Being a mum has taught me many things, but among them, it has given me a new insight into someone I though I knew better than anyone else, my mum!
That feeling you feel the first time you hold your child in your arms, that unconditional love and flow of warmth, the immense rush of emotions that create the most incredible natural high… I suddenly stop and realise, my mum felt that once, for me. When my little monster is climbing on the table and trying her hand at amateur bungee jumping without a rope, the feeling of panic and fear that she may be hurt, the pride I felt when she took her first steps, the dread I feel at having to one day let her go to her first movie with her friends, her first sleep over, the thought of her one day getting married and starting her own life… Suddenly I have a whole new understanding of the look I saw in my mother’s eyes at each of these junctures.
It’s ironic how those thoughts that crossed my mind all those times she said no to me and how easy it seemed to hate her for those moments, I now look back and am devastated at the pain she must have felt at hearing those mean words, as I would feel someday when my little angel says them to me, not realising when it is said, the crippling ache a mother feels in her heart.
With understanding this I have a new respect for my mum, and a realisation of how much she really has done for me. I think of the late nights I would see her sitting at the dinner table trying to balance accounts, now, as I try to stretch a budget longer than the Nile, I realise how much I took all the little luxuries she afforded for granted. I think of sitting at the dinner table and being given the best pieces from the roast, my mum insisting that the rib is her favourite, and now I realise how a rib becomes a mum’s favourite, it just tastes so much better, knowing that you are giving your child the best, even if you go to bed not quite full.
I recall little tantrums I threw wanting some little luxury or the other, now seeing the reality of the value of money.
And mostly, I recall all those moments she nursed me, played with me, taught me, or just held me in her arms, and realise how the stuff that costs the least, means the most, and a feeling of melancholy at the thought, that no matter how we may try to teach our child, they will only really know, when they have a child of their own.
