Like mother, like daughter

By Priya Arunkumar

Dark brown leather sandals. With a shiny gold leaf on it.

I used to wait until she removed it and would run to wear them.

Oversized, but slick and simple, most importantly warm, soft, after she wore it.

Most of the times, I used to trip and fall head first, hurting both my head and my knees. But that would make me get up, carry those sandals, close to me along all day. Dirty or otherwise.

My mother’s sandal.

It was a childish attempt of following her everywhere, a thought in childhood that without her sandal, she will not be able to go out, keep her confined at home, keep her home for all of us and maybe become her when I slip it on? She looked important and the keeper of our home.

Maybe my first step of copying her, emulating her, becoming her.

May be her first influence on me. Unknowingly. Instinctual learning. 

A duckling syndrome. 

Wanting to be her. Not wanting her to leave home, maybe.

Then came her handbag, her dressing table, her kumkum, her saree, her cupboard when opened a little, noiselessly, silently, spread her aura, her presence.

Fully engaged in the kitchen, she would sense my presence in the bedroom and yell not to open… don’t do that; how could she see so afar?

Nothing escaped her; One look at my face, she will know what I was up to. She could sense and tell what I did, then, now too. Even when she is not physically around.

There was no escaping her.

There is no escaping her.

Who gives mothers so much power?

A mother’s influence on her child is profound. Without doubt, mothers are almost every one’s first influencer. A very own customised personal influencer. Someone who freely teaches you, influences you that values are experienced first, not automatic or genetic; a lesson she taught me years back.

Its uncanny how daughters, little girls, can follow the footsteps of a mother instinctively. Most daughters pick up their mother’s habits blindly, sub consciously and with a sense of belonging; you don’t see beyond your mother when you are a baby, a child.

And then they grow up; daughters who have a way to copy, blindly follow, rebel, and as they grow up, attempt to outgrow, better?

Na, attempt. Just an attempt only.

Life teaches her otherwise. Perhaps it takes a whole life cycle, but you come back to the point where it all started… a full circle, illuminated by none other than your childhood influencer. 

One day, somewhere along the line, you will realise you are her. 

I still stare at my mother’s face in my mirror every single day.