“JUST BECAUSE people don't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you the best they can”

I read this line in a novel about the relationship between a mother and a daughter and immediately, had tears in my eyes. I figured out, it was perhaps because it made me realise how foolish I had been in certain situations in the past when we would have arguments and I would doubt my mother's love for me.

Both my mother and I are very headstrong women. Though I am very, very close to her, there are things which we strongly disagree on. That's when problems arise. Having lived in three cities, I now know that it's just not with me. All of us have issues with our mothers. For us, girls, this is our 'mid-term crisis'.

My mom is a busy woman. She is an entrepreneur. It's a wonder how she manages work and home so effectively. I am interning as of now and by the time I reach home, my body fails me and refuses to let me even sit upright. It's a mystery then, how she has spent night after night looking after my brothers and me, how she has been awake the whole night whenever any of us would fall ill.

Time has passed and I am no longer the girl who would go around holding her mommy's cloth, like her tail and would wait for her to return from office. Those were the ways of showing affection. I may not be standing outside, waiting for the car to turn right and enter the gate but I do get worried and pray to God when she does not reach home on time.

When she tells me her woes, her grief, I might act stern and emotionless but at night when I sleep, that's the only thing that goes around in my head.

And although I know that we will continue to have our mother-daughter tiffs even in the future, I know she will be the one person still standing behind me whenever I topple over a stone and fall.

Mom, this one is for all the things that you have done for me..I love you.