Day 6 of 30-Day Writing Challenge
Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash
I consider myself a very independent person. I owe it to my mother.
“Mom, does a chicken fly?” Looking at her back I asked her. I was sitting at the chabudai (low dining table) doing my homework assignment. Our kitchen and our dining/ living room was so tiny that my mother could hear me easily while cooking dinner.
The question was the only one I struggled to answer in my homework assignment. I was in the first grade.
“Of course it does!” was her answer. So I filled the paper with “Yes” onto my homework sheet.
The next day I submitted my sheet. When I received it back from my teacher, it had a big red “X” on that answer. “X” meant the answer was wrong. All the other answers had familiar red circles, meaning my answers were correct.
“My mother lied to me! I will never ask my mother to help me my homework!”
Ever since then, I had never asked my mother for her help to do my homework. My father seldom came home before my bedtime. Naturally I made a habit of doing my homework all by myself. If I made a mistake, I made it. I could swallow that bitter fact. But I couldn’t bear the humiliation of getting a big X for the answer I didn’t even answer.
My mother and I still laugh at each other remembering that insident. My mother praises me for not having depended upon her for my study ever since. That made her life a lot easier. She had so many other things to do including taking care of my father’s several employees who were living near our apartment.
Years later, at a class reunion of my high school, one of my classmates told me that he was still teaching math to his high school son. Out of love? Out of his own pride? For whatever the reason may be, it was beyond my comprehension. Till today I still thank my mother for giving me a wrong answer at such an early age.