Flashes of Mind - In Between the Trance

Sahan is eating a cucumber and crème cheese sandwich for dinner (well in this case, a hot dog as I’m good at improvising). It is only 6.30pm and I’m already looking forward to bedtime. Sahan’s eating lasted only as long two minutes until he got to the cucumbers. Now, he proceeds to throw half of his dinner in indignation followed by the other half even though I offer to eat the cucumber parts. This is the second dinner option he was offered, the first being egg noodles, which went down only as much as two or three spoons. He ate it as long as I started to feel like I nailed the dinner option and stopped. So, now we are on to the third dinner option – half a plain hot dog bun! I know, I know, the books say not to make multiple meal options for fussy eaters but I’m way beyond the books now and after the recent bout of illness he suffered, only now he is starting to flesh out a bit. And I love my toddler a cherub, rather than a skinny little worm.   This time around I don’t seem to ...

I want my sons to know me, unlike the way I know my parents. I know hardly anything about them except generic things like personality traits, some likes and dislikes, and behavioral traits I've come to know through observation.  I know that my mother is devoted to us, her children, even now as much as when we were young. Her way of showing love to us is cooking food and making sure we have plenty to eat. She seems to think that by quenching our hunger and thirst, she could pour love into us.  But we have always been starved for more than food. We wanted to hear what she thought about love and life, what her dreams were, what broke her heart, and what made her happy and sad. What her hopes were and what made her want to go on living; most of all, whether we were enough just the way we were and whether we were loved. But these were not topics that we discussed ever, and the words "I love you" were never uttered.  Instead, she religiously brought me a cup of tea and woke me ...