Gran'ma's Home

My kids usually take off for the granparents' home during the Summer break. Its not just the change of place and the relaxed atmosphere they look forward to. My mom pampers them silly year after year, catering to their littlest whim and fancy, with love and absolute adoration.

Example: She knows they love ice creams. So she buys huge family pack tubs of different flavours, with cones and makes them a double cone WHENEVER they demand.

So, after a fulfilling lunch or dinner, you'll hear the squeals of excitement as my mom hands out cones, with "Vanilla on top and Chocolate down" or "Strawberry on top and Butterscotch down"!!!!

She makes them milk shakes of every imaginable fruit, lick lollies (ice candies) of every imaginable colour and flavour, buys them all the 'Kurkures, Bingoes, Lays, Cheetos and Cheese Balls' they desire.

Mom lets my son walk down to the neighbourhood store to buy a toy EVERY single day. Armed with a ten rupee note folded and placed in the pocket of his shorts, hand in hand with our family gardener, he gets himself a knick knack because he has a fixation for "new toys".

While both of them suffer from swollen tonsils when they are in Pune, even in the warm summer months, all the ice creams, shakes and ice candies don't aggravate the tonsils at mom's place. They don't fall ill or even get a sore throat.

Its the strangest thing ever!!!

At home in Pune, we are strict parents, denying the Ice creams (due to the tonsils), or junk food. But at gran'ma's place, there is no such word as "No". Mom spoils them so much that it takes us atleast three weeks to "unspoil" them again.

Funnily, I don't get perturbed by the 'spoiling'. It just makes me love and adore my sweet darling mother even more!!!!

I am also reminded of a dear aunt (mom's sister) in Delhi we would frequently visit for our 'Weekend Rejuvenation Package'. Leading hectic lives through the week with school routines, jobs, hubby's MBA etc, we'd just reach her home on a saturday morning and crash. We'd sleep for hours, chat, eat whatever she'd cook for us, and just relax.

She would not only feed us, she would also take care of the kids and their requirement...easing the pressure on us, atleast for the weekend.

Gran'ma's are adorable. But I have not seen anyone as adorable as my mom and her family. Obviously, I believe that this runs in my mom's family... Actually, I am quite certain of that. I only hope and wish and pray that it has percolated down to me, so I can be a good gran'ma to my grand children as well!!!!