Tag Archives: children

A Month of Milestones

15 Jul

I’ve been terribly remiss about blogging (as is apparent, how clever of me to point it out!) and am going to blame it squarely on eustress: good stress caused by positive life changes, in this case a new job, a visit from family, travel, several celebrations, and the contradictory urge to romance my couch and see no one but my Boy.
With that long-winded excuse out of the way, let’s collectively acknowledge some fun milestones in this, the best of months:

  • July 1: A bloggy birthday! Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas turned 6 and I did nothing but blow my blog a kiss. Finally, I understand all those couples who have to halt a moment and calculate how many years they’ve been married. The ones whose limbs are extensions of each other and those who think in twos. Not-so-Little Blogette and I, we’re at that comfortable juncture. I love her like an old shoe. She knows I’ll be back. I’ve been coming back for 8 and a half years. But in the meanwhile, there are sparkly heels to be tried. Oh, and speaking of heels…..
You likey?

You likey?

  • July 7: On this day in 1994, a girl tapped my shoulder as I sat on a class bench in front of her. “Excuse me, are you OJ?” she asked. “No, I’m Janice!” I replied huffily, knowing full well that she knew my name. What didn’t penetrate my thick skull was that she was trying to start a conversation. A lesser mortal would’ve run for the hills. She, she came back, and for the last 20 years has been my dearest friend, soul sister, and rock of Gibraltar (no connection to the one I couldn’t visit!) Her name means “Jewel of the World” and my lord, how she has shone me through my darkest hours. We now know why we weren’t given sisters: having each other, a birth sister would be a mere appendage.
  • July 9: Daddy blew out a ring of candles on a cake brought by SOMEBODY ELSE. HMPH. That’s right, snatch cake-sending rights away from your first-born now. That dethroned monarch business just never ends. But my Daddy, he had a birthday, and oh how the world is wealthier because his goodness dwells in it! (Still throwing that corner tantrum, though. )
  • July 25: SO excited about this upcoming birthday, not only because hell-0, it’s a BIRTHDAY, what’s not to be excited about, but also because it is another important milestone. Champagne and cake all around! Would it be terribly inappropriate to wear a huge party hat, get one of those tooter horns and be my very own one-woman parade? No?! See, this is why I love you guys. :mrgreen:
Here, make do with the cake our SIL baked on July 4

Here, make do with the cake our SIL baked on July 4th

~

In Other News…
When the Boy’s brother got married last year, I heard a strange word for the first time: “co-sister”. Apparently, in the south of India, this term denotes women married to brothers. Being a similar combination of un-Southern and irreverent, my sister-in-law (the one of cake fame above) and I cracked up over the term, came up with instagram hashtags for it, invented a co-sister ghetto sign, and even harmonized “Hey sister, co-sister” (Lady Marmalade). Can you tell I love her? Will I be forever banned from kanjeevarams and mallige for this? *beats chest at the thought of no more bisibele bhaath in her life and eyes some Angus divinity in its place*

~
My 18-month-old niece called me this morning. She is currently visiting family in Texas, saw her mother’s phone lying around, found my contact on it, dialed, and chirped “Hi OJ Mami!” When my uterus finally un-puddles itself from the floor, I can’t wait to watch her in mid-toddlerhood-almost-preteen action.

~
We’ve been taking visiting friends and family to this Gujarati thali place that serves the most amazing shrikhand and khichdi, among other delicacies, but I won’t be going back for a bit, because the last time I had 5 helpings of khichdi and they started looking at me funny and avoiding my gaze and I’m mortified that I might have eaten them out of business. This redness of face isn’t rosacea, my friends, it’s ignominy.

How do you solve a problem like more khichdi?

How do you turn a seventh helping down?

How do you walk away from yummy khichdeeeeeeee?

Ignore the glutton, she’s just being a clown.

 

~
Swimming: I’ve been the resident hippo lately, breast-stroking gently through cool, turquoise waters on these warm summer days while our American neighbors wear toddler-sized swimwear, chug beers, burn themselves to a crisp, toss their hair and pose, and do everything but swim. Most puzzling, this behavior.

~
Books: Sindh: Stories From a Vanished Homeland, by Saaz Aggarwal, and To Marry An English Lord, by Gail MacColl and Carol McD Wallace. Both recommended for history buffs, albeit very different eras and geographies.

~
Heard in the OJ-Boy home:
Me: I think I’m getting food-averse. I don’t think I’m so interested in it anymore.
The Boy: Good. Now we can buy a house next year.

How large can I make the font for HMPH??? 😡

Adios, my friends, pardon my future busybeeness, although I will put up a recently-published article before the month is out and would love to hear your thoughts!

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Et du?

18 Dec

“OJ Mami,” he says with all the breathlessness of a critical revelation, “milk has 2 names: last name Du and first name Du.”

And with that, my 4-year-old nephew gulps down his glass of cocoa.

(Yes, yes, I only married the Boy for his genetic material, so sue me.)

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Together

24 Jul

At the beginning of this month, I announced an unusual ‘giveaway’, where we were jointly involved in contributing and none of you knew who the recipient(s) would be. To my base pledge of $50, I would add $1 for every comment received on this post.

67 unique visitors to that post left their comment (one squeaking past the midnight deadline by 5 minutes 😉 ) and together, we raised $117. Sadly, 80% (yes, you read that right) of the unique visitors to that page chose not to share our enthusiasm, and I can only hope it was a logistical issue vs. one of attitude.

Why did I open this up to everyone when I could have quietly slipped my check in the mail, you ask? Why did I invite people from the blogosphere to share, knowing there would be some cynics, naysayers and indifferent folk? Put it down to a case of chronic optimism. Of knowing that it may be my money, but I need it to be OUR attitude. As much as I dislike being preachy and usually save my rather strong views on citizenship for other spaces, I know that alone, I am merely one person contributing to another’s life. Together, that effect multiplies manifold. You may not dash out with your checkbook or sign up to build stacks of sandwiches for the homeless just because of this small effort. You may already be doing things far greater than I will ever dream of. The money you may have raised for worthwhile causes will very likely have exceeded this humble amount we have gathered. But if I got you to think–for even a minute–about sharing yourself with the world, planted a seed about doing something similar or paying it forward in other ways, I’m going to bring out my giant feathered boa and do the chicken dance in circles. (No, I’m not ridiculous in the least, why do you ask?)

Our $117 will be pledged to Ummeed Child Development Center in Bombay, India. The stellar multidisciplinary team at Ummeed (consisting of physicians, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physical therapists, mental health counselors, special educators, caseworkers, etc.) works to serve the needs of children with disabilities across all economic strata. Not only do they work with existing disabilities, they work toward early identification and remedial measures, since disability is a gradient. Nobody is turned away for their inability to pay, and a sliding scale based on income helps families give what they’re comfortable paying. Autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, mental retardation, emotional/behavioral concerns, attention deficit disorder, and occupational and speech disorders are among a wide range of disabilities they assess and assist. Inclusion is a goal, as they aim to integrate children of all abilities into the social mainstream. Ummeed serves the needs of thousands of families in my home city that have nowhere else to turn. Try this statistic for size: One therapist can comfortably manage a caseload of 35 clients. In the city of Bombay, a megapolis where levels of healthcare far exceed the rest of the country, there are 500 children with disabilities per available therapist. The need exists acutely, yet funding is hard to come by.

I have worked for Ummeed in the past. Some of my closest friends continue to serve there. Which is why I have an insider’s view of a truly wonderful organization that has, for the past 12 years, been the ‘ummeed’ (hope) of so many families.

Thank you for visiting my blog, for joining in, for inspiring me with your comments, and for being the vocal 20% that acted to make a difference.

Together is better. Together, we’re better. Give yourselves a round of applause. And now jump in for a group hug! 😀

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CSAAM 2013

31 Mar

April is almost upon us, and it is time to turn our attention to child sexual abuse awareness. Yes, yet again. Today and everyday, to keep all our children as safe as we humanly can.

I’ll make this short, I promise:

Please head to http://csaawarenessmonth.com, where you will see personal testimonials, expert advice, twitter chats, information sources and resources, workshops, an iPhone app and plenty of posts across the blogosphere, all centered around child sexual abuse awareness.

You can choose to be an active participant in conversations, a channel of information through your own social media feeds, or a recipient of material you need–the choice is entirely yours–but any valuable input/support would be appreciated.

For more on how to contribute to this effort that is now in its third year, please go here.

Feel free to link to this post, tweet about it, put it up on Facebook, or email it to anyone you think will benefit from knowing more about CSA.

Thank you for reading. Spread the word. May we protect our young ones from this scourge.

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The Wail of Trincomalee

25 Mar

Bring me fresh spices from Trincomalee

How can I, they be all dead there

Cardamom, pepper, and orange leaf tea

Only arms and torso and head there

~

Vetiver, sandalwood, tales of yore

Colonizers were led there

Rivers of tears are what’s left of the war

Savagely mothers have bled there

~

Orphaned children amass at the graves

Who will see that they’re fed there?

The peace of existence that everyone craves

Forgot to be born and bred there

~

Show me the signs from the paradise hills

Angels now fear to tread there

As dusk descends and bird-call stills

Spirits howl in their bed there

~

Pearls and ships and eastern winds

Vast fortunes lay spread there

What nature offers, man rescinds

No one will rest their head there

~

The flowers are gone from Trincomalee

To adorn the pyres, they said there

And those of us left by fortune’s decree

Must shortly depart in dread there

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Loth the Troth

14 Sep

My honest answer to “Do you want kids?” depends on whether or not I’ve spent the last hour with a friend who has one.

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A Home-spun Yarn

8 Aug

My niece came to visit the other day. A feisty 4-going-on-14, she bounced on my chaise lounge and dimpled up at me, demanding a story. Looking around for inspiration, my eye fell on these little fellas who hang off a corner lamp.

Clockwise, from top: Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, Englishman

And, with her participation, a story took shape. The concept is simple, so with language modifications, this can work well for 2- to 5-year-olds. I hope your children (even the one that lives inside you) enjoy it.

***

This is a story of five friends, elephants all, named Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum and Englishman. One day, Englishman hosted a garden tea party for his friends. It was a beautiful , sunny day and the flowers were in full bloom. As they were all eating cucumber sandwiches and blowing bubbles into their lemonade, Englishman’s Papasan came stomping onto the vast lawns. Englishman started to tremble, because he had done something very naughty earlier in the day and knew Papasan had found out.

“I’ll just be back,” he said in a small voice to his friends and looked around for somewhere to hide. The ground rumbled as Papasan thumped his way over to the little group sitting on their stools, doing full justice to Cook’s jam tarts. His generous figure loomed closer and closer, and Englishman realized it was too late to run! In a flash, he took the lid off the teapot, dived in, and slid the cover in place just as his father’s booming voice shook the table. In the teapot he stayed, breathing through the hole in the spout, all the while that Papasan was looking for him. When he finally clambered out, Papasan was long gone and his friends had run off to the play area for a game of tag.

“Here I am!” he announced, catching up with Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum, and ready to join in. “Why is the rock talking?” asked his puzzled friends, and ignored him, as he stood in the rockery, camouflaged by a thick brown coat of tea water on his hide.  Englishman scampered after them. “Here I am!” he tried again, waving his hands and wiggling his amply belly at them. “Did that tree say something?” his friends asked, as they stopped playing Pin the Tail for a brief moment.  Quickly moving on to a game of Ele-ballet, they ignored the voice, leaving Englishman bewildered and wondering what to do.

“I know!” he said to himself, and climbed up the play structure to the tree house, decorated in earth colors and natural wood tones. “Here I am!” he shouted down at them, certain they’d look up and spot him. “A talking tree house?” they shrugged, now used to voices emerging from things, and unperturbed, Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum continued to play.

This is getting absurd, thought Englishman, who stood alone and sad in the doorway of the tree house, watching his friends play and missing being part of all the fun. He hung his head dejectedly, and lowered his eyes to the ground, but they fell on something else instead. A slow smile split Englishman’s face and he considered the object of his attention. The tree house was built over a frog pond, and, clutching his trunk tightly shut, Englishman made his second dive of the day.

Splash! And he was in. The sound made his friends turn around, and they saw Englishman, now rinsed of the tea and his natural red again, climbing out of the pond, a family of frogs looking on in alarm.  “There you are,” they cried in unison, and tumbled over to him. “We were wondering where you’d disappeared to!” Englishman only smiled, shook himself dry, and joined Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum at their grass-stamping game, glad to be nothing but himself again.

Now do you understand why Mammas and Daddies say tea isn’t good for children?

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More Ghatlet the Cutlet

3 Aug

Mamma, when you go to god’s house, will you leave your i-pad for me?

~ Baby K, who, less than four years since he made his appearance, is sorting his mother’s will and gently hastening her along the road.

Want more?

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Made for Trade

13 Jul

Take my sister. I’ll give you 10 bucks.

~My 5-year-old nephew, making me a business offer oh-so-casually, as the 18-month-old commodity in question waddled about us.

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My Grandma’s Glasses

6 Jul

I’m sure it’s hardly news to you guys that I derive amusement from the search terms that bring visitors to this blog. Case in point, this entire category. So when the one below showed up, I giggled a little:

Then it occurred to me, what if someone really was looking for a poem for their 9-year-old? What if they searched and browsed and scoured books and the WWW and were disappointed not to find it here? What if they went home at night and apologized to their dejected child and they both stayed up worrying all night, the parent racked with guilt and the child quaking in fright at his teacher’s reaction the next morning? And because I’m nothing if not a bleeding heart and carrier of guilt about everything from the loss of a Palestinian homeland to the crisis in Kashmir, I arrived at a decision. “This child shall have his poem!” I cried and stood up with righteous purpose. Quickly realizing that it’s easier to write in seated position, rear end made contact with couch, and I hammered away at faithful Adele.

Here they are, simple enough verses that should hopefully satisfy all concerned parties. As for me, I’ll sleep well tonight, knowing a little boy somewhere averted a nasty remark in his school diary.

P.S. Do they still have school diaries these days?

P.P.S. I didn’t get a single mean remark in my diary. Ever. Thank you for letting me share boast  share.

My Grandma’s Glasses

by Orange Jammies

My Grandma wears big glasses

They’re blurry, thick and round

I bet if I sat on them

They’d make a cracking sound

~

Like children on a play slide

They slip down her nose

And bounce along her bosom

Everywhere she goes

~

Grandma says they help her

To sew, to read, to knit

So whenever I hide them

She gently throws a fit

~

One afternoon I stuffed them

Under the cushions round

And laughed as Grandma looked and looked

Then sighed and groaned and frowned

~

She tried to make some cookies

And rolled out the dough

But instead of adding sugar

She tossed in salt—what do you know!

~

She attempted to be helpful

By washing all my socks

But strangely enough what got soaked

Was my stamps in their box!

~

I shrieked, I howled, I hopped around

In anger and in pain

Salty cookies and unwashed socks

Were driving me insane

~

I dug under the cushions

The same ones oh-so-round

And pulled out Grandma’s glasses

From underneath the mound

~

Take them, take them, I pleaded

Let my world be alright

I promised never to hide Grandma’s

Crucial guides to sight

~

The next morning I arose from bed

And smelled something bake

In my drawer were bright, clean socks

As many as I wished to take!

~

We had cookies for breakfast

They were a special treat

Especially because, no, only because

They were so very sweet

~

My Grandma she must love me

I saw a glimmer in her eye

When she announced as her glasses bounced

Our next treat: apple pie!

~

I make sure Grandma’s glasses

Stay firmly on her nose

This time it was cookies and socks

Next time, who knows?!

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