Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Yesterday: A couple of weeks back I had a play date at home with my friend. Her kid is the same age as mine. We were talking about our age and when we had our kid(s), she has 2 and she brought her second one home. I told her I was 25 when I had my darling and she said "oh, so Ani is an accident, then". I sheepishly said "yeah". True, he was an accident, and when I first found out that I was pregnant, I did not know how to react. Of course, I wanted to have a kid but I just did not know if I was ready for it. When I told my dear hubby (am emphasizing the 'dear' part here, because he read my last post when he was at work, gave me a call and said 'I Love You') the news, he thought about it for a second and said " so am I going to be a father?". As days went on and a couple of trips with the doctor, I was still not sure if I was looking forward to my days as a mother. I did not have morning sickness, watched baby channels, shopped for maternity clothes, counted my baby's moves everyday, listened to lots of music, shopped for baby stuffs and countless things...not to mention the amount of food I ate, oh, I was so fat and over weight that people around me thought I was going to give birth to a huge baby. But nothing in this world could have amounted to the joy on the day I gave birth to my boy. He did not weigh much (hmm, it took me a lot of time to shed my 'baby' fat), kept sleeping 90% of the time, and it took us a lot of effort to wake him up and feed him. Days went by and he started smiling, crawling, walking, talking, and my dear (again!!) hubby and I were so proud of him. We realized his feelings, his happiness, his needs. We, in turn, learnt stuff on the way.

Today: Here is a 35 month old boy who wakes up early in the morning (he wakes me first), brushes his teeth with lots of grunts and shouts, eats his cereal (well, most of the stuff is on the floor), waits for Dad to go to work, takes his lunch, says 'Bye, Priya. Got to go to office, have a meeting with my Boss'. puts on his coolers (Its very hot outside, you know), takes his car and gets me groceries. He is bilingual, talks English and Tamil with ease. He knows how to get his way with his mom and dad. He loves to hear stories about people falling down(!!!) and laughs at silly rhyming words. He is a happy person and is really fun to be with.

Tomorrow: I was watching the new season of Desperate Housewives and how Lynette Scavo was trying to communicate with her teenage son. She used a site similar to Orkut and Facebook, posed herself as a teenage girl and chatted with her son. When her son finally found the bluff, she told him how desperately she missed her conversations with him. I saw that scene, looked at my son, and asked my dear hubby if Ani was going to do this to me. Am I going to miss his smiling, innocent face when my small boy becomes a teenager? No, I want to be his best friend. I want him to know that I have his best interests at heart. I want him to confide in me. I want us to have the best mom-son relationship. Now, Am I asking for too much???

Have I changed?!!!

I got married in 2004, I was 24 then. I was so looking forward to my life after marriage, always wanted to be a good wife, a great cook, home maker, mom of 2 adorable kids....never a career oriented woman. Well, all went on as planned, I started cooking edible food, waited each day for my dear hubby to come home from work, got pregnant 6 months into our marriage (which surprised many). Me wanting to be a stay at home mom started during my childhood days. My dear mom is a working mom (she still works even after my dad's death. Me and my brother are very particular about it because she needs some distraction too). She did not have enough time at home to take care of us.I have always envied kids whose moms were home makers. They had all the time for their kids. I was so needy (still am, as my hubby puts it), yearned for my mom's love and attention all the time. Well, to sum it all up, I did not want my kids to feel that way about me and I wanted to be there for my kids anytime.

Now, I have changed my mind, I want to work, want to look into advancing my career, thinking about waiting a year more to have the second one (my first is 3 yrs old now and people have started asking questions as to when I will be expecting). What has made me rethink about my future?

The first thing that comes to my mind is loneliness. As a person who is so used to the noisy streets, nosy neighbors,lots of friends, and especially my mom's love, life in the US is different. You can't just go and knock somebody's door and say HI, sometimes you can live in an apartment for a year or so and don't even know your neighbors. It's not like I am living in a totally isolated area where you don't even see a fly, I am in the heart of silicon valley and Indians are a plenty. But meeting your friends in India is different from meeting them here, need to call them, set up an appointment with them!!!!

Society too has made a big impact on me. People are so independent here, women really don't mind working in a gas station or being a waitress. I went to an optometrist and saw an 80 yr old lady behind the reception. Of course, most of them had to work because they got to make both ends meet. I don't have any problems like that, fortunately. We are well off, but extra income is always welcome.....

Lastly, I need to see how it feels to be working here, I have worked for Hewlett Packard in Bangalore and in Chennai, but not anywhere in the US.

As luck would have it, the financial crisis has made the job search very difficult, Finance professionals (like me) are being laid off...hmm, I am not going to give up......