For the last few weeks J has been insisting that I pick her early from daycare. When she says that, I tell her that Mommy comes just as soon as she can and really can't come any sooner. With the inscrutable logic that children have she insists "But come early today. Three o'clock early. Not five o'clock early".
Yesterday her request changed considerably "Come to pick me up before nap-time" which is about noon. Apparently her best friend's mother picks Jamie up before nap time. I was in a contest with her and was loosing by a wide margin. J goes on to add "Jamie's Mommy is the best Mommy. She comes there first every single day" Now "every single day" is J's preferred way of emphasizing consistent and repeatable behavior. My timings are not exactly consistent and she has noticed. I'm not doing the mothering job quite right as elucidated by an example.
I try to see if J can find another best friend - her loyalty has been very fickle traditionally. "Can you be best friends with Bryce maybe ?" I ask knowing that his parents always arrive last. "Bryce called me a gorilla. He's not my friend" she replies. "I don't want to be a gorilla. I could be a duck" she adds. We try some other names making sure to check that the incumbent best friend does not call J a gorilla knowing of her preference to be a duck, but dislodging Jamie is quite impossible.
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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