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Maternal Love

My thoughts turned to the two women I had reconnected with after a long time during my stay in Kolkata. One a friend from college and the other a cousin. Both find themselves in the position of being the primary care-giver of their ailing parents because there is no one else to share that burden with. Both have mothers whose love bleeds into control. 

They were raised to believe that is how the world of mothers and daughters operate. The departure from the childhood home, establishing an independent life of their own did not alter the dynamic, instead it remained in idle mode where the mother was not able to act out her proclivities very intensely. Now that they are back in that same home they grew up, all the destructive patterns established in the past have come to be bear upon them ferociously. 

All at once they have become who had long ceased to be. The change comes with friction and stress. Part of them is trying to move forward by norms they have established for themselves but there is a part that was always subservient to the mother's wishes and creates a drag force.  My good friend A told me once that adult children need to reset the rules of engagement with parents. If they fail to that they will be forever stuck in the quagmire of the past with parents who are not able to evolve with time and adapt to the adulthood of their children. Both of these women failed to make that reset and are paying a heavy price for it. 

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