Category: Rant

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Parenting decisions

It was six in the morning. I was done with the tiffins and was making a start on the kids’ breakfast as I called out to them to wake up for school. N woke up after a call or two but there was no response from H. When he refused to get up after repeated entreaties I went to check on him only to find him burrowing deeper under the covers.

‘My head hurts’, he mumbled, ‘I couldn’t sleep all night. May I please not go to school today?’

‘Not today!’, thought I, ‘God! please, not today’. Today I didn’t have the patience or the bandwidth to cajole or to fool around, to bribe or to offer concessions in a bid to keep the morning-before-school peaceful. Somedays it is almost stressful – this struggle to keep the mornings stressfree.

Annoyance rose up inside me. No sympathy, no concern, just plain annoyance.

I was supposed to go for a much postponed medical examination that day. This was something I’d been planning since the start of the year but just hadn’t been able to get around to. It would have taken up the entire day so plenty of planning was involved. The maids had to be informed, the children entrusted with a key to the house and told to manage their snack on their own when they got back from school. The zumba class had to be rescheduled and I was expecting a package from amazon so the neighbour had to be informed. As a stay-at-home mum, stepping out for one whole day is challenging.

Finally everything had been done and I had let the anxiety of the medical exam wash over me. The sense of achievement at having scheduled everything had faded at the thought of the ordeal ahead – the poking, the pricking and the drawing of blood and then of course there were the results to consider. What if there was something seriously wrong?

It was something I was looking forward to as much as I was dreading it.

For over a year I had been struggling with niggling aches and pains. Somedays I’d wake up with all my joints, right down to the digits of my fingers hurting. Somedays I’d wake up with a headache and carry it around for two or three days before it decided to leave. With no one to push me to get that checkup I had just let it be. I do hate going to the doctor on my own.

Finally, however, I had managed to ready myself and now this! I thought in frustration. This was something my already strung out nerves could have done without. Annoyance bubbled up again as I glanced over at my sleeping son. I’d have to reschedule and replan, provided I found the will-power to rebook that appointment. And all for a headache, which in all probability, would disappear even before his bus disappeared round the corner, I rued.

Am I being too soft on the children? Should I push him to go to school? It would be a struggle but I knew he would go if I pushed him. But was that too harsh? What if his head was really hurting? What if it was the beginning of one those terrible colds that seem to catch him all too easily? What if it turned into something serious, a fever, maybe? I touched his forehead. It felt cool. He turned over, forcing his eyes open, ‘Please ma, may I stay home, today?’ How sorely I missed the Husband at times like these!

I looked at H waiting for my response, his hair tousled, his blanket half on the ground, and I nodded slowly as a wave of guilt washed over me. Guilt. How could I feel annoyed at a child for being ill? Would I push him to go to school when he could barely open his eyes?

I saw his foot sticking out of the covers and reached out to pull up the blanket. He might be an 11-year-old tween with a size 10 foot but he still is my baby. The baby who comes looking for me at night when his nose is blocked or when he’s been all macho and watched a scary movie in the day.

Sigh!

Often I feel the children’s pain, physical or mental, more acutely than they themselves do but somedays, just somedays, I lose all sympathy and feel plain frustration, followed soon enough by guilt. And even while I know both feelings are way out of proportion I find myself unable to do anything about it.

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Izzat is a strange thing

I usually do not watch news on the television. I’m quite happy to wait for my morning newspaper or whatever I find online. News channels are so heavily polarised they leave me confused and utterly frustrated. I already have the twins who do a fine job of that, so no TV for me thank you.

But my parents were here and the evening news is their daily fix. So we sat around the telly and we watched. We watched a mob on a vandalising spree. It burnt down vehicles (about 200 odd), looted mobile phone shops and smashed glass facades of multiplexes protesting against a film. I sat there wondering why people would destroy multiplexes which had already agreed to not screen said film.

Do you hear me now when I say news is puzzling?

Meanwhile elsewhere in the country, protestors ran amuck brandishing swords, burning tyres, stopping trains, setting fires to buses and blocking roads.

One man tried to immolate himself in Varanasi.

Someone announced a reward of 1 crore to the person who could chop off the lead actress’ ears and nose.

Some others decided to pelt stones on a school bus full of children, the youngest of whom was merely four.

All for izzat, honour.

I flipped channels to land on another visual of Rajput women, heads covered, izzat fully in place, saying nothing mattered more to them, not food nor drink, but their honour.

And all of that honour was centred on the non-release of this one film. A film about a woman dead for countless decades. A film none of them had even watched. A film that the Censor Board as well as the Supreme Court, had watched, had gone over with a tooth comb over and over and over again and found alright.

So you see, this izzat is a strange thing. It gets tarnished rather easily – by a book, a story, a dialogue, a film, by a piece of art or fiction. And then it forces people to take to the streets to restore it.

At other times however, it proves to be unbelievably tenacious remaining clean and intact even when these same people make, watch and share suggestive videos or gyrate to provocative songs. It remains untouched when they line the streets and pass lewd comments. It isn’t sullied when they pull out women from cars and rape them or when they throw out their infants to die on the streets.

Strange thing, this izzat.

What’s even stranger and utterly disappointing is the reaction of the people in power, the administration.

Rather than resolving to make sure peace prevails, they choose to turn a blind eye. They looked the other way as a 2000 people strong crowd gathered and charged the multiplexes. They made sure police arrived just as the mob had done its bit and had dispersed. Bollywood style.

Four states went on to ban the film.

The Deputy CM of a state advised people to not watch the film in order ‘to maintain law and order’. Nope, it isn’t his job to ensure that. It is ours. And so we stayed away from the film, away from malls and multiplexes. And even though I’m not a mall person that irked, because this isn’t the country I was proud of, the country I taught my children to be proud of.

I’ve always chosen to be upbeat and optimistic. But this Republic Day I feel only lost and disheartened. Even as I dress up my daughter in the traditional sari for celebrations at school, I cannot find it in my heart to celebrate. How can I, when I see my freedom erode, bit by bit right before my eyes. And I wonder how many more liberties I will have to give up for ‘maintaining law and order’, for protecting the izzat of God knows who.

How far will you go for your 15 minutes of fame?
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Wet towels and crazy mornings #momdialogues

 

Cool Mom: Is leaving a wet towel on the bed reason enough to spoil everyone’s morning, and that includes yours more than anyone else’s?

Agitated Mom: It’s not just the towel and you know that. It’s ‘put away your plates after breakfast’, ‘put cream’, ‘pick up your jacket from the floor’, ‘take your tiffin’, ‘put in your bottles’ and on and on endlessly. To have to remind them every single day for every single task is just crazy. That towel was just the last straw. Besides, who does it if they don’t? I, right? That’s how I’ll be spending my entire day – cleaning up after them. What’s even more ironical I’ll also have people saying, ‘What do you do all day?’ The kids are grown up now.’ Hah! Grown up!!!

CM: Sigh! Such a long tirade! You could simply leave the towel on the bed.
 
AM: What?? Just leave it? So the bed and the towel become wet and stinky?
 
CM: Yeah well it’s the kids’ beds. They have to sleep in them. Let then sleep with the stink. That’ll remind them to put out the towels next time round.
 
AM: And what if they don’t? What if they don’t mind it at all? What if they get used to it? How hygienic is that? And what kind of a life-long habit am I helping them form?
 
CM: I’ll repeat – choose your battles. Choose your timing. The other option is of course to lose your patience, to give them an earful and then feel lousy all day long. As for life-long habits – they have time yet to pick them up. You want the kids to look back on their school days and remember only crazy mornings?
 
AM: No obviously not.
 
CM: The trouble is not with telling them to do stuff, the trouble is with you losing your cool when you do so. So how about playing some peaceful music, taking up your cup of tea and thinking happy thoughts – like the time N made you tea, remember? They do some good too. Oh and don’t forget to put yourself on repeat mode till they learn to finish their tasks, okay? It’s just one crazy hour, after all.

Picture Credit: Pixabay
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This isn’t the first time I have had multiple mums fighting it out in my head. You can read about other mommy wars here, here and here.

 

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Sweet memories and some thoughts

Mel from Stirrup Queens has invited us today to share a memory of our favourite childhood candy and I realised I had more than one. Don’t worry, though, I promise not to get carried away.

To begin with there were these phantom cigarette candies. I shared this on Facebook sometime back and heard from many many friends saying how they missed them just like me. These had a texture quite like chalk and were sweet enough to put you off sweets for a long time, or so I thought when I recently sampled them again. I’d thought they were dead and gone till one day I got a call on the intercom from my 9 year old asking permission for a cigarette that his friends were offering. I completely freaked and asked him to come right home. And this is what he got. It brought back many many fun memories. When we were young, we would put them to our lips and pretend to blow out ‘smoke’ during the cold Lucknow winters. 

I also remember a ‘sweet man’ who was quite a favourite with all of us. He’d stand outside our school with a huge box, which he hung from his neck, stacked with all kinds of sweets. My favourites were these tiny pink rose flavoured sweets that I cannot remember the name of. They came in a peppermint flavour too but the rose were my favourite. I remember the fragrance more that the flavour. Regrettably, I have never found them again.

Those were certainly simpler times. Sweets back then were simply an occasional indulgence, nothing more. They didn’t need to boast of additional benefits. Have you noticed how these days they come ‘packed with energy boosters’ or ‘fortified with glucose’?

And so each time our child has a meltdown and we reach out for a sweet to pacify our sad or angry toddler we can tell ourselves, “Wow I avoided a tantrum and I gave him an energy boost!” A win-win situation, right? And it’s way easier than helping him work out strategies to cope with his anger/grief. Advertisers have certainly made the whole exercise guilt-free.

Okay I’m over analysing this whole thing but I do have a lot of issues with sweets and the way they are marketed. For instance, have you seen how Kinder Joy comes in a boy version and a girl version?? I mean, must sweets (and toys and books and everything else) also have a gender now?

Despite all the advertising hoo-haa I wonder if my kids will remember them with as much affection and nostalgia as I remember my phantom cigarettes.

Linking to Mel’s #Microblog Mondays .

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A rant

Do you have days when nothing seems to be coming together? When you wake up each morning with a fresh resolve for a cheerful day and watch the resolve done and dead within a few hours? When the kids just won’t stop whining? When every interaction with them is a struggle? When, just as you fix one situation, another one is upon you? 

It’s been a bit like that over the last week or two. The twins have been down with a bunch of real and imagined ailments. That I am not able to figure out which is which is driving me crazy.

First H complained of throat pain. Over the evening it escalated, and by night time he was wringing his hands and crying out each time he swallowed. After a panicked phone call to my doctor SIL I rushed out to buy medicine. As I got back I heard him singing, yes singing out loud, loud enough to be heard outside the house. And it has returned each night – the hand wringing and the moaning hasn’t stopped despite my threats and pleadings. 

Then it was N’s turn. She complained of a headache. Do kids have headaches? Anyway, since she rarely falls ill, I assumed she just wanted a day at home (since H had called in sick a few days back) and I went along with it. She stayed home, read, drew, coloured, crafted and cycled through the day and seemed all fine till evening. And then the ‘ache’ was back moving to her stomach accompanied with ‘nausea’ (‘every time I eat I feel like puking’) and loss of appetite. Back I was to the SIL wondering if the vague symptoms indicated jaundice till I ruled it out.

That’s how it’s been between the two of them.

Do I sound over-anxious? Yeah, I do, even to myself. But at that point their illnesses seem very real and very worrisome. I wonder if kids have any clue how their vague and casual complaints leave mums stressed.

And then there are mosquitoes….

Many nights in a row H has been waking me up because he hears a ‘buzz’. He’s mortally scared of mosquitoes – scared, not annoyed like the rest of us. I’ve tried everything – from repellent gadgets to creams. He has always been a mosquito magnet but I’m beginning to think the buzz is more in his head than anywhere else. Each night he walks into my room at ungodly hours, shutting doors and windows till I suffocate, screaming if he hears a buzz and then falling asleep leaving me waiting for the alarm so I can get on with my day. 

Mornings find me irritable with a body ache that refuses to go. I am unable to go to the gym which means hanging out at home feeling horribly fat and cranky (Ugh!). I resent every phone call, every knock at the door, even the maid – anything that comes between me and my shut eye, which just doesn’t happen. It’s a bit like I was back to their baby years with the sleep starvation.

I’ve been wondering if it’s that’s what making me over-anxious. After all the kids couldn’t have changed overnight. I should be used to their myriad illnesses.  I AM used to them. I could always figure out the real from the fake. Now I just cannot seem to.

This is unusual too – this rant. I do not usually rant unless I have a physical person sitting in front of me – when I bug the h*** out of them – someone from my list of ‘privileged’ few :-). Unfortunately  that hasn’t been possible and you have had to bear the brunt of it. 

On a positive note the discovery of the day has been that a good bath seems to wash away a lot of my crabbiness. Highly recommended for bad days when everything seems to be going wrong. That and a change in schedule seems to make me feel better.

As a new week comes up I have my fingers crossed.

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