Skip to main content

Sundae Inspiration

I don't know what it feels like to have a father check out on their child and act like she does not exist. That is the position R (my ex) has adopted with J. When she was younger, she would ask when she might have "a" father like the other kids. She did not seem overly concerned about it having to be R, but someone needed to fulfill that role in her life. Over time, she had developed a protective layer of indifference to help her from being hurt over his absence - disappointment over not having her wish for a father figure fulfilled.

I often tell J that I am the luckiest Mommy in the world because I have her. She wonders how it is that she could be so incredibly precious to me and mean nothing at all to her father who saw her last when she was four months old. How does he not want to know about her, talk to her or see what she looks like. If she was as precious and special as I claimed she was, would her father not be a little more interested in her. It just does not add up for her.

I have struggled to come up with a way to explain this dichotomy and inspiration came in the form of a fictive ice-cream sundae (one of J's favorite treats). I told J "Pretend two friends go to the ice-cream parlor on a Sunday morning. The shop is very crowded and by when it is their turn to order, there is only one ice-cream sundae left. One friend suggests that they get it and divide it in two because they both love it more than any other kind of ice-cream"

"The other friend says, that he would get something else instead so that way they won't have to share -he does not agree with the idea of a half a sundae. So the first friend has the whole ice-cream sundae and loves it. The second friend gets a flavor that he really does not like that much and ends up throwing it away in trash. On the way back, the first friend is really happy she got her favorite treat and did not even have to share it with anyone. The second friend is mad because he made a bad choice and could not enjoy any ice-cream at all.He wishes he had agreed to split the sundae but now it is too late"

"I am like the first friend, you are like the ice-cream sundae and your dad is the like the guy who had to have everything his way or nothing at all. He is the one who lost what was most important in life and will realize it t only when it is too late. So now you see why I say I am the luckiest Mommy in the whole world ?" My "sundae parable" brought a big smile to J's face.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Vikas Gupta said…
Ah, interesting! Delightful.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

P.S.: R is a cruel man, needless to say.
2:42 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

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...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more