I’m turning into my mother!
Motherhood is a shapeshifting entity that should stop being oversold
There is no sound as satisfying as the crashing of a longheld taboo. If you pay attention—and if the infernal neighbourhood construction activity allows—you’ll hear the cracking of an ancient tradition. Somewhere in the building, a boy is putting on a dress for fun. Down the road, a grandmother is telling her husband he can pour his own tea, for god’s sake! And round the corner, a lawyer is escaping to Goa to open a bar (ill-advised, though we won’t tell him that yet). But we still can’t knock motherhood. Especially not around Mother’s Day.
Socially-sanctioned hearts
It’s hard not to think about the motherhood question after watching The Lost Daughter, the Elena Ferrante novel adapted into an Olivia Colman/Jesse Buckley film. It does what few other works of popular culture have done before: it takes your head and dunks it in the waters of maternal ambivalence for two long and discomfiting hours that are also swift and liberating. It makes you truly feel the paradox of loving your children with all your heart, but wanting nothing more than to reclaim your body, mind, time, home, and life. It’s a dirty little secret that some mothers hold in their socially-sanctioned hearts; for others, it’s a neon sign hanging over their overburdened heads.
Happy thought for a weekend morning? Okay, my apologies. Allow me to steer us to my own childhood, a time and place rich with comic potential, usually of the darker variety. I grew up in a house filled with women; paternal grandmother, mother, an older sister and a younger one. Here’s the clincher: neither of the older women was ever a preacher for the pure and endless joys of motherhood. In fact, quite the contrary. Phew.
P Embracing your inner panda
Watching Pixar’s Turning Red was a cathartic experience. (It’s odd how these days we get our psychology from animated movies and politics from stand-up comedy.) To see a thirteen-year-old Chinese Canadian, Mei, grappling with puberty, and another quite literal inner beast, takes you back to a time so many of us spent in confusion and misery without even knowing it. In a sequence towards the end, Mei and her mother—both transformed into their inner, angry red pandas—scream and flail at one another mid-air. Chronically conflictaverse, it was a great release to see the power dynamic between mother and daughter being reset in that primal, untidy, taboo way.
We see mothers on-screen all the time. Somehow, they’re still either the virtuous kind, buying the right kind of cooking oil to prove their love for their families, or the “selfish” type, constantly scrubbing themselves clean of any remaining maternal instinct in fancy salons. So, when a film with a wide reach shows mothers as messily human, it’s radical. For one, mothers never stop being
daughters themselves—whether obedient or rebellious, cold or caring, worshipful or resentful—or any combination thereof. This painfully self-evident truth needs a spotlight on it.
MOTHERS NEVER STOP BEING DAUGHTERS—WHETHER OBEDIENT OR REBELLIOUS, COLD OR CARING, WORSHIPFUL OR RESENTFUL
The Importance of Being Honest
It is, however, heartening to see mothers in the public eye own their diverse stories with swag. We have Malaika Arora flaunting her love life without it being an impediment to her other identities. Neena Gupta has long been a model for motherhood on one’s own terms—without ever glorifying the role unduly.
And Sunny Leone—admirable for her intelligence and grace but perennially chased by ignorant stereotypes—publicly embracing the role of mother with ease.
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” So says the eternally quotable Oscar Wilde in his satire of Victorian mores, The Importance of Being Earnest. I’ve come to the uneasy conclusion that what cannot be stopped gracefully should be accepted kicking and screaming. In my case, it’s the gene that makes me the most excitable person in the room. The embarrassing need to enact scenes while narrating a story, bringing even inanimate objects and abstract feelings to life. Waking up at the crack of dawn for no known reason and uttering strange sounds in the presence of cute creatures. Liking food served in hospitals— and cooking that way, too. Thankfully, I am neither a compulsive cleaner nor planner. But let’s save that for Father’s Day.