My mother wore soft gloves to protect her hands whilstcooking because dad
claimed often and vociferously, that he could not abide anyone else’s food – by “anyone else” he meant,of course, the poor, unwashed masses who sought kitchen duty.
Why did shego along with his demands?Was it because shewas afraid he might find her somehow wanting if she did not accede? Or was she raised to believeit was simply part of the job requirement of a wife and mother?I suspectit was a little of both. I bring this up because Mom was plagued with eczema for many years.
I can see her now, with her topical creams and unguents, wincing visiblyas she grated onions, diced hot peppers and sliced tomatoes, juice running down her handsand aggravating the flare-ups – a lifetime of five-starcooking. Diminished with resentment. Saturated with misery. I wish now, I’d been a better daughter. I wish also, that my father had been agentler, more loving man. But mostly, I wish my mother hadnot confused self-care with being selfish.She had a choice. She just did not see it.
Where is home?
A long time ago, I chose to move abroad. I arrivedin the United States on an afternoon as grey as my thoughts. I remember, my ears were blocked for a long time as if they were trying to shield me from the song and echo of loss. Barotrauma – they call it. In my new home, bereft of the walls of family and the roof of community, I had to start from scratch, like someone in a witness protection program, trying out a new name, forging a new identity. I felt like a darker, shorter, skinnier version of myself and certainly not as pretty as I thought I was, back in India.How can that be! And since I was no longer recognized as an up-and-coming copywriter with a great future, I was essentially, nobody. It was discombobulating, to say the least. Until it was not.
I taught myself to look beyond credentials, travel across borders, communicate without language, and live without fear. It was an incredibly epiphanic moment when I understood that whether you find yourself in a pond, a river or an ocean,it’s all water. Go with the flow. In the end, home is wherever you receive love. Look aroundand you will find, that the universe itself is actively trying to make you a suitable home – with sun, rain, snow, and wind conspiring to release like dandelion seeds, and pearls of dew, a minutearray of daily miracles. See how they shape themselves into our lives in the form of an infant’s pink mouth;a gnarled shade tree in your backyard;an explosion of fireflies igniting the night sky;or a perfect breakfast of blueberry muffins and eggs.
Speaking of breakfast, I only just found outthat the woman who sells me blueberries stands in a pond in the August heat and plucks berries from bushes along the bank, somewhere in Boston, because according to her those are the sweetest.
True. But also because they are handled with love. And that it takes a hen twenty-six hours to lay an egg before she can produce another. Hard to fathom, is it not? Mama Hen, with irrefutable constancy, concealing herself in a darkened coop and with infinite, bleary-eyed patience, growing her eggs for your personal enjoyment. My point is nature nurtures. The fact that we live and breathe is not by accident. It is the alchemy of many loving hands, of providence and of the multitude of gifts of nature that make us who we are.
Stuff happens
But, of course, it is all very well to have a cosy chat about going with the flow and recognizing miracles when you are home safe and the rain pelting your windows like an army about to invade, has no way of getting in. A few years ago, my husband got really sick, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with dementia and because it is mandatory that bad luck must come in threes,my boss, Jack (who I will shoot, drown or put in a coma in every book I ever write) advised me in an email I read at the hospital, that I no longer had a job.I had taken too many days off.
An army of trouble had infiltrated my homeand all my theories about how to live my best life went out the window. My brain seized up. I felt as vulnerable as a soft-boiled egg.
What to do. Where to hide.
My friends offered solace. Guidance. A proliferation of casseroles. It did not help much. Perhaps because I wasn’t looking for kindness. I was looking for my “perfect life” seen through the diffusionfilter of memory before it all went south. I became the lead actress in my own melancholic dramaand could not foresee a happy ending.It is possible,that I did not want a happy ending – after all, that would ruin my tragic status.
Poonam Chawla was born and raised in Mumbai where she worked as a copywriter before she moved to the United States. She is deeply interested in women’s issues. She is the author of three books.
