Reconnecting with Amma

By Padmalatha Ravi on Saturday, May 7, 2011 - 01:28

As the entries come in for Mother’s day special, I am wondering if my post will sound cynical. The thing is, Amma and I are not the best of friends. We never were. We fight all the time. Not a single week goes by without one of us hanging up on the other. But the frequency of this happening has come down drastically after I became a mother. So what changed?

Growing up, Amma and I never agreed on anything. In fact I was convinced she preferred my brother over me. She never kept track of my whereabouts, beyond the cursory details. She didn’t hanker over what I wore. She didn’t insist on first ranks or first prize in sports. She did however fret over my choice of friends. Though now I’ll admit she was right. I did make terrible friends for the most part.

But she never stopped me from doing what I wanted to. She never questioned my choices. I didn't recognise what a great boon that was till much later. But we did have great conversations. She’d tell me her childhood stories. She is a fabulous story teller. She’d patiently listen to me crib about my teenage issues. Some she handled well and some made her angry. I never thought of censoring anything though.

Later when I moved out of home for college, work and then marriage, she continued to be nonchalant. She was never the hug and kiss kind of person. But I had grown wiser. I made the first move. The initial awkward hugs gave way to whole hearted hugs and kisses. We still fought. Bitterly sometimes. Ending up in tears with the men in the family stepping to patch us up. 

All along I held it against Amma that she never told me anything, be it about choices I had to make on studies, work or men. But things changed when I became a mother. She stayed up with me all night when the child was crying. Her stories calmed my daughter long enough for me to catch some sleep. She told me what to do every step of the way. When the doctor scared us saying the child might be too close to a kidney failure, she threw a fit and promised me nothing would happen to her. She’d take care of it. And she did. We never went back to that doctor.

She always knew how to fix things. And she’d come up with a solution even before I had figured out the problem. It surprised me that she knew so much.

It is then that I realised, for Amma, I was a learning process. Just as my daughter is to me. But she had no one to turn to for guidance. She was figuring it out with me. There was no Dr Spocks or Google at her finger tips. And life wasn’t accommodating enough for her to be this fun mother that I wanted her to be. She had to prioritise. And she chose mundane economics of bringing us up and bare minimum sentimentality over everything else. She did the best that she could. As for my complaints about how she never guided me - she did so in a very subtle way, I just didn’t realise it then. Ialso realised that one simply can't not love your child. Atleast until she's hits the teenage.

And whatever complains I had about Amma evaporated in the first three months of my motherhood. She more than made up for the real and imaginary unjustness I blamed her for. Seeing her dance around my daughter's little finger, melts away any left over bitterness. 

I am sure when she reads this we are going to have a fight. But what the heck, happy Mother’s Day Amma.  

Padmalatha Ravi is Editor with Just Femme