birthdays

On 17th birthdays and glimpses of the adult

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Image by Ed Schipul/Flickr

So, here I am very early on Godzilla’s 17th birthday, resting on the corner of Testosterone Lane and Horsepower Road. Having two teen boys in the house means a lot of muscle flexing, boundary pushing, and territory marking. They wake with teasing exchanges that rapidly morph into the rat-tat-tat of suddenly flared tempers. And before long, like two elephant seals, they’re bumping and jostling each other over the most trivial of things. Left to their own devices, I’m sure they’d find a way to argue over two flies climbing up the wall.

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To My Father On His Birthday

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Father and me ©Asha Rajan

My dearest Achan,

Eighteen years have passed and more, since Death took you by the hand and led you away.  That moment of realisation that you had departed is still so clear, so breath-stealing these many years on.  And yet.  And yet I can no longer remember the exact quality of your voice, the timbre of your laugh.  Memories of you are slideshows, short films that play in my imagination; you are animated, vividly coloured, laughing and larger than life.

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Lo! Another birthday cometh.

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The imminent approach of September birthdays got me thinking about the woo-woo that happens in life. So here’s some woo-woo from my life.

Our Marriage:  The CEO and I got married on April 6th (incidentally the birthday of two of my friends… now three of my friends!). Two days before our wedding, my father-in-law tells us that that’s the day his mother died.  So now we’re primed for the presence of ghostly ancestors at our wedding (both of my father-in-law’s parents had died long before).
By Umberto NURS [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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No More Streamers

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Blowing Candles ©Asha Rajan

No more streamers littering the floor.

No more shining cachous skittering across counters.

The fairies have packed up their bread and departed.

Saggy, flaccid balloons leer lecherously at disemboweled party poppers, as football and pirate cupcake wrappers tango in mismatched pairs.

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