Elixir

If you were offered the elixir of immortality, would you take it?

Being eternally young would be awesome wouldn't it? Imagine being, say 15 years old all your life. No aches and pains of a 50 year old, no feeling tired all the time, no kids to worry about or spouse to fight with, no aging parents keeping you awake at night with concern, no bills to pay, no insomnia, eat like a horse and barely gain weight, no doctor visits and health metrics to check on...well you get the idea.

Could there even be a flip side to this? Look around you...all the people around you might not be graced with the same gift. So what happens then? They age and eventually disappear from your life..you watch them go through the aging process and all the attendant issues and finally experience the pain of losing them..while you hang around forever. So this whole eternal youth thing might be overrated.

So what's the middle ground? 

How about being able to time travel for short periods, be a youngster again and then get back to your present day life? Now we're talking! 

And now, how about being able to pick friends you can time travel with?  It's getting warmer!

And how about meeting up in the most beautiful of places, just enjoy each other's company, drink in the scenery, share experiences, fight about what happened years ago, correct the version someone remembers or alter your rememberance of events, laugh about things, cry over some others, get pissed off and calm the hell down. That's much better!

And then go back, back to your present day life, altered, but feeling still the same, at your age but somehow feeling younger, waking up from a sweet dream with that feeling of joy bubbling within you but not regretting being woken up because you know you can do it again. Bingo!

Well, this past weekend, we managed to do just that. Thirteen of us who had gone to undergraduate school together back in India and graduated thirty years ago, decided to meet up in scenic Georgetown, Colorado. We booked tickets, set up accommodation, planned and stocked up on food, checked out things to do at Georgetown, googled restaurants and breweries and generally were sure we had taken care of everything. 

This get together was months in the making, but like everything in life, things took an interesting turn the day we were all flying in.

A software update to a security code happening in Texas, made blue screens pop up everywhere..Intel had it bad but so did hospitals, and ofcourse airlines. The cascade of delays began early in the morning and we still haven't seen the end of it. We were all flying in from every corner of the US and very few of us escaped unscathed. 

As inauspicious as flight delays might sound, we did manage to coordinate meet ups in the airport, shared rental cars and managed to congregate at a friend's house in Denver. The thrill of seeing classmates we hadn't seen in 30 years was already making us feel a few years younger. After a quick dinner, we set out to the AirBnB we had rented when the second snafu hit. A typo had been made in the address and so the first set of people trying to get to the place had an adventurous thirty minutes not getting shot while trying to check door numbers and backyards and finding the right house. And all this close to midnight on Friday. We finally made it in and the party started!

People trickled in into the wee hours of the morning and we gradually woke up Saturday all excited about catching up on 30 years worth of each of our lives. Hiking on green filled trails on the lakeshore while talking over each other and trying to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of each other's lives, laughing at stuff that had been jogged in our memory by someone, sighing while remembering classmates we had lost in the in between years, all the while feeling the years dropping away. Back at the house, we settled in the sunny backyard while the menfolk tried out the kayaks and also a funky wig our resident naughty imp had brought with him. We were all clicking pictures like crazy and posting them online in all the whatsapp groups that our college friends had. But most of us weren't stuck to our phones, like we would usually have been on a lazy Saturday. 

Lunch at a brewery nearby while playing musical chairs with each other before finally settling in and placing our orders. Sharing food and camaraderie and ribbing the teetotellers while passing around tater tots and fries. Loud and rambunctious, the years  still falling away,  we finally wound up lunch and walked back home. 

Hearts and tummies full, we congregated in the lowest floor of the house and chatted away for the better part of a couple of hours until it was coffee time. 

A quick visit to church and a stroll  through downtown, followed by a pizza dinner and a walk down memory lane with a renowned young singer made us feel even more younger.. we were almost back in college. And then there was an impromptu open hearted conversation about our time back in college which became not just nostalgic but also cathartic for some, maybe all. Bedtime was actually Sunday morning and waking up knowing we had to wind up was painful..but we made the most of the half day we had before checking out. More beautiful hikes and breakfast followed by a drone operated photo session and finally it was time to leave. A quick check of the house to make sure everything was ship shape and then we were off. Back to our friend's house in Denver, lunch and more chatting and joking and laughter before we started our heart heavy trip back to the airport for our flights home.

With flight delays and really long security lines, the last of us got home in the wee hours of Tuesday morning  and we all eventually turned 50+ again. Back to the grind of daily life. Jobs to go to, houses to manage, calories to watch,  steps to count, traffic to fume over, politics to rage about, and ofcourse, family. 

Why should family be just defined by relatedness? Why can it not be defined by shared experiences? Doesn't the fact that kids barely stepping out of their teenage years ,congregating in a college for four solid years,  living and breathing and studying and gaining knowledge and experience and losing and winning in life together make us family?

When our parents sent us off to Karaikudi,  we were all seventeen or eighteen year old. We all shed our childhood in the ensuing four years and graduated not just with a degree in Engineering, but as adults ready to face the world. That was what all of us did together. We grew up together.  We grew up in the same house, ACCET. Almost siblings? Weren't we?

I can see the imp rolling his eyes already because I married a classmate...stop!

So we are all back in our respective homes, but still feeling high. And this high will last a while. Hopefully until we meet again. And hopefully very soon. 

Waking from a lovely dream usually is not welcome. But this one was.  Reality is fine. Because we know we can recreate that dream again. Our first attempt, I would say was a roaring success and all of us I'm sure would agree that more meet ups are warranted. When and where is TBD. But when you're family, the minutiae doesn't matter. We'll get it done!

Here's to a reunion again, soon!

How to Train your Dragon

They have their paddles up in the air shimmering in the sunlight. They wave it around and just like that, we are done. Done for the season. We walk back to the tent, and start packing up. We are all tired, but our hearts feel full. We practiced three days a week for almost eight weeks and here were are putting away our gear until April of next year.

Our entire weekend was spent at the waterfront. We were there both days from  morning to evening and we loved every minute of it. Our teams participated on both days and our paddlers walked off the boats tired, but happy. We didn't win any medals or championships, but we were there. With everybody else, competing with everyone and not having concessions made for us. We were, for the last two days, just paddlers and unless people noticed, which quite a few did, just a bit slower than a lot of other dragon boats. With our blazing fluorescent green jerseys, our custom made paddles (quite a few of us have them), and with our enthusiasm, we belonged. 

Noel has been doing this a few years but the veteran paddler on the boat has been doing this for more than 20 years now. Longer than Noe has been around on this earth. But I look around at his fellow paddlers and I am overwhelmed with emotion. We have a sweet sweet sixty four year old who recently celebrated her birthday. She loves purple and is generally decked out in purple from head to toe. We have a hearing impaired but very enthusiastic paddler who needs a lot of help getting in and out of the boat, but boy does he make noise! We have our sober veteran paddler who stays so very Zen that sometimes you fail to notice her. We have our Special Olympics star who is up on the slopes snowboarding in the morning  but ready with his paddle by evening at the waterfront. We have our noisy ones and our cool ones and our friendly ones and our aloof ones and our fidgety ones and our preternaturally calm ones and our severely impacted ones and our ‘on the cusp of normal’ ones. Almost like a microcosm of the special needs world, almost like a microcosm of the universe. And almost all of them, from the teenager to the sixty year old, never ever complain. They practice in the rain and the wind and the blazing sun and the cold. Nothing holds them back. For supposedly being special needs, they all are so flexible and cheery about everything that I admire their resilience and wonder if this is how God actually intended all humanity to be? I'm sure they do have their bad days, but we've never had to stop practice or cut it short or have a boat return to dock to accommodate any of them.

But more than all, we have the parents and volunteers.

The parents, devoted, long suffering, patient and participating in the sport because their kid wants in. Driving them back and forth, paddling if needed, waiting at the dock to help them on and off the boat and taking hours off their schedule three days a week for two months straight. Knowledgeable, welcoming and helpful, I've made friends with a quite a few and I will forever be grateful to the person who first mentioned dragon boats to us, because as much as Noe enjoys this whole thing, I love being here, surrounded by people who have been around the block on this journey I am on with Noe currently, and are so very generous with their time  and knowledge and resources. And just to be friends, sharing recipes and the inside scoop on spices and laughing at our kids' and their antics on and off the boat.

What can I say about our volunteers? Words fail me. Most of our volunteers have no blood ties on the boat. They are just along there for the ride because they want to help. Help our kids. Help them achieve what once would have been unthinkable. A place at the table. Help them make their presence felt. Make the world take notice. And notice the world does. And all credit goes to our magnificent volunteers.

In an ultra competitive sport where the actual race lasts barely over three minutes, a lot of our volunteers are actually paddlers on neurotypical boats and have to consciously slow themselves down and literally let the boat run. We have paddlers with muscle tone issues, and paddlers with hearing issues and almost to the last one, our paddlers are in it to paddle, not necessarily win. Tamping down that competitive spirit and letting the specials call the shots must be torture! But they do, they take their cues from the specials and just go with the flow. We almost always come in last, but none of the specials are disappointed, they walk out with a grin, everyone tired and panting and wanting to rest, but there is no ruminating on the loss or strategizing for the next race. And our volunteers go along. They don't take the loss personally. They cheer on our team and move on to the next race. 

And they come back, year after year and help and guide and cheer and comfort the specials. They put up with the muscle aches and the allergies and the strain of guiding the specials. Three days a week, a minimum of a three hour chunk every time to be devoted to practice, and an entire weekend dedicated to our team. I am awed by their devotion. I know enough parents with special needs kids who do not do as much as our volunteers do. The volunteers do not go home to a special needs person, but they have what it takes to love one and work with them. I am a firm believer in Karma, and I know they are all collecting good karma in spades. More than the  parents I would venture to say. We do it because our kids are in there. They do it for our kids plain and simple. 

So as I sit here typing this, my heart is full. When you think about your special needs kid, your one major fear is about how they will survive in this big bad world. But a weekend at the Rose Festival Dragon Boat races at Portland, Oregon will give you hope, and reassure you that the world, for all the nonsense going on currently, is still at heart, a good place. Every time our specials walked off the boat and up the dock, the ovation they received from the public was rousing and raucous. Our specials probably didn't know the significance, but every parent there knew, knew that they were being applauded and accepted and appreciated.  I don't know what their struggles might be elsewhere, but there on the shores of the Willamette, the second weekend of June, we were content!

And that means a lot to us. Until next year, paddles up Wasabi Special Dragons!!

R is for Remember

Sorry I'm dragging this one on so much. The experience was really life changing and not in a positive way.

Waking up on Friday, we gave thanks that yet another tree hadn't fallen to add to our misery and then opened our bedroom window to peek at the damage. The tree!! Boy was it a large one!! This one was spread all over the backyard.

On further inspection it looked like a tree in our neighbor's yard had fallen on another tree in his yard and both had fallen into our backyard. And along the way they had managed to crash a sugarplum tree in our yard and take it with them. Three trees ..trouble comes in threes I guess. 

Yet another neighbor of ours came in on Friday and helped us board up both the windows very securely, and managed to  cut away part of the tree so we could access the windows from outside. Power came back by afternoon and we were warm and almost close to normal once again. The thaw was pretty steady after that and by Saturday we were really really back to our lives the way it had been seven days ago.

Insurance should take care of most of the expenses and overall we came away much less affected than a lot of people we know. My Tai chi teacher had a tree go through her roof and will probably have to demolish and rebuild her house, six to eight months work. All their possessions stuck there and damaged probably by the elements of nature.

And Portland overall has been pummeled. Numerous trees down, quite a few on houses, some fatalities and in general, the fury of nature has left us massive reminders. The clean up is going to take time. We still have the darn tree staring at us and today might be the day it might get cleaned up. The windows are going to take much longer. They are usually ordered on demand and take time. So we are going to be left with scars of this storm for quite some time. 

But they also serve as lessons. Valuable ones. Like don’t mess around with nature. You never win.The imagery that came to mind was that of a tigress lazing around with her cub who keeps being annoying, nibbling her ear, grabbing her tail or in general being a pest. The mother puts up with this for a while and when her patience is finally exhausted, she lets out a mighty roar that literally peels the pants off the cub, who cowers at her feet, ears flattened, eyes beseeching.

Nature is our mother. We all came from her and she never ceases being the mother. We do not ever outgrow nature. We don’t go off and become independent . We will never hit a point where we don't need her. She is the one who keeps us alive. Feeding us, clothing us, sustaining us, giving us shelter.  All the supposed advancements that men have achieved? Peanuts compared to what she has gives and continue to give us. And when we are pared down to our basics, we are just muscle and bone with skin over it and all that is needed to sustain us is within nature.

Lose power and you find the value of fire. Lose power and you find the value of warmth. Walk in the dark and learn the value of light. Worry about your refrigerator going off and learn the value of fresh food. Frozen water pipes teach us the value of fresh water. After all, what we need to survive is food, shelter and clothing( optional no??). Nature has it,all of it.  Maybe in an unrefined form but it is all there.

When humans decided to 'tame' nature to their whims, nature waited and watched patiently. Centuries of 'advancement ' which included defiling nature just for our benefit.  Forests decimated, waterways rerouted, artificial materials dumped into oceans and released into the atmosphere. She waited and watched. 

Our neighborhood used to be a Christmas tree farm or some such thing. It was cleared away to build houses. A few trees were left behind I guess. Large firs with fibrous roots tend to be clumped together  and the roots intertwine underground and hold them all together in a rock solid bond. But indiscriminate chopping and leaving lone trees or trees farther apart, so the house can be built just so, or for nothing other than aesthetic purposes, backfired this time. Bending nature to our will for selfish purposes when nature has her own reasoning for things never is a good idea. We've learnt that firsthand. Painful lesson this. 

So it all depends on how much we will pay heed to nature. We can always start small. Have sustainable practices at home like reducing the use of plastic. Recycling as much as possible. Reducing food waste. Composting.Reusing things as much as possible. Using water sensibly. Planting native species in the garden. Small baby steps, but will definitely count when enough people do it.

Respect nature and most important of all, remember. Remember how it feels to have nature take revenge on you for all the abuse heaped on her. You will not make it, unless you heed her not so gentle reminders.

R is for Rage.

Wednesday evening was really a weird experience. The realization that you had been forced to leave your house and you wouldn't be able to stay there because of reasons beyond your control was swirling in my mind. While we loaded the dishwasher and prepped a meal and sat around the table, all that I could think of was how we had to make the difficult choice of whether to stay home or leave. Nature felt threatening at that point. We were at its mercy.  But we had made it home safe and sound and the power was back on, the house was warm, the water was hot and our beds were cozy and were ours to sleep in! Well, that was that. Back to good old life with all its everyday occurrences.

Thursday began all clear and calm, apart from the occasional wind gust. We went about our usual routine. Noel had no school on account of burst pipes and such in  most school campuses. The harvest festival back home had been drowned out in this mad storm and to make up for it, I made three traditional dishes that Noel ate with so much relish that I was happy we could leave our memorable experience of the last few days behind. 

Noel had therapy at 4.00 in the evening and I set him up online and walked downstairs to brew a cup of tea for myself. Fifteen minutes later, the power went out. That literally sent a chill through me. All the memories of the last few days came rushing back and I looked out the window. The wind was picking up and the rain was not heavy but since the temperature had barely made it past freezing, it was literally icing up when it hit the snow from the previous few days. Bad, but hey we had made it through one event, and if we sit tight, another one should be a breeze isnt it? Wrong!

While the cold was making us uncomfortable, it wasn't as bad as it has been the past weekend and it was manageable. Since we had done it once before, we prepared dinner, ate it and as usual set up things for bed. But this time we decided to lug three mattresses from upstairs and line them up in front of the furnace. We all remembered our hips hurting every time we slept on our side the previous Saturday night when we only had comforters between us and the hardwood floors. Funnily, everything seemed easier this time around because we felt confident about what to do. And the forecast was for icy rain only until the next morning. The wind gusts were strong, but if trees had held fast the last time around, why wouldn't they do so now?

We settled down around 7.30 p.m in the living room, Noe lounging on the temporary beds set up on the floor, and Manny, Vincent and I on the couches encircling the makeshift beds, all huddling as close to the fireplace as possible.We each had a device in hand, a phone or a Kindle and were engrossed in whatever it is we were watching/ reading. 

About fifteen minutes in, we heard the loudest thud possible like something had fallen on the house and we all sprung up in a fright. Speaking for myself, I stood rooted to the spot because I was sure there would be something falling through to the floor of the house soon. And the sound seemed to come a bit farther from where we all were. The silence following the fall was literally deafening, except for the wind gusting outside, an eerie whistling.

Probably 20 seconds in, we started talking all at the same time. And we rushed to the staircase, climbing up really fast, anticipating the worst. My nightmare was that we would see the sky through a gaping hole in the roof, with the icy rain falling on the carpeted floors. And a tree trunk splotch in the middle of it.

We had kept all the doors, upstairs and downstairs closed to conserve heat. So we went upstairs and opened the door straight ahead and literally braked to a stop. That was Manny's bedroom and his window( which we had installed only in 2022) was in the process of crumbling to the carpeted floor. The glass was tempered and so it didnt break or shatter. It was like watching glass breaking in slow motion. But it was falling right onto the floor and the clinking with every bit that fell. All of us were watching slack jawed as it cascaded slowly to the floor. We promptly stepped back afraid we would step on glass..that would be like adding insult to injury. Unfortunately, there was netting behind the glass and with the darkness beyond we couldn't see much on what precipitated this breakage.

In a minute it hit us that if the upstairs was messed up, then the area just below was probably affected too.

The room exactly below that room was our master bathroom. So we trudged below to see what had happened there. We had just opened the bedroom door when we heard it. The wind. It was howling so loudly. We walked in and slid the bathroom door open and the full fury of the wind and rain hit us. The horizontal pleated blinds over the window was billowing into the house and the same slow motion glass fall was happening.  Except this was collecting in our jacuzzi tub( which was exactly underneath the window) which by now had an inch of glass in it and more falling in. And we looked up straight  at a tree waving in the wind.  If we could reach out and if the jacuzzi wasn't in our way, we'd have been able to touch it. Whoa!!

This time we weren't just slack jawed but stood with our mouths agape, rooted to the spot with no words being exchanged at all. 

Ten seconds and we unfroze. Thoughts racing, we came alive to the biting cold. The temperature was still below freezing and now that the window(s) were open to the outside world, the air came rushing in. 

First observation: the tree seemed to have only struck the windows and the pointy top end was what we were looking at. Which meant that the roof was intact and not damaged. Or so we hoped. 

Second: we needed to stop the wind and rain coming in the house, else we would freeze to death literally. 

Our neighbor had heard the noise and we could see flashlights bobbing in his front yard. We yelled out to him to come in and the blessed guy, we are forever indebted to him, slipped and slid and made it to our house. We all stood staring at the mess and we finally decided that tarpaulin might do the trick short term.  

It took us an hour, but we managed to use a cordless drill and tarpaulin and seal both the windows. All this, while gingerly walking around the broken glass on the floor. Flashlights held just so, flapping tarpaulin held tight, screws handed out at exact intervals, reminders yelled out about not stepping on the glass, all the while the mind churning..are we safe?

We had already observed really tall trees in our neighbor's yard swaying like mad in the wind and if one of those was what we saw through our window, there were a few more  left doing that mad dance. Would they fall? And considering the direction this one fell in, the possibility that they would fall on our house was almost one hundred percent. They were all over fifty feet tall and as much as our house was set back from the neighbor's fence, they could reach our roof. We had proof of that staring right through our windows. Did a weak tree fall? Or was it a healthy one? What was the chnce there were more weak trees? Or what if that really didn't matter?

Peering into the darkness through the window in our bedroom looking up these trees backlit by an eerie white sky, we could see them almost bend with the furious wind. And to me it seemed, one of the taller ones would fall straight through our roof into our living room. The one where we had our fireplace and the one where we had set up our beds.

I shared my concerns with Vincent and we decided to move into the family room near the kitchen. It was much smaller,  but atleast to me, it seemed like it was safer than the living room. Mostly it seemed like it was out of the way of the trees.  

So we dragged the mattresses, only two would fit there, and lined them up. Manny decided to sleep on the couch. It was close to ten o' clock by then. We wearily went to bed. 

Vincent did another funny thing. He made us pack our bags one more time. Just in case a tree fell on the house and we had to leave. But I had to remind him that we were well and truly stuck. With icy roads all over, how would we drive? Where would we go? But we did pack, just for our peace of mind and left our bags by the garage door. By that time, I had hit rock bottom in my mind. And then I decided that if this is what God had in store for us, then this is what we would do. Trust in him and close our eyes in slumber.

But we barely slept, Vincent and I. Every wind gust had us lift our heads from the pillow and sharpen our ears for any scary noise. The creak of a tree breaking, the whoosh of a tree sailing through the air,the thud of a tree falling.This happened the entire night, but without any of these things happening. 

Morning dawned and we were all alive and well, albeit a little wary of what we would find outside the window.

Can I tell you more in the next post?

R is for Rainbow

 When you are over fifty I think the shock value of things goes up. Like saying, "In all my fifty years, I've never seen this ever happen !" has a certain zing to it.

I got that chance a couple of weeks ago. Not fifty but twenty seven. That is the number of years I've lived here in the US, in Portland specifically and yeah, I've seen nothing like this ever! Then I spoke to my 79 year old neighbor and she said she hasn't seen anything like this in her entire life and just like that my protestation bombed out!

Anyway, the forecast did call for winds in the 40 mphs and temperature in the teens. But what was not accounted for was the heavy rain that preceded this event.That had loosened the roots of tall plants, which I learnt from this bitter experience, have fibrous roots, and the deep freeze hardened said roots and the wind gusts toppled them like dominoes.

We were all warm and cozy, making videos of the snow swirling around in the blowing wind thinking about the fact that it always deposited itself in our frontyard.

And just like that, the power went out.

Well, no biggie. They will work on it soon. Maybe when the storm abates, which should be by end of day? Right? Boy we didn't know then how wrong we were!

We hunkered down, ate lunch, huddled in front of the one working furnace in the house, and gradually, ever gradually the temperature in the house started falling. From the seventies to the forties is a long ride and by the time that happened,the chill was biting and we were in the dark, with candles nd flashlights guiding us from room to room. We became aware of how reliant we were on electricity. No microwave, no dishwasher, no refrigerator. Water and heat was not a problem, but still one felt handicapped by things that were no longer working as they should be. But we managed to cook dinner, eat it, dump all the plates in the sink and run off to bed. Bed, being three comforters put over the carpet in the living room, followed by pillows and multiple comforters and blankets for warmth. We were all lined up close to each other just to retain as much body heat as possible. The furnace was still running but it was no match for the rapidly falling temperatures that started to actually make us shiver. Dressed in socks and gloves and jackets in addition to pajamas, we still felt it. 

A fitful sleep and come morning we woke up to bone chilling cold in the house. Brushing was torture, the water was very cold. We managed to brew coffee and drink it to warm ourselves. But it was no longer cozy in the house. Breakfast done, we became aware that this was not sustainable. If it were warmer, we'd make it. But with the temperature barely rising to about 20 degrees F, we knew that we'd have to do something. Vincent took a walk around the neighborhood and came back home convinced that power would not be restored anytime soon. He had seen firsthand, the destruction, but in hindsight, that was just a fraction of what it turned out to be. We decided to wait out the mess in a hotel room.

That part was not the difficult one. We managed to snag a room for two nights at a hotel and since there was yet another smaller ice storm forecast for Wednesday, we booked another  room in another hotel, planning to come back home on Wednesday when the temperatures were expected to hit the forties by afternoon, melting away this whole mess. Power was restored Monday evening but we chose to stay out until Wednesday. 

Wednesday came around and everything had been going according to plan and we packed up at the hotel and drove back home sighing in relief and anticipating a slide back into routine, when the first roadblock hit. The temperatures were still stuck below freezing at 1.00 o'clock in the afternoon and the Highlander couldn't make the slope up to our house. Damn!

We drove back into the neighborhood at the bottom of ours and parked the van which promptly started sliding in the ice. Vincent managed to somehow park it in a flat area without crashing into any of the vehicles on the street, and between the three of us, Vincent and Manny and myself, we slipped on tire socks around the front wheels. It involved clinging to the vehicle and sliding and slipping to the wheel, holding the rim and slowly settling yourself on your knees and slipping the sock in, and all this at below freezing temperatures. Have you tried putting on  leggings one size too small for you? That would be a cakewalk considering the effort to make a tire sock wrap a tire. After spending a precious hour on the two socks, we finally drove up the slope to our house one more time, but nope! No go. The vehicle still couldn't make it up the icy slope. What now?

We skulked back to a Grocery store/ Deli where we could sit and figure out what to do. We kept tracking the temperature rise and at 4.00 o'clock, it was supposed to hit 34 degrees F and that might melt the ice enough for us to make it home.

So back we drove home and this time, it worked! Man!

Walking into a toasty warm house where the heater had been running and the lights were on ( because we had left them on before we left) was the happiest feeling on earth! The relief!

Little did we know that the worst was yet to come.

Time and tide

If you are fifty, then thirty-five is about seventy percent of your life. So, reconnecting with someone you haven't seen that long is in itself a gratifying experience. But when that period of no contact is filled with pretty much all of life's significant events, that reconnection becomes all the more memorable. After all, when you meet people whom you last saw when all of you were in school uniforms and slogging away at chemistry and physics and math while hitting puberty and all the attendant issues, you really, really have a lot to catch up on. 

We were really barely sprouting wings then, and then in the blink of an eye, seemingly, we are sprouting grey hairs and painful joints. 

We weren't exactly best friends in school or anything, but our orbits intersected sometimes.  It was probably taking the same bus to school, or a shared love of basketball,  or common friends from back in school. But the moment the idea germinated, it was taken up by all of us and there we were, the day after Christmas, sitting at an Indian restaurant, drinking tea and rose milk and soda and munching on idli and dosas. That in itself I think, makes one feel the emotions of childhood rushing back into one's bloodstream. After all what can be more thrilling than feeling fifteen again, munching what was everyday food for us back then?

We all started filling in the gaps very tentatively, and managed to catch up on most of what had gone on in our lives. We were loud and raucous and jumping between English and Tamil. But it struck me later- our children and their goings on filled most of our conversation. We had extremely professional women in high positions at the table, but the talk was about the kids and their shenanigans. Husbands  were casually mentioned in the conversation, but we kept swiveling back to the kids. Their schooling, jobs, talents, love life. 

And then there was the common bane of almost all  women hitting the half century - perimenopause and its horrors. Hot flushes were discussed in great detail, followed by falling hair and flooding periods and birth control and endometrial ablation and hysterectomy ..the list goes on.  Using hair dyes was a side discussion!

Travel seems to be another hot topic. All of us seemed to like it and there was talk of past trips and future plans.

In the blink of an eye, time was up and since we all had things lined up to be done that day, we had to break up the reunion and get back to being 50 year olds again.

But the feeling I walked away with was contentment, a sense of joy that after thirty five years and innumerable milestones that each of us had individually and collectively hit  we could always be those eager, enthusiastic, wide eyed kids with the world before us, discussing our greatest achievements- our kids.

Lovely reunion! Here's to many more years of reunions, however fleeting!

Squishy Bits

 Had my Mammogram today.

That single sentence conjures up a laugh, a smirk, a slight pit in your stomach and a shrug with that feeling it's not a big deal. Manny is old enough to have a discussion about it with me without feeling embarrassed or rolling his eyes, but even he had a clip from 'House' to play to me and laugh over.

I have been having mammograms annually for the last ten years. The first one was obviously excruciating because it was the first time and for an, ahem, well endowed person like me, getting all the squishy bits on the machine was a task and then they sandwich it between two X-ray plates...whoa!! The unease! Memorable! And to top it all, they called me on a Friday afternoon telling me that they found some irregularities and wanted me to come over for another mammogram and if needed, an ultrasound. And the earliest appointment they had was on Monday morning. Wait a minute, I remember writing about this in a blog post from looooong ago...anyway, it is a new experience every time, so I'll keep going. 

That was my worst weekend ever. You worry about not just yourself, but your family. You imagine their struggles with you gone forever. Your kids are still small and you know your husband would be devastated. I was 41 then and the fact that you might have a terminal disease was a horrendous thing to face and my entire weekend was misery. But come Monday, I went in, was given the all clear, and then I went on a tirade with my PCP about the thoughtlessness of the scheduling personnel who left me hanging for an entire two days with the worst fear ever. So she referred me to another imaging place where they have mammograms as well as ultrasound  facilities available, so that, if a mammogram is iffy, you are sent right away for the ultrasound and then things proceed from there.

So starting 2015, I've been going to the same place and have become comfortable walking in there. I've been lucky for a few years when I've had the same technician who squishes my bits every year. But every single year, you stand there having the procedure done, and wonder, is this the year you are going to be caught? And this year my appointment was for a Friday the thirteenth, ha! Considering the fact that breast cancer is pretty prevalent these days and I do have a family history(well, one unmarried aunt in her late 60s, but still) of the thing, you are never sure. A very close friend of mine is a survivor and I know a couple of other acquaintances who have been through the struggle.

So you stand there, holding your breath like they ask you to and wonder. You look anywhere but at the machine doing its thing and think of other things to keep you from freaking out and your ears are sharpened to figure out if the technician takes a quick breath in. You try to look at her, does her facial expression change? Does she look worried all of a sudden?

 I remember they used to have the screen up where you can see it until a few years ago, I remember looking at the images with no expertise whatever and trying to make sense of it. Does it seem ok? Are those white patches normal? Luckily they've taken the screens away and so I don't have to freak out at stuff I know nothing about. 

A mammogram is a weird procedure, you have a stranger touch you very intimately and you are supposed to keep a straight face. Generally there is an air of embarrassment in the room, which is remedied by the technician's light banter. Today she asked me what my plans for the weekend was. Mindless replies, questions about your kids...more standard replies. She, it is always a she, thank God, walks away to do her thing at the screen and you wait to see if she stops talking. Does her tone change? Worried voice? I sound like a sissy, but this is me at my mammogram every year. 

Today, she wanted a repeat of one scan and my heart was on the floor. Damn!! I'm starting to freak out. But deep breaths in, hold your breath for the machine to scan and its done.

She is typing away and after a few minutes, tells me she has sent it to the in house radiologist and will be back with my results. And then she says, " You can change into your clothes, I'll be back." and walks away. That's when you notice that you have been holding your breath in all that time. If they do not need follow up images, that is a good sign. She can actually see my past scans and if she cannot pick up any anomalies, there is a good chance that radiologist cannot either. While she cannot give me the all clear because she is a mere technician, she can atleast set my mind at ease. Which she did in the subtlest way possible, "Change into your clothes".

Two minutes later, official paper saying my scan was clear in hand, she walks in, gives me the all clear, wishes me  a happy weekend and ushers me out.

And I walk out into the sunshine, and get in my car and drive home. Rinse and repeat, next year and the year after and on and on.

But there might be a woman walking in today who will be asked to stay longer, have more tests and given a referral for further tests or for an Oncologist. Someone for whom, today marks a before and after segue.

And so, thank God for his mercy and grace and care. He gives us burdens we can bear, and the strength to bear them, and the faith to fight the good fight.