Dear Mowgli boy

You are a BIG boy now. Or so you tell me. “ Mama, Mowgli big boy. Mowgline edukanda” ( No need to carry me now). The next instant you forget this and beg me to lift you up.
These are the days when you make me go absolutely crazy with your naughtiness and at the same time make my heart swell up in love when you decide that I need some loving. These days a prayer is almost always on my lips. A plea to keep you safe and not take you away from us. At least not in our lifetimes.
You talk nonstop. Sentences. Paragraphs. The other day I was hanging out the clothes to dry, I heard a strange voice from your room. You were playing with your trucks and mixer and cars. Apparently the truck was not well, so you were miming for it. A sick voice for the truck. Then another voice for the doctor who examined the truck and decided that an injection was due. I burst out laughing and came in and hugged you hard. You pushed me away irritated at me for disturbing your game. I used to talk aloud to myself, when I heard you also do that it was so funny!
You have started speaking in English and that again is so hilarious! “I want a this”, “I come, you go”. " I no come." and other jumbled up stuff
One day your dada refused to give you his morning cuppa tea for you to dunk your biscuits in, you immediately turned away from him and said “ You go! Mowgli no your friend!”. You had to repeat it a couple of times before we understood :-)
At times we tear our hair in frustration when you refuse to obey. You challenge us to take away your toys, to give you a screw. The only thing that works is being made to stand in a corner. I don’t know when you’ll behave, when you’ll start listening to us. When I will not have to threaten to take away your toys. Maybe once the “Nice threes” start? Just hoping :-)
Sometimes, the hurt is there. That you are the object of my love and the object of my frustrations. And the two are never balanced. There are days when I can control my anger/desperateness and not direct it at you, but some days it just slips out. I get irritated with you when all you want is to spend an extra 5 minutes playing in the water. Later on I feel bad about it. But at that instance I’m not thinking rationally. Daily I try making these vows to myself. That I’ll talk to you in a sane voice even when you are doing totally insane stuff, that I’ll not snap at your dada, that I’ll smile and get through the day. Well, well well… I’m a huge work in progress in that regard!
As a society we often talk about how children hurt their parents and how they should never do that. But I think more important than that is how parents hurt their children knowingly or unknowingly. By not listening to them when they speak, by dismissing their fears/concerns , by not treating them with respect, by fighting with each other in front of them. I read this in an old copy of Reader’s Digest a lot of years back and this is something that has stayed in my mind: “ The greatest thing a dad can do for his children is to love their mother” and I will add a “vice versa “ to it. The greatest gift that parents can give their children is to love one another.
And I hope that we can do that. Till we are gone. To love each other and love you and be a family.