Dear Piya,
Your old pals celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary this year.
It is quite a milestone for us, given the cat & mouse rapport couples like us share.
For this special day, hence, we wanted to have a nice lunch to ourselves; just the two of us.
We love you to the moon and back, darling, but we sought a little time away from you on this day, as we wanted to be just the two of us for just a couple of hours; and if you were to join us then that would not be possible in any foreseeable way.
You would jump around the nice restaurant that we were to select, making us remain more and more not-seated-on-the-tabke.
You would not stop talking at all, and owing to that, we would have to stop talking to each other so as to pay attention to your chirp (because otherwise your decibel level would keep on increasing with each passing minute, till you were to be addressed).
You would drop more food outside your plate and around the table than in your mouth which would make me request the waiter for more paper napkins than for food on the menu.
So, I hope you understand why we wanted to be alone for one lunch, don’t you?
Now since you have understood, let me share something - I don’t understand.
My heart wants some time away from you every now & then, but I never really understand why.
I love you, my girl.
I love being with you.
But my patience with you starts to wither after sometime, because I can never keep up with your unwavering energy. Not only do you not seem to get tired, you never allow the ones with you to take a break either!
And that is when I wish that you would take a nap or that I would take a break.
What I don’t understand is why my knees feel weak, then, every time I step out of the house without you. I don’t know why my eyes watch everything outside but my mind keeps thinking of you on the inside. I don’t know why every time you fall asleep I cannot take my eyes off your beautiful, innocent, little face, after having spent hours into begging you to go to sleep, I don’t know why a shard of guilt seems to pierce my heart with all the sour reminders of the silly ways that I was unfair to you during the day.
All I know is that separation from you is still a task I cannot master, even if that’s for a little while.
And so, when in this state of tug-of-war in my mind, when the rope remained taut towards not taking you along, you happened to overhear us whispering our way out the door.
We were sitting at the restaurant along with you, 15 minutes later.
Everything went just the way we were afraid it would.
If anything, the frowns on our faces were a bit more exaggerated than I had imagined them in my forecast to be.
“Never again...” we said to each other, multiple times during that one lunch.
This was one particular moment wherein some clarity came to my understanding of wanting some time away from you once in a while.
But it soon evaporated when we happened to discuss this incident with another couple-friend of ours the next day.
They too had decided to not take their kid along with them on their anniversary-celebration-lunch.
Unlike us, they managed to stick to their plan.
And upon hearing our side of the sob-story, they shared theirs.
There was an eerie silence throughout their lunch and there wasn’t a minute when they did not miss the cacophony of their kid being around.
They returned home with a different version of “Never again...” than ours.
So here is the fun fact, love.
You are a handful but you are the love of our life.
And it is because of this that we parents will always be in the perennial sweet spot of wanting to be with you and then without you, every now & then.
Love,
Maa.
Your old pals celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary this year.
It is quite a milestone for us, given the cat & mouse rapport couples like us share.
For this special day, hence, we wanted to have a nice lunch to ourselves; just the two of us.
We love you to the moon and back, darling, but we sought a little time away from you on this day, as we wanted to be just the two of us for just a couple of hours; and if you were to join us then that would not be possible in any foreseeable way.
You would jump around the nice restaurant that we were to select, making us remain more and more not-seated-on-the-tabke.
You would not stop talking at all, and owing to that, we would have to stop talking to each other so as to pay attention to your chirp (because otherwise your decibel level would keep on increasing with each passing minute, till you were to be addressed).
You would drop more food outside your plate and around the table than in your mouth which would make me request the waiter for more paper napkins than for food on the menu.
So, I hope you understand why we wanted to be alone for one lunch, don’t you?
Now since you have understood, let me share something - I don’t understand.
My heart wants some time away from you every now & then, but I never really understand why.
I love you, my girl.
I love being with you.
But my patience with you starts to wither after sometime, because I can never keep up with your unwavering energy. Not only do you not seem to get tired, you never allow the ones with you to take a break either!
And that is when I wish that you would take a nap or that I would take a break.
What I don’t understand is why my knees feel weak, then, every time I step out of the house without you. I don’t know why my eyes watch everything outside but my mind keeps thinking of you on the inside. I don’t know why every time you fall asleep I cannot take my eyes off your beautiful, innocent, little face, after having spent hours into begging you to go to sleep, I don’t know why a shard of guilt seems to pierce my heart with all the sour reminders of the silly ways that I was unfair to you during the day.
All I know is that separation from you is still a task I cannot master, even if that’s for a little while.
And so, when in this state of tug-of-war in my mind, when the rope remained taut towards not taking you along, you happened to overhear us whispering our way out the door.
We were sitting at the restaurant along with you, 15 minutes later.
Everything went just the way we were afraid it would.
If anything, the frowns on our faces were a bit more exaggerated than I had imagined them in my forecast to be.
“Never again...” we said to each other, multiple times during that one lunch.
This was one particular moment wherein some clarity came to my understanding of wanting some time away from you once in a while.
But it soon evaporated when we happened to discuss this incident with another couple-friend of ours the next day.
They too had decided to not take their kid along with them on their anniversary-celebration-lunch.
Unlike us, they managed to stick to their plan.
And upon hearing our side of the sob-story, they shared theirs.
There was an eerie silence throughout their lunch and there wasn’t a minute when they did not miss the cacophony of their kid being around.
They returned home with a different version of “Never again...” than ours.
So here is the fun fact, love.
You are a handful but you are the love of our life.
And it is because of this that we parents will always be in the perennial sweet spot of wanting to be with you and then without you, every now & then.
Love,
Maa.
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