Checkmate.

Sahana intended to play with his head. One night I eavesdropped on a conversation between the two of them:

Sahana: ‘Ryan, do you realize that this life that you are living now is all a dream of your mentally unstable mind? In reality, you are a patient in a mental asylum and you are dreaming all this?

Ryan was brushing his teeth. The buzz of electric toothbrush stopped as an indignant brain registered this information and then processed it.

‘NO, THIS IS NOT A DREAM!!!’

Sahana: ‘Yes it is. Mom, dad, me you, Sage, none of us exist in your real life. You are dreaming. One day you will wake up and all this is going to be gone. This is an alternate universe which only exists in your dream.’

All of a sudden a loud, angry exclamation from Sahana:

‘WHY DID YOU KICK ME???’

Ryan: ‘I kicked you and you felt it. That proves it is not a dream, you are real.’

Sahana: ‘Nope! You kicked me in your dream. I yelled in your dream. This is all a dream. You are really a mental patient in an asylum!’

Poor Ryan takes after me in gullibility. He semi believed Sahana and pondered over the possibility of his life being an alternate universe existing only in his unstable mind generated dream. Sahana laughed evil laughter – for a while.

Yesterday, after a trip to the library as we were getting back in the car to drive home, Sahana said something that Ryan did not like. And this is what I heard:

‘Sahana, since this is MY universe, I control it, you better watch out. If I don’t like what you are doing in my universe, I will exterminate YOU from here!’

I was walking ahead. I stopped and turned around. Sahana, for once, had nothing to say.

She and I talked about it in the car today as I drove her to practice. She said, ‘That boy!!! He has now turned my theory to his benefit. He now believes he is a pro baseball player dreaming of this life. He will wake up to his real life, go out and play baseball! It is a win, win! I wanted him to believe he was in an asylum!’

I said, ‘You relinquished the power girlfriend. You gave him his universe. He struggled at the concept. Then he made it his own and found peace in it. Now you are redundant!’

She is thinking how to get the power back. For now, it is checkmate!

Never a dull moment 🙂 !

Hold on to dreams..

The change is very gradual, almost imperceptible, yet I notice it lately. The silent burst of the colorful bubble of dreams in the young mind of my son. The brush with reality is painful and the realization harsh. Even a year ago, being an Olympic swimmer was a possibility, beating Phelp’s record was not simply a pipe dream but an achievable aspiration. Playing pro baseball was not wishful thinking but a natural progression of life. What else would he do other than play professional baseball? Or win gold medals in Olympics? He has his mind set to two schools when he grows up – Harvard and MIT. But now questions and doubts are casting shadows on those innocent dreams. I am not good enough! Am I good enough?

Those dreams, at the age of nine, at the beginning of fourth grade, are slowly starting to look unrealistic. Although I know this is simply a part of growing up, yet it devastates me to think that he will not casually say anymore ‘I will win one more medal than Phelps in Olympics’ or, ‘Mom, when both Ravens and Orioles want to draft me, what should I do?’ I just want him to dream on – for as long as he can. And who knows, his dreams may well be his reality one day? He is a little bundle of endless possibilities like every other child.

Last night while brushing teeth before bed time he said to me:

‘Mom, the child born by mixing you and dad, (interesting choice of words) that is me, should be super athletic and very smart, right? Dad is super athletic and you are very smart?’

‘Well, you ARE super athletic and you ARE very smart!’ I said. Please note how I avoided answering the ‘you are very smart?’ question! 🙂

He thought about it quietly for a few minutes.

‘Being good at sports is not going to get me anywhere, is it?’ He then asked.

‘Being good at sports is an ability not everybody has. It is a gift. Accept at it as one. And you love playing, so play. We can see where it takes you later. But you want to be well-rounded. You want to do well in school and learn all that you can learn as well!’

‘I am finding fourth grade very challenging. This is the most challenging year of all I think. Can you help me?’ (He just started fourth grade)

The cry for help was so plaintive, so innocent and genuine that I stopped what I was doing and took him in my arms.

We had a talk and planned a plan till he felt confident that we are all in it together, mom, dad, sister too. We are team Ryan and we will help him learn, no matter what. It indeed is a big transition from previous years to fourth grade and his steps are faltering. But he knew enough to ask for help. I am grateful. We have a plan. Bring it on, fourth grade. We got this! 🙂 And we high-fived!

We will make sure those dreams return! We need those bright, colorful bubbles floating around childhood. My mommy heart wants to save all of them, none can burst! So there! 🙂

‘

Teen 2.0

I am attending a training for my work. It, sometimes, is waking me up at night. The work is not difficult, it is simply intense. Yet as I turn on the computer, all I want to do is write blogs. So, instead of working on Young Adult’s readers advisory, I am writing a blog about it.

Me: Sahana, I am going to interview you for one of my classes.

Dying pterodactyl groan accompanied with a word I understand: Why???

Me: Because you are a teen and I need to interview a teen who reads and uses the library. You fit the bill.

Sahana: Yes, but I am not your average teen. I will give you deep answers.

Me: How are you not an average teen? What is an average teen anyway?

Sahana: I am just better than your average teen. I have maturity, common sense and lucid moments. Your average teen does not have those.

Me: Do you think you also suffer from the sin of hubris?

Sahana: Nope, I just say it straight. It is what it is. I am not an average teen. I am Teen 2.0. You know? The upgraded version!

My sweet little teen did not realize how very ‘teenagerish’ she sounded in that entire conversation! I was making marinara sauce in the kitchen for dinner. I did not even feel the burn of an errant spot of hot sauce on my hand, I was chuckling so hard. Silently, of course!

🙂

For the love of….money!

Those of you who follow my blog will know that Ryan is a believer. He is a true believer of God and a devoted worshipper of….money. He, since a tender age of 2 or 3, has been strangely attracted to money in any form – paper bills, coins, currency of any country. The word ‘money’ has always brought on that expression of awe and reverence. He is very religious too, no, not the ascetic kind. He is very mindful of the quality of his life on earth and he worries about his existence after he passes on from this material world. He has learnt to merge his two loves – love of God and love of money by sharing his wealth and helping the impoverished.

In a recent discussion with his uncle, he expounded his theory of this happy merge of his two passions.

‘When I become a trillionaire, I will choose someone who does not have any money and make that person a billionaire. However, I will take away his money if he takes drugs or alcohol. He can not do that!’

He does not want money to serve vices. Good thought, I thought and we had a laugh over it.

He has different schemes always for earning. In India, he earned money first by carrying his grandfather’s grocery bags. He refused a rickshaw and politely asked if he could have the rickshaw fare instead if he carried the bags of vegetables and bloody fish. His grandfather agreed. Then he charged his indulgent grandfather for his companionship if there were no bags to be carried. Lastly he charged his innumerable aunties and grandmothers for hugs and kisses. He made a sweet sum at the end of his stay. He gave all of it away to his grandmother before leaving India.

In summer he weeded my flower bed for 5 dollars and opened a lemonade stand. Since he does not mess around when it comes to money, he wrote out a contract engaging Sahana as his junior partner and employee with a 75-25 % contract. And he calculated the exact amount that he owed her, and paid up.

Recently he has cooked up another scheme with friends. They are making book marks and selling them. I came home from work and was told triumphantly:

‘Mom!! Sahana bought 6 bucks worth of book marks!!’

I turned to my daughter, who is currently flushed with baby sitting money and also the money she gets from mowing our lawn, and exclaimed quietly at her generosity.

‘Why did you buy so many bookmarks? 6 bucks? That is a lot of bookmarks!’

‘It’s all good mom! This is all part of my plan. When we grow up and I am a poor struggling writer and he is a successful business man, I will remind him of this day and how I contributed to his start up business. The guy is a softie, he will help me out with my finances. I have got it all worked out!’

Well, then….:)

Fragrance of life..

I seem to be losing the energy and spontaneity with which I opened the blog every day. I wrote with joy and with a happy carelessness. I got so much love and encouragement from friends and unknown readers. I lapped up the love and at the same time lost the spontaneity. I started considering how readers will rate the blog. I lost sight of the purpose of my blogs – to write down my ramblings, to archive my memories of my children’s fleeting childhood, to chronicle the moments when I first met my husband, how I fell in love and how we grew together. I did not visit the blog site for so long. Yet mama thought. She thought of how to keep her children safe, how to love them more, how to meet deadlines, how to balance expectations, disappointments, work, romance, needs and wants. And she thought of loving her blog again. She thought of writing here her ramblings, her dreams and hopes, snippets of her life – life as it happens to her and as she sees it.

I wanted to document a few conversations as Sahana turned 15. The first one happened at dinner a few weeks back. The topic was types of parenting and a fifteen year old’s feedback on it. Sean and I were curious to know what she considers good parenting, objectively. She said:

‘Well honestly, for us, you can do nothing right at this point. If you are involved and take interest in what we do, we consider you smothering and extremely annoying. We try to elbow you out. And if you let us be, thinking you are giving us space, we consider you apathetic and uncaring. We feel sorry for ourselves. So yeah, for these few years, mom and dad, you can do nothing right!’

Sean and I turned around and high fived each other. The pressure was off. We did not need to change a thing. We could not win. Oh, joy!

She laughed with us. We all laughed at the incongruity of the situation, the absurdity of it all, and the clarity of her realization and her observation.

The second conversation took place at a trattoria while having an Italian dinner in honor of her fifteenth birthday. Her words have stayed with me:

‘You know, I am very happy mom that you belong to another country and dad does the job that he does. You have always taught us that there is another world out there, our perception of the world we live in is simply a part of it. It is because of you we got to experience a wider world and different culture. And I am glad that daddy does what he does for work. He brings back the stories of the world he travels to which make both Ryan and I realize how blessed we are to have what we have. It teaches us not to demand but be thankful.’

It was her birthday, yet she gave me a gift.

Last night while we heated up food for dinner, we talked about our evolving relationship as she gets older. She gets angry with me often, whenever I deny her what she wants, yet in her ‘lucid’ moments she knows we are forever in love. She wonders how it will be between us when she is a woman. I said I will always be her mother yet at a certain age we will be primarily two women – confiding, needing support, love and affection. Two women who will know in their hearts that they have each other to fall back upon if the world fails them. The relationship attains somewhat of an equilibrium as the daughter grows up. She seemed to like that.

And this morning I saw these beautiful words:

And I wondered, is this how they will remember me? First love, first friend, first enemy, fragrance of life? Continue reading “Fragrance of life..” →

Romeo and Juliet retold by Sahana.

As I flipped parathas for their lunch, I overheard Sahana telling Ryan the story of Romeo and Juliet. I peeked from the kitchen to survey the scene. Both were seated at the kitchen table in anticipation of lunch, Ryan was round eyed in rapt attention, while Sahana, very animatedly, told the famous love story. Albeit a bit differently than how the bard had said. I requested her to write it down for me so I could document one summer afternoon of storytelling for posterity. She obliged.

This is her narrative.

So a long, long time ago in some Italian place there was a kid name Romeo and he was completely, totally, tragically in love with this total hottie named Rosalind. And who knows, she mighta had the hots for him back ‘cept she was trainin’ to be a nun and all.

But our man Rom was deeepressed. He sat in front of her tower day in and day out, not eating or sleeping, just thinking about her hotness. One day, two of his homeboiiz, Mercutio(Merc) and Benvolio(Big Bad Benny) came up to him.

“Yo Romeo, homez, me ‘nd Merc gon’ crash the old Cap masquerade. You comin’, you dig?” Big Benny informed.

“Nah Big Bad B, that ain’t for me. I’d rather sit here all sad and stuff,” Rom responded.

“Nah, brah, ‘t’weren’t your choice, you comin’ regardless, dig?” said BBB.

“Fine man. As long as Pops don’t find out.”

See the Caps and the Montague’s(our boy Romeo’s fam) were total enemies, so if Rom’s Pop found out, our boiz’d be screwed.

So the three boiiz crashed the Old Cap Mansion and Rom bumped into a girl six years younger than him and fell head over heels in love with her, only this time the feeling was reciprocated. There was a problem though: the girl, Juliet, was Mr. Capulet’s baby gurl. Disregarding this, the two decided to get married and stay together till death do them part. Rom got his homeboi the Friar to marry them, which he did with some complaints but in the end relented. Neither fam was allowed at the wedding cuz no one else knew bout #Ruliet.

One day, Merc, Rom’s main man, fought Tybalt in the streets. Fighting in the streets was punishable by death, so when Tybalt killed Mercutio, not only was Romeo piiiissed, he also had good reason to kill him. Big Bad Benny told Rom to run away, because the Prince Guy In Charge had out-lawed street fighting and Romeo was gonna be killed or worse, expelled from the town. So Rom ran away.

When Juliet heard that her hubby had killed her cuzz she was like “Oh HELL nah that ain’t cool,” but she forgave Romeo cuz #truluv and all. Prince Guy In Charge did in fact banish RomRom for killing that SOB and Rom being the sad hombre that he was, fled.

Now Mr. Cap wanted Juliet to marry an über cute, über rich studmuffin named Paris but she wanted OUT so she got the ancient equivalent of a coma-causer and she passed out.

Rom heard that his wifey had “”died”” so he scurried back in town and poisoned himself over her tomb after killing Paris who was going to visit her(did I mention Paris was a total studmuffin). Juliet woke up with dead Rom on top of her so she said a speech and took his dagger and stabbed herself.

The Old Peeps walked in and saw the young ‘uns dead, and they were like ‘our fight is dumb’. BUT IT WAS KINDA TOO LATE FOR THAT OMG and then they put up #Ruliet statues and everyone lived happily ever after except for Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet.

I laughed and laughed.

God had foreseen.

I can see gender inequality really upsets Ryan. Actually social injustices upset him. He was horrified to hear stories about caste system when we started reading Mahabharat. Sahana recently worked on a project on female feticide in India. During her research for her assignment she shared a lot of unpleasant yet true information about injustice done to a girl child. Ryan was a silent listener. But her words and facts made an impact on his young mind. And I see his brain whirring to find a ‘why’!

Since a very early age, he has been a champion for women/girls. Derogatory comments about girls by his male peers were deflected with ‘Girls are great!’ And my favorite, the irrefutable logic – ‘Your mom is a girl. She is not dumb, she is wonderful!’

I believe he has such respect for girls because he is growing up with his sister – a strong willed, intelligent, funny girl who puts him in his place, pins him down in wrestling matches, shouts at him when she is mad, helps him with his homework, stands up for him in playgrounds, cooks him food in his parents’ absence and laughs hysterically with him while watching funny Youtube videos. He looks up to her for her smarts, her knowledge about authors, movies, current bands, completely inane and unnecessary yet very fun facts. I have heard him say to friends, ‘My sister told me this. She is very smart. She is in high school.’

Hence, he does not understand why women would be considered inferior or unwanted. Whether he admits it or not, his sister is his hero! I think the gender inequality makes him angry because in some oblique way, it is a statement against his hero – his sister!

While doing math homework, he put his pencil down and looked me in the eye.

‘I just thought of something. I know why only women can have babies and not men!’

I wondered if we are sliding into uncharted territories.

“God had foreseen that men would eventually tell women they are inferior, not equal and be cruel to them. So God gave a superpower to women. He gave only them the power to have babies. So when men say ‘you don’t have power’, the women can say ‘oh yeah? Well, you go and have babies then!’ ”

I have said before his religiosity is very innocent and beautiful. He wants a world where everyone would acknowledge everyone else’s idea of God and live peacefully forever.

In God’s world there should be no inequality. God is the ultimate parent who thought of everything before sending the living beings to earth.

His logic may not be foolproof but his thoughts are so sweet that I do not go into deep theological discourses. He will, one day, think things through. I simply write down these bits and pieces of conversations, which are of no value to anybody, but me. I have learnt one thing from all the meaningful conversations I have had with both my children – simple, honest truth is just that, simple and honest.

Become an angry young man.

I believe one of the most rewarding aspects of parenthood is observing the slow emergence of the questioning, thinking mind of a child. It is a delight to see your child becoming socially conscious, questioning the wrongs that s/he sees around him/her, asking you for your thoughts on it and trying to figure out the chaos in his or her minds in his or her way. Questions, innumerable questions are hurled at us at all times. We try to answer to the best of our ability and resort to internet when we run out of answers. I personally try to convert each question about social equality or justice into a teaching moment by leading their thoughts in a certain direction and allowing them to persist and think it through.

While changing bed linen the other day, such a teaching moment arose when my younger child, Ryan followed me to the room asked a very pertinent question.

“Mom, do you get very, very angry when you read about all the bad stuff that happened to women in the past, that you read in history books? I feel bad for women that they had to suffer but I am a man and I don’t feel as angry as you or Sahana about it!”

Every time I hear about violence done against women, my belief about teaching our sons to respect women (and men) gets reaffirmed. We are equally responsible as the law and order system in the world to bring about the change in the mindset of men and women regarding the equality of all. And we can do that by teaching our sons to respect women and teaching our daughters that they are not inferior to any because of their gender.

So I took Ryan’s question as a teaching moment to teach and reinforce fairness and equality.

I told him, “Think of the injustice done to the women throughout the ages as injustice done to humans. Don’t think of them as women. Think of them as a part of human race who were not given equal rights. They had to fight for their rights, they were ridiculed, violated, oppressed yet they continued their fight and continue to do so to this day. You get angry when you read about how the whites treated blacks, how the homosexuals are treated in the world still, right? It is the same with women. They were not treated equally and that should make you angry even if you are a man. And use the anger to help women fight for equality which is their right.”

He listened silently and walked out of the room. I knew I had planted a seed. I just hope the seed grows into a tree and bears fruit and the world receives a young man who gets angry at any form of injustice and uses that anger as a fuel to right the wrongs done.

Questions! I love them….most of the time!

I don’t have all the answers to their questions. But I felt good about this answer and I write it and store this away in my treasure chest as a good mommy moment.

Gruff love

I don’t know about you but my two kids quarrel a lot. A whole lot. Sometimes, especially, on a cold winter day, when they have been cooped up in close proximity, they fight about the smirk on one’s face and one breathing too heavily.

“Stop breathing so noisily, it is disturbing me!”

No prizes for guessing if the heavy breathing stops or continues ten fold heavier.

Being an only child, this behavior concerns me. I try different methods to diffuse situations.

I use threats – “If I hear one more sound from either of you then….”

I have discovered, in these last fourteen years of being a mommy, open-ended threats are more ominous than definitive ones. The scary possibilities are endless.

I use cajoling – “Come on guys, you are making it very unpleasant for yourself and me!”

I use didactic approach – “Only the brave can offer the other cheek, don’t you know. Be the brave one. The strong, silent type!”

Sometimes these work, sometimes both the children are sent to their rooms because none of the above tactics worked. Sometimes, I remove myself from the situation and give myself a time out. I refuse to play the referee and when they come to complain, I say, “Both will be punished, if I hear one more word! SORT IT OUT!”

It is important to set the scene written above, to understand this story better, so I took the pains of writing down some facts of the bickering universe I live in.

Sahana was down with a fever for a week. And Ryan’s world collapsed around him. The first day of fever was spent trying to nudge her into action. When that didn’t get any response, the rest of the day was spent in quiet observation as Sahana lay on the couch with tired eyes. The second morning of her fever, he expressed his concern to me, while she was still in bed:

“Do you think Sahana will be OK, mom?” Simple words but loaded with unexpressed fear of loss.

When she woke up and came to the breakfast table, he was finishing up.

“How are you feeling Sahana?” he asked in a voice which seemed to convey ‘I am asking you, but I really don’t care that much’!

“I am ok. My head hurts!” She said.

After a pause, came a gruff offer, “Do you want me to make some breakfast for you?”

Sahana was in the kitchen getting her own food, she said, “That’s ok, bud. I can get mine.”

I mouthed “let him do it” to her and she said, “Ok, Ryan. It would be great if you make my breakfast. Can you make me a Nutella sandwich on toast please!”

He jumped up and made breakfast for his sister. And made the same, the third morning of her sickness as well. I believe he felt he was contributing to her healing.

I heard this next part from Sahana.

The day she felt better she said,”Do you know what your son said to me?”

Supposedly, the evening Sahana had a very high temperature and couldn’t get out of her bed to come to the dinner table, Ryan went to her bedside and offered her a nickel if she would get up from bed and come to the table.

“Sahana”, he said, “I will give you a nickel if you come eat with us at the table!” If any of you readers know Ryan at all, you will realize that offer of nickel was his ultimate show of love and concern for his sister. Ryan doesn’t part with his money easily.

Her fever was too high for her to respond. Once the medicine worked and she felt well enough to tell me the story, she did so with a smile on her face. A smile, because, parting with money to get her sister to resume normalcy is Ryan’s highest form of love.

The love flows underneath. Gruff love, but love nonetheless.

Sahana’s comment about her brother is this:

“Mama, I think Ryan is going to grow up to be that man – big, strong, scruffy looking, who sheds a copious amount of tears at the death of a kitten! He is actually a very nice boy! But I will deny it if you tell him I said this!”

Sahana is fine now and my bickering universe is back with a vengeance. As I write this blog, I hear two angry voices in the background saying:

“Yes you did!”

“No I did not!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

Repeat….

Sigh….

I do believe Anna Quindlan wrote what Sahana will one day say about her brother:

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother… Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

Bitter sweet

As I adoringly gazed at my few months old baby girl, my first-born, with sleep deprived eyes, I didn’t feel the transience of time. For a first time mother, the infancy of her baby is such a miraculous time. Every facial gesture of the baby, every grimace, every twinge is a thing of wonder. The reality that she will eventually grow up never crossed my mind. My love for her and my adoration at her tiny perfectness were overwhelming. As I placed my cheek on her impossibly soft, warm cheek when I walked up and down the room while she slept with her head on my shoulder at 2 am, I was filled with a glorious, wondrous feeling of love and a fierce protectiveness that was very new to me indeed. I never thought my baby would be four years old, ever. She would stay little with all her baby fragrance, baby smiles and baby sweetness. But that didn’t happen, of course. She turned four soon enough, and then five, and then….She was joined by a little brother when she was five and I felt that overpowering sense of love and protectiveness as I held his little body close to my chest, second time around.

As a young mother, I exclaimed at every ‘first’ of my babies. The first feel of the rough edge of an emerging pearly white. My infant has a tooth!!! The much awaited rolling over, the crawl, the first step, the first word! Every ‘new’ was an occasion to celebrate, to inform the grandparents, uncles and aunts. Yet, while celebrating and rejoicing the new milestone, a tiny part of me mourned the loss of that time before. I won’t deny that slight little feeling for a split second, ‘Oh, s/he is growing up!’ But I was always mindful not to harp on that feeling because life is, of course, a forward progression in new paths and onto new discoveries.

The first day of kindergarten, every first day in a new grade since. The first time the elder one stayed alone, the first time she offered to make dinner, first day in middle school and then high school, first of many of our book discussions and theological discourses, first time I realized she was thinking independently, making her case, forming opinions. The first time she lied, argued, talked back.

The first time I left the little one at school and made the mistake of turning back. His tear-stained face and one little arm extended towards me, pains me still. The first time HE stayed alone, I drove back into the driveway and saw an anxious little face peering out of the window. The first time I dropped him off at his swim practice and drove away. I saw him sling his swim back on his shoulder and make his way inside to swim, alone. First time he made his own lunch, jumped into the pool without floaters.

There were moments of relief and pride at each milestone and that tiny little twinge way back in the innermost corner of my heart.

They are both growing up, loosening their grip. And there is that ‘push me pull you’ feeling inside me. I mentioned earlier, there is that very tiny pang of ‘oh, my babies!’ In my day-to-day life, I don’t think about this enough, but when Ryan casually holds my hand on a walk and his knobbly knuckles seem to fill my hand, I ask myself, ”When did this happen?’ I remember just a little time ago, that hand in mine was tiny, soft, malleable – resting there comfortably, ready to be guided. This hand today, which grips mine confidently, still needs direction, sure, but his grip has an assurance. It almost says, ‘I can hold you up, mom, if you stumble. I am almost there!’ When Sahana wears my saree, puts my make up on and smiles at me, I gasp ‘She is a woman!’ I have a Rip Van Winkle moment. Did I sleep through time? Or is this the way human life works? The changes are imperceptible yet right in my face. I am simply unaware. One day, I look mindfully and wham, it hits me! Time’s a flying!

Yet, I find their babyhood in the goodnight kisses and the early morning cuddles, in their sleeping faces and innocent questions. My babies are still hidden there somewhere inside. I seek them out when I put time aside to do it. Then we sit a while, laugh together and cuddle and I enjoy this bittersweet flavor that life offers.