Mothers.

George Simenon’s A Letter to My Mother made me wonder about—how often do you think about the lives your parents have lived before you?

What their everyday mundane routines were like? What did they want to be when they grew up? What were their dreams and hopes for the world?

Did they have the same square shaped backpack that clipped and hung over their tiny shoulders that carried so much weight at such a young age to school? Did they walk to school with their closest friends chattering about which teacher they liked and who they detested? Did they spend Sundays sitting on the kitchen floor helping their mother grate carrots and talk about how the week went by?

My own relationship with my mother is something I’m manoeuvring in the now. On some days I'm 10, wanting to be seen or heard. On some I'm 25, understanding she is so much more than just my mother. On most days though I am 15, telepathically asking her to buy me more books.

A phrase I’ve come across often is—daughters wish to never turn out like their mothers and how by a twist of fate, they end up turning out just like them. I too, for the longest time hoped for the same. When I’m arguing with a friend about how we should take the metro to a place instead of a cab/auto because it’s more economical, the choice of words “do you love spending time in bangalore traffic so much that you don’t want to reach the place?”  that resembles the exact ones she would’ve used in a similar scenario. I pause for a second and hope I can rewind to say something different—just so I’m not like her.

The small smirk on my face when I crack a joke, is something I see on her face when she cracks a joke, that she sees when her mother cracks a joke. So much for hoping to not turn out like her.  I’m learning to embrace those parts of me that are similar to her.

The discovery that two generations can be so far apart leaves me aghast, for all of us, by virtue of our genes if not our upbringing, resemble our parents in some measure.

George Simenon is 67, his mother—91; and days away from death. He sits on the chair near the bed that his mother is lying down on while she’s hooked up to machines. She’s days away from death. days. He wonders how the little by little accumulation of experiences, unknown to him have shaped the woman to be woman who is his mother.

A Letter to My Mother, is a 50 odd page book that explores the relationship between George and his mother. This letter is a posthumous wail from a mourning son. It’s a deeply personal, honest, bittersweet set of memories and occurrences that have shaped the journey they’ve had. At times, it feels intrusive to read up close the resentment George has against his mother. Other times, you’re appalled by what his mother has had to endure to become the woman she did.

Face to face in a little hospital room with someone who has only a few days to live, a man tends to search his mind, and to do it honestly, without envisions

George assembles together from what he can about the bits and pieces his mother has told him about her life, from what he has observed about her, and some conjecture that can’t be confirmed; in this letter. In a way, this was his closure to understanding the woman his mother was.