Motherhood is full of stories. Mine is too. I have lots of stories. Today, I remembered one very strongly.
This was then when my son was 7 years old and was in Primary school. He needed to travel by train for quite a long distance for his age. For the first few months, I accompanied him, but later due to my work, it was not possible for me to pick him from the school every day. We decided to buy one phone for him so that I can guide him while traveling alone. He was very happy that he was going to get a phone and he is finally a big boy. There was a lot of discussion about what type of phone should be given to the school-going kid. His expectation was to buy a new trendy kids phone, but finally, a compromise was struck between us and we agreed to buy a phone with a bigger screen and buttons.
He was very happy to carry the phone that day to school. In school, it was a very exciting day. He showed his new phone everyone and was playing with it all the time. That day, I guided him on how to come alone and the phone helped us a lot. Next day, I kept calling him to navigate him during his return journey, but he didn’t pick up. I was quite worried and scared too. I decided to wait on the destination train station. When he reached and got down from the train, I saw his eyes filled with tears and he came running to me. Looking at his face, I took him in arms. He broke into tears and said, "Mamma, I lost my phone. I don’t remember where it is. It was with me until I left school." I was sure that the phone fell down somewhere on the way. That evening, he could not sleep or eat well. He was upset with what happened. Moreover, the guilt of losing a phone made him restless. I somehow convinced him that it's not his fault, it can happen to anyone and he should take care of his things onwards. But I knew his nature; he was not going to forgive himself for his mistake.
Next day he went to school without the phone. He told the sad story about his lost phone to everyone. That day, I picked him up from school. All the way, I could observe his restlessness and was thinking about how to make him smile again and that’s when my mobile rang. It was an unknown caller. I answered the call. The caller said, "We are calling from Police station" Hearing from Police, I got very scared. But I gathered some courage and answered, "Hello!" Police replied, "Some stranger has handed over a small phone yesterday that he found it on the train station. On this phone, we could find only one contact in the contact list - 'Mommy', so we would like to know, are you the same mommy from the contact list?" As my son was listening to this conversation, his eyes sparkled with the joy and he shouted, "Yes, Yes it's my phone. She is my Mommy" That moment later, his smile was back and he started jumping. I was so happy not for getting the phone back but to see the return of joy and sparkle in his eyes.
By
Anagha Mahajan
Stuttgart, Germany
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