Mother Merry!

 

It’s your birthday today. As birthdays go, it’s a weekday, but for you it’s a special one. You are celebrating a milestone that not too many people reach.

What do I write about a mother who has seen me as a snotty-faced kid, as a chubby, bespectacled youth without direction, and as a bearded man who writes about wines (couldn’t you find something better like buttermilk?)? What do I write about a mother who effortlessly brought up three children in a tiny house, coped with an irascible mate who was like putty in front of her, and who dotes on her grandchildren and the children of all her nephews and nieces like her own? What do I write about a wizard cook who made even the simplest dal-chawal into something Michelin inspectors might fight over?

Know what? I won’t really write about all that. Nor will I write about how you maintained a stoic façade when I left home for a better future. I will write about how you find joy in the smallest of things. I will write about how you love to feed everyone who visits. And I will struggle to put into words that feeling of emptiness I get when I end my call to you, even though we spent the entire call gossiping about some distant cousin of yours, who I have never met. Although I know I will be calling you again in a day or two. Simply because I want to hear you laugh at my terrible jokes.

You have seen highs and lows. You are my go-to when I just want to hang out with someone who doesn’t despair at seeing me wearing shorts. You are the inspiration for those moments of despair, those periods of stagnation when I ask myself questions to which I don’t have answers. You are the person who gives my day a reason to get out of bed.

I wait for those days when we both are chilling on the swing at home, knocking back a cuppa, and I badger you about what’s for lunch. But you just had breakfast! Why don’t you do something about your weight!

Happy birthday mom. They don’t make ‘em like you anymore. They never did.