Magic Moms

I never liked ghost stories. The slightest freaked me out. But just to test my bravery, one night on a school trip, I sat to listen to ghost stories around a bonfire. That night in the tents all my friends slept soundly, but it took me, what I felt, as decades for me to sleep. The very next night I returned home, and though I did not admit it to anybody, I went to sleep next to my mother, and all my fears vanished.

At an age, “sticking to mommy” is no longer cool. You are older now, independent, and if you are blubbering out “mommy” in the middle of a horror movie or in a haunted house, well buddy, you are going to be called an s-c-a-r-e-d-y c-a-t, and that’s a name no one wants. 

However, even if the tongue can be held back then, it is more or less often the instinct that causes you to call for your mother in times of panic, pain, or discomfort.

There have been embarrassing times when I couldn’t open the lock of a bathroom, or the knot of a salwaar wouldn’t open, when I desperately needed to empty my bladder; that the word “amma” was blurted out. There were times when I was alone and stuck in a situation which I couldn’t handle, and “mom” was the first word at the tongue.

Once, two of my friends and I had jokingly been talking of what we would exclaim if we had fallen down from a cliff into a deep forest. I mentioned that I would shout, “hat trick” (an inside joke), my friend said he would exclaim, “Ouch” (naturally) while my other friend, said she would scream, “Mummy!” The first friend was surprised by this answer, while I could understand. We then started chatting about how in times of panic we automatically shout for our mom.

 That’s what it was, instinct.

Somehow, we always believed our mother was a sort of magician, able to solve any problem that we had, while it was sheer common sense. We came to her with a problem, which, we were convinced was IMPOSSIBLE to solve. We would wait, as she examined the problem and with a tap of her wand, a solution sprung up. Now when we think back, the solutions were so absurdly simple, we hadn’t even noticed it.

Yet perhaps our mothers do have a magic. When there is a problem, simply call them and they fix it. Perhaps it’s a wound; they simply seem to kiss away the pain. Though the pain exists, the thought that ‘mom’s there’ makes it feel better already.

My own relative, after an operation, half-conscious, in great pain, called “amma, amma”. His mother was very far away, and yet he called for her.

That incident is proof showing that calling for your mother at those kinds of moments is sheer instinct.

So even if the word “mamma” ever does slip from your mouth, don’t worry. Go ahead, don’t tell anyone, that’s your wish, but remember it’s not always a scared-y cat thing, its instinct. We’re used to the world of magic moms, moms who wipe our problems away.