Everyone contemplates what they would do if they have only one or five or ten years to live. I would travel. I would call my high school sweetheart and tell him I still love him. I would sky dive. I would walk in the surf. I would give longer and tighter hugs. But would you do if you knew your mom had only five or ten years to live?
Would you still take that trip you’d been planning in the back of your mind for about ten years? Would you still skip out on Sunday dinners to go smoke pot with your ex-boyfriend? Would you remember the past since the future is just too scary to contemplate? Would you think about all the things she will probably miss or would think about everything she has already been a part of?
Take whatever kind of pull towards home that these thoughts conjure up inside you and then multiply that by 1,000. Now you know what it’s like to be an Indian daughter.
You know that 1991 song “Everything I Do, I Do It For You,” by Bryan Adams? Sure I guess it is supposed to be all romantic but from the first time I heard that song, I thought of my parents. If you are brown you know this old sob story. They left their upper middle-class jobs in India to come to Canada and work hard labour for 40 years in order to provide better lives for their children. And then we turn around and end up all emotionally unstable and (gasp) still unmarried.
Sometimes when I hear my mom talk about her nieces and nephews, I wonder if she is jealous that they are all married and settled. I mean at least I got my degree, but I am not exactly working a great job that she can brag to her friends about. I’m not sure how I turned out all weird and artsy and without an iota of corporate ladder ambition, but I know that it is not very brown of me.
Sometimes I think I will try and be a better daughter by meeting and dating brown people (such a bad idea, but that is a story for another entry), getting a better job, cooking Indian food and spending more time with her. It is exhausting. Most of the time I just want to cry and mope and curse the world. But there’s little time for that in between the visits, and the walks and the phone calls. Maybe that is a good thing but maybe not. The other day I found myself wondering when my life would be mine again and my instant gut reaction was in five or ten years.
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2 comments:
Oh, Preet! You are such a good daughter. I know that your mother, in the end just wants you to be happy and wouldn't want you to put your life on hold. Nothing is certain in this world. Tough decisions. You need to live your life for you, otherwise you might resent it in the future.
xo
The funny truth is that EVERYONE could die at any minute -- a freak bus accident, driver texting and driving, bad tomatoes, gas leak in your house, fire, bank robber with a Reaper complex.... We just want to pretend that we still have 10, 15, 20 years ahead of us.
So yeah, you are right, you have to live all like it's your last.
(PS, I like reading your diatribes about Britney, skinny dreams and drunken memories... just in case you run out of profundity at some point!)
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