Gifts, memories, traits, and the new learnings in the process of growing up ....

This is an excerpt from an ad hoc discussion that my husband and me had some nights ago which left me thinking about women and their multi faceted personality.

As usual, I was in a chatty mood and I started relating to him part of a discussion that my mother in law and me had the same day about gifting. I wanted to send a birthday gift to my mother in law's sister and when I asked her what would be a good gift for Pam(as we call her sister), she said that for them sisters, material gifts didn't matter much. They valued a hand written note, a hand made card or drawing or anything where you had used your creativity or spent some time thinking about the person in question. It sounded really sweet and true. That's why all the mothers still value their kid's random drawing more than any material gift he/she buys later in life. That random drawing on yellowed paper can still be found in your mother's cupboard even if that expensive saree cannot.

While relating the story, we landed on a discussion about which traits of his parents had my husband imbibed. We started with the creativity that he has got from his mother to the balancing act that he has got from his father to the positive traits that he has yet to imbibe from both. We were having a good time pulling each other's legs when he started relating my traits. He soon was relating the positive and negative traits that I have imbibed from Srivastavas (my parents) and Limayes (my in-laws). Soon, in the middle of the conversation, I discovered that how when we talk about men and their traits, we always discuss the traits imbibed from their parents but when we talk about women, we always talk about traits imbibed from their parents as well as in-laws. It was a sudden discovery and we pondered some more on it.

I guess, that's why women are the official tradition bearers of the family and are expected to pass on the values of the families to the next generation. We are responsible for the values that our children imbibe because we are the flag holders of two families. That seems like such a responsibility but I guess with time we grow from the little girl with pink ribbons who played with Barbie dolls to fighting with boys to falling in love and looking at the world with rose tinted glasses to helping our mothers in their daily chores while studying hard to stand on our own feet to having a career and then doing the balancing act between the career and the family. I assume we are meant to have multi dimensional roles and learn new things in the process of growing up.

So, cheers to a new thought, a new learning and many more to come! :)