I can be a rather cold, distant person where familial attachments are concerned. And unlike most people who have a softer spot for their mothers compared to fathers or siblings, I, in all contradiction, grew up having a love-hate relationship with my mother. No - not because she was the sort we sometimes hear about - the kind who deserts her kids or coudn't care less about them. My mother cared for us, fed us well, made sure we went to school in clean clothes, and was especially particular that we grew up with a strong sense of morality and decency. Yeah, she did all that.
Yet, I could never truly always love her as most people would their mother.
Today, just a few minutes ago, sitting a feet away from her at a clinic as she waited for her turn to see her doctor, I actually found myself staring at my mother as if she were this new person I could not recognise. Here was this frail old woman - one obviously in pain - pain that she could never make her children see or understand, for it is never always in explainable forms. More than pain, I think it is helplessness that's weakening her these days. Imagine how one must feel, having been a tough, strong-willed woman all her earlier life, having mothered and raised 6 kids as a perfect disciplinarian - in short having once been the underlying strength of a family of eight - but who was now reduced to a mere aged mother.
She sat there with an uncalled-for fear of me - her youngest child - in her eyes, wanting so much to look at me and reach out and yet could not - simply because I had stopped allowing her to, more than a decade ago. A sudden gush of tears welled in my eyes. It was like a flash of realisation, or more less-refinedly-put, a slap in the face. True, my mother had been impossible for a great deal of my teenage and adult life - indulging in her petty ways to the unbearable extent. And yes, I have many a time wished my mother had acted much more fairly to me and my sister as she had been to my brothers. But really, who am I to judge her - when I should have known better than to do so - judge the very woman who once carried me within her.
I had always mocked motherhood - strongly believing that it was an universally overstated sentiment that seriously needed some downplay. I would laugh unkindly whenever a new thamizh amma song gained popularity, or whenever people wrote poems for their mothers on Mothers' Day. Yeah, I had been a downright cold-hearted meanie where mommy sentiments were concerned. I guess, when one is deprived of something for long, the sense of longing eventually turns into an unkind dislike of that something. I realise now that it wasn't fair of me to mock (and probably envy) the motherhood of a woman who brought me into this world...just because I wasn't going to experience it ever.
This post is not written to apologise (not that it has any chance to - my mother is not English-literate). Neither is this post intended to share the lessons I learned today (I am in no position to do so). I just needed to come to terms with the "slap in the face" I received today, and the only way I do that these days is through my writing, particularly blogging. So there!
Yet, I could never truly always love her as most people would their mother.
Today, just a few minutes ago, sitting a feet away from her at a clinic as she waited for her turn to see her doctor, I actually found myself staring at my mother as if she were this new person I could not recognise. Here was this frail old woman - one obviously in pain - pain that she could never make her children see or understand, for it is never always in explainable forms. More than pain, I think it is helplessness that's weakening her these days. Imagine how one must feel, having been a tough, strong-willed woman all her earlier life, having mothered and raised 6 kids as a perfect disciplinarian - in short having once been the underlying strength of a family of eight - but who was now reduced to a mere aged mother.
She sat there with an uncalled-for fear of me - her youngest child - in her eyes, wanting so much to look at me and reach out and yet could not - simply because I had stopped allowing her to, more than a decade ago. A sudden gush of tears welled in my eyes. It was like a flash of realisation, or more less-refinedly-put, a slap in the face. True, my mother had been impossible for a great deal of my teenage and adult life - indulging in her petty ways to the unbearable extent. And yes, I have many a time wished my mother had acted much more fairly to me and my sister as she had been to my brothers. But really, who am I to judge her - when I should have known better than to do so - judge the very woman who once carried me within her.
I had always mocked motherhood - strongly believing that it was an universally overstated sentiment that seriously needed some downplay. I would laugh unkindly whenever a new thamizh amma song gained popularity, or whenever people wrote poems for their mothers on Mothers' Day. Yeah, I had been a downright cold-hearted meanie where mommy sentiments were concerned. I guess, when one is deprived of something for long, the sense of longing eventually turns into an unkind dislike of that something. I realise now that it wasn't fair of me to mock (and probably envy) the motherhood of a woman who brought me into this world...just because I wasn't going to experience it ever.
This post is not written to apologise (not that it has any chance to - my mother is not English-literate). Neither is this post intended to share the lessons I learned today (I am in no position to do so). I just needed to come to terms with the "slap in the face" I received today, and the only way I do that these days is through my writing, particularly blogging. So there!
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