Mom, Me and My Daughter

07.07.07…The sun was setting when I opened my eyes and saw my ‘daughter’ for the first time, in all my senses. She was already a few hours old. The little one, with her twinkling eyes wide open was cuddled in my mother’s arms, folded carefully to give her warmth, probably the same warmth that I must have got when I was born.

A new relationship had marked its beginning, between mom, me and my daughter.

Its more than two years now that I graduated…from a wife to a mother. The journey so far was not only ‘back-to-school-stage’ but was also a flashback of past where I rediscovered a lot of hidden aspects of motherhood that I never bothered to care when I was playing the role of a daughter to ‘my mother’. No doubt, I have been a wonderful daughter and still continue to be the best for my mother but gradually I’ve realized that ‘being a mother does not end after 9 months, rather it starts from here and continues till the last breadth’.

Someone has rightly said that, “God created mothers as he himself could not live on earth”. When my daughter shouts ‘Grandma’ on top of her voice, my heart rejoices as I feel so connected…the word ‘ma’ remains unchanged even with ‘Grandma’, so is the magic of this word. Three of us share a heavenly chord which no human can think of cloning. It’s definite and undiluted unlike other relationships which may have some grey shades.

There are times when at certain situations, I’m reminded of similar situations of past and then is the time when I compare who was/is a better mom, me or my mother. Minutes later, I shrug myself for comparing my mother with me (just a 2.5 years old mother) and hate myself for this creepy idea. But isn’t this natural with all other similar species like me on earth? Don’t you compare yourself with your old mother? Well, my daughter does.

I do not oil-massage my daughter as good as my mother does. I was upset when my daughter said this to me and I took out extra time out of my hectic office routine, just to learn the right trick of oiling and massaging. Post lessons from my mother, I was better than before but still not the best as my ‘mother’ was. But I was happy and relaxed as the youngest one in the generation had already started bridging the generation gap.

I feel happy and content when my daughter likes my mother more than me. This soothens my guilt of not liking my mother, more than a friend’s mother in my school or college days. I wanted the best of recipe for my tiffin-box. I avoided opening my tiffin on days when the lunch was not of my taste and loved to have a bite of sandwich from my best pal’s tiffin. At a recent Parents Teachers Meeting in my daughter’s playschool, I made sure to write remarks in the notebook that my daughter needs attention for her food habits.

“Your daughter loves to eat other children’s tiffin”, said her classteacher.

My mother is reliving her motherhood with my daughter and I’m trying to create a place for myself in-between, to live every moment of this special relationship. A plate of fruits shared between us has always been a cherishable moment for me only because my daughter makes sure that I put a piece of apple in my mom’s mouth and she repeats the same for me. It’s a doll game for her but for me and my mom its ‘life’ admits tension, stress and chaos of earning bread and butter.

Am I a replica of what my mother had imagined for me? I have no answers to this as I’ve hardly sat with my mother to understand if I am even close to what she had planned for me. But this does not stop me to think about my daughter’s future…what would she become? Will she confide in me for all her fancies and dreams? Will she treat me like her friend? Will she like me over her friends’ mother? Thanks to my daughter as thinking about her has made me realize that there’s still time for me to spend some ‘tea-coffee-hours’ with my mother and know her expectations.

Needless to say that, birth of my daughter has not only added new dimensions in my life but it has also given me a chance to reconnect and rebond with my mother, who was left behind in the race of catching with college friends, job, office parties, marriage, late night movies etc. I think, it’s time to give back and I shall let my mother enjoy every moment with my daughter and with each passing year, I will make sure that my mother remains a ‘mother’ for my daughter as well…

Thank you God for this gift of relationship between…mom, me and my daughter.