How to become the coolest mom!

Time flies really fast! There was a time when I brought my son for his annual dental check-up. Today the young adult dragged me for the long neglected dental problem. I loved this role-reversal.

“Why are you so nervous?” He grasped my hand.

“I am not nervous.I just hate to wait outside the dentist. Is it really long or may be the time just stretches itself a bit… I don’t know….it is still a mystery to me.”

“Remember when you brought me here as a child?You brought those quiz-time cards along and we played the quizzing game. You made the waiting time our fun time. May be because of that I developed an interest in quizzing.”My son is an ardent quizzer and has won many accolades in school, College and even at the national level quiz competitions.

Nothing has been more intriguing to me than revisiting my son’schildhood with him. We were living the good old stress-free days again. Some made us laugh together and some brought tears in my eyes. Our chat was interrupted when a mother-son duo walked through the door.

After the initial formalities, the mother-son took a seat. Without wasting a moment, mother took out a phone from her bag and handed it to her son, “lo…shanti se baithoaurkhelo(sit quietly and play)”. She then took out another phone, and got busy on it.

The quietness engulfed us too. Silently we were watching them, son playing some game and mother was perhaps watching a video. After a few minutes, my son broke the silence. “You remember Ma once I was really angry with you and had said that you are the world’s cruelest mom.”

“Is it? Really? No… I don’t remember.” 

“You had refused to buy PS2 for me and instead got a new badminton set for us.”

“Oh that!…I remember…. you were really mad at me that day. Then you told me that all your friends used to rave about the PS2 games and youfelt left out in their conversations.That I remember. But I didn’t remember that you named me the cruelest mom.” I smiled.

“Papa had gone to USA. You both had decided to gift me an iPad 1 on my birthday which he got from there. I was the first one to own an iPad in my class. But again I had to coax you to buy the games in it. But willingly got the permission to download the books.”

We again started talking about the games we played, the books we read, the holidays we took, and the time we spent together. Monopoly, mastermind, carom-board, ludo, snakes and ladder, brainvita, zinga, badminton, cycling, antrakshiri, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Roald Dahl’s…there were many. The family time, the bonding, the games, the win and the teasing after a loss; so many years of memories of good old days, still so fresh in our mind.

Suddenly he became serious and affectionately held my hand, “Thanks Ma for being such a cool Mom. If you were not strict with the gadgets then my childhood would have been really lonely, only me and my gadgets. I wouldn’t have had such an amazing memory of my growing up years and the time we all spent together.”

I looked in the direction of the other mother-son duo sitting in the room and imagined ten years hence they visiting a dentist together. I could not help ask myself, “What will they talk about?”