Sometimes a favorite poet's turn of phrase unchains a train of thoughts..
"Days I have held, days I have lost,days that outgrow, like daughters, my harbouring arms."
Midsummer, Tobago - written by Derek Walcott
Isn't that just how time has gone by ? Only that I could not describe it quite as heartrendingly as Walcott. You have heroes for a reason. In their words your thoughts reach a sublime level. J is growing at a pace that scares me. The little 6 pound something baby has come a long way and the years have been barely 4. She like the days themselves outgrow me. I love J like I never knew I was capable of loving - so I can't even tell if what I feel is really love.
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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