Mother Daughter Duo Against The World

By Disha Daryani

Mother-Daughter  Duo against the world

As Esha sat there on her dining table with the longest presentation to complete, she struggled to focus as she could hear her parents Kavita and Anant arguing in the adjacent room, “This is the fifth call since morning” , complained Anant. Esha sympathized with her father; every couple of days for the past twenty-eight years of her life Esha would witness her parents fight about the same subject- her grandmother’s constant calls. Kavita would as usual say something like , “ I am not calling her, she is calling me. She’s old and alone, Anant. Why don’t you understand, I am helpless in this predicament. I cannot ignore her calls- she needs me.” Esha’s father would sigh heavily and storm out of the house to office, choosing to remain silent yet again- but she knew her father was extremely frustrated and more often than not felt like his family life was constantly dominated by his wife’s family more so his mother-in-law.

Esha loved her grandmother and was very attached to her maternal family as her father’s relatives did little to no effort to maintain any relationship with her. Her maternal family had built a cocoon for her and her younger brother Ayush-filled with love and support.They always stood like a rock to the family even if Esha’s father showed little to no gratitude from time to time. Even so she knew her father had a point, her mother would tirelessly strive to run two houses and had to be available to her grandmother at every beck and call. Her grandmother’s dependency emotionally was so high that her mother had no time for herself at all or to build a better relationship with her father as she was always exhausted from the daily chores and numerous requests from her grandmother. Her grandmother did not intentionally pool her mother in, however multiple phone calls from the building interphone to her personal cell phone and in the absence of both, her grandmother would climb down the steps to ensure she had contact with Kavita at all times meant a complete takeover. 

Her mother Kavita was the purest of souls and did everything in her power to ensure everyone was happy and had their needs met. A couple of years ago as Esha’s grandfather continued his battle with dementia- he required a huge space that could create a hospital-like set up at home and hence had to move upstairs in the same apartment complex where Esha and her family lived. Esha’s father had generously offered his spare home to his in-laws to make Kavita feel at peace that she could support her parents in this time. However, Meena, her grandmother’s interference was not a new phenomenon, even when they didn’t live in the same complex- she would call for the smallest issues. 

“Kavita-should I send you your favorite Curry and rice? Kavita- let’s go to the bank. I need to get these papers. Kavita- let’s go for a walk in the evening, Kavita- Kunal(her brother) doesn’t give me any time, he’s only running behind his wife.  Kavita- did you see how Aashna (Esha’s cousin) was dressed, Kunal doesn’t tell her anything- it gives a bad impression, Kavita this new help you hired is very snooty and doesn’t wash the utensil well” and so it would continue. The conversations were always important in her grandmother’s eyes and she wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to call Kavita to ask without giving any consideration to the time or despite knowing Kavita’s daily schedule- ensuring if she was available to chat. It was all a part of “Mothers love” as her grandmother would often refer to it and Esha would wonder if she didn’t love her mother enough or vice versa because even when she studied away at University -she and her mother would only speak once a day and it was always enough to catch up and check in if everything was alright. 

Kavita’s personal life remained non-existent. Without a career to pursue and the time to build one, when her daily responsibilities seemed to take a back seat as well and the distance with her husband, Kavita had a void to fill herself. The constant touch with her mother would make Kavita share every little detail of her day and married life, her dreams and aspirations with Meena and it came to a point where she would grapple with fear to leave Meena alone without someone talking to her even for an hour. Sometimes it would feel like she couldn’t be in the void of the connection herself without other outlets to share her thoughts and feelings and she also relied on Meena.She felt extremely sympathetic to her mother and also indebted to her for the life she had given her, the support and love she got from her mother which she believed she didn’t receive from Esha’s father and more so all the trauma that Kavita’s in-laws gave her, she could only survive because Meena was the support during her early days of marriage and during Esha’s birth.

Meena, her grandmother would not only call for errands but would take no effort to look after her health and well being. She had health problems like Thyroid and Diabetes and while she was completely mobile her day to day living also required Kavita to be present and be a full time caretaker not only for her grandfather suffering from Dementia but also for Meena, because Meena wanted to take no form of responsibility of herself either. She would eat unhealthy and greasy food, not take her medications on time which would create fluctuations in her blood pressure or heart rate and invariably Kavita would spend even more time taking care of her mother and her father from calling doctors to setting up appointments, ordering medications. Kavita couldn’t take a breather. Meena being conscious and fully able to take care of herself would get dramatic and throw a fit if Kavita lost her cool with the pressure of caretaking and say something like “I can handle myself, I don’t need you or Kunal to look after me” and then go back to sleeping all day in bed, not eating which would leave Kavita no choice but to go out of guilt and concern to ensure her mother was not going to land up in the hospital.

A relationship between a mother and daughter is known to be the purest of them all with a tenderness and love that can surpass the toughest devils, but this angled approach between Kavita and Meena made the entire family unstable in many ways. Kavita and Anant had a good relationship however struggled to connect daily because there was no space and time. Their marital problems would seep into Esha and Ayush’s lives in subtle ways as they would observe their happy parents spend their entire time doing errands for the world and not connecting with each other. Esha’s relationships would continue to demonstrate these disorganized attachment patterns throughout her life. Kavita’s brother Kunal and his family always felt the love between Kavita and Meena meant everything to Meena and Kunal would take a back seat most times because he felt that Meena would prefer Kavita to look after her. 

While Esha thought this to herself sitting at the dining table, she remembered an Instagram post she had recently come across from a Mental Health page that mentioned about a concept called ‘Codependency’. She ran to her mother’s room and initiated a conversation with Kavita telling her about Codependency.

“Codependency can be found in the full range of parental relationships: A codependent father may rely on his daughter or son to keep him mentally stable and emotionally happy. A codependent mother may rely on her son or daughter to take responsibility for her physical well-being” read Esha from an article. Her mother who seemed to almost be in tears hugged her and said “Esha, I understand what you are trying to tell me, however when it comes to your parents all rules go flying out of the window- what matters is their health and wellbeing and if speaking to me gives your grandmother a sense of peace, I am ok to make the sacrifice. She loves us all so much and has sacrificed her whole life for us including you.Don’t you ever forget those times”.

We often think sacrifice is a form of love but is sacrifice of self, love at all? If one cannot love themselves to secure a boundary and state their own needs, how is one able to truly love another and give to another. Sacrifice in all ways is a choice and while some situations demand the sacrifice to be made for a greater cause, some situations require us to evolve to a higher level of understanding around this term and build a framework that creates mutual happiness and fulfillment of one’s own needs.

Esha could understand her mother’s emotions and knew that planting the seed of awareness for her mother was important, yet she knew this was a situation at this age and stage of life could not be changed for her grandmother. She vowed to herself to learn about this concept further and find a way to ensure that the future generations would not take on such habits that could affect the lives of everyone in the family and to assist her mother  to indulge in other hobbies that would give her some happiness and  peace of mind from her constant responsibilities.

Esha also knew her grandmother Meena struggled to balance a healthy level of dependability and often  tended to overgive. She wondered about how our patterns in life are formed and could only imagine little Meena born to an affluent family, cradled in the lap of compensatory love from everyone in the family to the loss of her own mother in her primitive years. Esha felt the dynamics of love , model relationships that Meena understood and the void of a mother she tried to fill through her own children.

Love and codependency can so easily be intertwined and where to draw the lines that can create a healthy and functional environment can be a challenge. It raises questions about one’s upbringing and the ways in which one receives love from their early caregivers. Who we are today and how we participate in formulating and maintaining relationships is more often than not a direct reflection of the ways we have to learnt to give and receive in life in childhood and while most can argue familial relationships can’t be considered codependent, some of them tend to shape our lives in very different ways if not regulated. The implications of such codependent relationships without the lack of awareness and well-deployed healing mechanisms can affect relationship patterns for generations to come.

By Disha Daryani