Today my precious daughter turns 14. Readers are most welcome to send gifts to her or to her mother. (You can ping me on chat. I will share the address)
This post is not a eulogy to the bond between mother and daughter, neither it is highlighting how she has made my existence decidedly more tolerable and the rest of the stuff. This is about a confession, that I always wanted to make, about one of my deepest insecurities that I unwittingly passed onto her. I am not big on accepting my follies. So I am going to downplay it in the post.
The photo accompanying is one of the rare pictures of Devi smiling ‘unconcerned’ of her appearance. I caught it in a candid moment. In her younger days, she was a girl very confident in front of the camera. As she approached tweens she started turning hostile to the lens. If you are wondering where my verbal diarrhea is taking you, it’s a reluctant confession that I am forcing out of me. The issue is close to my heart which I have been struggling with for a major part of my life. D has been battling issues with her skin tone and her appearance for a while now. I had prepared myself for the situation of self-image and body positivity from the time she was very young. But things didn’t work out the way I had imagined. She is more or less still hung up on her looks.
So, the love letter.
Last week, a day after the school reopened after Xmas vacation, D declared that she is done with the school and her classmates. I got worried and pried. Conversation roughly was like this:
D: I don’t think anyone likes me in my class
Concerned mother: What made you think so? Your friends keep calling you after class. For me, that is good enough reason to believe you have a handful of friends
D (shyly): mmm.. not that way. Nobody likes me the other way
Confused (dumb) mother: What other way?
D: All my friends have got at least one admirer in school. I don’t have anyone
Bewildered (still dumb) mother: You are pretty good in academics and extracurricular. I am sure a lot of kids admires your abilities
D (slowly losing her patience): Not that Amma, all my friends have got at least one love letter from their admirers. I don’t have any. I am not fair. Neither do I have straight pretty hair
After my initial eureka moment, I took some time to sink in the information and then came up with a lot of explanations that only a (previously dumb and confused now totally clueless) mother can possibly think of. Teenagers are generally not receptive to our brilliant excuses, and I saw myself stonewalling. She kept her fallen face and took solace in grabbing the smartphone from her remorseful mother.
As the day approached its final moments, I shared the story with my mother. My mother unlike me is quick to her feet in such tricky situations. ‘Your darling daughter is looking only for an admirer. She didn’t specify gender or age. You admire her enough to write her a love letter. Just make sure that while whipping one up it looks pleasing enough to be from a boy of her age.’
And thus that day my FB friends, I wrote the first love letter in my life.
PS. For those who are interested in the aftermath, it worked. She has a secret admirer now :)
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