November Musings!

In the sepia toned memories of my childhood, there is no image where I blow out the candles on my birthday cake. I do not even remember a cake with my name on it. My son would sure stare at me in disbelief.. His birthday is still half a year away and he has already chosen his cake!

But still, November is intimate to me unlike any other month.. It was on my 19^th birthday in a breezy November that i cut a cake for the first time. Thanks to my friends, it still remains the best bday I had ever had. The last row of our classroom where my little cake and cute gifts awaited is still fresh in my mind. In two years, when out of college and friends scattered all across different worlds, birthdays was about receiving love and gifts from that special someone in my life.

But in the last two years, its been more about getting old. `Old’ as in wasted or unimproved.. November arrives with a set of questions.. A kind of stock taking where my accounts refuse to get tallied or settled.  Not Jan, its November thats the time of resolutions for me. Many of them unfulfilled when the next bday comes. It reminds me of an hour glass and the time ticking away with many dreams waiting to spread its wings.

The other day I happen to listen to a doctor speaking `you can do up your bones till 35. After that, your bones will need outside help to keep fit if it breaks, ’he was saying. Somewhere, a light went off. Have I reached the first cut-off age from where things only detoriate and never improve? It set me thinking. My failing eyesight, my waning left ear and my steadily dropping memory power came to my mind. I see many of my dear and near ones succumbing to various lifestyle diseases. Always believing I am not to be one of them. But sometimes on various nights I hear the distant call of an other world where everything is white and frosty. And I wake up, my heart pounding. I turn around to embrace my little one sleeping peacefully beside me and feel reassured that I have a long way to go.

But its not the physical health I get concerned. It is mostly my intellect and thoughts that put me off. I can count my friends in two hands. Without any help from my feet. What prevents me from being friendly, i have never understood. Yes, motherhood has softened me. Mellowed me. But I still cannot forgive a person who has hurt me . I do not come across as an endearing person and have never tried to. Why do I screen people across me before getting to know them, i do not know. Sometimes, I grow judgmental, sometimes emotional and many times irrational. I am skeptical about other people’s goodwill towards me. I believe only half of the good things i hear. Sometimes I am superstitious too. If my children laugh too much, I expect them to cry soon.

Many Novembers have come and gone where I have tried to make me a better person. To make sense of many things I presume. In two months, I give it up. Why should I when the world around me is the same? I excuse myself. But thats what i love about birthdays too. Its like getting reborn. Year after year. You get a chance to improve or change. And to forgive oneself. Who wants the cake or the candles? When you get a new life itself! Ok, am ready to be 35. With a new set of resolutions.