Parents

I have been busy with infotainment video shooting this weekend. Many colleagues of mine helped. As parents, we found the best subjects of our conversation being our children.

We don't know when we first discovered that childhood goes in the blink of an eye. So much so that we all start to miss the opportunity, one way or another, when our kids grow out of something now and then.

I know exactly how it feels when Fredrik Backman writes about a father driving to his daughter's new college dorm room in the novel The Winners. The father went to help her drill holes in the wall for bookshelves. He was the one who was there, and he was so pleased with himself when his daugher whispered: "Thanks Dad, what would I do without you?" The holes ended up a bit wonky, though.

The next time the father visited, the shelves were straight. The daughter had bought a drill and fixed them herself. She never told her father because she didn't want to hurt his feelings, and he coughed to clear the lump in his throat and pretended he hadn't noticed.

Well, maybe I will be like that father with a lump in the throat one day.

Downtime

I'd spent almost one whole day at a public housing estate shopping mall as volunteer to talk to the public. By the time I returned home at evening, I felt guilty for leaving my daughter alone. 

In no way did I think we should talk about her homework. We all need unstressed periods of downtime every day. "I love you too much to fight with you about your homework." This is the title of a chapter in the book The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.

I have learned about the importance of downtime. Think of downtime as anything relaxing or rejuvenating, nothing purposeful, all of which are powerful for maintaining a healthy brain. We sat and shared caramel pudding, followed by a board game Battleshhp. 

As simple as that. 

Transformation

Clad in his sports T-shirt, emblazoned with gym logo, Anders is a white character in Mohsin Hamid's short novel, The Last White Man.

One day, he was horrified to find his skin turned dark on waking up. As much as Anders wished it's a nightmare and waited for an undoing, the answer from his mirror image and selfie picture unfailingly suggested there is no turning back. White became black.

Lest you think it's a Kafkaesque fictional scene, I have to tell you my recent experience in real life. I grappled with transformation on waking up, the way Anders did. I found my near vision lost on walking up this Sunday. The book starts to move further and further away, more or less like how the hairline moves away with age.

I came to the inescapable conclusion that it's time for me to buy bifocal glasses. Which continued to bother me. Nobody wishes to find a decline in near vision, least of all by a voracious reader. I was chagrined at calling myself a presbyope. Kübler-Ross was hovering over the room as I looked up state-of-mind analysis publication on how people felt about presbyopia. The best part of verbtaim analysis is that we can listen to the way each individual frames his or her life event. The sad part is that I have to agree with one of the social media posts "I feel that my arms are now too short."