Quinceanera

As I held the soft, warm bundle that were you, my heart just filled with this overwhelming, melting, oozy feeling that I have never ever felt before. A feeling of intense love for your tiny being, a feeling of complete bewilderment that your perfect body grew in my own, a fierce desire to protect you from all the evil in the world – a combination of all these and many more. Oh, and relief too, when the neo natal doc pronounced you healthy. Even now, when we laugh together over a shared joke, I look at your crinkled eyes, your wide smile and all of a sudden, think back to the moment when I held you for the first time. I can still feel that moment of wonder when I realized I am a mother to this tiny being in my arms. I remember I turned to every single person in the delivery room as I held you gingerly, and thanked them profusely. I thanked them for giving me you, a little pink bundle of perfection.

You are fifteen today. Almost a woman. Yet sometimes, when I enter your room to wake you up for school or swimming practice, I see in your sleeping face the baby that your daddy and I brought home. I move your hair and plant a kiss on your cheeks. You smile a little, in your sleep. Perhaps, even in your state of blessed unconsciousness, you feel my love?

You were born on a Thursday, the day of Goddess Lakshmi according to the Hindu mythology – the goddess of wealth. As we brought you home from the hospital, the landlady of our apartment in Delhi, stopped me to see your face as she thrust in your tiny hands an envelope full of money. She said, ‘Lakshmi has come to you on a Thursday!’ Your dad and I laughed.

Your dad boasted while you were still nestled within my body that he is an expert in babies, coming from a family of six siblings. I, being an only child, often expressed doubts about my abilities to keep a baby alive. I admitted I was clueless and all the books I read provided only theory. Your dad said, ‘Don’t worry, I know everything about changing diapers, bathing new borns. I will teach you!’ I, having never even seen or held a new born, believed him.

Then came the time to bathe you, for the first time. I handed you over to him and sat nervously watching. His hands were shaking and you were slippery. It was clear he did not know what to do with you, despite his bravado 🙂 . I almost died a thousand deaths in those few minutes in the fear that he will drop you. After five minutes, I could not bear the agony any longer, I took you back, ‘I can do this. I will do this!’ He handed you back and I cleaned you – fearlessly. As I look back, I realize motherhood came to me naturally. Taking care of you became my second nature, I did it with ease. Your daddy was of course, a huge help.

Your daddy and I decided to be with each other for many reasons, we discovered we completed each other in many ways. You, my dear girl, brought even more joy in our lives, than we thought was even possible. I have so many happy memories of the two of us sitting around you and watching you for hours, laughing over your facial gesture, gently sliding our finger into your closely fisted little fingers, tickling your tiny little toes and marveling over your belly laughs. I still can hear it!

We suffered from the agonies that all first time parents suffer from. We analyzed every cry, we tiptoed to your room when you were sleeping to make sure you breathed. We debated and read everything we could lay our hands on whether to lay you on your back, on your tummy or on your side when you slept. We asked innumerable questions to veteran parents and got patronizing and indulgent smiles. We proudly held you out for people to admire (you were really a very cute baby) and I frowned inwardly when people wanted to hold you. I antagonized a few family members by asking them to sanitize their hands before holding you. I really didn’t care what they thought. Your safety from germs was my primary concern.

You grew like a sunflower nourished by all the love not only from your parents, but your grand parents, uncles, aunts, neighbors, friends and teachers. People near and far loved you dearly and enriched your life with their happy presence. And you enriched theirs with your baby talk, toothless smiles, curly haired cuteness.

You made us parents for the first time. We learnt to be a parent by making mistakes with you. We learnt to create boundaries, we learnt when to give in, when to stand our grounds.

At fifteen, the worries remain for us. The reasons have changed. The overwhelming love that we feel for you for just being YOU remains, sometimes due to the conflicts that love is perhaps not as evident to you. But that first overwhelming intense love that we felt when we first held you follows you around faithfully. It will always follow you as long as we live. We do not sometimes, and may not see eye to eye always, but the love for you is permanent.

I want you to grow up and soar high with that knowledge. On your birthday, and for ever, do know please that you are intensely loved and lovingly cherished. I hope on your birthday, you will take a few moments to feel the love that surrounds you, make it a part of your essence and then when you go out to the world, spread the love on. We all know the world desperately needs it.

Happy birthday, my love, my dear, dear girl. Spread your wing, you will always have our love to fall back upon, if you so need, as your safety net.

I will celebrate Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day was a relatively new concept in India in the mid nineties. It was a borrowed concept from the West and we all sneered at this custom of designating this one day to mothers. “For us, 365 days are mother’s day. We don’t just designate one single day to celebrate motherhood!” we said. We were wrong. At least I was wrong. I didn’t celebrate mother’s day for all 365 days. I love my mother, but I didn’t celebrate her, I didn’t appreciate all she did for me, the things she went without to make sure I had everything I needed. Honestly, when I say she went without, she really did. Trust me, there is no drama involved in that line. She was, and still is, a constant comfortable presence in my life, my ultimate cheer leader, my picker upper when life dealt a blow, my confidante, and let’s face it, a nagging voice in my conscience till I did what needed to get done. I always felt words of love and thanks were redundant in a mother daughter relationship. It is understood that I love her. I shouldn’t have been presumptuous. Words may have been inadequate but I still should have tried. I have learnt to respect the power of words, since. So I write my feelings for her now.

The commercial aspect of Mother’s Day offends me. The day shouldn’t be about presents (although I don’t grudge any of you a day in a spa, or pandora bracelets or whatever you get), it shouldn’t be about the brightness of flowers or glitzy store bought cards! The day should be about telling your mom, “I see you. Yes you do drive me crazy sometimes (which mom doesn’t) but I love you more than you will ever know. Not because you gave birth to me but you tried your best to help me grow! You did what you thought was best for me. I didn’t always agree. But you were driven by love. And I love that.” There are exceptions to this mother image that I talk about, but then again, as the cliche goes “exception proves the rule”. The day should be about giving her that precious gift called Time. The day should be about picking up the phone and asking her how she is really doing. The day should be about noticing her as a separate identity, a woman as well as a mother.

I will indeed celebrate Mother’s Day. I will step out of this race against time for one day and find a comfortable seat on the grass. And I will pull out the memory book of my life and turn the pages backwards. I will revisit that moment when I first became a mother and held my first born to my chest. I looked down at her unfocused steel grey eyes and experienced some emotions that I cannot put to words. Was it love? Was it bewilderment? Was it fear? Was it apprehension? Was it pride? Was it tiredness? Was it all of these and more? It was a sense of an ending and a sense of a new beginning, all at the same time. It was the joy of holding a miracle. It was a fear of breaking her.

I will take a leisurely walk to see the first moment when I held Sahana in my arms, kissed her snub nose and whispered in her ear “I will see you soon” as the doctors whisked her away. I will remember the curly haired little baby girl who learnt to walk one summer in a rented summer house in Cape Cod while family sat around her, waiting to catch her if she fell. I will remember holding her soft hand as we waited for her preschool bus to take her to preschool. I will remember the moment when Ryan came screaming and kicking into this world and I heard the proud father saying to the new born, “You are so sweet, I could eat you!” as he cuddled the yawning baby. His toothless grins, the warmth of HIS soft hand in mine as we walked inside the grocery store. All those stressful moments when he was a rambunctious toddler and my fear that he was going to bump someone. His first day at preschool, his astonished expression as Sean blew on his face and dunked him in the pool at the tender age of 5 months.

I have a treasure of sweet memories that I want to write down for myself. I want nobody to present me a bouquet of cut flowers. I will, instead, pick up those memories of sweetness and kindness that my children have given me. They have offered their smile, their thoughts, their innocence, their childhood to me as flowers. I have accepted some, some I discarded because I have been preoccupied with schedules and timetables. I will pick up those discarded flowers too and tie myself a bouquet. Like when Sahana said she wants to grow up to be a parent just like me. Or today when Ryan assured me, although he gets very, very angry with me when I scold him, he never, ever hates me. Hate is not what he feels towards me, never. It is love, always love.

These are my presents that they have already given me. Along with the laugh lines. I have discovered my ability to love unconditionally because they were born. That is their gift to me. But I want more on this special day. I want them to give me a day when they refrain from sibling rivalry and meanness. I want them to take my hand and walk some distance with me, I want them to tell me about their thoughts, their emotions, their lives. I want this day to be schedule less and unstructured. I won’t ask them to be good and brave and nice and kind. I will not fret about grades. I will not talk about the frustrations that come with parenting. Heaven knows, I talk about that often. I won’t look at the bigger picture and worry about how they are growing up. I will simply live the day and feel very, very blessed to have two healthy children in my life, who drive me insane, cause tears of laughter, and make this mother’s world very colorful by just being here. I lose sight of this simple truth on most days. On Mother’s Day, I won’t.

Beginning

The sunlight reflected in her brown eyes and highlighted the gold in her brown hair as she focused intently on the high school coursebook that she held in her hand. She perused the book in front of her, chewing her lip, brows creased in concentration, thinking of her four year course plan. As I glanced at the utter focus on the young face, on the threshold of yet another phase in her young life, my heart constricted with an overwhelming feeling of love for this young person who was just a little bundle in my arms some years ago. I made a mistake as I held her, I blinked! And here we are, at this juncture in life. She is on her way to high school, deciding upon the courses she wishes to take.

Sahana is going on to high school this year and I am not ready. Just like I wasn’t ready when my fantastic radiologist took a look at the ultrasound report and said, “This baby isn’t growing in the womb, she is not thriving. We need to take her out now. Call your obstetrician. Get admitted tomorrow!” I remember sitting down in the nearby chair, looking up at Sean and saying, “I am not ready!”

Ready or not, she came. Grayish blue eyes, snub nose, pink skin, coconut head, rosebud mouth. She looked up at me with a stern expression as she tried to focus her eyes on this face looming large on her. “Here I am, mother. I am yours for a while. Yours to love, yours to nurture, yours to cherish, yours to discipline, yours to mold, yours to encourage and support. I am yours to help me to be the best I can possibly be! Are you up to the task, mother? You better be, because I am not going back!”

She, of course, said none of these. She just kept looking at me, or somewhat in my direction with all the loveliness, all the cuteness, all the sweetness that is possible in this entire universe. And I thought of nothing of the responsibility that I held in my hands either. I was happy! No, wait, that doesn’t quite say it. I was ecstatic. I was ecstatic that she was born, I was ecstatic that she was healthy, I was ecstatic that I still lived to watch her grow, I was ecstatic my husband held my hand and helped me breathe through the contractions. When the neonatal unit took Sahana away to administer the necessities, the other doctors took it upon them to sew up my torn body. While they worked on me I thanked everyone who happened to be within my eyesight. Sean reminds me that I supposedly thanked every single person in the delivery room with enthusiasm till I passed out from exhaustion.

There were many firsts, of course. The teething, the first step, the first words, the feel of little soft hand in mine as we both entered her preschool. I don’t remember who had the most trouble letting go of the other’s hand, it probably was me. I sat outside the preschool with other anxious mothers, and tensed every time I heard children cry, convinced that it was mine. I was later told she didn’t cry at all but watched everybody with interest.

We moved to US after her preschool years. She started kindergarten in a new school, in a new country, far away from her familiar world full of friends, neighbors, family. I felt an emptiness in my stomach as the big black and yellow bus swallowed my curly haired little girl to her first day of kindergarten. I was waiting, anxiously, at the bus stop for her when she got off the bus. “How was your first day of school?” I asked, nervous. “It was great! School is the best thing ever! And I think I met an angel!” she replied. She had made friends with another little girl who had blue hair and beautiful blonde hair. Her angel.

At the end of fifth grade, I started panicking again. Two dreaded words – middle school. I had grown up from age 5 to age 18 in one school with the same set of friends. My daughter was going to leave all her friends to go to a different middle school. And I heard stories of the horrors of middle school from friends in this country. Meanness, popularity, need for acceptance, dejection – all these become major factors as children navigate through the confusing corridors of middle school. I read books, I talked about the non importance of popularity, I talked about being herself, focusing on her schoolwork. She was nervous, but I was petrified. Again I watched nervously as she boarded the bus first day to middle school. The reply to ‘how was school’ wasn’t as exuberant as in kindergarten but it was still good. Middle school was a blur. She did well, she seemed happy bar a few occasions. Just recently, on a walk, she confided how difficult the first year in middle school was. How lonely she was. And friendless. Media center was her solace, she escaped there whenever she could and hid behind a book till she started finding like minded children. As the months went by, she became happier. Now middle school was something she was sad to leave behind. She didn’t tell me because I couldn’t help her and she thought she could handle it on her own, in her own terms. I was saddened and heartened to hear this. Sad to realize what she had gone through, happy to hear she learnt to be happy.

A new beginning yet again, another transition – high school, preparation of adulthood. Although, I am not ready, I do not have a choice. Everyday as my daughter stands a little taller and I stoop just a little tiny bit, as her face glistens with the freshness that only youth can boast and a new tiny wrinkle appears on my face, I see life slowly coming to a full circle. Many people don’t understand this, but I truly revel at every new stage in my life. Middle age is no exception. I have lived my youth, Sahana is starting to live hers. What an exciting time for her and what a simply amazing time for me to watch her bloom.

It is a new beginning for me as well, as a parent. With my first born, every stage of her life has been a new beginning for me. I have often been flustered and confused. Sometimes, the journey hasn’t been fun. I have had embarrassing moments galore but I have also learnt as I went along. I have identified my strengths and weakness. I have focused on my personal growth as a human and as a parent.

As I said, I am not ready yet to let go. I will never be ready to let my beautiful child go. But I have taken the first step. I will learn – to let go of her hands when she is ready. And will watch, yes anxiously, and learn with her as she steps into a new beginning, yet again.