birthdays and siblings...

Over the weekend my brother celebrated his 29th birthday. When my son asked him "how old are you?" my brother smiled and replied "not as old as your mom!"

Which is true. 

We are 21 months apart. He is the youngest, I am the oldest. My children adore him. They ask almost daily "when can Uncle Toby come over?" "what do you think Uncle Toby is doing right now?" "Uncle Toby is my best friend..."

When he visits they dive bomb him with show and tell and questions and watch this and watch me and talk to me and listen to this and oh did you know... 

I think he kind of loves it. 

But the other day I had to say "he's MY brother. I want to talk to him!" and then I thought it'd be a great teaching moment to talk about how we are siblings, and my two are siblings, and we get along, so maybe they should see that... oy. It went all wrong and we ended up laughing because I was making no sense. 

I want them to have what we have. 

We were best friends growing up. Confidants. Playmates. Yes, I might have tried to sell him a rock from our gravel walkway for his only two dollars... but mostly we got on just fine. I remember conspiring to stay up all night in sleeping bags on Christmas Eve, only to fall asleep just as I'm sure things got interesting around the Christmas tree. Riding bikes together to the library across town. Adventures when I started driving and we could go off the two of us for real. We crossed a state line and laughed like crazy, wondering what mom and dad would think. We were always in cahoots. 

This is the summer of getting along for my children. They are 5 and almost 3 {21 months apart...} and can spend hours either playing together seamlessly or they spend the day at each other poking and taunting and driving each other mad. 

I remember having those crazy at each others throats days with my brother as well... but they were the minority. 

But then, I don't really remember when I was 5 and he was 3. There's probably a reason for that. 

Watching my kids and their relationship unfold is fascinating. Complicated. And utterly silly and hopeful. 

{and now... I have to cut this short to end a stomping screaming match of wills upstairs.... oh yes there's a reason why we have selective memories from childhood!!}

I Missed Home.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.- Maya Angelou

The sojourn is over. It was exhausting. Contemplative. Confusing. A hurt on the ego.

But, the good thing is that it is over. 

I missed home. 

I missed the compress of my bed's mattress- its conformed, subtle, honest stability. 

I missed the knowledge of my room- how I know every corner of it, how I could point out at an object in its very place. I missed the comfort of the settled dust that seems to crop up every night, gathers up a little more. I missed the familiar pattern of the dancing motes in the single ray of sunshine that enters our drawing room. 

How every fallen hair gathers itself among its compadres in one corner, putting on solidarity, mustering more courage.

Or, how every little act transforms itself into a self-composed display of synchronicity.

I dwell on these things when I am away. I dwell on the little glow-in-the-dark stars that line my bedroom ceiling. How they stay there pointing to me a simple, well-guarded fact that here is now. In this place, in this moment, in this time, in this person- that is me.

Above is the shuffling of the last furniture that finally finds a place in a home.

Below is the rustic familiarity of an alien home, one could never relate to.

On nights such as these, I wait and watch. I wait for a tear to creep its way because this missing makes me want to hold on to everything that composes my life. And, I watch everything that surrounds me- every little book in its place, every furniture stuck in time and memory, every person- the same as before.

It is not so much that I love everything about this place- this little shack of a place that we have come to acknowledge as our home. But, it is more of the feeling of lack of origin... when I am away.

No one else's bed could have the right amount of bounce.

It is as simple as that.

No one else's home could have the exact wall patches that have formed in my room over the years.

Some things just belong to us. And, we belong in some things.

No wonder, I missed home.

Your Family.

Weekend flies. 

That is about as much I would like to write about weekends. They are fast, they are usually late, and they are always gone by the time I realize what just happened. 

Monday mornings are not usually my best time of the week. I am more disheveled than I am on any other day of the week- except maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. 

I had an entrance test this Monday. I was petrified, disgusted, and "disheveled". I sat in my room, trying to breathe, deeply in, deeply out, as the numerous yoga lessons have taught me to. That is when I heard my dad speaking English with someone on the phone. 

It was remnants of the language- broken, out of tense, and "disheveled".

It could have been any other emotion that could have set off the tears but, I think it is the emotion of extreme proud that brought them down. 

All that weekend, I was trying to get my autobiographical statement ready for my application form. I had to write about the 24 years I had lived, studied, failed, won, laughed, cried. I had to write about what social and economic background I had come from. I had to write about my family background. 

Everything that I had to write in my application happened in front of me... on a Monday morning. 

-source

My parents are not the alumni of the best schools or best colleges. They do not belong the "hip" crowd. They speak broken English and they are the regular "middle class" people. 

But, they are the ones who sent their children to the best schools and then to the best colleges so their children don't lose out on belonging to the "hip" crowd.

They are the ones who have sacrificed their little happiness to get us what we "wanted" the most. 

They are the ones who spend without qualms on our clothes, books, hobbies... they will never have anything for themselves. 

They are the ones who work the same job for twenty-six years because they have to provide for a family.

They are the ones who scold, yell, and then display an act of compassion beyond comprehension. 

They are the ones who sit through the nights, taking turns while their children have the poxes, jaundice, and mumps. 

They are the ones who get hurt easily.

They are the ones who continue to work hard even when they hit their fifties. 

They are the ones who will speak broken second language, who will wear pants with the wrong shirts, who will laugh like children at the stupidest of jokes, and who will probably never know how darn proud their children are of them. 

Every family has their story- a set of parents who are wild, weird, trying, tumbling, then rising again. A set of parents who worry about the hike in the vegetable prices, laugh about their children's adventures. A set of parents who never spoke about their "big dream". 

And, I realized that all of this, everything that you have known about your parents, everything you have learned from them, all of that will only remain a part of you. It will probably get reflected in our parenting- when we tell our children not to worry about their sudden excursion from the school, or when we ask them to sit through the dinner, chewing exactly 32 times. 

All this cannot be written in a hundred words, or in six lines, or even in one page. 

But, it will always be written in us... 

Tell us what you love about your family.