Yet another life lesson from my 22 months old #MommyRants #ImperfectMom

Between me and my daughter, we have this ritual of caressing wherever the other person is hurt followed by a kiss on the wound, apparently making the pain go away. The point of doing this was obviously to teach her that wounds and pains don’t recover from medicine alone, but love too. Recently I got a pimple on my cheek and I (very happily) didn’t leave a single opportunity to show it to my daughter to receive a beautiful soft kiss from her on my cheek, as long as the mark is there. Today was no exception, I was making puppy face pointing to the mark on my cheek asking her for some pampering. She paused a while, put her palm on my lips. I kissed her palm instinctively and she pressed it on my cheek. Then she picked up my hand at the wrist and caressed my cheek with my palm. She, then, held up my palm on my lips and pressed on my cheeks. It took me a while to understand her repeated movement. And her teaching revealed – Self love. 

She was making me caress and kiss my own cheek. She was teaching me self-love. Yes, you read it right and I want to make myself believe it, so saying it again. My 22 months old daughter was teaching me Self-Love! She was making me shower, on myself, the love I shower on her and I expect from her. Yes people. We shower all our care and love on people we care for and we expect the same way from others when we are hurt or wounded or just like that. What we don’t do is care for ourselves or love ourselves, tend our wounds and pains with our own love and patience, give ourselves the loving attention that we too need.

I, for sure, intend to start doing what my daughter taught and reminded me. Not because I don’t want others to love me but because I want to set the same example for her. What she taught me today from natural instincts, she will definitely forget the lesson by the time she grows up, thanks to social conditioning. I intend to be her reminder like she was for me today. Just in case, you or I still don't believe it - my 22 months old taught me self-love!

Corona-tion of my World

Pandemic, Social distancing, Quarantine - probably even the Search Engines need a break from these keywords.

I heard someone say, what the world needs is a World War-III and I cringed every time I heard that. Yet, here we are. Yes, believe it or not, we are on a World war, except this time the whole world is united. The sufferings of many are tremendous and thanks to the "quarantine", we can be blissfully ignorant, focusing only 'our boredom'. Even though I fail to understand how people of my generation find time to be bored, because I am up on my feet all day - cleaning, cooking, working from home and attending to my child, in short - EXHAUSTED, I still respect the mass-boredom. Agree or not, we are unwinding, we are getting familiar with the dust that is sitting on the window pane of our own house, we are video-calling (that's a lot of visible emotion) friends rather than texting, we are picking up long-lost hobbies or even new ones and many are actually opening up their kitchen for the not-as-privileged ones. And all of these, while a few communities of common people - Pharmacists, Medicine delivery people and others are working in war footing alongside Doctors, Scientists and Police.

To be honest, nothing has much changed in my life so far, except for the better. All this while cribbing to have to go to office and not having enough time for my daughter, is a prayer that is answered. Albeit, my prayer is answered in the most tragic way for the world as a whole. All this while in all my life, I (as well as others) blamed myself for not staying up-to-date with the current affairs. Probably this time is my undoing, I feel blessed to not be overtly in touch with the news.

A few friends have asked me how am I keeping my little one engaged and I casually answered that on the contrary, she is keeping me constantly engaged. However, when I really thought about it, I guess the most important thing I could teach her at his age was to accept monotony gracefully. Like every other kid, she missed going out on strolls in her stroller or cycle, to play with her neighbour friends, or on a scooter ride with mommy or on short drives. But eventually, she is learning to accept the fact that for some reason, she has to stay indoors like mommy and if anything, she is either finding her own little games or sometimes just staring at birds and clouds from the window. Accepting monotony positively, whether in food or time is a tremendously rewarding process because it fosters and boosts your perseverance and somewhere it triggers a creative spark to break the monotony if and when possible.

For me, I am just hoping, praying and most importantly, believing this phase will pass leaving the world a better place. Ironically, I can't help feeling that this social distancing is actually creating a greater humanitarian unity - beyond class, caste, religion or even your faith in your own government.

Battles and Wars

Each battle that we fight seems huge and heavy, impossible to win over and then we realize it was only a preparation for a bigger battle and so on. 

Every woman with a smiling face – cheerful smile, tired smile, bold and loud smile, shy smile, I-don’t-care smile, please-don’t-judge-me smile, cute and chirpy smile, scarred distorted smile, I-have-it-all-together smile, I-don’t-want-to-smile smile – each one is fighting a battle at any given moment. 

Someone is fighting with limited means to save a terminally ill sibling who is abandoned by in-laws. Someone is fighting to adjust with a flat-mate who gives her sleepless nights. Someone is fighting to find a suitable match desperately only to face disappointment. Someone is fighting to get out of a so-called perfect match. Someone is fighting her fears for her child’s safety within a whole family. Someone is fighting to raise a child alone. Someone is fighting to conceive a child. Someone is fighting to be heard. Someone is fighting the reminiscence of a bad childhood. 

And these are but just battles. 

The real war is that first thought that comes while reading the paragraph above – Judgements. Judgements that “Oh, this is a big struggle, hats off!” and “Oh, that one is not even a problem, what whiner!” Yeah, we do that all the time, almost like a knee-jerk reaction, don’t we?

The real war is that smile, coz ‘WOMEN’ are #expected to be pleasant. Period. 

P.S. Men, I have nothing against you. Just thinking about women at the moment.