You may have heard this tone with particularly effervescent kindergarten teachers. “I am going to pick up the toys, who wants to help me? ” The voice is enthusiastic, slightly sing-song and most suggestive of acquiescence. At the end of this sentence, there is a scuttle among the noble children, all aiming to please. Miraculously, those who were moving to the red side of the margin see a chance to redeem themselves and everybody is happy to be helping with the toys. The classroom bursts into song: “Everybody clean up! All the children do your share!”
I confess it was something like this response I was expecting when I announced that I was leaving for the grocery store. “I am going to the grocery store! Who wants to come with me? I am going to pick up splendid snacks for our trip!”
There was no scuttling to please me, no daughter trying to get back into my good books after deploringly questioning me at the mall the previous day whether I had crossed items off my list, as I made to wander off to look at some pretty and shockingly expensive clothes in a forlorn store. None of the repentance one likes to see. The children looked (a) uninterested in going to the grocery store and (b) they practically held my hand and stopped me from buying any snacks for them.
I was going to make a quick stop at Traders Joe, that splendid store of organic fruits, vegetables, beautiful flowers, eggs from happy hens, milk from peaceful cows, yogurts using contented bacteria and p cows milk, fragrant soaps and hand-washes never tested on animals: this is the kind of shopping the husband likes. Most snacks the children like, can be traced back to this store, and yet there weren’t ready to come. I was confused and muddled.
It must’ve shown on my face for the daughter, forthright as always, said, “The thing is: you will buy healthy snacks.” She emphasized ‘healthy’ in a rather distasteful tone of voice and continued, “Then, you’ll get mad at us when we stop somewhere to buy something we can eat. Of course, you won’t eat it too because though it is healthy, it is still a snack right? Then you’ll tell us all about starving children and how they would love to have healthy snacks and then we all feel guilty and can’t completely enjoy the stuff we buy with Appa on the way. So, just don’t buy snacks okay? We’ll go with Appa tomorrow to Traders Joe and buy something for ourselves.”
I was aghast and turned to the husband for support only to catch him casting admiring looks at her. “Wow! I wish I was that brave!” he tried not to say.
The husband can be relied upon to be convinced by the children. “But Appa…it is organic. See?” they say as they show him chips, cakes and ice-creams, and he melts, along with that chocolate mousse they are handing him. As soon as they get home, the children disappear upstairs, secure in their knowledge that their father blessed their choice, while I gasp at the contents.
Well, say what you will: I am going to take that packet of baby carrots for myself.
If ever you need to shake off your inhibitions and take a course in the art of bold self expression, I suggest taking the public transit, BART. Talking to Once-self is a free course that is offered to all riders. Also selective hearing.
Traveling on BART gives you a unique experience. One only has to close one’s nose at times and one’s eyes at others, and the rest is there for the taking.
Soliloquizing is often frowned upon: One never knows when one is talking like an onion to a donkey.
One time, I was listening to a man telling me about a music concert he’d been to.
One of the bizarre things about this particular individual was it looked like he was talking to me. I mean addressing me. Pardon me if I have told you this before, but if you need to find me on the train, you would do well to look for a sharp-ish nose buried in her writing or reading and keeping to herself, after the dramatic entry at the last minute of course.
So, I was mildly puzzled and looked up. Tell me, he said, thundering, what should the boy do? Shall I help him?
I mean. I don’t know. It depends on the boy does it not? I am usually not the one who has been asked to share advice. I was rattled. Only none of the words came out. What managed to come out was a shrug. I looked around me completely bewildered, only to be confronted by equally puzzled faces that all seemed to share the same vague feeling that this gentleman had never physically been to the concert he was talking about, and better yet, the boy could have been the lead singer on the fictional band, or his young ward, it was hard to tie the story together. He however, had something that most marketing professionals and politicians would die for: he had the unique ability to make a train-car full of passengers feel like they were being addressed individually by him.
It was amusing and interesting.
But when folks shout at you and demand that you have a good new year and a merry christmas, it is hard to not smile. Even if you are scuttling away with a slightly alarmed expression on your face.
I have always loved reading Children’s books. There is something charming, and uplifting about them, a shining hope that we sometimes fumble with as we grow older. Even when the books deal with hard topics, even when they deal with hard concepts. Every time I feel jaded, there is nothing like a lovely children’s book to help me uncover the magic again.
One beautiful day in November, I dragged the children along on a walk. The fall season, and the recent rains had given way to unruly gardens, crisp fallen leaves for us to feel the crunch as we walked on, and little birds frequenting the place once more. On the road side, was a hedge trimmed to the shape of an oblong mushroom and the toddler son stopped in front of it and said, “Like the Curious Garden book right? This is how it was in Amma’s garden when she was a little girl.”
The daughter looked dubious. “How do you know it was like that in Amma’s garden when she was a little girl. You weren’t there remember?” The son looked hurt. It is true that he is often confused with time and does not understand why there were periods in our life before he was born, when he always remembered having her with him.
“I know! But Amma told me when she read the book, right Amma?”
“That’s right!” I said somewhat taken aback that he remembered what I had said in passing while looking at the pictures in the book a few days ago. It has since become a favorite book for both of us. We love cuddling up with the Curious Garden.
It is a heart warming story about a little boy named Liam who looks after some plants on a forgotten railroad track only to have the curious garden spread its influence all over the forgotten places in the city. The Curious Garden also inspires many amateur gardeners and the last page shows the transformation of a bleak, smog-laden city to a beautiful one with creepers and trees and hidden nooks of gardens by the time the boy grows to a man.
During Thanksgiving, the pre-school that the son goes to had an exercise asking the children what they are most thankful for. The notes were shaped like feathers and they were all posted on the notice board together in the shape of a turkey. I stopped to see what the children were thankful about. I must say it was all wonderful. Very few had capitalistic tones, which definitely warmed my heart.
The son’s feather-shaped note said he was thankful for Mom cuddling up with him and reading Curious Garden.
One morning, when the husband was away, the daughter sighed wistfully, as we piled into the car to get to her school on time, and said, “I miss Appa. I miss the action before going to school.”
“What do you mean?” I asked guardedly. This is the sort of conversation that will lead to promises involving television time, chocolates or extended bed-times, and drama about broken promises for things that should not have been promises at all in the first place.
“Well…you know how you get things ready the previous night and then we come in the morning and take everything and leave?”
“Yes…”
“Well..we’d never do that if Appa was around would we? We’d run, and you’d run and there is more, I don’t know, FUN!” said the daughter.
I could not deny this allegation.
School-going time is one packed with drama, hilarity, perplexity, action and yawns. Feathers ruffled at this time smoothen themselves out before we get to our various institutions and good humor and charm overtake the retelling of it in the evenings and the family hums along with its customary cheer once more.
We also have strange customs and rules such as ‘Check the rear-view mirror till the car gets to the main road.’ I have run after the car on several occasions looking like a windmill flailing my arms, waving the latest piece of homework, or some paper that is required to be handed in. It is very hard to do that. Windmills function beautifully because they don’t run.
One time, I was charging behind the snorting car, looking like a pumped up rhinoceres because the daughter forgot her shoes. Her SHOES! I ask you. She explained that she likes to relax in the car and put on her shoes, so she can chill at home. When I told my friends this, they didn’t bat an eyelid. They said they always have an extra pair of shoes in the car for just such emergencies.
The time when the check-rear-view mirror became a rule was on a particularly cold day in the Winter. The temperature gauge was mercilessly pointing at sub-zero and the daughter forgot her lunch-box. The house inside was toasty and warm, and I had forgotten how cold Californian winters could get. I charged after the car barefoot, running a sprint, with a lunch bag in my hand. My athletic coaches in high school always thought I performed best when I had a dog chasing me causing my heart to pump like it was powered by an industrial pump, but I wish to tell them that I perform pretty well when barefoot on sub-zero roads as well. The car, already late, was doing its best to keep the distance between us level. I was running and creating such a ruckus, some geese stopped their flight mid-air to see who the dickens was rivaling their squawking.
Luckily, the car’s merge into the main road was somewhat delayed because of the traffic and I managed to bang the car from behind and cause the husband to turn around. The sheepish daughter took her lunch box, had the sense to thank me for the food later that evening, and all was laughed at, but it is now a rule. Everyone has to look at the rear view mirror before going ANYwhere.
When the husband travels, I throw my lackadaisical side aside and step into the role of The Efficient Baxter. Since I am rarely the Efficient-Person, I do a sincere job at it when I do step up, and I cannot deny, it snuffs the joy out of the process.
With the husband back, The Efficient Baxter has taken a break again, and we scrambled most satisfactorily this morning. I threw a well-aimed jacket through the open car window as it left, and received a beaming smile and a Thumbs-Up from the occupants.
The husband is back from a fortnight-long business trip and the whole household sighed with relief, joy and exasperation when his smiling face greeted us.
That sigh of relief was mine.
Those whoops and shouts of joy that woke the neighbor’s cat and caused the squirrels to fall out of their trees was the children’s.
That exasperated sigh that was drowned in the cacophony was the Television’s. Anyone would be exasperated if they were rudely told that their quiet time had officially ended.
This time, the television had a break too during the husband’s trip. You see, I am hopeless at getting the various things to work – there is Netflix and Amazon and Xfinity and Roku and Google TV and Apple TV and You tube. I am vaguely aware that these are all different things, but like the daughter says, “Poor amma – she has lost the battle the moment she calls it ‘The Television’ instead of lovingly calling it a TV!”
With the Television out of the running race of entertainment options, other activities gallantly stepped in to fill the void. We had a marvelous time together: taking walks in the golden autumn sun while entertaining friends and family, making beautifully shaped dosas and pancakes, whipping up thanksgiving feasts just because, cutting and pasting paper, preparing for a science fair, decorating our christmas tree. We did everything except television-watching. Which is what the children missed the most (after their father of course). So, the first words to escape their mouths after the vociferous cries of welcome were yowled was, “Could you get Netflix going again? Amma tried and tried, but she just couldn’t.”
The husband shook his head looking shocked, “Do you mean to tell me, you spent two weeks including a long week-end without TV?”
“Yes…of course! But we had a nice time right?” I said smiling at the angels who came on walks dressed like Panda bears and impersonating hawks.
“Well…let’s put it this way! We had a good time because Amma was happy that ‘The Television’ was not working, so she made sure we did fun stuff.” said the daughter rolling her eyes, and quoting ‘The Television’ like she has seen many fine teenage heroines on Television do. The husband gave me a look that said, “To think a mother would put her children through this!”
As Netflix came to life, the children enveloped him in warm hugs and embraces and the husband looked pleased. He swelled as it isn’t everyday that he is made to realize what a true hero he is to them.
I turned to the toddler son and asked him, “Who should give you a bath today? Appa or Amma?”
I was already whistling up the stairs sounding like a milk cooker out of breath, a book neatly tucked under my arm, when he shouted his answer: “Appa!”
One November afternoon, the golden autumn sunshine was shining through the yellow, red and maroon leaves. The remaining birds in this fast-losing-its-suburbia-touch flitted about looking for worms and grains, squirrels darted past barely containing their curiosity for the creatures who took the time to wrap themselves up in woollen to take a walk. The dogs looked at us with a supercilious air and closer observation revealed that it was because of the new cardigans they were wearing. The squirrels thought them (the cardigans I mean) ridiculous and the dogs thought the squirrels underprivileged, not that they told me of course.
It was at this time that a hawk screeched loudly and attempted to land smoothly on the concrete walkway ahead of us. Some crows took flight in alarm, but the squirrels chittered amused and carried on with their observations of suburban life from the safe treetops. A baby panda came charging after the hawk and unable to stop careened into the hawk. There was a moment of terse anticipation and tension, but the hawk turned its head regally, surveyed the baby panda and hugged him.
“No…Panda. You have to slow down before landing, or you could crash, like you just did, and real hawks wont be as forgiving.” said the Hawk to the Panda.
I don’t know why, but we went for a walk that day with the son dressed in his fine Halloween Panda costume. It was about a month after Halloween. He attended a birthday party where the birthday boy wisely asked for a costume party, and the Halloween costumes got to air themselves again. I must say I enjoyed looking at princesses, iron men, spiderman, pandas and rabbits watching a charming magic show at the party. After the party, the streets were looking so beautiful that we decided to go for a walk.
“If he is coming as a Panda, I will use this,” (she said pointing to a wonderful Jaipuri shawl of mine), “as wings and be a bird.” said the daughter.
“What bird should I be, you little Panda?”
I did not know that Pandas liked Hawks, but apparently this one did. So, the Hawk taught the Panda to fly.
If an ornithologist were to observe us that day, I am sure he would have learnt surprising things. Which reminds me of this article where ornithologists studied Angry Birds to compare and contrast real bird behavior vs those in the game.
Mr Dawdles and Ms Riviera Robinson had wonderful holiday seasons. Ms Riviera Robinson had a stylized, personal seamstress to sew her clothes for the Yule-Tide Ball. She wore a pretty blue gown with pale blue flowers. The straps made of satin were most becoming on her brown shoulders and the blue proved to be a perfect compliment to her eyes. A competent, if talkative, accessory designer helped her with her final touches. When the earrings were clipped on, and the necklace pinned in place, she was already starting to know that she was going to be a big hit at the Party. By the time, the maroon waist-belt and shoes went on, she was looking beautiful.
Mr Dawdles had neither the time nor the luxury of the personal seamstress, and the talkative accessorizer, but he had a personal shopper, and hair stylist. The personal shopper hopped from one store to the next in search of the right attire. Mr Dawdles also had remarkably less accessory needs and has obliged to go barefoot to the ball. I don’t think he minded. His hair, he cannot complain about either, it is cut perfectly unevenly and along with his drooping eye, gives him an almost appealing aura.
Mr Dawdles and Ms Riviera Robinson were both dressed attired and oversaw a party teeming with children, good music and bonhomie.
The dolls came home to be dressed for a Doll Party in the toddler son’s classroom. Riviera Robinson was last year’s doll. The daughter tried for days to put together some good clothes with scraps of paper and stapler pins, to no effect. Then one evening, I trooped into the house after a particularly long day at work. We had been at an all-day offsite conference with no admirable distractions during the day, and I was craving nothing more than some mindless hmm-ing and aha-ing before flopping onto the bed early. All hopes of flopping into bed early were dashed with one look at the severely disappointed set of children.
The Doll had to be turned in, fully clothed, the next day and all those papers and stapler pins had come to naught. Left to my own devices, I would have poo-ed and baa-ed the thing off, but I could not bear the look of disappointment on the daughter’s face. Neither could I bring myself to brave the cold, and the winter shoppers after that long day. So, I cut up an old skirt and sewed on a make-shift dress. As the dress took shape, the daughter revived like a sunflower in the rising sun, and found accessories for her. All the while, the toddler son bubbled and bounced around offering plenty of talk, sometimes related to the Doll-Dressing-Disaster, but mostly not. The next day when he walked into his classroom with Ms Riviera Robinson on his arm, there was nothing short of admiration for her, and he beamed happily.
This year, he asserted his personality and said his doll was to be a man. Able seamstress as I am, I didn’t feel I was up to stitching men’s pants and shirts. So, off I was, on a cold Sunday night (The doll had to be turned in on Monday, if it was to attend the party) looking for parking, and silently cursing the sexist doll industry. If you want to dress up your girl doll, all you have to do is stroll into a store’s doll section and pick out clothes of your choice. If you want your daughter and doll to wear matching clothes, that too is available, for a nominal price. If your doll is a man, well, tough luck!
I was looking lost and desperate amidst the beautiful girl doll clothes. I had the whole week-end to clothe Mr Dawdles, or Mickey Mouse, as he was then known, and I fritted it away admiring fall leaves and unnecessary thoughts about falling leaves and their mortality.
I wondered whether I should wrap him in white cloth, paint glasses on him and send him as Mahatma Gandhi. An older lady, with a friendly face, came up to the doll section and exclaimed, “Oh! Are they still doing those? I remember doing that project for my daughters years ago. Heavens! They even look the same.” I poured my heart out to the poor thing. I told her how I could not manage to tailor pants and was thinking of dhotis. “Or”, she said, piping up to the theme, “you could go even older, and dress him as Julius Ceaser or something with white cloth draped about his shoulders.”
As we were talking, I cradled Mr Dawdles a bit and she stopped mid sentence. “This doll looks about the size of a preemie baby.” she said. That was it. A preemie baby it was. So, that is why Mr Dawdles wore preemie baby clothes that said, “Mommy’s Little Monster” to the ball. I did not have time time to make shoes.
Schools, these days, make the parents work very hard.
In Part 1 of the Halloween post, I had written about deciding on an Environment themed costume for Halloween for myself. I settled upon a Tree. We had a whole hour ahead of us to plan, execute and pull it off. I don’t know whether you have tried impersonating trees, it is very easy. You send your husband to buy something, say a car or some green cloth for the tree depending on your mood, get out a piece of cardboard and some green paint. You then set your children to cut and paint a tree-top and you sit back and you wonder how to pull off looking like a tree trunk and you are set. Ask some creative friend of yours to finish up the costume, stand back and project the spirituality of stolid trees. Like Booker. T. Washington said, “There is no power on Earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.”
There is no power on Earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life. – Booker. T. Washington
Trees are wonderful and soothing. Their stoic presence, their sturdy silence and their useful practical lives should say it all. Setting aside the fact I cannot produce oxygen, or hold a sturdy silence, or be stoic, or useful, I could be a Tree. I need to stand rooted and sway a bit in the breeze. How hard can it be? I just have to be out and about for people on candy-highs on Halloween night to flock to me for some calm.
The Silent Spectator.
That went well. I only spent the whole evening explaining to all and sundry who I was. Have you tried impersonating a Tree? It is a spiritual experience in and of itself. It is not easy. For one. I don’t see Tree Costumes, so you cannot pick one up and pull it on. For another, it is dashed hard to hoist the top of a tree on a hat. It flops back and forth and does not stay sturdy. I am sure that plenty of people on Pinterest will tell you how to do it, but I can tell you how not to do it. Especially, if you try to work with a cowboy hat.
How to make a Tree Costume
So, with some excellent suggestions from my friends and children, we morphed it into a Tree Nymph whose express aim was to Save Trees. I tied the painted tree around my torso, wore brown pants so my legs would serve as the trunk and then wrapped my head with flowers to look like a Tree Nymph. I don’t know how Tree Nymphs look, but neither does the majority of the populace, so now they know. They look like me.
I must say I rather enjoyed myself. The son was Spiderman and the pair of us went around telling everyone that “Amma saves trees, and Son saves Humans”. When else could I have sported that Green nail polish the daughter and I picked up so we could have Rainbow themed nails?
Is this a Tree Nymph? If you haven’t seen one, then yes.
Say what you will about the rains that washed the Sun-dried California after Halloween, a small irrational part of me was happy. As a Tree-Nymph, had I invited the clouds over? It was certainly part of my original theme. The husband had even suggested I walk around with a large water droplet. But we did not have time to cut and color the water droplet. I sat relishing the sounds of the fresh patter of the rain, smelling the parched Earth drinking in the moisture, and enjoying a hot cup of tea in my hands.
“Next year, let’s all go environment themed. Maybe that will end the drought. If a Tree Nymph can bring rains, ….”, I crowed, and stepped out of my door to see an uprooted tree.
Usually, when Halloween rolls around, I am left out. What I mean is that I am the butler, the enabler, the inefficient decorator, the bad make-up doer, the scrambler, the chef, the doler of chocolates. But I am rarely one of the featuring stars in the evening’s show. When I say these things, I don’t want you running off with the idea of a pestilential sulker dulling Halloween. Far from it. I may decorate like a wet cracker, but there is one thing I bring to the evening – enthusiasm. One of my friends once said after witnessing a football game played by kindergartners that there was more enthusiasm than skill in the game. Exactly how I like to slot myself in the Halloween throng of emotions.
When I smile after hoisting a ghastly costume on folks, I smile widely, deeply and with affection. It gives the wearer confidence as they head out into the Halloween night. I like Halloween, for it is the one night when it is okay for serious minded adults who think of worldly problems to go out and publicly quack like ducks. It is often an illuminating experience to see that people give more attention to one’s quacks as a duck, than their most reasoned and logical arguments. It is all good – imagine if the Hippoceres lightened up.
What?! Don’t listen to me now! I am just Quacking!
If you like Halloween so much, why is it you don’t make more of an effort to dress up yourself? You ask. My answer drips in selfless service. There is usually a gaggle of folk around me needing attention – the costumes have to be just so and the food needs to be just so-so, the parents or parents-in-law have to be convinced to loosen up for Halloween and there it is. By the time the vampires, fairies and super-heroes come laden with plastic pumpkins, I have barely had time to lay the dinner on the table and grab a devil-hairband bought years ago, and smile (I have been accused of being the friendliest devil known to mankind, thereby failing spectacularly in even the simplest of costumes.)
This time, Halloween was on a Saturday and I had more time and energy on my hands. I started planning a whole two hours ahead that I wanted to be something too. Not just that. I was the decisive force: I wanted my costume to be Environment Themed. In what I thought was a brilliant teachable moment, I said that if we don’t save the environment, we won’t need Halloween Decorations at all, since the macabre stuff we see as Halloween Decorations, would be the sorry state of Earth.
The husband gave me a shocked, dismal look. The meaning of that look needs a much stronger pen than my own to record. I realized that far from a Teaching Moment, it could well become a Traumatic Moment, and swiftly swerved the conv. towards suggestions.
That did the trick. Ask us to talk and give suggestions, we trip over one another. There was a lot of shouting and a few good suggestions.
We need Water, Save Water, Less Plastic, More running water: (rivers, brooks), Recycle better, Anti Deforestation, More Trees, Drop of Water, Become a Cloud, No Toys (The toddler son came up with this and said proudly that he did not want to play with his toys anymore, and that I could give them all away, and not buy anymore. The pride on his face I tell you! It would have been a lot more virtuous if he had remembered that at the Lego Store the next day). The daughter said that I should crusade against oil spills since they harm animals, why not a Clean Ocean-Reef? Or Be a Farm.
An Ocean Reef – How in the name of Willow’s Marina Reefs can this be made into a Halloween Costume in an hour?
There was a lunar eclipse and a red moon a few weeks ago. The world watched the rare phenomenon and so did we. I remember seeing the Halley’s Comet about three decades ago, using the School telescope. The telescope was set up in our neighbor’s garden. There is a secret excitement and a strange lesson in mortality when looking at a comet that comes once in 75-76 years.That, by itself, was sensational enough for us to brave the cold nights to see the comet. The newspapers had been our source of knowledge and I think the news on state television made a statement too, but that was all.The rest of the buzz we created. I remember a lot of intent gazing and saying “Watdidocee?Isthatit?WOW!”
Now, I am tripping all over the internet over viewing pieces of it remnants : The Orionid Meteor Shower: Leftovers of Halley’s Comet
I can’t but help compare and contrast how we would have viewed it today’s times. Just as spottily is my guess, though we would have the pleasure of seeing the recording taken by somebody immensely more skilled at these things than myself.
We set about viewing the eclipse in our customary fashion. That is to say, we made a complete muck of things: hashed a pig or two in the duck pen and squashed a rat.
The husband stood at the kitchen island, with a seriousand urgent expression on his face. The daughter strolled in and said, “Oh – he must be playing chess!”
The affronted husband puffed out his chest and told her not to say trivial things like that. “I am, in fact, checking out a very important scientific phenomena that we can see in the skies today. “
The daughter, suitably chastened, went near him and cried, “He is on Facebook!”
I laughed.
“Yes, but checking to see whether the lunar eclipse started, not, you know, just face-booking.” he finished somewhat lamely.
The toddler son, flying his toy plane, and attempting a lunar landing, then explained the lunar eclipse to us: Moons can be red, blue or white (Is it American? No Everyone can see the moon when it is blue, red or white) and hide in the sun (Won’t it burn? No. Because Shadows are not hot.)
“So, why can’t you go out and check if the lunar eclipse started?” I asked. “After all, if people were saying so on Facebook, they must have done the same thing.”
This struck the children as sound logic, and they ran outside to see what was going on. They caught glimpses of a red moon and they charged in with the sensational news. The son ran into the house, taking his bass decibel levels to an excited high and the daughter came, tripping over her shoes as she took them off. I was, as is usual, in the evening, flopping about the kitchen looking efficient and determined. The urgent appeals from the whole family made me set dinner aside for the moment:
Just switch off the dinner. We can come back and eat.
Come fast. Now.
It takes a long time to cook. You are always cooking dinner.
I likes dinner.
They hustled me out of the house and we stood outside in a sort of anti-climax. The clouds, usually welcomed in the Bay area skies, were having a tough time figuring out why people were standing outside and grimacing at them like that. Hadn’t these very people been pandering for rain, and putting up mugshots of what clouds look like to make sure the populace did not forget? Now when the clouds did come and flit across the evening sky, there was animosity. Did they think moons brought rains? No. Clouds did. Very confusing for the cloud-body.
By now, of course, the husband had to take matters in his hand. He sprinted out to the street and then said we’d get a better view from the end of our street, so off we went leaving the door ajar. The husband, looking like an Admiral General in shorts,was directing his troops to better viewing positions. The children dutifully ran after him. He turned to bellow out further instructions, only to find his faithful wife running in the opposite direction. It is enough to rattle any Admiral. One cannot determine strategic spots with the errant soldier retreating. He stopped and the children skidded into him and they all bellowed at the recalcitrant soldier.
lunar_eclipse_viewing
The problem was, there had been a spate of robberies of late, and I was loathe to leaving the door open. So, I doubled back to lock up, while the rest of the family ran. Questions, explanations, eye-rolls and lectures on how-to-live-in-the-moment and not miss lunar eclipses were happening when the daughter yelled – ‘There! There is the moon.” The mutinous Admiral and the penitent trooper, both abandoned earthly worries for the moment and gazed sky-ward to see the moon disappear once again.
The husband tried to take a picture with the phone, “There are far better photographs that are going to be shared at the end of the eclipse, why bother now?”, I said, like it was going to make a difference.
Picture taken by us
We gazed again only to find a twig obstructing our view of the clouds. The husband charged homeward saying he’d bring us the car, so we could all pile in and get a clearer view. I tried telling him that a better view can only be had above the clouds, but he had gone. He ran and I ran after him with the house keys,and we met each other mid-street (In case you thought the children missed this piece of action, they did not.The toddler thought we were playing, and ran after me. The daughter, tasked with looking after her little brother, ran after him.)Within minutes of this rhino-charge, the car came, with the husband panting in the driver seat and we jumped in and headed out to a open parking lot.
I don’t know whether you have observed children playing in the park. They run up and then they run down, they run left and they right. All with no apparent purpose. So do the child-like. After about 15 minutes of running this way and that, there was some heavy breathing, more useless photographs, and a state of dejection.
If aliens used this time to observe life on earth, I am afraid to say the news they carry back to their homing civilization cannot be a promising one. A lot of pointless running, needless pointing later, we decided to just head back home.
We entered our community when the clouds cleared again. Swearing loudly, off we leaped from the car, and charged out to see the eclipse. We saw a knot of our neighbors standing to view the eclipse too. They had, in their usual wise manner, skipped the drama and simply came out of their homes and raised their eyes.
This was the picture the internet showed us the next day:
Nourish-n-Cherish 