The nest is empty......but does my life have to be so ?

Soumya's going away  to the University was tough....
rather I made Soumya's leaving for the University tough for myself!

Initially I would spend time in her room
to feel her presence and to fill the void,
reminiscing over the times we spent together...
brooding over the emptiness I felt in her absence.

I tried
retail therapy
mindless chatter on whatsapp

just something
to fill the hours which
seemed
to stretch on and on

Over the weeks, months and years 
I realised how much I had used my daughter as a surrogate, 
to define and live my short term goals and long term dreams!

No one asked me to do so,
it just felt easy :

in the Comfort Zone ...
playing the Mommy !

being worried about the grades, courses to take in the university, emotional highs and lows in school and the junk food intake of a growing teenager....

rather than looking at deeper, maybe more real questions of life, for myself :

How do I add more meaning to my life and to those of others around me?

What work/role brings joy to me 
and more importantly , what am I doing to pursue it?

Slowly it has begun dawning on me that
loneliness and restlessness inside of me are
nothing
but

a Reality Check to connect to

Who I really am :

Beyond
a friend
a daughter
a team player
a lover
a wife
and a mother.....

Some use travel, others mindless chatter, food, templatized fun life....
to deflect from visiting this space of inquiry of truly who they are , sans all the roles and titles

I have used my motherhood!

The nest may be empty today...
but life is still full of all the meaning that I can choose to create in it now!

Musical Glee !

I am glad the bus driver was

erratic,

rude 

and inconsistent in his daily pick up at 7.30 a.m
and
the auto drivers highly unreliable in showing up! 

The result was that I was forced to drive Soumya to school...all through the last few years of her school.

As we navigated through the potholed lanes of New Link Road, Andheri... through the early morning traffic, we  discovered a common love for music...

her type
my type
our type :)
We forged a new relationship which transcended time....and 'generation-gap' biases.

As soon as the key was put in the ignition and the radio turned up, we were  transported  to an indescribable space...

God Bless RJ Malishka and her shendi,  Ashok Advani and his smoother than wine voice , the bubbly Keisha , Bruno Mars, Lata Mangeshkar , RD Burman, Amit Trivedi , Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran and Jason Mraz  who hummed and crooned , yoodled or yelped depending upon the mellifluousness of the voice...or the orchestration of the instruments and words!

the beats reverberated in our small space and enveloped us in their warmth.

We were two kids who were cocooned in their private sound bubble and sing-a-long ( much to the amusement of the other motorists, I am sure  :) till we reached the school gates!

Who would have thought that I would enjoy the beats of BAD ROMANCE and Katie Perry or that Soumya would find RD Burman numbers, 'Hot' ?

"Today I dont wanna do anything
I just wanna lay in my bed!....drawled Bruno Mars

" Somethings changed within me, something is not the same...
I am through with playing by the rules of the game..." crooned Ibene...

"Hey Mom! This is Ibene ....She played Rachel's mother in Glee Season 1!".....
"Oh ! did she ?"
" Fantastic voice na!

"I want to break free ...We don't need no education....." 

I wish you were asked as students what do you want to study. 
Have you ever used calculus in life ? 
Why do you need to study that ?

Music became our common conversation triggers which seamlessly opened up other discussions, about school , teachers, boys, growing up pangs ,  dirt on Mumbai roads...

I did not need to sermonise or advise or guide her as a superior...just converse with her about the silliest of topics and the most profound of life queries...or the routine mom daughter arguments. ..Music always forming a seamless comforting space to weave these memories for me!

Today when Soumya is far far away from me, listening to music of her choice,  tucked in cosily in her hostel room...I do not have the same 7.30 routine...

Many days I am just about waking up that time as there is no morning rush...just an unstructured day, working from home.

I cannot but help feeling blessed for the Sound of Music in our lives and all those innumerable talented singers, song writers and musicians who deepened my bond with Soumya and with MUSIC.

Quietly reflective : the introverts in my life

Reading "QUIET : The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking." by Susan Cain.

What an eye-opener of a book for an exuberant, wordy, out-in-the-world extrovert like me !

Am taken back to around a decade ago when Soumya was all of five or six and was labelled 'shy' 'anti-social'and 'snooty' by moms n children alike, just because she took time to open up socially in her gentle quiet way. Like me, these people could not understand that she just had a different way of looking at life and was much more than those labels which boxed her into a space which screamed : ' YOU ARE SO QUIET....SPEAK OUT !'

Thanks to Uday, a quiet person himself, that she has, and continues, to blossom in her quiet, resolute and reflective way : teaching me many a lesson in calm and centeredness.

Would recommend this book to all : introverts, extroverts and ambiverts...Check the link http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/

One of my biggest learning in life has come from the three introverts who inhabit my space : my daughter, husband and father-in-law who balance my chirpy over-stimulated go-for-it presence with reflection, centeredness and depth of thoughts.

I am 13 now, MOM !!!!!!

I have been reflecting upon my changing relationship with Soumya.

She has been extremely excited that she turned thirteen this January.

I have been happy for her!

However, this momentous event of her life has also left me a little confused...

How do I relate to her, now ?
I can't baby her or talk down to her...
she rebels!!!!!!!!
and I am usually at the receiving end of this rebellion...

She is not an adult, though she says she can't wait to "grow UP"

One part of me is becoming more and more aware that I am mothering not a 13 year old teenager, but an image of my daughter!

I so desperately want to understand her changing needs, but I do not know who my daughter is, any more !!

Richard Brown of Naropa University says it so beautifully,

Children need our attention. But they are harmed if we smother them with well-intended, but self-serving attention. Children need us to be genuinely present with them; to be appropriate in that moment of life. We need to let go of our point of view and become them for that instant.

Such selflessness is not easy. We protect ourselves from the rawness of childhood with an armor of ideas, projects, and strategies.... We need to have the dignity and humility to look into the eyes of the children and not be afraid to see them exactly as they are. 

We must nourish children for their own sake, not just so they will live according to our view of childhood, no matter how noble the view."

Spontaneity

Took Soumya to library today because I want books to be one of our many common bonds. 

How will it be to share my thoughts with someone who is twenty-seven years younger?

…She seemed enchanted by those engaging picture books for kids in the library. She pulled out books from the lower shelves and sprawled on the floor, mesmerized, transported to another world. 

I envied her for her spontaneity….

As Hugh Prather says in 'I touch the earth the earth touches me'…

"There were seventy five people in the lobby and only a seven year old girl was finding out what it felt like to sit on a marble floor."

Being a mother

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There are eight of us who regularly come to pick up our girls from school…
eight agitated, unfulfilled homemakers.

All of us discuss " the something more" which we would love to do when our daughters grow up…

Lament over the Doctorates and Masters which have been replaced by PTA meetings and car pools ever since motherhood has come knocking.

There is a sense of deep anguish over wasted education.

Does one tend to define one's life by his job?

Why doesn't being a mother quench the yearning of the Soul?