“Can we go on a walk?”
My middle child pops into the living room where I am prone on the sofa, the lazy ceiling fan lulling me into sleep. Amma is seated across the room. I squint at the window. The sun is still pretty bright for 6:00 pm.
“How about after dinner?” I suggest. She agrees and saunters back to her room, phone in hand.
I am exhausted for a weekday evening.
“Kitchen closed” I had declared earlier in the day. With no cooking chores or cleanup, the early summer warmth was making me listless.
An hour later, my girls and I walked around the grassy oval in front of our home. I ambled along while one child skipped ahead, another leaned on my shoulder and the third chattered away. I insisted we leave our phones behind. So, we listened to birds coming home to roost. We saw airplanes leave white streaks across an otherwise endless blue sky. We skipped over goose poop and talked about which home was built when, who moved in first and which homes were resold.
In the midst of seemingly random conversation, we talked about relationships, breakups, trust and, love.
With the older two children becoming proper teens, me wrangling with menopause and the third on the cusp of puberty, hormones run amuck in our home. Emotions are heightened, everything feels blown out of proportion. I try to keep things in perspective by asking myself “What was I like at that age?” every time I want to react. It slows me down and, often proves doing and saying nothing is the best option. I bite back words, recognize conditioning I fought against as a teen and unlearn a few more things.
As my children spend hours chatting with friends on the phone, I remember all the evenings I stood by the metal gate of our home in Madras, swatting mosquitos as I chatted with my friend. This after walking slowly home together pushing our bicycles instead of riding them. This after standing at the bus-stop sending off another friend. This after waving bye to yet another friend at her apartment gate. Hours of inane and insane conversations about friendship, boys, love and, school.
In the past few years, I have opted out of all group conversations as part of a social experiment I am conducting on myself. I exited groups were I was a passive consumer of news. I left school and college groups where just by being present, I deluded myself that I was part of meaningful chatter. Once I restricted myself to only conversations that were intentional, I realize my list had whittled itself down to three people. A childhood friend that I reached out to because I loved talking to her. My cousin with whom I share a bond that transcends time. My kdrama chingu with whom I trade not just memes.
In the place of incidental chatter, para social relationships crept in. I reveled in one sided relationships with multiple artists. I discovered their personalities as imprints left on each album. I connected with these men and women as fading impressions of their experiences were fossilized for immortality in their work.
As the people I once was and the people they once were connected in the current time, a new relationship blossomed. I smile when I walk and bop. I cook as I commune with a younger Swift in Evermore. I fold laundry with a BTS that was five years younger. I discover old discography that reminds me how we evolve as people.
I hear giggling sounds from the teen bedroom upstairs. I stop what I am doing and listen as muted conversation alternating with squeals fill my heart. In another timeline, I would have walked upstairs to confiscate the phone and delivered a lecture on how they could chat away after the school broke for summer and why exams are super important. Instead, I hope they remember the giddiness of youth, the momentary highs of hormone induced happiness and, the dopamine hits from being this version of themselves.
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