morphing into ones own nightmare

This whole being kids and growing up business is rather strange- You open your eyes for the first time and from the blurry vastness emerges one warm smiling face with eyes laughing and crying at the same time; you blink, try to focus and soon enough there’s another face with the same moist eyes, wide with awe for the miracle of life, brimming with pride as though saying “that’s OUR miracle!”

You say your first words, take your first wobbly steps and there they are, those two pairs of eyes still wide with awe at the way you’re growing up so fast they are not done savouring the milestones, eyes still brimming with pride saying “yup, that’s OUR baby, the smartest in the world!”

In between all this, you never question, you never wonder but you just know that mommy’s kisses can make every ouchie stop hurting or daddy can fix everything that breaks.

It’s only a matter of a few years that your super heroes become the greatest force to reckon with, as you fight to assert your independence, fight to declare your need to have a life of your own, fight because you feel they are light-years behind you, fight because reasoning with them never seem to work!

Fast-forward a few more years and you’ve come a full circle, understanding why they said what they said and why they did what they did. You know the fears they had known, the tests of patience they had taken, the unconditional, unselfish love they had felt, only by now it’s too late to undo all the hurt you have caused them so far.

It’s just a matter of a few more years and they are back to being like the tantrum-throwing 2-year-old that you once were and need to be dealt with all the tact and patience like they once dealt with you.

Much as each individual grows to possess a unique personality, a major part of it is molded by the parents with the way they bring them up and the genes they contribute. It’s only natural to expect one to grow up to be like ones parents.

The way I see it, I look at my mom and see all the things that I can be in the future and another bunch of things I never want to be, and if anything I feel I am better prepared to stop myself from making the mistakes my mom made since I know they can come instinctively or genetically to me and I nip them right in the bud.

A little digression here, but her faith and “leave it to God” motto extends far beyond her spending habits; The “dahi ki roti” that utp seems to be raving about has no fixed ratios or a standard recipe.. I wanted to learn it from her and here’s how it went..

“ammi how do you make dahi ki roti?”
“it’s simple beta, just say Allah’s name, mix sugar, salt and baking soda in yoghurt, knead flour with the mixture and roll out rotis..
“but ammmmmmiiiiiiiiiiii” I protested,
“HOW MUCH of what?”
she smiles “Just say Allah’s name when you start, and know He will guide you along the way.. it will turn out just fine!”

(NOTE: the same formula extends to the likes of yummy cakes and home-made gulab jamuns too.. sigh, I can never be half as good as her!)

This, my friends is the kind of faith I would like to have, of connecting with God in the most mundane of things so everything I do becomes an act of worship.

The whole spending-without-keeping-track-because-you-believe-God-will-make-it-enough-to-last-the-month (phew! Long eh?) theory might have worked for me too, it comes but only naturally to me.. but I fight that instinct every single day of my life to fall in sync with the husband’s need to keep track of spending down to last penny, all because I’ve seen how unpleasant it can get where the cautious spender and the blindly believing partners can’t seem to agree on this one thing in life. 

UTP thinks I don't, but I do try to adjust, honest I do; I adjust because I know, I adjust because I’ve seen, I adjust because I fear I’ll become what I never want to become!

The way I have to draaaag UTP out for socializing, the way I have to push him to extend polite social enquiries, congratulations and condolences because he couldn’t be bothered himself, the way I have to beg him to take the little one (who is home 24/7) out to the park makes me think.. dang! He is turning into his dad.

What he didn’t take after, is his baba’s love of cooking though.. convenient eh? This fellow cannot boil an egg to save his life!

But the fact remains, he has seen his mom virtually play single mom to them, drive them around to parks and take them out for ice creams in the middle of the night. I’ve been a part of those fun nights too except the dad never joined us.. UTP must have thought to himself (and I know because he has told me, he has promised) that he will never be such a dad himself; but he sees himself turning into exactly that, he sees that my fear is valid and I can only hope and pray he finds a way to fight what naturally comes to him.

Just as the “preview” of your eventual personality can help proactively avoid developing a certain character trait, this “preview” that you get to see in your spouse’s parents makes you better equipped to handle traits in your other half that you disapprove of.

The (rare) times I see UTP actually coming out to admit he was wrong about something makes me appreciate the effort it must have taken him to bypass the massively bloated ego he seems to have inherited and I’ll never wait for him to spell out the s-o-r-r-y word, I know it’s a big deal for him to even come this far.

The funny thing is, all along UTP and I have found this to be something to joke about.. he would naughtily exclaim “uff don’t turn into your mom” and I would come back with a smirk and say “look whose turning into his dad” we’d burst into a fit of laughter and that would be the end of it all!

Its only now that we actually got thinking and talking about it here that the gravity of the situation and the probability of it ACTUALLY happening has hit us in the face and freaked us out!

But I guess there’s hope.. we just might go on fighting our nature to stop from morphing into our own nightmare all because we have seen and we have lived what it is like when those unsightly traits prevail. May God help us with that!