Virtuous Cycle

VIRTUOUS CYCLE

We go through life with a complex relationship with our parents, which is always evolving and changing, comprising different shades varying from wide eyed adulation to resigned acceptance to embarrassed dismay.

When we enter the world, we are totally dependent on them for feeding us, changing our nappies, putting us to sleep and for making our existence as comfortable as it can be, while lying helplessly on our backs in control of neither ourselves nor our environment. Whenever we get hungry/wet/crappy we holler for help and keep howling till we get it. Most of us get over this simple symbiotic relationship as we grow older. But some of us get stuck in this habit of shouting mummy/daddy whenever in trouble, may it be career planning, relationship snarls, marital discord or parental responsibilities.

The next phase is “My daddy the strongest man / My mommy the most beautiful woman (the best cook) on the planet“. This phase lasts till the teen years (maybe only tween years now) when it becomes “My dad the most rigid and stuck up miser / My mom the stupidest dinosaur with no inkling of the current fashion trends“. They embarrass us. Again, some people go through their entire lives thinking their dad the smartest / mom the best cook syndrome whereas some others continue to think that their dad is too stuck up and mum is too uncouth. The vilest vituperation of the genx ‘uncool’ is permanently branded on their nonexistent facebook profiles.

When travails of parenthood assail us in the early middle age, we suddenly wake up with a jolt and it dawns on us that mom and dad couldn’t have been so bad after all if they successfully coped with our teething phase, dysentery, measles, several bouts of flu, numerous exams, tests, quizzes, interviews, school projects, stalkers and horror of horrors “pimples“. They also managed to play Frisbee/cricket with us occasionally, take us on picnics/camping, prepare us for the fancy dress parade/school play and ferry us to painting classes. And here I am stuck with this tyke who starts howling the moment I want to sleep and doesn’t shut up even when I am being so calm and reasonable.

This renewed respect and appreciation for the progenitors sometimes remains till they depart for their heavenly abode. But it can also evaporate quickly when as doting grandparents they start spoiling the children rotten. -“Dad! Put him down. Or he will expect to be picked up every time he cries.” “Ma! no chocolates, I told you.” “Mom! don’t interrupt when I am scolding her.”

Finally, when the parents grow real old and feeble; and become clumsy, sloppy, forgetful, garrulous and repetitive, we tend to get impatient and dismissive. -“Mom! You already told him that joke 17 times.” ‘Dad! don’t spill your soup again.”

To our utter and complete bewilderment, while our own parents are slipping into senility and being generally a pain in the neck, we are already graduating from “My daddy strongest” to the “My daddy dumbest” stage. “What me uncool??” “ Hello! You must be mad.” What does this chit of a girl think of herself? Doesn’t she know I was the princess of the year in Saint Joans Convent, Ludhiana? And the boys used to make a beeline at the gate to have a glimpse of me? Wake up princess. Smell the roses. This is life.

And the cycle goes on.