My mini human and I ~ From a Nomad's diary

There are countless instances I could cite about how my son steals my heart every day. He has clearly entered a phase where he has drawn a circle of impermeability around him and makes sure no one crosses over without him knowing about it. My mom says, that is how boys are. She grew with two brothers and a sister and knows the ways of boys and girls. As for me, I am a single child who at some point of time imagined (not exactly craved for) what if I had an elder brother. I never wanted to have a sister. I just might have wanted a brother had God asked me and that too an elder one who would take me for games and other extra curricular activities. Now I believe that somewhere, I had actually craved for a sibling. And then, God gave me a son. Ever since my son was born, he has treated me more like a sibling, a friend, a child, a pet and what not, and less as a mother. He tries to protect me if there is stray dog on the road and immediately asks me to pick up stones. Sometimes, he teaches me how to ride his bicycle.  And if I hold his hand while crossing the road, he gets angry and says, “Please don’t hold my hand. I am the one who will hold your hand. OK!”. Sometimes, he gets offended if I finish my meal before him and so, I have to take an extra helping of food to compete with him again. This is precisely what makes motherhood joyful and challenging at the same time.

Raising a son is no easy game. Boys are different from girls on many aspects. Boys are not meant to be obedient, albeit the exceptions. They are not meant to be told what to do and what not to. They follow by examples. For most of them, their fathers are their role models. They ape their fathers, word to word, inch to inch and drop to drop. At least, that is the case with my son. One day, he came over and saluted and casually mentioned to my husband, “Dad, When I grow up, I am going to be an army officer like you.”, to which my pleasantly surprised hubby quipped, “Don’t forget what you said. I will ask you to remember these lines, when you hit your teens!”. Even during lunch or dinners, he prefers to have exactly what hubby is having. And, I know now, why a father-son bond is special. It is as special as a mother-son bond. The difference is, a father son bond is all about the emotions that are never spoken, never expressed and never made obvious. The bond is as strong as a mountain, as soft as a caramel and yet is remains inconspicuous.

Coming back to our sibling rivalries, there are just too many I could share here. Like, once a week I am loudly reminded by my son that he is a big boy now and that, I cannot kiss him or cuddle him in public. When he rides his cycle, he prefers to take a fall than to let me hold his cycle from falling. He gets irritated if I feed him an extra spoonful while he gets engrossed in watching Tenali Raman or Akbar Birbal stories on the laptop. Yes, my mini human is growing up. Sometimes, when I feel lost or have a heap of undone tasks and do not know where to start or probably have a bad bad day, he walks up to me, sits on my lap, strokes my cheeks, hugs me and pats me and says, "mumma, you are my best friend, no?". And I pinch his cheeks and say, "I am always going to be your first best friend!".

When I look back at the events that unfolded post marriage, my tense pregnancy which had a lot of un-explainable issues, and my own battle with a neurological disorder about two years back, that almost killed me, and the point when my father in law was on a verge of collapse and seeing my husband struggling hard to get my FIL back to normal, it feels all three of us have come a long way. A long way indeed. And, there is still a long way to go. As for now, I love the present. Someday perhaps, I shall write a book on motherhood. Someday.