Sometimes, while reading a book, her focus would shift out of her window into the park below. It was always the kids that caught her fancy. Little boys and girls playing, skipping, screaming, laughing all over the place. The kids and their mothers, laughing, skipping, playing along with them. While she didn't know most of these women, she recognised some from trips to the supermarket and chance encounters in the lift/elevator.

Funny, she'd think, they really didn't seem like loving mothers who would spend happy playful moments in the park. She thought they were more the leave-the-kids-to-nanny types. Maybe it was the aggressive argumentative dispositions she'd seen thrown at hapless cashiers and shop assistants. Or the scowls and abuses hurled at drivers and maids as they got out of their plush cars, coiffeured hair, manicured fingertips, painted faces, sparkling stones and pursed lips.
But here they were, throwing frisbees in the air, kissing tiny faces, rubbing tiny bruised knees.

No matter how obnoxious and nasty these women were to most people around them, they bowed down before their kids. And it was genuine unconditional maternal love that she saw. The kind the author of the book she was reading went on and on about. The kind her friends referred to matter of factly when talking about their own mothers. The kind she had only read and heard and seen but never experienced herself.

She always thought that her own lack of maternal love would someday hinder her chances of being a good mother. I may smile at strangers and say kind words to those who cross my path but I will never be one of those devoted, loving and lovable moms. I may spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells, minding every word that comes out of my mouth or filtering each thought that pops into my head but I will never be sure that mine is the name that will be uttered whenever someone asks, whom do you love the most in the world?

She had finally come to realise that her not receiving that pure unconditional love would not stop her from giving that kind of love herself. She knew she could be like all those moms in the park. She knew she could love her kids like they were the only thing that mattered. But she knew it wasn't enough, it would never be enough. It was just herself that she would never learn to love. And she knew that it was that fact alone that would never make her the perfect mother.