The second half of the year is always a little better than the first. More long weekends, more festivities. This half feels like a hug, while the other feels like a walk in the desert.
October has been great. Cozy sweater-weather, the anticipation of holidays, and some rain!
There is something cozy, something mellow about the way light falls in our bedroom in October. The dance of light and shadows on our furniture is soothing and mesmerizing at this time. The fact that we live on a giant ball, spinning and zooming through space, is sometimes hard to comprehend. But little things, like the light in the bedroom, the chill in the air, and early sunsets, let us know that something has changed, something has moved from its place.
I loved E. Alex Jung’s profile of Kumail Nanjiani. No matter how we grow, it’s hard to let go of our teenage insecurities and anxieties.
“Having other people decide how you feel about yourself — none of that goes away. It’s all still there. What you have to do is somehow figure out how to have self-worth from within yourself. I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll let you know once I find the key.”
I’ve had good success with recipes from My Food Story. Favorites so far include Lasooni Corn Palak and Dhaba Style Moong Dal. I’m making my way through her Fast and Easy Dinners recipe list.
I also made her Easy Gobi Manchurian to satisfy a craving for Bangalore’s street-style red Gobi. It turned out great, better than what restaurants here serve, but not as good as the Gobi in Mangaluru or Bengaluru. It got me thinking about something I wrote last year called The Search For Comfort Food.
Because I felt that post did not fully capture what I had to say, I tried modifying it, and it turned into an essay on the search for the feeling of home.
This Catapult essay by Purnima Mani captures a similar sentiment - I Can’t Go Home, So I Go to the Indian Grocery, she says.
In the absence of a plane ticket to Chennai, the food of my heritage helps tether me to the land and people I miss most.
That’s all for now. Continue reading for this month’s essay in which I contemplate being rushed as a child while hurrying my dawdling toddler
i.
My family has always teased, and depending on the occasion complained, that I am too slow. They have good reason to, of course, I like to take my time to do the things I need to do. In my family, I am the sloth at the DMV in the movie Zootopia, by which I mean I am excruciatingly slow.
When I began living on my own, I started slowing down whenever I could to undo the wrongs of my childhood and make up for the times I was unnecessarily rushed, unnecessary according to me.
Isn’t that the advantage of being an adult? I could eat ice cream before dinner or pizza for breakfast. I could go an entire day without eating a grain of rice.
I could be as slow as I wanted to be.
ii.
A few days back, I caught myself asking my son to hurry up. I, the family slowpoke, was asking my offspring to hurry up. Not once or twice, but multiple times a day.
Hurry up, I say, as he rolls out of bed or moves food around on his plate.
Hurry up, I say, as he dawdles before bath or tries to skip a nap.
Hurry up, I say, as he trudges up the stairs, lingering at every. single. step.
Has my husband’s and my unhurried behavior created a potent combination that is too slow even for us? Have all those years of sitting for hours at the dining table while our mothers pleaded us to move on come back to bite us?
iii.
Growing up, you look forward to the freedom of being an adult. You think adulthood is a mansion that you get keys to when you turn a certain age, a place where you can do as you please.
But when you get to the door of your mansion, you realize that it is haunted, shrouded in darkness, and falling apart.
You make your way in because there is no way back. You grope in the darkness for something to brighten your path, even as ghosts from the past and ghouls from the future jump at you from every corner and turn.
When you find a light switch and flip it on, a sinister yellow incandescent light fills the room. In that dim light, you see where to go and what to do next. In that same light, you understand, finally, why your parents said what they said and did what they did all those years ago when they were trying to hurry you along.
You empathize with them the way you wish your child would now.
It makes you laugh and cry at how stupid it is, the way we are always going in circles. Generation after generation keeps going through the same motions, making the same mistakes, and learning the same things. Why is it that we find clarity and meaning only in hindsight and never at the moment?
iv.
When my son tries to build something with his blocks and fails, he gets annoyed and frustrated. "Kashi korche, thain itya rabbana?" he says. How do I do it? Why does it not stay?
I always mistake his words as a cry for help and show him how to do it. He smashes whatever I build to the ground.
“Amma'n help korche nakka”, he says. I do not want Amma to help. When he wants my help, he says, “Amma help kari.” Amma, help me. Otherwise, all he needs is for me to be nearby. To watch, encourage, offer hints and suggestions while he tries to figure it out. Sometimes it takes a few tries, sometimes a few days.
When he figures it out, I can see the triumph on his face. I can see a satisfaction that is pure and wholesome.
I know that look. I know that feeling from when I got to the bottom of nasty bugs after spending days staring at the code.
We struggle so we may learn.
v.
If you don’t hurry up, we can’t go to the park, I tell him, clenching my jaw. But he dawdles, he plays, he cuddles. He does not hurry up.
There are things I want to teach him. Lessons I picked up along the way, from my parents, from others, lessons I learned the hard way.
Can anything be taught, though? He will learn what he needs to learn and what he wants to learn when the time is right. By getting his hands dirty. By failing and trying again.
The path is his. The struggle is his. The lessons are his.
I will watch, hint, and nudge him in the right direction. I will let him fall the little falls and protect him from the big falls. At times, I will hurry him up. Other times, I might slow him down. It might not make any sense to him now.
Not yet.
But when he gets to his mansion and makes his way through life, I know that he will understand.
wow.. this goes on every day with us too..I just came to the desk after hurrying my son through his dinner..now after reading this, it makes me ponder..