An Evening of Nostalgia In The Nursery
Yesterday I was cleaning up my daughter’s room (yes, she’s now reached the age when I’ll have to call it her ‘room’ rather than her ‘nursery’ :() and though I had not imagined it would turn to this, it did turn into a nostalgic evening.
As I began sorting and cleaning through her room, I came across things long forgotten. A doll that lay forgotten under the far end of the bed, a baby book that was filled with baby-gum marks and was now buried under newer books and toys. As I picked them up, I remembered each memory linked to them.
When my husband and I first got the confirmation of our pregnancy, one of the most exciting parts of the pregnancy for us was to plan and create the nursery. As happens in most Indian homes, we were not really planning to make our baby sleep in the nursery, but we wanted it to be a place that would turn out to be baby’s ‘own’ space. And with the gender of the baby obviously not known to us, it was quite a ‘let’s see how much we can still create’ kind of game for the both of us.
Picking up a toy here, keeping one back there, I remembered all those days years ago when my baby had just come in my arms. As any mother will say, I can still remember how it felt the first time I held her close to my heart, I can still remember how it felt the first time I brought her home. And those first moments in her nursery a few months later when she became aware of her surroundings – those are moments that are etched in my memory for life.
As her nursery began filling up, so did her personality, her likes, dislikes, her favourites and her choices, and it soon began spilling over into the way her nursery was getting shaped.
Initially, my daughter’s room was all cuddles and soft and cute and pink – it still is! (And going by the way she loves the colour, I think that’s how it’s going to be at least for the next few years!). I glanced at that big soft toy dog lying on the top bunk of her bed and remembered the first time she had played with it and how amazed she had been at the big soft bulk. And when I saw the life-like baby doll lying on her bed, I remembered the times when my daughter would hug it to sleep, and the doll was actually taller than her! How much that used to amuse me. Those first tiny baby books took me back to those days when she was still trying to learn how to speak, but had already developed a book collection of sorts of her own. That book-worm she still is, just like her mother (as I proudly show off most times) and even as I speak now, she is in school, sitting for her examination! Wow…. time surely flies, runs and sprints!
As a mother, one of the main things I want to be able to provide my daughter is a life where she can create her own personality, where I can help her develop those ‘special’ traits of hers, where she can be her own self, while still, in some way, being my daughter (I would have preferred saying my ‘little’ daughter.) Yes, as a mother to my daughter, I still feel it’s one of my most special identities ever, one that I will never trade for anything in life, and one, that to this day and forever so, will continue to make many more such memories for me, and I hope, for her too.
Debolina Raja Gupta loves being a mommy and best friend to her 5-year old princess. A working mom, voracious reader, social activist, photographer, poet, travel freak, beauty writer and an everything-of-sorts. Best fun is story time and our fashionista time together. My blogs: The Book Worm, A Few Thoughts Here And There, My Little One And Me, Beauty Makeup And More.