Down Memory Lane

I remember I thought and thought and   thought  again, debating over names.  You were my first born, and I wanted a name that no one had yet thought of. But in the end, I chose Prem.  Not an uncommon name, but a simple four letter one, meaning  love.

Much water has flowed under the bridges since then.  Today you stand tall, taller than me.  Six foot plus,and its hard to think of you as a babe in my arms.  But I remember.

I see you rusting in my arms suckling at my breast.  And when you had your fill, you would gurgle up at me , and a million stars of happiness exploded in my heart, enveloping you in a warm cocoon of maternal love.

I see you crawling over the place, crawling into the fabric of our existence of our love.And I see you, a toddler  with chubby legs and curly hair,plump and sweet. You even had a dimple on your cheeks.(where has that  dimple gone ?) You pulled at this and that, and led me a merry dance,and you also pulled at the strings of my heart,and the music it produced was love.

I see you a sturdy little fellow, plodding along to school.  I did not reckon then that, step by step, childhood days would pass and you would walk away from me , into your own adult world.  Then you needed me to hold your hands to cross that bridge . Now you cross  your bridges, but you don' t  hold on to my hands

I see you a boy of ten or twelve, with the sap of  exuberance in your veins.  Those were the days  when I had to keep on filling the snack tins, for you could empty them with speed and gust that would put a battalion to shame! But I did not mind the toil., that was a labour of love, and if your stomach got filled with food, my heart was replenished with love.

I see you gradually shooting up, but with every added inch to your  height, was there a widening width between us ?

I remember seeing you with a start of the tell-tale  shadow above your lips.  Yes boyhood was slipping away, and you were stepping across the line.  Your voice started cracking too, and I felt the stirring of a strange kind of pain in my heart. For, I could see the writing on the wall.

All these  years , I had held in my hands the key to your childish happiness. For happiness then lay in little things , like toys and sweets, and in pranks with your friends and your parents’ love, given and received.  But in manhood,  the same key does not open the same doors, for your happiness  now equates other things and the key is not with me.

I remember standing at my window one day.  You were standing  in the garden outside and you did not see me.  I saw you lighting a cigarette and the flame that you struck to light it was  a flame that seared my heart.  For I knew then that childhood indeed was a lost Atlantis, and you were no more child, no more boy, already a man.

Of course I had seen  it coming, when you stood head to head with me, and when you started using your daddy’s razor and blade and we had to get you your own set.  I knew it even earlier  , when an invisible barrier  of reservations crept into  your attitude to us, when you rebutted any sign of affection, I knew it was a part of the age of adolescence. 

On the sounding board of adulthood , you were trying to sound out the feel of independence.  You no more hugged and caressed me  as you used to.I let it pass, for I knew you were wandering  in the bewildering realm of No man’s land.  Not yet a man, no longer a boy,but a few steps away  ,the point of no return.

I sometimes think , If I could asked Time to be still, when and where would I have willed it when you were a babe in my arms , warm and sweet a precious bundle of love ? Or would I have willed it when you were an endearing  little mite, with laughter  in your eyes and mischief in your hand. Or would I have willed it when you were a scamp  in shorts and knickers , that always needed  to be mended, the way you got them torn?

Today the rend is not in your clothes, but somewhere in my heart, that knows the  time has come when I cannot fence you in, even  though the fence be made of maternal love.  You are like a bird flapping its wings against the cage seeking freedom.  Freedom, even from love that perhaps seems to you a yoke! For,  you stand tall, taller than me.  Did I say it before?  Well I say it again, proudly.  But is it because you stand tall that you cannot now see eye to eye with me?

But, come to think of it, why should I regret that you have grown as it is only proper that you should?No, let me not regret the times that  have been.  But let me realise that the time has come when I must untie you from my apron strings.  I must give you the oars to paddle your own canoe.  If that realization hurts, let me also remember that I did not  cry when they cut the umbilical cord.  Should I now cry when you cut yourself from my apron strings?