A few years back, I had gone for a parent-teacher meeting to my younger daughter’s school. Discovering your child was the challenge for the parents. Students of this pre-primary class had made cards for their families. Parents had to locate their respective ward’s card. This particular card brought smile and inquisitiveness on everybody’s faces.
“My mother makes lovely cakes
My father eats and sleeps
My sister gives me lots of hugs”
That is how my little one explained her family without knowing that when her father came home, he was on leave from his out-station postings. It was not easy for me to explain her observation to teachers and other parents. That little girl has grown up now and is going to a residential school within next few days.
She is unable to hide her enthusiasm for her new school, new friends, new place to live and most importantly for her newly achieved freedom where no parent is around to hassle her. But I am worried. Will she be able to deal with everything? Will she get lost in her new surroundings? We all go through this when our children want to sail alone in the wild sea. For me this is déjà vu. Same feelings rushed to my heart and mind when my elder daughter left home for her boarding school and then for college. I held myself that time, and will be able to do the same again.
Memories take me 17 yrs. back, the day this bundle of joy had arrived bringing happiness to everybody in the family. Till today she is the baby of the family who can drive everybody mad with her negligence and at the same time can bring a smile on everybody’s faces with her jovial mannerisms. That mischievous look in her little eyes, which I adored when she was younger, is still persistent.
The World From A Child's Eyes
One Of The Projects
I have tried to preserve her childhood innocence hidden in her primary school projects. She made lovely cards on my birthdays and lovely biscuit cakes (she could only manage that without any help) on mother’s day. It is a different matter that she always wanted a return gift for her hard work.
There will be a void at home without her. There will be no noise of our TV or music, no nagging for going out with her friends, nobody to argue with to prove her point of view and if not accepted, then furious. But at the same time there will be nobody forever ready to help the whole world, nobody to hug me over small issues, nobody to welcome even the smallest gestures of gratitude from others.
But her innocence, her ability to speak her mind naively is intact. I wonder if the world around her will appreciate it or hate her for this. This concern will always worry me because the ways of this world are very strange.
Maybe one day she will be able to take a few underprivileged kids to McDonald’s for a treat with her own money to let them experience every child’s favorite eating place. That’s her current dream!
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