I’m back… for now

Yes, I’ve been AWOL too long. For one, I gave the kids my study table and have begun to use the escritoire I got in the truckload of stuff from my parents last year. I can’t use a desktop on it and so have begun to use a laptop. I find that damn uncomfortable and it gives me a back ache so I finish office work and log off. I also re-uphosltered the office chair with a bit of Fabindia fabric I had lying at home. It isn’t very cheerful, but its calming and I am happy with the way it turned out.

There is a certain joy in knowing that three generations before you sat at this very desk - minus the laptop of course.

I’ve been away for a wedding where the Bean was a flower girl and the Brat a page boy. A cousin got married and I love her and was thrilled to be there. It went off beautifully and the groom is a great guy. The kids looked lovely and I sadly took no pictures because I was too busy with various duties around the wedding and didn’t really carry a camera. I also managed to drop my dad’s camera a number of times and not even notice that I’d lost it.

This is one of the first few family weddings where I mostly wore cottons and wooden jewellery. It turned out pretty well and the colours I chose – hot pink and tangerine were a nice spot of brightness and different from the usual silks. We needed a spot of brightness because the Bean got a bad attack of asthma a couple of days before we left. So we cancelled the train tickets, much to the kids’ disappointment and booked flight tickets. I was still a little unhappy because she was on the nebuliser 5 times a day and I couldn’t see how we’d manage that in the chaos of a wedding. But we did. The Brat has an eye allergy and needs drops a couple of times in the day. But come hell or high waters, I was attending the wedding even if I had to hire an ambulance. Most of the times I had a wheezing Bean in my arms because the humidity hit her and the weather there always gives the kids a bad cough. So she’d run around like mad and then come back for a dose of TLC.

I really had hoped the kids would sit still because they’ve not been inside a church in at least 2-3 years and have no idea how you’re meant to maintain silence there. But they behaved perfectly well (except for the once that the Brat pretended he was poking his eyes out and the couple of times he stood up and called out to me that he needed a Styracosaurus and a Diplodocus for his collection) and did me a lot of credit. At one point the Brat lay down in the lap of the father of the bride and went to sleep. The Bean came to me quietly when her sash opened up. I thought she wanted to stay with me but she got it re-tied and dutifully went back to sit with the rest of the wedding party. The day we left so many folks came up to me and said a special bye bye to her. She’d walked around and befriended them and told them stories *shudder* and built her own relationships with absolute strangers.  The quiet little Brat too had made some friends. And the funny part is that I didn’t know most of them.

It was great fun catching up with the cousins and I am rather sorry that the paternal grandparents kept me and my parents at bay for all the years before this. I could have spent so much more time with the family that side. I cannot get over the sense of loss of time and I sorrowfully watch my kids take the same cycle. Someday they will be free of us and their grandparents and will be able to meet their cousins outside of the family and have an independent relationship with them, free of prejudice and politics. I just hope it is a little sooner than 30 years from now.

We landed in Madras and the Brat looked out of the car window and began counting coconut trees. “I want to live in a place with coconut trees, mama,” said he and I grinned. A kid born and brought up in the northern plains feels the tug of coconut trees. Must be his roots calling!

It was a busy visit from the word go. Moving from venue to venue, organising, decorating the church, checking out the grounds, organising the games, everyone had something to do and in between all this I had to find a quiet spot, plug the Bean up and give her a shot of life.

The OA who arrived a day later came covered in huge red blotches and suffered in silence until we got him an injection the next morning. By evening he was covered in the rash again. It’s funny and sad because he’s one of those who takes pride in the fact that he is rudely healthy and as a result has no compassion, time or patience for those who do. I remember him looking at the Bean in utter shock when she was diagnosed with eczema – What? his daughter suffering from a namby pamby allergy type of thing? What was an allergy either way and why did people make such a fuss about it? So I was torn between worry and going nyah nyah nyah. We found a really cool doctor though, who gave him the shot, allergy medication and then said – Here for a wedding? Medicine and alcohol don’t mix well, so I’d say skip the medicine and go for the alcohol!

We also met an unbelievable number of cranky people this time. Old men at medical stores who took 35 minutes to bill us and yelled at the OA for not having exact change of Rs 371 ready. All while the OA stumbled through in broken Tamil and tried to smile.

I saw a lot of good too. We stayed at the YWCA and one morning while feeding the ducks a blind lady asked me to help her cross the road. I walked her across the beautiful complex and at the gate was caught by the famed, rude Madras autowalas. Except that this time they were not ripping me off. They wanted to help her as they regularly did. But I said I’d take her across since I’d got her this far and to my amusement, they didn’t trust me with her and followed me until I took her across the busy road, deposited her at a bus stop and settled her against the railing there. When I returned, a grizzly old auto driver stuck out his hand – “Good job madam. Which country?”  I took off my sunglasses and hat and glared at him and replied in Tamil -”Very much this country only.” I think they heard my accent and concluded that I was bullshitting them.  But this wasn’t the first. I got asked atleast 10 times in 4 days, where I was from. I’ve often got that in Delhi too, but never at this rate and intensity – usually just once every quarter.

The Brat and Bean on the other hand have watched endless cartoons dubbed in Tamil and the Bean has told G’pa that she wants to learn to speak Tamil from him. He nodded absently and speaking it pretty poorly himself, proceeded to forgot all about it. He was too busy feeling thrilled about the fact that he is looking rather young and fit these days. If he’d not balded so early he’d have been one of the best looking G’pas around. With ma gone to the brother’s place, I was running around taking care of him. Twice he got asked if I was his wife. Each time I was horrified. Do I look that old in a saree?! To which each person hastened to reply that its very common in those parts for older men to have younger wives and what with the custom of uncles marrying nieces, the resemblance is also there. I refused to accept that quick excuse and was damn put out. One lady tried to make up for it by quickly saying that I don’t look old enough to be a mother. Eh? Excuse me? I look old enough to be my father’s wife but not old enough to be mother to a  6 and 4 year old? Let it go, Lady, you’re only shoving your foot further into your mouth. Another said they knew my mother and I am the spitting image of her. Yes, I am, but I’m about 20 years younger, you know! yeah yeah, laugh it up you lot.

This trip I saw the change the years have wrought in my father. He calls it a night early and takes the kids home, letting the OA and I hit the pubs at night with the other cousins instead of being the life of the party, singing, playing the guitar and burning up the dance floor. It hit me when I walked into his room and saw three beds, his grandchildren, his blind mother on one and even the fulltime nurse who stays with her. I really missed my mother in that moment. He shouldn’t have had to do that alone and I said I would take the kids back to my room. But the kids clung to him and he shooed us out and that is how he spent  his 4 days. Putting the Bean on her nebuliser when I was helping with the arrangements, taking his blind mother by the hand to her meals and feeding her, taking the kids to watch the ducks and for walks in the compound, and trying to give me and the OA a break. He is going to be 60 this year and he is the sandwich generation, taking care of his 84 year old mother and 4 year old grand daughter in the same breath, without batting an eyelid. It’s a life lesson right there and there will be more related to this coming up in some days. It opened my eyes, made me rethink some things and really appreciate him for the person he is. And maybe aspire to be more like him and give more to family.

Wine. I wanted to organise some wine for a party and I was told you can only get it from a bootlegger or a five star. Excuse me? What is the deal?! The bleddy thekas have men falling out of them at any time of the day and there is no wine to be had for love or money? Can anyone tell me what the logic behind this is?

And the trip had Beanisms galore. I was screaming at her each time she went to the fish pond – Don’t do that, don’t bend so low, you’ll fall in and drown.

To which she finally replied – And I’ll die and then you’ll have to pray to God for a new baby and say “God, give me another chance. I promise to take better care of this one.”

Yes, total wtf moment.

 

 

Surprise!

Posted on March 14, 2011 by the mad momma (So those who missed this on themadmomma.in because the server crashed, can read and comment here. Come on folks, lets talk!)

I recently came across some studies that say couples who don’t have kids are happier.( Of all the articles on the matter though, this one is my favourite.) 

I find that easy to understand. I do envy people who fly off to Bangkok for a weekend instead of ferrying kids from one birthday party to another. Those who can sleep in till noon without little fingers prying open their eyelids and asking a sibling  “Do you think they are still in there?”

Kids are an additional responsibility. There is no getting away from that. Unless you are as cold as stone you are sure to be  involved with your kids and constantly thinking about them. By that I don’t mean you won’t stop off after work for a martini or give your best to a presentation. But I do mean you will look at your watch at 2 am and say, Damn, I wonder how the kids are, lets go home. Or, pack up the presentation and wonder if you’ve missed seeing them awake today.

Perhaps its not so much that you are happier without kids, but that you have less to worry about. Isn’t there the old line about freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Similarly, the more you have, the more you worry. If you are single, you have no one to worry about. If you are married you worry about your spouse coming back late at night alone. If you have kids, you worry about them falling down in the park and scraping a knee. It’s a bit of a no-brainer really so I don’t know why so much research went into it.

A friend recently asked me why people have kids. I don’t know. I really don’t; even 6 years after becoming a mother I can come up with no good reason to have kids. Nothing you couldn’t dispute at any rate. For the last 2 months they have had coughs and colds and there is snot on every conceivable surface of our home. They both are on some sort of medication to melt the phlegm that is in their chests and so they run around like urchins while I run behind them just wiping, wiping, wiping. There is skating class to go for, Bean to be dealt with while the Brat skates, homework, baths, dinner and finally I collapse at my desk and wonder if I should work or quickly tap out a post. Work deadlines zoom dangerously near and I can hear them whistle around my ears. Some days are good, some days I am torn between being mother, wife, professional, daughter and friend.

And then tonight as I crawled into bed with the babies after they’d fallen asleep, it struck me. It’s because it lets you get as close to another living creature. Humans are so transparent when they begin life that it is a pleasure to watch the way their brains work. The famed innocence of childhood is something we envy. But it is also a thrill, a high, like a drug, to be able to get into someone’s mind and watch it work. To see them figure out how a lock opens, to hear them pronounce a word, to watch their fingers curl around a fork and wrap noodles around it. Every bit of it is a human being coming into themselves and its like watching a science experiment, except much cuter!

The other cool part, is the ‘surprise factor.’ Do you know what I mean? Kids have the ability to look at something you’ve seen ten times over and make it more fun. How else do you explain the desire to take them to the beach and sit there digging castles when you could be sipping martinis by the pool instead? How else do you explain spending a Sunday at the zoo instead of in bed, changing channels and eating chips?

Whenever I visualise the children in my life I see myself leading them to the top of a mountain, my hands covering their eyes. And we trip and stumble along the way, they clinging to me trustingly. The path is uneven and I keep losing patience and wondering why I bothered at all. And then we reach the top and I remove my fingers and the view takes their breath away and I say Surprise! And they love it. Well, after having kids, my life is one endless series of yelling ‘Surprise!!!!!’ Be it reading Brer Rabbit to them or showing them how to shell peas and pick out the sweeter ones, everyday they learn something new. And everyday I relive the pleasure of it. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Edited to add: The kids have gone to Nani-G’pa’s place for ten days and the OA and I came home to a quiet home tonight. I didn’t find it peaceful. I found it empty and sad. Once a home has been touched by a child’s laughter it is very hard to go back to meaningless TV watching and huge chunks of time. We’ve learnt to find our little sneaky moments of romance, to eke out time to read on the pot, to have long chats with friends while rocking a baby to sleep on an arm that has lost sensation and now we’re just really efficient! I am happy that they are enjoying a break with their grand parents. I am happy that the OA and I have this time together. But honestly, in a week, I’m going to be crawling up the wall in agony if my children are not back in my arms.