The After

Well, this is not a post about patch-up.

I was in quite a bit of anxiety after I found that my mother had read the mail. I checked if there were any replies to the mail. There were not.

On Saturday evening, I went for bloodwork (repeat APA Screening, Homocysteine and TSH) and I needed to tell her that I had done so.

But this lump sat inside me, and I was nervous calling her. Finally I did call her in the evening, and she spoke to me normally. I was relieved. You see, both of us, as people, are unable to hide our emotions, especially boiling ones, over the phone or face to face, and the fact that her voice was even was relieving.

We spoke again last night. She did not broach the topic of the mail and I did not either, and I realized that she has not taken it badly. I can't say for sure she has forgiven me for writing to her like this, because forgiveness was not what I am asking for or what she seemed to be working at.

It's done. She knows. And she did not resist or feed me anything to the contrary to the subject of the mail.

I have never craved for apologies from my family as such. Even after what happened in January, there is nobody who said Sorry. I am not wanting a Sorry, and surprisingly, everybody seems to think they did what appeared to be okay for the moment.

I doubt that. But I am thinking with a broad range of knowledge of the consequence and that my yes or no does not change the outcome. Its like - what is done, is done.

Do you know how fantastic you are? How you lift me up with your words, and often give me perspective that I haven't touched upon? I loved Kym's comment. She showed me the deal with an angle I had not taken.

I usually restrict the scope of my posts to talking only about myself, and not bringing specific family members or their stories into the picture. But it seems that my mother has been in limelight much, in my blog.

My Mum (cutting out all other aspects of her life) married my Dad in 1976. She miscarried her first child very early in the pregnancy. I was born in December 77. A few months after my birth, my mother took up a job in a Cancer hospital.

At this point of time, my parents were at the beginning of their careers and so were still struggling to find their feet. While working at this hospital, my Mummy found she was pregnant, and that time I was hardly six months old, and my mother because of the nature of the work, had been exposed to radiation that was not considered okay for a fetus. My mother chose to end the pregnancy. Next year, my father fell sick, and his ailment was misdiagnosed, and he went into coma and his recovery took almost a year.

Whatever bottom of the pit savings there were, were gone in Papa's illness. My mother had to take a loan to foot the medical bills.

My brother was born in 1983, and it was a surprise, because no one had an inkling if my father's fertility had been restored. My mother lost her parents (whom she revered, and still does) such that none of her children (us) were able to meet her parents. The circumstances around my grandparents' death is a tale in itself.

My mother has had a fair share of drama and pain, and unfulfilled dreams in her lifetime. She works with the principle of talking about what she did wrong or what mistakes she made such that her children don't make the mistake. Problem is, the kids (us) want to make those mistakes, make new ones and as much as my mom wants to be the protector, we are out and about in the world leaving our own trail of dirt.

I wish my children never have to send me the kind of mail I sent my mom. I also fret that I don't have the unconditional reverence for my parents as my parents have for their own. I love my father. He still cries about his parents when he misses them too much.

And we are just a bunch of normal folks in out of the league situations tied to each other and walking on.