An ideal day

A friend wrote about his ideal day which got me thinking about what my ideal day would look like. This vision of my ideal day is a wistful one which I will never have again.

My ideal day would be waking up in our apartment in Kolkata while everyone still slept. Steal a couple of biscuits (they are called cookies in my adopted country) from the biscuit tin and sit by the window to watch orange hued sun rise over the coconut trees while the crows start congregating on the antenna on our neighbor’s roof to start their morning meeting.

Once the sun’s rays illuminated the top dome of Ramkrishna mission, people in the house would start slowly waking up. The municipality taps would get busy providing water to the women in the neighborhood, filling buckets, washing their dishes, exchanging news. A typical start to a day in Kolkata. My ma and baba would come out of their room, sleepy eyed and happy, greeting me with good morning and ‘how did you sleep?’

The morning would have Sean’s loud laughter, baba’s smirk, ma’s indulgent offering of her phone to little Ryan so he could play solitaire on it and Sahana’s teenage wisdom imparted to all. Khushi would have her breakfast while baba dictated what should be cooked for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There would be visits to West Side to pick up kurtis. Ma would want to buy the whole store for us. There would be sumptuous meals, visit with innumerable family members, invitations to those visiting us to stay and have dinner with us. If not dinner, then store bought chicken rolls and sweets. There would be raucous, competitive games of ludo. Khushi would win and do victory dance. Ma would advise all the players but never play herself. Baba would beam, pace and discuss with Gouri what needs to be bought for next day’s meals. And I would soak it all in because I would know these blissful days will be numbered.

I will never have these days again. I am thankful I have had them.

You are looking very handsome these days….

I have been giving Sean compliments for the last 4 days. Maybe I am noticing more, maybe the 10 day long break he took did wonders, maybe the sun hits him the right way illuminating the green in his eyes and highlighting his gorgeous smile, I don’t know why but he looks exceptionally handsome. So I told him that. There may have been some surprise in my voice when I told him, “You look very handsome.” He looked a little abashed and happy 😊.

Last night Sahana noticed it too. She exclaimed, “Dad, you look so fit. You look very handsome.” I found an ally!

“Doesn’t he? I have been telling him that. He looks very handsome these days.”

I gave both of them an arsenal.

“These days? He looks handsome these days? You did not think he was handsome before? Dad did you hear your wife?”

Sean jumped in, acting all aggrieved.

I tried to defend myself saying he was always handsome but he had started looking haggard with his intermittent fasting routine and too much exercise. Now he has just the right amount of weight and sleep. He looks fresh.

But I was not allowed to finish my sentence. They jumped on the word “haggard”.

“Wow, mom, you are digging yourself into a deeper hole. Haggard? You are calling your husband haggard? Dad how does that make you feel?”

Sean acted all hurt and said he did not want to talk about it. The more I wanted to defend myself, the more my words were twisted.

There is a mischief making demi God in Hindu mythology called Narad. He causes mischief and initiates quarrel among people. Sahana was Narad incarnate. The three of us laughed. I am documenting simple, every day joyful moments whenever I can.

Take it over, kid.

Once upon a time I was a super human. I kept all important dates of school, practice schedules, concert schedules, swim meet schedules in my head – for both kids. Before Google calendar, I wrote all the dates down on our wall calendar in our kitchen for easy access for all. However, easy access for my family meant asking mom/wife.

“When is Ryan’s baseball practice and Sahana’s softball game?” Sean would ask. And crazily enough, I would know the dates.

My kids never went to the same school. When Ryan entered kindergarten, Sahana started middle school. So I got bombarded with emails from 2 schools. And I read each one of them meticulously. I knew the dates of PTA meetings and string concerts, and first grade author’s tea. While I did not attend PTA meetings, I did my share of classroom volunteering when needed. Anyway, bottom line is that once upon a time I was my family’s walking Google calendar. I knew it all in my head.

As Sahana got older, she started taking more responsibilities for her own schedule. Gradually, all her schedule information started sliding off from my brain as she started keeping track. She arranged for her own rides to school concerts, and when she started driving, drove herself to places where she needed to be. My brain then focused on Ryan’s schedule and I did him a disservice by constantly supplying him with dates of his events. Even when he went to high school he depended on me to know the important school dates and swim meet dates. And the control freak that I am, I continued to keep all those in my head. Till I realized I don’t need to anymore. I can clear that space in my memory by giving him the reins of his own activities. So when he asked about dates of his meets, I calmly told him to look it up by logging on to the website.

“Just tell me, it is easier!”

“I have to look it up too. So you do it since it is your meet.” That was a white lie, but it worked. Ryan started looking up on his own. Slowly and I mean, very slowly, he started getting responsible for his own activities.

The husband, on the other hand, was more difficult to train.

“When is…?”

“I am not sure, I forwarded you the email. Look it up” – became my standard response.

I still get the emails from Ryan’s school, which I still read but I do not keep the dates in my head for the most part. I jot down important parent’s meetings in our Google calendar but the rest I simply forward to Ryan. Recently, I saw a text exchange between father and son, which happened while I was still sleeping.

Ryan: “When is my SAT prep class?”

Sean: “I am not sure. I don’t remember getting that email. Mom will know. Let her wake up.”

Me, after waking up: “I forwarded both of you that email. Check your mail.”

They did. The information was there. It was so fun to simply write “check your email”. It is such a relief to not be as responsible anymore. From a super human, I have become just a human with memory space cleared for what I want to store in it.

I love being a parent. And I love seeing the slow transformation of my children taking over the control of their lives. There is a slight pang in my heart, I will not deny, at the fact that they are grown up. However, the dominant feeling is satisfaction and yes, relief.

I am old…

“Sahana, I am getting old!” I proclaimed this morning before heading out to work.

She was deeply contemplating which music to play on her Spotify. But she heard me and reflexively replied, “No you are not.”

“Yes I am!”

“NO, you are not! Why do you say that?” She did look up from her screen – interested now in knowing.

“I pulled a muscle near my elbow brushing my hair. That happens to aging folks. As we get old we have trouble drying hair, get pulled muscle while brushing hair.” I provided fool proof example of my advancing years and utterly weak elbow muscles.

“Pffft….that is not a sign of aging. You simply have so much hair that brushing them gave your arm a muscle pull. This is an example of abundance of your hair not advancing age.”

Bam! She turned the ailment to compliment. One needs to learn from her how to convert criticism to compliment. We both laughed out loud. And I want to remember this moment so here it goes in my blog post.

Sibling relationship and food

Since Sahana started working, she buys some of the groceries. And not often, but sometimes those groceries include salt and barbeque chips or takis or hot flaming cheetos. She is a generous kid, who buys enough for herself and her brother. She keeps her brother’s packet of junk food out and promptly hides her own packet. The brother storms in from his boarding school over the weekend, opens the refrigerator door, devours whatever he finds to his taste and then complains, “There is nothing in this house to eat.” He finishes his packet of junk food and hunts in the hidden corners of the house for more. He has often gotten into trouble for eating his sister’s portion and once or twice there have been aggressive exchange of words. Expletives have been used and their mother has shouted at both of them.

Last night, Ryan came home mid week for a doctor’s appointment. Sahana and I had purchased our choice of chips – one packet each, to enjoy while the eating fiend was away at dorms. Ryan located our packets right away and helped himself to a generous portion from mine. He tried one or two from his sister’s too but he (fortunately) did not enjoy the flavor. He then hid both the packets of chips in a cabinet and asked me to tell Sahana that he came and took the packets with him to dorm. I was also asked to report to him her reactions. He was laughing his head off imagining how angry she would be when she came back from work to discover her packet of chips had disappeared. He cautioned me though, “Mom, if you see her balling her fists in rage, tell her I hid the chips. I don’t want her hurting my mother. Hee hee hee.”

Sahana came home from work and after she settled, I told her nonchalantly, “Oh, by the way, Ryan came home and took our packets of chips with him to the dorm. That boy is trouble.” As expected, Sahana got angry. “He has a eating problem. Do you realize that he has a problem?” She said a few more sentences about it, none of them complimentary to her brother. I could not keep the laughter bottled in anymore so I told her he hid her chips to get a reaction out of her. She laughed, “He is an idiot.”

I have not written about the kids for a while. This blog started as a record of my parenting journey. The journey continues and will continue as long as I live. There are exasperations, laughter, sullenness, successes, failures as we live our lives together. However, I have stopped writing about them now that they have grown up. I simply had to write down this anecdote to read later and remember this moment of laughter. Moments like these make life precious.

Goods in 2021

The beginning of 2021 was so full of hope. When I racked my brain for what was good in 2021 for me personally, that is what comes to mind first. Hope. We were so hopeful, naively hopeful. I remember saying to friends “After we get the vaccine, let’s plan on going to Kolkata together. “

Well that hope was shattered. I lost my parents and 3 other relatives to Covid in 2021. So try as I might, I can not find the goods this past year. There were goods – kindness was showered upon us, Sean and I took a couple of fantastic trips, Sahana graduated magna cum laude from college, Ryan kept his GPA up, improved his time in swimming, Sahana got jobs and planned for future, Ryan moved to dorms and had good school life, Sean continued his efforts to make a difference in people’s lives all over the world, donors in his organization donated money to help in Covid relief, my work friends held me up when I was afraid of drowning, books, as usual, became my anchor.

But all these goods could not balance the loss in my life. I am afraid to hope but I want to remain hopeful that the goods in 2022 will outweigh the bads. My best wishes to all of you out there who drop by my blog site. Stay blessed and healthy.

A joy

Yesterday, while out on an errand, I watched a little girl going ahead of her family. She could not have been more than 7 or 8. Her head was down and it seemed she was focused on the sidewalk below her feet. Her family walked leisurely behind her. But she was not walking though. She was skipping. She wore a white dress with rainbow colors at the bottom of it. Her shoes were white too. Her hair seemed wild, unruly and as happy as her motion was – bouncy. With each skip her hair bounced. And it all made a perfect picture of joy.

I watched her skip for as long as I could till I could see her no more. And on the first day of a new year, I thought of the joy she exuded – being with her family, somewhat ahead of them on a spring like December day, the last day of the year in fact, skipping instead of walking.