Memories To Make Their Hearts Smile

This incident happened 10 years back. My 3-year-old son refused to take the medicine (a bitter syrup) that I was holding in my hand. I sweet talked initially and finally when I was about to give up and force it down his throat.

My 5.4 year old daughter who was pedaling her tricycle came up with a suggestion. She said “Ma, Poke him in the bottom with a pin and he will open the mouth wide open. You can then give him the medicine”

My jaws dropped to the ground when I heard her suggestion. Now, where from did this 5-year-old pick up this idea. She continued pedaling and without my asking told, “You know that is how Tom does to Jerry when he refuses to take the poison. He pokes him in the bottom and when he opens his mouth to shout, he pours the poison into his mouth”.

Oh, Now I see! then it was the cartoon “Tom & Jerry” which gave her the idea.

But wait, it is not about the cartoon…

It is the same tender mind which refused to take the home-made Kheer when she was 6 or 7. Her reason was she didn’t want children.

Now a surprised me asked her what made her relate kheer with children. She replied her aunty from Bal Vihar class had recited a story from Ramayan. In the story, King Dasharath gave kheer to his wives and they bore him children after drinking the kheer. So, she didn’t want to drink the kheer and have children.

Now at 14 and 16 they laugh when I relate their childhood memories. My teens often come to me and ask me to relate their childhood stories.

“Life-long blessing for children is to fill them with warm memories of times together. Happy Memories become treasures in the heart to pull out on the tough days of adulthood” ~ Charlotte Davis Kasl

For the past 16 years, I have had many a joyous and beautiful moments as a parent. There were many pleasant moments, wonderful moments, tiring moments, frustrating moments, and proud moments and now as teenagers they give me many ‘Aha! Moments’ and revelation moments. These little ones whom I adored, pampered, admonished, cuddled have now grown up as lovely teenagers who sometimes give us advice, suggestions, help and argue with us too. After all that is what parenting is all about. Right? A mix of this and that, especially new age parenting.

Each parent would have many stories to tell about their children. These stories would have many moments which are cherishable, memorable and wonderful. Along with that many frustrating and tireful ones too. All these experiences could make each parent an author of a book.

I wish I had blogged them too some 15 years back. But, I wasn’t even aware of the blog world and hence started capturing them in stills and recorded them in an anti-fungal VHS.

I had recorded their first tumble, first baby steps, their baby talk, their rhyme time, prayer time everything on my camcorder and saved them in a VHS cassette (no CD’s then). All of them were lost when the anti-fungal cassette got corrupted. Most of the digital stills too were lost when our computer disk crashed.

But a few photos remain and along with these some written memories and some blog posts like this. It really feels nice to see young moms and dads recording their child’s milestones and lovely moments in some parenting blogs and here at Parentous. These blog posts are a wonderful read for me in my spare time and many times I am able to relate to their posts.

These blogs will survive and in later days serve to make our children’s hearts smile when they are grownups.

Asha Balakrishnan is a hardware design engineer by profession, a certified online grader for SAT, GRE, GMAT and other essays by choice, A SAHM, a blogger. Born in Chennai, brought up in Bangalore and now she calls Hyderabad her home. A mother to two teens aged 15 and 13.