Mostly parenting is joyful, rewarding and wonderful, just
like the way we hear often, but there are also those days when patience wears
thin, you have a million things to do and it takes just something seemingly trivial to tip
the delicate balance of sanity.
There are times when you get tired of picking up the same
toys, repeating the same instructions (a few hundred times), answering the
unending questions and resolving quarrels between kids. There are times when
the mantras of “Keep Calm, you are a Mom” and “This too shall pass” turn into, “I
am a human being too”. There are the times when I find myself turning from
Mommy to “Momster”, when I want to be mean, yell at the kids or ‘teach them a
lesson’ the old fashioned way.
Earlier today, when my five and two year old boys got into a
fight, the Momster in me unleashed itself, but within minutes the loving Mom
re-emerged, cuddling and hugging my boys and calming them down.
Later, while scrolling through some old photos and videos on
my phone I chanced upon a few moments from about a year ago. I was surprised to
see how little my kids looked. I realized how much my children had grown in just
a few months. My elder son had begun going to a proper school and he no longer
looked so young. My younger son who had barely started walking a year ago is
already speaking in sentences. He too joined a play school. I looked at them
and my little kids suddenly looked all grown up.
I showed one of the old videos to them and we all burst out
in peals of laughter. Just watching that video was a total stress buster and my
heart was once again reprimanding me for being harsh on them earlier.
Parenting is not always fun, rather it is tough, it is full
of ironies and paradoxes, compromises and trade-offs. And yes, it is also about
turning into a Momster and then melting back to being Mommy again.
Many years ago, when I was fairly newly married, I happened
to meet a simple man from a village who said, “In the village, we measure how
rich a person is by the number of kids he has, not by his money.” I had found
that statement amusing at that time. It did not make sense to me. But now, I
fully understand what he said. If you are a parent, I am sure you understand it
too.
