My mother is someone who never stops to take a break. She is also not someone who lets others help her. So, it’s natural that her nature is that of a fiercely independent woman who is constantly on the go, picking up one project after another. For the longest time, this made me feel like I’m not needed in her life, and that in her superwoman, whirlwind universe, there was no space for a sensitive child like me. I learnt to keep to myself, and stopped involving myself in her busy world, which I felt had no place for me.
That changed, though. One day, after a long week of buzzing from project to project, my mother felt violently ill. It turned out that she had Chikungunya, and wasn’t fit to even stand up, let alone go to work—her greatest passion. While my father was away at work, I was entrusted with taking care of her. Strangely, this horrible situation brought us closer because it made me realise that underneath the armour of a warrior, my mother was after all, human, and very vulnerable.
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Seeing a parent, who is strong as a rock, fall sick shakes you up
Somehow, we all grow up believing that our parents are superhuman, that nothing can shake them, weaken them, or stop them. Nothing wakes one up to one’s parents’ humanity like their illness. A dreaded event that pretty much everyone goes through at some point, it reminds us that the people we made gods out of are allowed to be weak and needy, just as we have always been to them.
They also crib and cry like babies when they’re sick. They also need to lie in your lap and fall asleep to the gentle strokes of your hand on their forehead. They also need to be force-fed when they refuse to eat.
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Disconcerting as it is to see someone you always saw as an unshakeable stalwart fall sick, it is also proof of how people need people, no matter how much they pretend not to.
For the first time in my life, I realised she needed me just as much as I needed her
In my mother’s life, my inability to contribute often made me feel rejected. However, this situation changed my perception of our equation. It also made me realise that we have the wrong idea about our relationship with our parents. Words like parenting make it sound like a one-way street, when in truth, a parent-child relationship is about both taking care of, and helping the other.
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Only when I stepped up and took responsibility at home, did she realise that asking me to help her was a fair expectation to have from me. In turn, her expression of faith in me made me realise my mother didn’t intentionally leave me out of her life. She, too, didn’t know that I could take care of her. No one told her that as a mother, she is entitled to my help and care, and that she doesn’t always have to be a magically-strong person. She realised she is allowed to show that she needs me.
Taking care of my mother opened my eyes to the superhuman amount of effort being a mother requires
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Think about every glass of nimbu paani that magically appeared after school, all those bowls of khichdi she instantly whipped up when we complained of the slightest stomach ache, remembering when you need to take your medicines. All of these small things many of us take for granted on the daily, but which our mothers do for years, without fail, require God-like energy and superhero-level effort.
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Those chapattis don’t appear out of thin air. The cups of tea we demand don’t just magically get summoned. No matter how much my mother tells me today that it’s easy and only takes a second, I know now that it is not. Taking care of another human being—and sometimes a whole family—is no joke. Yet, we just take for granted a mother’s ability to shoulder that burden like it’s nothing.
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When I had to take care of her needs for a short amount of time, it made me realise how we elevate mothers to goddesses and thereby patronise the sheer labour they put in as humans while parenting us. It made me realise that my mother is not a devi with superhuman abilities who can grant me whatever wish whenever I want—it takes a lot of effort on her part to give me the things I take for granted. Expecting her to be so, to always be strong and able to help me does a disservice to her humanity, which is the reason she does what she does.
Lead and Social image credits: iStock Photo, Fox Star Studios
