Is it really necessary to make a virtue out of a natural role?

Last week, I had been to meet my old friend. I was aghast at what she made to herself. When I had last seen her, she had been a young, slim, pretty, very earnest in whatever she did. She had about her then, an air of being someone who was very much her own person, walking her path of life a little apart from the crowd and yet interacting with it when the need arose.

She worked with me in my previous company, and was admired for her integrity, her efficiency and her demure demeanour. I lost touch with her when she got married and quit the company. We used to meet earlier occasionally, so I did not miss seeing her.

The thought crossed my mind when I heard this, that the company lost one of its best employees. I wondered why she decided to be a full time house maker and mom. I personally believe that support systems can be set up by anyone, and any women could be a loving, efficient working mother if she chooses so.
But one of my other friend who is a counsellor said many women do find the guilt of leaving a baby at home too strong to let them continue with their work. I wished her well in my mind, and knew that she would do a brilliant job of bringing up her child to be as dependable and sincere an adult as she herself was.

Years passed, and then last week, I ran into her quite by accident. As I said earlier, I was aghast at her appearance. Always slim, she now looked thin, frail and weak. Her hair had become frizzy and greyed considerably and her skin once luminous had turned dull and dry. I could see lines that were far beyond what was natural for someone in her 40s.

I could not stop asking her if she was ill. I must have sounded very rude, but she smiled back and said, she was as well as she had always been.....then seeing the look in my eyes, she laughed guiltily and said, yes I know I look a wreck. She must have read my mind and seen in it the question about whether her marriage was the cause for her looks?

It wasn’t, she hastened to assure me, all was well and she had a loving family. It was just her way of totally immersing herself in everything that she did that led to neglect of self.

Thus it was that she had spent the last eight years looking after her family and child, he was the sun around which her life revolved, there was little time for anything else. She did not expect any outside help, in raising her child. In short she was the full time mom, loving every minute of it.

What I could not understand was the fact that she had to take the last place in the priorities in her life. I told her that this was a millennium where even the unlettered knew that they had to fend for themselves, and no one else would really care for women if she did not care for herself, and she agreed with me...

I left her with the desire to invest a bit of her care in herself, but I wondered if the habit of years would fall off so easily. And if at the end of it all, it was worth...

After all, nature teaches us that our young are not our own and when we negate self to bring up children, do we not then grow expectations from them that defy the laws of nature?

It was a thought that stayed with me for a long time...and left me with no real answer.