My girlfriends who can't agree even on where to grab a bite for lunch are unanimous in their verdict on my social life - I don't have one. I have been in full-steam Mommy mode for so long that I no longer know what I would like to do for R&R for myself.Saturday afternoon momtinis sound only a little bit more fun than going grocery shopping.
Single parenting is overwhelmingly about planning up to the minute,balancing conflicting demands on your time, making decisions about a child without the benefit of an adult counterpoint and finally feeling like a twenty four day is not nearly long enough. On most days I do get the job done but the tiredness keeps growing like the US trade deficit.
N was traveling through town recently and asked me out on a "non-date date". He is still recovering from his break up with the woman he really loved. Being back in the dating scene has taken a heavy toll and he wanted to spend an evening with a friend and a kindred spirit. We had dinner by the beach and drove back into town looking for a club with a live band. He loved the music and I hated it but we had a wonderful time. He was able to let go and talk about heartbreak into the wee hours like he never could with a real date. He made me see the humor of my own misadventures maybe with a little help from the mudslides.
I got the well deserved break from being constantly in the Mommy state of mind and in N not being a parent himself, I was actually one up on the momtinis on the R&R scale for the single mother.
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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