Tag Archives: stay at home moms.

February 4, 2014 · 11:06 am

Why Does It Get To Me?

Does any mother not yell? No, seriously, is it possible? – leaving aside the Swedes, of course, who apparently don’t believe in using the word “no” to a child, let alone raise their voices ( my mother thought I was kidding when I told her that) .

I try as much as I can to be patient, but sooner or later the tantrums, the wailing, the sulking and the pestering gets the better of me and I find that the only way of making myself heard is by raising my voice.

I am not a patient person by nature ( it took me years to admit this) but with the kids, I try. A few months ago I told myself that I’d try to be more patient with them, no matter what.  So, when the other day when my eight year old made an unreasonable demand,  I declined gently, explaining all the reasons etc (all that textbook stuff about dealing with questions in a positive manner) but, the demand persisted. I counted to ten and explained it again. This happened about three more times. I continued to explain the reasons while holding my ground on my decision.  She didn’t take to it well and started to bolster her argument with talk of equality and fairness. It’s a time-tested strategy – when in doubt, bring in justice. Kids are clever enough to know that this usually puts the parents on the back foot.

Well, not this parent. I told her my reasons for my decision and expected her to understand.  I also wanted to make it clear that if she could not fully comprehend my reasoning then she would have to sort-of lump it, because sometimes parents have to do what they have to do. I always think of my own parents when I over-explain things to my kids in an effort to be the modern, involved (read evolved) parent. I cannot help but feel, at times, that their method of dealing with us was far better. My father had two pet phrases : ” you will know when you grow up” and “because I said so” as an answer to many questions . End of story. That was that.  My mum would try and tell us more, but only so much. I know that every generation glorifies their age and loves going down the how-things-used-to-be path, but my parents’ method did give them a lot more freedom than we give ourselves.

Anyway, that’s a whole different post. Coming back to my tale of patience, I tried as hard as I could to make her understand my point. And to be fair, she did get it, except that she still didn’t accept my ruling. Then the tears started. I took a deep breath and told her that she was overreacting. This seemed to open a can of worms and she went into previous arguments about this and that and how I never let her do blah blah blah. So, it finally happened . I caved and blew a lid, high drama followed (I am telling you, this teenage thing hits about five years too early) and more tears and apologies later, the matter was laid to rest, for the time being that is.  It ended, as it always does, with sorry notes from my daughter for the things she said in the fight, and apologies from me for losing my cool and making her cry. After having sworn, during the fight, not to take any more notes from her, I wiped her tears, kissed her, put the note in my cupboard (with the numerous others) and told her I’d never scold her that way again (this happens about once a week). What didn’t help (at all) was my husband’s comment about my handling it.  So I sulked and he didn’t address it, which, you can imagine, made me madder than ever (more on that in a later post, because man, that needs some venting)

With remorse comes guilt and with guilt comes introspection. I regretted the way I spoke to her and wondered, again, if I was being too harsh with her. I’ve never been able to decide this one,  does she react this way because I am too harsh? or does she react this way because I’ve not handled it right earlier? The guilt lingered and I thought about my own actions, of why I got so worked up and yelled. I started to question my reaction and look for a deeper meaning into my angst.  Surely I wasn’t so angry just because my daughter had cried.

Well, yes and no. Yes because the tears get to me. I can’t handle them beyond a point. I know it comes with being eight, when things that seem of little consequence to me, are matters of great importance to her and thus, when they are denied, there’s much gnashing of teeth. But when the tears flow so freely (with all three of them) I reach my limit and let my anger get the better of me. There’s only so much wailing one can take in a day and with the twins preferring it as a form of protest, I look to my older one for respite.  And no, because my anger is not only a reaction to her crying, it’s a symptom of the bigger problem (for lack of a better word).

I know I’ve said this before, but I wish that I was one of those women who was content being at home with the kids, or at least one who could make peace with it. But, I am not. And I am not even sure if such a woman exists.

I am reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friednan – it was a book that addressed, head-on, the real truth about the picture-perfect life of the suburban American housewife, about her angst and and of how she felt unhappy in a life that she’d longed for in a mistaken belief that that was what a woman must aspire for – a life of domestic bliss filled with a husband, children and a nice house. The book is said to have started a second wave of feminism ( don’t care for that word).

Here’s the opening paragraph:

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?”

My life could not be more different from the American suburban wife of the fifties, and yet, I can relate to her  “strange stirring”.  I guess that’s the stirring I need to address, because it’s whats causing the yelling. From what I hear from other women (and it’s comforting to know that I am not alone in this) it’s the way a lot of them feel.

So, what’s the solution? Not sure. But I know the problem, and that’s always the first step..

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January 23, 2014 · 7:07 am

My Profile Picture and What it Says About Me..

My facebook pictures have never been selfies. They’ve always been happy-happy family ones or couple types that would gets lots of “aww” responses (ok, too cutsie, I know – *cringe*) I’ve, somehow, never put one up of just me.

And here’s the thing, it didn’t even occur to me to do it. ( I am not too much of a facebook person and like to stay dormant mostly). When it  finally did dawn upon me, my first reaction was to analyze why I hadn’t thought about it before (why let up a perfectly good opportunity for introspection?)

I had many explanations in my head – you know, the typical, I-have-submitted-my-identity to the family, I have lost my individuality, I see myself as a mother and wife first – all that self-depreciating crap that women love to mull over and then do damn all about it. So, me being the textbook X chromosome explored it from all angles and came to the conclusion that in the past few years I’ve done little for myself and even when I’ve thought of doing something which would not have involved the family, I’ve been bogged down with unexplained guilt and dropped the idea. Why? don’t ask. Like I said, I am quite your archetypical X chromosome.

The irony, however, is that I always lost patience with my mum all through my growing years, when I saw her do the same. She would always put us and our dad before her own wishes – always, always, always! And it irritated me. Even today my father logs on to her mail and then tells her that so and so has written, blah blah blah, because he likes to be in control and she does not protest.  She’s an extremely intelligent self-made woman who has built a great institution, but at home she’s the wife who will submit herself to the fancies of her family and sacrifice her own desires for, well, for domestic peace.

I am not my mum. Not by a long shot – I have not the will and the determination that she seems to posses in copious amounts. And yet, I am the wife and mother who will (almost) never do something for herself. One instance – I never catch a movie with my friends. I love film, I can tell you that, and I am one of those weirdos who can go for one alone. When I lived in New York, I’d watch anything that caught my fancy (and a lot did).  Now, I live walking distance from a cinema hall, and yet it never occurs to me to skip away for a few hours and come back a much happier person. No, I don’t do it.

Each day, I live minute by minute, get sucked into this and that around the house, do some writing and before I know it, the day has gone and I am reading to the kids in bed. Then when I lie down, I think about the day gone, about the day ahead and about what I want to do with my life.  Or, I play Candy Crush till I run out of lives, then ask my husband what level he’s reached, express my jealousy and the next minute, I am asleep. That’s it. Day over.

So anyway, back to the profile picture (see what it unleashed?) After all the why and I should etc, I decided to put one up of myself alone. Not that this was an easy task. Because now I had to find one (the selfies come out distorted and I hated them all!). This led to another set of interesting observations. I don’t have any of me alone. All are with family etc. I could’ve cropped one out but I’ve never been a fan of those, they seem culled, and don’t end up looking that great. So, then, what was the revelation this time? Not much different; that I am always the one clicking the pictures and never really hand the camera to anyone else to get one of me by myself. I am the gatherer, always in garnering mode – get the flock together and take that perfect family pic, that sort. My husband is the opposite and strangely, I do see his point.

The profile picture, thus, remains the same. It’s a nice one of husband and me and I am okay about not changing it, not till I find a suitable one which seems worthy and has potential of many likes (I know -*cringe*).

The bigger picture, however is so – that the need to change my profile picture is  symptomatic of a larger attitude that I am now trying to embrace – one of getting my life back, bit by bit. The past few years have swallowed away chunks of my individuality and while I understand that that’s what rearing is about sometimes, I am now keen to get back on my feet and reclaim a bit of myself. Sounds corny? Probably. But this is what life is about – about seeing truth in aphorisms and platitudes. It’s true. I used to dump on housewives who went for kitty parties and now I have respect for them – that’s one thing they do for themselves and enjoy. When I  see a group of middle aged women in a restaurant cackling like schoolgirls, I applaud them in my mind for living the little life they enjoy. I am not sure what their profile pictures are like ( my bet is on family-type, though) but when they come out and meet their friends, they’ve left domesticity behind and are, for that moment at least, living for themselves.They have my new found respect.

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November 20, 2013 · 4:42 am

Am ready for work, but..

“The more you grow old, the more you need people who knew you when you were young”. That, or something like that, goes an old saying.

This has never rung as true as it does for me today. I say this because I have some super friends who knew me in my youth (ok, I know I am still young, blah blah , but you know what I mean when I say youth – like youth youth, the 20s youth, and  the 30s, it’s-going-but-still-got-it youth). These are friends who I don’t talk to often, some of whom don’t live anywhere I can drive to and yet, when we talk, or What’s App, I smile. They make me smile, my dear old friends – because they remember me for what I was and not for what I turned into when this whole mid life thing hit me – it apparently arrives a decade earlier now, as do strokes, heart attacks, blood pressure and many such delightful accomplices.

Anyway, today one of my dearest friends called and I had such a girlie, refreshing, you-can-do-it chat with her that I felt instantly uplifted, and though I am not waltzing into the next company and selling myself big so they can hire me on my terms (sigh) just yet, I am feeling much better about myself. See that’s the thing about old friends, they remember things about you that you lost somewhere along the way; aspects of your personality that the black hole ate up, to the point that you did not even remember being that way; those are the things old friends remind you of. They remind you of who you really are. It sounds corny, but man it’s true.

I don’t know if I make sense, but talking to her today was like looking at an old photograph and saying “Gosh, this is who I was!” She just needed to prod that part of my mind and it threw up so many emotions that it forced me to kick into action. “You were one of those people” she said, with the alacrity of a cat chasing a mouse, “who could walk into any organization and make them see your point. You haven’t lost that, it’s just dormant. Just shake it up, pull yourself together” she said (she was one of those charitable friends who thought that my SOP for NYU rocked. I don’t know if it did, but I did make it there). I know all this is easier said, but still, speaking to her I felt that I had become too bashful about the gaping hole (more like abyss, but whatever) in my resume and that had rubbed off on my attitude towards everything. I have become diffident about myself, period.

I’ve been thinking of getting back to work, but I keep feeling that I am not exactly employable anymore and if someone does think so then I should just take it, even if it’s remotely what I aim for. It does not have to be that way. I mean it does and it doesn’t. I have to be realistic about my profile in any organization, so no matter how confident I feel right now I can’t just walk into an office today and demand my own terms of work. However, and this is the part I need to apply in reality, neither do I have to be too diffident about the break (ok, more like an immeasurable crater that could fit three moons) in my resume. I have certain qualities and strong points and I should dwell on those instead of the ones that I feel conscious of.

Women always sell themselves short. It might be a blanket stereotyping to say so, but it’s true. Men will boast of their glory even when they have little to show for it, women will do the opposite. In my heart I know that I will work hard and perform well but, the big but is that I need flexibility – it’s the only thing I ask for. Why can’t companies measure people  more by their work?

My previous boss is someone who likes to appear progressive and “employee centric”. But when I went to him with the idea of flexi-timings, he gave me his classic between-you-and-me bull about how he was all for it but, you know, that monster that watches over us –HR – thought that it “would set a bad precedent”.

At some level, I do understand that from an organization’s point of view an employee working from home is hard to justify to others and probably not the best use of a resource. But if a company really cares about its people, and it should, then there can be checks and balances in such a situation, a system could be worked out that’s be acceptable to both. It can happen, especially in an industry like mine (web based).

The bottom-line is, companies don’t care enough. Sure there are exceptions but those are few and far between.

I, for one, haven’t found such a dream place. But I like to believe that it exists.

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July 4, 2013 · 10:56 am

Have It All. Why The Fuss?

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about women and their issues (not a fan of that word) – the whole work-life balance that’s quite suddenly become the thing to talk about in living rooms, when one is done venting about the government and the weather that is.  Not that I went looking for these articles in particular, but I guess it started with one article I read about women and related issues and surprise surprise suggested articles and blogs started popping up seemingly out of nowhere, but we all know how that works. Not that I care about being tracked, no really, I got bigger things to worry about.

Anyway, I digress (oh so easily). Point is, I’ve been reading stuff about how women can have it all if they do this or or if they do that (not relevant to the point I am making). It irritates me, this whole have-it-all discussion.

Who can have it all? Do men? Sure, in many homes they work and the wife looks after the family, but does that mean they have it all? I think not. Ask my husband. He’ll tell you about the grueling hours he puts in at work and only comes home to see the kids asleep – asleep when he arrives and out to school before he can say Johnny Cash, after a tornadoesque morning (three kids, two of whom are yet to be four, to get ready, feed and then drop to the bus stop by 7:20 – yeah, it’s a fun morning). He gets little time with them and does not have the moments I do with them (moments, I admit, I would now, after years of being home, trade quite happily for a teller’s job that requires standing on one leg – you can see I’ve had an eventful, tantrumy morning) But the point is, he has not had it all either. He’s missing their childhood in the aim to secure their future. He’s working his ass off, going through mid-life angst, well aware of the long road that stretches ahead of him. Not defending the men folk here before anyone accuses me of that (ironical that would be, really) but just making a point about this whole fuss about having it all.

What, by the way, is having it all? I don’t get it. Ask anyone if they have it all and you’ll get a answer in the negative. Any road to success (pecuniary success I mean) is paved with sacrifices and regrets, be it for a man or woman. Also, who says that having it all is the key to happiness? So much is in the mind. You could have it all (whatever that is) and still not be happy, or you could have some regrets in life and yet be content with the way things are. I made the choice to be at home and am living with it, angst et all. I got to do what I wanted with the kids – to bathe and dress them, to be there for the school drop and pick-up, to read to them in the afternoons, to take them to their tennis lessons – so I did. Now, I still want those things, but, my need to get out and work is higher, maybe because I’ve had enough of the domesticity and also because they’re settled in school.

I am also aware that for many women, it’s not a choice – they have to work and leave the leg-tugging baby behind. In my mind I was indispensable at home (with three girls I still think I am) and since the house did not depend on my income (though that would’ve led to less stress on the husband and thus on everyone else) I decided to stay at home with the kids. Sure they got looked after and the husband could work tirelessly without home issues clouding his analytical brain. But I too got to do what I wanted, at least initially. For many women, it’s hard because the house needs dual incomes.

What I want to say is merely this, as we were taught very early on in school – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. This little adage, for me, says a lot about the whole discussion around having it all. No one can have it all. No one.  It may appear so, but it’s not true. So why the fuss?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I don’t understand the issue at hand here. No one knows that better than me – since I’ve tried to strike that work-life balance and have, in vain, tried to get jobs that are satisfying enough and yet don’t threaten to consume you, leaving you to attend to your other full-time job of mommyhood in peace. It cannot happen. You either do some mindless work where you shut shop at five-o-clock  sharp and go home, or you find something meaningful, in which case leaving at will, or at a family-conducive hour,  is probably not that easy. Or you stay at home, and write (like I’ve been trying to do – yes, yes, a book is in the head). So I do get the point about how hard it is for women who want/have to work and have kids to go home to.

I guess what irritates me is a lot of hyperbole around having it all. I have a problem with the whole concept of having your cake and wanting to eat it too. Maybe it was how I was brought up, to believe that to get something you have to give up another. True, in an ideal world a woman (or a man) should be able to work and be there for the kids all at once. But, is that possible? Ask anyone who’s made it to the top. Or rather, ask the kids. If you are going to slave to get to the top of any organization, something will have to give. And that something will be your home.

Ask Enid Brighton’s daughter (or husband who she had a tumultuous marriage with) what they thought of their life with her. She wrote more than 600 books for children, but did she have time for her own? Did she have it all?

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May 29, 2013 · 6:02 pm

He thinks Mergers, I think Plumbers..

One evening, a few nights ago, I was lying in bed next to my husband. We were both tired after a long day and were similarly engrossed in our thoughts, of the day gone by, the one that lay ahead, all that needed to be done, stuff like that. We were having one of those, silently-reading-in-bed and thinking about battles ahead moments (am reading David Mitchell, by the way, and for those who haven’t read him, I highly recommend him) I had a hectic day planned – visit to the pediatric ophthalmologist, then to a birthday party, then rush home in time for the maid to leave, take the kids for their swimming lessons, call the electrician for the AC that’d started to make disturbing noises etc etc, you know working out the logistics in my head. My husband was lost deep in thought too, but his were, well, different, to say the least – crunching numbers, selling companies, handling employees and their emotions and the like. Not to put myself down, but compared to his, my list was full of mundane if vexing chores; his, probably both worrisome as well as mentally fatiguing. So we lay in bed reading, interrupted only with to-the-point conversations about this and that, such as “did my credit card arrive today, it’s about to expire”, or “how was the kids’ swimming lesson?”

There are times in everyone’s life, I am certain, when you have moments of extreme clarity, like you’d just spotted the obvious, which had been under your nose all the time. These crop up suddenly, almost without warning, seemingly out of nowhere, much like the Eureka moments that make everything lucid at once. Well, I had one of those that night. I realized why the distance that’d crept in between us had the dangerous potential of turning into an abyss.

This distance, I realized, had a perfectly logical and quite frankly a very valid explanation. We had sunk into such different worlds that on a day to day basis we had very little in common with each others’ lives. People at his work, understandably, knew much more about him and the issues that face him than I did. At my end, the mommy friends I’ve made in recent years around swings in parks knew more about the angst I feel as a mother or the issues that face me. True we try and involve each other in our lives, but that can only happen that much. I cannot begin to understand all the pressures he faces and he cannot relate fully to the life I lead. Our days could not be more different. And that’s where the danger lay. No matter how hard we try, at the end of the day we have such dissimilar events to deal with that we seem to be living on completely diverse planes.

Not that I didn’t know this earlier, but that night, somehow it became clear to me that something had to be done. We absolutely had to find a common ground and that could not be the children and the home alone. Something else needed to bind us. Yes there was love and friendship, but that’s something that needs to be worked on constantly. You cannot just lie there and say – ok so we have different lives but that’s quite alright because there is this marriage and love and all that jazz. No, that’s not enough, not near enough. You have to connect mentally – that’s what was was so clear to me that night. I can’t talk markets and numbers like he can and he can’t put in his bit about running the house, but surely there’s stuff we could find to talk about that was removed from or not connected to the life we lead together.

Mental stimulation. Yes, that’s what we needed.  That is what would keep us on a somewhat level field.

I am not sure if I make sense, but this is something I’ve only just fully understood. I mean I knew it, but somehow lost the thread in all the domesticity and the gap just crept in on us.

I suggested (not letting him in on my new-found epiphany, of course) that we watch a film – The Great Gatsby. We’ve both read the book and loved it. So we did and it was a wonderful idea. We came home talking about the film, the book, the let down (if you’ve read the book, you cannot like the film, Leonardo notwithstanding) and a whole lot of things that we’d forgotten about.

Not once did we talk about the kids or the house.

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May 9, 2013 · 1:55 pm

What career advice will you give to your daughters?

When I was growing up all I heard my mother say was that we had to make something of ourselves; that we must “stand on your own feet” – a term that Indian parents love to repeat, ad nauseum, or at least they did when my parents were in the stage of child-rearing that I am today.  Hindi films extolled the virtues of the phrase with lachrymose on-screen mothers telling their kids to “become something in life”.

So, it was ingrained in me very early – parents, cinema, et all – that I had to make something of myself. Stories of didactic brilliance, against all odds, were fed to us on a regular basis. The boy who sat under a street lamp and topped the national level civil services exam was the role model who we had to get inspired from, if not emulate.

So, my question is this. And, just to clarify, this is not to assign blame or say that my life would’ve been different had my mother prepared me for what lay ahead. But what I want to know is why no one told me one day I’ll have to make a choice – work or home? I spent years thinking, studying, working towards a career and then, whoosh. Before I knew it, I became that Stay At Home Mom, wondering if someone out there wants to hire a freelancer who is willing to work harder than “regular employees”, whose only limitation is that she cannot leave home for hours on end.

Why was I told that I must “stand on my feet” when that is exactly what I am not being able to do, whatever the term means?

The question that could be thrown back to me is – who told you to have kids? Or, did you not think about who would raise them? Well, not really. I mean, you reach a point when you want kids and you feel you’ll be able to figure to out as you go along. After all, the world has kids and juggles. My mom did. Couldn’t be that hard, right?

It’s not hard. It’s just life-changing. For those who can strike that magical (but it so eluded me) work-life-balance, I sound like a whiner (don’t like that term, my blog name notwithstanding). But I am not. I am asking a real question; more because I want to say the right things to my daughters. I do not want to lead them down a merry path only to have them reach a dead end later, or worse, to reach that wretched fork in the road where they’ll stand and dither and fall into the deepest quandary, the answer to which they will seek for the rest of their lives.

Should I tell them that they must work hard and dream big, but that one day they may have to let go of that dream, or a family? Or, should I tell them to be realistic and choose a path that will allow them to strike a balance between work and domestic life? So it’s better, say, to become a writer, academician (but wait, not dean, that’s time consuming), entrepreneur, teacher, consultant (so many women I know now “consult on a freelance basis) as opposed to any other profession, enriching as it might be, but which threatens to take them away from their homes for long passages of time?

What’s the answer? Is there one?

I want to, just because it’s sort of relevant, tell you this story. Make what you want of it.

I have a friend who was brilliant in college – the sort we thought would lead the way and we’d just follow. At 21 she got married. No one could understand it. One fine day, she just married this guy her parents had chosen for her. Just like that.

It turned out that her mother was this control freak who had figured life out and had laid out a plan for her daughter. She got this rich guy to marry her. By the time she was 23 she’d had her first and only child. She then, needled by her mother, did an MBA (while changing nappies – no diapers then). She lived with her parents-in-law (she, husband, kid on the top level; they on the lower, pretty common in India) So, the child was magically brought up while she worked. Long story short, today, she’s only 42 and her son is safely pursuing his undergraduate degree somewhere in the US. She’s on her way to the top management of her company with which she consulted (surprise surprise) for a few years while her son was young.

So, she’s set, as they say in Indian-English parlance. No stopping her till she reaches the top, which is less than an arm’s length away anyway. Her mother always wears this smug expression on her face – she’s something out of a Jane Austen book, where her only aim in life was to settle her daughter, first into a wealthy household by way of marriage and then into successful employment. Both were achieved.

Well, needless to say, I am not that mother. Don’t want to be. Besides, I’ve never asked this friend what she thought about being married so early. She never questioned it, at least not publicly, but I am not sure she loved being coaxed into domesticity while her friends went abroad for further studies, or ones like me who enjoyed single hood till my twenties ended.

I have no doubt about the reaction my kids would have, if I was to, in some wild imagination, turn into that controlling mother with the all-good intention of planning their lives. There’d be a mutiny, to put it mildly.

So back to the original question. What do I say to my daughters?

I ask, but I think I know the answer.

I am going to let them figure it out for themselves. Limiting their imagination right now for some future dilemma seems unnecessary and frankly foolish. They’ll cross the bridge when they come to it.  Hopefully, I’ll be living on the ground floor, looking after their babies..

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July 24, 2012 · 5:40 am

Analyze This

Here’s something interesting. By and large, I am fairly particular about the house, food , clearing up mess etc (except, of course the odd drawer that’s been stuffed with papers, pens, un-sharpened pencils, random pictures etc). I like a neat house and also like to have a decent, balanced meal for dinner. Except, and this is the weird part, when the hubby leaves town on work.

Now this is strange. When he goes out of town, all my discipline just melts into nothingness and I turn into a kid whose parents are away. I stay up late (really late) reading or watching some complete nonsense on TV (if there’d be better stuff, I’d watch it, but there isn’t), I eat Maggi for dinner (kids still eat the right stuff!) and I don’t bother with too much clearing up either.

I don’t quite understand this. I mean it’s not like I can’t do all that when he’s here or that he demands certain standards from me (he may expect them, but he never vocalizes his wishes when it comes to the house) Yet, when he’s home I want the house to be calm and neat and not resemble the hurricane-hit look that it had just an hour before he returned from work. I like to think about dinner and try and get it all done in time. But, when he’s traveling, I flip to the other side. It’s funny really and I am sure there’s some warped reason in my head for this.

One, could be that at heart, I am not as disciplined as him (and this is true). So left to my own devices, I’d stay up late, wake up late and proceed to ruin the next day, and the next. (He, on the other hand, is an early riser who plays a game of squash every morning before work). So when he leaves, I slip back into this sort-of languid zone.

The other reason could be that I just want to not think about the house for a few days and let things be. I want to look at the papers mixed up with magazines and the felt-pens without their caps and say “darn it”, I am just going to sink into my Maggi soup and my book and ignore the world around me. There’s immense comfort in doing that.

Having said that, now for a word or two in my defense. The fact also is that if he’s gone for more than, say, three days, I get tired of being the recalcitrant kid who’s not being watched and start to berate myself for my indolence. I turn off the idiot box, resist playing Fruit Ninja on my iPad and also don’t read till too late (in the previous three days, I do all three!) I also eat right after the second day (more because I start to worry about the return of the inches).

However, I then go into a cleaning over-drive and spend the next morning cleaning like a possessed-woman. I then tire myself out and get cranky. I also get no work done (am a freelance writer) and then press the panic button. All because I let myself slip for a couple of days!

And, when I speak to the hubby over the phone, he’s more disciplined than ever. Agh.

When he returns, however, the house is as it was when he left and reveals no vestige of the scene that was played just the night before! I never tell him, of course, because he will wonder why this is so – and we don’t like all this wondering and analyzing now, do we?

It has nothing to do with him, but it kind of makes it hard to defend when such behavior coincides with his departure. The best I can say is that because I am not half as disciplined as he is, I don’t want to exactly rub that fact in his face!!

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