I was out to lunch with a bunch of co-workers. The topic of conversation for the afternoon was dogs. Period. I don't have one and know as much about them as I do about aircraft engines.
That said, my contribution to the conversation around gourmet pet food, air-conditioned kennels, play dates for pets, bark collars, emergency vets and cutesy puppy stories was minimal. All of these folks are either single or recently married and the puppy in their lives is almost the baby substitute.
When one woman gushed about her little Wanda being in the "chewy stage", my thoughts turned to J when she was teething. Having made that connection between the familiar and the unfamiliar I was able to tune in to the conversation a lot better and even enjoy it.
No offense to J but the puppy tales reminded me of her a lot. The J of two years ago. I wonder if it isn't the same when a bunch of parents trade baby stories around folks who have pets but not babies. I am almost sure in their minds they make the kind of correlation as I did this afternoon. Thanks to those cute puppies many beautiful memories of J's babyhood paid me a sudden, surprise visit leaving me with feelings of pleasurable nostalgia.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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