Its been 18 years, of having to run back to a person I call my home. Its been 18 years of tireless efforts to better me. Its been 18 years of spoiling me and saving me from the world.
Its been 18 years of being my Mother.
Understanding me when I don't feel like leaving my bed and making my favourite breakfast when I come back home after three months.
She is the woman who won't let me drive her on a two wheeler, because she doesn't want to get the feeling that her pampered kid has grown up so fast and gives you a million instructions while driving a car, even though she herself doesn't know how to.
Who needs an alarm when you've got your mother's good morning kisses and who needs a damn award when you have got that smile on her face?
Right from waking up to her face to telling her your school stories and eating an extra roti just because she feels you are hungry to getting to hear her voice for only15 minutes everyday is the price you pay for growing up.
Maybe you are too busy making a living, maybe you feel you need your space and you zone out for a week straight. Maybe you have your best friends to always fall back on and you party all weekend without checking your phone.
But there will always be a woman, sitting by her phone, wondering why you haven't returned her calls yet. Because maybe thats the only thing she has to look forward to throughout her day and maybe because you will never understand how it is to have a part of you away from you 340 days a year.
Time and again, life will knock us down. For everything that happens to you, there are your mother's arms. Waiting for her child to come back home, waiting to listen to all your stories and waiting for you to spend those few days with her that she will keep on reviving till the next time.
I hope you call her today, I hope you call her every time something good happens in your life, and tell her all the little things that make you happy and how much you miss her. And I hope the next time you meet her, you take her on a date. Brewing coffee and the smile that you don't see enough and make her feel like you are only hers, for a day.
There isn't a thing else she would ask from you.
The kind of love that makes you feel like you belong, to a home. A home, which is not a place or a destination, but a person.
For her, an infinite times over.
