Hey hey!
It’s Mothers’ Day season and I’m madly excited to let you into a scoop of one amazing writer’s piece I was told to check out on. She is beyond extraordinary and my current favorite storyteller. I’m so lucky and grateful to know she exists! In her own words is a
‘Professional photobomber. Funny when angry. Does not know what she’s doing in college, but likes doing it anyhow. Feels like a proud mama when she initiates someone into reading. Would love to be a witch, a taxi driver or a bartender someday.’
|Status quo|
My mother and I, we don’t fit the stereotype. Any stereotypes. We share sex jokes, pick on our father to the extent that he dejectedly murmurs to us to leave him alone. We once tried to teach my elder brother to whistle, and now, to flirt. She’s not the carefree hippie parent, either. Cities away, I still have to leave a missed call to notify I’ve reached college, she wants to know if I ate, if I have slept. She still wants to know how my day went, and wants to punch the person who ruined it.
She knows I drink, but trusts me to know my limits. We have a don’t ask don’t tell rule: as long as I can cover up my own mess, she will not lecture me about it. I once had a weird withdrawal phase, and decided to delete all my social media accounts. My brother smelled something fishy; it was probably his moustache. She heard him out, and said she didn’t think this was an attempt to escape some kind of cyber blunder. But that day, she sat me down and told me one thing. That it doesn’t matter how big or bad it is, if I have a problem, she will be there for me no questions asked, no judgements passed. The magnitude of my fuck-up, doesn’t matter as long as she is there to fix it with me.
We’re close, closer than most of my peers are with their parents. Sometimes I get cheesy, and cannot resist texting her an ‘I love you’ with the customary good night. She’s not used to it; neither of us are. She will then ask me if I’m fine, if there’s something wrong, and why I would say that. As if saying I love you was some kind of an SOS. She worries why I express my love, why I miss her, as if I cannot without a reason.
So I don’t say it to her, because all it brings her is doubt about my wellbeing. Instead, I write her into my stories, as a friend, a teacher, a kind stranger. I tell people about the crazy lady in my life, her dirty little jokes, her amazing burns and undeniable immunity to my snarky comebacks. I cannot tell her I miss her, because then she might too, and she will wonder if I’m alright, because we’ve never been like this, this clichéd loving family. We decided long ago that we were too cool for that.
We love, but leave it unsaid. Because saying it shifts the status quo. Makes it a real, tangible memory. Makes it something that would keep us awake, wondering if it meant more than it was, if it conveyed something we didn’t catch.
We don’t say it because we wouldn’t know how to live without it, if it becomes a habit, and one of us is gone. I don’t want her, or me to wonder if we said it enough, if we meant it right, if we understood it right. We know we do, and that is enough. It has to be.
-Krithika Nair
To every mother who at times feel like they aren’t doing enough. You are doing more than enough.
Gigantic love sealed with prayers,
Seku
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