The goodbyes that are painful...

If I refer to all the females in my family (including me) as ‘drama queens’, it would be an understatement. We strongly believe that if a daughter to goes on a picnic she may never come back, or buying a two wheeler to a son is like gifting him death. So you get an idea. Every single thing is blown out of proportion and every event like marriage, birthday, and graduation is laced with tears and filmy dialogues and thus dampened. I grew up in such a fiercely loving yet slightly dramatic home, and even though I am way better in terms of drama, I seem to carry traces of what was generously bestowed upon me.

However I was married into a family where people are not as dramatic as us. Goodbyes here are more matter-of-fact and met with more smiles than tears. So my belief that my family had the most complex DNAs which made them brutally sensitive and that they were the first of its kind to have ever walked the earth only got stronger. I reach for the tissue during any movie that has got anything remotely to do with emotions. I fought tears and lost when my son got vaccination shots. The first two weeks of my son’s first daycare was when I ran short of words and tears or even breath. However I was strong enough to hold my own and not broadcast it to the rest of the family for obvious reasons.

This morning I dropped my son at the playschool when I heard loud wails from outside. A boy, around four, had been enrolled and it was his first day there. Two people had to stop him from running to his mother, who walked away hesitantly with her two younger kids. The child refused to pay heed to any act of consolation, and got too wild and loud to handle. Other children including my own stood perplexed and helpless.  We slowly left, even though my heart went out to the boy, who was evidently kept home till that day. As I stepped outside, the mother waited with a miserable look on her face. 

She asked me,’ Is he still crying?’. 

I said ‘Yes’.

She went up to her car, placed the youngest baby carefully on a car seat, fastened the seat belts for the other child and got on to the driver’s seat. 'Wow', I said. 'She must be the iron lady or something'. As we started the car to go to office I took one last look of the mother who was still in her car. She held a ball of tissues and was crying profusely. She kept wiping her eyes and slowly rested her head on the steering wheel. 

My heart melted.

The mother. Her undying love. Care.  Tears.  Worries. 

 You do not call that sensitive. It is what mothers are all about. 

I think I misunderstood my family.