My cousin sister and I are shopping. Giggly, girly, fun... Arms laden with make up, clothes and shoes, tummies full with yummy food, and souls happy with this girlie connection, we enter our last destination, the amazing Khussa Mahal.
Khussa Mahal is a shoe lovers haven. Khussa is the name for the hand made shoes or chappals so adored in the Punjab. And khussa making is definitely an art. As I pack to go home today, I look ruefully, at the huge pack of about 16 chappals, khussas, and shoes I have managed to amass in 2 hours in Liberty Market! I tell myself, lovingly, that half are presents, but know that the Excess Baggage section of PIA is going to get rich at my expense today!
So, to cut a long story short, we shop. I and my cousin look indulgently at a small boy, maybe 3. Cute as a new pin, he has a mass of curls and an impish grin. I engage with him, and ruffle the top of his head. A Pizza Pooch bag lies on the bench near him and I sigh, another Mom who cannot pack a healthy snack... another unhealthy and hyper child.
No sooner had I thought this thought, almost as if the child heard me, he darted towards the door. Another customer was entering the shop and cars and traffic was a snarl outside. Fearless, as if he was a marathon runner, our champ runs out onto the street... his slim, pretty, stylish mother running after him....
She managed to catch him before any harm... she grabbed him, and slapped him hard on his cheek. His laughter turned to tears. She suffocated him in her arms and showered him with kisses. And they both came back in to Khussa Mahal where all the other shoppers were shopping, oblivious to this drama. Oblivious, callous, not interested in someone else's life...
My cousin and I exchanged a glance. She is one of the calmest women I know. A great mother, loving, interested, spending a lot of time on her adorable 4 year old... A great wife and daughter in law, in short perfect! And for me, the perfect sister, who will pamper me with love and shopping and presents when I visit Pakistan.
Motherhood is such a fragile space. A sacred space. Few mothers realise that they are in a temple when they are in the "mothering zone". Especially for boys, who need more tender love from the ages of 0 to 6... and mothers do not realise it!
It saddens me when I see articles in the New York Times saying bipolar disorder among children is on the increase. It saddens me when I hear of more and more children on drugs like Lithium and Ritalin. It saddens me because I know by the time these children are 20, they will be drug junkies, jittery, needing other medicines, stronger doses, to stay functional.
Don't mothers realise the fine balance between love, space, respect, diet—all sacred connections? And why are the onlookers so casual? Don't they realise we are all linked. All One?
With One Heart,
Jhilmil
"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends with you His might that His arrows might go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."
Kahlil Gibran
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