A year of wormotherhood

My English text book in school had a beautiful chapter on a Russian folktale which describes the story of Varya, a six year old who is lost in the fields and when asked to describe her mother..she keeps describing  her as, ’My mother is the most beautiful woman in this World’. All the farm beauties are lined up before her, but she cannot find her mother…What emerges later is her mother who is actually an ugly faced stout woman.. Their union is a heart rendering description of  warmth and affection for each other…In the eyes of the little girl, her mother is truly the most beautiful woman in this world.

I am always reminded of this wonderful story when I think about a mother-child relationship…and more so about mothers who leave back their children to go to work. Though, today, the needs of the women have changed from being mere wage earner to establish one’s own identity outside the cushion of their homes, this dilemma still remains.

Come this August and I complete one full year of working motherhood…And I can’t describe what a hell lot of difference it is to work before being a mother and work after you have left a baby back at home.

As a child, I always told my mother, that I hate her when she leaves me in a day care centre and I as a mother would never do that to my child. But 20 years later I find myself in the same situation. Thankfully my child is blessed with loving set of grandparents who love and care for him much more than I would. Yet, it is no less pain to walk this tightrope game.

The zeal to perform and excel at work is always intact, but along with it is a longing to go back home to the offspring. It is really mindboggling to see this internal change in yourself where a perfectly careerist woman is transformed in to a two hearted personality, who leaves one of her hearts at home every single day. My boss once remarked that I put forth family over work and my husband always feels I give more weightage to work than home and child. I wish both these men knew what it is to be like a working mother, who is cut across these two Worlds!

But hats off to so many working mothers who successfully manage these tangents and higher credit to all those who have given up their work life and brilliantly successful careers just to become  full time mothers!