MMS

The sibling justice system is an ancient one, with its own laws and by-laws, defying common, every day logic. It is a system like no other, which morphs itself often to suit sibling convenience.

These laws were in evidence in our home last week, as my kids had had a fight. And as I was to find out, over something so silly that I shook my head in disbelief. So, the silly fight simmered through our rooms, words clashed, apologies were demanded, none were given and multiple eruptions happened that evening.

And then there was an eerie silence, the siblings had descended into a cold war. They looked past each other, ignored each other and stopped talking to each other. My husband and I intervened, but the cold war froze us in our tracks. And as all wise parents know, we adopted the best course of action by letting them be.

Image courtesy – http://www.shutterstock.com

However, this cold war brought about some unexpected challenges. Both warring factions started referring to the other as ‘You know who’!

Though they did not talk to each other, they constantly sent messages to each other. Enter yours truly – Mom’s Messenger Service – MMS. All through the week, I patiently carried messages between the two warring factions – a neutral messenger, without passing any comment or judgement.

Finally, a couple of days ago, when I got home from the supermarket, I realized that both kids were in the kitchen, chattering as usual and discussing the merits of chocolate and ice-cream.

I smiled. Another sibling fight in history had just ended, till the next time. And as I put away the groceries, I remember all the fights and petty squabbles I had with my sisters over pencils, pens, food, pillows, books and over everything and nothing.

This sibling saga will continue and so will the MMS!

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The Mom Blueprint version 2.0

Every mom views herself as that all-important go to person for her children. From the moment she holds a tiny, bawling baby in her hands, every mom is finely attuned to her child’s needs. As her child grows, the mom becomes adept at gauging the child’s moods, its likes and dislikes, and the many hundred things that she instinctively knows about her child. Being a keen observer, every mom pre-empts most problems, and has a range of solutions to help her children. I am no exception to this Mom Blueprint!

After dinner this evening, my son and I were exchanging small talk. He then talked about how he had not completed a few projects and pending tasks, and worried about whether he would finish them on time.

Click! The Mom Blueprint kicked into action. I gave him a few options, I suggested a possible schedule, I also gave him a pep talk about staying focused and that he could do it etc.

Courtesy – http://www.pexels.com

It took me a couple of minutes to realize that my son was staring at me without nodding or agreeing with my inspirational talk and clear-cut solution. I asked him what the matter was? Pat came the reply, “Mom, I didn’t come to you for a solution to my problem. I just wanted to rant. You don’t need to solve all my problems, mom.”

My daughter, who was supposed to be immersed in her work, suddenly joined the conversation and strongly agreed with her brother. “Mom, chill. I am sure he can manage this.”

Hmmm. That was a first. Another milestone reached as a mom; where I have transitioned from an active problem-solver to a passive-observer. I hope I have done my job well, and have taught my kids all the most important lessons, as they go out into the world and face life’s many challenges. I have to apply to Mom Blueprint Version 2.0, and acquire a whole new skillset now.

Love in a jackfruit seed

I love my work table, and the organized clutter on it. It is where I feel at peace, where I write, and where I keep all the documents and to do lists that I am juggling with, at any given moment.

On my table is also a small rectangular tray, in which I store stickers, post-its, drawings and small gifts from my children.

In this box is a jackfruit seed, its coat a little loose now. This jackfruit seed was gifted to me by my daughter, about four years ago. She drew eyes, a nose and a mouth. The eyes were on all sides, so that any side you turned the seed, a pair of eyes stared back at you.

I still remember that afternoon. We had just come back from the supermarket with two boxes of jackfruit.

We usually cut open the fruit, preserve the seeds and add them to a lentil based gravy. The seed becomes tender upon cooking, and adds a nice flavour to the dish.

My daughter took away one of the seeds for the gift she was to make for me.

As she observed the seed, I told her stories from my childhood. We lived in a small town in the hills, and it was quite cold for eight out of twelve months in a year.

We had a small cast iron stove called a kumutti aduppu that looked like this.

Image courtesy – Pinterest

This stove had many uses. My grandma would load it with coal and light it up. One had to keep fanning the coal to keep the fire going.

On rainy days, when clothes (especially baby clothes) needed to dry, a basket was placed over the kumutti’s embers, and small baby frocks and shirts would dry on them.

Small pieces of fragrant resin called benzoin resin, sambrani, were thrown into the coal embers. The resin emitted a lovely fragrance, considered to be therapeutic.

On the weekends, when all of us had our traditional oil baths, the sambrani would be thrown into the kumutti, and a basket placed over it. The fragrant smoke would seep out through the cracks in the basket, and dry our wet hair and infuse it with fragrance.

We would also throw in jackfruit seeds into the kumutti, and allow them to roast. Our grandma would take them out carefully, cool them and give them to us to eat.

Truly beautiful memories.

I come back to the here and now. My daughter walks in and sees the jackfruit seed.

“Mom, can’t believe you still have this.”

I smile.

I have many such gifts from the kids, each with its own allied memories, and lots of love.

A dollar worth millions….

My son has just walked in from school. He drops his bag and other paraphernalia, and comes straight to share key snippets from his day with me.

He starts from the moment he reached school, and takes me on a journey through his day, where I get glimpses of his world.

He rushes through the ‘vanilla’ parts and cuts to the most important part of his day, which was a bazaar, where the children had to promote and sell products that they had brought to school. My son and his friend had taken stationery items and chocolates to sell.

My son’s eyes light up as he talks about how much he had enjoyed the whole project, and about how much money they had made.

And then, he rummages in his pocket and takes out a small white paper pouch. A really tiny one.

He opens it and shakes it gently. Something falls out of the pouch. He picks it up and gives it to me.

“This is for you, mom”, he says.

He has bought a pair of pretty green, stone earrings for me.

He adds, “I got them for a dollar!”

My throat catches, as I turn the earrings and admire them.

“They are exquisite”, I say.

“The green stones are the closest I could find to your birthstone, mom, but the green stones are surrounded by tiny white diamonds”, he finishes with enthusiasm.

I hug my son and thank him.

To me, this dollar is worth millions.

Truly priceless!

Mom Standard Time (MST)

It is 6.50 a.m., and our home is bustling with all the trappings of a typical school day morning. Both baths are occupied.

I am all over the house, trying to do many things at once.

I knock sharply on the door of one bath.

“What?” screams my son, over the sound of the shower water.

“7.20 a.m.”, I holler.

“Okay, okay”, says he!

I move to the next bathroom. I knock again.

“7.30 a.m.”, I announce.

My daughter says, “Ohh.. will be out in a minute.”

Strangely, my son seems to have heard the ‘time’ that I called out to my daughter.

And he shouts, “How could the time be 7.20 am for me and 7.30 am for akka (sister)?”

He calls out loudly to his sister that it’s not 7.30 a.m. yet and that I was lying!

I smile and move on.

Welcome to the world of a unique standard of time that Moms around the world follow – Mom Standard Time (MST).

MST is not time-based at all. It is based on a set of privileged rules that moms around the world have designed to get the best out of their children, to push them to give their best, and to generally show up where they are supposed to!

MST can help squeeze a mammoth school project into one evening! Mom Standard Time can also transform the boring hours when one is down with a cold or fever into something magical; a time when siblings are at school, and mom makes special soup and hugs you and shows you how much she cares!

Image courtesy – Geostat

MST has the prerogative to call you, whenever, wherever and impose time deadlines. The same MST allows you to sleep-in, and gets you that much needed shut eye on the weekend.

Mom Standard Time is based on love and the laws of parenting. It adheres to only one standard that every mom wants for her children – that they use their time wisely and become good humans!

Dolls and Dreams

I am obsessive about cleaning, and feel strange when I am not organizing or ‘re-cleaning’ things around the house.

Today, I attack the toy cupboard. Sadly though, the toy cupboard is only ‘that’ in name. Very few toys remain; the remaining space has been taken over by other stuff – odds and ends, this and that.

But it was not like this earlier. Every drawer in the toy cupboard was colour coded and sorted by type of toy, frequency of use, easy accessibility and other crazy things that only a mom with OCD would do!

At one point my daughter’s world was in various shades of pink, purple and silver. One drawer in the toy cupboard was dedicated to dolls, Barbie dolls to be specific. My daughter had around eight to ten Barbies.

Courtesy – Clipart Zone

I remember wonderful afternoons, when my daughter and her friends would play, cook, have tea, dress up their Barbies, and do all that little girls around the world did!

Before we knew it, my husband and I were attending our daughter’s interview for admission to school. They wanted to meet the child and talk to her.

My husband and I sat on either side of our daughter, who was at her cheerful best. The teacher spoke to her.

Teacher : Why do you want to come to school?

Daughter: To study….

Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Daughter: (after deep thought) I want to be a Barbie doll.

All of us burst out laughing.

As with everything else, the Barbie phase came to an end, in bits and pieces.

It began when she stopped playing with the dolls, sometimes. Then came the phase, when she would take them out sometimes, or when a friend still wanted to play. Then came the phase of packing them up, but not willing to part with them. And then the day, when she gave them away.

The dolls were replaced by badge makers, loom bands, beading kits, and lots of art and craft projects.

Pinks and purples have now been replaced by black, silver, and more black and silver.

How time has flown!

Moms and lunch boxes

My kids are now at the age where they seem to be hungry all the time and are always asking for food. One meal is barely over before they want to know ‘what and when’ they will eat next. As a mom it is nice to see this phase, but my kids were not always like this.

They were picky eaters and wanted only a certain type of food. My daughter would have milk only from medicine dispensers, strange as it sounds. 

There have been many different food phases in my kids’ lives.

I am reminded of a funny incident that happened many years ago, when my daughter was attending nursery school. I would prepare small sandwiches, mini dosas, mini idlis, vegetable wraps etc, trying to make my daughter’s lunch box as interesting as possible, knowing that she was fussy about what she ate. I would check with her the previous evening about what she wanted  – just to give her a sense of involvement, so that she would eat her food at school.

Picture courtesy – Clipart.com

I derived a lot of satisfaction to see her empty lunch box after school everyday! One day, however, the box came back untouched. I was worried if she was going to fall sick, but she seemed her usual self.

So, I asked her why she hadn’t touched her lunch. And this is what she said….

“Amma, the girl who usually eats my lunch was absent from school today!”

Aha….! That explained it all.

Lipsticks and little girls

It was a sweltering day, many years ago, when we had the naming ceremony for my baby girl, who was only 3 weeks old.  My mom’s home was teeming with aunts, uncles, cousins and little nieces and nephews, all of whom had come to bless and welcome our little bundle of joy.

I received hundreds of tips on being a mother, and hundred ‘must-know’ things about child rearing, and a dozen versions of who my baby resembled in the family. It was a normal, Indian family celebration.

I was a little tired by the afternoon, and when my mom caught my eye and realized that I was tired, she signalled for me to go in and take a quick nap. I slipped away, unnoticed.

I went and lay down, my eyes closing involuntarily. While still asleep, I heard something. I opened my eyes and realized that one of my nieces was in the room, before the dresser mirror.

I could see her reflection in the mirror, as she made faces at herself, and then tried on one of the lipsticks. Gently opening the tube, she used her finger to apply a dark maroon lipstick on her lips. I could imagine how good and beautiful she felt. After sometime, she quietely slipped out of the room.

Image courtesy – Shutterstock

I laughed, fully awake by then. I remembered how, as a little girl, my favourite game was to play ‘teacher’. The role demanded that I have long hair, and that I wear lipstick.

The hair problem was easily resolved. I found a piece of black cloth from my mom’s sewing kit and tied it around my hair, allowing the black cloth hair to fall over my shoulders to  the front. My students ‘had’ to see my long hair.

The lipstick posed a problem. My mom did not use lipstick, neither did my aunt. But my teachers at school wore lipstick, so I needed to wear lipstick to look authentic. Then I hit upon the idea of using the red liquid that Indian women use to wear bindis (the dots on the forehead). This was available in abundance, so during the afternoons when my gran, aunt and mom napped, I applied generous amounts of red on my lips and taught and educated many children every afternoon.

Lipsticks and makeup were forgotten till high school and university, when my mom gifted me my own lipstick for my birthday. I still remember its shade, copper brown. I still wonder how my mom knew what would look good on me! I used that tube till there was nothing left. 

After that first tube, lipsticks became a part of my life, and over the years I have tried many shades, and have settled on a few that suit me well.

A few years ago, when my son had his school concert, the little girls in his class were all dressed up like pretty dolls and fairies. However, a few girls had their lips in a weird kind of pout. On asking their moms, I found out that the girls had worn lipstick for the first time, and that they did not want for it to go away. I remember how much I laughed that day.

Now, my daughter grimaces when I talk about makeup or lipstick or accessories. She is ‘at home’ in her jeans and tees.

I smile as I look into the future, when my daughter will want to try on lipsticks and makeup. She just doesn’t know it yet!

A Mother’s Love

There are two sides to motherhood. On one side is when you are a child and receive the love of a mother; on the other side is when you are a mother and give your love to your child(ren). And you realize the value of the former only when you experience the latter.

I still remember that my mom was the nerve centre of our family. Her smiling countenance, her commitment to giving her best to every single member of the family, her superlative cooking skills, her ability to take on her children’s problems and lighten the burden for them, her unshakeable faith in her children and the belief that they were the very best.

From home mechanic to recycling expert to instant gourmet meal producer, my mom wore so many hats with ease and changed them in a jiffy. 

I don’t remember her ever being really sick. Even if she was a bit under the weather, she ploughed on, ever cheerful. However, there was this one time when she had slipped and hurt her knee really badly, and was out of action for a week. I remember how my siblings and I moped. We felt that the lights were dimmed in our house, the thread that strung us all together and got us going was not there. So, we spent time in her room, reading our books or sitting with her, wishing to hear her voice chiding us or her ‘mom looks’ that could freeze us in our tracks. Even those were better than having her unwell.

I did not realize all that I had learnt from my mom till I became one, and knew that being a mom means to GIVE; to give unconditionally, every single day.

             Image Courtesy – http://www.Cliparting.com

To love so much that you hurt. To want the very best for your children. To care too much, but to also learn to let go..and let your children soar and fly.

And retain every single memory of the wonderful years that have flown past, and the days that are flying past even as I type this. Rainy afternoons with hot samosas and movies, cycling trips with the family, stick figure drawings on the refrigerators, playing referee to sibling wars, cuddles and hugs, laughter and smiles, and lots and lots of love.

 A mother’s love. 

Catching some shut eye

Sleep means different things to different people. There is a lot more to the science of sleep than the oft-discussed night owl vs. morning bird.

When there is an infant in the house, the baby typically cries each time you put him or her down, so you learn to  maintain a rhythm that keeps baby happy, and that also enables you to sleep walk. And the next day, at work, you unconsciouly tap out that rhythm on the carpet.

But before the kids came along there existed a time when you could stay out late, watch movies, and still have a never-ending chat with your friends, and continue to feel rejuvenated; a time when you went straight to work the next day, looking fresh and ready to take on the day, without having slept a wink.

Even before this phase was the time in college, when the concept of sleep was alien. When you studied hard, and had lots of fun.

So, coming back to the kids. Your infant suddenly grew into a busy toddler, whom you chased under tables, and up and down staircases, whom you pushed on swings and caught at the bottom of slides. And then, when your toddler was all tucked into bed, and you looked forward to catching a few winks, the said toddler came crying with pain in his calf muscles or some such.

Then, suddenly, your teenagers and tweenagers had become independent creatures, and disappeared into their coccoons. And you said,  “I can finally catch some shut eye.”

                       Picture courtesy – Clipart Panda
But now, sleep plays truant. You sleep well some days and stay awake on some days. You ponder about life and wonder about what lies ahead. You look at the stars and marvel at the universe, and then worry that the alarm will ring in a few hours.

 And then again, there are those afternoons when you get two hours to yourself (the luxury…), and you make plans to read a book or watch a movie, and as you recline on the couch to enjoy the book or the movie, your eyes close involuntarily. 

Sleep….