My Sweet Home

I went to my parents’ home this week. My mom was lying on bed and by seeing me she flips onto her back. She used to wake up early in the morning when the dawn is still thin. She likes to wear red saree most of the time & always seen with her bun hairstyle. In the past, my mom used to love to decorate our home with all matching colors.  But she doesn’t do that anymore.  My Mom died last rainy season, exactly a month before my daughter (barfi’s) birthday. I glanced again at the calendar. Can it really be a year since she’s gone? It feels like yesterday. It feels like forever.  Her absence left me without breath, or sleep, or appetite. Whenever I visit my home, which is although now physically vacant, brings back my yester memories involving my parents, uncles, aunts, cousins & my brother. There is always something incredibly magical and nostalgic about my childhood home.

That day, after returning back to my new home, I called for my daughter “Barfi”? I don’t see her, but I hear her concealed laughter. I get out of my chair & walk around the room. Where is Barfi? I say. This was a frequent game we played. “Finding Barfi”, as I call. She would hide when she hears the front door open, under the bed or beneath the dining table, and I’d have to yell, “Where is Barfi? Where is she?” until my voice displayed enough panic that she would burst forth, end-up up laughing and playing. And this made me wonder about my yester childhood, wherein I used to play hide and seek with my mom. Now, apparently, we are playing the game again, & I accidentally said where is Amma?  Where did she go? Immediately, I saw my little 4-year old barfi tapping her little fingers on the desk as if she has to think about it.  She sits in her little chair and asks me to tell her story about my amma (my mother). It was a very soulful moment for me to tell my daughter about my mother who is no more. But well, you can get used to everything in life, I suppose. Even this.

I switched on my computer, watching old videos of her. Where would I even start? I kept thinking about what she said. I never wanted to put my loved ones down on paper, maybe it makes me to accept that reality of them, and maybe I don’t want to accept this reality, that amma is gone.

Eventually, as always, I couldn’t just say No to my daughter and said, “All right, I will tell you something about my mother”. I told her, that today I went to my parents’ home and I somehow felt their omnipresence warmth and I rejoiced in it. Now that Barfi asked about my mother, I told her that I have now learned that, I cannot touch my mother, but she can still touch me. I am not sure why this is. I don’t get the rules. But I am grateful for her every little contact.

As I say this, I see barfi’s eyes getting bigger with bewilderment:. They say a child’s eyes are fully formed around age three, and that is why they appear so large on the face. Or maybe those years are just so full of wonder, the child can’t help it.

Well, I continued with the story again and said, it takes a special strength to take care of your own mother, barfi, and a whole different strength to admit you cannot. At this moment I sensed that you didn’t get my words and here is what I remember the most. After a while, you crossed your arms, as if you were getting impatient, and I looked at you and you looked back, and I stuck out my tongue and you stuck out yours, and I laughed, and you laughed in return. And I continued the story, I said to you that even though I knew so much about my mother, Barfi, I could never know she was so brave, and I knew that being brave would only help her. Although, I did not know how much..
Then you immediately said to me, that my mother was as brave as you. And this made me more nostalgic and think about an incident from past were in once I did something lame and was caught by my mom red-handed and I in-turn looked at her sharply and said Are you mad about that now? She says “No.” She looks off. “I don’t get mad anymore.” That actually saddened me, because my mother’s temper was one of her most endearing traits. She would cross her arms and turn away from us. Then I saw my daughter running away from me, I tried to come upon her right, she’d spin left, on her left, she’d spin right. When I squatted in front of her and held her by the shoulders, and finally could get hold of her.

Although barfi became busy playing with her toys, later on, I was still stuck up in those nostalgic memories. I strongly believe that there are many kinds of carelessness in this world, but the most selfish is procrastinating time because none of us know how much we have, and it is a disgrace to God to assume there will be more.

Mentally I was still in my parents’ home remembering the last few days of her wherein she placed her hands on the sides of my face. The warmth of her fingers loosened something inside me, and despite knowing better, I blurt out the question: How are you? Perhaps, it seemed natural to my mother, seeing a grown-up son, stepping in to take care, but it was new to me. until I saw the transition of my mother became my daughter due to a neurodegenerative disorder. That was the moment I felt she needed me, more than the crying newborn way.  It seemed less a diagnosis than a surrender. And something about not knowing the fate seemed terrifying.
Just again as I was slipping into the nostalgia, I felt two little arms by my side & two little hands slip into my fingers. I glanced down to see its Barfi. She smiled and asked me to join her in play. I was exhausted yet elevated in an almost unearthly way. I have always found something enduring about children seeking attention and the extent they go to get it.

Then she looked into my eyes. And the one thing she’s never asked me before, she finally asks. “How did your mother get sick?”

The thought itself had in many ways turned my stomach into knots, also left me humbled. This might be hard to understand. But to that point, I still felt, foolishly, that I was in control of things. Although I didn’t answer barfi, I vividly remember the day taking my mother to the hospital not knowing whether she is alive or not. Then the sense of “we are in control of everything” kind of wiped off.
I started staring out the window at a hibiscus plant, whose red stigma is thick in these winter months. It’s the only red-flowered tree in our backyard, and I was trying to remember if my mother planted it, or if it was here when we bought the house thirty-five years ago.


And I just smiled and thought nostalgia is a beautiful feeling in itself.