Skip to main content

Reviving Ties

The past year has been about change - often of the cataclysmic kind. DB's coming into my life ending a ten year drought in love was as welcome as it was challenging. It was the year when some friends who had supported me for close to ten years as I flew solo, decided that our friendship had run it's course. So I got used to not hearing familiar voices on the phone, not seeing their emails and in time learning to forget that they were once an important part of my life. When the new marriage hit a bump on the road, I had no one to turn and talk to. Instead DB and I sulked in our corners and came back together when we were done.
I was forced to cleave my life in two - yet again. Life before DB and life after. It was reminiscent of when R (my ex) and I parted ways years ago. Spending New Year's eve with my old friend E was very poignant. She met DB for the first time and J after four years. We felt just as welcome as a new family as I did when it was J and I. DB and E got along wonderfully. We talked, ate, drank and took long walks along the nature trail that runs behind her house and runs all the way to the ocean.
Until reconnecting with E, I had been coping with having to start over one too many times in my life. Mourning the loss of friends - DB's lost plenty on his end as well after our marriage. As a couple, we often floundered on our own without the benefit of nurturing friendships. I am meeting my friend V for lunch today. She texted me this morning wanting to meet for lunch - just her and I. We have in the past meet in a larger group, V, K and his family and the three of us. I gather V needs some time alone with me. This is not a revived tie but a tie that needs some strengthening. I feel good about the year ahead.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

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