Anyone who has reared (and loved beyond reason) a couple of children will surely have been through many morning shows like this. You are rushed off your feet and you wish you had at least eight arms (extra brain cells would come in handy too), to help you find ways to get things done more efficiently.
While you make breakfast, pack lunches, pour juice for one and milk for another and tea for a third, it is quite likely — in fact, almost certain — that the rest of the family is wandering around the house vaguely, absolutely confident that you will be their time-keeper in addition to being everything else!
So, along with those octopus arms and the extra brain power, you need to keep your eye on the clock to make sure everyone — including yourself — leaves the house on time for their various study and work places. Of course, you have read all those guide books and probably have enough suggestions to write a book of your own on how to rear an independent, capable family. But at that moment, around 7 in the morning, all theory is thrown out of the window and the only thing that comes to mind is the theory (and reality) of chaos.
You hear questions like, “Where is my tie?” “Did you remember to wash and iron my sports uniform? You know I have games today ...” (‘Like you could do anything about it at this late hour if I hadn’t!’ you think uncharitably, but you don’t say anything because, fortunately, your mouth is full of the dry-rusk breakfast you are trying to swallow while preparing fluffy omelettes and fresh toast for everyone else.)
Speed-of-light mornings
When at last you can talk and you see your beloved family waiting expectantly around the dining table, you mutter impatiently, wondering how you could consider them beloved at all when they take you so much for granted, “You could come and help, maybe close up the lunch boxes, add a napkin, and ...”
But you are interrupted by an over-wise young one (whom you spent hours trying to teach a Literature lesson the night before — largely unsuccessfully), “They also serve who only stand and wait ...”
Your hands itch to throw the spatula or anything handy; but you control the urge and think, ‘This too shall pass...’
And, eventually, in the fullness of time, those speed-of-light mornings do pass. If you have planned well in terms of time, place and person, the mantle is passed on to the next generation and while someone else takes over the morning show, you can linger over a cuppa, dip that rusk in it or substitute the rusk for something tastier — made by that someone else.
But if you have not controlled your ‘destiny’ as well as you could have, you may have this kind of experience: A beloved child offers to whip up his ‘branded’ omelettes for breakfast and you welcome the loving thought. You hear sounds of eggs being beaten and you smile. You see yourself accepting a laden tray (with a rose, of course) for breakfast ... but wait a minute, what was that shout?
You hurry to the kitchen and hover there uncertainly, thinking that you are meant to stand and watch his prowess. Then, quick and clear, come the instructions: “Make the toast, get out the butter, pass me the herbs, crack the next two eggs ...”
You fumble — and of course, you grumble. “What happened to ‘They also serve who only stand and wait...’” you ask, harking back to his words of a decade earlier. And pat comes the reply: “It’s a new world order, mum. They only eat who help me serve.”
Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.
