Heroes And Moms

   I grew up reading mythology and history, listening to stories from the past was a favourite pastime for all of us. Strangely enough, it was never the hero of the narrative that fascinated me, but the ones that remained on the periphery, people who loved unconditionally, and who were always left behind. How would they have dealt with life afterwards, knowing and yet, not knowing. No one seemed to know or even care about their turmoil. Didn’t they go through a lot? What about their feelings?

    Reading about every struggle, whether it was for the freedom of a country or individual, for every change big and small, in attitude, in society, every movement, every unrest, I wondered. How did their families cope. For all the bravado, I am quite sure, there is a father who longs for a child that stayed at home, did farming, got drunk occasionally, got into political discussions. A mother who wants a child who would get married, produce a brood of children, fight with her, back of her mind, she wants all that the rest of her sisters have. Giving up one’s life for one’s principles is fine, so long as it's someone else’s child. 

  

     And when it's your own child standing up for something you know is right, you feel the fear but try to suppress it. For a moment, you wish you hadn’t brought them up to be so upright. You would have loved to stand on the side and applaud, you would have felicitated the courageous child and the brave mother. You would wholeheartedly support their cause, tell them to follow their heart and be the torch bearers.

But it's your own child!

   Your child that you protected from real and imaginary hurts. The Child that you tried to navigate onto the path of comfort, path of good and easy life. You tried to give everything you longed for but did not have, to your child.

    And then, this child, who could have anything, do anything, declines. Your child chooses, the most difficult road, toughest of the toughest. Your child announces to the world, I refuse to live by your standards, I refuse to accept the norms that are not true to me, I refuse the falsehoods, the pretenses, I refuse to bow down. This is what I am, this is what God made me, I will live by my convictions, my rules, so deal with it.

   You exchange one set of fears for another. You smile, you reassure your child, yes, we are with you. You only taught your child to be honest, to be truthful, and above all to be true to one’s convictions.

    But at the back of your mind, you are wishing, your child had chosen an easy road, the beaten track and was not suffering so much. It's so easy to be brave for someone else.

     There is a lot of bewilderment, you still see a child who puts a finger in the night lamp socket just to confirm your statement, a child who wants to snap fingers under a stray cow’s nose, who wants a cake the shape of a haunted house. You see all that you hoped would be there in the future for both of you at that moment.

  And you see it all slipping away like sand through your fingers. You don’t try to hold it. You can’t. You let it go, gently. Because that’s what your child wants, that’s what your child chose, not the beaten track, not the conventional path, not the easy road. Your child chose not to conform but to chase the dream, to follow the vision.

    

 So you put all your fears, your dreams, your apprehensions in a basket, put them away in the farthest, highest corner of the loft, put them aside like yesteryear’s shrunken jeans. You can’t throw it away, you can’t stop looking at a trim figure and wish you could fit into those jeans.

   But you know you can’t, so you just buy yourself new jeans, and new dreams.  

It's easy being a Hero, but it's so tough being the mother of a Hero.