I come from a long line of Punjabi women who take great pride in upholding their core values. You could say we are opinionated. This is prevalent in the DNA of my mother, my grandmother, my great aunts and myself. So it's no surprise that it's one of my daughter Ilya's most obvious traits.
An onlooker might say that all Punjabi women are the same, but our family line seems to have taken this to another level. 'Upholding our core values' invariably leads to other behaviour that underscores our personality: impatience, volatility, and above all, an 'uncontrollable desire to control'.
As a child, I could never understand how my mother had the ability to yell up a storm if the events of the household strayed from her control. Then, moments later, she would be perfectly calm. Despite her volcanic moments, everybody knew that once the lava had cooled down, everything would be fine.
At her core, she has the warmest and most generous of hearts. At a subconscious level, I wanted to be just like her. Still, when she'd say things like: 'By the time I was your age, I was a delightful daughter. Why can't you learn to be more like me?' my comeback would be something like, 'What, explode for no apparent reason at all?' Her reasons didn't make sense to me.
Mum would think about this and then carefully respond: 'A sensible girl would learn from my good points as well as the bad. She'd emulate the former and disregard the latter.'
I am nothing like my mum, or so I like to believe. Mum visited us in Hong Kong for six weeks last spring. It's always great to have her around, and as I age, I rely on her wisdom. But we can never escape our usual mother-daughter 'discourse'.