Happy Mother’s Day

As I switched on the Wi-fi today , within some moments, my phone was full of messages about ‘Mother’s Day’ . Some crying out loud about the love and sacrifices, a mother makes to raise her children, while some with series of emotionally engaging poems that recite the ideal combination of ‘motherly’ qualities that world’s half the population has or is eventually expected to posses some day. But really, what is the ideal combination of qualities that an ideal mother possesses. The answer is ‘none’. Being a mom myself, I can say it with a certain authority that I am just as emotional, stupid , vulnerable, impatient and irritating as anyone.

So I still don’t get the hue and cry around the mother’s day especially since we all, including me, have made very few deliberate attempts to actually make a mom’s life easier. Becoming a mom gives me so many reasons to be grateful to the almighty. But along with the joy comes a price that me, and every mom pays. That price is called ‘ being less human ‘.More than often I and many moms have been expected to forfeit their right to be human . It is now expected that we become this superhuman creature that must readily be a food factory for her infant, and a housekeeper and nanny on a continuous basis to the family, for life. Needless to say that she doesn’t really have any right to feel that she has a separate life that she is entitled to, which is outside of her motherhood. It amuses me to the core when i receive a mother’s day wish from people who at some point have criticized my qualities and choices I have made as a mother. Be I having a career, be it keeping my child at a day care or be it giving my baby ready to eat food.
Merely wishing mothers on this day means nothing. Let there be a tangible expression of appreciation to moms. Let’s criticize less, appreciate more, judge less and empathise more, advise less and help more. Today, do something that will make her smile, even if it means making a simple cup of tea for her. That, in my not so mature mind sounds like a true Mother’s day wish.