Tuesday, February 2, 2010

That warm space.

That warm space.
It’s actually never a space, it’s a person. Like you never quit a job, you quit a boss, similarly with moms, it’s never about where they live, it’s about what they have in their being that just makes every place better.
I realised that when I lost my mother. A year ago. We were all devastated and all the focus was on dad who was alone now. Technically, the rest of us were all “settled” and busy in our careers and lives. How wrong we could be to think that.
Home didn’t feel like home. Doesn’t even now. And that’s when I realised that we were all lost and floundering. Not just immediate family but younger cousins, my friends, the help at home. Everyone whose lives she touched regularly. We spoke a lot to each other and yet we only ended up hurting each other or mouthing things that sounded so fake.
Unconsciously and probably unintentionally as well, I felt people gravitating towards me and expecting that warm space that my mother exuded. It was too daunting a task and my first reaction was to flee. Yet I couldn’t see people I love being so helpless. I also realised that how glad I was that I seemed to have inherited from my mother the ability to make people comfortable.
She never had all the answers. Just the ability to listen without being judgemental. This is rare. How easily we judge and slot people, right? Sometimes all people need is someone to listen and offer unconditional love. My mother, most mothers, give us that. And that’s what gives us the strength to take on the world. Knowing that there is a lap that I can come back to and that space will love me despite who I am.
My mom passed on that legacy, and made me a mother to people much older than me...

1 comment:

Pratz said...

u miss ur mom a lot don't u?