Speaking my truth (poem)

Don't be angry with me, just wait a sec ...

You know I love you, 

but it's hard to keep you in check.

Your whimsy, that foul temper!

The way you are so contrarian!

My dear, do you remember 

the many times I've thought of something to say, 

and you violently disagree? 

You just have to have it your way!

The pen writes not what I want to express, 

but some proposition of your own.  

You know it leads to a lot of stress

when you won't cooperate and collaborate; 

if you put ideas into my head.  

I think it's very immoderate 

of you, to assign to me a beliefs or feeling

that I had no intention of subscribing to.  

You say you are just revealing 

what lies beneath my well-chosen expressions. 

I call it squealing and wheeling-dealing,  

a wanton act of aggression,  

to steal my thoughts and lay them bare 

on the naked page, for all to see. 

But....perhaps you're right and I must prepare

to confront that ugliness inside of me... 

Say what I mean, and mean what I say. 

Be honest to the highest degree.

 

On second thoughts, you are absolutely right 

to have taken me in hand, and asked me 

to reconsider and reappraise and rewrite. 

 

Where would I be without this rectitude,  

this compass, this unseen and unacknowledged beacon;  

it was in danger of decrepitude. 

 

I get it now; you love me too,  

my dear conscience, and you won't let me stray 

too far from the truth; I'm grateful to you.

Random acts of kindness

I took Y to get her first Pfizer dose today and the lady who administered the vaccine was so kind. She patiently explained everything about the vaccine and its side effects to Y, including me in the conversation (unlike most docs and nurses in this country who insist on talking only to the child!). She answered my questions about scheduling the second dose. She also cleverly asked Y a question about what she (Y) was going to do once she went back home, and while Y was thinking about it, deftly jabbed her arm!

She must have seen so many people today. I know she was just doing her job; but nowadays, I am moved by any small display of consideration and kindness. Someone holding a door open for us, or smiling under a mask, or moving aside on the trail to make way for me as I race past huffing and puffing; the tiny courtesies that are so much a part of pre-pandemic life feel novel and unfamiliar. Like a precious gift, forgotten in a dusty corner that I have serendipitously discovered now. 

We just got an email from Y's school principal that an ex-teacher had passed away. Turns out she is the mom of Y's classmate and succumbed to breast cancer. She leaves behind two young kids. Another random act of kindness - this classmate's dad had met Y one afternoon, several months ago, when she had gone out for a run and got lost. He met Y on the road and she asked him for directions and he walked her home. As they walked, he asked her where she studied and informed her that his son was in the same class as Y.  I was very grateful to him that day. That tenuous connection makes me feel doubly sad for him, his 2 kids, and his family now.  How do people deal with losses of such magnitude? Those kids' entire lives will now be coloured by the loss of their mom at a tender age. 

Vaxed!

The weekend has been spent resting, after our 2nd dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Today I napped for more than an hour, a deep, strangely unsettling period of rest. Immersed in the very depths of sleep, as I fought my way to consciousness, it felt like I was buried many thousands of fathoms under the sea. Laboriously, I pushed my way up into awakeness, hands and legs pumping in the imagination. Even at the surface, the eyes would not cooperate and refused to open and take in the world! It was a process of almost physically having to peel the eyelids apart, so heavy had my slumber been. 

I come out of these naps feeling lackluster rather than rested (S says that's because they are too long, and he is right). There is a heaviness in the limbs which makes me think that this is what it must be like to be very old. One of my husband's (and Y's) "fun" things to do is to click a snap of me while I am sleeping. I am always upset to see how utterly exhausted I look in these photos. Mouth slack and open, I look for all the world like someone who has run a marathon and just plopped herself down to sleep, not at all like an active woman who gets her 8 hours every night! I wonder if this is just one of the many changes that the body experiences, with increasing age.

Anyhow, relieved to have got both shots now and we will be considered to be "fully vaccinated" after 2 weeks. The CDC also approved the Pfizer vaccine for 12-15-year-olds and Ads has already got his first jab.

The present (poem)

 In this alien land, the sense of unbridgeable difference loomed large. 

The very air smelled light; no more the anticipated heaviness of a summer's day. 

The humidity rose and settled in waves around me, burnished with birdsong. 

I strained to hear the familiar sounds of traffic, but only met the thump of basketball against hoop.

My tongue drooled for the annual Alphonso and rebelled at the acid Mexican variety.

Summer brought indecent lushness, a hint of the tropics;

but the tropics I remembered was wilted trees surrendering to the heat.

Strange, unaccustomed land; strange, unaccustomed beings! 

I have to embrace it with open arms; else the remembrance of the absent ones will undo me.  

This is the here and now; the one and only present.

I won't long for the yesteryears and might-have-been;

Welcoming this unexpected gift, I will untie the tangled skeins of an unremarkable life.

Goals for 2021 and 2020 report card

Since 2019, our family has had a formal goal-setting exercise every December, for the New Year. Since 2020 we expanded to doing a family meeting at the end of every month to review where we are on our goals, how the last month went, what's top of mind of us for the next month etc. 

Last year's "performance", I am quite happy about actually. My goals were doable, and some I knocked out of the park. And for the rest, well it was 2020....we can be kind to ourselves :(

Report Card 2020 (and my report card for 2019)

Learn swimming - Did start classes in early 2020 at our health club, which shut down in March 2020 :( At this rate, I might be pushing 60 by the time I learn to swim like my kids!

Teach Ads some life skills - same as last year. We made some good progress. I don't do much after dinner other than putting the leftovers away, which is great because clearing up after a meal is my least favourite activity. Ads now (most days) cleans the kitchen after dinner. He wipes down the dining table and all the counters, the gas stove, sweeps the floor, and if I am on a call or something, loads the dishwasher. Y is in charge of refilling the water filter and making me my post-dinner cup of green tea :)) I taught Ads to cook things like Maggi but still a long way to go.

Join another nonprofit Board - Done, since April 2020

Work on Ads' college plan - Middling progress. Since he doesn't know what we wants to do, I'm somewhat at a loss on what I am supposed to research on!

Paint more - Accomplished. 

Write more - On this blog and Linkedin/Medium. Accomplished.

 

Some of the other goals carried over from 2019 were accomplished as well. Exercising and meditating every day, reading a Tamil book, and teaching S how to cook (he has learnt a LOT and very comfortable cooking a full meal now). In addition, COVID gave me the opportunity to resurrect an old hobby - singing.

Goals 2021

Lose weight- This will be the hardest, I think?

Meaningful work portfolio (including my Board work)

(Continue to) paint, sing, write - have targets for each of these :) 

Ads' college research 

Connect regularly with friends and family - something we started doing more intentionally in 2020 when we couldn't travel. I reconnected with school and college buddies and with cousins and extended family a lot more in 2020. Hope to continue this good habit going forward as well.

Spring 2021

The school year is winding down even as the pandemic continues to rage, most virulently in India. I feel like I am living in 2 mental states. One is anxious, upset, and angry at what's happening in India. Concern and worry for parents are uppermost in my mind. The other goes about my daily routine, revelling in the Virginian spring and the warmer weather, Zoom calls, cooking and cleaning and thinking about summer plans. So far, happy that parents, parents-in-law and most friends are well and safe, if bored and completely fed up!

Spring is here and I am discovering so many new trails, to my utmost delight! For example, I didn't know that the Virginia bluebell blooms for just a few short weeks in this season, and many riverside and streamside trails are very popular around this time. I have joined a hiking group on Facebook that gives me such useful information. Armed with their recommendations and tips, we have been on a few hikes, all of them very pretty. In addition, bunny rabbits are much in evidence in the spring, and we have been seeing baby bunnies prancing around in our backyard, in addition to the usual deer, woodchuck and occasional fox sighting. We didn't get to DC for the cherry blossoms this year but got to enjoy them in and around the neighborhood.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.