Documenting the diverse shades of parenting
It has been three years of writing this fortnightly column for the readers of The Tribune and let me tell you that I miss writing for you in the week that I am off. This column gives me a space for expression. For exploring a story till I find meaning. Of sharing details that I may forget later. Details that are the warp and weft of the weave of our lives and define the larger picture.
Why is it important to remember? What do we hope for when we document moments? As a memoirist and a workshop facilitator for memoir writers, I find myself answering this question in creative ways repeatedly. For this column, I dipped into what I now refer to jokingly as my ‘secret blog’ a space where I wrote for years before I gained the confidence to share anything with a wider audience.
One entry titled ‘Why I write this blog’ starts like this: “I write this for my daughters. I expect they will be as confused, lost, lonely and searching for validation when they are mothers of young children as I have been. Besides all the predictable beauty and happiness of the experience. I doubt I will remember these times with lucidity. I certainly don’t imagine that they will have any patience for my memories.
So this is my way of expressing my ‘motherness’ to them. Of loving them honestly in a way that I know how to. Of recording how I experienced the highs and the lows.”
On another day, there are two entries one dedicated to our first born who is not yet four years old. It is titled, ‘This one is for you, Sahar’.
“Sahar is a born lady. You were poised, calm, gracious, indulgent as a baby… and so you are today as well, at almost four years old. You are also very cranky. And eccentric in some ways. You hold your pee till your head will burst, you get cranky from hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation, a need to go to the toilet. But, by the grace of God, you will not do what you need to do. And get crankier and crankier. (This sounds horrifyingly similar to your mother actually, but she won’t agree right now, so we won’t tell her). It is very trying!
You are also very graceful. What your father calls ‘jamazeb’ in Urdu.
And your OCD… I’ll pour that out some other day. For six months you only played with blocks, then came puzzles and now it has been colouring with crayons. Books get filled in less than a day! The only constant has been stories… listening, reading and telling.”
Sahar turned 20 years old this year. Her post-pandemic teenage years have been trying, just as they have been for nearly everyone else. We have analysed our patterns and interactions, sought therapy and tried our best to support each other.
Reading this blog entry with her and her younger sisters made us laugh out loud. These words about Sahar as a pre-schooler are a surprisingly accurate description of Sahar as a new post-teen young adult. We feel so relieved. We don’t need to analyse other things so much this is us!
The second entry on the same day is about our second-born daughter, Aliza, who was a toddler then, two months short of her second birthday.
“I say about you Aliza, that you are my dog. You are our puppy!
You are a really happy bunny, you have a circus clown’s sense of humour, and you wag your tail with happiness. You demand attention, prance around and make everyone around you happy with your sunny cheerfulness.
A winner of hearts even the child-haters, self-absorbed serious adults, those obsessed with boys, the baby-baiters fall for you and laugh with you. Even serious Sahar gets infected with your madness. You little monkey. Irresistible Aliza.
What did I eat, what did I think, what were my dreams when you were growing inside me?”
A wave of self-acceptance washes over us as we read these words about us, leaving us flushed with unexpected happiness. Aliza is 18 this year and again, like the rest of us, she has struggled with the choppiness of the pandemic years and our collective search for rhythm and normalcy. Reading the entry about her as a happiness-generating toddler reminds us what is at the core of our personhood and reassures us that we can restore it again.
About myself, I found this paragraph: “I write. I don’t write enough. I look at my garden and think of what all I will do when I begin to do it. I watch my children and let them remind me of what I used to know, where all I was meant to go and how I can reach there.
Being still is a great way of getting places. I revive love like it is an ancient well a connection to the core that can be the source of life again.”
The writer is a filmmaker, author and teacher
