Discordant Time

“We made a TikTok on my friends account but don’t worry we didn’t show our faces”

I am walking around my home sipping on coffee when I see the text. My youngest also sends the said video. I watch it not quite sure what to expect. It is cute. The music is preppy and the editing top notch. I approve and before I know it, I am following my almost 11 year old’s friend on TikTok and she me. We trade messages and say bye before it gets too awkward.

**

My middle child is seated at the kitchen island sipping on her coffee when I walk past her. Her once ruby red hair is now faded to a less glossier maroon. She has it up in a high ponytail exposing her bare shoulders. She has her headphones on as she scrolls through her phone. I tap her and she does me the rare courtesy of removing the headphones.

“I am not dying anymore. The test results were normal.”

I say this half in jest but a few days ago when I sat in my study anxiety pressing on me like an ominous cloud, my kids came to say good night and I blurted out “I may be dying.” I knew I was exaggerating but their comments truly brought levity to my life.

“Oh! Will I be motherless then?”
“Dummy, you have another mom…”

Both of them guffaw and a moment later, my middle child gives me a warm hug and says “I just want you to know that I love you.”

**

It is dark in the family room when I go to get a drink of water. One of the twins is rooting around in her school bag.

“What are you looking for?”
“None ya…”
“Why is it none of my business?”
“It just is. You know I don’t tell you everything right? I don’t have to…”

I walk away chastened.

**

“This summer, I need you girls to get a job and learn driving.”

I look at them expectantly waiting for the push back that usually comes. Both of them nod their heads and go back to their phones.

**

My middle child is sitting in my chair in the study earnestly reading the vomit draft of the first chapter of my new romance novel. She looks up at me when I enter and pointing to the white board where I have outlined parts of it goes “you write smut?”

I am taken aback but acknowledge that yes, romance and intimacy is part of the story line.

“I like to keep it classy…” I say and walk out the door before we can get further into what I plan to write. Honestly, even I have no idea what the story is going to look like.

**

A comment notification for a post on my blog pops up and I go down the rabbit hole that is the blog and end up reading a few posts I wrote when my older two were babies and third was not even a concept of a plan. I tear up and it hits me that fifteen years have flown past in the blink of an eye. At every point in my life I have had some idea of what the future would look like. When they were babies, I had imagined their high school life to be chaotic and my life to mirror most south Asian moms.

However, in hindsight, our life is nothing like what I had imagined it would be. It is chaotic but in a good way. I thought I would be stressed, which I am, but not in quite the way I thought I would be. My life right now is filled with music, with camaraderie, with quips and barbs that belong in a sitcom.

This time in a couple of years my older two will be getting ready to graduate high school and my youngest a year away from high school. From this vantage point, it feels like I can almost touch the finish line. Strangely, I feel myself wanting to slow down, to savor the time we have with our daughters. To commit to memory, every joke and, every profound statement that comes out of them. I want to click pictures capturing their profiles, capturing them unguarded, hair up in claw clips immersed in their reels. I want to preserve in virtual ether when they comment on their favorite foods or feel nostalgic about chapatis spread with jam and rolled into a snack.

This life feels fleeting. A gossamer spun web that will wash out with the next rain. So, I am holding on to it as delicately as I can lest I break it.