Growing down

So I am going to office, and what am I wearing.

Heeya's ICSE art project. A madhubani hand painted t-shirt. Peacock, et al. A mindfully selected pair of ice blue jeans that would go with the t. Heeya's blue sneakers her feet have now outgrown. Finally, Rhea's beach themed kiddo watch like the cherry on a sundae. 

As I looked at the thing in the mirror, yes definitively a quirky mish-mash but looking beyond that, more like who really am I this morning, the only epiphanic morning moment a Monday might allow, I felt I was a sort of product of my kids, rather than the other way round. 

A bit of Heeya's art, her vulnerability turned rebellion turned independence, her awakenings and her depths, her reflections, her criminal laziness, her moments of intense focus, her beautiful quiet. I observe, I marvel, I absorb, as she happens to life. 

Rhea's infectious entropy, her feverishly galloping exhausted, exhausting mind. Her hunger, her anxiety. The limitless curiosity and awe in her deep dark eyes that fizzles out by the time it reaches my spent soul but blazes brightly in her till the day is done, into the next. A bit of that too. 

Sometimes, often, I feel I am changing, growing, branching, rooting, becoming more of me, with the girls. Does it happen with every parent. Or only those who wanted another chance to childhood. Doesn't everyone start growing down at some point to come full circle. 

Rainy School Mornings (or just making memories)

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We got this.  

I sermonise while helping Rhea balance and manage the extra long steps past the interrupting walls between iron railings around the lake. The street was waterlogged from end to end and she was using the high iron fence as a precarious pathway to the main road so as not to wet socks, shoes, trousers and her body parts inside them.

Suddenly there was no fence anymore, because there was no lake anymore and we still had a good 30 feet distance to cover to get to the road where the bus will arrive soon and won't wait if we are not visible and SoS-waving both hands like shipwrecked souls. 

Kole aay. Come in my lap / arms. 

Ma ! I am almost 10 ! That's in years and 30 that's in kgs. You will break your back. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Jhotpot kole aay. Wrap your legs around me you're slipping. Now stay put. 

Thus we walk and wade slowly through the water. A bundle of mother and daughter and schoolbag and umbrella. An occasional big muddy wave hitting us now and then from all indifferent vehicles of the universe. And then finally, triumphantly, we reach the bus stop couple minutes ahead of time. With a balmy sense of achievement. 

Nice way to start the day.