One Step Forward, Two Steps Back...

The only alarm clock in our house starts shrieking! 

Heavens above, it is 9.00 a.m.!! 

We are late for school! Again!!! 

How??? Wasn't everything running as per schedule today?? 

Seriously, HOW?? 

Forget it, I tell myself!! Let’s not cry over spilt milk. 

The more sensible should concentrate on how to rectify the situation instead. 

But try as I might, I cannot get rid of that giant cloud of stress that now seems determined to engulf me and leave me disjointed! I don’t want to end up with yet another polite admonishment from the principal of the Vs school. Her soft and genteel yet firm tone makes me feel like a nervous and gawky school child all over again. I have to physically stop myself from giving in to the urge of biting my nails and shifting from one foot to the other when she carries on about how "the boys miss the morning warm-up activities when they show up late and for their sakes, we don’t really want that, do we?" 

I don’t know what the morning warm-up does for my boys but I know what another reprimand this morning will do to my mood through the day. 

So like a general laying out the marching orders for his troops, I scream, “Move!! Move now!”. 

Not much happens. 

V1 is busy going down the stairs with his head down and V2 is trying to pull the pants off his brother! 

I have no time to be patient today. 

So I get down to business. “Stop that NOW! Else I am going to strap you in your buggy and I will push you to school like a baby. You want to be a big boy? Then behave like one!” I say in a voice that would have sent shivers down the spine of a lesser soul. 

But again, it's all water off a duck's back as they say. V1 is now rolling on the floor, pretending to be a caterpillar now and V2 refuses to budge till he gets some Ribena. 

Aargh! It has taken us 8 minutes to climb down one floor and get our coats and boots on. 

And we haven’t even started!! 

There is still a half mile walk ahead to school. 

A walk, that on any given day, since I’m no Roger Bannister, takes me about 7-8 minutes; 15 if I’m walking with one child (on the days when one needs to reach early for a trip or when the other is unwell…) and 30 long minutes if I am walking with both brats, more on some days, but never less!!! 

Anyway, we have made it out of the door. 

“NOOOOOO. NO. NO. NO. Do NOT….” I start screaming! 

Too late! 

Even before I can finish my sentence, both my boys have jumped into the puddle right outside our door. They are wet; soaked to the skin, laughing gleefully while I am now stressed calculating the extra time we will spend in changing clothes and simultaneously trying to quell the desire to pull my hair out with my own bare hands!!! 

“Calm down” I keep chanting, over and over again. “Any yelling and shouting will only delay you further”. 

Especially if V2 starts crying and then coughing and eventually vomiting as he has taken to doing these days each time I get annoyed. 

I ring the bell, call for Nanny to bring a fresh set of clothes and start taking long, deep breaths to calm myself down. 

It’s now 9.13am. 

Not bad. 

Working with the speed and efficiency of a F1 pit crew, Nanny and I have managed to finish changing both brats in just under 5 minutes.. 

We might, just might, be able to make it before the school gates close! 

Naah! I spoke too soon! Didn’t I mention in the other post how your child will do everything he can to slow down Time each time you are in a hurry? How could I forget what I preached not so long ago??? 

We make a few more stops along the road. 

There is a snail lying squashed on the road, begging my sons to investigate and avenge its wrongful death. 

“Who squashed it Mamma?” 

“Why Mamma? Was it aak-see-dent or willi-be-rate (accident or deliberate)?” 

“Can we punish naughty man who squash him?”

So many questions that Scotland Yard would be proud of, but I have no time for. Not today. 

“C’mon move now. Mamma will be punished if we aren’t on time” I say and nudge them along. 

Not for long. 

After about 5 steps, at a pace slower than the dead snail's; were it able to move, that is, we bump into the neighbour’s black Persian, hiding in the bushes by their gate. Ignoring the haughty and contemptuous look that she reserves especially for my boys, they plead “Minnie cat, please come to me’s house”. "Here, take my orange juice, Minnie cat". The more they plead, the more scornful her glances get. Finally feeling sorry for them, I kindly drag them away, while trying to assuage their shaken ego, “Minnie cat likes you. Yes, really. But she cannot come to your house till her Mamma says so”.

And then things just go downhill from there…. 

First we bump into the Fox in our neighbourhood and I wait impatiently while the boys issue another set of invitations that go unacknowledged. 

Then we stop to pick dandelions to offer to the 6 and half foot tall Viking man-teacher, who V2 calls his best friend these days. 

And they follow these up with a conversation with the amused handyman on the roof about why he is not working naked (read shirtless) today, completely oblivious to the fact that now I am squirming with embarrassment! 

After endless “what’s this Mamma” and “who’s that” and not to mention, a fight at the signal about whose turn it is to press the button for the traffic light today and a bout of poking each other with their umbrellas, I am really, really close to losing it. 

“Enough!” I say. “I am so so annoyed. We take this same road every day. We see the same things every single day. Do you really need to stop every single day to look at them?” I yell in frustration. 

And just as soon as those words leave my mouth, an image flashes into my mind.
I remember a promise I made to myself years ago, while travelling on a train in Switzerland. 

It was 7yrs ago, and in the midst of watching the breath-taking scenery with my mouth wide open in wonder and awe, I turned around to see a few fellow travellers, unaffected by the beauty outside, busy on their laptops; each face a veneer of politeness, but barely masking the boredom and impatience they were feeling. “Commuters” explained my forever reasonable husband as I stared at them in shock. 

“If I ever were so lucky as to be a commuter on this route, even if I were to take this journey a thousand times, I will never get indifferent to this beauty around me. Never. Isn’t apathy a fate worse than death?” I had said then. 

And as that memory clashes with the reality of a woman on the rush, yelling “go, go, go”, I feel a pang of shame. And guilt, for being a hypocrite, as I think of a little girl, who ignored every entreaty, every warning her mother issued, and came home soaking wet each time it rained. With her face aglow with happiness, splashing in every puddle on her path, walking with the raindrops beating down her face. 

When did Life change me so much, when did I get indifferent to every little wonder around me – from the puddles to the snails, to the Fox and to the weirdly shaped clouds in the sky; when did I put on Fast forward these precious little moments of togetherness wherein I walk hand in hand with 2 little hands on each side of me; when did I become the very person I pitied a mere 7yrs back? 

When did I swap smelling the roses for creating 2 robots on the march, I ask myself… 

I reach a decision. The rushing can wait. There is going to be plenty of that in the future. 

For now, it is time to stay true to that little girl who watched the skies each night to meet an alien prince in a flying saucer; that little girl who loved to make rafts from banana barks and splash in puddles. 

So we make another stop, this time to admire a tiny snail and its shiny trail. And then we gently remove it from the path so it doesn’t meet the fate of its unfortunate brother, who we stumbled upon earlier during our walk… 

The tiny snail

And it's silvery trail..

It is 9.45 already. The school gates have been long closed by now. 

I sigh. And shrug and prepare myself for yet another subtle rebuke. 

The reprimand I can handle. 

But apathy I cannot!