8 Separation and reunions

One of the most dreaded events in a child’s life is going away from its mother. It hurts the little one’s heart, it’s a painful sight to see too. The child pleads, cries, howls, throws himself at its mother, not knowing that sometimes she is going away just for a couple of minutes. It doesn’t matter to him. Minutes or hours. The instant someone else tries to carry the child, taking him away from the mother, hell breaks loose. In fact, it doesn’t have to be someone else taking him away; if a child does not see his mother beside him after he wakes up from sleep, he is going to cry! Separation is tough. Both for children and their mothers. Children do not have a sense of time as such and tend to settle down in a while. But the mothers live every minute away, worrying.

The only thing which makes it all tolerable and beautiful is the reunion. The sweet smile on a baby’s face, a toddler running as fast as he can towards his mother, or even a teenager feeling relieved seeing his mother and asking “where were you? I have been looking for you!” It all shows the same; the bond thriving on never-ending love and care. The children are eager to go back into their mother’s arms but I guess the mothers look forward to the reunions more.

They work like magic on mothers who are tired after a long day of work, they give them a sense of relief that the child is now back in their safe hands; somehow every mother believes no one else can take care of her child the way she does. The mothers do look forward for a break from babysitting, from all that hard work and dependency, from all the tantrums and drama. They long to go back to their careers or even just a few hours of quiet and peace. But believe me when I say, the minute we mothers are alone, we don’t know what to do really.

Not a minute goes by without thinking of the little one. If he is OK, if he has eaten, slept, pooped? Is he playing? Is he running too fast? Is he safe? And then the strong urge to just leave what you are doing and go back to the baby. That’s why probably mothers are always a bit early to pick up their kids from school and daycare centres.

Even after the children grow up and move out for education, work, or marriage, the mothers find it tough to let go. They drown themselves in worry, they make daily calls to check on their children, they need to know when the kids are coming home to visit them next. The wait for that day patiently, and as the day gets closer you see them in action. They will clean up the whole house, stock up everything their children like, plan the week’s menu loaded with their special favourite dishes and so much more. Once you are home, you will receive feedback on how you look, how you dress, and they always feel you don’t do eat right and work too much. Mothers also have secret agendas; to make you visit the relatives, give you a lecture on settling down in life, on saving money.

If you have kids of your own, then it’s a bliss. Our mothers will take charge of your kids and you don’t have to worry at all. Everything will happen smoothly and you will enjoy the break, the quiet, and being alone and the downtime. You will wonder if you ever drove your mother crazy the way your kids do; the answer will always be yes. Your mother will tell you that you were such a brat and her grandkids are angels.

When it’s time to head back home for you, your bag will be heavier with all the goodies she packed, you will weigh heavier after eating all the calorie-loaded food that she cooked for you and your heart will be full of all the love she showered on you.

7 Pink and blue

Yes, I bought everything blue for my son. None of his clothes ever had a hint of pink or purple or even a lace on it. I never found a pink coloured shoe pair, socks with laces or a shirt with hearts printed in the boy’s section. Finding a Barbie there was out of the question. Whereas the girls' section had pink spilling over from all counters; clothes, shoes, stationery, toys. Most of the toys were even packed in pink cardboard boxes. Having said this, I never actually told my son that, “Pink is for girls and blue for boys”

Yet, one day while hunting for a gift for my son's classmate, a girl, I spent just an extra minute looking at the toy cars. And there it came,” No! Ma, we cannot buy a car for her! Girls like dolls! I want to give her a pink one”. I was surprised to hear this from my son with whom I never had discussed all this. Where this knowledge about cars did are not meant for girls come from? Who told him? Did I ever utter something which made him think so or was it someone else who discouraged him when he picked something pink earlier?

I had never given this much thought earlier. Now when I look at my childhood photos, I realize my parents never really followed this colour code. Nor did my uncles and aunts. Me, my cousins even my friends were dressed in all possible colours. My brother is seen wearing a hat with lace and my cousin sister is holding a car in her hand in one of the old photographs.

If I look around now, however, it has all changed. A little boy holding a Barbie would be stared at and girls are never gifted cars, robot toys but only dolls, kitchen sets and DIY jewellery kits.

It didn’t matter earlier, but now I realize how my choices are influencing my kids. My heart sinks every time my son reminds me to buy a blue kinder joy chocolate egg and not a pink one. As parents, do we really have a choice? I can only imagine the disbelief and disappointment if I would ever try and give my son a pink one.

I always ask my son and husband to help around in the house, hoping I am bringing equality into practice. However, it’s a long way to go before I can actually show my son the same happening in the neighbouring houses or even in my own extended family. The bar is set so low for men that it is a big deal if they manage to cook dal rice or do a load of laundry in the washing machine. Whereas the girls need to be master chefs, all the housework they do goes unappreciated and their career ambitions are kept under check right from childhood.

Honestly, I feel our parents and grandparents had the roles and responsibilities sorted. These days we all preach equality while we are still struggling to truly understand it ourselves and bring it into our own houses.

Women can work, yes, but only if the household is running smoothly. Breakfast, lunch, dinner should be ready, children should be looked after, their studies and extracurricular activities should be taken care of, and the husbands’ schedule should not be disturbed. If everything is handled well then yes, please go pursue your career. This is the reality that the mothers face. They are so exhausted with this double shift that they let go of one job, the one outside the house.

It is only after we get it right ourselves and change that we can truly teach our kids gender equality. It is something that they will learn from the community, not from the parents alone. 

6 In sickness and in health

Unlike all other promises that we make, which we tend to bend and break, the promises that we make to our children,(not to them directly! That candy you promised. Forget about it!) …yes so, the promises we make to them especially when they are still in the womb are never broken. We take those early promises, like” I will protect you and take care of you all my life and guard you against all the bad and evil things in the world” very seriously.

Right from day one we wash the babies clothes with disinfectants, scream at anyone who sneezes in the baby’s room, we have hand sanitizers all over the house, we wipe and clean all cupboards, floors every two hours when they start walking, we boil and cool their drinking water, we wash and scrub them every time they come back from the park, we deny them candies, ice creams, roadside food and lock them up in the house if we know there is HFMD going around among school kids. We do everything we can think of and yet the children fall sick. The first time they have a fever, cold and cough we are lost. We run to the doctor, monitor the temperature, keep records of it and pamper the child to the core. Slowly we learn to administer a few basic medicines and dare to wait for 3 days before going to the doctor, we give them a dose of medicine and send them to school anyway. We know when they are really sick and when they are faking it to bunk school. In any case, it is never easy for a mother to see her child getting sick… Our heart bleeds every time they complain of pain, we feel so helpless. We act strong and keep telling them that they’re going to be okay soon but we have this fear ourselves, we hope are pray every minute that it doesn’t get worse. We want our kids up and running ASAP. We leave all the housework aside, take leave from office and sit with them day and night just to keep them company. Nothing and no one is more important at that time. Once they get better, we are relived. The next day we miss the quiet house and start wishing that they sit in one place at least for a minute.

The reverse happens when you are sick, you want to sit down and do nothing, never get out of the bed and you want all the housework and cooking to be taken care of, by someone, by anyone…you want a fairy to come and make all the work disappear, you want her to make your children well behaved and mainly you want her to make it all quiet in the house, you don’t want to hear all that crying and howling. You just want to become invisible to everyone so that no one bothers you, you don’t need anyone to pamper you or look after you, and you just want them to leave you alone. That never happens.

You get out of bed, earlier than usual because you could never sleep in the first place, you cook, you get the kids ready, do all the housework, go to office and work, come back home, work again, and finally crash in bed, late after everyone is fast asleep hoping you get at least that 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

It is not that no one notices that you are sick, children will ask you,” what happened mummy?” and might even be the pretend doctor and give you a fake injection. They will run and get you a glass of water and ask “Are you feeling better now?” You wish that was enough to make you better. You lie and say you are all okay, thanks to the little doctor at home. Your husband will come and hand you a tablet to pop in, will offer to take you to the doctor too, but you know that kids cannot be left alone and you don’t want a family trip to the hospital where you will end up having more trouble keeping them entertained while you wait to see the doctor. You choose to stay at home.

 Being a mother gets you a lot of love, but it never gets you the rest you need. On days like this when you just want to lie in bed, the children just choose to be around you all the time. You want them around of course but you want that silence and sleep more which is then a deal-breaker to having their company.

Mothers always carry a lot of guilt, for the tiniest of things. On the days like these when they are unwell, it multiplies and you end up blaming yourself for falling sick as if you are not allowed to do that, you will blame the timing of the sickness, asking yourself why couldn’t it happen after my son’s exams? You will be unhappy about the gravity, a cold would have sufficed, why the fever and cough? With cold I could have managed to do more. You get worried and anxious as if your children are starving, seeing them (happily) eat a simple bread toast which your husband has managed to prepare. You see the laundry piling up and get scared that children will have to run out of clean clothes the next day. That’s not true, you have all those new ones lying around still with the price tag on, remember? Ah, but make sure to ask your husband to get their school uniforms washed and ironed, you don’t have many sets of those, do you? Leave from office is reserved only for children’s sickness, and now when you really are looking and feeling like shit, you will still show up at work. You come back home, help them with their homework, prepare dinner, put them to bed, again swallow a pill and hope that tomorrow you feel better, not for yourself, but because you can’t see the kids suffer eating the food ordered in and late bedtimes. (Which they are actually enjoying, no surprise there).So that is the story, we remain caregivers 24*7, no matter what else changes around us or within us. That is the promise you have made to your child, “I will look after you in (my) sickness and in health too”