From lucky uterus to Mother Emeritus

Having a child is similar to undergoing a lobotomy. Before an army of mothers attacks me with soiled diapers, let me make it clear that this statement is backed by scientific research. Scientists at Leiden University scanned women’s brains during and after pregnancy and saw significant changes in the brain’s architecture. They believe that these alterations are what makes a mother prioritise her child’s demands over all other tasks. It basically compels her to stop being the Sherlock Holmes of her own story and go straight to playing Mrs Hudson, the landlady of Holmes’ Baker Street flat.Medium108412173 Technically, these neurological changes should revert to their previous stage once the baby doesn’t require immersive care, but the brain is a creature of habit. The neural connections that place the child front and centre continue strengthening, and we find ourselves pivoting around our children long past the time they need our single-minded dedication.This revelation struck me right after a phone call with a health insurance agent. The wheezy man was explaining why my premiums were increasing this year and being part Gujarati, this was causing me physical distress. Wondering if I should move to a cheaper plan with fewer allocated GP visits, I asked him, ‘Can you tell me how often my two dependents on the plan have used their allotted visits?’In a stilted British accent, he stated he could give me my daughter’s information but not my son’s. ‘He is not a minor so he would have to give you access to this information. We can’t compromise his privacy.’The Indian mother in me was immediately offended. Does this white man not know that there is no such thing as privacy within our households? We tell people it’s called a joint family to make it sound palatable. Technically it should be called a conjoined family — with one head, a dozen chattering mouths and multiple limbs, all stitched up together.Medium108412174 I protested, ‘But he is my son! All his organs that come under your policy have been created by me.’ But the agent stuck to his stance.When I messaged my son for access to his account, I received a curt reply, ‘Mom, I have used only four visits in the entire year, and you know that because you insisted on coming with me for all of them! While I am happy to answer all your questions, I am not giving you my password. I am 21, not 12; I can handle my own things.’He has been pushing back for a while, but this year, the boundaries seem to have grown from chalk lines on the ground to looming electric fences.That evening, my diary had a maudlin entry: ‘A mother is like a pack of cold cuts with an expiry date stamped across it. After that period, you are simply forgotten at the back of the fridge till someday you rot and have to be discarded’.Sitting around scrolling through the news, I noted that the inspiration behind the entire Succession series, Rupert Murdoch, had finally retired and handed over the company to his son. He still retained an honorary title of ‘chairman emeritus’.‘Perhaps I should also retire from this motherhood business and just keep an honorary title. ‘Mother emeritus’ does have a nice ring to it,’ I told my husband, expecting sympathy.Instead, he said, ‘What are you moaning about the empty nest when our daughter is still here, and you seem to always be busy working anyway? And what does this emeritius-demritus mean, can’t you just use normal words instead of being a maha pakau all the time?’It was no point telling him that it didn’t matter that I have a company to run, a book to finish, columns to write, and a younger child’s hair to detangle, mothering my eldest had been such a big part of my life that now that he didn’t need me, I felt completely useless.Remember that neural rewiring we discussed at the beginning? Those pathways were clearly having an existential crisis.While there are hundreds of books on how to deal with babies, toddlers and teenagers, there are very few resources on how to continue being a mother when your child has left his childhood in the rear-view mirror. I decided to tap into someone who has had almost 50 years of experience in the business — my mother.Over dinner, eating the parwal that she had insisted on heaping onto my plate, I said, ‘Mom, my job is to take a bullet for my child. Why do you think I spent all those years practising by giving your grandson a nerf gun and standing within range? And now I have no say in anything he does! When I give him advice, he says I am nagging!’‘But you do the same thing,’ she said, ‘every time I tell you about your hair, or try to fix it just before we are stepping onto the red carpet, you push my hand away and say you can do it yourself, so why are you complaining now? And weren’t you the one who once told me that unsolicited advice is just interference. Good, that you are getting a taste of your own medicine.’Disgruntled but trying to look at the bright side, I had to concede that humble pie does taste better than parwal and is also calorie-free. But this talk with mom gave me a clue on how to approach the problem. I didn’t have to put myself in my son’s shoes to understand the situation. I just had to make a list of all the ways I feel my mother tries to coddle me and ensure that I stop doing the same to him. Number one being not fidgeting with his hair. And the unsolicited advice-interference part is true. We don’t go around randomly telling our friends that they need to take vitamin D, then go buy it for them, insist they have it in front of us, and check their mouths to make sure they have swallowed it. But we often do things like these to our children even when they are closer to middle-age than to puberty.Our adult children do not need other adults hovering around them. They need supportive friends, and if we want to continue being a part of their lives, then we should assume that position or, like the Chinese, write petitions to make offspring visits a constitutional right.Though I have an undeniable compulsion to hold on to my children, it would be wise to remember that they are like the air stored in my lungs, in my custody for just a moment before the next exhalation. This may not be an entirely correct analogy because unlike breaths we can’t keep popping babies in and out constantly. I suppose we are more like catapults. A catapult’s job is not to feel the absence of the stone, but to let it go, and then find satisfaction in how well it was guided towards the right trajectory.