Are you a GOOD MOTHER

The visceral feeling of being a parent is synonymous with being guilty. As a mother of an 18 year old I believe I can say it with some authority - my feelings of love and care and attention for my son were always, and I mean always, shaded with a little tinge of guilt. I was never good enough (am still not) and never will be a great, or even a moderately 'good' mother.

I have run many miles, and weathered many a stormy nights, and kept vigils over years and yet this elusive, this mysterious, this magical being evades me; the ideal good mother. Where is she, and who is she? what are her children like? and how do they behave? what have they achieved in life, and what do they say about their mother? are all pressing questions I am dying to ask her. This is 'the' elixir of life, if you will, I'm after. To know who and what and how a good mother is made.

My experience of motherhood has been and continues to be a dramatic, thrilling, fearsome, lonely, beautiful, draining, exhausting, frustrating. The day you become a mother, or the day you know you're going to have a baby all equanimity disappears from your life. Everything becomes huge - both in perspective and its effects. Reality is dilated, for you are not only responsible for yourself but another person who is totally unable to do the job him/herself. It is literally putting some one's life in your hands! and in normal circumstances that usually happens in emergency rooms of hospitals where trained doctors are at hand to help. Despite the presence of acumen and skill and tools and training at hand, imagine for a minute the usual trauma centre of a hospital, chaos reigns. There is immense urgency and threat of lives being lost, of patients falling into coma. There is shouting and yelling, and several pairs of hands to help out, there is drama and excitement and heady rush to do everything imaginably possible to save and nurture life. Now imagine this scene on constant replay in a mother's mind for all times to come! Can you even begin to understand the immensity of tension, of worry, of urgency and rush, the continuous challenge of being on alert and in attendance for all times to come, because one single blink of an eye, one moment of looking askance can endanger the life of your child. Now, just think of being on this level of anxiety and stress every minute of every day, all of your life.

That, my dear fellows is what being a mother is all about. WE WORRY about everything and anything that could, maybe, might, harm our children in the smallest possible manner. A mother is not only worried about her children but has this nagging feeling that worrying about them is somehow essential in warding off evil. That in case she may falter and for two minutes of her entire existence not fear for her child, it would fall upon the powers-that-be to actually befall something horrific on her sweetheart. That is why constant worrying like spinning the prayers beads is essential, and must not be eased at any time.

Besides being ridden with worry every second, mothers always feel inadequate. At least, I do. I feel I could have raised my child much better, I could have loved him more, made him study and learn more, made him happier, made him stronger for the world. There are so many planes on which I believe to have short changed him. And this ever present, ever annoying, ever nudging guilt is by my side like my shadow, and I don't think it will ever leave me till I die.

Perhaps, motherhood is this agony, this complete surrender and giving in to another person's good. Perhaps this is the ultimate and most sacred form of love, this angst ridden, tense, agitating happiness that pervades our being day in and day out. AND - I would not trade this constant terror for all the riches and calmness!!! Ever!