Chez Moi

Last week, whilst in a hurry to get ready for school or maths class or some such…
Me: P, hurry up and get ready. If you are not ready, then I will have to leave you and go off by myself.
P: okay mummy.
(few mins later, he comes out dressed whilst I am still ironing my trousers)
P: I’m ready mummy and you’re not. This means I have to leave you and go now and you have to come by yourself.
Me: !!!!

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On the way back from school, chatting about what to do for my birthday, which is weeks away!!
Me: How about boating?
P: Speed boating?!!
Me: No, er, the slow kind.
P: Nah. Boring. How about ice skating?
Me: Well, not much fun for me as I won’t be able to do it.
P: No, no, you can do it. Daddy can be with you and hold you, make sure you don’t fall.
Me: No, hon, Daddy has to stay with you, make sure you don’t get hurt.
P: Me? Why? I don’t have a baby in MY tummy!!
Me: ROFL!

Why is it that most fears surface around 3.00 o’clock in the morning? It feels like at that time, all the nameless fears buried deep in your subconscious somehow float to the surface then and jostle your brain.

I had two nights last week when this happened to me that has prompted me to write so. First was last Friday - earlier on  previous evening, P came to me with this bump on his head. Didn’t think much of it as hey, which child doesn’t get scrapes and bumps eh? But then, in the dead of the night, thoughts of the mysterious bump and its mobile nature came unbidden to my head and roused me awake. From there, it was a small step worrying about mysterious ailments and a pointless and thoroughly scary Google search.

A quick trip to the doc the next day put my mind to rest.

Three nights back, it was the baby’s turn to worry me. Normally, she (I’d like to think it is a girl!) is quite active and moves around a lot. But that night, I couldn’t really feel the movements and started worrying. I had given myself 30 mins before I awoke S and really shifted into proper panic mode. Went to the loo, drank some cool water and lay down on the sofa for a while, worrying about silly things when I felt a small bump. I daren’t believe it and thought it was my tummy rumbling away. But soon enough, the baby started kicking and moving with usual vigour and the relief that flooded through me was unbelievable, I tell you!

Now I know what my mum means when she states that she couldn’t sleep after she woke up with some disjointed thoughts re my errant brother! Isn’t it funny that no matter how old your children are, it is at 3 AM, you lie awake thinking of them and worrying your head over them?

P and his love of the hyperbole

This morn, P was given his usual mug of hot chocolate. Only, it was a few degrees hotter than normal, when it is more ‘warm chocolate’ than hot. He took one look at the wisps of steam coming from the mug and plonked it to the side. After due prodding, he deigned to touch it about 5 minutes later and withdrew his hand in a hurry.

“P, what’s the matter?”, says I.

“It’s the hot chocolate. You’ve made it too hot. It is hotter than even the sun!”

Right.

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On biting into a really ripe strawberry: “hmm, this is just like tasting wine!”"Really? How do you know what wine tastes like?” (lest you all think I slug some down his gullet each night!)

“Well, like strawberry wine”, clarifies he, as if that helps!

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During our weekly Tesco shop:

P kept  touching  one thing after another, with the statement, “ooh let’s take this one” or “can we buy this one pleaassseee?”  and after the fifth such suggestion, his tired dad  snapped:

“Let mummy choose, P, after all she’s the one who’s going to cook.”

Pat came the reply: “well, I’M the one who’s going to eat!”

You’d think P would have his hands full, with the kind of stuff he gets up to. But no.
One of his favourite things to do is fool around with a camera, any camera. Be it the one in our phones, the digi, the camcorder or even the ones in our computers. Many a time have I logged onto the computer to find that my son had had an impromptu photo shoot all for himself. Never one to take a pic of him smiling nicely, he prefers to try out the Mac’s various zany settings.
Here’s one of him looking angelic, albeit in an oil-filmy way. Psychedelic is the word I’m look for!

Another one - imagine if there were two of him!

I read this article in one of the blogs I frequent and it touched a chord in me. Mainly because I had aired the same view a few times in the past. It has got to do with parents needing to lead a life of their own, without letting their children be the “be all and end all” of everything. Or being “selfish”, as the author of the post, Melanie Lynne Hauser puts it. Why?

“Because some day, you will be sitting at home on a Saturday night watching reruns of “Flip This House” while your kids are out doing whatever they fancy because they have been selfish all along. “
…..
Kids grow up, you see. And move on. And leave you – alone.”

What do you think of that? I feel like agreeing with the point the author’s trying to make. Granted, we are all in the early stages of parenthood, with our children still in / barely out of nappies and just beginning to take small steps into becoming articulate children. Why would we want to draw away and take a few steps backwards, just when things are beginning to get interesting, just because we would be lonely and by ourselves in our dotage?

And isn’t it the point of having children? So that we could lavish love and affection on them? Isn’t it counter productive to hold yourself back and deny yourself the joy you get out of loving them completely and utterly?

Or is that the road that leads to stifling them later on? ‘Coz whether we foresee or not, our attempts to instill a bit of independence in our children invariably means that they will learn to function without us pretty soon. After all, they have to go into the big, bad world and stand on their own two feet and they cannot do that well, if they are still looking at us to steer them forwards, right?

So when do we start preparing ourselves for that eventual day, when our chicks are ready to fly the roost, as they must? Do we ignore it and face it when it comes or be prepared for it and have Plan B sorted and ready?

I have to come straight out and admit that I try to baby my son as much as possible. I adore him totally and though he is just 6, catch myself thinking “oh no, in another 11-12 years, he’d finish school, start college and move out”. What a ninny, right? I mean, whenever my husband warns me to let him be, I grandly tell him that when the time comes, I will let him go but till then, I shall hold him to me, as long as possible.

But does it work that way? I mean, can you spend the best part of 20 years living and breathing for this person you give birth to and then just step back smoothly?

I have often felt that that is the mistake most Indian mums make and which is the root cause of most MIL-DIL related issues. The mothers, especially of boys, pour so much of themselves into rearing their sons that they are unable to let go, causing untold friction after the son gets married. With a daughter, they are mentally prepared from the outset that she will leave their house to go to her marital home someday so it doesn’t hamper their love. But with a son, who is going to “be with them forever”, the expectations are entirely different. Unwilling to let go of the umbilical cord even after the son reaches adulthood is the main cause for misery.

One way to avoid this is for the parents to actually have a life on their own. To go out for movies, dinners and having friends away from the children’s life, without the children constantly in the picture, so they don’t lose the idea of imagining the pair of them as a couple in their own right, not just as parents of their children. This way, the parents can make sure that they do not become strangers to one another when the children are out, making their own way in the world and can actually connect and have a jolly good time with each other.

In all the years we have been living in the UK, my husband and I have rarely gone out without our son. We have refused to leave him with babysitters, while we go out for night out on the tiles. The first time we went out for lunch by ourselves, in a long time, was last year, when our son was away at a classmate’s birthday party. We sat facing each other, without our usual buffer, wondering what to say to each other. We found ourselves talking about our son, what he might be up to and then going gradually silent. Though we have found ourselves being irritated by our son constantly interrupting us when we try to say something to the other, words didn’t come so easily when he wasn’t interrupting us every five seconds!

I see this with my own parents who have grown so out of touch with each other, that they hardly know what to say to each other for more than a few minutes. Ever since my brother left for his studies abroad, the house has been resounding with the silence and it is heartbreaking to see them pottering about in their own different shells. My dad has built a life for himself, with his work and hobbies, whilst my mum seems to be floundering away on her own, living from one weekly phone call to another, going crazy over her dogs.

I think that is a ghastly sort of fate to condemn oneself to and a thankless prize for having raised your children and sent them off into the world.

Which is why, I say - to you and to myself - , yes, love your precious children but not so that you cannot set them - or yourselves - free.

“If you love something, set it free…”

– ancient Chinese proverb.