Family

“Do you think family is supposed to make you feel good? Bake you an apple pie? They are supposed to make you feel miserable; that’s why they are family!” From Supernatural Series by Bobby Singer. Indeed, that’s the quote makes perfect sense when I think about my family. A family of 3 and always pulling at 3 different directions with very strong passionate discourses. No one feels validated or respected by each other as our disciplines are different. Sometimes, I wonder how we can even be a family!

On a retrospective note, the things that we have been quarelling for decades are so arbitrary. Everyone’s personal space and individuality have been sensitively valued yet criticised among each other with strong opinions from their stances. No one has any control or influence over no one’s life choices, but everyone carries a deep remorse of being responsible for each other’s decisions. We all keep oscillating between authenticity of love and hate equally all through our lives.

My mom is such an independent and empowered woman. She has been walked on wires balancing her strong personality of an alpha female and genuine responsibility of a mom. We can’t live without talking to each other for hours in a loop of arguing and reconciling. We are so different that we can’t even relate to each other’s problems, yet we share everything. It’s a beautiful relationship! Though we never agree on single thing, we always have each other’s backs. She is insanely and impractically ambitious. I am the cautious one as I have suffered enough because of her blind risks and failures. Hence, I aggressively give her pros and cons of her ambitious ventures and never supported her ventures physically in person after my 20s. However, I have always been supporting her financially to mend all her failures. I admire her ability to get back on her feet after every failure and fiasco. She is a bouncing ball! She is always on a roller coaster ride with her minute by minute agenda to earn more! She upskills herself with every new trend in her tailoring business. She can never take a time off in peace. She believed strongly till her last breath that she can make it big and fix everything in a snap. However, I know how impossible it is practically yet the dreamer and romanticist in me always fall in love with her vivacious spirit. I have never given a thought about how my life would turn out to be but I just wanted to be there for her as she was there for me in every step of mine! Indeed, I was there for her until she breathed her last breath on my chest. I believe our relationship is epic and no one can even come close to the space I shared with her. My mom and I didn’t even share a handful hugs and kisses. Never shared the love in any tangible form other than through food and care when in sickness. Yes, there were scars of disappointments and dissatisfaction but the love we had for each other is this lifetime’s zenith. I realised only after she left that differences we had kept our relationship in tact and made it impeccably beautiful!

My dad and I share a unique bond! I don’t even know whether I can write it in words effectively. I still don’t even know whether he loves me as his daughter or not. I have heard him saying enough times that ‘I am there for you, Pappa (little girl) / Kannamma (pet way of saying mother of my eyes) / Pillai (daughter) and so on. Every time he says I fall for it and believe it so much. But he had never been there for me most of the times. In his presence, he mesmerizes with his unparalleled conversations and promising words. I remember him beating me only once and scolding me not even once all his life! He has never even raised his voice. If I confront him with a serious conflict or question him on his responsibility, he just convinces me that he has done his best with all his might and makes me believe he is the noblest man in the world. I am wired like him in many ways as his stories were my inspirations and they set my strong moral values. I know his sense and sensibilities. I love art, literature and music immensely which is rooted from him. The irony lies in the idea of like-minded people get along well: nope! My father and I can complete each other’s sentences. When we read a book, we interpret exactly the same way that leaves no room to different perspectives even. I worshipped him, loved him, hated him and after he died, I don’t even understand what I have for him! Neither I can be ambitious like my mom, nor I can be frivolous with my words like my dad. I hold greater respect for my mom though she never exhibits or expresses she has always been there for me physically, mentally, emotionally and morally! I strive hard to love like her with authentic conviction and commitment, though I choose the path of career that my father put me in without my conscious choice.

Now, as both my mom and dad passed away, I don’t have a family of my own. When we were as a family no one of us cherished the bond between us. Who wins the argument mattered most! It’s not at all right, I could have been kinder to my mom rather than yelling at her whenever she fails in her ambitious ventures. Though I was there for her and she knew that she had my back, I could have avoided the ugliness of pointing fingers at her. Mostly our parents are institutionalised for years to the principles that worked best for them at their period. As they let us fly away and learn our own principles, we can’t pull them into our way of living. They don’t want us to take their throne and rule them when they are weak, but they want us to win our own thrones, build our own kingdom, and leave them at peace with their old kingdom. But with all the might of youthful arrogance of ego, we want them to sit idle at home and chill as we have started providing for the family. Until the last ounce of life runs in our bodies, we can’t be idle both mentally and physically and that is default aspect of human beings. So, respect them and their choices that make them feel meaningful! Indeed, family makes you feel warmth of goodness and trust, but family is the one that puts you into unbearable misery too. Nothing comes for free or without pain in this world!