She said, “I bear no malice to none. I speak forthright and
from my heart as a parent who wishes well for children be it mine or another’s”.
Her voice, tone as well as content of the carefully chosen
words were laced with apparent honesty and felt candid, sincere. So it seemed and so it sounded! There was no reason
to suspect something amiss and an innuendo.
“I could not bear her boldness, her audacity no more. She, I
feel and am convinced has changed much and she is not the same little one I
saw, I knew before. And I decided that I must seek you out to tell you that
unless you pull her back she will be lost to you, forever”.
I brooded .Such message would be disturbing to anybody who
has a child and who is committed to bringing up children. When an observation
as disconcerting as it is in such words come from a parent- and that from a single
mother who certainly may have felt the lonely agony of bringing up a child, one
must take notice. It cannot be malarkey and false. Can it be?
Could it be? Could it not be? Truth and falsehood where
distant mirages but I wished the woman was viciously inclined to malign. But
yet why must a mother utter such vicious stories of foreboding about another child?
A child who was or has been inseparable companion of her own?
Perhaps there were infringements-minor infractions at that,
the impetuosity of teens? We have all been through the crisis of teen.
When what later, mercifully not very late turned out to wipe
out the foul air and the gathering tempest , the fear- I sighed an immense sigh
of relief and wondered why people should be so petty and uncharitable. Good
intentions laced with innuendo and exaggeration! An adult, gown up, a mother seeking
cheap satisfaction was quite an oddity. To opine on someone who you have not
seen for months? It was preposterous. And an uncivil way of evening out the
differences children have sometime in their midst.
Who was it who said “It is a wise father that knows his own child”?
It was William Shakespeare and here it was the C, who from the moment the unpleasant
silly story emanated was an icon of confidence that all was malice and rubbish.
Such is the trust she has in her children.
For me, I still believe in the infractions of youth. How can
one pass over youthful times without a wee bit of mischief? Well then the
borderline, the threshold has to be known and heeded. That is something a parent
has to inject in children, not to be heedless.
