Skip to main content

Different Paths

Watched Run a few days before Mother's Day and it gave much food for thought. There is an universal presumption and expectation of a perfect love flowing from mother child. It is expected to be the natural order of things so any reports of deviation are viewed with great skepticism. The messenger is often killed and the message must wait another day to be heard if ever. Diane in the movie is a horror-inspiring mother - that is the point of the story and she delivers a powerful performance. 

But there are micro-aggressions leading to micro-traumas far more pedestrian mothers are responsible for. In my own extended family are a couple of mothers that clung to at least one of their children as a long-term security solution. These mothers created circumstances in which the kids remained emotionally stunted, unable to get into a relationship or marriage - embark on their own life journeys. The  mother has built a co-dependent relationship with this middle-aged person who has no life of their own and only knows how to be a child to their mother. 

These folks lead apparently normal lives, having completed their education and entered the workforce. They are free to come and go as they please but they just don't. Its as it they have an invisible fence around their lives that the mothers set up early and the rest happened quite effortlessly. It is not even clear if these mothers actually wanted to accomplish the outcomes they have with their children. The children in question are of my generation - we were once a boisterous set of kids running around causing trouble anytime the family got together. They were no different from the rest of us. 

We started to diverge little by little by our teens and beyond that we were too far apart. I count myself among the fortunate ordinary in this group - that has done mostly mundane things that people do in different phases of their lives - nothing remarkable one way or the other. To even achieve that status, it takes a mother not to abuse her incredible position of power in irreversible ways. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more