"Stages" of growing up!

Ok so this one is a total 'proud mommy' post.

Little Shaayari walked into the Durga Puja pandal on Saptami night, when the talent competition was on. She insisted on going up on stage, although we had prepared nothing.

I asked her if she'd like to recite Incy Wincy Spider - one of her favourites, and a rhyme she delivers exceptionally well - and she gave me withering look, like I was some slimy creature that had crawled out from under a rock.

"Incy Wincy Spider nahin bolna, Tumhi Ho Mataa, Pitaa Tumhi Ho gaana hai". Of course, we were at a Durga Puja after all. Was I daft. I stood suitably chastised.

When I went up to the organisers they asked me if she would be in the 0 to 3 category or the 3 to 6 category. Tempted though I was to say the former (chances of winning clearly doubled), I sort of erred on the side of honesty. 3 to 6 I said. She turned 3 two months ago...

Anyhow, this isn't about winning, I told myself!

Shaayari had a blast! We did two quick rehearsals back stage and then bam, there she was on stage, in front of a mike for the first time in her life, smiling confidently at a bunch of benign bongs.

"Good evening, my name is Shaayari" she started... and instantly dissolved into giggles. She had just heard her own voice over a microphone....

The crowd giggled with her.

After a bit of gentle, focus proddding, she continued. Confident. Cheerful. And LOUD!! After the prayer was over, madam walked off stage with a smile, a sashay and promptly forgot all about the whole thing. I truly witnessed the pure joy of performance, with no pressure of competition or winning there!

4 days later, on prize distribution night, they called my Mom on stage to give away all the prizes for all the competitions. I was hovering around more out of concern for Maa's health than any other expectation. Shaayari was of course with me. So then imagine my surprise when they declared the 3rd prize winner for the talent show!

Spontaneous impromptu performer Shaayari Madgavkar!

Grand daughter dressed in her ghaaghra choli (which she had insisted on wearing on the last day of pujo) receiving the prize from an equally surprised and insanely proud grandmom.

Some moments in life are just.... sweet!

The Full Time Version

My live in nanny had to run off home for almost 2 weeks, some personal family emergency.

This unfortunately also coincided with the time that my husband was all set to leave for England for a year. In fact his departure was half way down the nanny's leave time.

Needless to say, what with all his last minute preparations, and the lack of baby sitter support at the same time, I had to take off from office and work from home. Whatever little work one can manage that is, with a 3 year old.

I plunged in head first, to 12 days of insanity. Office calls, emails, baby bath time, feeding time, play time, story reading time, husband packing time... and I knew I was in for some very messy times...

And I was totally wrong. Tiring, physically, yes. Bad? No.

I realised that I hadn't been a full time hands on mom for almost 2.5 years. I had spent 6 months on maternity leave after my little girl was born, and during and post that I have always had a live in nanny. Or at least, during their various evictions, illnesses, replacements and leaves, at least some sort of part time support.

In those first 6 months the help were not of much use beyond being extra hands and feet because I wanted to do everything myself, even my little baby had decided in her preocious, pre verbal way, that she only wanted mommy...

But after that I needed to rejoin work. I got very good support, my daughter would be dropped off everyday to my mother's, and gradually, while mommidom remained a spectacular, central part of my life, my other inate personality began to take over, like beautiful shrubbery in an untended garden...

My baby and I continued to discover each other in the most unique and myriad ways, in that profusion of our various selves...

However, this last week brought me back to bootcamp. The brass tacks of one of the simplest and oldest roles in the world.

Being a mother has been not just the central but often the only identity a woman has worn across societies, over generations. Some of us, brought up in our liberated, cosmopolitan, privileged set ups, have then gone on to challenge that automatic role playing and outsourced a lot of the drudgery, to put it bluntly.

Yes, I am one of those women who don't derive satisfaction from the basic wash-bathe-feed-clean routine of rasing a small child. I often feel that women treat these chores as exalted only to lend meaning to their own dull lives.

That may be true. It may also be a very one sided view of mine. I don't know. Because I will not be doing this full time bit much longer than another 4 to 5 days. But I know for sure that its given me pure joy, pure satisfaction and a lot of relief from the heart wrenching sadness of seeing the man I love leave for a year.

Thanks to my kid, I have been too busy and too cheerful to mope.

It would be an exaggeration to say I got to know my child better in these days. No, I know my child even otherwise; we are extremely intuitively bonded. But what I did get to know are those little things that impact her daily schedule, her appetite, her physical comforts and therefore her moods... I discovered the basic, the simple, the day to day part of parenting. What I got to experience was the sheer ordinariness of motherhood.

And that precisely turned out to be extra ordinary.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably a working mom like me. And therefore you probably also have a pretty established support structure. I know the other wonderful facets of your myriad personality are important to you. I know that you have allowed choices to govern your life, and not compulsions. And possibly, what makes you gloriously you is the fact that you view motherhood as extraordinary rather than ordinary, a vibrant choice and not a given fact.

Here's a suggestion: stay who you are. But tell the help to take off for a week, every 6 months or so. I know I will!

Haven't written here in a long time.

And that is certainly not because life with a 2 year old is dull or predictable or uninspiring.

Quite the contrary in fact. It is so full of living, breathing, breathstopping moments that it becomes a kaleidoscope of feeling well nigh impossible to render on paper at regular intervals.

Today however I felt compelled to pause and put paper to pen - or finger to keyboard if you please - and talk about the one thing preoccupying so many working mothers, all the time.

Guilt.

During a recent visit to Pune, a friend of mine, who has a 1 year old, invited me for coffee. As soon as we sat down across each other in the cute colourful cafe, her first words were: 'does the guilt ever go away?'

I will repeat here, what I said to her. Immediately. 'No'. I said. Emphatically. 'It never does'.

So breathe. And learn to live with it. And to negotiate life around it. It is years of socialisation and gene pool mutation probably, but the guilt of leaving your child in another's care and going away, simple doesn't go away! Even though rationally you know that the kind of quality time you are spending with your child is probably more enriching than the old world bathe, feed, put to bed routine. Even though you know that the 2 hours of playtime in the evening and the half hour of cuddle and fun in the morning is bonding you beautifully with your little one, even though you know that because you have a nanny to take care of the boring stuff, you are able to present your most cheerful most energetic most playful self to your toddler, even though you see the child's face light up every time you enter the room...

Even though you see your baby run into your arms and hug you and kiss you and altogether let you know how precious and how central you are, you STILL FEEL GUILTY.

Paradoxically, the child's unquestioned devotion makes you guiltier. Because you probably belong to the same generation as me, where most moms were stay at home moms. Where your mother spent a lot of time taking primary care of you (read food, clothing, cleaning) and she never suffered any guilt if she couldn't make time for play or piggy back rides or crayoning sessions.

Today you keep asking yourself: have I abdicated mom responsibilities and taken to being almost a sibling? Why am I not doing all the stuff that my mom did and why am I doing all the silly things that moms don't normally do?

My daughter thinks that pillow fights and tickle sessions, play with words, and building blocks is par for the course with mommy. Cuddling up and sleeping arm in arm is our biggest joy. Splashing about and turning bath time into water wars is regular. The nanny is boring. Mom is fun. The nanny is taken for granted, time with mom is precious.

That itself makes one guilty again. Hey, mom was supposed to be the one you could take for granted! In a bizarre twist to envy you suddenly want to be the boring stable presence in the child's life rather than the exotic, perfume twirling, heels clad, now-you-see-me-now-you-don't avataar of yourself you have turned into inside the fantasy film in your head.

And you don't stop to reason. Or to realise that this image of yourself is truly pure fantasy. You don't notice how it is still only you that the child will sleep tucked in next to at night. You don't appreciate yourself enough when it is only you who can understand what the toddler needs in her broken half speech, when everybody else has given up.

You don't notice when it is only you who can pacify the child when she's upset. And you certainly don't pat yourself on the back when the child comes running to you with shiny eyes as she learns a new word or phrase or rhyme in play school. Because you are too caught up with patting her - and that is the way it should be of course.

But stop for a second. To applaud yourself. You are doing a very good job. You are redefining motherhood even as you redefine womanhood. Maybe you abdicated some other gender stereotypes with greater ease: maybe it was a traditional wardrobe that you gave up for unisex wear. Maybe it was a role in the kitchen that you happily delegated to the help - or, as in my case, my husband! Maybe it was a personality type when you cashed in on your assertive aggressive side and said 'balls' to the notion that women accept and adjust...

Whatever it was, is or may have been, you have negotiated and forged many new identities. This is but another glorious one in that journey.

So enjoy it. You don't cook like your mother, you don't dress like your mother, you don't talk like your mother, you don't pray like your mother. You don't need to mother like your mother.