Cinderella

5:45 PM. I am all smiles...totally in the networking mode. It has been a relatively slow day at work. No deadline. I can actually enjoy this networking event with prospective future collaborators.

6:15 PM. Spot another attendee surreptitiously looking at his watch. A fellow Cinderella, I think to myself. The clock would strike 6:30 PM, and we would lose our 'glass slipper', a.k.a. the liberty to pretend that we don't have to care about our children's dinner and homework tonight. The gloss of the business suit and charming conversation would morph into domesticity--sometimes blissful, sometimes tiresome.

6:30 PM. Mad dash towards the parking lot. Fellow Cinderella drives past---waving, acknowledging, "See you around!" There's a pride in recognizing that the ability to be there at home to tuck your child in is mighty empowering!

Lost and Found

Raising a human being is an enriching experience. Period. Yes I know it is not always fun, and it can be back-breaking work at times, and there would be moments when you would question your ability and willingness to continue to be available for them 24/7, but I am pretty sure you discover something about yourself in the course of parenting (or grandparenting, or spending time with a kid even if it is not yours--you get the drift).


I meant to write this blog last Sunday, just after coming back from a refreshingly unplanned but uniquely memorable trip to San Francisco. Quite coincidentally, my immediate last blog in May of this year was also inspired by San Francisco (the graffitis of the city). Though I am not saying I haven't been to the city in the last four and a half months (which merely proves the fact that I don't end up writing a blog every time I go to the city), I am probably more enamored with the city than I consciously think I am.

This time the trip to the city was fueled by the desire to dazzle my six-year-old son Gogol, showing off how he can have a rocking time with mom in a weekend while daddy was saving the world (in more practical terms, daddy was offering a workshop at a conference in Europe.) We had two complimentary tickets to the Exploratorium since Easter, which we never ended up using. I thought the single-parenting weekend was the perfect time to utilize the tickets. But I guess we started a little too late in the afternoon, and underestimated the time required to reach there, meandering through all the detours due to the Presidio Parkway construction project. After missing a turn and realizing that we didn't have enough time to explore the museum before it closed, I started thinking of an alternative amusement, because, remember, I was on a mission to 'dazzle'? I had to maintain a calm exterior, as I could sense Gogol was getting anxious, but trying his best to keep it to himself. I don't know the city well enough to decide on the fly where to go. I needed to park somewhere to be able to access my smartphone to search for kid entertainment options, preferably outdoors, since the indoor stuff were likely to close shortly. I took a random turn into one of the side streets. Fortunately, I ended up finding a parking on Lake Street in front of a cute condo (and got a chance to renew my appreciation for my Mini Cooper, which fits perfectly in a tiny parking space between two driveways, and lets me prove that I haven't forgotten parallel parking!), and to my utter delight, the sign "Mountain Lake Park" was right in front of me! Too bad my smartphone didn't get a chance to prove its utility this time around, because I was 'destiny's child' that afternoon!

The park is quite a hidden gem, tucked in the inner Richmond neighborhood. There are tennis courts, picnic areas by the lake (which is more like a pond than a lake, but who cares), walking/jogging trails, and of course, quite an expansive play area for the kids. Gogol was happy. I was happy. I was relaxed enough to indulge in small talks initiated by an energetic and chatty grandmother who was watching her 4-year-old grandkid, fashionably named Rhys (as in Jonatahn Rhys Meyers). He reminded me so much of Gogol at that age--precocious and all. Needless to say, there was an instant wavelength match between Gogol and Rhys, and parenting (and grandparenting, in case of Rhys' grandmom, whose name is, let's say, Ann) became easy.

After a while, Gogol came down from the play structure to have a little snack break, while Rhys was still up there. All of a sudden I heard Rhys shouting, "That little boy needs help!" I thought Rhys himself was the little boy. Who was he talking about? I looked up and saw another toddler, even younger than Rhys, was sort of stuck on a mini deck of the play structure, and couldn't come down by himself. I rushed. Almost at the same time another gentleman, who happened to be the baby's uncle, also rushed in there to the rescue. Then came running the mom and the dad of the baby, gasping and panicking. The baby was brought down to safety. We learnt that he managed to walk all the way from one of the picnic areas to the playground while nobody was watching!

After the baby's family left, Ann, understandably a proud grandma, exclaimed, "Now isn't Rhys an alert boy? He understood that the little kid was in trouble, and he himself is only four years old!" I nodded in agreement. I was genuinely impressed. Feeling encouraged, Ann started talking about Rhys and her own son, Rhys' dad. I didn't mind listening at all. Ann described how Rhys's dad was a naughty boy himself, giving the young Ann her share of scary moments.
"What does he do now?", I asked. "Oh, he is just twenty one, still trying to figure out what to do in life," Ann said.

And then there was the awkward moment of silence. Both of us realized that Ann had inadvertently disclosed something that she herself was uncomfortable with. To be twenty-one and to be the father of a four-year-old son--somewhere the math doesn't look good. I saw the fleeting sorrow followed by a steely determination in Ann's eyes. So what if her son became a father perhaps before he was ready for it! Her grandson is still brilliant, and she would do whatever it takes to raise Rhys the proper way. I think Ann and I connected the deepest at that moment--without uttering a single word.

The rest of the afternoon was like a dream. Ann suggested that we go to a dessert cafe called "The Toy Boat." She was my newly-discovered friend and city guide. While Rhys and Gogol walked hand-in-hand, I learnt that Ann used to live in the DC area, when she was young, just a few miles from Greenbelt, where we lived till 2008! There were more things in common. She too worked at a law firm, and she too loves used book stores. We walked quite a few blocks to go to The Toy Boat. The store was not quite what I pictured in my mind, but the retro appeal of the all-American store bang in the middle of a heavily ethnic neighborhood grew on me soon. Rhys and Gogol rode on the mechanical horse and shared ice cream. I bought myself a coffee and treated my tour guide Ann with a lemonade. She sang songs from her childhood movies, inspired by the decorative toys (figurines of various movie characters) on the shelves and posters on the walls. The rest of the patrons at the cafe were being totally amused by the pair of odd couples that were us! It was truly magical.

Rhys and Ann left for their home after a while. Before going, Rhys declared, "I want a playdate with Gogol." Ann and I smiled at each other, and told him that we would try. Gogol is now mature enough to know that was not going to happen, because he didn't see Ann and me exchanging email addresses. But he chose to be silent for Rhys' sake.

I bought Gogol an old-fashioned magnetic toy. We walked back to our car. We didn't need to ask anybody how to get back to Lake Street. We got to know that part of the city by heart. We may have lost our way to the Exploratorium, but I was moved enough by what we found that day. I had to capture the memory in writing.

Good luck raising Rhys, Ann. Who knows, may be we will run into you guys again. Mountain Lake Park is not going anywhere.

Two…One…(Zero)...Smoke the Ganesha

My son made me a blogger in 2006. Being a new mother felt so marvelous, that I couldn’t help but start blogging. In summer 2009, my ego has made me a micro-blogger.

Micro-blogging at Twitter (and Facebook) has made me lazy enough that I haven’t been blogging at all lately, while my number of tweets is speeding towards century, and friends have been noticing the spike in the frequency of my Facebook status updates. I knew this would happen. I even wrote a blog when I signed up for my new Twitter account, speculating whether I would blog less (and micro-blog more) down the line. Sadly, my speculation proved to be true. And, what seems to be a collateral damage, I have become a more narcissistic writer than I ever was! When I used to solely blog, I felt conscious blogging about myself all the time. Thus, I used to intersperse the “me-blogs” with blogs on more universal topics or short stories. But micro-blogging and other social networking tools inherently stoke narcissism, and somewhere in that apparently innocuous ego-driven journey, I ignored my original muse—my son, who has been appearing less and less in my creative output.

Well, I have finally decided not to resort to the lure and convenience of micro-blogging before I finish this long overdue ode to my son.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t been any less fascinated by my son than I used to be when he was a baby. In many ways, his current 4-year-old persona is much more interesting than his babyhood, as he now possesses the skills to express himself in so many different ways. But a few things have sure changed. Firstly, I now take my son as a constant in my life, so that I don’t feel the need to chronicle every experience and emotion associated with him, as if they are evanescent treasures. Secondly, I have gradually felt more comfortable writing about things other than my son, when I realized that I reach wider audience that way. Again, ego takes over at times, but even a mom is allowed to have an ego, right? However, honestly, a kid has so much more potential to create a ‘writable moment’ for you, just because their world is so unpolluted. Let me just try to illustrate.

My son is totally into the idea of recycling. Every Thursday morning, he would accompany me to the big recycle bin in the backyard to dump the co-mingled recyclable trash in the house. Now, we are talking about empty glass bottles and metallic cans here, which do make a lot of noise when you dump them all together. It was a little too much for my son, and one day told me, “Mamma, can I do the paper recycling only, because the bottles yell at my ear.” I couldn’t have come up with that expression “yelling at my ear” to describe the clank myself!

Then there were One and Two. These are the two tiny little goldfishes that are always busy swimming in a glass bowl in my son’s room. They are fairly new acquisitions. I took my son with me for my ‘homecoming’ trip to East coast in September to enjoy my two weeks off between my old job and new job. One of our East coast friends’ son had a goldfish named “Zero.” My son was so inspired by Zero, the goldfish, that he ordered his dad over the phone to buy him goldfishes even before he would go back home from his East coast trip. The Dad obliged. My son obsessed over what to name the goldfishes the whole time we were inside the plane on our return flight. “How about I name them ‘For Here’ and ‘To Go’?” He asked. I thought they were pretty good innovative names. But before I could nod my approval, he said, “How about, ‘Jack’ and ‘Jill’?” By that time, I knew there will be a deluge of suggested names that usually come in pairs. (What’s next? ‘Prosecution’ and ‘Litigation’? Pardon my job-speak.) But he suddenly stopped toying with the names, and said, “I will name them One and Two. They will be the brother and sister of Zero.” The definitive tone in his voice told me that he was done with his exercise in nomenclature, and found the idea of bi-coastal goldfish siblings pretty darn satisfying. So we now address our goldfishes as One and Two. Sometimes my son also calls them “Ekta” and “Duto”—literal Bengali translation of One and Two. He practices his Bengali-speaking skills with his goldfishes when he is in a good mood.

Another time, it was “the poor kid” incidence. We frequently tell our son that he should not buy any more new toys, because he already has too many of them, and he should think about the poor kids who don’t have any toys. After the lecture in socialism, we went to see a newborn at a very close friend’s place, and my son declares, “This must be a poor kid, because I am not seeing too many toys here.” I seriously hope my friend didn’t hear him! But, to tell the truth, I sometime wish we could go back to his newborn days, where the number of toys were under control!

The latest quotable quote that came from my son is, “Let’s smoke the Ganesha.” Now this asks for a little bit of context for the uninitiated. Late September to mid October is the season of religious festivals in India, and the diaspora celebrates those with equal enthusiasm. My husband and I are not remarkably religious persons, but we love the celebrations. Our son may turn out to be a more spiritual being than either of us, as he is plain fascinated by the colorful and gorgeous action and paraphernalia of deity worship. He has managed to put up a shrine under a rhododendron shrub in our backyard, and borrowed a decorative metal “Ganesha” (The Hindu Elephant God) figurine from the fireplace mantle to grace the shrine. He puts fresh flowers there whenever he remembers, and asks Ganesha to keep everyone in his family safe and healthy. He even prayed for his best friend on his birthday. Now he wants us to invite all our friends, and have a full-fledged puja and celebration in our backyard. Yesterday he picked up some fragrant incense sticks from an Indian store when his dad took him there for grocery shopping. He has seen his grandma motion the smoking incense sticks in circles while serenading the deities in India. He asked me, “Mamma, can you light these sticks, because I want to smoke the Ganesha.” I obliged and he ‘smoked’ his Ganesha with the “smokers,” the term that he has coined to describe the sticks.

I can not finish this piece without sharing his most famous quote: “It takes a teamwork to make a baby.” I am sure he learnt it from his teachers, but when delivered by a precocious 4-year-old kid, it gets a special dimension.

I am glad I finally got to write my tribute to my constant source of inspiration. Now can I go back to being lazy and narcissistic again? :)