Motherhood

Women play many roles in life. Motherhood is one of them. This is true of my life as well. I am daughter, sister, wife, mother. So why should I not have felt the urge to write about daughterhood or wifehood or sisterhood (if I may put it that way)? Maybe it is because you can’t help being a daughter or a sister. You are born into these two relationships. But the roles of wife or mother you may choose. You may also opt out of these relationships. Something in the way my daughter touched my existence, in the way she reinforced my sense of being, must have made me pen these words.

Now she is eleven years old and a major source of sustenance. I feel very keenly the pleasure of the relationship. There are moments of despair when she seems obstinate or careless or even uncaring. But I know the despair is more from the uncertainties presented by life than her activities. The sense of unhappiness comes more from my knowledge that life does not always go the way you plan it than from anything else. I dream many dreams and think many things. Most of all I think of seeing my child independent and strong, a good human being who can take care of herself and of others. So sometimes when she doesn’t listen to reason, I despair. Then I think of her past days of infancy and feel the warmth of those days suffuse my being and I, after the poet Wordsworth, again am strong…

My daughter has been the window to my understanding of the states of mind of a child. A bell of recognition tinkles in the mind when I read this particular poem by A.A.Milne:

When I was one

I had just begun

When I was two

I was nearly new

When I was three

I was hardly me

When I was four

I was not much more.

When I was five

I was just alive.

But now I am six I’m as clever as clever

So I think I’ll be six now forever and ever.

I feel the creator of Winnie the Pooh wrote this with kids such as my Poo in mind. Poo may be all of eleven now, but she would like to be six. She wants her dolls and chocolates, she wants her hugs and to snuggle up to me in bed at night, she sheds large tears when something doesn’t go her way. She wants all the ice cream from the family pack, she wants all the sausages fried at breakfast. She watches cartoons and likes to scribble in her exercise books and all over her hands and feet. She thinks nothing of breaking my lipstick or spraying all the perfume into the air. Phew! The list could get longer. But she has her lucid moments, when her observation of a situation could match any sensitive adult’s.

I look on and marvel at this child and secretly feel proud at having more than a hand in creating her. My flesh and blood she is and yet she is quite unknown to me, revealing new possibilities every day. I feel awe at this relationship of a mother with her child, forever caring, forgiving, giving, never asking and watching with fondness all the growing moments.

I remember how keenly I felt every moment of her existence within me even before she was born. I remember some of my scattered thoughts in those thirty seven weeks of waiting…

My little baby,

As you move inside me and

Assert your individual self,

I wonder what you will be like.

Will you and I have

Anything in common?

I hope you will be a girl.

Sometimes I am pleased,

Happy almost.

At other times

I am afraid. Inexplicably.

With you, I hope to be fulfilled.

Just your being there is enough.

No matter who you will be,

No matter what you will do.

And, my thoughts after she was born...

No male can have

the sense of achievement

that a woman can have.

Giving birth is an experience

and an achievement that is common,

but to each mother it is an achievement

exclusive and special,

an experience that is

overwhelming and unparalleled

by any other experience in this world.

Despite the intervening years,

I feel intensely

that moment of your birth still.

It is no mean thing –

this biological process

of nurturing within oneself

another human being and then

bringing him or her to earth safe.

The moment has a worth

for always and ever after.

At that moment you feel God is watching

and heaven is all around you.

It is God and you

and a divine moment of creation.

I am saying all this

as an afterthought, I know.

Actually it is a moment

one can’t just describe.

It is a moment to be felt

and to be experienced

and the moment that irrevocably

creates the bond

between the child born and

the woman who gives birth.

What wonderful emotions fill the woman’s heart when she realizes she is in the family way! When I knew I started glowing from that moment onwards, mostly because you are supposed to glow. What’s a mother-to-be without that special glow that speaks of happier things?

The glow however does not last. At the beginning of the third month or so I began to develop the symptoms of a seasick person. Retching seemed to become a pretty regular thing, throwing an entirely new light on the connotations of the word “wretched”… (any pun is intended).

If you are a mother then you will remember that come the fifth month things begin to improve. So it was with me. The glow stole back. Secret smiles played on my lips. I felt like forgiving the world, and particularly my husband, anything. I began to think with the bouts of nausea coming to an end, my days of discomfort were over. I found myself singing “Everything’s gonna be easy now…” – at least till ‘labour’ day.

Midway through the seventh month, when I distinctly began to resemble a weaver bird’s nest, I developed this terrific craving to lie on my stomach. I longingly looked back on the days when I had the absolute freedom to lie on my stomach, and didn’t take the opportunity to do so to my heart’s content. My husband’s face began to appear villainous. Days of discomfort were back again.

Just when you think you have finally finished, you have to start all over again! That’s motherhood for you. And I am not talking only of feeds and nappy changes. The whole emotional gearing up is towards one thing after another… a bit roller coaster in nature.

Some experiences feel like it’s a whole world traveled right round. Like motherhood. My daughter is on the threshold of life and I am at breaking point.

I look back on the days past and wonder if I should start all over again. Maybe I would get it all right the next time round. Maybe then my daughter would approve! But no – this is a once in a lifetime experience. That is motherhood. You start out with pencil and paper, and no erasers are supplied. Right from the word ‘go’, you can’t help but be sensitive to the particular joys and pains of being mother.

The first nickname also comes out of a feeling of joy and belonging. I called my baby Poo, after Winnie of the Winnie the Pooh fame. She just seemed like… well, like Poo.

When I heard the first wail emanating from my bundle of joy, the lightness I felt is something else. The awe at the mysteries of creation and my participation in it filled my being with a peace which is age-old, yet forever new. My soul said “You are Mother, hallowed be thy name”. I felt satisfied, pleased, tired. I felt like the poet Wordsworth, “Something attempted something done/Has earned the night’s repose.”

Something attempted – yes, something done – true… I had certainly earned the night’s repose – but did I get it? The answer to this question is historical knowledge.

With the arrival of the precious newcomer, repose and I became necessarily estranged. Infants have a remarkable way of treating night as the most appropriate time to indulge in various activities more suited to daytime. By the end of the first week from the day I got out of the nursing home, motherhood seemed anything but sublime. I seemed to be feeding, cleaning, changing, feeding, cleaning, changing… between bouts of keeping awake and comforting the little one. I wondered what made me do this. Why didn’t I learn to know better? By the time Poo was four months old I began to wonder why I was not born infertile.

My routine was something like this: working by day, staying awake by night, dozing at dawn. Poo liked to stay awake through the night. It was not that she made a nuisance of herself, ‘mewling and puking’ through the night. She just felt friendly. She waved her hands and feet in air, she made gurgling noises, generally shooting benevolent looks at her sleepy parents. I would sit up and stare at her unable to doze off when my daughter was still awake. I would try and sing her a few lullabies sending up quiet prayers to God to work a miracle. Lullabies seemed to please her leaving her hankering for more. When my throat would run dry so would my stock of lullabies. Sometimes I would try to pat her to sleep. She thought it was some form of game to deepen the bond between us.

Come dawn and the first chirping of birds and the cawing of crows and she would give a deep sigh and slip into slumber. On many occasions I resisted the temptation to give her a wild shaking. In the first 365 days of her life Poo slept through the night only on two occasions. How’s that for a record?

Of course, it was not all as bad as it sounds. There were the moments of pleasant surprise and intense happiness. The first smile, the first undecipherable word, the warm feel of the tiny soft body cuddling against me will never cease to be sources of wonder and the moments of proud realization that I did all this by myself – these were there too.

Feeding the baby has a joy all its own. This remark came from a friend who kept trying to tell herself that she was fulfilling some predestined role. The bond that grows between the mother and the child through the act of breast feeding, since it necessitates such closeness, is a bond unbreakable – she said. They all say it, in spite of the fact that we keep seeing bonds breaking here, there and everywhere. Each mother is foolish enough to believe that she is building a relation with her offspring which few could have achieved. I am no different.

In you I see myself reborn.

That one monosyllabic word

Which is common to all faiths,

All communities, to all humanity…

‘Ma’… when uttered by you,

Unwittingly, in a sort of half knowledge,

Reincarnates my whole being.

I participated in God’s creation

In giving being to you.

You recreate me, daily.

This special bond,

Forged in pain, fostered in pain,

Must not lose its meaning,

In the commonness of everyday activities…

I have to rise above

The mediocrity of daily existence,

I have to shake free of the pressure

Exerted by limited minds.

Help me, my child,

To be dependable and strong…

Mothering is a full time job – no earned or casual leave, please. Some sick leave perhaps, depending on circumstances. You have to be around all the time, to start all over again whenever the need arises.

For one, you have to be around when your infant is trying to decide which finger to suck. Poo started by trying to put both her hands into her mouth. A difficult and frustrating task indeed - I had to be around to sooth the frayed tempers. I watched patiently and unobtrusively, as my daughter took the first decision in life. The thumb it was.

The first time Poo rolled over on to her stomach after many tries was akin to her passing out of school. Or so I thought. Every time I placed pillows around her for safety fearing she might fall of the bed, she thought I had placed them there for fun and for her to crawl over. To give her credit, she never once fell off the bed. Neither did she smash her little chin when she first took to crawling. When she could crawl, she always aimed for the mysterious darkness under the dining table.

And the first tooth… oh boy! One fine morning when Poo was 11 months old I found her inconsolable. All motherly instinct failed, and I watched helplessly, as my little one cried and howled and soiled her clothes because of what appeared to be a small gastro-intestinal upheaval and went red in the face. Then suddenly one evening a week later, she calmed down with a cherubic peace on her lovely face. And her smile was no longer toothless! A little spot of white on the lower gum and it was a reason to celebrate.

She began to chew up things thereafter. Her own fingers, my fingers, books, newspapers… one day before I could retrieve the tiny piece of newspaper which was in her mouth, she swallowed it. My whole life flashed before my eyes. I saw myself running down hospital corridors, my little one trussed up in an operating theatre… I called up her doctor with trembling voice…

“Doctor, my daughter has swallowed a piece of The Telegraph.”

“She may become a journalist in the future,” he answered in a tired voice and thereafter proceeded to give professional advice. From his voice I understood she could have done much worse. But having recently attained the job of mother and being still in training I guess I could be forgiven these heebie-jeebies.

Since five months of age she intermittently suffered from a bronchial condition which has stayed on with her. As a result I tended to worry each time she coughed even a little. In fact I worried about just about everything. One fine morning, I found a notable number of grey hairs on my head which by now had begun to resemble a neglected bird’s nest. I felt a deep gratitude for the mother who had brought my siblings and me on to this earth and brought us up. We were four. She must have had a job of it. Ask her now and she will speak only of the joys of having us. We never do speak of the pain and the trials. What would be the point of it, in any case?

I watch you as you reach out

For a piece of sunlight on the floor

You try to grab it –

It slips out of your grasp…

So much in life is like

That piece of sunlight…

Now you look with

Innocent puzzlement…

The pieces of sunlight

That eluded my grasp

Fill me with anger

And my eyes with

Tears of despair.

Don’t let that ever

Happen to you, my child…

Pieces of sunlight are just

Transparent ephemeral things…

Laugh when they elude you,

Clap your hands with glee…

Play around with shadows

And sunlight.

The way we should play

With dreams of happiness.

Poo took her first independent steps when she was a little over one year of age. A little red plastic chair served as the prop. She started pushing it about the house. Round and round she went, her plump little feet padding behind. She seemed untiring. I was thrilled but worried at the same time that she might be overworking herself in her excitement at this new ability. All mothers gush and drool about the first step the child takes and feel increasing joy at the way the unsteady steps become surer and surer… They wouldn’t gush so much if they knew where these steps would gradually lead!

The steps lead to the parts of the house where one was not used to carrying her to. The kitchen, for one, is the location for the most enduring curiosities. The pots and pans beckon as do the ladles and spoons. No matter how many cuddly and interesting toys I bought for Poo, she was fascinated by utensils and cutlery. I kept buying toys in something of a frenzy thinking something would absorb her interest, divert her from the culinary tools. Dolls and teddy bears, musical toys, mechanical toys, winding and unwinding toys filled the shelves and floors. Most of them she took apart as far as they could be taken apart and went back to the kitchen for the more interesting stuff.

Then an idea struck me. Now why hadn’t I thought of that before? I began buying little tea sets, kitchen sets, picnic sets, coffee sets, tiny gas stoves, rolling pins, pots and pans for Poo. She loved to play with kitchen stuff, so I thought it a clever notion to get her a miniature kitchen. Well, let me tell all misguided souls like me, kids love the real thing! Kitchen, here we come on little wobbly steps…

Of course, to be quite fair to Poo, the kitchen was not the only restricted area she made a beeline for. The bathroom was equally enticing, particularly if there was a bucketful of water just waiting around to splash about in. Soon she was walking all over the house, exploring as many corners as she could get into. Luckily, none of them were tight corners!

All mothers are naïve enough to believe that the way her infant is taking on the progressive steps in life are indicative of the conquering spirit. All human beings have the conquering spirit. We all like to conquer the odds, as it were. The odder the circumstances, the better it is for the kid. Like being on TV is to try and climb in through its back. As Poo grew up she began to realize the various uses her hands and feet could be put to and she went about it with great gusto. By two years of age she had realized hands could be particularly useful in smashing and pasting my favourite lipstick all over my writing bureau. Feet could, she learnt, be suitably used to speed through the house, and at a later stage to climb up shelves and window bars.

She knew atmospheric truths pretty early, like the higher you go the “cooler” it gets. Most of the stuff one wanted to keep out of her reach would be placed on the higher shelves of cabinets and cupboards. But the old conquering spirit made her aspire to these heights and achieve – get her hands on my precious photo albums or interesting trinkets.

The dexterity, with which she got her hands on my collection of trinkets, baubles, and other interesting bric-a-brac, aided me much in developing a philosophical attitude toward material things. I realized that possession of material things was only a temporary pleasure. She took a particular liking to my collection of pens of various colours. She took to scribbling on any surface that was worth scribbling on. I sought a way out by providing her with paper and crayons. She loved her crayons and she scribbled day and night. I thought I had hit upon a really smart idea. This I thought would really keep her busy.

To be fair, it did, for many months. She still loves to scribble, draw and colour. But she has gone on to higher things.

Poo - the things you say and

The things you do

Are all so endearing

And a constant wonder to me.

From the first word you spoke

To the full sentences that you speak now,

Each thing means so much.

You will not remember

The things you do and say.

Possibly, I will forget much

And remember perhaps

Just a few things.

But just because memory fails,

Moments do not lose their value.

At age three plus I sent her to school. Very early in her academic career Poo concluded that institutionalized learning is an entirely worthless process. Why should we have to learn to write spellings correctly? Learning to add was fine, but why should we have to learn to subtract as well? Why should we have to go to school every day? Why? Why? These agonized questions I felt absolutely unequal to. I had no answers that would satisfy her queries.

Being an only child, surrounded by grown-ups (average mental age 50) she would obviously get restless and want to spend her energy on a lot of activity that was not particularly result-oriented. A notable part of her activity was dismantling a toy within fifteen minutes of receiving it. I decided she needed her energies diverted into the correct channels. She needed more company and defined activity, or so I thought.

Since I could not imagine the possibility of providing her with a brother or sister, I decided to get her a pet. A little whimpering dog who would I presumed rouse all the protective instincts and affection in her. I imagined warm cozy scenes of dog and child playing, and generally passing the time delightfully. Advertisements on TV show children hugging and cavorting with dogs. I was quite wrong, of course.

Poo called it Tomato, rather indicative of what she planned to do with it. “Squash it” is a term that comes readily to mind. She saw the pet as a competitor right from the beginning. Accordingly, she proceeded on her attempts to annihilate the poor chap in a serial manner. She pulled the tail to see if a dog can move backwards. She placed the quivering 8 inch-in-length creature on the dining table and encouraged it to jump off. I like to believe that she was not trying to incite the poor creature to commit suicide.

After some time, I found the little dog shuddering at the very sound of my daughter’s voice. I had to send it back to its original birthplace after which Poo told me with a very hurt expression how upset she was with my decision. And then went about her work cheerfully. I consoled myself that these things can happen; after all, not all little boys and girls are fond of pets. (But almost one and half years after Tomato was sent back, one day she told me she was awfully sorry for what she had done to Tomato and would like to apologize to the dog personally and that she had realized the error of her ways.)

Post-Tomato it was Barbie dolls. A friend of mine presented my daughter with her first Barbie doll. I personally had never thought of buying her one because it was my innocent belief that children as small as her would prefer either little kitchenware or stuffed bears or large cuddly dolls. My theory on large cuddly dolls went the toy kitchenware theory way. Poo had no particular liking for cuddly toys either. The first toy to really take her fancy was the slim, chic Barbie presented to her. She wanted a name for her Barbie. Almost without thinking I answered “Jamaica.” And Jamaica she was and still is.

Almost overnight Poo turned into a Barbie collector. I would have to buy her Barbie dolls of all description and appearance and back home from the shops we would go through an elaborate christening ceremony. Each of the sixteen Barbie dolls soon had a different name. Of course the dolls needed their dresses and accessories as well. For hours she would sit and play with her Barbies and her world of imagination grew as my bank balance dwindled.

Barbie continues to be a passion for her. Leo-Mattel knew their business well. Now we have a Barbie house with furniture, clothes and shoes and crockery; in short, the works. She still plays with it all, perhaps living out some little fantasy, in a world far removed from fathers, mothers, grandmothers, schoolteachers…

At age five the child develops the rational mind, theorists say. I wonder if any theorist has ever brought up a full blooded child. At age 5, I tried to appeal to the rational mind in my daughter. God had obviously made a slip in the making of my Poo. The rational mind is peculiarly absent. And as if to make up for the gap, a generous amount of the imaginative faculty has been put in.

She always had new stories about why she would not like to go to school. She developed a permanent ache in her stomach. At least 40 per cent of school days were not attended by her. Her school expects parents to write letters asking to be excused for absence and send in medical certificates when necessary. On one such occasion she nonchalantly told me that she had failed to hand over the letter as on the way to school she had dropped it and it was promptly swallowed by the neighborhood dragon.

The neighbourhood dragon was initially my creation as it effectively quieted her in her unreasonable moments. When she was being particularly difficult, I would call to the dragon to come and pull her up. This ruse worked. I knew when it worked. I however did not know when it stopped working. I knew it had stopped working when she used it back on me that day.

My powers to convince were put to test each morning, at around 7.30 am, as is my physical strength. I had thought I had got over playing dolls a long, long time ago. But I seemed to have revived something akin to that in my life again by admitting Poo to school. Each morning I would have to lift her bodily out of bed, carry her to the wash basin, brush her teeth for her, spoon in her morning meal, give her a bath, clothe her, comb her hair, all the time speaking on the good aspects of school and how wonderful it can be. Through the whole exercise my daughter remained more or less inert and finally left to catch the school bus with a “lifes’s not fair” expression.

Poo treated her going to school as entirely my responsibility. I thought going to school was a good idea, she did not. I thought an academic training was a necessity, she thought differently. The generation gap was obvious.

I am the proverbial “working mother”. I teach in a college and get back from work in the evening. When Poo was five or even six, she would be home at least four hours before I came back. Those four hours of being unavailable to meet my daughter’s demands was like the end of the world for her and more so for others who had to keep an eye on her in my absence.

So back home, looking for a cup of tea and a bit of rest, I had to play games with Poo. She scripted the games, wrote the dialogue and directed my actions. I just had to be a willing participant. I am as willing as you can find them. Only a little slow on the uptake. Sometimes not acting on the cue led to disturbing situations.

The leg of a doll once came off as we were trying to marry her off to Prince Charming. At the same time I remembered a small chore in the kitchen. I told her I would fix the leg after I had dealt with what needed to be done in the kitchen. Poo of course considered the surgery on the doll a priority and kept hollering for me to get back to it. By the time I finished in the kitchen and came back, all was over. Out of sheer frustration she had chewed out of shape the errant leg. Thereafter she proceeded to throw the doll into the dustbin, announcing it was a most unsuitable candidate for a bride.

Quick to decide, I must say. Admirable quality, if one judges dispassionately. She took other major decisions in life with equal dexterity. Five, not yet six; she announced that till the end of class two she would try and take academic life with equanimity. No studies after that, thank you.

Academics are something Poo always got hold of from the other end. Spellings were the greatest victims. She could spell the same word in three different ways. She preferred phonetic transcription to spellings in the standard lexicon. From time to time with commendable perseverance I would break down her resistance to spelling practice. On one such occasion she had got wrong nine out of the ten spellings I had dictated. I tried to give her a hurt look at her dismal performance. Unfazed she pointed out the one correct spelling and said, “If I had managed to get that one wrong that would have just about completed it.”

She had some kind of mental resistance to ‘b’ and ‘d’. She would always write ‘b’ as ‘d’ and ‘d’ as ‘b’. On one such occasion, when she had again written ‘bate’ instead of ‘date’, I asked in as tolerant a voice as possible “Why do you always end up writing d as b?” She gave me a worldly wise look and answered, “I have a problem.” I wondered who it was that had a problem on her hands! There was no denying that this child knew how to call a spade a spade.

What would you like to do when you are grown up? – I had asked Poo once at the age of, perhaps, six. I suppose this question from me was guided by years of social adherence. Her answer: stay at home, read Cinderella and paint, what else?

What else? True. That sounded a little familiar. Did I not feel this way too at age six and seven or even eight? I have ended up doing other things. Maybe she too will succumb to social and economic routines. Give in to monotony. Develop the ‘rational’ in her and I shall be at ease to think that she is accustoming herself to traditional expectations.

One fine day she said she would like to be a teacher. I gently reminded her that an academic career that ended at age six would hardly equip her for the profession. Her bewildered query was, “You have to study a lot to be a teacher?”

“Well, at least, till college”, I said without going into too many details. One had to be cautious.

She asked me with something of disbelief, “You studied in college?”

“And university”, I said.

She became silent and I knew I had just shot down one burgeoning ambition. Of course, I consoled myself that it was too early to lose hope.

Subsequently things began looking up for which I must be eternally grateful to her teacher in class II. It must have been some chord the good lady touched in Poo’s heart. Half way through that academic year, Poo announced grandly that she was willing to give academic life another try. She would finish school, going through all the classes that the academic institution had on offer. That was a pretty happy day in my life. Rich reward for my apprehensive soul. No matter what we think or feel, we all know we have to see our child gear up for the challenges of day to day existence.

Then she announced that she would be a doctor. Again too early to hope too much, but I was curious to know what had brought the fit on. Apparently it was television soap that had induced this process of thought. She loved the white coats the actors in the soap wore. In any case this was a good thing and, I believed and believe, one worth encouraging. The future in any case is always unknown but present hope is a wonderful thing.

At one point of time I realized that Poo was developing a skill in spellings entirely her own and far removed from reality. Like many a hapless mother I had employed a tutor, a young college girl, whom I gently instructed to be firm but friendly and to adopt a mode of teaching which would serve at the same time as a couple of hours of companionship for my daughter.

I have always felt that providing my daughter with company when I am out earning the butter for the family bread, is somehow one of my responsibilities. Anita proved to be a happy companion. Soon my daughter could actually spell words and add and subtract with ease. The amount of work Anita set her for the week was all done just a couple of hours before she was supposed to turn up. This was obviously not a happy practice.

Poo was being told as much by her father in one of those rare moments when he thought he had a duty to discipline her.

“When we were kids tutors would set us so much work we would not be able to lift our heads. Anita is making it too easy for you. You should have a tutor like the one I had and mountains of homework!” he said.

Poo’s reply, I think, should go down in history…

“If you get me such a tutor, the days she is supposed to come, I will simply not be at home!”

These tasks set by Anita always were a bone of contention between Poo and me. Each evening I put in my reminder. Some evenings she would reluctantly sit down to do the work before eleventh hour. On one such occasion, she was doing her homework with more than usual reluctance. Hence the mistakes in arithmetic were quite a few. I glanced in and remarked that she should check and see whether she had done all the sums correctly. Her reply was, “It’s the teacher’s job to check and see whether my sums are correct. I have done the homework. That’s all!”

That was all, really. A sheer example of clear thinking on the theory of division of labour; it would make Adam Smith smile with satisfaction.

Most children dislike studies. Their dislike is historical. The routine and the compelling monotony that often get associated with school and studies is perhaps the reason. Shakespeare spoke of young boys walking like snails toward school. The reality of children’s dislike of academics is that old. We all know the truth and yet we worry when we see our little children not wanting to sit down with their books as a routine.

We all cannot think beyond institutionalized education and we feel scared that our children may not make the mark. These fears cannot be avoided no matter how one tries. I do deep breathing exercise each time the worry of Poo’s academic reticence hits me. I tell myself, que serra, serra and then I feel like breaking down.

The best excuse she has given till date for not looking forward to going to school: Noise pollution!

Poo, your brightness and lucidity,

Creativity and abilities

Remain unharnessed,

As I flounder in an

unresolved search for identity.

Have I been wife?

Can I be mother?

Life’s varying aspects become

disproportionate and fearsome.

Past dissatisfactions hound

present imaginings.

Where do I fit in with my longings?

Which nook am I to guide you to?

Incredulously, I stare around me

Wondering at which point

Things began to queer for me.

How do I pick up courage?

How do I scrub out bitterness?

How, where do I restart?

I know only acceptance

Can do the magic,

And help me to redefine happiness.

But acceptance reeks

Of compromise,

Of a half-hearted existence.

Confusion reigns over my being

Which finds itself inept,

Helpless to provide shelter

to another’s dreams and longings.

At six, a child is a curious mixture of pure innocence and instinctive awareness of immediate surroundings. Poo noticed many things as her sudden statements about situations or people would make clear.

Somewhere along the line I realized that Poo had not quite developed as far as eating habits went. Anything that meant some trouble to eat was not worth eating. One should be able to eat without looking at the food on the plate or so she thought. Eyes could be better employed at meal times looking at cartoons on the television. As a result most meal times would become a trial in patience for hapless me. She could take half an hour over a piece of bread; almost two hours at dinner and so on…

Like all mothers, I believe that a certain amount of food should go into a growing child daily. As a result I bend myself in all directions to ensure that the food put on the plate in the first place at least should be consumed, never mind a second helping. On one such occasion, when I had been repeatedly telling her to finish her breakfast for almost an hour, out of sheer frustration I remarked that I would pray to God that she has a daughter just like herself and then I will see how she will feel!

Pat came the reply, from one who was a little over six: “If I have a daughter like myself, I would send her to a crèche everyday.”

Wisdom I had not achieved in all these years served to me on a platter! Now why hadn’t I thought of that? There were of course many reasons why I had not thought of that. I believed in families and had definite ideas about the kind of home atmosphere a child should grow up in. Loving grandparents, loving but strict parents and a person to help out with the hundred odd jobs that crop up when there is a little child in the house – that was how I had pictured things.

But we cannot always translate dreams into reality. Situations may not live up to expectations. You yourself may not be able to deliver the goods. Many things can put a spanner in your plans. The unfortunate thing is that children often end up at the receiving end when dreams go awry. I like to think I tried my best, but who can decide? Poo is Poo, dreams or no dreams. Poo has come on to this earth with her own destiny and she will fulfill it.

The best thing I can do is be a mother. I realize that now. When a student does well, I feel good being his teacher. But when I can make my daughter laugh, that is the biggest reward. When I say “I love my little baby” to her at least once in the day, I feel a sense of achievement. I realize that at the end of my life if my daughter will even so much as say that she had a good mother, my life will be fulfilled.

As I said, you may have dreams and they may not work. You may have theories about bringing up children and they may fall right through the floor. I am speaking of the great separation when a child is to be moved out of her parents’ bed into a bed of her own. Some say a child should be made to shift out of her parents’ room when she is five or so. Others say this should happen when the child is mentally prepared.

A little over seven years of age, Poo started speaking in terms of her own room. So I thought this was as good a time as any to encourage her to shift out of our bed. With much fanfare, her bed and study table and toy box were all suitably placed in her grandmother’s room (making the best possible arrangement in view of the constraint of space in our small apartment). Two days and nights went off rather well and then the excitement about her little corner in the home subsided. On the third morning she walked into our room, sat on our bed and looked around rather wistfully. What she said was even more heart rending.

“My pillow is no longer here. That is Papa’s pillow and this is Mama’s. I have now gone out of your lives”.

Weaning… A word we normally associate with moving the child from a liquid to a solid diet. It’s a word that applies to many other “movings away”, if I may be allowed to put it that way. Just when you thought you had finished weaning, you had to start all over again!

Moving the kid out of your bed into one of her own, in the next room is yet another weaning which needs your patience and hard work. After Poo was moved out of our room into her grandmother’s room, on many days, in the wee hours of the morning, she would crawl back into our bed. I would suddenly realize that we had a very cuddly and warm being amidst us.

One night, with something of determination, she walked in with her pillow, plonked down on the bed as her father and I readied for sleep and announced, “That room is full of ghosts. I am just not going back there”.

Just when you thought you had finished weaning…..

My effort continued in various ways. And six months down the line she seemed to settle into the idea that she had to sleep in her own bed and not in her parents’. I was of course far from easy in the mind. With Poo you could never be sure. Of course I love her for her unpredictability.

It was Poo’s habit to watch TV and munch chips or some such snack. She is not the very outdoor types. She prefers to invite friends over and play at home. Physical activity with her as a result is perhaps not as much as children of her age. One day I noticed she was developing something of a paunch. I warned, “Baby you will have to cut down on the front-of-TV snacks. You are developing a tummy!” It seemed she hadn’t heard or did not care to hear. But she had heard. A few minutes later she gave a nervous little smile and said,

“Hope I won’t get a baby!”

About the birth of babies she had been collecting information for some time now. Babies came out of mummies’ tummies.

Babies were to be obtained by applying to God.

These applications may be filed mostly after marriage.

Sometimes you could put in a requisition before marriage.

In case of requisitions after marriage, the supply was faster.

Before marriage, God took His time about honouring your request.

Impressive data, I must say. How much of it was heard and how much thought out, I will never know. Like the one about sanitary napkins: they are to keep your butt from getting hurt if you fall while playing or running about!

I could not help noticing that she was developing a quick wit, charming and funny. The wit was particularly applied in academic discussions between hapless mother and bright-spark daughter. Every excuse was tried by Poo to avoid studying. She always felt that sitting down with school books was time misspent. Almost every other day I would have to speak to her at length about the need to take school work seriously. Sometimes I would scold, sometimes coax, sometimes reason with her.

When she had struggled through sixth standard and enjoying a short recess before report card day, I told her to keep on with math and language practice. I had got hold of a comprehension workbook in English and asked her to work out the exercises one by one when I was away at work. She was doing them alright. One evening back from work as I corrected the work I wondered if she was copying from the answers given at the back of the book. She protested, shed a tear, asked me to stop trying to be Sherlock Holmes and finally threatened to give up studies if I suspected her of not being honest with the work. I kept quiet through this process wondering what I should say. It was actually she who spoke up next with sheer honesty, “Oh! How can I give up studies when I have already given them up!” I couldn’t make up my mind whether to laugh or despair at this holding up of the mirror to oneself.

Like the unbridled winds, Poo carries on… I watch and feel proud, a little weepy, a little confused and sometimes plain exhausted.

It is never enough to just say I love my child, or my parents, or any other person for that matter. Loving someone means a huge responsibility towards that person. When you love a person, you love the totality, strengths and weaknesses included. Being loved also entails a responsibility. You have to try and not disappoint the person who loves you.

God knows I have my disqualifications. I hope as a mother I am not yet a disappointing figure. I have not been all that I could have been as a mother. Sometimes I am too full of a sense of deprivation. I feel I deserved much more in life and go off at a tangent.

My feelings of loneliness, of wretchedness, go only when I focus myself back on Poo’s needs. Existence becomes my need when I think of her present vulnerability. I have to live for Poo. I have to provide for my child till she is self sufficient.

I must also remind her that self sufficiency is not selfishness. It is being able to take good care of yourself, and at the same time being strong, caring, and being there when someone needs you.

Those were the wonder years. Now Poo is much grown up. She has her own collection of lipsticks, trinkets. She has decided that she would like to be a fashion designer. She does have a way with clothes, I have noticed. Though I buy the clothes for her mostly, she decides what she will wear on which occasion. She often combines one piece of attire with another in rather interesting ways. She adds on the accessories and I find myself liking the ensemble. Rarely do I ask her to change anything or make any suggestions.

She even tells me what I should wear and what I should not. She tells me when my make up looks a little over done. I developed grey hair quite early in my life. Partial progeria, maybe. Once, my agonized 6 year-old told me that a graying mother of a little child was just not acceptable. What would her friends think? I immediately started colouring my hair. Five years down things changed. On a certain day I looked at myself in the mirror and remarked that it was time for touching up my hair as the greys were peeping out – but I was just not able to find that one empty hour or the energy to do it. My now sensible 11 year-old daughter told me, “Mamma, you can stop dyeing your hair.” Apparently now she was old enough to have an ‘old mother’!

In fact, I often find myself seeking approval on my appearance from her. This may be guided by a deep-seated anxiety that I may not be proving to be a good mother. ‘Good’, of course, here has no moral connotations. These are the anxieties of a typical working mother who feels she is not doing enough. I can list a few non-working mothers who never did enough but still are held in enviably high regard by their children – and this is not sarcasm. I realize the presence of the mother matters. Theorists talk of quality time – it’s an empty concept, let me tell you. Kids have remarkably short memories, and will remember very little of the good times. They will normally compare notes with their peers and for absolutely inexplicable reasons feel cheated in comparison to some friend or the other. The idea is not to try to hard if one thinks rationally. But when a mother thinks about her child rarely does rationality play a role. And this truth applies to all generations of mothers.

Things get worse, when the child grows up and begins to shift away mentally. At times, Poo complains about my not making time for her. At other times she does not want mother’s company. She likes to be by herself, doing things and gets a little upset if I come up to speak to her. She has conversations with friends which she no longer tells me about. Sometimes she scribbles things in a diary which I am not allowed to look at. She still needs me, of course, to clean up after her. She will continue to need me for that for a few more years now, after which I hope she will learn to clean up her own mess.