Our parents spoilt us rotten.
No, we didn’t get everything we demanded as we grew up. We didn’t have wardrobes bulging with clothes and we didn’t have oodles of pocket money. We didn’t have the freedom to stay up until the wee hours and then sleep until noon on holidays. And we didn’t escape from household chores. Whether we liked it or not, we had to help out, especially on weekends when a massive amount of work was done to cater for weekdays and everyone’s employment schedules.
All considered, our childhood was pretty disciplined and sane — but we got spoilt when we were adults. Because, as we entered our thirties and forties and beyond, our parents aged naturally and gracefully; they stayed active, and made no demands on us. When we went home for holidays, somehow the table was as laden as we remembered from our youth. Mother was busy and so was father.
We thought that a lot of the stuff they did could be done by paid helpers — and they should put up their feet and relax. Wisely, they ignored what we said and continued to do things themselves.
When they visited our homes, we wanted to give them a break from the everyday routine. “Lie abed until mid-morning, linger over a book or the newspaper, chat with your friends,” we suggested. Instead, they got involved in our day-to-day activities. Rising early and fetching the newspaper from the gate, inspecting the plants to help them survive our neglect, stringing beans and de-veining prawns for a party — they did not let us feel they had done their share of work in their time and now it was our turn to keep the boat afloat.
Win-win situation
It was not that our parents had no interests beyond the basic running of a household. They had brought us up to create time to develop our hobbies and interests and they had never compromised on their talents either — and thus they understood that it was a win-win situation if many hands made light of the work. For, once the chores were done, all of us could play a game of Scrabble or take that walk through the park to spot some birds or stand around the piano and give ourselves up to the music mother played...
Their seventies came and went and inevitably they slowed down in their eighties — but they didn’t lose their interests — in us, in other people and the outside world. They did not ask querulously, “Where were you?” when we returned from a jaunt. Instead, they wanted to know what we had done, whom we had met and whether we’d had a good time. It was not petty gossip that kept them going but genuine concern for others: a desire to know how someone’s violin classes were progressing and someone else’s mussaenda bush had fought whatever blight had hit it...
While others allow their universe to get smaller as they age and become self-absorbed and self-centred, even in their illnesses, our parents’ concern was for their caregivers — and they never lay back and waited to be waited upon. They would rather sew a button or shell peas to keep their hands moving than have a physiotherapist come in to aid functional mobility...
They had the wisdom, the will and most of all, the heart, to do it. And that is how they spoilt us.
For, not only is theirs a tough act to follow as we age, but while others accept that old age makes a person’s world contract and close in around them until they are the only ones within, we find it difficult to understand and accept those among the elderly who would rather sit back and let the world work for them.
Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.
