'The mind is willing but the body is not?'
No, I am not talking about sex. In fact everything else but sex. No, sex too...sometimes....errrmmmmm...it isn't coming out the way I want it to....
Let me start all over.
The last couple of days has been really horrible in terms of getting work done. In my mind I have cleared the study table, the kids' wardrobes and kitchen cupboards ....I have unpacked from my last trip ........and I have even put back the 'antique' curtains which I had pulled out from suitcases that hadn't been opened since 1880!!
BUT ALL THESE WORK REMAINS UNDONE!!! This lethargy is killing me. When technically lethargy should not.
The only thing I do is cooking and that’s only because of a misplaced sense of guilt. I did tell the family that my coming back to the kitchen will not be a daily affair and they were actually thrilled, especially hubby.I had to at least pretend to use my lovely magazine-featurable kitchen!
I lie in bed in the morning running the 'to do' list in my head and feel so on top of things. But once up and standing before the mirror, seriously contemplating the ills of the world, plucking the stray hairs around the brow I heave and sigh and get winded out. I shower, then sit with my morning coffee and the morning papers. I toss and turn and burrow deeper into my soft velvety sofa with all that I read.
Arrogance is as despicable as lack of integrity but when combined it is degrading to all humans. Crooks always seem to escape and there are just too many fall-guys to take the blame. The 'id' is in glorious manifestation amongst the rich and powerful. So now is a good time for people to consider if there even is a middle path to save us all from the evils that men do.....as the Bard had asked many a time.
I guess if you don't have the killer instinct to destroy people on your way up you aren’t going places. On a clear thinking day when I feel tres noble I am so proud of all the good people who have been warriors fighting the good battles......but at times like this I am thinking 'more fool you!'........
So I should get more sane or insane? After all in the general scheme of things you are but a tiny, minuscule particle... maybe even a non-particle as future discoveries might reveal.....remember everything is 'm a y a'..?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Mom plays her role ......
After having lost Dad I understand only too clearly how fragile and precious life is. I make sure that we each (the children) really play our parts in a responsible manner in taking care of Mom. She definitely is the luckier parent but she isn’t the easiest of persons to please. In fact sometimes she can be a real pain. I am saying this without any malice.
Where Dad had been magnanimous and accommodating, Mom can be exacting and sparing with her compliments. Personally I made a decision that she is important to me ( something I learnt from hubby, from the way he devotes himself to his mother) and so I take care of her with a mixture of love, duty and compassion. Depending on her ‘behaviour’ one of the three factors will vary. Of course when she has her best behaviour on, I don’t stop to think whether I am serving her out of a sense of duty, or love or compassion. I just enjoy doing it!
She lives with my brother and he is a wonderful son. When she went to live with him after Dad died, she would quite regularly give him a hard time. My sisters and I would go to his rescue. Little things ..... petty and absolutely silly matters would eat into her. “If your daughters do it they are being thrifty but if the very same thing is done by the d-i-l then she is stingy and miserly. C’mon mother be fair."
Slowly but surely she has changed and now is a much happier person. And I am learning my lessons from her too, in a convoluted sort of way, and I am sure these will come in handy when I need them.
There is one important thing I must give Mom credit for. She definitely is the one who spins the yarns that hold the fabric of our relationships in place, keeping it very much alive and kicking.
For example in early December she insisted that right after the grahapravesam of my brother's house all his three boys should have their ears pierced in typical Hindu ritual. Of course that meant all of us had to make time and participate in the ceremony, right from bringing the atha varusai to staying till all the guests left. We did as she said and then some more!
Everyone had a great time. It was wonderful to see the children; the cousins displaying a wonderful spirit of camaraderie. These are times when cousins hardly recognize one another when they bump into each other at street corners or meet at functions. So seeing them all ( from age 29 to 3) so happy together was a bonus and we have Mom to thank for. Later that night she had arranged a bhajan with her Gang of 40 and we were duly imbibed with religiosity.
I think the bottom line is, relationships are going to bring as much joy as heartaches and to exist peaceably we must WANT to learn to live with each other’s deficiencies or imperfections more than with each other’s ‘perfections’. At any rate perfection is over rated, and nine times out of ten it is the source of problems, so to hell with perfection!
After having lost Dad I understand only too clearly how fragile and precious life is. I make sure that we each (the children) really play our parts in a responsible manner in taking care of Mom. She definitely is the luckier parent but she isn’t the easiest of persons to please. In fact sometimes she can be a real pain. I am saying this without any malice.
Where Dad had been magnanimous and accommodating, Mom can be exacting and sparing with her compliments. Personally I made a decision that she is important to me ( something I learnt from hubby, from the way he devotes himself to his mother) and so I take care of her with a mixture of love, duty and compassion. Depending on her ‘behaviour’ one of the three factors will vary. Of course when she has her best behaviour on, I don’t stop to think whether I am serving her out of a sense of duty, or love or compassion. I just enjoy doing it!
She lives with my brother and he is a wonderful son. When she went to live with him after Dad died, she would quite regularly give him a hard time. My sisters and I would go to his rescue. Little things ..... petty and absolutely silly matters would eat into her. “If your daughters do it they are being thrifty but if the very same thing is done by the d-i-l then she is stingy and miserly. C’mon mother be fair."
Slowly but surely she has changed and now is a much happier person. And I am learning my lessons from her too, in a convoluted sort of way, and I am sure these will come in handy when I need them.
There is one important thing I must give Mom credit for. She definitely is the one who spins the yarns that hold the fabric of our relationships in place, keeping it very much alive and kicking.
For example in early December she insisted that right after the grahapravesam of my brother's house all his three boys should have their ears pierced in typical Hindu ritual. Of course that meant all of us had to make time and participate in the ceremony, right from bringing the atha varusai to staying till all the guests left. We did as she said and then some more!
Everyone had a great time. It was wonderful to see the children; the cousins displaying a wonderful spirit of camaraderie. These are times when cousins hardly recognize one another when they bump into each other at street corners or meet at functions. So seeing them all ( from age 29 to 3) so happy together was a bonus and we have Mom to thank for. Later that night she had arranged a bhajan with her Gang of 40 and we were duly imbibed with religiosity.
I think the bottom line is, relationships are going to bring as much joy as heartaches and to exist peaceably we must WANT to learn to live with each other’s deficiencies or imperfections more than with each other’s ‘perfections’. At any rate perfection is over rated, and nine times out of ten it is the source of problems, so to hell with perfection!
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Thinking of Dad......
Whenever I send some one off to the airport I think of my Dad......of how he isn’t here to take trips overseas. I knew he wanted to see more of the world, travel to places that appealed to him. For example he wanted to visit Brazil and see for himself the rubber trees in Amazonia that had become a huge part of his life! Many a times he had told us how the British had smuggled rubber seeds out of Brazil and after developing 'healthier' versions of them in the London Botanical Gardens, had planted the south east Asian colonies with these trees to reap huge monetary benefits for many, many decades. But alas! he never got to go anywhere near Brazil...
I can say without any sort of censure that he was my favourite parent. He passed away in the fall of 1996 and it took me a long while to come to terms with his death.
Dad had an immense capacity to make me feel that I was special (despite my consistent bedwetting which somehow irritated the hell out of mom). He was proud of my little achievements and took any of my sad moments personally. We were so much in synch and I could feel him brimming with pride when I won even a tiny trophy for my studies or a medal for some sporting event.
Because I lived in a rubber estate, when I wanted things for my school he had to take me to town on his scooter. The scooter rides became occasions I would treasure because it’s during these trips dad would talk about his dreams – dreams he had for himself and the dreams he was building for us. With the wind on our faces I would careen my neck from behind him to get at his words and then yell out my replies over the noise of his Vespa. When I close my eyes I can sense him even now.
I never knew why he chose to speak of such adult things to me. I must have been about nine or ten ( I remember because after that we had a car and the scooter rides ceased). Perhaps he had had an inkling that if I wasn’t weighted down early in life I’d fly off and be constantly airborne. Yes, that must be it because even now I often feel a very strong urge to ‘take off.’ If it weren’t for the kids who have me well anchored I’d probably be somewhere in the stratosphere helping with the
ozone holes!
The day Dad died was the day I felt most helpless in my entire life. I couldn't help feeling hollow and desperate like I just let slip something invaluable to me; something so precious and so very much a part of me that I felt totally destroyed. The feeling that he won't ever be there for me was devastating and something in me died that day.
Time heals. It’s about thirteen years now but when I revisit that moment in time the impact of his loss is no less. I grief that my kids are not touched by his presence. He was gentle and kind, loving and upright. He taught me to love by knowing people not by judging them.
Mom was different and that was quite understandable. She was 15 when she had me and literally grew up while her kids were growing up! In retrospect I must have been hard on her and thought she wasn’t capable of loving us the way dad did. I know now that it really is an unfair judgment. Each one of us love differently, and we are loved differently. We, in turn, love ours differently.
I understand that perfectly now because that’s how it is with mine own. We have favourite kids not because of the quantum of love bestowed on them but because of how easy their behaviour is on us. I try to make my kids understand this but often they are too smart for their own good.
In the darkest moments of my life my Dad has been the beacon of light and has guided me along. It’s funny how we draw on the wisdom they have imparted to us without even realizing it, that they have actually handed down so much to us while we had shared the same space with them. I think our fault has been that we took most of it for granted only to mourn their loss now…even after years and years ….in ways that surprise even us. When I go to funerals, I must admit shamelessly that any tears I shed are real, except that it is rarely for the deceased but it really is me going back to my moment of greatest loss – the death of my dear dad.
After Dad's death I withdrew into myself. I would quite dutifully perform the daily chores and routines were observed to make sure everything was running smoothly. But I knew internally I had turned cold. I was merely auto-piloting my life. In the confines of my mind I was in turmoil. My heart was bleeding and I just couldn’t find solace anywhere. I went through the events that led to his final moments when the life-support system was disconnected and I blamed myself for not taking better care of him. I blamed myself for believing that my Dad was infallible because he made me believe that too…. till late into his condition. Too late actually and I was such a fool not to have followed what my heart was telling me.
For almost a year I lived a very stoic life depriving myself of things that made me happy. I had a nagging pain between my shoulders that started on the day he died and refused to go away. I suffered the pain in silence refusing to see a doc about it. I felt I deserved that and it corresponded with the misery I was going through. I would have been the perfect candidate for therapy. I let myself suffer, feeling a sense of justification for not having rendered the attention when Dad needed it most. Of course, outwardly I was almost same old me. Hubby had an inkling and like most husbands didn’t know how to deal with it.
Then I agreed on a short break, mostly for the sake of the kids – a trip to the beautiful island of Langkawi. It was my first trip there and I went grudgingly. Our chalet was on stilts on the water itself and when you stood on the balcony and watched the waves lap so silently and soothingly, as if the quiet solemness of the atmosphere was too sacred to be violated, you have no choice. No choice but to feel the peace and start thawing the cold that you had let encompass your heart.
Early the next morning before anyone woke I walked to the end of a long, almost 200 meter stilt that they had built for walkers to enjoy the early morning tranquility of the beach. It literally went out to sea and stopped stark in the middle of nowhere. I found myself there and as I looked around it was pure magic. There was the shimmer of delicate waves all around me and the streaks of gold that glittered so sparsely was to let you know that dawn was breaking in ever so gently.
When I sat down and took in this blissful solitude and serenity, tears started flowing down both my cheeks. I was panting gently and the tears were unstoppable. Then I started sobbing and my body was shaking, at first hardly noticeable. Soon, like the crescendo I was crying out so loud that I am sure the gods must have heard me. I screamed, I poured my heart out, I asked back for my Dad. I pleaded and begged. I cried my eyes out. I saw flashes of him suffering and then I saw him stilled by death. I broke down once more. I wept like child and just couldn’t stop. I tell you, I let it all go. It seemed as if I cried for all humanity. I cried for love that was lost and gone forever. Forever. Oh God how I cried…….
Then suddenly an overpowering silence came over me. I looked up with bleary eyes at the horizon and there was the crackling of dawn, only it came without the crackling, in complete silence, sacredly tiptoeing, respecting my sad and somber feelings. At that moment I had my answer. An answer to my deep sorrow that came from my bleeding heart.
I asked God, “Please let me be the daughter to my father in one more life and give me the chance to serve him in the way I really want to. It is my sacred duty and it is the only way I can ever love anyone again.” He granted me that wish. I know.
As I walked back my hubby came out looking for me a little worried, well maybe a lot worried. It was first real smile I gave him since my Dad died.
Whenever I send some one off to the airport I think of my Dad......of how he isn’t here to take trips overseas. I knew he wanted to see more of the world, travel to places that appealed to him. For example he wanted to visit Brazil and see for himself the rubber trees in Amazonia that had become a huge part of his life! Many a times he had told us how the British had smuggled rubber seeds out of Brazil and after developing 'healthier' versions of them in the London Botanical Gardens, had planted the south east Asian colonies with these trees to reap huge monetary benefits for many, many decades. But alas! he never got to go anywhere near Brazil...
I can say without any sort of censure that he was my favourite parent. He passed away in the fall of 1996 and it took me a long while to come to terms with his death.
Dad had an immense capacity to make me feel that I was special (despite my consistent bedwetting which somehow irritated the hell out of mom). He was proud of my little achievements and took any of my sad moments personally. We were so much in synch and I could feel him brimming with pride when I won even a tiny trophy for my studies or a medal for some sporting event.
Because I lived in a rubber estate, when I wanted things for my school he had to take me to town on his scooter. The scooter rides became occasions I would treasure because it’s during these trips dad would talk about his dreams – dreams he had for himself and the dreams he was building for us. With the wind on our faces I would careen my neck from behind him to get at his words and then yell out my replies over the noise of his Vespa. When I close my eyes I can sense him even now.
I never knew why he chose to speak of such adult things to me. I must have been about nine or ten ( I remember because after that we had a car and the scooter rides ceased). Perhaps he had had an inkling that if I wasn’t weighted down early in life I’d fly off and be constantly airborne. Yes, that must be it because even now I often feel a very strong urge to ‘take off.’ If it weren’t for the kids who have me well anchored I’d probably be somewhere in the stratosphere helping with the
ozone holes!
The day Dad died was the day I felt most helpless in my entire life. I couldn't help feeling hollow and desperate like I just let slip something invaluable to me; something so precious and so very much a part of me that I felt totally destroyed. The feeling that he won't ever be there for me was devastating and something in me died that day.
Time heals. It’s about thirteen years now but when I revisit that moment in time the impact of his loss is no less. I grief that my kids are not touched by his presence. He was gentle and kind, loving and upright. He taught me to love by knowing people not by judging them.
Mom was different and that was quite understandable. She was 15 when she had me and literally grew up while her kids were growing up! In retrospect I must have been hard on her and thought she wasn’t capable of loving us the way dad did. I know now that it really is an unfair judgment. Each one of us love differently, and we are loved differently. We, in turn, love ours differently.
I understand that perfectly now because that’s how it is with mine own. We have favourite kids not because of the quantum of love bestowed on them but because of how easy their behaviour is on us. I try to make my kids understand this but often they are too smart for their own good.
In the darkest moments of my life my Dad has been the beacon of light and has guided me along. It’s funny how we draw on the wisdom they have imparted to us without even realizing it, that they have actually handed down so much to us while we had shared the same space with them. I think our fault has been that we took most of it for granted only to mourn their loss now…even after years and years ….in ways that surprise even us. When I go to funerals, I must admit shamelessly that any tears I shed are real, except that it is rarely for the deceased but it really is me going back to my moment of greatest loss – the death of my dear dad.
After Dad's death I withdrew into myself. I would quite dutifully perform the daily chores and routines were observed to make sure everything was running smoothly. But I knew internally I had turned cold. I was merely auto-piloting my life. In the confines of my mind I was in turmoil. My heart was bleeding and I just couldn’t find solace anywhere. I went through the events that led to his final moments when the life-support system was disconnected and I blamed myself for not taking better care of him. I blamed myself for believing that my Dad was infallible because he made me believe that too…. till late into his condition. Too late actually and I was such a fool not to have followed what my heart was telling me.
For almost a year I lived a very stoic life depriving myself of things that made me happy. I had a nagging pain between my shoulders that started on the day he died and refused to go away. I suffered the pain in silence refusing to see a doc about it. I felt I deserved that and it corresponded with the misery I was going through. I would have been the perfect candidate for therapy. I let myself suffer, feeling a sense of justification for not having rendered the attention when Dad needed it most. Of course, outwardly I was almost same old me. Hubby had an inkling and like most husbands didn’t know how to deal with it.
Then I agreed on a short break, mostly for the sake of the kids – a trip to the beautiful island of Langkawi. It was my first trip there and I went grudgingly. Our chalet was on stilts on the water itself and when you stood on the balcony and watched the waves lap so silently and soothingly, as if the quiet solemness of the atmosphere was too sacred to be violated, you have no choice. No choice but to feel the peace and start thawing the cold that you had let encompass your heart.
Early the next morning before anyone woke I walked to the end of a long, almost 200 meter stilt that they had built for walkers to enjoy the early morning tranquility of the beach. It literally went out to sea and stopped stark in the middle of nowhere. I found myself there and as I looked around it was pure magic. There was the shimmer of delicate waves all around me and the streaks of gold that glittered so sparsely was to let you know that dawn was breaking in ever so gently.
When I sat down and took in this blissful solitude and serenity, tears started flowing down both my cheeks. I was panting gently and the tears were unstoppable. Then I started sobbing and my body was shaking, at first hardly noticeable. Soon, like the crescendo I was crying out so loud that I am sure the gods must have heard me. I screamed, I poured my heart out, I asked back for my Dad. I pleaded and begged. I cried my eyes out. I saw flashes of him suffering and then I saw him stilled by death. I broke down once more. I wept like child and just couldn’t stop. I tell you, I let it all go. It seemed as if I cried for all humanity. I cried for love that was lost and gone forever. Forever. Oh God how I cried…….
Then suddenly an overpowering silence came over me. I looked up with bleary eyes at the horizon and there was the crackling of dawn, only it came without the crackling, in complete silence, sacredly tiptoeing, respecting my sad and somber feelings. At that moment I had my answer. An answer to my deep sorrow that came from my bleeding heart.
I asked God, “Please let me be the daughter to my father in one more life and give me the chance to serve him in the way I really want to. It is my sacred duty and it is the only way I can ever love anyone again.” He granted me that wish. I know.
As I walked back my hubby came out looking for me a little worried, well maybe a lot worried. It was first real smile I gave him since my Dad died.
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