- Mood:
sleepy
Is this what they mean by - goodness begets goodness?
- Mood:
sleepy
This year is Atul's fifth Halloween. The first year, he was Winnie the Pooh. It was more for us than for him. For the second one, he was a cute little tiger cub. He was hilarious, he would knock on people's doors, would want to play with kids in the house, and would hand over the treats back to them. The third Halloween, he was a Superman. He got into decorating pumpkins and such activities. Last year he was Buzz Lightyear, and we carved our first pumpkin at home. The tradition continued this year. Question of another six or seven years before he outgrows and Halloween will not be what it is now. Until then, here's to more candy looting, pumpkin carving and fancy costumes.
Have a good weekend.
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A scene at Atul's key board class. The song called for a queen, and a few soldiers. A queen was selected based on eeny, meeny, miny, moe rhyme. The boy and the girl soldiers pretended to play the trumpet, march to their places, followed by the boy soldiers bowing and the girl soldiers doing the courtesy. Then, it was the queen's turn to make a grand entrance and go towards her throne. Then the boy soldiers and the girl soldiers along with their mommy/daddy waved at the queen. It was an endearing sight to see the little girl's, that is the queen's, face turn different shades of pink, shy and blushing, from all the attention lavished on her. The innocence on her face was priceless.
- Mood:awake
Fun, fun and fun. Yeah, as long as it lasted. Not any more though, as we will be laboring in our backyard this weekend raking this short-lived beauty. Ah, well, a small price to pay, what do you say?
- Mood:awake
After those much cherished couple of years, it was time to bid adieu as my dad's job took us to different places. We kept in touch. Wrote to each other every week, some times every two or three weeks. I looked forward to sleep overs at her place whenever I visited Trichy and she came to spend a couple of days with me in Coimbatore. A few years rolled by in this manner. Then she got married, four days after I got engaged. Want to know the best part? both of us were heading to the same destination post marriage - Boston. Who would have thought and how special is that! Her being here made a big difference to my transition. You see there were a plethora of things to discuss - husband, inlaws, America, India, home sickness, setting up new home, groceries, cooking, cleaning, school days, deals, vacations. And who better to discuss it with than a good old friend.
After all these years, I think of her as family. Someone who knows my history and someone with whom I have grown up. Someone who will remind me of the person I was and the person I aspire to be. Over the past years, I have seen her undergo a number of life changing events. I have seen her in labor, hours before she gave birth to her son. I have seen her grieve the loss of a loved one two months later. I have seen the warmth she exudes on her mom, the pillar of support she is to her family and a shoulder that I tend to lean on so often. Resilience is the word that comes to mind when I think of her. The courage to accept, the will to fight, and her immense faith are some of the things that have made my life richer. Not to mention her dear husband and darling son whom my family is fond of.
As she turns a new chapter in her life tomorrow, here's wishing her the happiest of thoughts, the pinkest of health, and the very best in all her endeavors. Wishing her with all that she is wishing for, now and always. Happy B'day dear friend. Some things are just meant to be, and I am grateful our friendship is one such thing.
- Mood:
tired
Not today though. I thought I did the right things. After returning from rehearsal last evening, I ironed the costume I had borrowed for the performance, made sure all the accessories were in order, and that the salangai was packed. Searching for some inspiration, I keyed in "Kalakshetra" in YouTube and soaked myself in the five-part series on the dance school and felt pumped up after seeing the young and dedicated artistes practice and perform. Before hitting the sack earlier than usual I skimmed through the pages of the sole Bharathanatyam book we had in our collection. When I woke up this morning, I felt rested and relaxed. Spent a nice hour and a half practicing and correcting myself. Got dropped off at a friend's place where I got ample help for getting dressed. The dhavani component of the costume didn't sit as well as it should. A minor annoyance. The make up did not leave me with a feel good factor either. Was it the nose stud that I normally don't wear? I was not sure. Another minor annoyance. Then, my dance mate and I listened to the dance music while she was driving and I was coloring her daughter's hand (who was also performed tonight) with red marker. We reached the venue, exchanged greetings with other friends , quickly went through the sequence etc. etc. Then the program started with a bunch of us performing the invocation piece. It was a short piece and I was off in one or two places. No time for fretting though as I had to get ready for the next piece. This time it was an expression intensive item. No glaring mistakes but the item left me feeling I could have done better. The feeling should pass, I told myself and took delight in watching rest of the dancers perform. Apparently the feeling did not pass and only had a domino effect on the thillana. I missed thalams, went wrong with the abhinaya, and my thakka dhimmis were sloppy.
I would have played the sequence in my head a hundred times tonight to figure out what went wrong? what could I have avoided? was the practice not adequate? was I stressed out? was it the unfamiliarity with dynamics of live music? or was it just my state of mind? When a dancer knows that she has performed to the best of her abilities, it's a huge confidence booster. It's addicting. It makes her crave for more and more. Today I realized that when a dancer does not perform to the best of her abilities, it takes a while to forgive herself. But it still leaves her craving for more and more. To prove to herself that she can do better than that.
- Mood:
calm
Then, I decided to give myself a time out from the mental checklist and just be. I sat down with breakfast in hand, relishing one bite at a time. Everything else, from unfinished chores to the broken grinder had to wait in line to be taken care of. Hunger satiated, the traffic jam in my head slowly cleared. Lucky for me, the mechanic of the household, a.k.a. the husband, fixed the grinder and saved my day.
Phew! some mornings are more intensive than others.
So what was on your mind this morning? anything interesting? trivial? in the mood to share?
Then there are folks like my husband who go in search of white noise to put them to sleep. The fan is switched on every single night not for the breeze it produces but for the noise it creates.
How very fascinating that the human brain is wired so differently, isn't it?
* Thatha in tamizh means grandpa
* The Almighty is addressed affectionately as Ommachis by kids in tamizh
Update: I was pleasantly surprised to see so many updates on face book and twitter from desi friends who were as impressed with google as I was for celebrating Gandhi Jeyanthi.
So what's my point? Time management is a hard nut to crack. I am all for smelling roses and flying a kite. Believe me, I really am. But I also see merits in taking care of the under-appreciated mundane tasks. If I fold my laundry over the weekend instead of doing an art project with Atul, does it mean that I chose to fill the mayonnaise jar with sand rather than golf balls? That's one way of looking at it. I would argue that the laundry folding would save Arvind and Atul the hassle of digging through the mountain of clothes in the morning rush hour during the week and perhaps will give Atul extra few minutes to play with his toy car or munch on his breakfast. So in some odd ways, the sand after all made room for more golf balls. What do you think?
So it dawned on me this week that while I tend to do things in the last minute, I really can't pass my slackness and rush things with Atul, can I? There has to be a routine. A set time when he and I will sit down and learn together. And the learning process has to be laced with fun and silliness to sustain long term interest. Oh the joys of parenting!
I felt incredibly blessed to be part of something as beautiful and magical as this.
What all these extra-curricular activities mean is that the quantity of time that he will spend at home will go down, so we have to make sure the quality aspect of the leftover time goes high up in the scale. Easier said than done for a person like me who gets easily lost in the humdrum of life. I am also acutely aware that we should not live our life through him under the guise of exposing and experimenting. Hopefully, with time we will learn to identify when we slip into that mode and correct ourselves. But for now, let the chauffeuring begin!
Even in the age of amazon and internet searches, nothing can beat the word-of-mouth as a marketing strategy! What do you say? Okay, time to move on to my next quest - a good dentist referral. Any suggestions?
Hope all of you had a happening summer and have slipped into a routine now that the school year is upon us. I can already see shades of yellow in our garden. Time to pull out the sweaters and the jackets out of the closet I say, albeit with some reluctance.
Technically, my tales are not that of absentmindedness. They lean towards my tendency to make things in my head. Sometimes the things that I make up in my head seem to me more real than reality itself. It almost always leaves me scratching my head - it's not me, is it? It's one thing if you know you are committing a mistake, but another thing when you are blissfully unaware of your fallacies. You are beyond redemption.
This episode happened about three years back. All dolled up and with a present in my hand, I drove down to a friend's place for her baby shower. As I approached the street on which her house was located, I noticed that I was the first person to arrive and it surprised me mildly because I thought I was a few minutes late for the party. Well, punctuality is a trait you don't expect in an Indian get-together, do you ? So reasoning, I knocked on the door and rang the bell a few times. Nobody answered and there was no sign of any baby shower whatsoever. I should have taken a hint by then. But no, I didn't. Instead, my otherwise unimaginative mind imagined a number of scenarios and I was strongly convinced that the most plausible explanation was that the baby decided to arrive earlier than expected. So I called up the dad expecting to hear a exasperated hello or a voice recording. Neither happened and what did I hear instead. A very calm "Whats up Suman" greeting. Then and that instant it struck me that may be, just may be I came on the wrong day. I don't recall the conversation that followed after, all I remember was frantically trying to recall the content of the invite to figure out where I went wrong - the venue, the time, the date, and the day. When I received the invite a couple of weeks back, I had conveniently made up the wrong day (a sat. instead of sun.) in my head. The reference I made in preparation of the baby shower there after was the day rather than the date, so the date of the baby shower took a back seat and the mistake was never corrected. I stood there cringing and squirming, looking for a place to bury my head. I came home so embarrassed to a husband who did his best to hide the uncontrollable grin on his face. What a big joke, except that it was not funny when I went through it.
They say, once bitten twice shy. Not really, at least not in my case. Last December, Arvind, Atul and I braved the snow storm and drove on a Sat. afternoon to a secret santa event that was rescheduled. This time too, ours was the only car (do you see a pattern here?). But with the weather so bad, one should only expect the unexpected (rationalizing again, I didn't learn from my mistake, did I?). The decorations were on, so I went ahead and knocked on the door. As our gracious hosts opened the door, I asked, is the party on? has nobody arrived? They asked if we did not get the rescheduled mail that not only mentioned change in date but also change in timing. For a second, I wished that I had inherited an invisibility cloak from an ancestor just like Harry Potter did from his dad. What was I going to say to Atul who was expecting to see Santa ho hoing. Our hosts invited us in and let excited Atul have fun. They were even kind enough to handover a spare present saying that it was from Santa. Of course, on our way home, Atul asked how come Santa did not come to give the present. It doesn't feel as tragic as I narrate it here, but I vividly remember my heart breaking into pieces thinking how I had ruined that afternoon for him. If that was not enough for the evening, thanks to our friendly street plower that had piled a mountain of snow in front our drive way, we had to dig our way into the house on our return.
That evening taught me to get more attentive to details and steered me away from making things in my head to suit my convenience. Every time I receive an invite or have a committment I signed up for, I am fanatic about entering the details in my calendar and sharing it with Arvind. Considering my track record, it doesn't hurt to have a second pair of eyes to spy on.
On that note, have a lovely weekend folks.
You see I am the kind of person that reaches out for a pullover when the air conditioner hums on a hot summer day. I wear fuzzy socks when the temperature hovers around 60s. I go to the beach to get mesmerized by the vastness of the sea and to take pleasure in building sand castles rather than to get drenched by the waves. The days of longing to get soaked are far and between. Perhaps, on a hot and humid day, which is not an everyday occurrence even during summer in a place like Boston. So when I signed up Atul for the parent-child swim lessons, little did I realize what I was getting myself into.
My quandary started when I had to shop for a swim suit that I would be comfortable in and do the underlying preparations. First hurdle crossed, I heaved a sigh of relief when I stepped into the kiddie pool and realized that the water was after all knee-deep. No problem, this much I can do, I said to myself and started having fun with the son. Even that seemed like an effort on evenings that the sun chose to hide behind the grey clouds and deprive us of warmth. "Shake your hands and legs in water, and you will get warm soon", would be the instructors advise while Atul's teeth were chattering. So together Atul and I would splash, walk around, and obediently follow the instructions from the teacher. The real trouble began when she enthusiastically declared one evening, "I am going to spice the class a little bit and take you to the middle pool". The voice in my head screamed, no, don't do this to us, I am more than happy to have a class that's totally bland.
And then the next instant I noticed a pair of peering eyes staring at me. A pair of eyes that is an astute reader of my expressions and body language. A pair of eyes that can figure out when I am being genuine and when I am faking it. A pair of eyes that was eager to explore and have fun in the big boy pool. A pair of eyes that was looking up to me. So that pair of eyes silenced the voice in my head, and, spontaneously, I told Atul, "Yay, I think the big boy pool is going to be more fun. The water will be deeper, but have no fear because amma is here".
Tomorrow will be the last parent-child swim lesson. I am so proud of us - Atul and I. As I write this post, I am not certain if I was the one that nudged him out of his comfort zone or if he was the one that encouraged me to tread new waters.
- Mood:
sleepy
