Me and my mother

Sometimes, I just wonder how I have let life slip through my fingers. Am I indulging myself too much. Should I be more duty conscious? Should I be more responsible. But again, these are such ambiguous terms. Especially these all lamentations come, when I see my role as a mother. I am a mother, who is so different from my own mother. My mother, whose sole purpose in life was to look after her husband and children. sometimes she tells me, ' oh, life is so easy for you girls today. You no longer have to do chores like we used to. You don't have strict mother-in-law like me'.

When I compare my life with my mother, I see times have indeed changed. She is one driving force behind this change. Everytime when I wanted to enter the kitchen to cook something or just fool around, she would say' I could not study, I have nothing else to do apart from this. You have to study, so that you will not end up like me'. She always encouraged me to be something. Apart from other mothers of my friends, she never was interested for finding good husband for me. but rather she beleived that I should be financially independent. My father was a patriarch in true sense. He controlled me, but in such a way that I reach my goals. I make the best of what I could do. I still remember, almost a decade ago, he called me for a serious meeting. I was about to graduate then. He asked ' what do you want in you life. If you want to marry and have kids and be housewife, now is the time for that. But, if you want to study more and make a career, you could do that. But you have to be ready to accept that you may not find a good husband. As you know that in Nepal, men don't want to get married with women who are more educated or career oriented than them'. I said, what my father wanted me to say and knew that I would say:' I choose career'.

Thus, now, I am in this lop sided balance of motherhood and career, which is not vs but somehow complements each other. It is a difficult balance that many women choose or forced to choose. Just few weeks ago, I read buchi emecheta's ' Joys of motherhood'. The first book I ever read that discussed about the daily lives of black women. The central character in the book had to become mother to be accepted as a woman. But again, sometimes her motherhood became a chain that she could not break free from. At the end, struggling through out her life for her children, she dies. But none of her children are able to look after her in her most difficult old age. She dies, alone. But then, her sons perform the most expensive funeral ever. What is the point?

The blog post, does not make sense even to me. It is a series of uncordinated ideas, which has been happening a lot while I write thesis. I come to blog, when I just want to write and not being cared about providing a good argument. It is my friend, who would listen, even if i have the most silliest thing to say. I am happy for discovering this outlet