Earlier today, I was in the grocery store dithering between aisles as I am prone to do when J whines for something I will not give her and I am scrounging for the current shopping list in my bottom-less handbag. The combination can do funny things to my hand eye co-ordination.
So where I had to go the detergent/cleaner aisle I find myself in wine and beverages. Now that we are where we are J declares she "needs" some "green wine". I tell her that she is under-age for wine. She informs me she is three and will be four on her next "happy birthday". While on the topic of birthdays she extracts a promise for a "huge pink birthday cake", a party and four candles. I cannot argue with any of that. Instead I try to explain the difference between "need" and "want" and the appropriate context for each word.
After the lesson she paraphrases "I want some green wine". The older gentleman and his very proper looking wife who are within ear-shot trying to zero in on a Pinot Grigio (what else after "Sideways") are giving me dark, disapproving looks.
I almost want to tell them "Look, I'm not doing a "God Juice" deal a la MJ if that's what you're thinking. I'm a just a poor mom trying to survive a three year old uber-brat" I'm not sure if the gag order on anything MJ is on or off not having kept up with that "yucky" story. So I hold my peace and try to gag J instead as her "want green wine" gains in decibel levels.
I'm almost out of the woods when a label catches my eye. A mission of frolicking monkeys on a bottle of 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon intrigues me enough to pick it up and read the label. J assumes that I have given in to her "need" and "want" of the day and lets out a war whoop of delight. The couple that was close to calling 911 on me have left so I breathe a huge sigh of relief.
I am not exactly sure why I put the bottle of wine meant expressly for "your prime mates" in my cart. It's just one of those things that defy reason in an woman's life.
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
Comments
J sounds soooo precious!!!
Yeah, I have seen many a hassled mom in those very aisles struggling with the children as well as the disapproivng 'I know parenting better than you' looks!!
dont mind them....
so how was the wine??
seeya around!!