Going bananas

I reach out for a bunch of bananas on the fruit seller’s cart – the Brat loves them and could live on bananas for the rest of  his life. My hand hovers over it for a minute and then I walk away.

As I pass the balloonwala I stop to admire the bright colours. Mentally pick the two I want and stop short. And walk away.

I check the time. It’s getting late. I must rush home to the… the… damn. To no one.

Yes, the birds have flown the nest again. They’ve gone to have chicken legs with G’Pa and Nani.

The OA and I just dropped them off and travelled back without reservation. No don’t ask us why we tend to make a habit of this. I have a feeling it’s divine intervention just so that I have something to write about here!

It was uneventful. If you call 10 hours of sitting on corners of berths and squeezed into tight corners uneventful.

When I went to bid the Brat goodbye he hugged me and said ‘Thanks for coming… ‘

Thanks for coming?!!!!

The Bean? It was time for her nightly half hour of cartoon time and she shoved me out of the way unceremoniously and got on with the important task of watching Dumbo. I begged her for a kiss. I hugged her and told her I’d miss her. A tear rolled down her cheek and I was flattered – and then realised that it was because she was watching TV unblinkingly. I reminded the Brat to wipe her eyes and make her blink every little while and left for the station.

Happy that my kids are secure and confident and have been so since the age of 1, and stayed away from me  – not just tolerating it but happy to be with whoever they are. Enjoying whatever the situation, place and people offer them. It’s comforting to know that they’re not clingy, upset without a routine or afraid to be with people other than their parents.

The Bean has changed remarkably over the last couple of months. Not only is she not afraid or shy with strangers, she is outright bold, walking up to people for a kiss and a thank you. She’s a little more picky than the Brat but she does me proud.

We had a houseful over the last two days at my parents’ place and it seems strange that I know more single men than women –  from their early teens to the mid thirties. And my kids love them. And they love my kids.

A patient Perakath watched over the Brat while he pretended he was fishing in the fish pond. In reality he was just digging in there with a stick and chucking bits of the waterplants out. We ignored him, knowing that every kid in our family has had their baptism by water at least once in one of the ponds and not been any worse off for it. But Perakath persevered and stood out there picking up each bit of sopping wet weed and tossing it back in. Ensuring that the Brat didn’t drown.

The other two cousins melted each time the Bean asked for something and by the end of it I had three pairs of doggie eyes looking at me pleadingly each time she wanted a bar of  ‘choko-let’.

For those who wanted to know how Nani reacted to the Bean’s chicken eating – She sent us two tickets the next day to bring her Bean back to her which is how we ended up rushing them back to Nani-G’Pa house. Well there’s a longer story behind that but we may as well save that for another post…

And I was in no hurry to leave office and rush home today  – because the nursery is dark.