Today is veggie day and I roped in my newly-freed-up-from-classes assistant and we bought, cleaned and dried everything before putting them away. Normally said assistant would be moaning and groaning through his classes while I’d be out tapping fruits and smelling the leafy greens, so having the small hooman around and helping, made for a nice change.
We took a walk in the morning while waiting for the veggie van to turn up and took a few pictures. I’ve decided that you can’t keep kids away from digital media in toto. If they have to use devices, well then, let something good come out of it.
So we took pictures of plants around the complex with me trying to tell him about different angles to capture and what made a picture stand out over others. The operative word here is “tried”.
Anyhoo, my kid helped and the tomatoes in the house have never looked or been cleaner!
While a lockdown hits hard at every aspect of our lives, today am far more upbeat than I have been in a long time! The reason is simple. My kid’s online classes are coming to an end for 2 months. And Red and I will finally get back to being human parents rather than the human-sheepdog hybrid we’ve been since the start of the entire phase of online learning.
In all honesty it was me who was woofing more than Red. He was busy on calls and would be on perpetual red alert to firefight when mother and son had their standoffs.
Our days would start out nicely enough- hugs and kisses and then the tide would turn to a small human being dragged out of bed on some days and on other days his rapidly-descending-into madness mommy would threaten to pour water on him or worse- discontinue the Netflix subscription!!
And then my erstwhile cherub and the sound of my life would transform into a modern day Gollum, complete with the hissing and glazed eyes while thinking of his precious.
But all snark aside, I have realised, all over again, that it is NOT easy to manage kids. Whether you do it out of love or get remunerated for it. I have a deep reverence for the teachers who have been tasked with teaching during these times. Dealing with different personalities, comprehension levels et al on a regular basis is a task by itself but add sullen faces, innate shyness, wonky internet connections and the sounds of a busy household in the background and teaching becomes something akin to an obstacle course. And landing on your feet isn’t guaranteed at all!
But I am looking forward to more peace. My throat is *eagerly* looking forward to not hitting the high decibels. Red’s ears are extremely eagerly awaiting the time when noise-cancelling headphones won’t be a part of our daily diet. And I guess TO is just waiting for a time when his mother isn’t giving him this look a 100xs a day.
Be as that may, I love my kid and I wanted to celebrate the last day of school in a manner befitting his happiness. So his favourite aunty is making him luscious chocolate cupcakes which will be snarfed down in a manner befitting a starving child rather than a well-fed one. And while I gaze upon the flesh of my flesh with love and adoration in my eyes, I will take immense joy in knowing the cupcakes are chock full of zucchini!
Take that you fussy eater who tries to convince me of all people that he has food allergies which is why fruits, nuts and many veggies can’t land up on his plate.
Young love is *very* different from not-so-young love. The expressions are off the charts and sometimes we look back at those days of being unrestrained and full throttle in our feelings and maybe cringe a bit saying, “Damn! Did I really do all that?”
From writing your name along with that of the one you want to end up with for ever and ever to wishing on stars to having “your song” light up your day and your mood; young love is heady to the hilt and there’s usually very little logic associated with it. It’s all heart. Miles and miles of it.
I tend to remember anniversaries. Red remembers ours of course else life would be way more hellish and his credit card would be taken on a revengeful ride he may never recover from.
But the little dates that led up to the actual BIG DATE he tends to gloss over. While we weren’t terribly young when we met, we weren’t too old either. Young enough to be frivolous and silly at times but we didn’t do too much of silly. We did a few standout things and then became the kind of “proper” adults married couples are when they argue about unmade beds, wet towels and why they can’t share the same sheet throughout the night.
I was talking to the bestie a little while ago and we were reminiscing (like we do a LOT these days) and I started to think back at all the little lovey-dovey things I’ve seen people do while they were in the throes of their first love. Maybe their second. By the third and fourth time you know there’s probably a fifth and sixth one in the pipeline so you don’t go all out. You do just enough.
But more on that later…during the time when the love is young and so are you, eighteen page letters (front and back) seem to flow with ease. Giving missed calls to each other on the newly acquired cell phones each time you miss one another is also a hokey thing we do. Of course it can be taken into account that in those days it used to cost money to receive calls as well as make them but young love sees no currency. Young love sees only hearts, rainbows, unicorns, bike rides, hugging in the rains, love notes scribbled on napkins at whichever restaurant you find yourself in and the list is practically endless.
There are long-stem roses on the eve of Valentine’s Day. Actual gift cards with babies dressed like cherubs and little bunnies (thank you Anne Geddes for boosting the card sales for Archies galleries across India!), being starry-eyed and being only able to talk and think of “The One” is par for course.
And don’t think it’s only the girls who indulge in all this mushy-gushy stuff. There are guys who wish on stars (very few though), write mini essays on every book they buy for their girl because just a 2 line inscription does not cut it at all! Flowers get pressed between notebook papers, major detours are taken just to have a glimpse of a loved one and long journeys filled with bumper-bumper traffic on the way back home is faced after dropping off the love of your life. The actual meeting might have been for 15 minutes; but you met. Your hands touched, your eyes met and often, that was enough.
I have and still do find the excessively long or even the short but extremely private communication between couples pasted on social media quite hokey and hard to relate to. I could never do that. I had to do it in private or not at all. And knowing Red the not-at-all was more likely because barring the initial days of “romancing” we settled down to a pattern of togetherness that was not just comfortable but it was something we did with ease. Autopilot even. And while many people are detractors of the autopilot mode saying spontaneity, fun, surprises are needed to keep things alive, autopilot is where we’re all headed eventually so it’s not a state that we necessarily “settle” for. There’s comfort and complacency both in autopilot. There’s acceptance and (passive)aggression in autopilot but there’s a sense of knowing where you are and the person you are with which is very soothing as well.
So for everyone with their heads up in the clouds of love, enjoy it. It’s a rite of passage. Those nervous knots in the stomach, the flutters, the sweaty palms, the racing heart…it’s meant to be enjoyed, experienced and learnt from. Those who already have gone through the stage are more likely to pop an antacid if those feelings crop up now when they’re on the far side of being ‘young’.
Be young, be silly, enjoy gifts of multicoloured bear plush toys which may make you sneeze your head off (true story) or of big blooms on Valentine’s Day; thoughtfully spiked with an adulterated Charlie spray, by an over-zealous street side florist. Enjoy the little cards that have sepia-tinted images of little kids kissing each other…you’ll look back at the days when poems were shared, heartfelt lines were penned, all for you and for the sake of that irrepressible young love!
“I am all Covided out!” That’s not my utterance but borrowed from a friend who’s said it with so much sincerity that it came across even on chat. But the reason I wrote it here is because I am all Covided out. While I waited for my reports to show up, while I played devil’s advocate about a CT scan for a mild dry cough and while people who are family getting diagnosed on a regular basis, this disease seems to have got its tentacles into everything and everyone in some form or the other.
I haven’t seen my bestie in YEARS. Actually it’s been a year and a half but you know how it is with besties. You want them to be around all the time; even if they live a continent away. Met my folks after a year despite then being a 2 hour flight away. Those things bite!
TO went back to school very briefly before being hauled back home to fill our days with petulance, sulks and occasionally making me feel like a Shawshank Redemption was going to be enacted in my own home.
The kids have been asked (read banned) from going down and playing together due to a major uptick in the active cases in our community. So poor TO is off his cricket practice and rarely goes down to either cycle or even more rarely- swing in the kiddy area. Yesterday there was a Mexican standoff at the play area downstairs with TO and a couple of little girls who thought he wasn’t supposed to have access to the swings since it was all theirs. He disagreed. Those girls had a dangerous gleam in their eyes. Their frills and flounces didn’t fool me…they’d have taken him out in a heartbeat!
Red’s not going to work at all these days. He was headed to work a few times a week earlier for a few hours at a time and it felt like some semblance of a balance was getting restored. But while we aren’t colliding with each other constantly, the whole miasma of uncertainty sometimes gets to me and all I want to do is watch cat videos on Instagram and see things like this. It makes me feel like there is light and goodness in the world and a sense of warmth will gradually seep into all the nasty cracks that have some up.
I mean how can you not put aside all the vagaries that life seems to be throwing at you and just look at that lil chin that’s so nom-nom-alicious!! I swear babies were created for something other than making zombies out of their parents and that’s just so quasi-jaded people like me can fawn on them and their pictures and of course, give them back to the zombies…I mean parents, once the quota of happiness has been derived.
Anyhow, I was feeling particularly blah last night and I started looking for cat videos and came across a small clip where a bride is throwing the bouquet but it’s a staged “throw” and the bride actually hands it over to a lady who turns around to find out that she’s being proposed to. No..that didn’t make me feel better at all…I think I found it a bit hokey but I’ve never had a proper proposal so what do I know? My ears did perk up at the song in the background…Bruno Mars’ Marry You.
Now I’m not a closet romantic. Sure I cry at watching Love Story and think whoever doesn’t cry when Jenny dies is dead inside! But all the typical crying at seeing an engagement ring and having someone get down on their knees doesn’t do much for me. If you see the video of the song I’ve written about, it is funny and annoying all at once. The lyrics are a bit meh also but it’s a feel-good song and not a feel-intellectual one so it’s not a surprise that it’s the go-to song for flash mob engagements.
And while it’s a good gesture, exciting even but the woman being proposed do doesn’t show her face since she’s all overwhelmed and there’s an annoying photog getting in her face to see how she looks all tear-streaked and blotchy-faced…ah love.
But cynicism apart, the song is peppy and while I’ve heard it TONS of times earlier in background scores on TikTok etc I always moved past it. But my slightly sad brain needed a bit of cheer last night and the beats of this particular song apparently were where the cheer was to be found. Whoda thunk?!
I feel asleep listening to it and woke up feeling better. Maybe it was the lyrics, maybe it was the melody but I do know this song is going to be looped in my head while I tackle the chores today and I will be smiling and swaying along with it…
Moral of the story: If you’re walking along in a mall and suddenly there seem to be people breaking into a dance all around you and this song comes on…RUN if you don’t want to say yes to whoever it is you’re seeing. Pretty hard to say no when the world’s looking at you and there’s a sweaty person kneeling down with an open ring box and the background dancers are getting their TikTok and Insta-worthy faces on!
These days at least. For those of us who are moms, the steady output of coughs, sneezes, phlegms is not a bother at all. Seeing how they are usually aimed our way or done by our loving offsprings who would probably have a tissue, a hanky in one hand, have another hand free and still not remember to cover their mouths while coughing or sneezing.
This is a frequent issue with TO. Even during the worst of the pandemic last year he’d sneeze and desperately looked around for a tissue despite there always being wipes readily available. Then when he thought I wasn’t watching, he’d quickly wipe his face off in the crook of his elbow…yech.
When he was younger, he would treat my clothes and my body as his living, breathing wipes. He’d walk by and wipes his hands off on my jeans or t-shirt and give me a cheeky grin as he dashed away.
These days he’s mighty put out by the paucity of hugs and cuddles that are coming his way since it’s being doled out by only one parent. And a bony one at that. I find him standing at the door to the room am isolating in and taping his feet at me and asking when I’m going to tell him I’m negative and it’s ok for him to smush his face into my rather squishy stature and feel like everything is alright with his world. Hopefully in another 30 hours or so he’ll have reason to be ecstatic or sulk like his world is out of whack!
Oh Corona…you have so much to answer for.
P.S: I wasn’t able to post this yesterday and today am happy to say that I *am* negative! TO got hugs and kisses and muscled in for Red’s share as well. It’s all status quo again. Praise the Galactic Ameba!
By the time the words Corona (the problem and not the beer), Covid had infiltrated our lives, I had hoped I would be able to avoid the situations which led to me having to take a test to see if I was positive or negative. And for a largely positive person (outlook in life-wise and not disease)I was looking forward to staying negative for a long, long time to come. But in the words of John Lennon, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” And so I had reason to get tested. Not once, but multiple times as it would play out.
During the first test, I kept looking at best case scenarios which would be me testing positive and taking a 2 week holiday, all expense-paid, in the guest room and getting waited on hand and foot, without having to interact much with anyone. I would binge-watch, binge-read and just wait out the germs exiting my system. The worst case scenarios would have been my 80+ father-in-law getting it. He has co-morbidities, is a difficult patient with the most minor of issues and no one wanted him to have that over his head at his age.
Instead an 11-year old fidgety boy came up positive amongst all of us. He took it like a champ. Got everyone’s attention and basked in it for whatever it was worth. Was prayed over and showered more love and affection than he has been since he broke his hand a few years back. And Covid was dealt with in a manner so calm and efficient that it hardly seemed like a problem.
The second test was a necessary follow-up to the first test and when the results came, I whooped up so loudly both Red and TO came running out of their rooms to see what had happened. We did our own versions of “take that you nasty pathogen!” and went our merry ways.
The third test was necessary before I went in for a surgical procedure late last year and while I was fairly sure it would show me as non-reactive, my mind was already bracing for the intrusion of the excessively long swab burning through my nasal passage and making me gag. I needed only to gag because the nose was thankfully left alone and I was cleared for the surgery.
The fourth test came up recently when I traveled after a gap of almost a year and a half. The place I was landing in mandated a negative test report so I went through the rigmarole of the burning nose and retching to get the said report and I was nighty put out that no one checked or even mentioned it when I landed. All that swabbing up and down dark alleys in one’s body and all for nought.
Am getting tested again in an hour or so. I came back home and have what are now called “mild symptoms“. In a pre-Covid world, I would have been able to accurately put them down to a change in climate, exposure to the air conditioning in a cramped place or just a cold and let it ease itself out of my system. But in circa 2021, they are mild symptoms and need to be viewed with suspicion till forays through my body prove otherwise.
The world that we know has changed but not the people. Not much anyhow. We are still doing the things we want and are pretty comfortable with taking what we think are “acceptable risks”. You live with something unpleasant long enough and it stops being a Boogeyman and gets reduced to being an inconvenience.
A year ago having an occasion to have a test would have given me quite a bit of worry. Now it’s just a matter of temporarily moving into a room on my own for an enforced staycation vs. being free to move around and cough in public without being looked at as Typhoid Mary. And while I hope that this post doesn’t get added to with an anecdote of a sixth test, it is entirely a possibility and one that will be taken up with a weary “here we go again” +some kind of tongue-in-cheekness.
TO put it very succinctly before going to bed last night, “Be NE-GA-TIVE Ayu!”
India just beat England in the decider match of the ODI series. It was a couple of nailbiter moments but then India won. Red came and got me saying TO was a bit distraught. I went to the living room to see him alternatively shouting at the tv and holding his head in his hands.
He kept saying I’m so stressed out and rubbing his forehead and head. I happened to mention that the Indian captain may be a tad bit more stressed out than he was and pat came reply,” No! I’M MORE STRESSED THAN HE IS!!”
When an 11 year old starts to have a meltdown about a match with he’s not playing in, it’s time to give him a W-I-D-E berth!
A while back I’d written about a pigeonthat had a less than satisfactory interaction with my car. The car didn’t feel too bad for sure and I felt a bit of annoyance but didn’t let it bother me much since there are way more pigeons than there are cars in this world. Or it seems to me.
A while back a flock of pigeons decided that TO’s window parapet was a good place to set up shop and play out the circle of life. They would coo to each other, mate, make a nest, lay their eggs, incubate said eggs, get hatchlings, some would die and the rest would fly off only to come back and replay the entire unchanging drama all over again.
In the process copious amounts of feathers were shed and poop was pooped. It was a not a place I was happy to call my own. We were majority hampered by the lockdown that was in place and couldn’t get a vendor to come and install pigeon nets for that area either. Over time the window ledge became guano central and had enough allergens floating around (literally) to make an allergist super-duper happy.
Let me tell you something about guano. It’s good as a fertiliser, sure, but it’s acidic in nature as well. It stinks and it’s not the most pleasing thing to set your eyes on either. It’s downright unpleasant and not something I want on my windows. And to top it all off the pigeons are no candidates for MIT since they kept doing their freaky round and round pacing even around the dead chicks and still managed to make their nests around the corpse and lay more eggs.
Yesterday was another red letter day wrt said bird. One calmly sauntered, yes sauntered, into the dining room via the living room, through an open window and proceed to walk up and down the length of the hall as if it had paid the mortgage on the house. When I saw it and tried to shoo it away, it again proved how much of a brainiac it was by NOT flying through the large AND open balcony doors and out into the wide blue yonder. Instead it flew into the small kitchen and from there into the utility area outside the kitchen where we have pigeon nets to avoid the situation that was happening right then.
In due time Red, TO and our Favourite Girl#1 arrived on the scene and proceed to be unsuccessful in driving the then-panicked and still dumb bird away from the nets and towards freedom. It’s always fun being advised by a 41, 11 and 5 year old in rapid succession while I advance towards a scared bird that’s pooping all around the place where all the cleaning of the household goes on.
Ultimately the said pigeon was captured with a sheet thrown over it and then released into sunny skies where am sure it did not head off towards safety. Knowing this particular bird, am sure it headed to the next apartment’s window and promptly started to explore how their house was set up.
Jokes apart, it is very difficult trying to get a firm grip on a squirming body. It was tough when TO was a baby who had enough mucus jammed up his nose to make me become nauseous and I had to go all octopus on him with the nasal aspirator. And it was tough yesterday with the bird with the super silky feathers and a brain that didn’t tell it to do anything but fly in circles and flap its wings uselessly.
I. Really. Don’t. Like. Pigeons.
They should confine themselves to pooping on statues, St.Mark’s Square and Trafalgar Square and just be happy. Anything more is just greedy; plain and simple!
Being a stay at home mom is a different kettle of fish. If kettles full of fish aren’t your thing, feel free to put in a vegetarian or a vegan option if that rings your bell.
I am, for the most part, a Stay At Home Mom. It was a decision that I made pretty willingly. Things also didn’t align in such a manner that I felt confident or comfortable enough to leave TO with any other caregiver or in a creche or daycare and hie off to work.
When the hieing off did happen, the universe conspired to have me be more grounded (the parents grounding the kids kind and not the being practical-kinds) and ultimately I circled back to home and hearth and kept my activities centered around it. The work too is something I’ve been doing while lounging in my pjs so WFH is not only a familiar concept but it’s been a way of life.
Recently TO headed back to school. It was something he was longing for. Me…not so much. I figured if he gets to ride out one whole school year at home and then starts fresh for the new academic year in school, it might be an easier transition but again, universe and child conspired to do things differently so Red and I opted for in-person schooling for TO with some riders in place wrt his and our continued safety.
And believe you me, within 2 days of school starting, the whining started too. Not that it ever ended properly; some of us are born whiners and continue to whine till Doomsday hits and even then, we go whining into the Great Unknown.
Barring the first two days of school where the former lump jumped out of bed, brushed, bathed and tackled his morning routine with alacrity, we were back to the “pleasantness” of an early morning routine where the mother dons on the persona of the Wicked Witch of the West and drags an innocent Dorothy, I mean TO, out from the warm comforts of his covers and into the cold, hard, unforgiving world of sunshine, cold bathroom tiles and mandated personal hygiene. I mean what could be worse?! Plenty as my kid puts it…
Imagine having to bathe every day, like clockwork, before leaving the house. Because unlike over Google Meets, here people can actually smell you. And the fact that they *can* smell you is a cause for concern.
Imagine having to comb your hair because again, unlike over Google Meets, they can actually see the birds nest you’re lovingly cultivating in that mess on top of your head!
And the list goes on. Needing clean underwear because going commando is no longer an option or that grunting as a response will no longer be acceptable while answering the roll call…the world is full of a minefield for a kid heading back to school. And the worst of it is probably the uniforms that are collared, starched and make little hoodlums look presentable and not like they got dressed in the dark while suffering from color blindness in the process.
Today the brat got to take a day off from school to participate in a sporting event. I dropped him and his teammates to a location a bit far from home and was navigating my way back with the help of Google Maps when I realised that Ms.Google Maps Voice has a bit of an attitude. She’ll start with a nice even tone when saying “Take the next right” and if that right isn’t taken within a second of the words leaving her automated voice box, the next time she speaks to you it’s with the subtext of “take the right turn already you moron!”
Never a dull moment- that’s the crux of a S.A.H.M’s day!
