The Imperfect Mom
Every Mothers’ Day we flood the social media with our pictures with our moms accompanied with beautiful lines about how perfect they are. And, at least from what I’ve heard & seen all my life, mothers are indeed supposed to be these perfect and selfless human beings. A little that we forget is that mothers are human beings too before being anything else. And now, that I’m growing up and being expected to be more ‘lady-like’, I realize that the selflessness is glorified beyond humanly possible, or at least that is what I feel so.
We’ve always followed one kind of narrative when it comes to mothers or even fathers. Mothers are these ‘ideal’ women who take care of the household and are always there to take care of and guide their children (not to forget, with the society becoming more modern, mothers could work outside but of course are still the primary housekeepers). They are the ones who are like the first teachers and are the ones you can confide in. They’ll deal with all sorts of crap just to always protect you and so on.
However, in reality, there are so many different kind of relationships that we share with our mothers. And I would choose to believe that maximum of them are not as perfect as we pretend them to be or expect them to be. For instance, take Sanjay’s relationship with his mother in the book House of Cards by Sudha Murthy. She didn’t really bother a lot about him, she probably was proud of him but not there with him like a mother would have been; as was expected of her. She didn’t even guide him through life a lot and left all major life choices to him. Does that make her a bad mother?
But the idea of writing this piece had first come to me while watching Jane the Virgin. Growing up in an Indian household with all the television soaps and movies idolizing the mothers as goddesses with this absolutely unreal sense of existence, Jane the Virgin kind of made me re-think what has been going on in my mind since a long time. Quoting Jennie Synder Urman, the Executive Producer of the show, “The love story at the center of the show is Jane and her mother and her grandmother.” The show beautifully portrayed the different kinds of relationship women shared with their mothers — Jane with her mother Xiomara, Xiomara with her mother Alba, Jane with Alba or Petra with her mother. It allowed space for conflict, for arguments — pretty heated ones actually, for the not talking phases, and everything in between. But what it did best was to so brilliantly portray how it’s all a part of the love-hate relationship children and their mothers share.
It also further assured how being a mom is not a textbook course you can simply mug up, instead you learn on the go — you fail sometimes, you make mistakes but you come around. Not all mothers are the same, not all share the same relationship with their children, not all are how the society would want them to be. The point is that we all love our mothers but no child should ever to go through the feeling that their mother is not a good enough mother because looking back, I know there were so many times that I too felt that my mother didn’t fit the ideal mother image that was fed to me continuously. And I know so many who too have felt the same. Being a mom is not an easy task, and like every other relationship, it has its share of ups and downs. And if you see the roadmap, no matter what path you choose, the destination is always mostly love.
So if those social media posts have ever overwhelmed you, or if you too have felt some mixed emotions, remember that sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to be. Sometimes you think that the damage done is beyond repair and maybe it is. But you can try to look back, break down everything into pieces to understand why it happened the way it happened. And sometimes, you’ll find that the other person did the best they could in those circumstances. And sometimes, that little introspection can heal everything like magic, of course not at once but you’d be there! :)
