Category: Mothering
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Mother’s Day And Motherhood
“I’ll get it Amma…” The snippet was part of some inane conversation in the morning as we bustled around getting ready for school and work. I would have missed it had it not been for the funny flips my heart did when I heard Amma instead of mommy. Motherhood, for me, is the destination of…
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Mother’s Day: The Missing And The Worrying
The late evening sun slants through my open window. It is not yet the kind of Spring I long for. The temperatures hover in the 50s, not cold, not warm. Sometimes a wind blows, the wet kind that harks back to the ill wind that the books I grew up on talked about. The apple…
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Ten Years. Many Lessons.
This week marks ten years since we went from being a couple to parents of twins. Each year I struggle with marking the day. Obviously, it is of import to me. It also is of import to my children in ways I cannot measure or understand. I consciously stay away from anything celebratory. I…
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One Walk At A Time
It is growing dark. Pattu’s flashlight bobs up and down in the dusk. I am walking beside her and watching her try to stamp on the beam’s focal point. It is like watching a dog chase its tail. Exhausting and entertaining at the same time. I throw a question at her and hope to catch…
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Becoming Our Mothers
In the midst of stir-frying a melange of vegetables for my children’s’ lunchbox, I reach out for my phone. I shake the pan on one hand and scroll through my FB feed on the other. I set the pan down and lean on the kitchen counter as I catch up on writing-related posts. Next up…
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Mother’s Day: Gratitude
Pattu enters through the garage, her backpack sliding off her shoulder and her right hand clutching a patterned paper bag. I reach out for it and she holds back, her smile leaking through her eyes. She hands me her backpack instead and heads right for her room. Ammu walks in next and brushes past me…
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Mommy, Mommy: The Soundtrack To My Life
My hands circles her tiny body, my face pressed against her back as she sits and turns the pages of the Llama Llama book I got from the library. Her voice falls up and down, the cadence of it lulling me into a sense of bliss. I am almost asleep when she abruptly flings my…
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Like A Wrecking Ball
I look at the dusk setting just outside the window of my dining room. The soles of my feet hurt from standing tad too long in the kitchen. My back aches from all the pots and pans that would not fit in the dishwasher. I am tired. I long to walk outside. To feel the…
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Deconstructing Self Worth
Collected in The Smudged Hyphen (2026). I sit between two women at the tae kwon do class my twins are at. We trade smiles each time one of us turn toward another. We are tentative, jabbing, probing with our eyes, ears and spidey senses to see if there will be a connection. We have forty…
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BBC Asia Radio Interview
The alarm went off at 3:00 AM and I stood sipping coffee in the cool back patio of my sister’s home while my Amma sat on the recliner inside listening intently to the radio online. She made a picture. Her eyes narrowed in focus, her glasses perched midway on her nose. Her coffee cup sat to…