Home Alone!

Image: Internet 

Every morning I wake up and of course I first and foremost get rid of my exercise fixation. But even half way through that the nagging "I got to be doing this that" feeling creeps in. Yes, it is the dreaded school cycle & morning routine. Well, not so dreaded now. But more on that in a bit. That feeling is not entirely unlaced with excitement, I admit.

It is kind of strange but I just love those first few minutes of the morning when I see my daughter. Now, it could be that I am a morning person. Or that I am all hopped up on endorphins after my workout session. Or it could just be true love or something. Whatever it is, I feel very positive and awesome and all resolved to be a wonderful mom (and not a nag), every morning. And then that feeling slowly goes away and I become this person who most likely has PMS (even if she doesn't).

Now, this year, we have made some changes. We moved schools! I know - this is like super big and momentous and I haven't had a second to talk to people whom I haven't met IRL about it. We thought long and hard, actually for almost one full year, and then bit the bullet and did the needful to give up on the CBSE dream. With that, we threw away also, the dreaded uniform, a 15 minute morning and 1/2 hour afternoon commute, and the comfort of familiar textbooks. 

I would have to be really selfish not to mention that this is the fourth school the child attends, well, fifth if you count her play school. She is a trooper and has held her head high in all. This is also the fourth language she learns (as a second language) - Spanish. Oh yes. She did Hindi when we were in Mumbai. Then I went all idealistic mother tongue (well, father tongue if you really must split hairs) on her and she did Tamil when we moved here. It got super scary so we moved to Sanskrit (which she loved) when they offered it. And now, in the new school we picked Spanish! 

The class is very small, and they follow the Cambridge curriculum. She gets to wear a Tshirt with the school logo on it, and shorts/skirts/pants of any sort. Of course she wears shorts or jeans, which is also her normal outside school wear. The salwar kameez as uniform is something she has hated a lot! She can wear non-uniform shoes so she has a series of sports shoes that she wears using logic I don't understand. Her feet, incidentally, are a half size bigger than mine now. 

It has been a month and she is full of beans (and rather red in the face from playing in the sun) when she comes back home. So far, except for a couple of minor fights with a couple of the kids in her class (she can be fierce when it comes to small matters like someone taking her pen - I blame it on the fact that it has all happened 1000s of times in her years of schooling), she seems well settled. I don't know anything except that we talk science occasionally, and I needn't tell you how much that warms the cockles of my heart. 

Today the school has taken them to a movie - Kaaka Muttai - which is why I am home alone currently. Good for them, 'cause I have been really really bad about any kind of movie watching this year. I was telling her this morning that she cannot take any food/water to the theater as outside stuff is not allowed inside. "I am not an idiot ma - even if I have been to exactly two movies in my eleven years" she said - tone all accusatory. I don't deny it. I never seem to find a chunk of time for this. 

But I have managed to pick her up from school all this month (except a day or two here and there), been un-competitively encouraging of her basketball playing, bought her all the shoes she asks for, including ordering a pair online, sending it back 'cause it was too small, and getting the correct size in timely manner, allowed her to make a food timetable and not insisted overmuch on Vegetables Every Single Meal, and generally tried to keep the nagging under control. Now where is my Gold Star, dammit? 

Being Invincible

Those days are gone. Just vanished. Poof. Behind now, not coming back.

You know, the days when I could wake up at 5:30, go for a most grueling session of basketball, come back, shower, breakfast, pack bags, cycle to school, sing loudly in the assembly, attend classes, eat lunch, play kho-kho in the free class, dissect a rat in the practical session in the afternoon, cycle home, make a chart for the science exhibition, do my homework, eat dinner, polish NCC shoes and go to sleep with dreams of the morrow.

Also gone, the days when I could sleep at 1 am, wake up fresh at 7 am, brush, bathe, breakfast, go to the 8 am class, come back starving for the 11:40 lunch, eat, brush, chit-chat, wear the khaki and go to workshop, come back, eat bread pakoras (and digest them), go play basketball (not so grueling though), come back, shower, eat, go to audition for a play, chit-chat, drink miles of tea, park the bum in the corridor, cut out a crossword to take to the class tomorrow (hey!), put the clothes pile on the mat on to the bed, and lie down and go to sleep at 1am, dreaming about the dumb charades competition on the morrow.

Irreversibly behind me, micro-waved cinnamon-oatmeal (1 packet), shower, wear layers of clothes and sneakers, run to the bus, in by 7:30 am and working away for a fair bit by the time the rest of the gang showed up and clamored for coffee at 9:30, very sweet American coffee, lunch at 11:30, simulation jobs on every computer accessible to mankind, graphs, emails, more coffee (even sometimes half a donut), take the bus back home to a mish-mash of rice, dhal and veggies cooked in the rice cooker as Seinfeld plays in the back, desultory reading of papers, phone calls to New York, going to bed a little disturbed but confident that the light would appear tomorrow, and at any rate, a soccer game at 3 pm, must not forget the cleats.

Age has surely caught up with me as waking up at 6:30, milk, coffee, sandwich, PUTTING the dabbas in her bag, telling her the road is smooth because of the road-roller and the road-roller is smooth because we made it so, and also very heavy, and, no, they did not run the road-roller in those parts with pot-holes, but they will do it soon one hopes, and yes, it is true all this was a forest before human beings built such big buildings there, and surely it is best that we are happy with what we have and not keep on worrying about what we don't have (such as several arms similar to the branches on trees), and no, I just know the white birds are here but am not sure why they like to be near my office, and okay bye its good you want to walk in to the class alone and I will just stand here a little far way and wave, see you sweetheart at noon. And here at the desk on firefox and two emails later I am just tired.

Yes, my invincible years are behind me. Its not her fault. Children should question things. They are born scientists. Mothers should have known not to exhaust themselves in earlier lives.