Tag Archives: Mommy Blogs

December 5, 2011 · 7:24 pm

A confused mind.

I think it’s mid life (no, not going to say crisis, yet). It must be something to do with mid life, because I am confused, stressed, angry, frustrated, and yet, quite happy with life, in general I mean. It’s possible. Didn’t think these mix of emotions can go together, but, apparently, they can!

I think about getting back to work, or to some sort of work. The twins will start school this spring and my older one will have a full day at school. So, I probably can do something, not a whole lot (what between picking, dropping, tennis, homework and the doctor visits thrown in for good measure) But, I can, if I try hard (and I do want to) have some sort of a work, freelance life.

The trouble is, what do I do? One day I wake up, ready to write that book that I’ve been writing in my head for the last ten years, or longer. My thoughts are lucid and I get a high thinking about it. This usually happens when I’ve had little sleep and returned from the gym, all charged up. By mid-day I run out of steam and my who-am-I-kidding mood drapes itself over me like a wet blanket. By the evening, I’ve given up that plan altogether.

Till, another day arrives with optimism, and I think about a neat business idea that I would love to work on and in my mind it all gets worked out – do-able I feel. I think about all the women who took the off beaten path and then made it somehow, against all odds, et all. Again, I get all excited about it, but, after the initial giddy excitement of having found what I want to do wanes a little, I start to see the holes in my so-called great idea and before long, poof! that’s abandoned too.

This happens over and over again. One day I am all set to go be a teacher at my daughter’s school. The other day I want to write, then I want to start a small business. Gosh. This is mid life, it better to be. Either that, or I am losing it, finally.

Between all these spasms I manage, and don’t ask me how, to actually do some freelance work. Some writing here, some design there, etc etc. A friend wants something done, I oblige; like that.

What I , however, do regularly, and this I am proud of, is go to the gym. Yup, started it earlier this year. Not crazy about it, but I do it and it’s shown results. A good feeling.

More on this in my next post..

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December 1, 2011 · 6:07 pm

Been busy. And still not doing all that I want to do..

Is it me? Is it me who has no (real) answer to the question “what’s up?” or “What’ve you been up to?”. I seem to not have a moment in the day (my sister is livid with me that I don’t answer my phone, ever). And I am not working, yet. And still when I think about what it is I’ve been doing, I have to wonder. I know I am busy with the kids, (the plumber, the electrician, et all) but that’s pretty much it. So how do I answer that question? “Been good, busy, you know with the kids”. I get a nod, mostly a I-hear-ya kind of one. One (almost) six year old and two two year olds. That’s enough to take up my day.

Then, I talk to my mom. Now she had three kids too, and not half the help that I have, and of course she achieved much more than I have! Humph. She still works. And I spend my day in pajamas (ok, tracks) running after the kids. Double humph.

I am not organized enough, I don’t manage my time well, it seems (mother says). True, maybe, but does one like to hear that? Not really. So I tell my mum, come help me with my kids and I’ll get back to work, be the super mom et all. Right, she says.

So my point is, how will I ever have the time to do all that I think I will – I mean I do believe that one day I will work, that I’ll organize all the photographs that’ve ever been clicked and put them chronologically in custom made albums, that I will sort out all my papers and have everything filed away in impressive formats, that I will organize my drawers, that I will read to my kids and play games with them that add inches to their grey matter, that I will take time and visit my parents (and not lose patience with them), that I will read the books I buy, or the one’s sitting on my bookshelf bleating at me, that I will have a perfect garden with seasonal plants planted well in time, that I will watch all the films I want, that I will go for the occasional play or book reading . And yes, one more thing, that I will bake (well).

When will I do this all? I don’t know. But I know I will . Oh, one more thing, that book I want to write (now it’s a script, btw) that’s got to squeeze its way into my life too.

Someone give me more hours in the day. I could use them.

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July 5, 2011 · 5:59 pm

Five Things Motherhood Has Taught Me.

Thanks Forever Mother for tagging me in this and making me think.

What has motherhood taught me? Agh. So much. But, here’s the thing. When I respond to a question like this on my blog, there is, almost immediately, a conflict in my mind – between what I think motherhood has taught me and what it really has. You know, we have a perception about ourselves, which is not always accurate, but we like to believe facts about ourselves anyway! And a question like this makes me stop and think about perception and reality. Agh. The truth is not always good!

Anyway, here’s a sincere attempt:

1. Children are born selfish. The first instinct is of survival and self fulfillment. It is for the parents to teach them about sharing and giving. Ever tried to take a toy away from a two year old? What did that result in? You know what I mean..

2. Having kids has taught me something about my own parents – that people are not perfect and we expect our parents to be. It’s only when you become one you realize that your parents are human too.

3. Children do lie, though they do it without malice. So don’t always believe yours, listen to the other kid too..

4. Every child is different, so comparison is really not a positive thing.

5. And now for some emotion! Above all, motherhood has taught me to thank God for my happy life. No matter how much I rant and rave, I am fortunate. Very fortunate. And I don’t mean only economically. I mean it in every sense of the word…

Has motherhood changed me?

Like hell it has. Some for the better and some for the worse. Honestly.

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June 4, 2011 · 10:38 am

She’s beautiful. Truly.

What’s real beauty to me? Not a simple question.

Many clichés come to mind, but I reject them all. I think, till, I stop for a moment and think some more. Now thinking, most often, for me at any rate, has a positive result. What’s wrong with clichés? Are there any rules about them? Should one not use them only to sound intellectually superior? Nope, I think.

So, I tell myself, stop all this intellectual bravado, don’t worry, for a moment, about sounding trite, and think. More clichés. Sigh.

I know I want to say something about inner beauty, but what? I am not going to use a cliché!

Then, none other than Marilyn Monroe pops into my head. Gosh! Is that it? Am I so superficial? Fortunately, it’s not her skirt-flying-oh-look-at-me image that comes to mind, it’s what she said about beauty – “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring”. Ironical that she should have said something like that, and I could not agree more.

Imperfection is beauty. I like that. And this is my cue.

Let’s rewind a bit: 1994 Miss India Competition, we sit glued to the TV – little girls and beauty competitions, there’s a direct connection there. (Not that I was little, but the connection starts, much to the consternation of the parents, when girls are little)

I remember it clearly. The competition, it is now quite evident, is between the two, then unknown, aspirants – Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen. The former is blue-eyed, apple and peaches complexioned, straight from the never-written-yet-read-by-everyone beauty book. Yet, something seemed missing and I could not put my finger on it. Don’t get me wrong, I found her beautiful, not to deny that even in my most ah-beauty-is-about-inner-being moments. Yet, like I said, something was amiss, and it was not her puffy hairdo. The latter is beautiful too (they are all, just by the fact that they are at a beauty contest!) and yet, her beauty, for reasons I did not think about then, seemed almost tangible, like you could touch it. It seemed real.

Through the event Aishwarya wore a cat’s-got-the-crown look, something that, ironically, cost her the very crown she coveted. I remember thinking that she was beautiful, yet, I found it difficult to appreciate her beauty. Sushmita, on the other hand, may not have had the conventional looks (whoever defined those) but to me she was stunning. She had the spunk that, eventually, took her to the top.

Fast-forward to 2011: Now I think about those two women. Aishwarya has earned accolades, more than any Indian woman probably, for her physical beauty – her perfect face, her lovely eyes, her smile, et all. She’s probably forgotten that 1994 loss, or maybe learned from it. But that’s not the point.

Think, for a moment, about those two women today. Sushmita’s beauty has manifested itself in a way that Aishwarya’s simply cannot. How many women, and single women at that, do we know who have adopted girls and given them a loving home? Not many. Sushmita did not need to do that, she is rich and successful and could, like mostly everyone around her, live in her own little world, concentrating on herself and not much else. It’s easy to lose sight of reality when you are famous. But Sushmita seems to have her feet firmly on the ground.

Kudos to her, I say. She, to me, is truly beautiful and defines what real beauty is about.

And, I am sure she makes a beautiful mother too. Maybe we should ask Renee and Alisah about what Real Beauty means to them? They’ll probably have the perfect answer.

Here I quote Zadie Smith, who says that beauty is found where you would not expect to find it : “Pulchritude–beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection”.

Who would’ve thought that a former beauty queen would have so much beauty inside her that it would overshadow the one on the outside?

(PS: This post is written for a Dove Real Beauty Contest and may appear more relevant to people from India. My apologies to my readers from overseas, this one time!)

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June 2, 2011 · 11:22 am

Perfect Honesty Is Not Always Good For Childen.

Childhood, I believe is about happiness. Children need not know the truth about everything. I think we as parent sometime get too caught up in doing the right thing. What’s the right thing anyway? How do we know that is not better to bend the truth than to tell something to a child that he or she can’t digest?

I’ll tell you why I say this.

A few days after the earthquake in Japan my five year old daughter came to me and asked me what an earthquake was. It was a mama-what-does-this-word-mean kind of question. Now, whenever my daughter asks me a question,  I try and give her a detailed answer. In fact, we play a little game around it,  with the aim that she remembers the answer. It mostly works. So,  when she asked me about the earthquake,  I drew a little diagram, got out the globe, cut an orange to tell her about the earth’s crust and layers etc etc. She loved it.  That was that.

About three days later when I was putting my daughter to bed at night, she sobbed and sobbed and refused to sleep in her bed. She said that an earthquake might come at night. I told her that it won’t. She asked me how I could be so sure. After all, if the tectonic plates could bang into each other under Japan, the same could happen under India! I winced. Great,  I thought,  in my enthusiasm to teach her I’d given her too much information!  I’d gone and scared her.

Damage control, I thought. So, I launched into logic. And zones. India is in a zone that is not really prone to earthquakes, I told her (true) and that there are some countries that are more prone to them and we are not one of them. She seemed a little mollified, though not entirely. Phew!  (Still refused to go back to her bed). I had dodged a tricky question.

Unfortunately, there was more to come.  A few days later she asked me (and this is some sort of a recurrent theme, we’ve talked about this before, in snatches) about death. Agh. Not again, I thought. I was not in the mood for this.  But she was, and her questions were not general, they were specific. “Can babies die?” she queried. I decided to lie. “What about dad?”. I told her that only very old people die (One day, sometime ago, when I’d told her, on one of these bedtime question and answer moments, that mamas can die, she’d wept uncontrollably and clung to me for days) . So I decided to let her believe happy things. Why cloud her little five year old mind with unpalatable truth? Dad will be with you till you are as old as mama, and even after that, I said. “And you?”. Ditto, I said with a straight face. She thought, then she smiled. Not sure if she believed me entirely, but she liked the reassurance.

Like I said, and many may not agree, childhood is about happy things. Truth is for grown ups.

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May 3, 2011 · 9:31 am

The Sibling Factor..

I feel like a tightrope walker. All I seem to be doing, for, well, for a large part of my day, is the balancing act – between the kids that is.

Three kids – one five year old and then twenty month old twins – you can imagine the i-want-this-one kind of fights. To a new entrant in our house, the noise levels can be, well, just a wee bit overwhelming, to put it mildly. I am used to it, though; screaming is part of the general acoustics here. There is always a bone of contention, and that object, for that time, assumes such great importance for all three that nothing else can match its excellence and try as you might the one who has it will not part with it and the other two cannot be persuaded to play with anything else;  distraction tactics are met with flailing of the arms and, of course, some more screaming. No matter how hard I try to be fair and equal, there is always one kid (sometimes two)  screaming, or worse, sulking (this, mostly the older one) feeling betrayed and cheated. The younger ones like to express their discontent, at what they take for unfair treatment,  by prostrating themselves on the floor with shrieks that could pierce the Rock of Gibraltar.

The older one, on the other hand, has mastered the art of touching the raw nerves , of saying what she thinks will get her a reaction, and it does. “You don’t laugh with me the way you do with the twins”, or, “they are small, so you are always giving them my toys”.  She knows she’s being unfair when she says that, because I have been only too careful not to make her feel this way.  In fact, I have neglected the twins if needed, but not her, because I knew that it would be difficult for her to suddenly have to share everything, from her mother to her toys, with two more siblings. But, even then, at some level, she feels that I am not fair, that I treat her and the twins differently.

So, here’s what I think.  It’s a tough balancing act when you are a parent of two or more kids. In your mind you try and be fair, but that does not  necessarily mean that the kids see it that way too. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that they won’t.

I don’t know how my parents did it. I now realize what it means to raise three kids (we are three siblings too) and have them feel equally loved.  It’s a hard thing to do and my hope is that once they are grown up they won’t feel this way. Sibling rivalry can manifest itself in unpleasant ways, and that’s scary for a parent.

My kids are young right now and these are passing, insignificant fights, I know that. But, it makes me think, how will it be in the teenage years? When one of my girls is, say, 16, and the other two 13? Gosh. Imagine that.

These days will, in retrospect, look rosy and wonderful.

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March 23, 2011 · 6:16 pm

When parents Grow Old..

My folks live in a city that is about six hours by road (on a good day) and I visit them, say, three times a year. I try to get them to visit me but they are tangled up with their house, dog, garden, a little business they run (that is now getting a bit much for them but none of the kids want to take it over so it’s in a state of slow death) etc.

My father has Rheumatoid Arthritis and is in pain every single moment, every single day. It wasn’t so bad earlier, but for the past few months it’s become acute, mostly, because he’s developed a blood condition that requires some of his pain medication to stop. He’s now never without pain, in multiple parts of his body.

I call him, I feel terrible when I talk to him, but then my mom tells me that they are managing fine, which I know they are not. I go there sometimes when I feel he’s really low. But that can’t happen that often (kids school etc etc) so I mostly call, sometimes in my crazy day, I not even that . I  get sucked into domestic chaos and forget about his pain, till I get the time to think about it again (like right now). I want to change their life. I want them to wrap it all up and live in the same city as my sister, my brother and I, so we can look after them ( so it’s easier, I guess, for us to look after them) . They fight that and are not prepared to leave their life ( which I understand but I think it’s a matter of time that they’ll have to, once they grow too old to be alone). It’s hard I know, and we’ll face it someday too, but what is the other option, if none of us can move there?

It’s so hard to watch your parents grow old. I feel helpless. Part of me says – he needs you now,  drop everything and go, and sometimes I do. But I know I should be going/calling much more often; am so tied up with home and the kids that I can’t drop it all and go as often as I’d like. It makes me think – how does he feel about it? He’s in pain, he calls me and sometimes I can’t even talk because the kids are wailing and fighting over the phone. I tell him I’ll call later. I wonder if he understands. I know he calls my sister when he really needs to talk, she’s got more patience and has one grown up daughter, so it’s not crazy at home, though she works. We are three siblings, but all of us are so tied up with our daily lives that making a trip to see them becomes difficult, unless the kids have vacations.

I feel that time is running out. They are old, and though very independent, they, ideally, need someone to be there with them. They have help, of course, but that’s not all they need right now. They need one of us and not one of us can be there for too long.  It’s sad. I feel guilty, more because they never ask for help, but when I call my mom (now 75) and hear that the driver didn’t show up and she drove my dad to the doc, I feel miserable.

I don’t know what the solution is. His condition is not critical but he’s unwell and has a condition where he will be for a while, so, as my mom says ” how long can you leave your homes and be here?”. Not long I know, so we call, sometimes visit, then leave them waving at the door.

Life.

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