I have a friend, who I met in college, the brightest student in class by miles. And when I say bright, I mean someone who could discuss Marxism with Marx himself, or tell you intricacies of Freud’s work that most people would not be able to comprehend. But, she never rubbed her immense wealth of knowledge in anyone’s nose;  you could walk past and not even notice her- reserved and simple, yet gifted with a brain so sharp that one word out of her and you knew this was someone who had spent years curled up with them books, from Robert Frost to Dostoyevsky. Not that she’d tell you that. But you knew. Also, she was the one you went to when the exams loomed dangerously on your head!

I lost touch with her, as I did with a lot of my friends, after college. We all went our own ways into the big bad world, our bosoms full of idealism and dreams. But, in all the years that I was not in touch with her, I would think of her off and on, and when I did I always imagined her deeply lost and involved in the world of academia, which is the only thing she seemed to be meant for and enjoyed.

But, when I did finally reconnect, I found that she had abandoned all that seemed so dear to her and gotten married soon after college. Nothing wrong with that, but she seemed the last person in the world to be doing that.

Anyway, it was what she did and I never asked her why. She married someone in the army, had a son, nine now and immersed herself in her domestic world. She seemed happy when we talked, but I always detected a twinge of regret in her voice, something I didn’t explore further.

But it made me think. Why did she make that decision? It was not for love, that much I know, since I vaguely know the man she married and I know it was not an impulsive must-marry-him decision.  But, it was not for me to question a friend’s decision, even if I wondered about it often, and she largely seemed happy, so, I let it be.

A few days ago she wrote to me and herself addressed the matter, if only indirectly. Her words are here, and I am sharing this without her knowledge, but they are so beautiful that I feel I should share them. Also, they encapsulate wonderfully what I feel about my own decisions in life:

“Introspection is a dangerous activity. It makes you look back and take stock, not a pleasant thing to do. In life, you walk down a road… then, a path opens up on the side and for some reason you leave the road and start down that path. It’s a beautiful path, tree lined, shady, and edged with dainty blossoms. The fellow travelers that you encounter are polite, friendly and nice. The path does get bumpy occasionally, but, there are no steep gradients, neither up nor down. The path is more of a dirt track and you walk in a slow unhurried pace. The scenery is pleasant though, it seldom changes. Slowly and imperceptibly, you stop taking in the scenery or feel the cool shade or even notice the fellow travelers. Even as your feet carry you along the path, your mind wanders back to that road that you got off. What all did that road have to offer after you quit it? Once in a while, through the gap in the trees, you catch a glimpse of that road. You dimly make out people walking in confident purposeful and fast paced strides. This sets you wondering. How is the journey on that road? What happened to the friends you parted from when you wandered off down this shady green path? You try and imagine their glitzy, high – octane life, full of accomplishments targets, achievements and hefty pay cheques. You feel a twinge of envy as you envision their confidence and their self-assertiveness, their ability to say no when they wish to. You gradually endow them with all those qualities that you seem to lack. The exciting journey of the busy roadsters creates a tiny black hole inside you. Soon you spend all your time peering down this hole even as your brain is slowly sucked into its lightless oblivion. How close you are now to becoming Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, even if by nature you are neither hedonistic nor adulterous. The wooded path palls on you, the cool shade suffocates you and the pleasantries of the sweet folk, you find tiresome. The timid flowers by the wayside seem so tiny, so pathetic…

Sooner or later in life we reach this stage. Bewildered, you ask yourself,” where am I? How did I get here? Would I have been better off on that other road?”

I still don’t know why she look the leafy path and I don’t want to. But my point to her was this; that no matter what path you take, you’ll always peer through the trees to look at the other one and wonder if that had been better. Someone who took the fast paced one would wonder if being with the kids on the shady path had been a better one to opt for…it’s the ultimate quandary and I can safely say it is one that most women face.

Women, not men. Men believe that there is only one path for them, and they take it. They don’t feel the angst of wondering “what if?”, of agonizong over life changing decisions, of watching their friends stride along a path that they would have liked to be a part of. It should not be this way, but it is. And it’s a shame.

I was one of those people who could sleep anywhere, have even slept on an x-ray machine once. But the past ten days have been terrible, and I just can’t sleep.

And there’s a reason. My daughter, on the day she turned two and a half, got burnt with hot tea. It happened in a flash, and it was horrible. Horrible, horrible.  I didn’t know how badly tea can burn, but now I do.

But, the good thing is that now she’s healed well, after many visits to the pediatrician and other doctors. She got it mostly on her chest, but could have been her face, eyes…anything.

The first few days I kept wondering why this happened, and the image replayed itself in my mind endlessley, like a bad film on repeat, and the more I’d try and get it out of my mind, the more it would persist.  Then, I looked at my daughter and realized that she was far braver than me, for she, even with her would, all wrapped up in bandage, was running around the house as before.

It was then that I told myself to snap out of it, and it was then that I stopped asking why this happened, and thanked God for what did not, because it could have been much much worse.

She’s a trooper I told her and she smiled. When I took her for her bandage changes, she cried, obviously, but not much, and kept telling me, all the while, what a good girl she was. “Mama, I am a good girl”, she’d say through her tears, trying hard to put up a brave front while the doc cut her bandage and cleaned her wound. I wanted to hold her and cry but I had to be brave for her, for she was looking to me for support. I clenched my teeth and didn’t let a tear fall out of my eye, not in front of her at least. She kept repeating how good she was some fifty times while the dressing was being done. It was heart wrenching to watch her do this, she was doing it for she was scared, and hoped that if she was good, she’d not get hurt. This from a two year old.

One underestimates one’s children. I didn’t know my daughter, my little delicate doll, who would cry if she spotted a life size Winnie the Poo at a birthday party, had such fortitude in her. She went with me to the doctors without as much as a peep out of her, and when there she complied better than any adult I know. She’d turn, sit, stand, lie, as the doc said. When I gave her medication she’d open her mouth and gulp it down without any resistance. She was unreal, and I salute her for it. I would have not been this good had it happened to me.

The worst is now over and she’s on the mend.

Now I need to find my sleep.

My daughter loves books, wants me to read to her every night before she goes to bed. It’s something I started doing when she was very young because I wanted her to love reading, which, to my utter joy, she’s showing signs of.

She wants me to begin every story with “one day” or “once upon a time” and they all must end with “happily ever after”. Only then am I allowed to switch off the light, after which she flops on her tummy and closes her eyes, almost as if she’s trying to picture it all again in her mind’s eye.

But, the trouble is that most fairy tales I tell her are fraught with all sorts of evil and dark elements. And this is something I have wondered about often, why, for one, must stories for little children be full of stepmothers? How terrible it is to tell a two year old that when a little child’s mommy dies, the evil step mom tries to kill her or makes her work in the house. But, one might argue, that there’s always a happy ending. Really? What is that? Oh! the handsome prince. So, all these terrible things happen to Cinderella, but in the end a prince charming, who’s floored by her beauty, marries her and that’s a happy ending. Now, there’s nothing wrong with stories and I do not want to over react for the sake of it, but it amuses me how so many of them end this way!

Or , then there are those where even if the parents are alive, but poor, like Hansel and Gretel’s parents, they lead them into the dark woods and leave them there. Imagine what a little kids thinks when you tell him or her that.

A few days ago, my daughter asked me to tell her the story of Snow white, but when I started reading it to her, I was not sure I wanted to tell her that Snow white’s mommy dies, so I sugar coated it somehow. She asked me what a step mom was and I tried telling her in the best way I thought possible for a two year old to understand (I don’t lie to her, mostly, when she asks me something, I may give her an abridged version but I try not to lie). She didn’t quite understand, but didn’t inquire further, so I let it pass.

But then yesterday she found Hansel and Gretel and told me to read it to her – the cover had little children and a house made of candies on it, so it appealed to her. When I started reading it, (I told her that the kids got lost in the woods, not that the parents left them there) and got to the part about the witch, she looked at me in fright and told me to shut the book. Then she cried and cried and said that she never wanted to see that book in the house, that I should give it to some “other baby” as I tell her when I want her to look after her things!  And I know that there is a moral there in the story about not going into strangers’ houses and so on, but I think I can teach her that anyway, without such tales!

I’ve decided to put these fairy tales away, and since I have other books for her too – I’d also bought the Panchtantra stories some time ago – I now read those to her, and she loves them. But every now and then she’ll ask me things like why the wolf wanted to eat Red Riding Hood, or where Cinderella’s mommy was…

Each child is different and I think before reading these stories to them one must think whether they’ll be affected by them or not. And frankly, a lot of kids would be, I mean who likes to be told about witches, wolves and evil mothers? Not kids for sure. I wonder what they were thinking when they wrote such stories for kids.

Before I say anything else, I must admit that I am not a strong person, not strong when it comes to people I love. I have a lot of angst about, well, about many things in life, but also about mommy issues, as is apparant in this blog, but, the big but, let’s just say, I ain’t got nerves of steel, to put it mildly.

So, last week when my daughter sat inside her classroom with total strangers, I was happy. She has a lot of stranger anxiety and one of the reasons I wanted to put her into playschool was to try and cure her of some of it, so that she does not recoil each time someone waves a hello. She never liked school (its only been a week and a half) but, once there, she would go in and after a while I’d leave the room and she’d be fine.

Day before yeaterday she just didn’t want me to leave, but the teacher made me, so I had to. I felt terrible as they took her screaming from my arms. I skulked around corners for a while till I was scolded and then I left the hall and sat outside with the rest of the mothers and soon I was swapping salad recipes, though my mind was inside the classroom.

I told myself that she’d be ok, that this is something she had to learn to do and I had to be strong. But I could not get that image of her out of my mind, her sweet face and large teary eyes looking at me. I gulped a few times to stifle the lump that was, once again, beginning to form in my throat. Then I started wondering if I was doing the right thing, because though in my mind I was doing this for her betterment, just like everyone around me, I was very upset about the fact that she cried the way she did.

The thing about her is that, though it may appear to be the opposite, she actually loves kids her age and once she is familiar with a place, she tends to love it. So I had hoped that she’d start liking the place soon. And while I know that such moods are cyclical, I am dreading going to school tomorrow and leaving her in the classroom. The last time she told the teacher to bring all the mommies inside, she had pleaded for me and when I was finally called in, I found her eyes red with crying. She ran to me and clung and cried, then laughed, then asked me not to leave. I could not say anything but I held her hard and after a while told her that I was right outside and had not gone home.

I know all kids go through this and they settle down after a while, but, like I said, I am not strong enough. I hate it when I have to leave and she is crying, I hate it but I still do it because I think it’s good for her, because the whole world does it, my parents did it too, and all the rest of it, I know all that, but it’s still not good enough for me because I simply hate seeing her sitting at a table crying for her mommy.

My daughter started pre-school last week. She cried, of course, and I felt terrible when she clung and didn’t want me to leave. I told the teacher that I would stay till she was a little settled, and I know what the debate on that is – that they don’t settle till they can see the mother, and there’s truth in that, but, I still knew it was not going to do her any good if I left her crying like that in the first week. Each child is different and I know that in her case she needs to feel a little secure before she likes anyplace, otherwise she develops an aversion. I wanted to give her the security that I was not leaving her there. So, I was the only (or one of the only) mother sitting inside with a child, not that that bothered me in the least. She looked at me and said “mama, don’t leave me here”. I promised I would not till she liked it.

I think it worked. The first week I went in with her and the next I would go in, like all the other mothers, but leave in about ten minutes- never slipping out, but telling her that I was going to be waiting outside, so she need not worry. She cried for a few minutes, of course, but not in the hysterical fashion she had done before. I told her that I’d be right there and take her home in a few hours.  Somehow that worked. She was alright without me inside, maybe because she knew that I was around, or maybe not. I don’t know what worked, and I also know that part of it is cyclical, she’ll probably still cry sometimes.

But the thing is that she’s aware of the fact that now she has to do this, and I am not sure she loves it yet, but she likes her teachers, which is good.

The first day she put her little Dora bag on her back and walked away, I smiled and yes there was that silly lump, don’t know where it came from, but there it was in my throat. She looked back at me and smiled, told me she had just spotted a little Tellytubby doll.

She’ll probably learn to let go soon. Now, I have to do the same.

I decided to solve the clingy problem with all the will I had left in me.

Last month I had told myself that after my vacation, I would seriously tackle the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life issue.  But that cannot be done with a toddler holding your leg and wailing . You need peace to think, and I haven’t had any in the past two weeks, because my daughter decided she needed her mommy 24-7 and no one else. Flattering as that was, I began to lose it after a while; something needed to be done, fast.

So, this is what I tried. I got up in the morning and asked a friend if she wanted to watch a film, which she did, and I trotted off and told my horrified looking maid, who had been witnessing the scenes around the bathing and eating, to do what needed to be done – the bath, food etc – and put her to bed in the afternoon. I planned to return only after she had taken her nap.

And guess what? She didn’t shed one tear or throw one tantrum. I was told happy stories about how she laughed and played in the water and also during lunch. All that drama was, of course, only for mommy dearest. So overjoyed was I with this outcome that the next day I decided to take off in the morning again, and went shoe shopping, something I had been wanting to do for a while. And sure enough this time too she was happy as a calm and was sound asleep in her cot when I returned home, to peace and quiet.

So I am not sure I’ve successfully solved the problem – mommy hood has taught me not to celebrate achievements too early, and sometimes not all all, they have a way of resurfacing just when you think you’ve crossed that bridge – but I am feeling chuffed. After all not only did I manage to wean her off me for a while, I also got to watch a movie, catch up with a friend and buy some shoes in the bargain- not bad, not bad at all!!!

So now I am wondering if my good luck will last and somehow, miraculously, she’ll love school when she goes, for the first time, on Monday.

Too much to ask? I thought so. But, it’s worth a shot, in case someone up there is listening.

I am not going to deny it, I like my daughter to doing the “mommy” thing – you know wanting mommy to do this and that and no one else. Except, I like it to an extent, after which I start to lose it a little. I mean if going for a bath becomes an issue, then it’s not fun. These days I find myself constantly explaining to her why she needs to let the maid, who she does like, give her a bath, feed her etc, so that mommy can get things done.

But rationalizing with a two year old is, well, it’s not exactly a walk in the woods. I get a lot of No! accompanied, of course, with hysterionics like rolling on the floor, making throwing up sounds and faces, the usual. She didn’t do much of it earlier, so I thought I’d escaped it somehow. Right, wishful thinking.

Anyway, so ever since we returned from our wonderful vacation in Singapore, she’s been on this mommy -will-do-it-phase. So yesterday I decided to be brave and do something about it. I told the maid to give her a bath and I let her scream her way through. I stayed in the kitchen where I could hear her well, but I didn’t go in for the rescue, something she was trying hard to get me to do – the vomit sounds et all. But I stood my ground. I felt mean but I ignored that voice. I am not sure if it helped, but I was determined.

Did it help? Not sure. I am hoping it did, if in a tiny way.

One does what one can but it does not always work. To think that just because I let her cry one day she would now miraculously change her behaviour is, needless to say, expecting too much. But, still, at some level I think she understood that mommy meant business.

I’ll probably have to continue doing stuff like this, because in two weeks she starts school. I am not even thinking about how that will go. Boy oh boy, that’s going to be fun.

Time Machine anyone??

I decided to take a little break, so came to Singapore – have loads of friends and relatives here. So here I am with my daughter and mother, husband could not take leave. And I am sooooo glad I did this. I needed to get away I think and just chill for a while, which is exactly what I am doing!

The best thing I did was to bring my mom with me, because now I am totally hands free with my daughter – we are all happy this way.

So tonight I plan to go out partying with some old friends and I have to say, I’ve not done that since my single days. It feels a little weird to be going without my husband and there’s this silly voice in my head that says I should be feeling a little guilty leaving home, hubby and baby and living it up. I am, of course, ignoring that voice (snuffing it out is more like it) but it is quite persist ant!

Guilt and women – there’s an illogical connection there. There is no reason for me to be feeling this at all, yet I do – and the guilt is on many fronts – leaving my mom at home with my daughter while I party, since this is a vacation for her too, should she be subjected to being at home looking after a toddler? Then, would my daughter be ok in a foreign land without me in the evening? What about my husband? Will it be weird bobbing around town without him?

I know that most of this is in my head, but I wish it was not! And maybe it’ll be ok when I do go, one beer down and I’ll drown all that guilt into oblivian – till the next morning that is!

But, what is true is that I will miss my husband, because it’s been a while since he and I just went drinking with friends. I mean we go out a fair amount in India, but somehow it’s not the same as before, like the good old days when he and I lived in various parts of the world. India has tamed, and aged, us both. I don’t know why, but it has.

I wish he could be here so we could re-live some of the old times..

Got a call from the school. She’s made it.

I was relieved. That was the emotion I felt, of relief. Happy? Maybe.

So, I went to pick up the letter today, and even though I was expecting the fee, and the pecuniary euphemisms around it, to cause a dent in my pocket, I still didn’t realize how big a dent it would be, till the pretty lady at the reception affably handed me the papers and I looked at the stratospheric figures staring me back at me . My first thought – this for a two year old?

But, it’s a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing, and I though I’ll probably take it, because I’ve come to believe that this would be good for her, it’s an obscene amount of money. My mother reminded me that the monthly fee would be as much as the salary she retired at, after teaching English for twenty-four years. That’s a disturbing thought.

Disturbing because, extravagant as this is, I am probably going to go ahead with it, and all because I think my daughter would benefit immensely. But would she be worse off going to any other decent school that does not charge an arm, a leg and a pound of flesh? Am I ensuring that, by sending her here, she’d achieve the best, whatever that is? Not sure, not sure at all.

And it’s not like everyone who can afford it is packing their kids off to such schools. I’ve read some interesting articles about alternative education that some parents are choosing for their kids. Like this one I read recently about homeschooling. Not that I could, or want to, do that. I don’t have it in me. Besides, I think children need school for more than education. But still, it’s refreshing to know what some parents are doing today, and more than the capability, they have the will to challenge the conventional system.

I wish I had it too.

In the good old days, children went to school at, what? say 4 or 5? maybe a tad earlier. But not at 2, that’s for sure. So when I told my father that I was putting my two year old into play school (she’ll be almost 2.5 when she goes) he thought I’d lost it, which it does not take much for him to think, he’s old school and I am, well, mostly, not.

He’s nuts about my daughter so he was upset. And I’ve been sitting on the fence about it anyway, so I kept (read keep) swinging between whether to send her or not. Looking around me didn’t help, since everyone sends their kids at some bizarre age or the other. And that’s not what I want to do anyway, to send her just because the whole world is doing it. But, I have enrolled her for July for the Toddler session, she goes everyday for three hours.

First, I was so worried about her whole interaction that I was ignoring, rather stifling, this little voice in my head that kept asking me if that’s what I really wanted. She has to go to school for a long time to come, did I really want to start it now? Did I not want her to be at home with me, playing the morning games we do, watering the lawn, playing with water, reading, and all the rest of it. Did I want to force her into a routine just because it was the right thing to do? She’s two for Christ’s sake.

But, till her interaction was over I managed to silence that voice. But now it’s back and I want to face these questions.

I know the answers and it makes me sad. The truth is that, if I was ensured admission into a decent (and that’s a whole different story, but for another day) school, I’d probably not send her now. I do think she’s too young and needs me more that she needs a routine. But, I don’t have the balls. I know that by the time she is three and over, I’ll have driven myself insane thinking about her admissions. At least this way I know that she will continue in this school, which, hopefully, will be right for her.

Its going to be five days a week, and this is the other thing that bothers me. Why make a toddler go five days? Three seems right to me. That way, they’d go and play three times a week, and yet, not lose out on time at home.

My husband thinks it’s too early but he’s left the decision to me, and from time to time, he, like me, laments the fact that we don’t have the guts to let her be for now and cross the admission bridge when we come to it.