This is dedicated to my new baby niece (not technically a
niece since she's my cousin's daughter, but in my family, if a person is
younger than you, they are a niece or nephew and if they are older than you,
they are your aunt or uncle, but then I had one kid try and call me
"Aji" (grandmother) because I am cousins with their father's mother
who is technically considered my sister because our fathers are brothers - but
then I was like "no way, dude, I am NOBODY's Aji! I am WAY too young for
that kind of responsibility).
This is a story about PAYBACK.
Something happened to me a while ago that brought me to
knees, and nearly made me crumble. Kiki didn't want to go to Hort (afterschool
care). And she was adamant about it. Not sure what started it. Not even sure
what ended it. But it was dreadful. Now, it may not seem all that bad to you,
but to me it was tragic.
Over here, for first and second graders, school ends, on
some days at 11:10. Yep that's right, 11 freakin' 10! School starts at 8:00, and it
takes about 10 minutes to walk back home after dropping her off, and 10 minutes
to walk back to pick her up. So that gives me 2 hours and 50 minutes to shower, eat
breakfast, look for jobs, write cover letters, translate them to German (get my
proofs back from Sweet Papa claiming that my grammar sucks), create project
proposals, make all my job related calls and hope people don't call back when
my kids are home and I have to try and sound professional while using gestures
and hand signals to threaten my kids to leave the room and be quiet.
To be fair to the German school system... No wait, this
system sucks. Kiki gets out at 11:10 twice a week, 12:15 twice a week, and one
day a week she gets out at 1:00! Hurray! 4 hours of freedom! I just might get
time to get some groceries without a kid demanding everything from cookies to Hello
Kitty printed toilet paper, or worse yet, a kid who HAS to poop just at the
point where your shopping cart is full and you're behind 15 people, including
the old guy at the front who is trying to pay for beer and candy with pennies!
When I took her out of Hort for a week, Bugsy said I was too
easy on her. He's right. I never would have given in to him. I think he tried,
but I was so sleep deprived overwhelmed with the two younger ones that I
couldn't give in to him. Plus he made friends and learned the language way
faster than he would have being home with me speaking English and watching TV all day. Yeah, I
guess I could have planned better and taken them to the playground in between
nap time (which changed daily or sometimes never happened) and cooked
nutritious meals for them (without groceries because I had to leave them at the
store and get my kid to the nearest clean toilet before the poopy came out only
to find that it was a false alarm, and to later find said poopy on my living
room floor an hour later because it was the exciting part of The Lion King and
they couldn't get off the couch to get to the bathroom on time). Sorry, mama.
But Bugsy was different. He's stubborn, but at some point
he'll cave. It might take a while, but he'll give in eventually. Fifi, pretty
much will find the adventure in anything, and only needs a few minutes to warm
up to an idea. And when not, she can easily be bought off with a bar of
chocolate. Kiki, though, I have met my match with that one. She is more
stubborn than me and Sweet Papa put together. She will stick to her guns on
everything. She. Will. Not. Budge.
It's terrible. At first, I thought this, for sure, was a
trait she got from her dad (which he got from his mom - but that's another
story altogether). But apparently, according to my cousin (different cousin
than the one that had the baby - this one lives in India and therefore has much
larger gene pool to study) my family is famous for its stubbornness! Famous!
This wasn't just about not wanting to go to Hort or school
(which came later). This was about PAYBACK. When I was in first grade, my mom
got a call from the school nurse EVERY SINGLE Monday morning saying, "Mrs.
Vernekar, your little daughter has a tummy ache." as my mom continued to
remind me for years afterwards trying to imitate the nurses' southern accent while
speaking with her own Indian intonation.
What had I done to my mom all
those years? Was I really that bad? Was I really that annoying? When I first
found I was pregnant with Bugsy and was feeling weird and nauseous, my mom
laughed and said to me "Guuuuuuudd. I hope he gets you!" What? What
kind of sympathy was that from my own loving mother? What had I done to that
woman? I mean besides the weight gain, lack of sleep, interruption of her
college studies, pulling her hair while she was learning how to drive, slapping
her in the face when she tried to sing us to sleep, and the worst - scratching
her precious two-year old prince of a son in the face whenever he came near
her. I was a tiger!
Then it occurred to me. All my kids got the worst traits,
not just from me, but from Sweet Papa, AND all of our siblings! It's not
survival of the fittest. It's survival of the most annoying! Bugsy and Fifi got
the non-stop talking gene from both our sisters (a double whammy). Fifi got the
gotta-be-friends-with-everyone-gene from my sister. Kiki got the
must-fill-my-pockets-with-leaves-and-other-random-trash from my brother
(although to be fair, he only collects leaves, seriously, borrow one of his
jackets and you'll see what I mean). Fifi most definitely got the shoe-lovin'
gene from my sister-in-law (really? you want to wear your sparkly but flimsy
sandals on a 2 hour hike?). Luckily Bugsy and Kiki got the night owl gene from
us, but Fifi didn't. She's the only morning person in the family, which was
hell for me until we re-programmed her so I could get some sleep.
So, Baby M, although your mom was the cutest baby ever, and
she claims, right now, that you are a calm baby, I know what your uncles are
like, and I can't even imagine what you might be getting from your father's
side. Be careful what you do to your mom
and dad in the next 20 or 30 years, because it'll all come full circle when you
have kids of your own (or when you're asked to babysit my grandkids).
