Aliya Naseer Farooq
It is a busy day at home. Half the daily chores are still undone. It is almost noon. Lunch needs to be on the table. It is almost ready, just need to warm the frozen naans. Wash a couple of glasses lying on the counter. Throbbing in my temples, oh, forgot my morning pill. Hope it’s not too late. I pop it, anyways. The throbbing stops. Kids are beginning to wake up. It’s Saturday, their weekend. They all pitch in, once up. They have their work online. I have a cook and maid, both of whom are not here due to Corona and its corollaries. The house work is manageable. It is under control, 99% of the time. Yet, the sheer weight of it ALL, weighs me down. It is an unending list of tasks. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishes, washing, drying. Of course, being a human comes with its own bunch of essentials and they have to be taken care of; I am not including threading, waxing etc here.
It is 3:00 p.m post lunch and I have thrown myself on the bed – diagonally – which is what I do when I feel I might pass out or go mad if I do not immediately go horizontal. From the corner of my eye I can see the pile of winter stuff, the pile of formal eid clothes couple of other piles in the dressing room where there is no space for dressing, any longer. Yes, I see it. No, I will not get up to even touch that Pandora’s pile. For it is un ending.
I will rather close my eyes, ears, mind and whatever other faculties I possess. I will close my eyes and drift off to better climes, better times. I will pack myself a suitcase, I will put myself on an aircraft, book myself in a hotel and stroll along a beach, lose myself in a heavenly botanical garden and eat a cheese panini at a promenade in a foreign land. No duties, no responsibilities, no one calling out asking me for their socks and shirts. Things that I am supposed to put in the proper place and then hand them over to their respective owners.
It is a normal day. It is a good day. A day I am most thankful for. I know that not many have such good days. I know and give thanks for the food, health, happiness.
It is on just such a day when I am getting up after shoving the laundry into the machine and finding that my knees are the same age as me and are acting up in strange ways, when I suddenly remember the pill I forgot to pop…. It is then that my daughter comes and hugs me.
She is young. She has just woken up on a weekend after a hard week of online report writing and zoom meetings and helping me out at end of the day to wrap up in the kitchen and put out the lights. She is the light of my life. Yet, I feel myself unable to hug her back with equal love, warmth and joy. I am sweaty, I am aching and I am exhausted. I want to hug her like I mean it. I want to hug her when I am bathed and clean and fragrant and have finished all my chores but I also realise that it may be too late, by then.
So, you see, that is the dilemma. That is the pull and the push. The tearing apart of souls. The aches and pains of the flesh. The hurts of the mind.
This pandemic, I hope and pray, is not the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. I hope it shall pass. I hope the world will emerge fresh and clean, purged and purified.
Still, I need to hug my girl. Now and Here. In the laundry room, next to the pile of towels with the detergent in one hand and bleach in the other – I will hug her – I Must!
For this is it. This is life. This is today and today is all I have. I need to tell myself. I need to wrap my mind around this reality.There is no utopia out there.
I need to take a large black garbage bag and fill it with all my high-strung, sixteen year old girl’s images of a sparkling home that gleams with glint-cleaned window panes. Tiles sparkling with dettol- wiped mopping. Kitchen smelling of green apples and cinnamon. Family eating magazine worthy meals as I, a paragon of beauty, freshness and magnanimity stand with a cherubion smile on my radiant face!
Then, I need to tie up that big black garbage bag and chuck it into the large dustbin and put it out to be taken away by the garbage collector.
Yes, I need to do that and I need to do that now. So, I can hug my daughter regardless of the sweat, the flab, the grey hair, the rough hands and minus the cherubic smile. I will give her this memory of a mom
who has come to terms with her reality. My today will be her present. I will give her a mom who loves her to bits. A mom who is trying very very hard to love herself. For she is not what she hoped to be. She is always falling short. She is always at fault. She is hurt. She is broken. She aches all over. That, of course, is all in the head and none of it must show.
So, come dear daughter and take this hug. A hug from the heart and soul of a mother. This less than perfect hug from a far from perfect human is all I have to give. Please receive it in its purity, incompleteness and its fragility. For such is life, my dear, such is life.
All of you out there, who, like me, thought that one day you will have it all, be it all. Please stop. Stop right now. Start living in the moment. The here and now.
I don’t know how many messages are being transmitted by this dreadful disease right now. I am sure, there are many. Some philosophers, writers, scientists will decipher and decode in the years to come. I humbly request you to live in the now. This is the simplest message of all.One we all needed to hear, loud and clear. One we are all hearing now. Some may pay heed, others may ignore. such is the state of affairs. It always has been and always will be.
The writer is a teacher and a writer. She has written columns for English dailies such as ‘The Nation’ and ‘The Frontier Post – Lahore
