The Perfect Holiday

Every summer, when the heat reaches insane proportions, when the kids are school-less and agenda-less for what seems like an eternity, when newspaper supplements and magazines are overflowing with ads for holidays to distant and exotic locations, our family, like every other urban family that is readying to escape the hectic pace and daily challenges of city dwelling, religiously packs up and leaves for a good two weeks, with hopes and dreams, of new adventures, new experiences, quality family time and most of all, change.

This time we choose an exotic country with rolling hills, lush meadows, balmy weather, a lot of history, culture and food that promised to be nothing short of sensational.

Despite how alluring all this sounded, I knew I was being ambitious. The itinerary looked challenging. We were four - a three year old who doesn’t understand instructions, a 9 year old who doesn’t care much for instructions, a 37 year old who doesn’t stop giving instructions and a 38 year old who usually doesn’t pay attention, instructions or otherwise.

But, we each resolved to overcome our faults and make this the perfect holiday.

The first problem of a long holiday – being cooped up 24x7 in the company of the family, sharing living, sleeping, brushing and bathing quarters, can get to you after a few days, even if yours is a lovey-dovey family such as ours!

The second problem – the proverb ‘no more than 5 hours sleepeth the traveller’ does not apply to travellers such as us. The husband is happiest when reclining in bed till the sun is directly overhead, preferably with a blackberry in hand , the kids are happiest when there is a functioning TV within a 500m radius, and as holiday planner and executer I am happiest when I get to live my ‘Discovery Travel and Living’ fantasy. With such diverse demands from a holiday, the immediate future looks rather bleak. Still, we have to complete what we have embarked upon.

Ruins : The first few days are spent in a city with a glorious past that is steeped in culture and heritage. My heart begins to race, not at the thought of walking the very grounds where chariots once raced and where valiant gladiators once tore lions to shreds with their bare arms, but from trying to keep a certain 3 year old from reducing the carefully preserved ruins of centuries past to rubble by alternately climbing, stomping and poking the fragile structures with bare limbs. I feel the urge to flee the eternal city if it is to stay that way for posterity.

Museums are not free from risk of damnation from us too. The details and imperfections of the human body, masterly recreated by renaissance artists and sculptors are sniggered at and mocked at without discretion. Reason – “Mom! Why are all these people nangu? Why did the artists forget to put clothes on them?” We are left with no option but to flee scene, lest the entire Indian race be seen as philistine.

Forts are dismissed as drab, churches are branded as garish, monuments are written off as repetitive and identical by know-it-all 9 year old. By now my heart has begun to bleed at the hours of research and planning gone to naught, and the pointlessness of the funds sunk into this holiday already.

Ruined limbs :
Museums and ruins are not for us. It has to be the glorious outdoors then. We hike, we bike, we walk, we jog just as the fit anchor on the travel channel does, without messing her make-up or even a strand of hair on her head and after a hard day even has the time and energy to change for dinner. I hold her entirely responsible for the state of ruin we find our delicate limbs in. We city slickers are better off watching the travel channel, exercising our thumbs on the remote and leaving the hiking and trekking to those anchors. They atleast get paid for it.

By now we are whining with nostalgia about home, the comforts of separate rooms for adults and kids, the friendly neighbourhood masseuse, the driver who ferries us all over and above all the din and bustle, smells and sounds of home. Did I say we wanted change? Nay!

Holiday Resolutions
Every year we end the holiday by making a new resolution each.

Husband : Will never do a family holiday again (he finds board meetings more relaxing!)

9 year old S : Will never do a holiday with N again

3 year old N : Will never stop rebelling, mostly without a cause

Me : Will continue planning family holidays...A day will come when holidays will be filled with fun, relaxation, enjoyable family times, picture perfect family photos...till then I shall persist!

Happy Mothers Day

I remember reading Oscar Wilde saying ‘All women end up becoming like their mothers – it is their tragedy; and no man does – that is his’. I can’t comment on the man part, but if someone told me during my growing years that I would end up like my mother, I would have scoffed.

I grew up wanting to be as unlike my mother as possible .Those days I felt everything about my mother was either too much or too little – too much love, too much control, too little freedom, and so on. The onset of adulthood left little time to think about mom – grappling with career choices, managing the widening circle of friends, and the ponderous thoughts of choosing a life partner. But mom continued her relentless micro management of my life – ‘your hair was better when I did the washing’ or ‘your clothes are not appropriate for this occasion or that’ or ‘if you eat like this, you will not be strong enough to bear kids and raise them’.

Marriage happened and with marriage came new relationships and new responsibilities. Yes! This could be the turning point, I thought, where mom lets go of her iron grip. I was after all in safe hands now as she herself admitted – (It baffled me, how she’d rather trust new son-in-law than old daughter).

But habits die hard – my marital status didn’t deter her! She was now constantly coaching me on how handle to each new relationship, especially the ‘other woman’, also known as mother in law. To be honest, I found it easier to handle new mother in law than the old mother.

Was it just my mom or was there some underlying behavioural pattern to all mothers? I simply had to find out, so over a quickly put together crib session cum lunch with gal pals, I discovered that it was indeed a universal phenomenon – moms had to control and daughters had to rebel against control, and they keep getting drawn towards each other for more of the same.

Time took me to the next stage in my life cycle - motherhood. Please note, no amount of reading up or pre-natal classes prepares one enough for the first mind numbing wails of the new born, the first hiccup, the first signs of colic, the first vaccination....the list is endless. I noticed my wall of strength who vowed in the presence of god almighty to stay by my side in sickness and in health and in good times and in bad, was fainting and crumbling outside the delivery room when I most needed him; he refused to hold the baby for the first three months for fear of hurting her.

Suddenly I needed mom. I could think of no one better to turn to but her. Mom’s word is gospel now. I follow her instructions to the t, however archaic they may seem in comparison to the numerous fancy books on childcare I have read in the past 9 months. I bathe, feed, medicate, and even eat as she instructs, all in the interest of the baby’s well being. I exchange notes with her on how she handled my own infant days, what thoughts and emotions went through her then, what dreams she had for me and so many other things that I hadn’t bothered finding out all these years.

As my child grows, I find my dependence on mom only increasing. I start looking forward to her visits more than ever, venting my anxieties, frustrations and fears within minutes of her arrival. The husband points out gently that I have become everything I have always accused my mother of being - hyperactive, paranoid, worrisome and controlling. I shrugged – what would someone without a uterus know about how to raise a child.

Pondering later, I take what husband says as a compliment - if I turn out to be half the mother to my daughter as my mother was to me, I will have achieved something. I feel (with all due respect to Oscar Wilde) it is every woman’s tragedy if, in fact, she DOES NOT end up becoming like her mother.

Happy mother’s day to all the mothers I know.