Me, Myself and Musings

The other day, I was reading the “Quotation of the day” widget on my blog, which quotes Agatha Christie-“Lucky is a man if he has had a happy childhood”. How true, isn’t it?

I didn’t have an happy childhood. I don’t know if I can call myself an unlucky man, but I am indeed unlucky to have lost my mother when really small. Who can realize more the fact that there is no one in this world like your mother, than a motherless child himself. That is one thing I have and will always miss for rest of my life. Motherhood for me is more of a ‘read-somewhere’ or a ‘heard-from-someone’ thing rather than something which I had experienced firsthand.

Throughout childhood and even now, hardly anyone around me knows that I didn’t have a mother. I was this boy, who had too much pride to let anyone know his sorrows and garner sympathy in return. Whatever memories I have of my mother are extremely fond and well cherished. She was an extremely beautiful woman, a poet at heart and an avid reader. Only much later that I learned of her disease and depression with which she lived, while showing a happy face before us. I wouldn’t like to mention how she died out of similar pride that I still harbor, that I mentioned before.

I didn’t have a happy childhood because it was mostly spent watching my parents fight. I have distressing memories of my mother crying after a brawl with father and sometimes father locking us inside a room to stop us from coming in between him and his target (my mother).

Yet, I don’t hate my father, for the reason that he immediately took the part of mother, soon after her death. He did all he could to aid us, to cope with a motherless upbringing we grew in. he married again and we had a stepmom. And yet again we were lucky that unlike what’s portrayed in movies and television, she turned out to be a truly loving lady. She would get up very early to cook us breakfast and packed lunch, ready us for school, sometimes hand feed us when we decided to throw some extra tantrums etc. She tried to give us everything she thought a mother gives to her child, but being an extremely sensitive child, I still secretly longed for my mother. I felt the love she showed wasn’t the kind, a natural mother bestowed upon her kids.Later, she had a child of her own and my sensitivity found reasons to further prove my beliefs by comparing her behaviors with her own child.

Now, when I think about her, I realize that I owe her much more than a mere thanks. She really needn’t had to care for us, the way she did. I love and appreciate her for that.
As I said earlier I don’t hate my father, but I don’t love him the way I should. I cannot stop myself from believing that my mother was his responsibility and if he would have really tried from his heart, he could have saved her life. He should have prevented her from falling victim to manic depression. How? I don’t know.

But the images of him, taking care of me when I was critically ill, visiting my room late at night to check if I was sleeping comfortably and covering me with a bed spread to shield the cold, worrying about my college admissions, the role he played during my marriage and the lovely grandfather he is to my child-makes me show a happy face, albeit with a tad bit of resentment.