8/26/09

Dedicated to all mothers..
**********************************************************************************

I WAS listening to a friend complaining about her mother the other day.

“As much as I love her, my mother drives me nuts if she comes to stay with me for longer than a week,” she said.

“She’s a control freak,” said her husband.

“Yes,” she agreed. “She reorganised my kitchen the last time she visited. One day, I came home from work and it was as if I were in my mother’s kitchen. She obviously wasn’t impressed by the way I’d arranged everything.”

“She even moved my beer glasses,” said her husband. “Can you imagine that? I mean to say, no one should mess with a man’s beer glasses.”

“Didn’t you tell her that she shouldn’t do things like that?” I asked.

“No, I thought it might be better coming from her daughter her instead.”

“And how did she take that?”

“Well, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her,” said my friend. “So I rearranged the kitchen back to the way I’d had it before she arrived, and let that do the talking instead.”

“And how did that work out?” I asked, picturing her mother’s reaction as she reached for a coffee mug only to be confronted with a beer glass.

“She sulked for the remainder of her stay with us.”

“Such passive-aggressive behaviour would drive me crazy. It must have been difficult coming home to that everyday,” I said.

“I just didn’t go home until I was sure she would be in bed,” said my friend’s husband. “Sulking was just another attempt by her to have things her way.”

“Like many mothers, she doesn’t know when to stop being a mother,” said my friend.

I nodded my head in agreement.

Later that day, after I’d said goodbye to my friend and her husband, I thought about my own mother. Truth be known, I can only stay with her for about five days before dormant thoughts of matricide begin to surface. Although she doesn’t sulk and wouldn’t dream of reorganising anything in my house, she can often rub me up the wrong way with certain statements that give me the impression that she still sees me as the teenager I was when I left home more than 30 years ago.

For example, when my children were babies, she would sometimes say, “Do you think that’s the best way for a baby to sleep?” just as I’d gotten them to sleep.

“No, I think it’s the fastest way to induce suffocation,” I’d always wanted to say, but never did.

It’s not just my skills as a parent that come under scrutiny. My driving skills are questioned every time I go back to visit my mother in my native Scotland.

“Is that how people drive in Malaysia?” she will say whenever I attempt a 10-point turn.

“There’s a zebra crossing ahead. You have to stop if someone is crossing,” she once said, as I approached a familiar landmark in my hometown town.

“Really? You mean to say I can’t just plough into someone?” I’d wanted to say, but didn’t.

“Don’t you know how to use a clutch?”

“I drive an automatic car in Malaysia.”

“Didn’t you know that’s it’s illegal to reverse out of a side road into a street?”

“Obviously not.”

“You must indicate before turning.”

There’s only so much backseat driving a person can take before their head explodes, causing blood and gory bits to splatter all over the offending mother’s floral print frock and pearl necklace.

Then there are the endless comments about my singledom.

“Why don’t you find yourself a nice man and settle down,” she will often say.

“I feel perfectly settled as I am,” I will usually respond.

“But it’s not normal.”

“It is to me.”

And it’s not just me who is subjected to the Spanish Inquisition whenever I visit my mother. My siblings are also subjected to endless comments about their lifestyle choices and personality quirks.

All this talk about mothering skills makes me wonder how I’m perceived by my own children, who both happen to be home from college for a few weeks.

I think it’s perfectly fine for me to expect them to keep my house in order and to let me know if they’ll be around for dinner. It’s also reasonable for me to ask them when they expect to return home when they go out for the evening.

But I don’t think I have the right to make comments about their clothes, or the length and colour of their hair, or the time they go to sleep, or the statements they make with their T-shirts, or their eating habits, no matter how tempting.

It’s tough being a mother, but it’s often tougher trying not to be a mother.

*****************************************************************************

Compare that story with this story..
*****************************************************************************
I WAS finishing my tarawih's. There was one woman there who brought her little child with her, about 2-3 years old. Usually kids will make a lot of noise playing with other kids, until the imaam has to advise them to lower their voice. However, this boy just stayed with his mother. He didn't yell, nothing. But when his mother was praying tarawih, he played with his mother's telekung, many, many, many times. Whenever we finished one prayer, the mother just smiled at her son, never showing any sadness or angriness at her son. But her eyes looked sad. I guess she just didn't want to make her son sad.Afterall, children are supposed to run free, it was said it could increase their creativity...


*****************************************************************************

Aren't these two stories kind of the same? I mean, read it carefully and you'll see. The conditions are the same, just the roles are reversed. The first story, we have to put up with our mother. The second? The mother have to put up with her son.



See?? Isn't life is like a wheel, they say?? What goes around, comes around.
What goes up, must come down. (J.T. ^^)
During we were young, our mothers had to put up with all our mischievous acts,
yet they never complained a bit, being a mother.
Then we get older, we have to put up with our mother being a mother.
Can't we just bear with it for a little, considering she put up with us all these years and all the things she did for us??
I just hope I'm going to be a good, no, an excellent mother(hopefully) no matter when my child's young or old.. ^_^

No comments: