Sweet my child, I live for thee

Home they brought her warrior dead:

She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry:

All her maidens, watching, said,

"She must weep or she will die."

Then they praised him, soft and low,

Call'd him worthy to be loved,

Truest friend and noblest foe;

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,

Lightly to the warrior stepped,

Took the face-cloth from the face;

Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her knee—

Like summer tempest came her tears—

"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

************************************************************

A child has a special way of adding joy to a family. The same child also instills a healthy fear in the parents - a fear born out of realizing that the new life is fragile. Even when the parents hold their baby for the first time, they do so with trembling hands, scared that they might hurt the baby if they are not careful enough. Though this healthy fear never dies out throughout the years, it is at its most when the child is young.

"A healthy child makes a happy home". Everything seems to be perfect till the day that child falls sick. That's when all hell breaks loose. Caring for a sick child doesn't only cause physical stress to both the parents, it also affects their mental health. This mental stress is not only due to their nagging fear about their child's condition, it is also because when a child falls sick, it disrupts the family's regular routine. They are more likely to miss their work. They are less likely to sleep at night. They are likely to even skip their meals during the day. The child's deteriorating health in turn affects the parents' normal functioning and lifestyle. I have seen similar effects in my own family when me or my sister had fallen sick. It had caused turmoils in my parents life.

All said and done, what I said above is the most obvious inference that we can draw from the one liner "A healthy child makes a happy home". But when I had a conversation with a cousin last night regarding this, she made me look at it from a different angle. Here you go -

One fine day a girl child is born and over the years she matures into a woman. But that woman is reborn as a mother only when a baby is born to her. 

It is said that a woman-turned-mother loves her child more than she loves her better half. Once she becomes a mother, she lives more for her child than for her husband (No offence meant men!). It's the glow on her child's face, that makes her happy and proud. A child has the power to instigate myriads of emotion in the mother, like in the poem at the beginning of the blog where the woman is able to cry over the dead body of her husband, only when her child is placed on her lap. 

A healthy child is a happy child. A happy child means a happy mother. But if her child is sick, under no circumstance would she be able stay happy. A woman - wife or mother - holds the family together. She is like the pillar of the family. If the woman of the family is not happy, it would have a devastating affect on the entire family. In such a situation, how do we expect the entire family to be happy or healthy? It's like a vicious cycle.

But when the child is hale and hearty, the mother can put all such worries on the back burner. The family life runs smooth, without any hitches.

I though personally don't know what being a mother feels like, but I totally believe any woman who says it was her happiest day in life when she held her child in her arms for the first time and said 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

*************************************************************

This post is written for Dabur India for 'A HEALTHY CHILD MAKES A HAPPY HOME' campaign, in association with IndiBlogger. Click here to know more - https://www.liveveda.com/daburchyawanprash/