My Mother Figure – My Better Half
Editor’s note :
As most regular readers of the Times of Amma know, the month of May is when we celebrate our mothers with guest posts from readers and friends on one of the most special women in their lives. This May though, we focus on Mothers of a different kind - this May is about celebrating those who nurtured and nourished us without really being our mothers. This month we celebrate the Mother Figures in our life.
In this rather unusual edition, Ramya tells us how her husband is the mother figure in her life.
The moment I saw a post from Shweta about Mother Figures, I jumped at the opportunity to write about a person who is the epitome of that for me. I just realized that I have never acknowledged that I consider him as caring as a mom. Well!! He will know when he reads this! Who is a mother? In wiki terms, she is the female parent of a child who may or may not be a biological offspring. In my simple words, it’s a person who cares for you and looks out for you. I have many such people in life who are always wishing well and praying for joy and prosperity for me. One prime mother figure for me is my friend from 16 years; my better half. A bit of a flashback here – We met on a casual day when we were in college 16 years ago, a weird sense where I thought he was a friend’s friend and asked him if he was. He had this feeling that I was coming on to him (surely no!!). We talked/became friends and then I realized that he was in no-way the person I thought (read as judged... which everyone does, right !!) he would be. I never dreamt that this relationship would last for 16 years and counting. 8 years of knowing him and then 8 years as his better half. Marrying my best friend was the best thing I ever did. He knows every bit of me from teenage to adulthood. He's seen everything that I have gone through so far and my support system day in and day out. I won’t say we are a perfect couple, we have our ups and downs where we have fought our heads out and threatened each other with different strange things. We’ve had our melting and boiling points to extreme limits which includes pulling off each other’s hair (just kidding!!). But the least we know is that we can’t live without each other however annoying each of us are. He always takes the initiative to make every fight better. I've been through emotional lows and crazy highs, and he has been my shoulder to cry and laugh on. He's been a mother to me at every low and a friend at every high. As crazy as life can get, he has always been there for me. We live in Singapore, away from parents who are in India. When I got pregnant, I was top of the moon scared (read as high level panicky!!). We decided to have our baby in Singapore as I wanted to be where my husband was as I was comfortable in sharing my feelings about the baby with him. We also decided that he will get an equal share of my pregnancy hormones if I was with him. He has been my pillar of strength at every doctor’s checkup where I squash the last tip of patience out of him with my silly (scared) theories. Every time a strange thing happens to my body, he immediately reads the gist from the pregnancy books and tells me a brief about it – exactly the lesser extreme of what I need to know. I left it to him to worry about the extreme cases on the book. Not a single moment in the 9 months did I feel that I was away from my parents. On the day of delivery, he was a star who helped me sail through my 15 hours of labor like a pro (of course with hurt palms after my insane contraction squeezing). Our journey as parents started and I still eat his head when I get sick or if something doesn’t go my way. He goes that extra mile to make sure I get it sorted. He cares for me like my mother at every instance and that’s what makes him my special Mother Figure. I am not very good at writing poems; I don’t know how to rhyme but I just write what I feel like from my heart. Here is one that I dedicate to my husband who has been more than a mother to me… He is rustic, but there is charm, He is reserved, but there is importance, He is bold, yet delicate, He is strong, yet benevolent! There is care that I want to cherish, There is preference that I want to be proud of, There is love that I want to treasure, There is chemistry that I want to preserve!
Ramya is a Chennai girl who has lived in Singapore for more than a decade now. You can follow her on Instagram here. Stay tuned to the Times of Amma on Facebook and Instagram for more stories on Motherhood, Mother-figures and the different versions of a Mother's love.
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