The Jealousy Factor

I'm not someone used to being jealous of people. I do of course become influenced or impressed, but jealousy is just not my response.

Or so I thought, until yesterday.

The credit for my dress designing and stitching goes completely to my maternal grandmother [ نانو ]. Mama doesn't usually bear the torture of sitting with a sewing machine, but something made her make me a dress this time, yesterday.

It was a pink-and-white printed cotton dress, and large scraps of the cloth as well as some of the adorning lace were left over by the end. Mama wrapped them up into a ball and placed them in a shopper in case she might need them later on. She then began clearing up the place ready to prepare dinner. After testing the dress for fitting, I logged onto Facebook to check out the social network updates. I expected mama to be in the kitchen, and so the gentle whirr of the sewing machine came as a surprise. I put it down to her mending something as an afterthought. No worries.

Absorbed in the World Wide Web I realized only after 20minutes that the whirring was still continuing!

I got up to check up on mama. And what did I see? Mama holding up a white frock with pleated neck; the same pink-and-white cotton highlighting the shoulder joints; the white embroidered lace encircling the hem. A pretty girl-ish frock. That might not have been much in itself had I not seen the huge loving smile on her face. I was shell-shocked. I mean, who was that little dress for? We don't have a little girl that age for miles in our extended family, so why the dress?

Before I could speak a word, mama asked me how did the frock look? I said hmm, good, but who WAS it for? So she told me; it was for the daughter of a classmate from Quran class. Wasn't it pretty? How should she join the bow? Like the traditional two-tier thing, or the simple kind? She kept asking me these questions in quick succession but they were entirely lost on me. Yes, I was furious in my mind. Jealous. Of the little girl.

And on top of the cloth-ey business, she also mentioned that the little girl was one pretty thing and was a 'girl' true to the bone. That she usually wore the pinks and purples meant for little girls; had straight hair she usually wore in two ponytails; had a sweet voice one just wanted to hear over and over again. I'm sure mama didn't mean to point out my own un-girl-iness, but I felt the contrast hard.

Really hard.

Why was I jealous? Maybe because it was MY mother making a dress for ANOTHER little 'girl'. Because it's ME who's going to a different country in a week's time. Because it's ME who wants MY own mother's FULL attention. Maybe this. Maybe that.

 

I know it's hardly the response to expect from a university student. I mean, نانو makes the girls in her area dresses all the time as gifts, and I haven't once felt like this.

But, this time…?

I'm ashamed. But… but…*another bout of uncontrollable jealousy*