Part time parent

I know people who are part time parents. They do it artfully and you know you are one when:

1)The daily modicum does not bother you. Children grow on their own is your motto!
2)It does not matter whether you speak with the children or not. They are there like your favorite potted plant.
3)Their fears or phobias do not matter. Somebody else is handling it.
4) It is even more better if there is no financial involvement. The other parent is taking care of it. After all I paid with my sperms!!!!!
5)The thought that someday when children grow up, they come sniffing after  the money so how does the growing years matter.
6) When children become adults, therapists can successfully change how they think about their part time parent.
7) You admonish more and love less.
8)You know the children dislike you but the part time parent has to QED that quality time is important and not the quantity.
9)Your heart does not tug at you when your child is ill. The other sucker parent is sitting up tending!!!
10) At the end of the day the children do not remember who gave and who took!!!!

 

My daughters, fearless and frank.

Last night was a humid and sultry one. The rains have deserted Mumbai . The greens of my garden longed for water from the skies.
I was up reading and writing. Writing to create the fate of my characters and playing God.  The cuckoo from my clock came out and cried two times. It was 2 am in the morning!

Sleep still eluded me. The kids were sleeping in their room.
I felt the need to step out of my room and see if all was okay. Or if I were to hone in I would say that I felt someone moving around.
I walked out to see Aaliyah walking up to her room with a glass of water. All of eight years old. At 2 am she climbed down the stairs ( her room is at a level higher than the kitchen's) and reached the kitchen, She poured a glass of water for herself and walked back.
'I was thirsty, she explained.
When did this happen? She is not frightened of the dark. She did not want to disturb me. She represented to me growth. Two years ago the swaying palms in her balcony scared her and last year fictional characters from her favorite TV serial.
Today nobody can frighten her with ghosts or monsters or like.
When we were watching a movie on Helen Keller, Aaliyah said she did not want to watch the young Helen. The dramatization of the young Helen was painful. I thought Aaliyah was frightened.
She said that she was disturbed by a young girl who was impaired visually and could not hear as well.
She is growing up as a rational, fearless woman.
I am a proud mum....
 

I am a superwoman!!!!

I realized this when:

1)I began managing my job, family and my writing efficiently.
2)In spite of being in an unequal relationship I never let it affect my self esteem.
3)years of being side lined in relationships I did not aver my faith in myself!
4)I handled my pregnancy, delivery and back- to- my 58 kg frame single  handedly.
5) My book featured in all the major critics list.
6)the treatment meted out to my children by their father when they were young makes me feel sorry for him!!!!!!! Such apathy towards the young needs penance!!!
7)Relationships have to be nurtured. It cannot work with only one giving and the other judging!!!!
8)friends who are with me for decades and new friends have made me and want to make me a part of their life!!!!!!
9) Sex drives can go up or down. It does not mean a thing in a relationship.  My orgasm today is a cup of hot ginger tea with a nice salad.
10)I fix breakfast, lunch with my own hands for the grateful and the ungrateful!
11)I am a hands on mother. I drop the kids to school, feed them, pay for their school, buy stuff for them, take an interest in their lives, activities and try to raise them as good human beings.
12)At my work place I have reached where I can call a spade a spade and also move on....
13)I have sold houses, purchased houses and remodeled them.
14)I do not have a need to be accepted. Others have to fit in!
15) I have moved on from issues that used to affect me by contemplating that ,'If I do not matter, then I have no business to be here'. I am important.
16) I pretend that I am an army wife whose husband is on the front and the problem is mine and solution also!!!!!
17)my new manuscript is racing to an end.  And I have people in the literary world waiting.
18) I can still be happy when a cherry tomato grows on my plant, I hear a new tune or I buy a new dress!
19) I can dance, laugh loudly, sing and reach out to people.
20) I am the Margaret Mead of my life!!!!!!!
21) Yet, I am a woman, vulnerable and like the mosaic of an old mosque.