The Warmth of My Un-cool Mother

When I was in high school, I would often hear girls rave about how cool their mothers were. How they shared wardrobes and shoes with their mothers, how their mothers trusted them completely. How their friends loved to hang out with their mothers. I could never relate to such conversations.

In those days, I never thought of my mother as cool. She had strict rules governing the complex business of raising little ones and she watched us just as a hawk watches over her young.

I knew girls who would go out for parties and stay overnight at their friends’ homes. Mine would be out in the balcony, eyes peeled, if I didn’t show up five minutes after the time by which I should have been home, down to the minute. If I remembered to call and tell her the reason for my delay with a revised time of return, I would be let off. If not…

Like all teenagers, I used to think of myself as something of a rebel, and would wonder why I was being tethered down when other girls of my age wore what they wanted, spoke to and hung around with anyone and did whatever took their fancy.

During my brief stint in a newspaper, we often had to work the late night shift which would end at 1 am. Female employees would then get dropped home by the office car. Since it was one car dropping five or six of us home, I, who stayed the furthest, would reach home no earlier than 3 or 3.30 am. My colleagues often told me about how they would let themselves in, with their own latch keys, mind you, into their quiet, sleeping homes.

When I asked my mother for a key, she told me there was no need for it; she would open the door for me. And sure enough, whenever the office car came to a halt outside our building gate, I would see her sitting in the balcony, unwilling to go to bed until her daughter was safe home.

I asked her once why she took the trouble to sit up and lose precious sleep, waiting for me, she told me that she couldn’t possibly sleep until all her dear ones were safely home. Then she smiled and added that the day I got married, she would stop worrying about me. She added, “Your husband and in-laws can worry about where and how you are. I shan’t bother at all.”

I was too immature to understand the import of her words then. It was only much later that I realized the comfort of knowing that someone at home loved you enough to worry about you not being home.

Behind the relieved laughter in her voice, I still recall the worry in her eyes, the fear that something might happen to someone she loved. When nightmares like these assailed her waking thoughts, she would pray with all the strength of her simple faith that her fears may not come to pass.

Having returned home in the early hours of the morning, I would go to bed and not wake up until hours later. She, of course, would be up by 6, getting breakfast ready for the whole family and generally preparing for the day.

In today’s day, she would have been considered a Work-at-Home-Mother, every bit of the work she does calibrated and recognised. Back then, she was only considered a housewife. The label was derogatory, at least I thought so. When asked what she did, she would cheerfully reply, “I’m a housewife,” omitting to mention the successful sewing enterprise that she ran from the confines of our tiny home, while simultaneously managing the household, cooking, washing and cleaning, looking after the family and playing an active role in our home education. She had also nursed to health an old relative who had suffered two separate accidents and become bedridden for more than eight months each time.

During Diwali and Christmas especially, she would have so many orders that often she would end up working until 1 or even 2 am, then waking up at 4.30 am to literally pick up the thread where she had left it. In spite of having so much to do, she managed to do justice to every task she undertook. Food was always on the table at meal times. The pantry was always stocked. We never ran out of anything. She was always in control of every situation.

All through my growing years, I was blissfully unaware of the many sacrifices that she must have had to make to ensure that the household ran smoothly.

These included the tiny things she gave up, a little sweet something she had prepared that my brothers and me wanted more helpings of, that she suddenly didn’t seem to be in the mood to have. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t even know what her favourite foods were.

And then there were the big sacrifices, the dreams that she must have put on the back burner as she dreamed great things for us. Rejoiced in our victories. Grieved over our losses.

Today I am a mother of two kids, and yet I dutifully call her once every day. It is a comfort to know that in a world where so much goes wrong every day, there is one little corner where I continue to be loved as I always have been. She waits for my call and worries if I don’t call. I guess, you don’t ever retire from a calling as a mother.

Such big shoes I have to fit into. I wonder if my little La Niña will think of me as un-cool someday.



‘I am writing a Tribute to Mom in association with Parentous.com‘

The Spirit of Christmas Past

Christmas is most real to a child, perhaps because the Creator of the world came to us in the form of a child.


As children, preparing for Christmas, it was a delight to do something good and not be found out. The parish priest of St John the Baptist Church, Thane, (I think his name was Fr Peter something), came up with an ingenious idea to prepare the Sunday School children for Christmas. While others cleaned their homes, we children should clean our hearts, he said.


He handed each of us a single sheet of paper on which the popular image of a heart, with numerous lines crisscrossing it, was printed. The crisscrossing lines would total up to more than 300 little squares. The idea was that all through Advent, we should do something nice for someone and offer it as our gift to God. With each good deed, we would be permitted to colour one of those little squares. On Christmas Eve, we were encouraged to place our coloured hearts, a symbol of our love for God, in the manger at the church crib. Wrapped as He was in nothing but swaddling robes, our coloured hearts would keep Him warm.


Looking back, I recall that none of my good deeds were really scale-breaking. Sometimes I may have foregone a sweet that my brother wanted. Or I may have given up watching a favourite TV programme and tried to help mum instead.


More than the deed itself, it was the spirit in which it was done that made it significant. For once, we thought of the needs of others, rather than our own. For once, we swallowed our pride and grief, if we were scolded undeservedly. For that one time in the year, we would try our best to be a little less selfish, a little more generous, a little more as God would have us be.


The Wise men came with their gifts. We brought our hearts. It was with a glow in my heart that I would place mine at the manger, knowing without the shadow of a doubt that just as the Babe smiled upon the little drummer boy in one of my favourite Christmas songs, He would look with delight upon me.


My parents never bought us gifts at Christmas. Partly because our financial circumstances didn't permit it. But more importantly, because we were just not aware of the tradition of buying one another gifts for Christmas. The way my parents taught us to view Christmas, the focus was always on the Birthday Boy, whose birth transformed the world.


So the tradition of piling up neatly wrapped gifts at the foot of the Christmas tree and pretending it was Santa Claus who had bought them for us never featured in our memories of Christmas Past. In fact, for a very long time, we didn't even have a Christmas tree.


Dad used to make a crib, a small visual representation of the Nativity. It was a small house that Dad had fashioned out of leftover plywood. It wasn't at all ramshackle as the real one must have been, but that was because Dad had good carpentry skills. With loving hands, he would smooth sawdust on the floor, place the thatched and stitched roof on top of the house and put the little statues in their positions. Even as he tried his best to make the little house as comfortable as possible, he would tell us, "The real stable must have been dirty and smelly. Imagine the trouble that Our Lord willingly accepted for our sake."


All through Advent, my excitement would be steadily built up, rising in intensity as Mum made a different Christmas sweet each day for our kuswar (Christmas goodies). One day, it would be neureos, then perad the next day, dodol the day after, and cake and kormolan the next. The following day, it would be two types of doce (the Portuguese word for sweet). one made of chana dal, and the other of local bread or pao. They were both my favourites, chonya doce and unddya doce, unddo meaning the Konkani word for bread. This would be followed by batk or bolinhas. For the local flavour, Mum would make chaklis and besan laddoos and our basket of Christmas goodies would be complete.


Day after day, our little home would be redolent with the aromas of all these sweets. It was another reminder that Christmas was approaching. As these Christmas goodies were being made at home, I would go to school with a heavy heart. Somehow it seemed unfair to miss all the excitement even for a few hours.


Incidentally, one of my cousins, so went a famous family story, apparently wrapped up a school exam in a fraction of the time allotted to write it because she did not want to miss out on the kormola making at home. While it was a very amusing story that never failed to bring on the laughs, dear cousin, if you read this, I want you to know that I thought your action was thoroughly excusable. :)


Meanwhile, Dad would decorate our little house with colourful buntings and balloons, even as Christmas carols would be playing on our little tape recorder. Mum would sew Christmas dresses for the two of us. The finishing touches would be put at the very last minute, often because there was so much that she had to do, while managing her sewing business too.


While these preparations were on, my excitement would be muffled, under wraps. It was only when Dad got the crib ready, often the last step in our Christmas decorations, that the warm feeling in my heart would smoulder into a full-blown fire.


Those childhood Christmases were beautiful. I remember the thrill that used to come over me at Mass on the first Sunday of Advent when the choir would sing, "Bestir thy power, and come, Lord, to save thy sin-laden race." It used to be my cue to give in to unmitigated joy and excitement because my favourite time of the year was finally here.


Truly, there is no Christmas like the one experienced by children. One casualty of being a grown-up is that unfortunately we lose the tenderness and affection that we used to experience as children. We lose the warm Christmassy feeling and merely end up keeping the date.


This year, I resolve to change all that. I resolve to become a child again at Christmas time. I resolve to re-live the excitement that was mine, all those years ago, and to share in the delight of my little daughter and son and two nephews. I resolve to open my heart again so that when I peer into the crib and look at the little Babe lying in the manger, I can feel content that I have made my heart a fit dwelling for Him.