Being a Mom - Part II

Continued from Being a Mom Part I

Look at the child, not the walls.. :)

Relationships often have responsibilities attached which take away a part of you or change you into something else. Being a daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, student or wife had that kind of effect of on me.

The best part about having kids is they did not take away what is there in me and change me into a Maa. They have brought the real me out and made me what I was really meant to be in the first place. They haven’t driven me nuts – but made me think wisely. They have not made me weak and nervous but made me strong and brave.  They have given me the enthusiasm to fight for my life and live in their happy world, enjoying their company. I can proudly say ‘I am at my best when I am being a Maa’.

 I am indebted to my children for returning my own self back to me.  I would like to share a small poem here which many years ago Rayyan (7 yrs) walked up to me and rendered spontaneously.  I treasure it one of the best award I ever received. It was said in much simpler words in mixed up language.  I wrote it down and kept it in my own words.

God gave me a Maa.

God has given me legs to walk

A boneless tongue to talk

A short nose to poke about

A big mouth to eat and shout

A cheek to receive lovely kiss

Friends to help me in crisis

Wonderful teachers to teach

A father to discipline me and preach

A heart to warn me when dangers lurk

Two tiny hands to do my work

Above all God gave me a Mommy

Who can do everything for me!

She talks for me when my words fail

She pokes about when I lose trail

She shouts on my behalf when I have sore throat

She plays with me when my friends tire out

She teaches me what my teachers can’t

She preaches me when my father won’t

She is in my heart to make it strong

She is like music and a beautiful song

I love my Maa.

Off course I love that dear boy who is grown up and fast turning into a wonderful animator now..

Fun time with kids

The kid summed it all very well. I changed back into behaving and being a kid after I became a Maa. Gone were the days I spent, brooding over lost opportunities, lazing around, being grounded for no apparent reason or watching boring movies. It was time again for long walks, activities, music, creativity and fun. I took up painting once again and it was one of the activities we all enjoyed thoroughly as a group of expert painters. Occasionally, Farheena would get carried away and her art spread on the floor and climbed up the walls. She wouldn’t stop until sleep took over her genius creations.

Farheena continuing the art work in her sleep...
She was unstoppable..

I allowed one messy room for my children to enjoy themselves. The walls could be painted and floor could be tainted there, but nowhere else in the house. To this day, my children have followed the rule. They do not trespass their territories ever. There was a time when I was confused about making decisions. Children were precious and I could not take chances. Though I had instincts telling me what was right and what was wrong, I decided to seek expert advice from people who knew about children. Starting with a book ‘Bringing Up Baby’, I intently 
studied a lot and listened to people who mattered on parenting. Finally what precious gift I got out from all my effort was my ability to be patient, ability to accept the truth gracefully, ability to persevere and ability to love unconditionally. 

Being a Mom - Part I

One of the hundreds of loving moments which makes life worth living...

 When I was thoroughly enjoying Sidney Sheldon’s ‘Tell Me Your Dreams’, I was intrigued by the multiple personalities of Ashley Paterson. It was unbelievable that a person could have a diverse personality inside their psyche, that was until my own alternate personality took over me. My alternate personality was called ‘Maa’ and it was completely opposite of what I was. The advantage I had over Ashley was that, I was aware of both the sides of these personalities and could interact with them. I am spared the mystery at least! Whew.

Little Rayyan

Life was simple and boring until 20^th August 1991. At 7.18 a.m. on that day, the most wonderful moment of my life took place. I gave birth to a child and I was born again. That is a contradictory sentence, but that is how life has been ever since. When I say, ‘I was born’, that is the beginning of my alter personality which started taking over me and changing me into a Maa. Days have passed by, and finally, ‘Maa’ rules my life now.

I was a trouble maker as a child, but, as I grew up, I sobered down. Though I had those temper tantrums, crying bouts and other teen related symptoms; for most of my teen years I was quite, scared and withdrawn young girl. I was afraid of the world. Loud sounds, fights, dogs, cows, men, and eve teasers everything scared me in my teens. I do not understand when and why the transition happened, but somewhere during my adolescent time it took place slowly and unnoticed by me. On the other hand, that could be one of the other alter egos taking over me, or just simple growing up process. Whatever, I damn sure that I was not the same person in my teens, as I am now or I was in my childhood.  The present myself can relate well to the childhood myself, but in no way can it see eye to eye with my teen self; which was hollow, pretentious, always trying to please others, and nervous.

I am indebted to my children for returning my own self back to me.  Few Memorable moments I have enjoyed with my loving children. 

               

Having fun with costumes

Another childish behavior of Maa LOL

Annie enjoying Farheena's birthday cake

               

Annie wears flowers in her hair for the first time.

The beach dramas...

Rayyan being extremely excited about his paper  hat

Picnics are more fun with children

                                     

                                              Cooking is fun when you cook for your kids. Their smile pays  with happiness

My Blog Review by Lucifer House Inc

This is a well balanced and helpful review of my blog. If you like it get in touch with The Fool (Don't be fooled by that name ;) ) for a review. I have already implemented few of the tips given there and I feel it is giving out positive effects. Thank you The Fool.

Lucifer House Inc.: Chapters from my Life:
Long back, I remember reading a book called ‘What Katy did’. One bit of conversation from that book had somehow stuck to my mind when I had read it. There is a character called Cousin Helen who tells Katy on becoming bed ridden that she is now a student in the “School of Pain” where she will learn lessons in patience, cheerfulness, hopefulness, neatness and the making the best of things. This came back to my head unconsciously when I was going over the blog ‘Chapters from my Life’. The blogger seems to have learnt a lot in the very same “School of Pain” and she is kind enough to share the learning with all of us. Her writings reflect a deep understanding of the essence of life and the value of every single moment in life. 

The blog appropriately titled ‘Chapter from my Life’ puts forth some chapters from the life of Farida Rizwan, an Indian rural house wife who has been through a lot of really tough circumstances in life and has emerged stronger for the same.  In addition to personal experiences, she writes poetry and shares thoughts on family, relations and life in general, caring for children and on fighting cancer. She herself has lost more than one family member to the disease and has a special needs child she takes care of. But that by no means makes the blog just a cancer support or child care blog. A few posts may pertain specifically to these topics. But the general public at large can relate to and have some takeaways from most of her posts.

I would like to point out some of the things that fascinated me most about her writings. In her articles on relationships, she has structured her thoughts really well and exhibits an amazing clarity of thought. Her personal experience posts are really vivid and capture all the key events associated with a particular incident in her life and the associated emotions in an interesting narrative. Her poems are a real delight. They come straight from the heart and reach straight to the heart. No pretensions, no unnecessary words, no complications! Hers are poems even someone who does not care much for poems can easily relate to.  One unique aspect of her posts is that she makes most of her own illustrations. Self made illustrations add more personal touch to the writings and connect better with the reader than images from Google.

Her back drop is a combination of light and dark blue with checks like a shirt. I feel it looks too austere like a hospital ward. Since she writes about the gloomy topic of cancer also (though with a positive frame of mind), I wish she would lighten the environment of her blog with something more cheerful in the background. As far as widgets go, some of the navigation widgets are nice but overall I get a crowded feeling with too many widgets. I am not sure if the advertisement widgets bring any revenue at all. The award badges are nice, but she has won so many contests and I am sure she will win many more. Maybe it will be nice to have separate static page to display the achievements instead of keeping them all on the side bar. The general badges pertaining to blogger sites that do not bring much traffic can be done away with or moved to a not so prominent location close to the blog footer.

Coming to my favorite topic of navigation, I must say she has put reasonable efforts in this area. There is a related posts widget and labels have been used as tabs to segregate different post categories other than the regular archives. Also there are in- post links to other posts where ever there is some connection. However navigation is an area where there is always scope for improvement. Using labels as tabs, makes it a bit inconvenient as reader has to scroll down 10-15 posts on a single page. Instead, having links to the posts on a static page with some small description can make it more visitor-friendly. In my opinion, a blog is not a news website but more a living book. So one must constantly be revisiting and reorganizing content. One can always change content in an earlier post as one gets fresh thoughts and also add links to a later post if found relevant. The ease of access must be same for a 3 years old post as a 1 day old post. In literature, personal, photo and most travel blogs content is not dated. So as more and more content is developed, a serious rethink is needed to classify and re-organize the content. In some ways it is very similar to how companies keep restructuring their organization as they grow in size.

One more thing I would suggest while organizing content is to segregate contest posts from regular posts. It has been my personal experience that regular readers of a blog do not appreciate contest posts, especially the ones with narrow guidelines or where one has to talk about a specific product unless the blog itself is a product review blog. So it will be convenient if regular readers have some mechanism by which they can easily identify contest posts and skip them if they do not want to read them.

In terms of interaction, in the older posts, the interaction level is quite low. But in the more recent posts, it is seen every comment is read and responded to. The volume of comments is also quite good.  For this type of blog, I feel the comments are sufficient interaction. I don’t see the need for any specific section for general interaction as is the case of information blogs.

This would be classified as a personal blog in most directories. But I find the very concept of a personal blog an oxymoron. A blog is something public. And personal is opposite of public. A blog should be classified from the point of view of the reader and not the writer. If a blog has no utility to a reader, then it is just a personal diary or a rough book. In this context I would prefer to call this blog an inspirational or motivational blog rather than a personal blog. It is the place to go to if one is feeling down in the dumps and that life has not been fair. This blog would definitely help lift up one’s spirits. Chapters from Farida's life also offer one lot of lessons about life in general.

Find below a few samples from the blog. 

Hidden Faces

Children are to be loved and protected

Man and Woman - What connects or disconnects them?

Trapped in a cocoon

Directly from the heart of a mom with a special needs child