Welcome to another chapter of my circus life. Monday began with plenty of Indian/South Asian food and banghra dancing in the early am of the day as the SE Asian division of the Foreign Service Institute threw a party for the end of Ramadan and celebrated Eid. Most of the teachers, young, old, male, female, danced their butts off after the feast, dragging most of the timid, stuffed students to the dance floor. Now, it is possible that this wouldn't have been THAT awkward if all of us were wearing traditional clothes, but, except for the teachers, everyone else was wearing a variety of out of place clothing, including: (1) rain boots with all kinds of designs like frogs and flowers (it was raining outside), (2) long skirts, (3) short skirts, (4) suits, (5) 4-inch heels (ok, that was just me). So, all of those uncoordinated students, flailing their arms up in the air and stomping the floor with the rain boots/sneakers/high-heels, kept trying to keep up with the teachers who were coming up with all kinds of masterful moves on the dance floor (barefooted!). It was not pretty but fun was had by all.
After that auspicious start of the week, Son decided to get sick, which meant no Bangla classes for me on Thursday and Friday. He spent most of Thursday on the couch with fever, watching sullenly Sesame Street and dosing on and off , while adamantly refusing to take off his shoes. He refused to take them off even when he went to bed that night, and after I had sneaked in to remove them twice during the night, he woke up freaked out by their absence and insisted on putting them on again. He also spent portions of the day latching onto me for dear life, while I was trying to work remotely. in the afternoon, he resolutely refused to sit on the couch by himself, and instead chose to watch TV while sitting in my lap as I was typing on the computer. Every time I stood up to go to the bathroom, he would be inconsolable and insisted on coming inside to make sure I would not run away or disappear through the drain.
There were two positives from the whole story. First, I discovered that Son can count to 10 in English (courtesy of my wonderful father-in-law, who had the infinite patience to count his cars with him every day during his stay with us) and to 5 in Bulgarian (courtesy of my desperate attempts to teach him to count). I was so impressed that I made him count half of our belongings in the apartment. When we went to count my shoes, I got embarrassed and shoo-ed him out of the closet. Do YOU think 35 pairs is too much??? Second, I finally got some sleep. Typically, I have to be up by 6.30 am to make it to daycare and Bangla class, and I cannot seem to go to bed any earlier than 12. Now, I got to (sort of) sleep in till 9 am each morning while Son was awake and was playing around my bed, rolling his cars on top of my half-asleep head and tickling my feet. It was heaven.
Son's clinging to me has made me realize something--when we are sick, we all want our mommies. It is a comforting thing, even if mommies do not exactly contribute anything to our well being. Son could have perfectly happily watched Elmo on his own, or sitting NEXT to me on the couch, but he simply HAD to climb on top of me and watch it from my lap. I have gotten more hugs and kisses and "mama, mama"-s in the past two days than in the past 2 months combined. It's good to be needed by a little, blond, curly boy, who is usually so filled with energy that can barely stop to give momma a kiss.
And speaking of which, here is your bengali word of the day--"chonchal", meaning energetic or restless.
I am happy that I could make positive contribution to my grandson's memory skills on numbers. as much as he can 45 cars , that was the last count, after he threw the one at Smithsonian metro station, you can certainly have 35 pairs of shoes ( people used to have even 350 wives in our vedic lore.). As much as u are back to ur now weekly blog writing, we are (amma and myself)are back to our nice little humid but our won Mumbai apartment and me to usual commenting on ur writing. I can tell one thing proudly, my daughter and son always used to cling to me whenever they became sick in their childhood, and I am happy that you are able to change the family pattern!
ReplyDeleteHope Emil has recovered by now. I must have been an interesting scene to see the such a diversity in dancing, particularly on an auspicious occasion of Eid, breaking the fast at the end of holy month, hope the mullas were not a witness to it, otherwise there could have been fatwas issued against u and my son!