Mother's day

Happy mother’s day ,
To my mother and to my mil and to all mothers.

Talking about my mother, she is not an extraordinary woman. She is a simple person but one thing that I have seen in her is that, if she wants to be strong, she can be unbelievably strong. You can’t believe the strength she shows, if the situation requires it. Otherwise she is very soft and almost childish:) sometimes I wonder, who is the mother, me or her! I am having a very close relation with my mother now, than what we had when I was younger. If she has a soft corner for someone she would just blindly trust them and if she has a grudge on someone, she would never change that, no matter how hard anybody tries .That’s my mother,;) she is my mother, by all means.
The other mother I have is my mil. We have an interesting love hate relationship. If we have a problem, we will fight it out. We don’t hold back. When we are together after an argument, sometimes I won’t talk for a long time. She knows this. So she would try this. She would come and tell me, I am going to make coffee, you want? Depends on my mood, I would say yes or no. if I say yes, there is no more problems. If I say no; she knows things are not okay. She would start all over again and say, she won’t talk to me, I know etc etc, which normally makes me go silent again!
I’ve never seen someone like her. Born as a Brahmin, she started making non-veg for her husband! Then she continued it for her kids too. She has separate sets of pots, pans etc for this non-veg cooking. She would never taste to see if the salt is right. Somehow, it comes out extremely good. Sometimes I go with her to the market and she would lead me. People in the market knows her well and she will tell them, you know I don’t eat these, or know if they are good or not, so better give me the best ! They always give her the best fresh ones, with a smile! That’s a scene to be seen.
On the other side, my mother, being a Christian, doesn’t eat meat. She won’t even touch the pan if it had any left over curries in it! The only time I saw her differently was when she was feeding my son when he was small. She was feeding him rice and he wanted meat curry with the rice. I saw she looked almost ready to die but still didn’t say no to him . That’s the one and only time I saw her anywhere near non-veg.
Coming back to mil, she is an extremely friendly person. However, an extremely jealous person too. I’ve had a lot of issues because of this jealousy .Noo; it has nothing to do with her son. It has to do everything with me visiting my mother. One day I made her see, how unfair she is behaving and that took care of that issue and now no problems. At least she is not showing any! Fact is, after my marriage, I spend only 2 days at my own home, altogether, in all these years. I know some girls who don’t even go to India often, mainly to avoid being with their in-laws. So when things are like this, I thought being jealous or showing me a blown face when I go to see my mother wasn’t fair. So I made her see all these and told her that she is my mother and I would go anytime I want to see her. She said she understands this but still feels bad:) All I need to do to make her feel okay is a pinch on her nose or cheek. Depends on my mood, it may be softer, or harder. She would do all the home chores all by herself. But once in a while she goes like, I am doing all the works etc etc. That lasts for a day, and next day she will pick up everything from scratch.
She loves traveling and doesn’t like sitting around for more than a second. My mother and she are friends and they enjoy going together to get their pension and having lunch at their favorite restaurant. Whenever we are there and we plan to travel, she will make sure everything is ready including water before we go. I love the lunch packs she makes, and sometimes before going home I will ask her to make that just for the fun of it:) . For the first time, I got a chance to do something like that for her last year. She was going for this tour to Bangalore. She said she would have dinner from the hotel, with others. I thought all these years she did everything for us, still doing it. So I made chapattis and tomato fry for her, also had a bottle of water ready in a bag. Even though she said she doesn’t want me to do it, she was more than happy to have it. I heared her telling someone that I made it for her:), it didn’t cost me anything to make it, but it was worth doing it.
I need her in my home when we are there. Without her, the home seems very silent. In the mornings if there is no electricity and not much water in the tank, I can hear her walking here and there saying what do I do, there is no water, what do I do!! We have a well that has enough water, thank god for that. But she would still be worried about the less water in the tank. Until her son gets up and tell her shhhhhhhhhhhhhh , she won’t stop;).
We call both our mothers every single day. Thanks to Reliance! On Sundays I wakes up only after my husband wakes up, even if I am awake, I will wait till he wakes up:). So some Sundays if its really late back home, I wont call them. I spend 15-20 minutes with my mother, then 30 to 45 minutes with my mil,every single day. It makes them feel like we are not away, that’s exactly what we wants too. She would talk from how the plants are looking to how the helper who comes to water the plants and clean the house didn’t do her job to how the one staying with her full time didn’t do a job right away when she asked her to do etc etc. I fear ,soon I will end up with a bad ear, since I hate using speaker phone . I am looking 'forward' to hearing loss in the nearest future! When I told this to mil’s brother, he said laughing, that would be good, you don’t have to listen to what she says anymore!!! I said that wont be a bad idea;)
We need our parents to feel alive, I guess. I feel we become real adults when we no longer have our parents with us. We can remain kids as long as we have our parents. I hope for, long life and health for them.