These holidays were incredibly busy for me and my husband. We hosted family and cooked for all the meals, cleaned after 3 babies and a dog. 3 kids, yes. All under 5 years of age. The ruckus, the jumping around the number of times we just about yelled can’t be measured.
At the end of the week, my little one who is all of 3 years old had a choice to continue the revelry at my grandmother’s. The family was moving to paint my grandmother’s house red! My son loves going there to spend time on the ‘mottai maadi’ (open terrace) watching monkeys all over. Strangely enough, he stayed back. It was quite something for me to hear him say that he wanted to be here at our home, with us. I watched out for any signs of sickness over the next few days. Until I realised what it meant as he woke up and just lay on the sofa with our dog.
He lay there, stroking her. Quiet. Seemed to contemplate on the next round of mischief he could do. But the quiet. Oh, the quiet.
Looking back, I understand he needed some me-time for himself. And his way of doing it was to stay back in our home, dial back on the noise and running around (didn’t last long, let me assure you) with kids. He still did a lot of mischief, cooked with us, spent time chasing my dog all over the house. But on his own time, at his own pace.
While I don’t want this to be like a LinkedIn post (heh!), I learned how important dialling down and having some quiet time for yourself is. That I had to learn this lesson from a hyperactive 3 year old is humbling. I am spending this last week of December starting from Christmas until the first working day of the new year on doing nothing. Hosting family, lots and lots of good food, reading, binge-watching a show all night, planning for the year ahead.
So one of my resolutions this year (another post, another day) is to seek this time and space consciously and mindfully.
