So, the bad news is I haven’t added to this blog in a few days, but the good news is why. It’s because I was practicing Dreams 2, 4, 9 and 10 in India!
Who turns down an opportunity to go put out a professional fire in India and experience an amazing new place and culture after years of being all about house and home? Um… rhetorical question with only one answer… Pick me! So, when I returned from dropping the little chick off at college and heard there was a need for a ruffled feather smoother at our offices in India, I flew at the chance.
The years I willingly and enthusiastically prioritized being a present Mom for my kids and during which I fully participated in each crazy twist and turn also clipped my wings and I didn’t fly off at a moment’s notice without a thought about who would watch and water my kids. One of the hallmarks of this new phase is the one and only text I sent to my offspring before I sprung off to an exotic location;
Off to work in India for a couple weeks.
Reachable by work email and back the 9th.
Love you three more than anything.
M
The newfound freedom of being the mother to three adults!
I then giggled my way through the airport, savored British Airways gentility that made a 20+ hour flight enjoyable and even felt sorry for the women traveling with small children who certainly weren’t having the same experience I was binge watching British TV series across the Atlantic and then sleeping soundly across the continent to India.
And India! Since I had never been there, I indulged in every curry tasting, sari shopping, bangle buying and “Yes, Madam” civility that crossed my path. I even fulfilled a lifelong dream of traveling over a weekend up to Agra to see the Taj Mahal which was just as awe inspiring as my mother, an avid world traveler whose 6 filled passports of stamps from leisure travel over 40 years puts me to shame, told me it was when she insisted I make the time and spend the money to take full advantage of being in the proverbial neighborhood of the magical Taj.
I can’t imagine a man who would love me so devotedly as to build me a marble monument after I died in childbirth with his 14th child. Of course, I can’t imagine being pregnant 14 times. The fact that I did it three times was a testimony to my short memory and uneventful pregnancies and birth experiences. Like one of those women who gives birth in the late morning in the rice paddy and then straps the newborn to her back to keep gathering the yield, I did the same with all three of my kids, efficiently and without any drama or war stories to tell visiting relatives.
But, I don’t even remember getting a trinket nonetheless a marble monument to our love. Of course, he did fly in rugalach overnight from my favorite NYC bakery when I gave birth to his first son. It was damn good rugalach, so that definitely counts as a grand gesture!
I wonder what other new mothers got to memorialize the birth of their child from their mate. Any grand gestures of your own to share?
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