BEYOND BEING A MOTHER

You will not find her in the kitchen because she detests cooking. You will not find her running after her children to feed them because she believes that when hungry, the child will ask for food on his/ her own accord.  If you have been in the same vicinity as her, psychologically and emotionally, you would know she rejects the idea of mollycoddling. Have you refused a movie invitation once?Well then don’t be heartbroken if she heads out alone or with someone else. She doesn’t believe in asking the same question twice or wasting her time in changing your mind.  Are you scandalized when  her 17 year old daughter tells you that she was alone for a month during her board exams with only the house help for company because her mother was busy setting up the house in a new place where her husband had got transferred? She would look at you with utter incomprehension and very innocuously ask you   “Why does my daughter need me when I am not responsible for her academics anymore?” You need coffee to keep you awake during the wee hours of morning so that you can clock in a few more hours to fine tune that presentation of yours?  Don’t look her way please. She is in her slumber land, dreaming of a lazy day with her girlfriends. It’s only coffee, go make it yourself she has told you since you were 14.

  Life, for her, is beyond the multitude of roles she plays. Her life for her is how she wants to spend it. Sometimes it’s about watching a clutch your stomach and laugh out loud movie with the best company she can have at a short notice: her own At other times it’s an impromptu trip to the nearest city with her girl pals and yet other times are a trip down memory lane. A lane which she has walked with people she has adored before she became some one’s wife and someone’s mother. Laughter she shared with people from a lifetime ago, pranks she played on people without  witnessing  the exasperated look on her husband's face  and parties she has attended prior to being suffixed with   “Mrs”.  A treasure box she is reticent to share with her “family”.  I have a life beyond my children, and husband and with that she would dash out of the door to book tickets to meet  her family . What family you ask? For isn’t her family right here with her? I have another family that does not consist of my husband and children.  My mother and brothers are my family too, she would tell you with patience that one cultivates towards a naughty five year old who refuses to see logic. “All mothers do that, why don’t you” , complains a pouty  12 year old. “Because I’m not all mothers, I’m me. If you want that expensive dress, you will just have to grow up and earn enough to buy it.  She would tell you with an icy look in her eyes and end the argument.  She firmly believes that the concept of a “supermom” is propagated to remind women that they are just mothers who are expected to care for their off springs.  I’m a mother yes, but first I’m a human being with all her faults and follies. Just a human. Not a supermom.  

A perfect parent is a myth, she would tell you. A parent is as imperfect  as the next person. To deny the imperfection to a parent, especially to a mother, is dehumanizing the humanness that is an integral part of any individual. Parents are born at the same time as their children. Just like the child is new to this world, the parents too are new to parenthood, she would inform you.  They learn from their errors and experiences to care for the child and to care for each other in that new role that nature has entrusted them with.  Motherhood ( She uses the word parenthood) comes with no instruction manual. To call mothers, especially mothers, perfect, is to elevate them to status of divinity, which takes away her identity.  I’m not unblemished, neither am I unmarred. My blemishes and my failures are proof that I am a work in progress  as a parent, just like you are as a daughter .  I’m happy that I’m your mother but I’m happier that I’m a reader, an artist, a foodie and much more. You, dear daughter, are an integral part of who I am, but I’m beyond you. I’m me.  Having said that, she will go back to the latest episode of her favourite TV show.

With this, I join the bandwagon who pay ode to their mothers on Mother’s Day . Here is to the woman who gave birth to me but did not let the role be her definition. A woman who doesn't need an appendage of a relationship to define her.  A badass mother and a kickass woman.