2007, A year of growth...sideways, outwards, inwards and all around

To have a year to reflect upon is truly a stupendous thing. I have never had to take stock of my life or year before - life just happened, travelling on the pre-set course I had planned. But if it is one thing that defines parenthood, it is that you just cannot plan for it. Sure, there's family planning (ha ha), but can you prepare yourself for the reality of parenting? Books you can read, but nothing prepares you for the actual screaming, crying, smiling, laughing, growing baby.

As my dear Rehan grows, I find myself, for the first time in my life perhaps, actually growing. The sheer terror of responsiblity, I guess.


I don't usually offer unsolicited advice, anyway, this is not advice. Just what I have learnt.


I am glad, so glad to have waited three years before (sort of) deciding to have a baby. Three years of getting to know my husband, screaming the corners off each other have made parenthood (slightly) easier. The first three months of a baby's life is the horriblest of your married life. Mine, anyway. But forewarned is forearmed, I hope.

I spent some months being estatic and weepy at the same time. If it sounds strange to you, well, it is strange to experience.


The most important thing is not love, but forgiveness. The willingness to look not beyond your husband's (and own) faults, but to look at them squarely, and accept that you cannot change people, much, not even yourself. You can only control your impulses, your reactions. And most of the time, that is good enough.
To forgive mistakes, because it is not what has been done that is important, but what will be done.

That, at the end of the day, a baby is a neverending bond, even in death or divorce.


That, a marriage works better when you work together rather than for another.

That volume is not strength, but bullying. That silence is not acceptance, but tolerance.

That friendship exist even when friends are in absentia (my dear 2/7-ners anyway).

That one should always offer opinions with caveats, because you never know when the rug is going to be pulled from under your feet.
That certainty is not always a good thing. And that doubt is not always a bad thing.
Be careful of what you say, the conclusions that you make, especially when you are most convinced of its certainty.

That being a woman is not that bad after all. (It's society that suck!)