April AToZ Challenge Day 4- D is for Daughter

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

For me D is for daughter. I know it sounds kind of silly when I say it now, but even before my doctor confirmed my pregnancy I knew that a little life was growing in my belly and sometimes when my husband was out of the house, I used to stand in front of the mirror and talk to my stomach. Of course if my husband had seen me doing it, then he would have thought that the pregnancy was making me go bonkers.

But the truth is that I sincerely believe that there is an invisible bond between me and my daughter. Most of the times when my daughter demands that she needs her Amma(mother) and not her Appa(father) for even the smallest of her chores, it exasperates me. But there are times when my heart swells with love and pride. I share a strong bond of love with my mother and I wish that my daughter perceives me as a friend and is comfortable sharing her secrets or problems with me. I do realize that as a parent it’s walking a fine line. Being a parent and being a friend to your child is not easy!

Few months back my husband and I had some tough days when my daughter developed fever. Those nights were terrible, with me being awake and applying a wet cloth on her forehead in a bid to get her temperature down. It broke my heart to see my daughter in that condition. And suddenly I remembered a passage that I had read in a book by Khaled Hosseini in ‘And The Mountains Echoed’.

The main character in the book, Pari, is thousands of kilometers away from her child, when she hears the news, through her husband, that her daughter is showing symptoms of childhood leukemia. Anxious and nervous-wreck, she concludes that her decision to become a parent had been a reckless and irrational thing, because when you become a parent you are just increasing your odds of heartbreak.

That’s what I felt that night, holding my shivering daughter in my arms and trying to pacify her. Because there is no grief that is as heartbreaking as losing your child. Let me not write too much about the depressing stuff because being a parent is a joyous thing too.

Seeing my daughter grow, seeing her pass the different milestones, seeing her go to school fills my heart with love. I have so many dreams for her but I also want to give her the freedom to choose. I want her to fall down and learn from her mistakes. I don’t want to smother her with my love but I want to let her know that I will always be beside her to support her, to pick her up when she falls, to motivate her to fly and achieve.