About a week back, I got Amma to write the following and sign it.
Its written in Tamil and it means that my mother promises not to wash clothes by hand from Dec 21st till Jan 12th. 🙂 I got it posted in my maternal family’s whatsapp group and all my cousins have been calling her and reinforcing the message.
Many of you may wonder why I had to get Amma to do this. Ever since Nov 1st when the pollution shot up significantly, the three of us have taken turns to fall sick. First off the block was Amma with an allergic cough so bad that she got medicines for a month. Thankfully no antibiotics. The cough hasn’t fully left her yet ! The next person off the block was Krishnan. His old sciatica pain resurfaced and he couldn’t go for his swimming regularly. Then just the day when we had our ISB reunion (Nov 30th), I came down with the worst ever cough. I had a fever for just a day and the cold for a few days, but the cough wouldn’t go for nearly three weeks. I had to use a nebulizer, a first for me and while am absolutely fine now, the cough does surface atleast once every day.
This year the winter came on suddenly and with a vengeance. Its 14 deg inside the house and sometimes it goes down to 12 deg and the breeze outside is icy cold. While we have enough protection to keep ourselves warm, the challenge is keeping my mother away from water. She loves to wash her own clothes and she wants to wash them everyday !!! She doesn’t understand that the weather has changed and its not a healthy cold plus she is getting on in age …. To her credit she has stopped washing her saris daily and she lets me put them into the washing machine.
Phew ! One episode of growing up Mom dealt with successfully. :):)
Does something happen when you become a Parent ? Do you automatically become difficult to deal with as you age ? Am sure everyone around the world is asking these questions and dealing with their Moms and Dads in their old age as best as they can. I still remember an ex-colleague of mine struggling to get off the phone with his Mom smack in the middle of a training session :). I can never forget the look on his face when he told us (it was a team training and we were about 10 of us sitting around a table) that his Mother was giving him stock tips even as she never invested in stocks. Please remember, this ex-colleague of mine had a degree in finance and was 40+ with a successful career. Moms !
Expect these stories to keep coming and please share tips on how you have dealt with growing up your parent(s).
#Parents #MomsinParticular
Dear Malu, “cope up with growing children is much more difficult” I am telling this from my personal experience.