The Moments of Impact...!

I always wanted to hate my mother. She looked after my needs, gave me more than I needed but was not there when I wanted her to understand me, my world. She found fault in everything I did: the long hours spent in the mall, longs hours spent over the phone, the people I hanged out with, the books I loved to read, in short nearly everything. When brother did something really bad, the blame came on to me. When he was not studying, I must have done something to distract him. 

My heart cried her own secret battle for her attention, her understanding. But it never happened. I wanted to shout on top of my voice “Why me?” When it became too much to bear, I shouted, I shouted angry bitter words and my heart cried retribution. Later, I remember being termed as “vehemently rude”.

Life has made me fall a thousand times, sometimes due to my stupidity, at times due to circumstances. It never bothered me. Isn’t life all about falling and getting up? Failures never swayed my unremitting confidence. “If one door closes than in some other place another opens!” My motto is pretty much that. But my mother was my opposite. When I was the optimist, she became my nemesis. She wanted to protect me from failures but can she?....if that’s what life has in store for me. I remember telling her just that more than a million times. Each time, she managed to bypass my words and succinctly put forward her warnings.

The daily tiffs left me utterly disgusted. I wanted a mother not a dictator. After all these years, I can say with conviction that she has not changed a bit. There were moments, strong moments when I wanted to hate her with every fibre of my being. The hell with her domineering attitude!

But I never brought myself to do that. I always found myself transported to one of those times, the moments of impact, when she became the mother I wanted her to be “the soft caring lioness”……..

Long long summers back, on a late afternoon, I was having my light afternoon slumber, when I felt my mother enter my room. She had just returned from office. She slowly came towards me and lightly brushed her hand through my hair. Neither I was awake nor I was sleeping, but like a fossil that moment is forever engraved in my memory. I can’t really explain what I was going through then, but it felt as if slow electricity was passing through my body. In that moment, I knew with clarity what it feels like to be the Kohinoor diamond.

The moments of impact….The moments of impact tells us what we really feel about a person. We can’t change a person but what we can is to accept them as they are. If I sit down to remember my mother’s harsh scathing accusations then it will take me forever to forgive her. Every time the thought of hatred passes through my mind, I remember that moment and everything else becomes blurred. In that one moment, I saw her love for me and nothing else is bigger than that.

Life is not about holding grudges, but it is about forgiving. Just because a person does not do things the way we want them to be, we start hating them. In moments when you start doubting a persons’ devotion or love for you, remember the moments of impact, when that same person treated you as the precious Kohinoor diamond.

Your heart will know the answers!