The Difficult Decision

Some of life’s most difficult decisions are those that deal with the ones we beget. Where the head and the heart are at loggerheads with each other, where the decision of holding on or letting go takes on epic proportions, holding at stake the security and well-being of the ones we hold most dear, the decision assumes humongous significance. 

Such is life. There I was with a decade dedicated to academic development, indulging in a career which not only held significance for me as a job, a career, a sourceof financial sustenance but also enabled me to bring into effect changes in the age old rusted academic process and disseminate the light of knowledge to the widest possible section who otherwise would have been left completely deprived of the benefits of private school education. 

It was a job which was responding to the call of my being, so passionate I was about it. But in came motherhood and events conspired to put my macro dreams on shelf in quest for fulfilling my micro dream of holding my own little one in my arms. So distant and blurred became everything else that never since that day I have casted a glance back at the road left behind with regret or longing at what could have been.

But five years down, I was once again standing at the cross-roads where a decision has to be taken. The little one had just started taking his first steps into the world of other adults and perhaps it was time again for me to get back to my life’s calling.

Or, so I thought. It was easier encapsulating in my mind, going back and forth into its pros and cons with friends and well-wishers but when it actually came to taking the plunge, I had cold feet.

For starters, I did not consider anyone good enough to handle my son, in my absence. Not his father, nor my own mother, nor a trained attendant, nor a reputed day-care, nothing, nothing could measure up tothe benchmarks I had set, in my own mind, for the munchkin. And imagine, myworst fears were being dismissed by people around me, as unfounded. What if he sweatsand they fail to note andchange him promptly, what if he takes a fall and I am kept in the blind, what if he falls sick and I am unable to avail leave, what if he slowly forgets me and starts showering the same wet kisses and sloppy fingers on someone else? These were scary teasers to a prelude keeping my son tied to my apron strings for the longest time.

Till one fine day in the playground, the difficult decision was taken, for me, by someone else. My son turned to me and said “Mamma, I would be right here, even if you take a detour and come back. Do not worry, I won’t go anywhere”. I realized that I was afraid, deep inside that if I lose him out of sight, he might dissipate like a bubble but no, and here he was solid, concrete and stable. My job in the formative years were done. Now it was his destiny which would slowly be unfolding at its own pace. Hence I could not play God to him any further. It was time to set him free and more importantly, time to set myself free.

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