The Mother-morphosis
For a very very long time, I was not much into kids or babies. I didn’t hate them. I just didn’t have any interest in them. I never went cooing and cuddling at the very sight of a new baby, the toddlers stayed away from me and so did I. In fact, very early on I had a feeling that I didn’t want any children of my own.
BUT, with a certain turn of events (which I am not going to discuss in this blog. Maybe a different blog) I realized that what I needed was to grow again, along with a child. I found my “Ithaka” (Click it to read a beautiful poem). My journey had just started.
I was surprised to see myself picking up mom duties quite naturally. I was not afraid to hold a tiny baby and perform different manoeuvres. The typical instincts of waking up at the slightest of sighs and coos kicked in. If someone scanned my brain they would probably see my amygdala fired up (You know.. the portion of brain that makes one vigilant, protective about their infants). I could feel love being manufactured in my being. My baby was a tiny love mining machine.
There is a documenseries on Netflix called Babies. It unravels the mystery that a baby is — born totally helpless but grows up to be master of the world. This series has strengthened my affirmation that it’s not the biology that makes you a parent to an infant; it’s a choice, a committed choice to be the parent for the infant. Biology bowed down to choice in my case.
It’s quite clear that my baby and I together are lying low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs — Physiological needs. I am dipping my toes into the next level where my baby starts associating with resources, people which gives her the feeling of security and identity. This is so conflicting in my mind. In my spiritual journey, I have come to understand how the root cause of all our pain is deep identification with people, things, and concepts. And here I am trying to encourage my baby to associate with a toy or a caretaker. Wait a minute. I have used the word “associate” with my baby, whereas for us adults I have used the term “identify”. Maybe that’s the core of it. Maybe there is nothing wrong in associating with something for the “utility” of it. Just when this association turns into a tight grip identification that’s when the light turns red. Hmm. Something to think about.
Every morning I remind myself that my baby is not my property. I don't get to play God with her. I don't revel with joy if I am the only person she would readily come to. That just limits her options and boosts my ego temporarily. I consider myself a facilitator. While all the work of growing up, growing wise, gaining experiences and learning from them is up to my baby, my job is to ensure I provide her with a level field, fenced against unnecessary dangers and landscaped to provide her comfort when she wants to rest. I could be the punching bag where she exercises her emotions so that she learns to adjust them to the right force for the desired impact. (I know. I am getting carried away with analogies :P )
I know very well that a lot of new parents, like me, make a lot of plans and resolutions about how to raise their children so that in the future they become healthy, confident, happy, successful individuals. I chanced upon a very thought-provoking TED Talk recently (Watch it here). It was like a moment of epiphany. I would love you to watch the video, however, in short, what it said was that your style of parenting shapes what your child will grow up to be in the same way the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world causes a hurricane on the other side of the world — “in a seemingly unpredictable but powerful ways”. But there are a lot of other factors that act on the personality of the child — genes, society, economics, events the list could go on. For crying out loud children of the same parent turn out to be poles apart.
We can influence but cannot control the person our children will turn out to be. Even still, we do have to be the parent around. Why? Because, we are the parent in the moment, not for a future version of our child, but for the child which is now. Our parenting is just for the sake of parenting and not for a specific outcome. We are important as the parent because there is love at this moment which is oozing out of us, not for a future value for that love, but because we can’t help ourselves.
