A House for Happy Mothers

by Amulya Malladi

“You keep going to a bookstore and asking for a dozen red roses. They obviously don’t have red roses and you come home disappointed. That’s what’s going on with your mother. You keep expecting roses and keep getting disappointed. I know not to ask for roses at a bookstore.

namaskaram,

Priya had always believed happy couples agreed on everything, but now she realized that healthy couples learned to respect even when they disagreed. It wasn’t how much you fought; it was about how good you were at making up. It was about trusting each other and the relationship to have that fight, to get it out there and have the love to heal the wound, temper the argument, and laugh about

There’s only hurt and pain if you forget this one is not yours to keep. It’s a suitcase. The contents are valuable, but you give it away when you reach the destination.”

wetting her feet and her chappals.

Asha had learned to give her children turmeric with milk when they had a cold instead of the pills that the doctors gave, and when they had a fever, she would keep it down with a decoction of ginger and raisins, as the village healing woman had instructed her. Giving

She knew women who couldn’t keep their pregnancies and some who could never even get pregnant. They were treated poorly by their husbands, their own families, everyone around them. A woman had to get pregnant, had to give birth—it was part of being a woman, as natural as having breasts and a womb. A woman who never became a mother was incomplete.

Profound.