2024…Soon To Be 2025

This year too, seems to have flown by. We’ve had all sorts of experiences by turn- happy, sad, meh and pretty much all the emojis have had a chance to be centerstage…even the poopy one. And oh the realizations! I can honestly say it’s been chockfull of everything and then some.

We’ve grown a bit as parents of a teenager. Sanity has been eroded a bit but that can’t be laid entirely at the child’s door. Family being what it is: a dynamic entity which is by turns idiosyncratic, fulfilling and also frustrating; Red and I find ourselves not as elastic as we were even a year ago. We’re firmly ensconced in middle age and it is kicking our collective butts.

These are some things which have made room in our lives now:

• Taking a picture of small prints of instructions on a jar/bottle/packet and then enlarging it on the phone’s screen to figure out what it says.
• Making peace with the notion that progressive lens might be the next stop.
• Medicines for controlling our cholesterol and other little sundries of health which were till now taken for granted.
• Talking about retired life (even if it is another 15 years down the line).
• Wanting more relaxed and quiet time which is deemed as meaningful as compared to the louder, noisier days of our youth- no longer tempting.
• Wandering what we might do when we are our parents age or the possibility of being alive when our kids reach the age we are in now.
• What the child might do in their future- career prospects, family etc.
• Wanting to rid the house of stuff that doesn’t get used up and wanting to pare things down aka simplify, simplify, simplify.
• Seeing Marie Kondo with the same kind of eagerness that Hugh Jackman used to command (and occasionally still does).
• Wanting things to really resonate with us deep down instead of doing them for the heck of it.
• Recognizing those who are truly family and those who are here to stay even without the familial ties that bid.

Happy 2025 people. Here’s hoping the coming year finds you all with ideal levels of cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure and sanity. If that seems like a big ask, find a quiet spot for yourself far from the madding crowd with a bit of soothing music or bawdy/silly jokes and just BE.