My mother turned another year older a few weeks ago, and I have only just realized what the aching feeling in my gut has been. I've been paying more attention to her recently, taking note of every exasperated sigh, every smile, every laugh, and everything she's saying without speaking. I miss her even when we're both at home, but can't actually talk to each other because we're busy. It's almost as though I don't want to miss a moment of her, as she's getting older -- and I know that now -- she's getting older. That is the ache in my gut. I'm her only child, as she had me late in life. This makes her birthday bittersweet this year -- and my birthday as well. Little did I know that me getting older meant her getting older too.
On her birthday, my cousin back home in India was looking through old photos with our grandma and was messaging them to both me and my mom. It made me both happy and jealous to see my mom happy, but before my existence. I'm jealous I never got to meet her as she was becoming the woman I would know years later. I wish I could have met her before she was changed by marriage and raising a child. I wish I met her when she would have gatherings with her friends on the weekends, listen in on their good conversations and catch her genuine, youthful smiles. Then it dawned on me: she was once a child, a teenager, a young woman.
Our parents are children too, to their parents, uncles, and aunts. My mother is my grandmother's precious daughter and it makes me feel bad that I took her humanity for granted. When you know someone from childhood, it makes it easier to forgive their mistakes, to appreciate the imperfect. But, I have always seen my mother as someone who always knew what she was doing. So, when she would subconsciously hurt me, I would feel as though she did it purposely. However, my mother is still a parent for the first time, though she has always been a parent in my life. She is her own person who is taking on a different role for different people.
And I think that is why it's important and healthy to see people from this frankly, odd, perspective -- as children. Children are un-molded and not yet burdened by the roles society expects them to play, they are allowed to be imperfect as they are still "learning" and "growing". But aren't we all still learning? Acknowledging people as once being a child means acknowledging their story, their imperfectability, and their humanity.
I don't have a perfect relationship with my mother, but she is still very much a person I don't completely know. I don't know exactly what her childhood was like, I don't exactly know the kind of experiences she's had that guides her choices today -- at least, not unless she tells me. And this past of hers is hers to keep, it's her right to keep it to herself. But it is still my job to acknowledge its existence, and my ignorance of it.
It keeps me compassionate. I love you, Mom.