The after-effects of mom guilt show up even decades later
At 63, my mother does a startlingly good impression of a sullen, obstinate teenager who wants to hole up in her room watching shows all day, while I’ve taken on the role of the worried parent trying to cajole her into going out and socializing (oh, how the turntables!).
Just a few months ago, in fact, I undertook the task of trying to persuade her to respond to an old friend who’d been trying to get a hold of her for weeks. When I broached the topic, my mother was glued to the TV, watching her favourite Youtuber make mutton biryani. “Mama, he’s texted you at least five times to ask when you’ll be free to call,” I ventured. “Why aren’t you texting him back?” Too captivated by the marinating mutton, she shushed me.
I tried again, this time making a robust case for why it was important to keep in touch with her friends, how dejected her friend must feel, and how she’d probably feel lighter by the end of it. But before I could complete my monologue, my mother pch-ed irritatedly at me: “If I call him, he’ll want to speak for two hours. I don’t enjoy that.” So saying, she turned back to the TV and hit play, signalling the end of the discussion.
Occupation: Mom
It’s not like my mother was ever the epitome of sociability before motherhood, but she still had a few work friends in her corner and would frequently spend her lunch breaks with them, gossiping, laughing, bickering. This changed when she became a mom.
To ensure that my brother—who has a physical disability and can’t function independently—was fed on time, and that I wasn’t left alone with a nanny for too long, she’d hurry home to us after her full-time teaching job. Once she’d tended to us, there’d be an onslaught of chores: taking me for my biweekly Kathak lessons, going grocery shopping, preparing garam nashta, ensuring the house was neat and tidy. It didn’t help that my father, albeit a very active, involved parent, had to relocate to another city for work when I was eight, and could only make bi-monthly visits. Very soon motherhood turned into her second full-time job.
As a child, all of this seemed like run-of-the-mill parenting to me; it’s only in hindsight that the sheer enormity of what she managed and what she had to sacrifice to do it, has dawned on me. Now, I realise that somewhere along the way, my mother became… just my mother. No longer a person outside of us, with interests and aspirations of her own. And with no time to form a broader community and friendships that require proactive effort and regular phone calls to survive. So our house was never flooded with guests, outings were few and far between, she lost touch with those work friends and missed out on almost all the lunch dates my classmates’ mothers would plan.
Representative photo: Still from ‘English Vinglish’
The hermit
Now six years post-retirement, my mother is in full-blown hermit mode, her life resembling a Ghibli movie, quiet mornings and all. When she’s not curled up with our attention-demanding cats, she’s watching YouTube videos, taking afternoon siestas, or managing the house with Monica Geller-like efficiency.
Sounds ideal, right? Except, she only steps out once or twice a month to have lunch or dinner with my aunt and uncle—often begrudgingly—and sighs whenever her phone lights up with a familiar name. At least when she was working, she’d see her friends at chai time in the cafeteria and be forced to make small talk with her colleagues. Even if she wasn’t thrilled about it, she was still meeting her social quota for the day. But now? There’s no compulsion to go out, no social obligations, and nobody to disturb her solitude.
I’ve tried vocalising my concerns, and my father gently pushes her to accompany him outside whenever he’s visiting, too, but she mostly dismisses both of us: “I just don’t feel the need. I’m happy being by myself.” While that may well be true, I’m also aware that she’s prone to depressive bouts—periods where she feels low, bursts into tears with little provocation, and turns inwards. She’ll deny it, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact of not having a life and circle outside the home she can turn to.
Still today, when she does go out, she complains about feeling guilty for leaving us alone. “I know you can manage by yourselves, but I still feel that way,” she shrugs when I ask her why. Perhaps it’s the residual mom guilt—that terrible feeling no mother anywhere seems to be able to escape—from 20 years ago that still haunts her. Or maybe it’s what she needs to tell herself in order for what she’s lost to feel bearable.
Like mother, like daughter
As much as I try to make this about my mother, it is really my own feelings I find hard to contend with. Her refusal to leave the house has me riddled with a strange grief. After all, there’s a version of my mother that shines in social settings: a part of her that is jovial, giggly and a little more carefree. I fear that, with her social life receding into the shadows, that version of her will someday altogether disappear, too.
I can’t ignore the pangs of resentment I feel either. I’ve been painfully shy and awkward all my life, taking time to learn social rules that others seemed to acquire effortlessly. And part of me wonders how much of it is because I rarely witnessed my mother having close friendships when I was a child. Did my mother’s reclusion shape me? Would I have turned out differently, struggled much less, if she’d modelled for me how to build connection and nurture relationships?
Sometimes I’m frustrated, especially when she’s feeling low, because it seems so… avoidable. We can’t do anything about the past, but now that she has more leisure time and freedom, why does she still refuse to take back her social life?
Representative image: ‘Tumhari Sulu’
Accepting what I can’t change
While I don’t have the answers, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that forcing my mother to do anything she doesn’t organically want to is a Sisyphean task. So even if her lack of social life isn’t ‘healthy’, I’m trying to make peace with the fact that she is happy by herself.
I still encourage her to talk to her friends from time to time, but never forcefully, and always with the understanding that it has to happen at her own pace. And if not outsiders, then I ask if she’ll accompany me—when the weather is pleasant, for instance, I’ll suggest a short walk around the neighbourhood. They’re small gestures, but hopefully, they’ll pave the path for a version of her that can find small moments of joy in being around other people.
In the meantime, I try to see the silver lining in her introversion. It makes her my knight in shining salwar kameez at family gatherings—especially when my social battery is also at 1%, and the ordeal is made slightly more bearable when we share a ‘when-will-this-end?’ look, soothed in the knowledge that at least one other person wants to get out of there as badly as we do.
