I Feel Like A Super Hero!

My Cuckoo clock has gone whacko! It strikes the hours for the half and vice versa. I still lovingly set the clock day after day, tired of muttering, embrace the ‘whackoness’ it is trying to display finally! I feel like a super hero. If you know me, you will see why I feel that way! Not long ago, as I try to cheer my students as they complain about having to come to school on a snow day when most schools are off, enthusiastically I start “Hey guys, do you know something about me that is going to make you laugh? I like all my hangers in the closet to face same direction.” I hear gasps and palms on their mouths and some giggles. It is like that day when I said I wanted sprinkles on my ricekrispy treats, they wouldn't believe it! I offer a further explanation with a “You know I am much better these days. The younger Mrs.S wanted all the hangers to be of the same color too, along with hanging in the same direction!” The little stink bugs that they are, the next opportunity they get, as they make little ornament shirts guess what, the hangers are facing different directions!


I love their sense of humor! I feel the pride well up!
Now you see why I feel like a superhero with that clock chiming all wrong? Yes, a nerve steel to fight that clock, accepting it, every half hourly, like a superhero!

Driving in to the biting cold of the early morning deliberately, knowing well that I will reach my destination before the car even warms up, I look up to the sky and see a brilliant crescent moon, with Venus shining bright as the morning star and I instantly smile, feeling like a hero and why not I think? Truth be told I know that if I miss this workout session, I will feel crappy. So, I bear the cold, the early hours and doggedly do what I know works for me. But the moon and the stars and the sky and the snow make me feel like I am doing something even if for selfish reasons! Now you see, why I feel like a superhero?

Watching literally that one jasmine bloom a day for the past week in these bitter cold winters, I smile, and I do feel like a hero as I remember to pluck that one flower out and offer it to the deity in my pooja room! Why does this single flower blooming makes me feel so happy and proud? Is it because I am aware of its presence or is it because I see that single flower as proof of love the plant is offering me? Either ways, for reasons not known to me, I feel like a super hero!

I watch the food in the birdfeeder being devoured by that squirrel! I want to go out and chase it away but the cold keeps me indoors. I slowly warm up to watching the rhythm with which the squirrel feeds almost doing a dance and accept the reality and suddenly I feel like a superhero!


Between the bitter cold, school days off, some school days rougher than others when school is on, my kids home yet running around for activities and errands all the while listening to Michelle tell her tale in “Becoming”, nodding my head in approval, sometimes seeing similarities, but all the time wondering at the incredible life they came to have, I can tell you that I feel like a superhero and why not? I may not be the first lady, but she understands me and my life – as a wife, a mother! Can I not feel like a superhero? Should I not feel like a superhero?

As I finally doze off into a much-needed nap on the couch, snuggled up watching a ‘superhero series' with my DD, I am exhausted. Exhausted with the running around, the cold, the schools off and on, trying to be the mother, wife, sister, friend, teacher – a superwoman simply put, and I suddenly feel an urge to let go of it all! I feel the lightness of my being as I drift into sleep as just me, knowing well I will not know this me as well in my sleep! As I drift into deeper sleep, I am thinking of a fish, a fish hanging on to its dear life and the lines come to my mind “Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river…………………yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more!” What a super hero she is I think even as some part of me tells that waking up refreshed again, trying not to cling, I would not want to change a thing about my life, superhero or not!

PS: I owe it to me to think of this creature of Illusions, yes the same Richard Bach one, as a fish and a she!

 

Dear @GeetaKashyap,

Sorry about the delayed response - weekend has been crazy busy

Thank you for reiterating that and thank you for your words.

 

Dear Vani, @girvani

It is always such a joy to have a friend who gets it! You not only get it, you express it and make feel so good about myself with your words. 'Becoming' is weaving an interesting web in my head - it is kind of amazing reading her, yet think of one's own life. I am jotting down some notes and hopefully will be able to sort out certain emotions! My students I tell you, they make it all so joyful for me! I hope you enjoyed that much deserved nap after dropping your boys off!

Thank you as always my friend for bringing in your cheerfulness here!

 

Dear Satchi,

Tell you what! It really is not that hard to take yourself to workout if you know very well that perhaps that is the only physical activity for the day, given our weather! So being in the place that you are, it is okay to cut yoruself osme slack, curl up all you want and enjoy! Those ornaments were supposed to be ugly sweaters for their christmas trees but turned out to be the cutest ever!

As for those hangers, I helped myself by replacing all of mine with the same color - one problem solved! Another is work in progress Thank you for your feedback, always a pleasure to hear from you.