My Views and Ideas: Life and Parenting

  “But I was listening,” we keep saying this numerous times to ourselves, to our children, and to our parents. In reality we don’t. We just keep waiting for the other person to stop speaking so that we can get over it quickly, and do what we were doing.  No one listens to anyone anymore. We are either too preoccupied in our own world, or we don’t care what others have to say. Everyone has an opinion, and is ready to offer it at a moment's notice, but very few will actually listen and absorb it. In the end we are just left with regrets of not listening to someone that mattered to us. We think about our children all the time, “ they are listening,” but do they really? I always caught myself not listening to what my parents had to say.  Yes, Papa, I am listening! Maa, I listen to you all the time! I regret it now. But that boat has sailed now. However my children are there, and I still have time to change my attitude. In the back of my head myriads of thoughts go in my hea...

  As a daughter, I feel an unspoken responsibility to care for my aging parents—people who gave their youth, energy, and love to raise me. Even now, despite their frailty, they find small, familiar ways to nurture me, the same way they always have. But as much as I try to be present for them, motherhood pulls me in another direction, dividing my time, attention, and patience between the two roles. With age, my parents seem to change before my eyes. The steady, self-assured adults I knew now appear more fragile, their needs softer but more urgent. At times, they seem childlike—vulnerable, easily hurt, craving my understanding. Meanwhile, my children, standing on the threshold of adolescence, push boundaries, test my patience, and demand constant attention. I feel stretched between these two worlds: one looking back with quiet expectation, the other rushing forward, unrelenting. The weight of being needed by two generations is exhausting. I often find myself torn between two lives—th...