close
US

STORY

By Dr Javeria Hayat
11 November, 2016

As I looked into the eyes of my two year old, I saw nothing but pure affection for me.

The moment of truth

As I looked into the eyes of my two year old, I saw nothing but pure affection for me. I was helping him get dressed for his daycare so I could drop him off on my way to work. He loved me! My heart warms towards him whenever I think about us and the tacit bond we share. How it was comforting last night to see him curl up to me. Despite having had a tiresome morning at work, how relaxing it had felt like heat seeping into my veins and bones, pumping life into me. How celebrated and precious each and every moment of his littlse life is. His first cry, first smile, first grip, first yawn, first step, first word. I will share all my cherished memories with him when he is older. When I go shopping, it’s to the boy’s section that I automatically go. I feel incomplete if he isn’t with me on my trips. Is it possible to well up such feelings for anyone! I hadn’t known. 

STORY

Lost in thoughts and musing to myself, as I came downstairs holding my son by hand and his bag of ‘lunch’ and other accessories I had packed in, I ran into my neighbour.

‘Hi there! Oh my God! Have you put him into school already?’ she asked, with a horrified expression. “You know I have decided to never make my daughter a doctor. Uff, how ignored their families get. Their children never get their attention and their homes are broken. Look how you can’t devote your time to your son when at this time he needs you the most.’

I smiled politely, and could only manage ‘Ji, you are right.’ My heart broke into a thousand shards in my chest as the dagger of guilt pierced it. ‘I am not a good mother,’ I think to myself as tears of self-hatred and anger trickle down my face, burning it as I have not moisturised it in days. I take a glimpse of my face in the car mirror to see prominent dark circles around my eyes due to lack of sleep, my lips parched, face dry with patches of white on my cheeks. My hair, tied up in a bun haven’t been freshly shampooed. My hands and feet are unkempt and rough. God, what a mess I am! I should quit everything and sit at home for my child. I can’t keep up with personal care because all that time that I should be doing it goes into playing with my boy. Availing a yearlong maternity leave wasn’t enough. I should’ve extended the leave.STORY

My heart loaded with grief, I called up the one person I needed the most in my vulnerable state, to cry out aloud till I felt light as a feather - my mother.

‘Ammi,’ I burst out weeping as soon as I heard that angelic hello on the other side.

‘Why did you make me a doctor? Why so much fuss to study and get grades and all that celebration of achievement and pride when I were to fail at the most important test of my life - motherhood! Or may be you shouldn’t have married me off.’

She listened to my wailing in silence and later we conversed for hours until I felt better and back to life.

In hospital, I met my friend and still preoccupied with the topic, I shared it with her. ‘You know,’ she said, smiling.          ‘My mother was a working woman all her life and we will always respect her and love her for what she did for us. My brothers are considered the most decent and  have been commended on their upbringing, because of the way she brought them up. And I’ll tell you this: we were never taught to judge others absurdly like that.

‘But look at yourself and your family. Your mother has been a stay at home mom and you all love her and respect her the same way we do ours. You are not judgmental or insensitive because your mother engraved this while rearing you up. These are the very manners we must instil in our children. A woman, not a man, is another woman’s biggest enemy! Because, as a mother, she is the one shaping the mindset of her children and she will tell them whatever she has learnt herself. It doesn’t matter if she puts her child in a daycare for a few hours or leaves him to play outside while she could enjoy the morning show on the TV. Your child will learn from you daily during the time you spend with him, even it be a few hours. His mind gets saturated in a short time and then he wants to play and execute what he has picked from you. So, it is the quality of time you spend that is important. We women must not tell our children things that are not right. They must not learn to hate others based on whether she is a housewife or a working woman or whether she got him by natural birth or a C-section.’

As we were discussing it, an alarm went off in the room signalling us to shoot towards the emergency.STORY

I saw a child brought on a stretcher shrieking in pain, his foot bleeding heavily. I stepped forward and shifted him to the operating theatre. His face seemed familiar. It was my neighbour’s child. She was running down the corridor and started yelling my name on spotting me. ‘Please do something for him! He has bled a lot. He fell off our balcony. Your husband got us here in a car. He dropped us off to your ward. I will be ever grateful -’

‘He will be fine, don’t worry.’

I rushed along my team of surgeons to the theatre leaving the woman in misery behind the swinging doors of the OT.

Half an hour later, the child lay comfortably stable, somewhat sedated on the couch while his mother sat beside him watching my colleague prescribe her child medicine.

That day, I made a resolution to myself, that being however good or bad a person I might be, I’ll ensure my children never learn to hate or judge others irrationally.