“Why don’t you ever say, ‘I love you’ to Nanima?”, you used to ask.
“I am Indian! I take my mum to the temple instead.”
By now, you have given up. When seeing your grandma out the door, you say in unison, “I love you, Nanima” (a little louder when I am within earshot). And I typically add, “make sure you go the gym” or “call the physio”. How your sweet words must nestle inside her heart as she walks away to my exhortations.
I have been in my mother’s life for nearly 50 of her 75 years. When I was a brand new mother and brand new oncologist, eager to succeed in both places, I too felt the poet Adrienne Rich’s description of motherhood as “a sense of insufficiency to the moment and to eternity”. When I was with patients, I thought about you. When I was with you, I thought about my patients.
My parents moved to Melbourne where my father re-entered academia and my mother reconfigured my life with a devotion and patience God only granted grandparents. But long before she scooped you into her capable arms, my mother had more than fulfilled her duty to me through two profound gestures.
The first was self-sacrifice. Abandoning dreams of a career may have been in keeping with her era, but my mother threw herself into motherhood. I was the kid with the crispest shirts, the best-pleated skirts, the smoothest plaits and the shiniest shoes. I don’t know why the Carmelite nuns thought that an all-white uniform was a good idea in monsoonal India, but my tennis shoes sparkled thanks to the paint she dabbed when I slept. At lunch, my friends flocked around my lunch, the tastiest with enough to spare.
My brother and I left home around age 16 for a better education. My father was immersed in work and suddenly, our big house fell empty. Many years later, my mother described going listlessly about her day and suddenly howling at the walls from sheer loneliness. She feared she would go mad. There was no help, no distraction, not even a phone connection to hear our voice. Her “coping strategy” was to remind herself that she wanted us to have what she did not. Back then I was occupied with my own needs; today, I realise my mother paid for my education with her tears.
If her self-sacrifice lifted me to greater heights, her second quality built the foundation.
At medical school, I was never as “together” as I wanted to be. When presenting a transplant patient, I lost track of the organs prompting the fellow to rescue me. I fainted in surgery and halted an operation. I nearly dropped a slippery baby. One day, noting my constant striving, my professor broke out laughing: “You know what I like about you? You take criticism in stride and just bounce back.” Years later, my friend who watched me grow up put it differently. “The best thing your mother gave you was constant love. It means you don’t look for approval elsewhere.”
When I was young, my mother displayed in me an absolute faith and absolute love. In her eyes, I could do no wrong that I couldn’t also fix. She didn’t use indulgent words to declare her love but to be in her presence was to feel like the most important person in the world.
When I scored a zero on my maths test (and forged my dad’s signature to boot), he was annoyed but she stayed quiet, and I never cheated again. To become a doctor, she told me to go anywhere I wanted. When an Indian uncle warned that being a single woman in western society would “spoil” me, she retorted that I wasn’t a bottle of milk. At the threat of an “unarranged” marriage, she trusted me over an algorithm.
My mother allowed me to live a fuller life than hers without penalty, bargain, or guilt. To this she added extraordinary generosity. Today, I attribute my resilience and equilibrium to the confidence that no matter who else judges me, it will not be my mother.
You are children of a different time. Today’s mothers have competing demands related to professional and personal goals. Sometimes, I must put my work above your needs. I expect your help in the kitchen because I need you to be self-sufficient. I don’t walk you the bus every day, come rain or shine. In terms of self-sacrifice, I do far less than my mother.
Unlike my mother, I scrutinise your grades and challenge your decisions. I threaten to call your teacher because it kills me, of all people, to hear that I should introduce you to the art of reading and writing. We quibble over junk food, screen time, the dog and the dishwasher. I am not your “bro” and want to ban the phrase “it’s not that deep”.
Sometimes, my love for you must feel conditional.
A generation ago, Nanima strived to be my “everything” parent. But I suck at cake decoration and balk at standing around at sports. Sometimes I prefer my own company to yours and I can be annoying, confusing and confused. At my best, I am what the psychiatrist Donald Winnicott called the good enough mother.
Nanima says that spoilt people are those who didn’t receive enough love, not the ones who were bathed in it. I will keep trying by taking her to the temple and various appointments as she ages. But on this Mother’s Day, before the annual ritual begins of “guys, who was meant to get the card?”, let me say, that I love you. I appreciate all the little things you do but the purest gift of all is to catch the three of you in an unguarded moment in your own little universe and wonder how I get to call you my kids.
This, I have in common with your Nanima.
• Ranjana Srivastava is an Australian oncologist, award-winning author and Fulbright scholar. Her latest book is called A Better Death
