Mom plays her role ......

After having lost Dad I understand only too clearly how fragile and precious life is. I make sure that we each (the children) really play our parts in a responsible manner in taking care of Mom. She definitely is the luckier parent but she isn’t the easiest of persons to please. In fact sometimes she can be a real pain. I am saying this without any malice.

Where Dad had been magnanimous and accommodating, Mom can be exacting and sparing with her compliments. Personally I made a decision that she is important to me ( something I learnt from hubby, from the way he devotes himself to his mother) and so I take care of her with a mixture of love, duty and compassion. Depending on her ‘behaviour’ one of the three factors will vary. Of course when she has her best behaviour on, I don’t stop to think whether I am serving her out of a sense of duty, or love or compassion. I just enjoy doing it!

She lives with my brother and he is a wonderful son. When she went to live with him after Dad died, she would quite regularly give him a hard time. My sisters and I would go to his rescue. Little things ..... petty and absolutely silly matters would eat into her. “If your daughters do it they are being thrifty but if the very same thing is done by the d-i-l then she is stingy and miserly. C’mon mother be fair."

Slowly but surely she has changed and now is a much happier person. And I am learning my lessons from her too, in a convoluted sort of way, and I am sure these will come in handy when I need them.

There is one important thing I must give Mom credit for. She definitely is the one who spins the yarns that hold the fabric of our relationships in place, keeping it very much alive and kicking.

For example in early December she insisted that right after the grahapravesam of my brother's house all his three boys should have their ears pierced in typical Hindu ritual. Of course that meant all of us had to make time and participate in the ceremony, right from bringing the atha varusai to staying till all the guests left. We did as she said and then some more!

Everyone had a great time. It was wonderful to see the children; the cousins displaying a wonderful spirit of camaraderie. These are times when cousins hardly recognize one another when they bump into each other at street corners or meet at functions. So seeing them all ( from age 29 to 3) so happy together was a bonus and we have Mom to thank for. Later that night she had arranged a bhajan with her Gang of 40 and we were duly imbibed with religiosity.

I think the bottom line is, relationships are going to bring as much joy as heartaches and to exist peaceably we must WANT to learn to live with each other’s deficiencies or imperfections more than with each other’s ‘perfections’. At any rate perfection is over rated, and nine times out of ten it is the source of problems, so to hell with perfection!