NuNu

Downstairs

talk turns into tunes

songs ache

words are taken

"Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

I’m so happy!

Happy Holidays!"

(It‘s still February.)

Upstairs, she breathes

me kisses and begs

for “Mental Mints.”

To be the best Mama in the world,

you must be willing to share Altoids.

_

Mothers

Sometimes,

every woman is my mother,

every one of you is my child.

None of the usual explanations

make sense.

Every thing ends.

You grow out of my chest

I live in your womb.

I lie in your blood.

Only stones separate

from rice

at the parting of fingers

The years pass over us.

We are hay

(who were once flowers)

_

Every Thing (another valentine)

Mornings are dishes, dishes,
then decisions.

But one filled-up tank of gas,
these circles of things we say

then the Maharajahs themselves
could not be this happy.

Like squirrels giddy as leaves in a breeze
(So far: We = Pharaohs = squirrels = leaves)

So tracked, there is no fairytale,
just an adventure spun for kids like us

(like ours)

lying thick on shores of lullabies
versed in waves and sighs ellipses.

_

Multipurposing Mozart

My favorite moment was when Li’l A poked around in the program and told me that “Wolf-Gang” would be a terrifying name for a crime syndicate.

And yes, the concert was beautiful. Libby Larsen’s “Parachute Dancers” was menacing fun, and the Mozart (39) was both playful and plaintive. It made me a little teary from happiness that these accidental assemblies of notes exist to revisit.

And yes, dressed up in a blazer and on Tylenol for his neck sprain, Li'l A was the perfect philharmonic companion—the street musician we always pay our respects to (cash, natch) gave him a lift of the eyebrow and called him "Daddy-O" to the amusement of all the older patrons waiting to get into the Schuster Center.

But no, I didn't have an answer for why we paid two dollars to the man outside and hundreds for Neal Gittleman's crew inside. Is it because the musicians inside have to share?

_

Babu Ahtah (Don't Wake Daddy!)

The first time my mom visited me in the U.S. and saw a board game called Don't Wake Daddy at the store, she squealed in disbelieving delight. Her dad who worked late as a telegraph master (Telegrams, remember them? When people counted words before Twitter?) slept late on the weekends. And if she or her four other equally rowdy siblings woke their father, there were threats and thrashings.

Inevitably almost, their reality spawned a game they liked to call Babu Ahtah (the Dad game), which consisted of one of them playing the dad and the others trying to play without waking him, but ended with the "dad" waking up and beating them all up to loud, playacting yelps.

And unfailingly (and somewhat hilariously) meta is the way my mom says that most of these games were so noisy that their dad--their real dad--would wake up to thrash them. Really thrash them.

Li'l A loves to hear that story, now that he's not so freaked out by that little detail about kids getting beaten as he used to be when he first heard it. And I think about my mom and her sibs all of whom in that particular time and and in that particular milieu expected to get beaten for bad behavior. And I choke on the extra love that comes from thinking of my amma as a vulnerable child and knowing how, when she became a young mom, that sad cycle of abuse was broken. 

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Wake up call

A long time ago, I had a dream.

Li'l A is a toddler crawling through one of those giant mall play tubes. He doesn't walk yet, and he seems to be having a good time. I used to call him "Aachu" back then--a mispronunciation of his name and also a mispronunciation of the Telugu word for love "Aasa." Kind of like how "Holla" is neither "holler" nor "hola"--but actively alludes to both. But, I digress.

It starts to storm, getting both late and dark at the same time; I start to call Aachu, but he doesn't show and I'm immediately scared and frantic. Then in that weird third-person narrativity of dreams, I can see him inside the tube and realize that he's crawling away from the sound of my voice as fast as he can. And not merely to be naughty or prolong playtime but because my voice terrifies him. This was at a time when his GERD-y refusals to eat and my Indian mom instincts to overfeed as much as/whenever possible were at the point of worst conflict.

I cannot begin to describe how sad and disappointing it was to see his fear. And I cannot begin to quantify how much I backed away from my pig-headedness about eating right away.

I think I remembered my dream because I heard Amy Chua (the infamous tiger mom) on the radio this morning and she described how her daughter would yell that she hated her. I'll admit to being the mom who expects all of Li'l A's grades to be As, to asking what happened to the missing two points on a quiz that garnered 98/100.

But I wouldn't be able to deal with my kids not loving me.

_

Dressing in the Dark

One day--like most days--I literally got dressed in the dark; pulling on a pair of black tights that were more like disco tights in their shine value. Yi! Their inappropriateness for standing in front of a class of undergraduates!

The kids overheard me grumbling about it to my MIL and now they love to cock their heads at an assessing angle and ask me if I got dressed in the dark when I come downstairs. The little critics.

But after nearly ten years in this country, I just discovered trouser socks, and my cute shoes are back in winter rotation. Yay! And now I can add that to my list of immigrant discoveries about dressing appropriately for the weather.

Stockings! Yay! Saying no to summer dresses when it's bright and sunny out (but still only about 35 degrees)! Boo! Finding out that I'd need to pick "tan" over "nude" leggings! Yay! Finding out tights snag and run. Boo! Keeping a black Sharpie in my desk drawer to deal with that crisis! Yay!

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