Tentative Parenting : Dealing with Grief & Uncertainity

K2 : Ma, why does the brain suddenly bleed?
Working Mom : I don't know, sometimes it just happens. 
K2 : Ma, will he be alright?
Working Mom : Let's pray for him tonight? Is that ok?
K2 : Ma, was the ICU scary?
Working Mom : It's late...why don't we save some questions for tomorrow.

I am mentally exhausted ...I never imagined being in the pediatric ICU watching K2's 8 year old friend on life support...harder still was internalizing the grief of the parents and trying to explain the situation to K2. Based on my recent devastating loss here is my meager attempt to get K2 to understand and deal with the situation 

1. Face Reality and let out the pain - it's OK to talk about feelings and fears. Cry, Grieve, Ask Questions and deal with reality vs. being an ostrich with it's head stuck in the sand
2. Talk it out - I am glad K2 is asking questions and trying to understand the prognosis for his friend. 
3. Harbor no regrets - one interesting thing K2 asked about his friend falling sick was - whose fault was it? And my answer was - sometimes K2 it isn't anyone's fault it just is
4. Shift the focus away from sadness - it is so easy to fall into a rut...get miserable and wallow in that misery...however it is important to snap out of it
5. There is no one way or right way - I dealt with my grief through work and exercise and my life lesson that I offer to K2 is that - that well might not work for him. He will have to find what helps him counteract that feeling of hopelessness and helplessness
6. Most importantly remembering that grieving/dealing with uncertainty  is a personal process that has no time limit. 
7. Pray Hard...faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul

I am praying really hard ....

Tentative Parenting : Respect Women

The country is making a big mistake not teaching our boys to cook & raise a garden &  do household chores.           --Loretta Lynn

For the first 23 years of my life...traditionalism stared me in the face - a father who held a job and a mother who took care of the house. I won't say it was the happiest of mergers but it worked (or they sorta made it work). I am sure those key formative years had a great deal to do with my schizophrenic personality today where I am a feminist during the day (taking my fair share of the work, performing, questioning, contributing) and a traditionalist at the night (think all house hold chores minus taking the garbage out once weekly).

The truth of the matter is we (women) can be fabulous, brilliant, creative -- have tangible impact and yet at some point there is a mental brake that we apply to our own psyche - because unlike most men women with children are still expected to work the second shift at home (and no! not all of us have the model husbands who actually do their fair share of the household chores). Just as work has expanded to require me to be present all the time, I have realized that being a good mom also requires my attention 24*7. Parenting has become a full-time job: school meetings, doctor's appointments,enrichment activities, homework and projects, organic school lunches... It's hard enough managing one 24/7 job. No one can survive two of them. 

So every time I hear talks about Women's Emancipation the one thing that sticks out for me is this one simple fact - as long as women are the ones doing more of the housework and childcare, women will be disproportionately hurt when both workplace expectations and parenting expectations requires them to be present 24*7. They'll continue to do what too many talented women already do: Just as they're on the verge of achieving workplace leadership positions, they'll start dropping out.  Beyond stats and doom & gloom, the way I am fixing this at home is I am teaching my 7 year old boy to cook, do chores and above all respect women (hard for me to fix 25 years of Socialization that went into K1 but K2 is my blank canvas).

Here's an interesting video clip that got mixed reviews in India, but in my mind it hit a home run in terms of messaging :

This week saw me at PWBC's 25th Conference - Rising Above! It was fabulous and gave me a lot of food for thought! 

Au contraire mon cheri !

"Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity"

My son  broke my heart yesterday. Truth be told I was setting myself up for failure...here's how it played out

Working Mom : K2 how is your dinner?
K2  (mumbles  in a whiny voice) : Ma can I eat the cheese and garlic bread now
Working Mom : K2 the deal was you finish 3/4th of your healthy stew first.
K2 ( whiny voice going shrill ) : Don't like it
Working Mom : K2 it is good for you...its super foods - Kale, Shitake Mushrooms, Black Beans
K2  ( whiny voice) : it doesn't look good (buddy had a point there!)

Let's just say I  lost my case but forced my son to eat his bowl of the black bean stoup (stew or soup...I wasn't too sure) if he wanted the buttery garlic bread and the ricotta goat cheese he had picked up at Harley Farms . In case you were wondering it was wonderful - fragrant with cumin and cayenne pepper and the shitake mushrooms tasted like butter...but to my precocious 7 year old it probably tasted like mud!

I have been re-reading this book " Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman (mostly because the health fervor of a work colleague has me suitably intimidated to lift my chocolate ganache and coffee cake eating tushy off the floor and get a little more disciplined about my eating habits). Hence, the need to create something incredibly healthy but insanely simple...try this recipe  but remember I warned you that it might not be kid friendly. You might try to brighten the one-tone color with cilantro, a splash of lemon and some chopped onions...enjoy by itself or with a crusty piece of whole grain bread.

Ingredient List

• 2 Cups of un-soaked black beans
• 5 cloves of Garlic
• Homemade or Store Bought Vegetable Broth ( I used this )
• 1/2 pound Shitake Mushrooms (chopped)
• 3 Oz Kale (1/2 packet of the Organic Girl Baby Kale Box)
• 1 medium Onion (chopped fine)
• 2 Medium Sized Tomatoes (chopped fine)
• Salt, Turmeric, Cayenne Pepper powder and Cumin powder to taste

Step 1 : Take first 3 ingredients and place in the crock pot on high for 8 hours
Step 2 : In a large skillet, put 1 tsp Olive Oil, add the turmeric and cayenne pepper powder. When it sizzles add the Onion brown, add the tomatoes and brown for 3 minutes. Now add the Shitake Mushrooms and cook for another 5-10 minutes. Add Salt and Cumin Powder (strictly to taste...I eyeball it)
Step 3 : Add this mixture to the Crock pot. Cook on high for 4 hours.
Step 4 : Adjust Salt, Add a splash of fresh lemon juice...taste and then adjust more if needed

You get 7-8 servings of the stoup and contrary to what my darling son says it is delicious!

Especially when you know it is all of 200 calories, 2 gms of Fat, 22 gms of Carbs, 15 gms of Protein and a whopping 9 gms of fiber! Here's me with my bowl and a glass of kefir...Salut to your health!

Infographics & a song stuck in my head!

“There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.” 

                                                                                             ― E.B. White

I am in love with infographics - Isn't it way cooler to explain complex things using visual aids. I got hooked on to infographics last year with the pretty compelling Infographic Charts on Happiness from  Happify. So here's me dabbling on an Infographic on Child Obesity : Not Earth Shattering statistics but wholly my own creation...so super-excited about it.

When I was in India last month I got to see two movies (and two movies only!) with a feminist bend - Gulaab Gang and Queen. The latter appealed to me a lot more than the former - the character of Rani (Queen) was endearing and the metamorphosis of a naive girl to woman was totally heart tugging - "her life wasn't going as planned and yet it all worked out". This entire week there has been a song "stuck in my head" - playing on my headset in the office, in the car and anyplace else I cared to listen to it...and the video was shot in one of my favorite cities - Amsterdam (TDC  how I miss thee!)



Dinner today was on the fast lane (15 minutes to table) - EVOL Breakfast Sandwich, Fresh Mangoes and Oranges, Cucumber and Feta Cheese and Noosa Yogurt

Helped K2 prepare and practice for a presentation on "Gemstones", packed my office in less than an hour for my move later this week and  made my weekly to-do list. How is your week looking?

Stuck in Habits...

There were a couple years of my life when I tried to live my life sans my cuppa chai and all I remember is a foggy mind and an intense need to make my morning cuppa....feeling virtuous every time I didn't make myself a cup but intensely missing it all the same. I reveled in my trips to India - the full fat milk, the tea laden with sugar and cardamom and made the old fashioned way on the stove-top -- slowly, with love, no short-cuts there. Conversations with Bapa, Ma forcing me to have a Marie biscuit to avoid getting acidity and the smell of newspaper print...as Bapa read his news and me holding my head at a weird angle so that I could  read the comic strip at the back of the paper...it was the companionship, the love and warmth in the morning just before we went on with our day...that I am still stuck on...
Our mornings now are a mad rush to - get snack bags and lunch boxes packed, 6 AM conference calls (for him), hurried emails (for me), instant coffee (for him), hot chocolate (for kiddo) and instant tea (for me), the constant drill of finishing on time and get out of the house...not a minute to stretch, smile and welcome the day graciously and with open arms.

So today, when "P" sent me this Dilbert clip that made me chuckle in the morning  (some friends just know when I need a pick me up) ---

I decided  to wake up with a stretch and a smile and welcome the day sans shortcuts

Tomorrow - I will go back to short-cuts but for today I choose to be "Stuck in Habits"...drink my cuppa chai made my special way and remember the newspaper, the marie biscuit and Bapa...

As Stephen King aptly put it -

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

The Anatomy of a TV Show

My trip to India was eye-opening. I got to spend 10 days with my grandma . She is about 78...sweet, a worrier,  an awesome cook with the craziest quirks. Her one constant in  life is her TV serials on Apka Colors every night 6-9 PM (if you get between her and her TV time heaven save you!)

It took me some years to warm up to shows here in the US what with my initially crazy work hours and travel schedule I didn't watch much other than re-runs of Law and Order and The Food Network. In the past few years with On-Demand and DVRs...a few TV shows have become constants in my life - The Good Wife, Grimm, Castle, The Mentalist, Rizzoli & Isles and most recently Scandal.

Scandal turned out to be a major let-down -- started off as a story about a fixer in Washington DC  and quickly devolved into a lurid sordid story of affairs galore. I am still in a state of shock after watching the sudden death of Will Gardner last night in the DVRed version of  The Good Wife --- game changers, sordid hook-ups, petty fights, office politics....all culminated in this...

Maybe my cue to abstain from TV awhile...how has this week treated you?

Tentative Parenting : Calm the F*** Down!

Email from K2's teacher : I just want to let you know of an incident...
Working Mom : Lost it and took all electronics away for a weekend. I had a talk with him on actions and consequences but I didn't behave like one of those calm moms who have an adult conversation with their kid, I became THIS screaming banshee...and think I scared myself as much as I scared K2 (and probably his dad)

Last month I read about this technique called the CTFD  (calm the F*** down) technique - and it applies for the PARENT not the KID!  I wasn't a picture perfect kid - I broke things, I fibbed, I beat up all the boys in my big brother's class and I was probably below average on my grades and my parents dealt with it. And I turned out alright! So I need to CTFD and take a deep breath and determine my course of action. The reality I have realized in my meager years parenting is :

#1 Childhood shouldn't be a race.
"Every child learns to walk, talk, read and do algebra at his own pace and ... it will have no bearing on how well he walks, talks, reads or does algebra...or even how successful he or she is in life

#2 Sometimes, you just have to slow down.
“I will not say, 'We don't have time for this.' Because that is basically saying, 'We don't have time to live.'

#3 Pay attention.
“If you pay attention, kids will teach you how to laugh loudly, how to love deeply and how to live fully. They will also ruin all your stuff and drive you crazy...but then didn't you sign up for this parenting thing?"

#4 Get comfortable with dissonance.
"Our families are where we first learn how to say 'No' in a safe, supportive environment. If we don't learn to do so there, we won't learn to do so anywhere. If our children can't say 'No' to us, they won't say it to anyone -- AND I am not signing up to raise a doormat/pushover" 

#5 Stop solving everything.
“This one took me years to figure out. It's one that is really hard to get good at because I love fixing and solving things for K2...but I have learnt he would rather solve his own problems"

#6 Beware  of distracted living.
“We live in an age where we are constantly fed messages that we should try to do as much as we can as fast as we can- multi-tasking to live at maximum efficiency. How many homework assignments and grocery store runs, appointments and meetings, Zumba classes and posts to social media sites and DVRd shows and any number of things with varying degrees of importance do we try to cram into any one day?”...Let's just stop and enjoy the "Cherry Blossoms"

The honest truth is - I don't know how I do this parenting thing. But I don't think it is hard because I am a working mom trying to do a balancing act on a tight rope...nor do I think it will be any easier if I was a stay-at-home mom... I don't know how any of us do it. It's glorious and rewarding and full of love and it is at times probably the shittiest roles I ever signed myself up for. Yet what I do know for a fact is - I will take every day as it comes with an open heart and mind and take it for what it is vs. judging, evaluating and wanting to change it.