Aisha

That vivacious happy little thing is the biggest wonder of my life. My daughter.....how I love to say she is my daughter, love to claim her as my own. And as she grows she creates in me the need to love her more than the previous day, the urge to live only to love her as if she is my very source of sustenance.

The sound of her laughter filling the house, her incessant baseless demands for say, a torn piece of paper or the cap of a medicine bottle, her mispronounced words like 'peeese' to 'please' or 'sol-ly' to 'sorry' or even better...the air escaping from the gaps of her teeth when she tries to pronounce a word that has an 's' or 'z' to it, the sight of her soft plump feet happily tapping on the floor as she saunters from one room to another, her holding you by the finger and pulling you to the fridge to give her her heart's desire: chocolates!!, her promptly coming near you to check your temperature if you say you're not feeling well, her emotional cajoling when you are mad at her....all these make me long for her to madness!!!

and whew! Her constant wish to hear nursery rhymes on youtube or worse, when she demands to be sung to...that's when you actually feel like your teeth's gonna fall off. She wouldn't want you to stop.

Best is when daddy dear sings...the lyrics are all wrong. And when he runs out of rhymes it is the occasional hindi or english song and aisha is all "na na nah".

Of late, with yet another little babe on the way, I haven't been able to attend wholly to her. And because of that anger keeps fuelling in me. Baseless as it might sound somehow it makes me feel she would stop wanting mama's attention after asking for it so much and not getting it. I fight hard to keep up to her needs and demands but as the pregnancy nears full term my physical self fails.

I have learnt that where motherhood can be constant sacrifice it can also be an extremely abnormal jealous need to guard her child from someone who tries to come too close to her (I think that arises from the fear of being outsted from her position of motherhood !!).

Where motherhood can be unconditional love, it can also be unconditioned anger towards her child for reasons a mother would best keep to herself.

Where with the onset of motherhood a woman could love every child she comes across, she could also be this most thoughtless selfish woman god could ever create!!

Personally speaking, I also know that besides all these qualities that have percolated down into my veins with the onset of motherhood, I do not want my children to be indebted to me because I am their mother. Neither do I want them to be dutybound towards their parents or be burdened by filial obligation. The only bond that should bind them to us must be love and love alone.