Back at it….maybe?

Yesterday, the emails kept coming. Ping…ping…ping. They were from WordPress telling me I had comments on my blogs. That was surprising since this blogsite has been lying dormant for many months. It is not that I don’t think about this space. I think about it all the time. As I drive to work or gym, I formulate in my head, sentences that I would write in the blogs. But when the day is done, I look at my laptop and never turn it on.

Yesterday, my littlest cousin in Kolkata could not sleep so she went to my blogsite and read many of my blogs. Not only that, she kept writing comments on them. My favorite was “I love you so much, Didi.” I read the blogs where she left comments. Some of the blogs were sad, some of them were general observations of life around me. Seeing her comments and the fact that she was reading them thousands of miles away made me feel connected. I have written so much about my life in this space. I have written about my children, my travels, my everyday life that encompasses my joys as well as my grief. I still have not seen a grief counselor, although I am getting closer to the idea but this blogsite has helped me cope by allowing me to write down my feelings. I made those public and readers responded by saying some of those blogs helped them process their grief. That made me feel less alone.

We had beautiful weather this week. The barren trees are sprouting their luminous green, the green that is my absolute favorite. This new green that I get to see every year fills me with hope. This is potential at its finest. What flowers will May bring? How this nascent green will change to a deeper, somber green as the summer progresses till they are leached of their colors and become red and golden? I love this process, this circle of life. And I don’t mind my own transition from somber, deep green to the red and golden of mature years. Sure, I don’t enjoy the new medications that get added to my life, or the daily aches and pains of getting older, but I wonder with some anticipation (and a little dread of losing people I love) how the next phase would be? For the most part, I am eager to move on with life. At certain times, I am wistful. Especially as I see my children become their own people with their own lives. This is what every parent hopes for, yet there is a twinge in my heart as the grip loosens. Did I give them my best? Did I enjoy them to the fullest when they were younger? Why did I complain so much about how busy life was when they were little? Why did I make life so busy? So many questions, so much self critique. However, despite that, I feel so proud of them. Both of them are good people.

Back to weather. Yesterday, Sean and I went for a long walk in a local park. We decided to leave the paved walkway and follow a trail deeper into the woods. I was looking at my feet as I walked, mindful of treacherous roots that poked above the ground dangerously. I had already stumbled a couple of times but managed to stay on my feet. We stopped for a second and I looked around me. Sean was in mid conversation, saying something about his work. I touched his arm, and whispered, “Look! Look around us.” We were surrounded by young royals – trees that were getting their new leaves. The sun tried to peek in through the foliage that rendered the leaves luminous, fluorescent even. There was nobody around us. There was no sound except sweet chirp of birds. I felt insignificant and I felt special all at the same time. Insignificant in front of such majesty and special because I got to witness it.

I don’t go to any building that is designated as a place of worship. The little opening, surrounded by trees, sunlight creating dappled shadows around me was my temple, my church, my mosque. I did not pray. But I gave my thanks.

An accidental sunrise

The most important part of my morning ritual is sitting quietly in front of the photos of my parents with my cup of coffee and staring at their smiling faces. The world around me is quiet, fast asleep. The only sound that I hear is of the heating unit pumping blessed heat in our house on cold, winter mornings. I do this every day, without fail.

Today, as I got up to put my coffee cup away after my morning ritual with my parents, I happened to glance out of the window. I caught the sun rise, accidentally. Everyday, I wake up early and look inward instead of outside. And while I introspect and look back at memories or wipe away tears or question ‘why’ again and again, the sun rises with resplendent glory. I guess, this is nature’s way of balancing sadness with beauty. I will, perhaps, incorporate looking outwards in my morning ritual. After all, life is about balance.

Solitude

I shared this pond with no one this morning. The resident ducks and Canada geese were nowhere to be seen. The sun was not strong enough for the little turtles to climb up on logs and sun themselves. I stood by the edge of the pond to look for them. They were perhaps snoozing in their nests.

It felt strange and beautiful all at once to find myself alone in this tiny bit of universe. The cerulean sky was sparkling with golden rays of the sun. That color, I have realized, makes me immensely happy. The trees and bushes stood quietly, their reflection in the water somehow doubling their silent presence.

No matter how much I sparkle outside, I struggle most days to get off the couch and put my game face on. However, on days when I feel the gentle sun caressing my face and the splendid blue of the sky penetrating my soul, I feel I will be okay. I get up to face another day. I love, I am loved. I will live today and remain hopeful for tomorrow.

A perfect day off..

My driver’s license almost feels like a waste these days. Since Ryan started driving, I have relegated the wheels to my two kids so they can go to their jobs, practices and occasionally social engagements. Unless the husband has meetings in far away places, he also works from home. Most days when I am off from work, I am pretty much home bound due to lack of a vehicle. I can always go for walks which I generally do but I did not go anywhere today.

Today I woke up determined to vacuum the house, weed the flower patch, cook dal and sabji, launder the towels and mop the kitchen floor. As I sipped my coffee this morning, I questioned why I put all that on my to-do list on my one day off. That list, on this beautiful morning, seemed ridiculous so I scrapped it. One should be flexible, right?

Instead, I cooked dal and sabji, warned Ryan to hand me back my tablet once I finished cooking. He was finishing a math packet and watching Seinfeld simultaneously – I worry about accuracy of those math problems. He handed my device back without a fight so I could read Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars (in e-book format). I finished the book, wrote a review on Goodreads and pondered upon the story of Nurse Powers trying to help pregnant women afflicted with Spanish flu in the maternity ward of a hospital in Dublin, Ireland in 1918. The book is relentless, honest and a stark narrative on the condition of women and the expectations that society placed on them.

Anyway, after finishing that heart rending book I needed something light and entertaining. I am also queuing up books for the book club that I hope to start – Light but not Fluffy. And Julie Murphy’s If the Shoe Fits seems to be a worthy candidate…..so far.

Between those two books I thought a lot about Sage, once I found out today was National Dog Day. I also thought about our back to back losses. Sage died in 2020 and ma, baba died in 2021. As a Hindu, albeit a non practicing one, my thought goes directly to bad karma. What did I do in this life or my past life so bad to deserve such sorrow? Death is natural and a part of life I know, but this absolute truth is still hard to swallow.

I mindfully set those thoughts aside as I tried to lose myself in Julie Murphy’s story of modern day Cinderella, If the Shoe Fits. The heat is not oppressive today. There is a light breeze. The sky is bright blue and the clouds are snowy white and fluffy. The sun is sweet and golden rays are reflecting the rich, shiny green of the trees and bushes in our backyard. The majestic oak tree at the fringe of our property is lopsided now. Part of its limbs fell on the ground after some severe storms in the past but it still stretches its remaining limbs up to the sky. It is undaunted despite its loss. I think there is a lesson to be learnt there.

I see it. I am still new at it.

No matter, this moment is good. I will take this moment and consider it a blessing.

Peeking in

I was away for a few days looking at colleges for my son. When I travel I don’t look at the blog. However, when I opened the app over the weekend, I saw that many people have read several blogs (or one person has been reading them, I don’t know). I also have several new subscribers. Thank you and welcome to my blog, new people! I appreciate you stopping by and pressing the subscribe button.

Whenever I see new subscribers, I get this feeling of responsibility that I should write something for them to read. However, on this humid Monday morning, my mind is blank. I even went for a walk where I get most of my ideas for a blog post. Today, I was simply cutting through the humidity, huffing and puffing as I crested a small hill in our neighborhood. I thought I would write about a few observations and realizations about our travel.

First, I still feel slightly taken aback when I look at Ryan walking beside me on a tour of college campus. When did he get so big?

After a few tumultuous teen years, say from 14 to 16, when I loved him but did not quite like him, he is turning a corner. He is funny, engaging and loving. My kid is coming back to me!

I realized after staying in New York for a couple of days that I do NOT like a city anymore. This came as a complete surprise since I grew up in Kolkata and always considered myself a city girl.

Due to my work and Sean’s constant travel all summer, I felt we were leading parallel lives. Ten days of traveling together with him made me feel reconnected.

Sahana cooked this amazing steak last night. And despite the fact that I have really limited my meat intake, I ate it and loved it.

And I finished Horse by Geraldine Brooks. Friends, if you pick up one book to read this year, I suggest this one. I finished it last night and I am sad and fulfilled at the same time.

Kemon achish? How are you?

How are you? This is such a loaded question, isn’t it? How easily I answered this question before May 10th of 2021. Despite all anxiety, despite occasional sadness, sickness, anger, despair, I was well. I was doing fine. People I love the most, people who were my center, were alive. Covid 19 took that away. I have climbed up a steep hill of hopelessness and grief but when someone asks me “How are you?” I stumble. Do they really want to know? Do I really know?

A dear friend from Kolkata asked me today, “Tui kemon achish?” I gave her the rote response, “Bhalo achi.” (I am well). And that is the truth. I am well. I am just not as well as I used to be. How can I?

Mary Oliver’s poem Heavy has taught me to carry my grief well, reposition it, balance it, bear it. Yet there are times, so many times, the resilient muscle that I am trying to grow goes limp. I have to start strengthening it all over again. A friend who lost her dad to Covid told me about ‘resilient muscle’. We are both trying to make it stronger. But a certain memory, a certain slice of my past life, certain song, certain smell is enough to break down resiliency. I have accepted that though. I know this is my new state of being and I will try to remake this new me and despite all, I will be well. I am well.

But this is such a beautiful question one person can ask another. How are you? Tell me. I really want to know. I want to sit by you and hear how you truly are. I don’t want to give you advice, or sympathy or pity. I just want to be with you and listen, truly listen to how you are. Tell me. I care. I am here for you.

You got to laugh

I wasn’t laughing at 7:30 am this morning. After complaining to literally everyone whole week about how tired I was, I finally made it to the weekend. Friday night (after my sink got fixed) was glorious. I came back from work, made a quick dinner, grunted hello to Ryan (and he grunted a ‘what’s up back), settled down to watch Gilded Age on HBO. I woke up on Saturday morning with a to-do list. But first and foremost on the list was a refreshing long walk. I laced up my sneakers, did some stretches, debated whether I wanted to listen to music or just get lost in my thoughts (always a dangerous proposition) and then went downstairs to go out through the basement. I landed in water. Yes, my whole basement was flooded. My first thought, interestingly enough, was an irrational anger towards my partner, the poor guy. Things always happen when he travels. I just had the plumber fix the blockage in my kitchen sink the day before and now my basement is flooded!! Not just water but entire gunk from the blockage was on my basement floor. The rugs in front of the tv was sopping wet. At that point I did not know where the water came from, there was no leak in any of the pipes. I came upstairs, woke Sahana and Ryan up, took the heavy wet rugs outside to dry in the sun with their help. Sent a thank you to the universe for blessing us today with a scorcher – yup, you read that right. I am so thankful today was 100 degree F so my rugs, thousand towels and two mops that I used to mop water from my basement actually dried.

The same plumber who thought of his friend’s mother when he saw me, came back. He discovered there was a bigger blockage in the main pipe which he snaked out. I ran the kitchen sink and the disposal to make sure there was no water or goop rushing out in the basement. I also heard how much money the guy makes in this profession and all about his personal life. I will encourage Ryan to consider the plumbing profession if he wants to make it big in life in terms of money. He is a very friendly guy but I was outwardly friendly, silently seething because I had a ton of water to mop in the basement. He said he won’t charge me as if he is doing me a favor. I said he shouldn’t charge me because this was a recall. Anyway, I did not have to pay but I did have to listen to various stories of his life.

Sahana had work today but she brought me coffee from Dunkin Donuts before leaving for work. Ryan followed the plumber around with me and nodded his head seriously at all the technical talks of blockage and snaking. He took his role as the man of the house very seriously. Anyway, after the plumber left, my real work began. By the time the water and awful gunk from basement was cleaned up, I was done for. I wrote to my husband a long message about how everything was awful, how hard I had to work and so on and so forth. He responded with a sad emoji to my long, woeful story and promptly followed that with his Wordle completion score. He is definitely sleeping on the couch when he returns.

I kept checking my basement all day. Either I went down or sent Ryan down to check. It has remained dry. Nervously, I did a load of laundry but stood downstairs just in case the water started spouting from the pipes. The water remained where it is supposed to remain – inside the pipes. We ordered Afghani food after Sahana came back from work and the three of us laughed as we ate. Ryan is big into investment, now that he is earning money and his voice rose in excitement as he educated his mother on his research about index funds and S&P 500 charts. His mother is clueless about investments and should really take a class. At one point, when his voice started bellowing as he got very invested (see what I did there?) in his topic of investment, the stereotypical librarian in me shushed him (most public librarians don’t shush anymore, it is truly a stereotype 🙂 ). After dinner, Sahana and I went for a walk which was lovely.

It was a good end to a bad day. There was laughter and that is, sometimes, just enough.

Bad day

I have written before that my love language is feeding. Now that my family does not care for the food I cook, I cook for my coworkers. On Wednesday night after work, I chopped onions, pureed tomatoes, made ginger garlic paste and soaked vatana (dried green peas) to make ghugni, a popular street food of Bengal, for my coworkers.

On Thursday morning I woke up energized. I was ready to cook all morning before work. I had also picked up a beautiful eggplant from the farmer’s market. I planned to make baingan bharta as well. I had my morning coffee, rinsed the dried peas and transferred them to an instant pot to boil. I set the timer at 10 minutes. While the peas boiled, I peeled the roasted eggplant and then picked up the vacuum to clean. When I opened the instant pot lid, I discovered the peas were overboiled and completely useless for the dish I had planned to make. Fortunately, I had cans of garbanzo beans in the pantry and I substituted.

As I was doing the dishes and drying them, I knocked down a glass jar which broke in pieces scattering glass everywhere on my kitchen floor. That involved picking up glass, sweeping the floor and then mopping it too so that no stray glass could sneakily cut our feet.

Work day went as usual without any angry customers. My friends enjoyed the food. My coworker and I brainstormed for class ideas. The conversation went like this “And we could do….”. “YES!! And then we could do….!” It was quite funny.

I came home after 9 pm thinking, “alright the morning was bad but the rest of the day turned out fine.” And then Sahana exclaimed, “What is this?” She was pointing to the kitchen sink. It was filled with dirty water. The water would not drain. There was clearly some blockage. I spent the next half hour emptying dirty water from the sink and pouring it in a bucket to throw outside. Then I called the plumber. Sahana canceled her plans to stay home for the plumber so I could go to work on time. Ryan was not helpful at all. He went to bed because of his practice at an ungodly hour in the morning.

It is Friday morning, I am waiting for the plumber. And of course, Sean is traveling. Things happen when he travels. On top of all that, I did not hear from Sean the whole day!

But here is a picture of the ghugni and baingan bharta. I will have you know, I cracked a real coconut for the first time in my life after watching You Tube video on “how to crack a coconut” and used fresh coconut meat for this dish. I felt very “from the scratch”.

Stat line is flat

Well, hello world! I peeked in to my oft neglected blog after a long time and saw to no one’s surprise that the statistics line of my blog site is flat. For all these days, no one has peeked in to see if mama is thinking. Mama has been thinking but she has been too lazy to put those thoughts down on her blog site.

It is summer in the library baby!! After spending just 2 hours in the children’s section, helping young readers find books (but lets face it, none of the books I suggest are on the shelves), toys, handing them and their parents reading lists, giving them hints as to where the scavenger hunt clues are, giving out tickets for children’s classes, listening to little ones scream because it is their naptime and their care giver refuses to take them home, I fall flat on my face and do not feel like writing. After a day at the library, I come home and surf Instagram to watch food vlogs and animal videos.

I have had some fun times with both my kids. Sahana took me out to celebrate my 10 year work anniversary. I still have to wrap my head around the fact that I have an adult child. I had made it clear to her when she was an angry teen and I had to lay down ground rules that I am not here to be her friend, I am and always will be her parent. But I feel the line is getting a bit blurry from time to time. She asked me what I would have changed, if I could, in these 10 years of working at the library. I did not have an answer right then. But after giving it some hard thought, I realized, there were times I put my responsibility towards work over my children’s activities. It is too late now but I wish I had done things differently.

Ryan at age 17 is a much nicer young man than he was a couple of years ago. He is really fun to talk to and as he grows up, I find his wicked sense of humor very similar to my father’s. He resembles his grandfather as well and sometimes, when he talks I lose my focus as I see baba peeking through his eyes, his smile. He will assume some leadership roles in his senior year at his high school and I think he will lead with maturity, empathy and grace. Very surprisingly, he does not fight me like he used to when I ask to do chores for me. If I ask him to do something, he says ‘sure’ and does it (except for making his bed or keeping his room clean, and that drives me crazy). I am a very involved parent and like to know everything that is going on in my children’s lives but I am learning to stay silent but present so they come to me with questions/thoughts/ideas. I fail often, but I try again.

Sean and I have not had much time to relax together. We both have been working hard. I miss him and often feel lonely. I guess such is middle age. I realized that now that my parents are gone and children are growing up to have their own lives, the person whose companionship I crave and when he is not around, miss is my husband’s. We vex each other often and I realize we squabble more as we get older and crankier but we laugh too, despite and still.

This blog is really not substantial. I am just showing some love to this online journal of mine. Not sure why you would be interested in reading about my children, but some of you do read so thank you. I have some ideas to write more substantial (may be not, but it is my blog so I can write whatever feels substantial to moi) in upcoming weeks.

I want the stat line not to stay flat – it is an ego boost to see the line go up, so please click 🙂 !

Tea cups

The reason why I am writing this blog is simply to delay the inevitable. I am all dressed and ready to go to the supermarket to buy groceries for the week. It is my day off and I do all the essential chores and errands on this day and before I know it, the day is done. It is almost funny how I procrastinate on chores. I did my morning Wordle (have you fallen into the wordle trap yet?), then I did the New York Times mini crossword, then I watched videos of Ariana DeBose because she is so gorgeous and so talented. Then I felt guilty for being on my phone for half the morning without ticking off any item on my to-do list. So I got my bottom off the couch, showered, dressed and almost put on my sneakers to head out. However, I discovered my Fitbit is out of charge. Why should I move a muscle if I don’t get any credit for it, so I am charging my Fitbit. Sean asked me to write an email to one of Ryan’s teachers. I fired up the computer to write that mail and now I am scribbling/typing on my blog post. Once my Fitbit is charged up I will go buy food, I promise!

I want to write down what I realized this morning while grabbing my coffee mug for my morning cuppa. Every morning I wake up, press the button on my coffee maker even before my eyes are fully open and browse my WhatsApp (when the cobwebs of sleep have not cleared from my brain, I still instinctively think there will be the usual message from ma waiting for me in the morning). The coffee maker makes my coffee, I reach to the cabinet where we keep our mugs, I don’t even look which one I grab as long it contains substantial amount and pour the coffee. Only when I have had a few sips do I glance at the mug and never give it a second thought. Now, I am not a tea drinker. People often assume that since I am from India, I enjoy tea. I don’t. I drank tea – milky, sugary tea as a young person. But I never enjoyed it. It was almost a cultural thing to do, a ritual almost. When I moved to USA, I tried coffee, I liked it and stuck with it. However, I have discovered herbal tea now, thanks to some of my friends. Especially Bigelow orange spice black tea. On very cold days, either at work or at home the idea of holding a hot cup of tea in my hand seems very cozy. So I do that. I heat some water, reach for a mug. But here is the difference. When I am about to pour hot water in a mug to make a cup of tea for myself, I choose the prettiest mug that I have. I actually pay close attention to aesthetics of my mug, I love to see the gradual transformation of the color of water as the tea steeps in it and changes the flavor of the hot water. The transformation of color in a pretty mug gives me a simple joy. The taste of the tea almost becomes secondary. It becomes, again, the ritual of making tea – an act of self care.

Do any of you do this? Take more care to choose your tea cup than your coffee mug?