Embarrassment thy name is foreign to me! Finale

“The Store”

Ask any Mom and she would probably call this place the ultimate humiliator (pardon the incorrect language).  Yes, the same store becomes either heaven or hell depending on who’s tagging along.

Colorful new designs to welcome you, perfume and makeup corners to lure you and the clearance sections that beckon you, ahhh…the joys of shopping are second to none. Hours felt like minutes when I went on shopping sprees before.  And by the end of it any guilt about spending on things not needed would be rubbed off instantly by counting the number of calories burnt just moving around in the store. Money spent =weight lost, not a bad deal at all, I used to tell myself. Before we all get carried away let me say this, we are talking about an entirely different era here.

Fast forward and cut to the present day. Minutes feel like hours, all because of the sheer mental and physical exercise that one has to undergo persuading a 6 year old shopper who wants to buy all the girlie stuff available in the store and chasing a 2 year old who thinks the space between aisles was created to practice marathon runs.

And you would think strollers and shopping carts could restrain kids from running wild in the store! All is good till they are babies and happy sleeping in their infant seats while you shop to your heart’s content. Things are still manageable when they are a year and a half and enjoy the ride that a shopping cart offers. The trouble starts with two and from thereon it just keeps getting worse.

The “trouble” can also be classified into two parts. The first is when they are too young to understand the notion of shopping and treat the store as a playground and the cloth racks as a hiding place. So if you see an out of breath woman running around the store calling for someone at the highest permissible pitch of voice in the store, do not assume she has gone mad. It could be me looking for baby no. 2 who has a knack for sneaking away right under your nose. The second is when they start picking up things for themselves at the store. While the first one is hard on your body, the second one’s gonna hurt your pocket.

But if I had to choose between the devil and the witch I would say in a store, 6 years is a lot better than troublesome two. The 6 year old you can convince, bribe or even blackmail with a timeout, the toddler is a little tougher to get through. Try and catch them while they run and risk looking like a fool or stop them and knowingly becomes a target of their brutal, physical (kicking, scratching) and ear piercing (howling, screaming) attack. It is what they call a no-win situation.

From leaving a fully loaded shopping cart at the checkout line to forgetting what I had gone to the store for in the first place, I have done it all. But what ultimately made me what I am today (which is “unashamed”) is the “roll over” as I call it. And once you are a victim of the roll over, nothing else can ever shame you.

It has been in existence for as long as people have had kids and the chances of a parent not suffering it in a lifetime are as rare as me landing on the moon. Of course, each child is blessed with his or her unique style but this particular stunt is definitely not a rare skill and therefore there are zero chances that I can get it patented for Baby no. 2.

It all starts with a refusal. One minute she is all happy and walking with me side by side and the next second she stands still, eyeing my reaction. When I don’t give in, the wailing starts. This is when the blunder of trying to reach out for her is committed. I do that to save myself the embarrassment of being stared at by the other shoppers (some of who are genuinely shocked at the screeching noise coming out from a child who doesn’t look capable of even a whimper) only to land in a bigger situation. As soon as I take a step towards pacifying her, she throws herself on the floor like a stunt man and rolls from one side to another. And she is fast, I kid you not. I reach on one side and she moves to the other, I make a grab at the other end and she rolls out of reach. Finally when I manage to stop her and try to lift her by the shoulders, her whole body does a flip flop that would put even a skilled gymnast to shame. Either that or she goes stiff, so stiff that it is impossible to lift her or bring her to a comfortable position in my arms.

At this point I have a couple of options. Leave her on the floor and wait till the end of the day till she gets exhausted and decides she doesn’t mind being picked. I could also ignore her bawling and acrobatics, somehow haul her up and exit the store at the earliest. Or I could talk to her, try and pacify her and hope that she voluntarily decides to save the stunt for some other day. To be honest, after having tried all the options listed above a couple of times, I now avail of the alternative that is effective, gets me quick results and never fails. And what’s more it’s cheap and delicious and fits in my purse. I take out a purple colored (supposed to be grape flavor) sucker and dangle it front of her eyes as she lies on the floor. The twisting and turning stops as suddenly as it started. The half closed eyes brimming with real tears (yes, as fake as their cries are in circumstances like these, the tears are always real, I guess that’s what makes a mother’s heart melt so easily) are now wide open. A cute little hand tries to reach out for the sucker and says “mama give”. Mama, who is by now a seasoned player, scoops up the baby, puts her in the stroller first and then gives her the sucker. 

Embarrassment thy name is foreign to me! Part 2

"The Airplane"

Travelling with kids is bad enough but travelling with kids in an airplane is as bad as it gets. No wonder some of the airlines have banned children from their first class seats! Logic says that as a parent it should anger me, this discriminating policy of a certain airline, targeted at parents of little innocent children. But at this point I am beyond logic. Hey, if it’s a pain for me to travel with them; their own mother, can’t blame you for not wanting them around puking next to you just when you are about to settle for a nap in your spacious, fully reclining, comfy first class seat.

So understanding the other people’s point of view is just one part of the story. The other part is my own story, the actual sufferer in the whole air travel business. The person who gets ugly glares from people when her kid wails and screams loud enough to beat everybody’s eardrums at take off. The mom who desperately tries to balance a food tray and a toddler on her thigh in an economy class seat. The monster who looks like she is about to smack (but she dare not !!) her 4 year old who has just overturned a bowl full of peanut snack on herself and finally the loser who has resigned to fate and let the journey take its course.

I have been through some really long journeys in a plane with two kids and it hasn’t been as bad as I have made it out to be above. BUT it hasn’t been pleasant either. I am not going to go ahead and say “it was a great 17 hour plane ride with the kids, they had a blast and so did I!!”

And I have learnt a few lessons as well, one of them being turning a deaf ear to accusing tones and a blind eye to those “looks”.  On one such recent journey we landed with not one but both seats such that made the long travel with kids impossible. One of them didn’t have a working television and the other seat’s TV couldn’t be pushed out of the arm rest. A 16 hour flight and two kids with no TV to entertain and all I asked for was that one of the attendants atleast try and pull that stubborn equipment out. What I got was a cold look and a “we won’t stoop low enough (literally) to pull that TV out for you, deal with it” kind of an answer. Fine, I returned the glance which said “don’t blame me if the kids find out an alternative entertainment “.

At the end of that terribly long flight as I was securing my handbag and my children before disembarking, the same attendant came by and made a face looking at the area we had occupied for nearly a day. Surveying the bits of paper and food she commented “Wow, did a hurricane just pass by here?” holding out a huge trash bag, waiting for me to make her job easier. “It probably did since there was no television” I said and started walking towards the door. That was probably the closest I ever came to returning a favor.

p.s. Finally we shall reach “The Store” next…

Embarrassment thy name is foreign to me!

Any doubts that I had about having an ounce of mortification have today been put to rest and I am in a position to declare officially, confidently that I am beyond it!

Of course it hasn’t happened overnight and of course I ain’t proud of it. But you see the thing is I am kind of feeling a little liberated, buoyant and better-off now that the burden of keeping up with social etiquettes has been lifted off my shoulders, could this condition be diagnosed as “shameless”? Well, I am not going to say it, you decide.

And who do you think is responsible for lifting the burden of my shoulders? My two little devils, who else? Before I sing their praises let me tell you that in my world there are two kinds of extreme humiliations possible. Being caught in the middle of a messy home or a public outburst. Having suffered both the scenarios ample number of times, immunity came faster than medicine.

Like I said before, this hasn’t happened in a day just like Rome as we all know wasn’t built in a day. If I had to retrace my steps and go back to where it all started the chronology of events would be somewhat like this.

“The house”

Charity begins at home and so does disgrace. To give myself a little bit of credit, I had things pretty much in control till well after the arrival of Baby no. 1. Like my mother and her sisters who inherited “the” trait from their mother, I too fell into the same gene pool category. We used to be clean freaks, all us ladies in the family and by “used to be” I mean the rest of them still are. To give you a few examples, clothes worn outside house even for less than an hour went straight into the laundry basket, leftovers had only one destination – garbage can, the kitchen sink had to be clean even if was 2 a.m. by the time the guests left and bedtime routine started with laying a fresh bed sheet over the one that had been in use all day. I could go on and on with such examples but  figured it would be a waste of time since the above sufficiently explained the point to be made.

With the arrival of our first child, it became a little tough to live up to the high standards set by my own self but I was younger and not really current with the ways of other worlds.  So I worked around the house when the baby slept and then marveled at the mess she managed to create in about quarter of the time it took for me to clean up.  Still, the zeal to maintain appearances was very much alive and I took pride that if anybody showed up unannounced, they would find a clean carpet, a mess free kitchen and a well fed baby, at almost any time of the day! As the baby grew into a toddler, the “unannounced “changed to “a 10 minute notice” and then to “sufficient notice”.

And here I must say that nobody can really blame me for not trying. When the second baby came along and started crawling a couple of months later, I made a valiant effort to pass the quality control test. I tried to keep the toys in their bins, food off the carpet and pillows on the bed. I tried to fold laundry on time, load the dishwasher after meals and retain books on the shelves. I tried to be a Super Mom. Most of it I tried to do for the benefit of that “unannounced” visitor. But, there is only so much that a mind and body can take.  It took many wasted hours to realize that if I was going to utilize every minute of my free time in setting things right around the house, the only thing that wouldn’t be right after a while would be my brain.

So these days I am no longer a captive of my own code of belief. I cash in on any free time that I get and do things that are high on my list of priorities like reading a book, calling up a friend, taking a walk, writing mommy posts or watching a movie; the dishes in the sink can wait!

p.s. “The Airplane” follows….

A little step in the world of fiction

Heya everybody..
finally took a tiny bit of a step towards writing fiction and here's the story published in SPARK:

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=3472

I promise you a laugh or two if you have the patience to finish the whole piece!!

Trepidation

Fear means more to me these days than it used to. From being a risk taker to leading a cosseted life, from “I don’t give a damn” attitude to diplomatic dealings and from driving a two wheeler with a total of three on board on the highway to checking the speedometer of the car too often, it has been a gradual deterioration.

Travel planning used to be fun and exciting, even more than the actual travel. These days though there is also a certain level of anxiety which just doesn’t go till I reach my destination. Couple of years back, we were planning a trip to India and with all the thrill of shopping for gifts and packing there was a gnawing apprehension about something I found hard to share with anyone. A friend who was travelling 2 days before me to the same place came over one day to exchange notes and we got talking about the unbearably long travel and things like that. Suddenly she said “I am so scared of something bad happening in the flight, like a hijack situation or something.” And it was exactly what was going on in my mind and I had felt like saying those very words. Thank God, I thought, there are people who have the same kind of fears and it means I am not insane!

And the thing is I don’t even know when these kind of tiny qualms started creeping in. Because as long as I remember, when packing to go anywhere, all I used to think about was the scenic route or the book to take on the journey or the new people I might meet and get to know on the way. Disaster never crossed my mind.

Same goes with the news that I read. News around the world used to generate a little bit of curiosity and concern earlier. Now when I read or hear about school shootings, child kidnappings and abuse, terror attacks or people dying of man-made disasters, it stays on me longer. At times I say a silent prayer and the other times I wish I could do something to prevent it (not very practical I suppose).

So why do I fear things that have never happened to me?

Is it aging? Is it a natural progression of the mind which goes from being carefree to being more aware of its surroundings and thereby the dangers present in it too? Or maybe it is the world that we live in today where something better gets invented everyday and so does something terrible.

Is it because of witnessing sad things happen to people you love and the realization of vulnerability that comes with it? Or maybe it is the unpredictability and brutality of life itself these days where the young are taken away before the old.  

I think it is bits and pieces of everything put together. A sizable portion of it is growing up and becoming aware of the perils of the world, the bad with the good. It is also the easy accessibility to all kinds of information from every corner of this earth thanks to the media and its far-reaching connections. If I didn’t know half the things I would be happier!  

But mostly I think it is because I have so much more to lose now.

It's a wonderful life!

I had been lucky enough to get my poem published in "SPARKS" last month. I put it on facebook for my friends to read but completely forgot to share it on this blog, so here it is!!

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=3255

Hope you all enjoy reading it!

The Curious Case of the Missing Keys

Anybody who has lost keys sometime in life knows what I am talking about. Their significance is immense, be it keys to a car or a house or a cupboard. Keys denote   power, protection and ownership over the possession in question. Losing the keys equals to losing them all.

Before going any further I have a genuine question for you all. If an adult gives her car keys to an 18 month old to pacify her for the time being and the keys are lost when in possession of the child in those 5 minutes and because of which her other child misses out on the art class because mommy has no keys to drive the car with, who can be termed responsible for the disaster? The adult? I thought so....

So here goes the curious case of the missing keys.

It was one of those days when we jump from one activity class to another with a short break in between. Back from gymnastics and en-route art class, we stopped by the house for an hour’s break. If it isn’t obvious from the question earlier, let me clarify that it is not me who does gymnastics or art. Neither do I have the bodily flexibility to engage in gymnastics nor  the faintest skill required to indulge in arts, I am in fact lazy and cannot draw anything at all, not even a straight circle.

My older daughter is the one who takes gymnastic lessons and art classes. By the time you read this though, art classes would have become a thing of the past. After 10 lessons and 100 dollars, both, me and her had to accept the harsh realities of life. Some things you just inherit, like them or not. My daughter, just like me; cannot draw. After sitting through hours of art lessons and observing almost hopefully from outside the window, I concluded that the other students had a better chance of learning some art if my daughter wasn’t busy distracting them after scribbling a few lines here and there on her own paper.

But that day, we were still doing art, right after gymnastics, with an hour in between.  A lot can be accomplished in an hour IF you do not have a clinging toddler on you every single waking moment. And I had not set out to accomplish that “lot”. All I wanted was a cup of tea before I left for another hour of toddling up and down the stairs, left and right in the hallway with the younger one, trying my best to keep the decibel levels of “NO” in control while her sister busied herself and others in the art class.

The tea got ready somehow admist the chaos going around and there it was in a cup awaiting me. Yet the actual act of sipping it deluded me. “Mamma, Mamma"…soft cries, clinging hands and endless following around, she was determined to climb in my lap and sit there doing nothing thereby making me also do nothing. The hot tea was soon going to be lukewarm if a distraction was not made available immediately.  Just when I was about to give up a magical jingle came to the rescue. The car keys slipped out of my pocket and landed at her tiny feet. Thrilled, she picked them up and started playing. I was on the verge of taking them back (fully prepared to face a tantrum and more fierce clinging) when an inner voice said “ grab this opportunity”. Choosing between a steaming cup of tea and a potential outburst, I chose peace of mind. It must have taken me about 5 minutes to finish the tea and start gathering things to step out of the house again. And it was precisely then that the disaster was uncovered.  It seemed we had everything but the car keys needed to get to where we needed to be.

At first I searched randomly thinking she had just dropped them there somewhere. Half an hour of searching with no results changed my strategy slightly. Now I was thinking, she must have hidden it somewhere (oh yes, barely 18 months and already capable of hiding things). One whole hour gone by just looking for keys, by then the art class was long forgotten. I was panicking and cursing myself for allowing those 5 minutes of uninterrupted leisure.

That night the lights in the house were up till mid-night. From going through the trash thrice (wearing gloves) to rummaging under bed sheets, creeping behind couches and clattering through toy bins; there wasn’t a spot in the house we didn’t cover (or so we thought) in quest of those damn keys.

As for the person literally responsible (technically it would be me) for the disaster, she found the search pretty entertaining. The whole high voltage activity in the house got her excited and she ran from one room to another as if it was some game we were playing. And when we asked her from time to time where she had kept the keys, her answers alternated between “here” to “there” to “mamma” to “Oh Oh”. Not very encouraging, but well, we tried.

The gloom stayed on me for a couple of days after the incident. Especially after I called a dealer and found out how much it was going to cost to replace the keys. The weekend after that day was again employed in search of the missing keys. We came up with a couple of lost things already written off like an old photograph, a hair clip and a plastic necklace, but not the keys. They had vanished without a trace.

Using the principle of elimination, hubby checked off each room of the house from the list of possibilities where the keys could be and zeroed in on the bathroom. “She has flushed them down the toilet” he announced giving up on the search.

Four months passed and reluctantly we got another set of keys made. Two days after the new keys took over, a strange thing happened. The clingy toddler who was getting naughtier by the day discovered that throwing magnetic “A B C D’s” around in the kitchen was much more fun than sticking them on the refrigerator.  I was cooking and the letters were getting in the way so I picked them up and put them where they belonged. Some however had been pushed way further in below the gas and oven range so I called for help.

And guess what we found along with an ‘X” and a “C’? Yes, the missing keys!