The year of conversations

As 2012 winds down, I sat down to introspect as to what kind of a year this has been for me (a few glasses of wine for lunch will do that for you, the introspection that is) and I realized that while this has been a year of a memorable events and changes - seeing our first snow fall, mastering toilet training, letting go of the pacifier and the bottle of milk at night, graduating to big boy beds and bicycles, loads of road trips and finally moving cities and countries; it has also been a year of conversations... many a memorable chat with my two boys. 

The norm in our household earlier had been thus - I talk non stop and the husband switches off while pretending to listen. In fact he got so good at it, he could repeat exactly what I had said, word for word, without any of it having percolated into his head.

I had expected the boys to take after him in their conversation skills and talk in monosyllables but as of now they seem to have my gift of the gab and keep yapping all the time.

And with every passing month, as their vocabulary grows richer; and as they learn to use plurals (giraffes-ses and clothes-ses, which always reminds me of Gollum from LOTR); as they experiment with past tense (broke-ed, eat-ed, sleep-ed et al); as they learn to twist the difference between 'accident' and 'deliberate' to their advantage (the  perpetrator always claims his crime was an "accident" while the victim invariably insists it was deliberate) and as they discover the power of adjectives ( for instance V2 warning V1 with a"Get away from the TV or you become an old woman like Mammy"), I have been witness to many a memorable conversation which has invariably left me amused or rolling with laughter and on a few occasions, speechless.

As the year winds down and as these memories fade away, I wanted to record these for posterity. 

So here are a few of my favourites of this year....

1. A Mammy's job? 

Every morning, as we walked hand in hand to the school, the boys and I had some conversation or the other; some days we talked about the boy who ran away to the moon, some days we discussed superheroes and their clothes, food habits and weapons of choice. Some days we stopped to watch the fox that came for food every morning to the home for the elderly, right at the beginning of the lane where we lived or we talked about the chestnut cankers lying on the road and the squirrels for whom those cankers were a treat.

That day, since they had asked me before if my favourite hobby (apart from reading and taking pictures) was looking after them, I decided to get their thoughts on what a mummy’s job is/ should be. 

So, never one to waste time beating around the bush, I jumped in directly, “What do you think a mummy’s job is?”

V2 thought for a while and went first “Tell me to be careful”

Me very surprised and thrilled, “Yes, that’s right. What else?”

V2: “To say No if we are naughty”

Me: “Great going!”

V2 is on a roll now “To cook yummy food for us?”

Me “ Okay. What else?”. 

Looks like I have been doing a better job than I had been giving myself credit for. No wonder the compliments are pouring in… 

So thrilled to the core, I turn to V1, “What do you think is Mummy’s job?”

V1 is my not so garrulous child. He speaks less, and uses words more succinctly and conveys what he wants in as few words as possible! 

So I cannot wait to hear what he has to say about his Mammy.

And then V1 speaks. “Mammy’s job is to say No all the time. And be a headache” 

Ouch! 

2. How to not eat your cake and get away with it too....

There is a reason V2 always gets away with murder... 

V1 who knew I was upset about his refusing to eat my bread pudding, decided to make amends, and asked for it on his own at dinner time.  But then the minute he saw it, he forgot all his good intentions and said "No, this is yucky. Don't want it"
(Sigh! All my illusions of being a fantastic cook get smashed to smithereens every single evening!!) 

And then as I start looking crestfallen, V2 says "Mammy, I love it. I love your cooking” 

Then he proceeds to take a tiny ant sized portions and chew on each at a speed which would make a sloth feel like Usain Bolt!

So finally, annoyed I say, “If you love my cooking so much, then why do you not eat your food?” 

To which V2 very considerately explains "Mammy, I like your cooking. But I don’t like eating” 

3. Semantics and a 3yr old..

Yet another day of yelling and shouting at the dinner table. 

I am yelling. V2, as always is taking what seems like forever to eat what is on his plate. 

Suddenly I discover, he has put his head on the arm of the chair and is fast asleep. 

So I wake him up and try putting a spoonful of food in his mouth. 

Two spoonfuls later, I notice he has fallen asleep again. Saliva dribbles out of the corner of his mouth. 

So I feel sorry for the kid, pick him up and carry him to his room to clean him up and put him to bed.

As I lay V2 on his bed, suddenly his flagging energy seems to miraculously make a comeback as the little man immediately opens his eyes and starts jumping.

Me shocked, “You are not sleepy anymore?”

V2 flashes me his trademark roguish, elfish grin. 

Me even more shocked at having been made a fool of by a 3yr old, “You were lying to me?”

V2 still grinning, “No Mammy, I not lying. I pretending”. 

4. Love and War

The boys have been fighting non stop – everything and anything is liable to cause a war these days – from the super hero picture on their underpants to what view one has on their side of the taxi window to snatching each other’s toys to calling each other babies; it is a roller coaster that just doesn’t seem to ever come to a stop. 

I know this is all my bad Karma coming back to visit me; a payback for all those years my sisters and I drove Maa insane with our non stop fights but it is still driving me crazy. 

However today as V2 insists V1 is “annoying me again and again" and refuses to participate in a reconciliatory hug and a “I love you Bhai” end to the squabble, I decide to try a new approach.

Me: “Well I have 2 sisters. Sometimes my sisters annoy me and I get angry and fight with them. But we still love each other. And so we say sorry and we hug each other because sisters love each other. Just like that, we are supposed to love our brother and not fight with them all the time". 

At which point my normally quiet V1 suddenly brightens up and says, “Mammy I have a brother. He annoys me all the time. But I still love him”. 

5.Straight out of the mouth of babes.

Now that we have moved to Singapore and the boys have left behind all their friends and everything that was familiar, one of the topics under frequent discussion is who and what they miss the most about life in London

Vj: "So who do you miss the most amongst your friends back in London?" 

V1: "Raoul and Jojo" 

V2: "Ira and Nisa" 

Vj: "Who else?" 

V2 who is more social of the two, pipes in: "Aunty Gen. And Aunty Savy" 

Vj: "What about people from your school? Clementina? Maria? Luca? Francesca?" 

V2 looks at Vj like one looks at a person with single digit IQ - with a mix of pity and scorn. 

Then he explains patiently: "We cannot miss all the peoples Daddy. Only some peoples" 

Straight out of the mouth of babes, as they say…

6. Church tales of horror

Now for some anecdotes from our once a week visits to church ever since we moved back.

We went to attend Mass in church this December, after a gap of almost a yr. 

And it showed...

"Mammy who is this (pointing to Jesus)? Why is Gonesss Nomo Nomo not here?"

"Mammy why is Jesus stuck there (on the cross)?"

"Mammy who hurt him? Tell me their name?"

"Mammy are they singing sad song because he is hurt?"

"Mammy why is that man ( the priest) talking again and again?"

But the most memorable of all our horrifying church tales would have to be when, during the Christmas service, when in the middle of everyone singing "Gloria in excelsis deo", V1 decided he had enough of "sad songs" people keep singing in church and decided to belt out Happy B'dy Baby Jesus at the top of his voice! And if that wasn't bad enough, he followed it up with a louder, "I want to go potty N.O.W" which resulted in us running out full speed before we got thrown out of church and banned from ever coming back!

And on that note, wishing you all a memorable 2013 full of smiles and laughter....