Pre-Halloween Scare

Boy had clear instructions to get off the school bus at Y Aunt’s stop and walk over to her house with friends, S & S.

Boy understood instructions and tried getting off the bus at the right stop.

Bus driver decides to enforce rules and refuses to let Boy get off the bus at Y Aunt’s stop. Instead forcefully takes Boy to his usual bus stop.

Good precaution on bus driver’s part except that there isn’t anyone home to receive the 9 year old Boy.

Boy does the right thing, walks home with bus friend and neighbor. Calls his amma from said friend’s home to let her know that he is there and will be going to a different friend’s home shortly.

Boy calls from second friend’s house to update Amma on his new location, all the while explaining why he had to do this. Unfortunately Amma is unable to pick up the phone both times, since she is stuck in meetings at work.

Friend S is in hysterics since Boy was not allowed to get off the bus and calls Y Aunt wailing and sobs into the phone that the Boy is off on his own.

Y Aunt rushes off work to go looking for Boy in his neighborhood. So the wild hunt begins. Y Aunt is knocking on random doors to figure out the Boy’s location. She tries calling Amma but Amma is still stuck at the same frigging meeting and wondering why everyone has chosen this hour to call her.

The third call from Y Aunty jettisoned Amma into walking out of the meeting to take her call. By this time, Y Aunty has mapped her way to the Boy’s friend’s house and is driving him to her house before she heads back in to work.

A scary situation averted thanks to Y Aunt. She is simply the best and she so knows that J

The best moment:

The Boy didn’t know his best friend was crying till a kid in the bus yelled at the bus driver for making the little girl cry

Aren’t kids the total riots? Got to absolutely love them!

p.s. The boy now has a piece of paper with Amma’s signature giving the bus driver permission to let the Boy get off at the friend’s stop on the designated days.

On that note a Happy & safe Halloween to you all!

Awesome desert…

Would you believe I lived in a desert if I had this to show you?

 

These are a few pictures I clicked as the OH & I took a walk this past Saturday morning with the beast, Z

A tender moment revisited

When they were newly married the old couch was a priced possession. Many a days were spent sharing the single ratty old couch and watching TV. Then came the kids and with them the grandparents. Life got to be hectic and chaotic with little time for much else. Then again many years later, one quiet weekend, the kids were off to their classes, the grandparents were off traveling and the seasoned couple got to enjoy a few hours of TV, sharing space yet again on a single but not so ratty old couch 

Corridor Conversations

Sunday morning 8:15 a.m.

Appa, you have cricket today?

That’s not fair. You will be gone all day and when you come back you will be tired and won’t have any time to play with me. I hate you going to cricket. Why can’t you stay home with me? I am so mad at you Appa. I won’t talk to you anymore.

And with that he walks into his room to watch more television…

 

Tuesday morning 6:00 a.m.

Appa, where are you?

Amma, where is Appa?

Appa’s voice is heard feebly from the basement.

Appa, you are already in the basement and have been working since 4:30 a.m.? You don’t do anything with me anymore. You don’t spend any time with me. You are not even here to send me into the bath and comb my hair. All you do is work all the time. You don’t even play with me anymore.

And with that he huffs off into the bathroom for his shower…

The rest of the morning was spent ignoring Appa’s instructions and requesting Amma to repeat the same instructions so they may be worked on.

 

He makes life so much easier for me. How can Appa even think Amma nags in the presence of a protégé who does such a splendid job?

On familial love…

They fight

They bicker

They hurt each other

They act like juveniles

Never secure in the love for one another

But when in need,

They stick together like it’s meant to be

Heartwarming, it is to see that they aren’t alone when the situation warrants

They are after all, peas from the same pod

and you realize without a doubt that the love & care behind it all

was never too far from the surface

Waiting to glow on a new moon day

when the moon isn’t there to be the guiding light…

Limerick Gimmick

Married she has been for almost 16 years and still often thinks about the circumstances of her wedding and how lucky she got with the choices she made. Jumped she did at the tag that gave her the opportunity to tell her friends the time in her life when the two souls came together and started making choices (not always the ones the heart wished but definitely closer to what the mind said) as a team.

He <OH> was a struggling PhD student

In a time when every little purchase caused a dent

Engagement or wedding was his choice

A price greater than he could afford was his invoice

Wedding is where he chose to spare his cent

And this one I dedicate to everyone who has challenged me with tags along the way…

They graciously throw challenges her way

To which she always falls a prey

Never a breeze it is

Always ending in a crisis

One she eventually finds her way out of at the end of the day

This time I would like to open this up to anyone who visits this space and feels like taking up the tag. I had a blast doing it. Thanks AJ.

A bond thicker than blood!

They have shared a room for almost 5 years now.

Over the years they have bonded over this daily ritual.

Many a times, late into the night we have heard a quiet chatter from behind the closed doors

They enjoyed their various night time activities, be it reciting their prayers when grandma was around, or listening to audio books on their boom box

Sometimes it was cuddling with their webkinz or their favorite stuffed toys

They had many a fights and many a tattling rounds during their night time conversations

They planned surprised events for the rest of the family

They even let their respective friends share their room when they came over for sleep overs

They slept in postures that wasn’t always convenient to the other

They cribbed, they complained and

They fought over who made the bed in the morning

There were times when they fought so hard they had nothing nice to say to one another

But they always made up at the end of the day

Because they needed one another at bedtime to chase away the monsters and

Also to ensure neither got the privilege of staying up later than the other

He had his own room across the corridor but never made it there except to pick up his clothes and grab his school bag

Many a times he was asked to sleep in his own room but he always chose to share hers

He promised he would go to his own room when he turned 9.

That age came and he still was least interested in being on his own

And then one day he decided it was time for him to have his own room

The room he chose was the one grandpa and grandma occupied

He waited patiently for them to leave

Before he took possession of the room

He asked for a night lamp, stacked his favorite animals and pillows around him

And breezed into the land of nod before amma and appa could say goodnight.

The first thing he asked as he got up from sleep this morning was…

“Amma, can I please have the dresser and the mirror & the TV in that room to myself?”

My baby has grown up and this Amma can only hope & pray that the time the siblings spent together have forever bonded them together in life and that all their fights will ebb at the end of the day and their love for one another will grow tall into the sky.

A daughter is a gift of love*

Every parent should be blessed with a daughter is something grandma often says to me. She loves her two boys and would fiercely fight for the need to have boys in life but has always missed having a girl in her life. I have often seen grandma and grandpa converse and comment on how unlucky they are to not have a daughter to call their own.

Much as I respect and love her and will always be there for her, she can never be what my mom is to me. Everyone struggles with this notion that a son-in-law can be a son and a daughter-in-law can be a daughter, but from what I have seen and experienced in my life, the sooner one accepts the fact that one can have love and respect for everyone but at the very core, it is impossible to love/care for someone as one does their own parents.

The OH is as balanced as a Libran can get Days after we were married he said to me that he loved for his parents, my parents and me equally. This immediately got me all upset but as I sat to think about it, I only realized that if a guy loves us all just the same, he can never treat any one of us any different and that it takes a very special person to say & feel that. Obviously it is a different kind of love for each one of us and that made me realize that what he said had more to do with doing right for each one of us than loving each one of us the same. It would be interesting to ask him the same question today, post his two babies (but I digress!!)

Today both he and I know that we can never feel the same for the other’s parents as we do for our own and that brings with it peace & harmony on most occasions when in years past we would have had a raging war Back in the days, I would often get upset when he wasn’t hanging around the phone when I called my parents but over the years one changes and adapts and finds peace in the way it turns out to be. It is almost like you throw a deck of cards up in the air and fight over where you want each one to fall only to realize that you don’t have much control over where is falls and it is much easier to find comfort and happiness with wherever it lands.

I often mentioned to the OH before we had the kids that I wouldn’t mind having two girls but if I were given two boys and no girls, I would have been sad. Now that I have one of each, I see them for who they are and that they are both special in their own way but I have to agree with grandma that not having a girl definitely sucks. Every parent deserves to understand how special it feels to have a daughter in their lives!

Am sure you are wondering where this all comes from out of the blue. Well, there is a reason to this random thought process. Let me explain.  Grandma and Grandpa left for India today. They have been shopping for months and packing for weeks now. As is always the case, just before any flight, the items in the baggage start breeding and the children gain weight the minute they reach the airport weighing scale. There is almost always a shuffle at the airport to shift the weight between the bags. This activity requires an inordinate amount of patience to stand by and watch them painstakingly got through the motions. When it comes to grandpa, he is not wired to let anyone else touch or mess with his packing. He has to be the do-it-all guy much to the agony of the family standing around watching him helplessly. Grandma after 40 years of marriage knows not to get into it. Daughter-in-law after living with them for sixteen years now knows when to shut up and offer to help in a manner that does roughen sensitivities. Son possesses no such qualities. He tends to lose his temper and get mad at grandma and grandpa for not anticipating the added weight from the new children in the box. Anger never does any good and egos are bruised and everyone is left feeling miserable at the end of it all.

Total thanks to logistical issues grandma and grandpa were dropped at the airport by daughter-in-law instead of son. The above scenario repeated itself but the situation was handled with no tantrums and grandma and grandpa left with a smile on their face and were happy that they didn’t have to face the wrath of the son in addition to having to deal with all the stress of opening and moving stuff around. Grandma was happy and voiced it is as many words that she was glad it was not the son accompanying them this morning to the airport.

This whole experience made me wonder why sons are not wired to be patient in such situations. They would make it so much easier on the parent by being patient and considerate in situations that are extremely stressful to begin with. It is the girl who almost always has the patience to be calm and deal with the situation better and also not hurt sentiments. I know this is a generalization and maybe there are sons out there with the requisite patience and daughters who lack the same quality but it’s just that I am yet to meet one of either category…

* quote by and unknown author

Ajeeb kashmakash ya uljan

Is it time to rejoice the freedom to be gained

or

mourn the freedom to be lost

with grandma and grandpa leaving tomorrow?

Creativity & me…

… are defnitely not terms that go together when it comes to me. For one who has infinites patience tinkering with gadgets and reading through instruction manuals for said gadgets, I have little or no talent when it comes to anything art. That should explain why both my siblings sings real nice and I stick to enjoy their music in fear of hurting some poor soul in some way with any such attempts.

Now when it comes to duplicating some random drawing I can probably pull off an elementary version but that is where my talent at art ends. Creativity isn’t my cuppa of tea. No sir!

The lovely rads tags me to do a post on my experiencing with kolams. Now a tag is a tag and I got to give it the due honor and respect Now hear again is something I have enjoyed being an observer rather than a doer. Growing up I watched my aunt (mom’s sister) come up with the most beautiful kolams. I would wake up in the morning during the many vacations we spent at her house and stand out at the front door and watch her weive her magic on the ground. Be it the most simple creations or the most intricate designs, they came naturally to her.

Then grandma of course had to ensure that her daughters had all the good talents required for a domesticated housewife. Little did she know back them that we’d turn out to be who we are today She taught us the basics of using rice flour to draw a fairly simple pattern at our front door each day. This task was passed down from my older sibling to me and it am thinking went down to the younger sibling as well. By then I was out of the country and didn’t bother to ask the younger sibling during our many conversations back then since we had so many other pressing issues to talk about.

Now I can only imagine what the people who walked past our door each day thought when I was delegated this task. The older sibling picked up the art gene and could do some amazing designs herself and after enjoying her creations, the same folks were stuck with having to live with my err not so pretty work (I wouldn’t even call it design!) After marriage the art of kolam was promptly forgotten with the many apartment living we did. With the advent of grandma for the birth of Meg, she brought with her customs and rituals that had been sent down in the order of priorities. She would meticulously soak and grind the rice for each festival and make sure there was a simple design drwan out at the front door. She always looked to me for help and I would promptly pick a random assortment of duties that didn’t include this particular task.

As Meg started to grow up she showed distinct signs of creativity explicitly missing in the amma/appa gene pool. Obviously she took after the family gene and is extremely good with anything art. She would watch in awe as her perimma (my older sibling) and grandma created these lovely kolams and would try it all on pieces of paper. She soon collected a small stack of kolams she has learned and each time she visited India, she would find a guinea pig to teach her a few more designs.

This diwali in an attempt to please the daughter and hit by a sudden urge to test if the brain could recollect anything from the past, I attempted a rangoli. The fact that the festival happened on a weekend helped with the time factor. Presenting to you folks the result of a few hours of collective effort between mother and daughter