The challenges of motherhood

Courage, compassion and the ability to truly nurture, make some women extra special as mothers

BY SHERYL DIXIT

Another Mother’s Day is here and once again, I will enjoy the adulation and excitement from my two boys as they shower me with cards, gifts and lots of hugs and kisses. It’s standard operating procedure for Mother’s Day, and I am unlikely to ever tire of the routine, specially the hugs and kisses. But this year, I’m thinking about all those special women whose role as a mother is more challenging than mine, in different ways. Like the mums who have a child with a mental disability, whose only wish on their special day would be that their child could communicate with them. Or the mums who tend to their physically handicapped children, and wish that they could be healthy again. Or the mums who have tragically lost their children and who wish they could hug their child again. Or the women who have the ability to be wonderful mums, but cannot, for a plethora of reasons, have children. Or grandmothers, who take on the sole responsibility of bringing up their grandchildren, to give them a better life, as for whatever reason, their own children can’t cope with parenthood. Or for the women who bear the responsibility of bringing up their children as a single parent.

…what I found astounding in all these women, is their amazing courage and their even more discerning compassion.

I have been fortunate because, since becoming a mother, I have met some of these women. I have talked to a mum who struggles with her autistic son, fitting his sessions of various kinds of therapy into her busy schedule, as she juggles tending to the home, her other two school-going children and a frequently–travelling husband. I have seen a mother coo and cuddle her severely afflicted child suffering from cerebral palsy, delighting in every sound she makes. I once met a pregnant lady who had lost her eldest daughter to a particularly virulent form of cancer; she passed away within a year of being diagnosed, before her sixth birthday. Another mum told me the heart-breaking story of her son in his early 20s awaiting trial for manslaughter, as he ran over a man when driving drunk. Yet another mother could barely conceal her anxiety for her fourteen-year-old daughter who indulged in drugs and alcohol fuelled sex orgies, and still refuses to change her ways.

These are just a few of the situations that challenge mothers, but what I found astounding in all these women, is their amazing courage and their even more discerning compassion. It almost feels as if being in their situation has given them a deeper insight into life and its ultimate meaning. All of them without exception have a single philosophy: they ‘get on with it’. They ask for no pity or sympathy, and are all matter of fact about their situations. They have accepted the inevitable and take each day as it comes, good, bad or average. They make no attempt at deception – either for themselves or their family and friends. They take everything in their stride, from sleepless nights to shrugging off insensitive comments people make…. they are very special, and I admire all of them tremendously.

Without exception, these women are amazingly nice, cheery and very, very strong. I look at my life with its hassles which are no more earth-shattering than children who don’t have an appetite or are overactive, and I realise that I have a lot to learn from them. Regardless of how they feel each day, they are she simply switched off each time her parents and in-laws insisted that her son be taken to a religious institution to get prayed over to cure him of the malady. “Six sessions and they did nothing more than make him more hyper,” she said with a laugh. “Another session and they’d have to start praying for me too!”

to shrugging off insensitive comments people make…

I guess I’m impressed because all through my childhood and youth, disability in any form was considered a social taboo. Children and even adult sufferers were ostracised and strange beliefs emanated around them. I have heard stories that their condition was because of the ‘evil eye’, a result of their parents’ or grandparents’ sins, because their mother didn’t breastfeed them, because they were born during a lunar/solar eclipse... Sometimes even the most minor of disabilities became a big deal, like the time a child was born with six fingers on each hand and an obviously jealous neighbour insisted that he would grow considering these children as freaks of nature.

Now that I’m a mum, I think I can appreciate the effort it takes in fulfilling one’s role towards one’s children. You love them, no matter what, that’s what a mother does. But how hard must it be to not receive a reciprocal hug? Or to live each day fearing for them, for their lives and the circumstances that surround them, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to change things. Which is why I admire their sense of compassion so much. They seem to comprehend better, to be more forgiving of petty human follies, perhaps because their own experiences have been so intense and heart-rending.

I dedicate this Mother’s Day to those mums whose strength of spirit, compassion, generosity and courage have been an inspiration to me. With the fervent wish that their children, regardless of their condition, are able to, in some way, acknowledge and appreciate them on this special day.