I don’t know what is wrong with my family.

My 12 year old daughter tells me that her wonderful aunt(my supposedly older, wiser sister!!!!!) told her that, she would buy her sexy lingerie when she is ready to sleep with her boy friend.

Hello!!!!!..

12 yr old? who still believes in Santa? Sexy lingerie? Sleep with her boyfriend at this age?
Is that what an aunt should be telling her niece?
I am sure my sister thinks she is a pretty cool aunt..
but there is a time for everything.
Unfortunately I am stuck with this stupid family.

I remember my early teenage years in Kerala..
Malayalee aunts had some perverse satisfaction humiliating girls on the verge to become women.. Mine used to pull my t shirt down and laugh.. My sister used to join them.. they created so much of drama when I wore my first bra..I hated growing up.

I don’t want my daughters to grow through what I went through..

It is so hard to protect ones children from ones own family..

I guess, i never realized till now how profound is my need to run.
Whenever anything upsets me, my first reaction is to close myself like a clam. Then nothing can hurt me, I am safe inside my shell.
I have done this always.
It is the only way I know to survive

But I also do an excellent job in running..

4 Continents so far!

Right now, I would love to pack the bags, grab the kids and run, to somewhere unknown, away from everyone.
New life, new adventure, new challenges..
I am so tempted to do just that.

But for the first time in my life, I sit here with my laptop at 3 in the morning and am actually thinking the pros and the cons of running.

It is almost a year since i came to down under.
The bottle brush tree outside my bedroom is blooming already.. In a couple of weeks rainbow Lorikeets will come to drink the nectar. When i first came here, I used to sit in my bedroom and watch the birds. Just as I looked forward to the blooming cherry blossoms on the way to my kids school in Canada, I looked forward to the return of the Lorikeets. But that is all there that is holding me to this place..there is this need to run.. again..

I wonder where my Shangri la is
I wonder if I will ever find my Shangri la
I wonder if I there be a day I can stop running..

I don’t know when my sisters will realize that Amma has been playing the famous divide and rule game with us since we were born.
To this day there has never been a time when all four of us were talking to each other. Amma ensured that.
Everything was fine, till Amma came to live with me. although I don;t generally call my sisters or write to them, we were still in talking terms ( ie, if they call, I will at least talk!!)

Few weeks ago, she cried and told my older sister over the phone that I was mean to her!!
The thing is I wasn’t.
I had promised myself before she came over that I will not scream/yell or shout at my mother, even though her actions make me want to strangle her.I know she is old and won’t have many years left. I just wanted one chance to live with her happily.
So in all honesty, I can assure that I never ever said a nasty word to her the last 6 months..( There were days she made me so mad and I have driven pretty fast on the highway, just to calm down, but I didn’t yell at her.)
Did my sister believe me?
Of course not.
I had to endure an hour long lecture about how Amma has struggled to raise us and how much longer we will have the joy of her presence on planet earth!!
It makes me mad to receive lectures from someone who was never there for her mother to begin with. It makes me even more mad when she doesn’t even try to hear my side of the story.

so now I let the machine speak to my sister when she calls. I don’t need to hear any more lectures.

I wish there be a day the 4 of us can stand united..but miracles rarely happen..rarely..
Till then, amma keeps bullying and we let her bully us.

I am so blessed by the fact that in the absence of an actual mother in law, my mother has taken the job of my official mother in law.
I am not sure what has brought in this transformation.
Yesterday it started with the fish curry.
Amma doesn’t eat rice without fish curry. I actually drove all the way to Redcliff so I could get the freshest fish for her. ( I am an idiot, I know!!!)
I cooked the red fish curry for her in the afternoon.
( Amma hates cooking and so far the only thing she ever makes herself is coffee)

She decided to eat plain rice sans the curry.

I know she did it to teach me some lesson.
But for me it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t eat, she suffers. I am beyond caring,

Then it was the laundry. I hang them out to dry on the clothes line, she goes a few minutes later and hangs them to her satisfaction. It doesn’t matter that it is my house and my rules apply. I was so angry, but again i kept quiet.
She usually takes the clothes from the line once they are dry. She decided not to do so yesterday. And because I had assumed that she would bring in the clothes, i didn’t go and check either. There was no joy folding clothes that were ice cold, so I had to use the dryer..

This morning, she took only her clothes from the machine and hung it on the line, leaving the rest for me to do. The thing is, I have been doing the laundry all by myself all these years, it doesn’t affect me in any way to hang clothes to dry. I don’t get her point.

Now she decided to close the door to her room and hide inside. She comes out to make coffee, take the coffee to her room, close the door..It kind of make me feel that I am running some sort of hostel and not a home.
Perhaps there is another lesson somewhere here.. I don’t know what it is..
All I know right now is if i get to chose a parent again, I will never pick my mother.. I will pick my dad over and over and over Again, even if he was the most abusive father ever.

No mother should treat her children like this.
No mother should get away with this..

Amma and instructions go hand in hand. She knows everything and there for must instruct everyone how anything ought to be done..

There was a small water leak on the bedroom carpey and I had the plumber coming in to check the shower for any leakage.. He opened up the taps and was checking the water pressure. My mother felt she needed to instruct a qualified plumber how to do his job. She was sure he was doing it all wrong!!
All i did was to tell her to just let the plumber do his job. She didn’t like it.