Blessed!

Today is, what would have been my mother’s 71st birthday. We just celebrated her birthday in style last year as she completed 70 years. She never ate cake or any of those baked items(most of them contained egg and she never ate eggs or any non-vegetarian item) but for the first time, she actually cut the cake and blew out the candles. She seemed genuinely happy and was participating in more activities after my father had passed away.

As I look back at the years, I think I was blessed in more ways to spend time with her. These are some of my fond and fun memories with her:

1. She stayed very close to my place and I made it a point to see her, talk to her and eat with her everyday the last 2 years. Now, you might think that I might be cooking food for my mother and taking it for her…but actually, it was the other way around…:) My mother loved to cook a variety of dishes and she made yummy dinner for me everyday! I had idli with chutney, dosa, masala dosai, upma, kesari, ven pongal, puri, chappathi and the list is actually endless 🙂 I feel so blessed that I had food made by her everyday(except on the days I was travelling) She used to also make a lot of yummy snacks like ladoo, pakoda, eggless cakes for the entire family too. My sister used to visit and she was also given a good bounty of food 🙂 I used to always tell her that I would put a gold hand made for her especially because I felt so blessed to be eating from her hand(which I never did :()

As she slowly recovered from my father’s passing away, we had quite a nice routine at night. We used to eat yummy dinner, watch some Tamil soaps, chat, I used do a few chores for her like paying her bills and generally have a good time.

2. Kannada classes started around March-April 2021 and she was very keen to learn it. Many people are shy of picking up a new language and even speaking it(inclusive of me :)) – but my mother was a pro at learning new languages. When my father was posted to different places in the North India when they were younger, she was the one who picked up Hindi, Marathi with ease.

She started to learn to read and write Kannada at 70 years of age( I also gave her company by learning a new language – but my mother was definitely better at it than me :)) She was very good at it and did all the simple homework that was given too.

I was happy that she was keeping herself busy and she liked what she did too. Plus, studying can be done at any age, right? You don’t need to do any age defying activities and kept your mind – sharp and young too. Here is one simple word in Kannada in remembrance of my mother(because I still have to learn more to write more :))

3. My mother was a very a patient mother when I was growing up. She never told me to learn to cook because “I will need to do it later in life”. I might be the only daughter in her parents life who never ever stepped into the kitchen. I had never even made tea or coffee till I got married. My mother kept me on a golden plate and I was only told to focus on studying. Because, of this, a funny incident happened and I still remember how calm my mother was:

I was probably in my teen years and she had ordered groceries and all the dals had been delivered to our house. She told me to put each of the dals in a separate container. I politely obliged her but in the process I think I spilled the toor dal and the channa dal. I thought they were the same thing and mixed them all up(face palm :))

I think I would have lost my temper if my kids had done the same thing today, but my mother was very calm. She must have been smiling all the time but she never said anything. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the evening trying to separate the toor dal from the channa dal patiently and I am not sure we succeeded!! 🙂

4. My mother’s greatest happiness? She loved to see both her daughters married and be with their families. As a girl mother, her greatest happiness was seeing both of us with our husbands. I have never seen so much happiness in anybody else. I am married for a long time and my mother used to find happiness whenever I stand with my husband or sit in the car front seat with my husband 🙂 (my sweet mother :))

Happy birthday, Mummy! I hope you are at peace with appa!