Thirty five

-->

I am thirty-five years old. But I honestly don’t know when I stopped being 25. When I look back, it’s like the last ten years are blurry and yet filled with so much clarity. Make sense? Maybe it doesn’t, I seldom do. Besides fine (and not so fine lines), gravity playing havoc with parts of my body and a few grey hair, age to me, like my father loves to say, is just a number.  

And I thought long and hard about this while grappling with this new number that now defines me as a thirty five year old woman. What does that mean? Do I need start dressing different? Should I fight the urge to say ‘that’s what she said’ at let the sexual innuendos pass without so much as a smirk from me? Should I organize play-dates with tea and cake instead of wine and pizza? Should I stop taking selfies and looking for perfect filters that will make skin glow and teeth sparkle? Should I talk slower and gesticulate less? Should I not about my boobs and orgasms at public places? Fuck that. I will forever be inappropriate, even my number is  88 and my teeth are fake and tits wrinkled.

But also, how can I be thirty-five when I still throw tantrums with my mother? I stomp my feet and hold my breath. How could I be  thirty five when I’ m a teenager when I sit with my friend’s staring intently at instagram stories and talking about mental nights and nursing I am dying, I just did ulti on my pillow hangovers. How can I be thirty five when I feel like a child  when my daughter and I make up dances and songs, colour outside the lines and laugh wildly at nothing at all.

So I am not 35 at all.  I am what papa says, I am as old as I feel.

It’s about how I feel during moments that have woven my life together, creating my story, one stitch at a time. And not every stitch is perfect; in fact so many have come apart... but the number thirty-five has taught me that it’s perfectly fine if they do.

TWO

-->

Dear Anaya or Nunu that you so proudly call yourself with a mouthful of spit and a baby lisp,

How can a person so little, with such few words, communicate with me in ways no one else ever has? My little girl you never cease to amaze me, and you aren’t even two yet.

Wow, two years.  At the risk of sounding like an old lady sitting on her front porch, cleaning her blotchy spectacles, I will say it nonetheless, it feels like only yesterday when the doctor handed you into my arms. You yelled at your new reality and me and I welcomed you half in awe and half in ‘what the f have I done! Will my life and my once beautiful friend Vaj… um… Vajanti ever be the same?’

But we’ve come a long way haven’t we? I don’t just love you like a daughter, I love you for the little person that you are growing into.

Your love for animals and fart jokes. Your loud laugher and dizzy dance moves. Your tiny kisses and 10 second massages. Your love for noodles and bites of papa’s dark chocolate. Your descriptive eyes and buck- toothed smile.

Oh, how I love you. I want to break into song about my love for you, but I’ve weighed the pros and cons and this lullaby will probably wake you.  In my head it will sound like Madonna in Evita but to you it will sound like a baby seal choking on a gum-ball. Good lord, sorry, I keep going off on a tangent, don’t I?  I hope you have a better attention span than your old woman.

 So where was I….aaah, yes..

As you lie next to me right now, wiggling in your sleep, I’m trying really hard not to drown you in my sloppy mamma kisses. Since you’ve come into my life, you have become my bestest homie…. Homedawg… bff…. Best biatch. And no matter how shitty my day is, even the semi- atheist in me thanks the sweet bhagwan that I have you to come home to.   When you run towards me, yelling  “mamma.. there mamma” every thing negative inside me shrinks. My silly fight with a papa over whatsapp, or a petty comment that plays in my head on a loop… whatever it might be, you and your magnificent baby hugs have the power to make it all vanish. Because you remind me of what’s important. Not pettiness, or jealousy, or anger. But stories, kisses, dances, bow- bows, birdies and the many adventures that lie in the parp (park).

Please don’t grow up, mama needs you.

OK now stop wiggling and go to sleep.

 There are Netflix shows to watch.