Jet lag is a beast. Jet lag plus sick kids is a 1-2 punch of misery. What started with my son spread to my baby and finally hit my daughter. We have yet to all be well since arriving and I am miss feeling the fullness of the family unit intact. High fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and endless hours of sleep continue to keep us from doing much of anything.
Sometimes my prayers get answered, just not in the ways I expect.
I’m am enjoying the slow start to this trip instead of resisting it especially since we leave Friday and travel around for two weeks straight. I am still jet lagged, crashing at 8pm only to wake up at 11:45pm in the hopes morning was near. By 1:45am I am wide awake staring at the ceiling. I scroll until my eyes burn and the possibility of sleep returns. I sink back into a dream state only to be woken up by my kids at 3am. We try to subdue them back to sleep, pleading and praying, but it was no use. By 5am I find myself brewing a double shot of espresso, groggy but surrendered, serving a peachy pink papaya for the first round of breakfast.
One of the things I am enjoying most is being off my phone. As much as I preach minimal screen time for my kids, I am attached to my device. It’s hard to admit and I want to be better but the enticing dopamine hit is ever present. Any momentary pause I fill the gap with a screen. Because of the time zone difference, during my waking hours here nothing is going on back home so the draw to know what’s happening and with whom is so much less. It’s the first time in a long time I’m not carrying it around every second of the day and feel a sense of relief to leave it in the other room. It’s a welcomed break to not waste my attention on shit that doesn’t matter. It’s loose and I make no promises to change even though a change in my habit is necessary. But the truth is I am so much more present when the phone isn’t present.
We have been spending so much time with Sebastian’s parents, aunts and uncle. This opportunity to sit amongst elders feels sacred and important. It is largely lost in American culture but listening to their stories, using them as guides and being in a multi-generational home is a huge theme of this trip. One day they will be my children’s ancestors and I want them to develop intimate and meaningful relationships with them now. Rocking in chairs on the porch, eating plates of homemade food, enjoying the slow passage of time is the priority. All retired, they spend anywhere from 3 to 6 months in India without the stress of work or responsibilities. The air is rich with wisdom and experience, with the lightness of relaxed energy. There are naps and afternoon snacks, reading the paper and watching the news, talks of politics and people. There is no urgency whatsoever. They teach me how to use the washing machine and feed my family with food and love. It calms my nervous system and I remember to absorb the feeling of lives well-lived. This is their enjoyment era and I recognize what has been earned: contentment.
I used to think New York City was intense, even more so since moving to the country. But India is next level, what my husband calls an assault on the senses. It’s like a constant sound machine on high with incessant beeps and honks, putters and revving of all kinds of engines coated with a thick smog of fire, smoke and incense. It’s hot and hard to breath. The sun blazes down with little to no cloud cover. It feels oppressive and overstimulating. There are people everywhere, crowds on every corner. We went looking for an art store that we never ended up finding and passed several hundred people deep in protest, mostly men in button down shirts, soaked in sweat and rolled up sleeves wearing white skirts knotted up with exposed calves and sandaled feet. A loud, thundering voice emphatically screams over a loudspeaker. I’m not sure the cause but a cause they had and it was apparent in the intensity of everyone’s eyes. There is construction and billboards, wifi towers and small shops crowded and stacked on top of each other. There are churches and schools and broken sidewalks and a coat of dirt on most things, including the soles of our feet. There is an endless stream of rickshaws and motorcycles and I smile at the woman next to me at the traffic light in a beautiful ornate blouse with no helmet on her head. What strikes me most every time I visit is how it all (or mostly) works. There is some kind of flow that I can’t quite understand but that I can experience. How they aren’t more accidents or incidents is amazing to me, given the sheer number of moving vehicles and bodies. I feel disbelief. Even in moments when I lay awake all hours of the night in the quiet of the house, I can still hear the bustle over my portable sound machine.
Today I do my first load of laundry. There are no dryers here so I take the baskets of clean, damp clothes and begin draping them over the clothes line on the balcony in the back of the house. I peer out into neighbor’s homes, courtyards and roofs. I usually dread this but today I don’t mind such a mundane task. I carefully hang each piece. My daughter’s sparkly tank, my baby’s bamboo pajamas, my son’s comic tees, each piece reflective of the person who wears them. These years are fleeting, I know, and I slow down and savor. But something about hanging each piece to dry in the hot sun, watching them move whenever a breeze comes, makes me appreciate the now even more.
Sebastian and I attempt to go on a mini day date to the coffee hut a few doors down. Our baby isn’t napping so we carry her along. We order two chais in cups slightly larger than shot glasses and sit on the steps to enjoy the afternoon treat. We are both trying to avoid a nap in the hopes to kick the final thread of jet lag out of our systems. I ask how he feels to be back to the place of his birth, with his parents and relatives, in his beloved Ammachi’s home, with no plans and sick kids and meals fit for a king, where he’s been able to largely set down work and pick up his roots.
“It feels like home,” he says with a smile, and I couldn’t agree more.
