Mum is the word for me!!
“I really missed my Mum’s everything
while I was hostelling. Most weekends and sometimes days in between, I
would take a few hours break away from the frenzy of the rat race and
go and sit quietly, recalling the days spent with her. Over time these
quiet hours became an invaluable part of my week. Mum's thoughts
would greet me with a radiant smile, Everyday back at home we were so happy to
see each other, and for an hour or two we would be encased in the purity of
love without any agenda or selfishness. Those hours spent with Mum were
precious interludes where I could sort through the clutter in my mind, smooth
out the wrinkles in my emotions and allow myself to breathe. Mum’s
presence was a tonic, allowing me to see with renewed clarity how foolish my
worries were. As I held her shaky hand and stared into her warm eyes, I’d
throw my anxiety into the rubbish bin, realizing the triviality of my
fears.”
Take a pause and re
read! Do you notice a subtle allusion to an impalpable protagonist here? A
certain protagonist, not in flesh and blood, but is still felt, rather,
abstractly? Don’t you not fail to notice that there’s a relationship, within
layers of emotions, that connects the two ladies in the story? Yes! You’re
right! Those two ladies are my mum and me! Together we’ve shared a relationship
that traverses both time and age, and still overwhelms us so much so that we
chose not to let go of this bond ever.
Right after my birth,
the first person I came face to face was my mother. The person who held me
straight up in her palms was my mother. And therefore of all the primal
relationships that I've shared in my life, the one with my mother stands out. It’s
a unique blend of warmth, proximity, self-honesty, bitter-sweet arguments,
occasional blow ups, and a healthy obsession that does not only stands the test
of time but also evolves and improves over the years. And this observation,
apparently, throws up a few questions...
Isn't she into boyfriend stuff and all? Well, if you think so, in all probability you are wrong! Chances are
that even as the battle for boyfriends gets fiercer amongst Gen Y, here’s
another small town girl who lives up that very special bond of her life with her
mum. Yes! Hands that once rocked my cradle today play my soul mate. Laughable
as the perception may be, but then whether you have a great mother-daughter
relationship or one that can be improved, you probably know that a
mother-daughter bonding starts at an early age.
When I was five, she
was a goddess. I smeared my face with her lipstick and modeled her earrings and
high heels, wanting to be just like mommy. That's the way it was until I was about
thirteen, when she suddenly became the most ignorant, benighted, out-of-touch
creature on the planet, and I couldn’t get far enough away from her. My primary
form of interaction for the next five years or so was a single word,
"Mooooooooooooommmmmmm!" And then, somewhere between my teens and
twenties, I was really lucky; she became my best friend again.
Each of us has a
special need to be seen and to be noticed by our mothers, and that's why the
loss of one's mother can be so devastating. In a letter at the beginning of
Hope Edelman's book, Motherless Daughters, a woman whose mother died when she
was thirteen wrote: ''No relationship is quite as primal as the one between a
mother and her daughter. It's the original relationship, and it's also a
relationship that has been sentimentalized but not honored never realizing the
fact that no one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. I lost my
mother twelve years ago when I was thirteen. One of the most painful things I
realized when my mom died was that I would never again be loved as
unconditionally (in this life) as a mother loves.''
Many married women
concur that a daughter's need for her mother is biologic, and it continues
throughout her life. Not only is my mother's body the source of life for me but
also it was her face that I look to, to see how we are doing. When I asked a
woman in her thirties how she feels about her mum, she said, “My relationship
with my mom has not even changed a bit. The quality of attention we receive as
babies determines in part how worthy we feel to be here on the planet. And
today, even as an educated adult women, I keep going back to the same well of
maternal attention to see if we're okay and lovable and to check out how we're
doing."
You can't measure the
love between a mother and a daughter. What makes our bond so special and unique
is the unconditional love between the two of us, which never demands anything
but, gives the utmost it has. Those deep emotions and that profound love, I
bet, if can be found anywhere. The mother-daughter bond is designed by nature
to become the most empowering, compassionate, intimate relationship that one
ever will have. Every girl always spends a quality, personal time with her mother.
Though personally I acknowledge that the culture at large plays a significant
role in our views of us as women, ultimately the beliefs and behavior of our
individual mothers exerts a far stronger influence. Even today, when girls seek
contemporaries to confide their sentiments in, I have always found a soul mate
in my mom. And we'll always strive to be the best of friends on earth.
It was following this
that I, finally recognized the real book that was trying to come through me;
not a doctor's parenting manual for mothers and daughters, but an entirely new
and empowering way of looking at the mother-daughter relationship. An attempt
to find a way to help women of all ages-whether or not they are raising a
daughter-heal themselves physically and emotionally at the deepest possible
levels.
