Learn and Serve

October is shaping up to be a good month for me. First it was the experience of the Jazz Festival and now, being part of the learn and serve initiative.

Learn and Serve has been around for a while now. Since its inception, every year groups of women get together to learn how to knit or crochet. Quick and simple projects like scarves and beanies are chosen. The finished product is distributed among construction workers as well as among people in cancer wards just before winter sets in here in Bahrain.

It’s a great cause and yesterday I was able to attend my first session. The lovely ladies who attended it with me are in the picture.

Now, I’m not exactly a beginner. I first picked up a crochet hook when I was pregnant with my little one, in 2015. I had this idea in my head that I would bond so much better with her if I had made blankets and mittens and little bonnets for her myself. So, before her arrival I managed to make two little blankets and a few amigurumi toys. Once tiny made her appearance though, my hook, much like all other aspects of my life became neglected and I only picked it up again when I wanted to make a graphgan of Jimi Hendrix for the husbands birthday last year. (His birthday is coming around again in a couple of weeks and that graphgan is…well…perhaps I can give it to him as a Christmas present this year!) Anyhow…

Am so glad that I decided to stop being lazy and to be a part of Learn and Serve this year. Hopefully, the cap that I’m making will keep someone nice and warm in the cold winter months ahead.

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Come back tomorrow to find out what happened to Emily after her wedding ceremony. To read all that has happened to Emily so far, click here.

Post 11 of 31 of the UBC this month. Nearly at the halfway mark! Closer and closer to completion I get everyday! Yay!

 

A is for…

…April Arrivals!

Apparently golden-yellow sunshine has given way to pale moon beams and then returned to reclaim its territory over and over for more than a month now. When I was told, I blinked in disbelief. I moved out of my room and looked at all the calendars in the house suspiciously, to see if I could spot any sign of mischief, but all of them; from the one that hangs in my parents room to the one on my phone; show me that today is the 8th of May! It seems then that what I have been told is true – I have been entrusted with the care of the most precious parcel for five weeks already! I can scarcely believe that she has been here so long. True she was scheduled to arrive in April; but she made her grand entrance a lot earlier than she was supposed to. A friend of mine joked and said, “She definitely knows her mother is a CA…why else would she arrive on the first day of the new financial year!?!”

When I called my doctor to discuss what I thought was a silly problem and she told me that the baby had to come the next morning – days before she was due – I did what any reasonable person would have done in my shoes…I panicked. Would the baby have grown enough to be able to survive outside its cocoon? Why so much before the due date? Was I becoming an inhospitable host? Why wasn’t the husband there by my side?! Could I handle a baby? Would I know what to do? What if we didn’t bond well?  And worst of all…was I even ready to be a mother?!? To say I was freaking out would probably be an understatement…

Now a little later I know, although it is normal, I didn’t have to turn into a great big mess because lying on that operating table, strapped up to strange contraptions, my mouth covered with an oxygen mask, I can’t recall a time I was happier than those few seconds when they let me gaze upon her face before whisking her away. I realized that my biggest fear about being ready was probably the most foolish of all. Of course I was ready! I’d been ready to be her mother since the day I saw her as nothing more than a little speck on the ultrasound.

April…you have brought with you many nights of disturbed sleep and a painful recovery post surgery, but, you could not have been a more beautiful and blessed month!

Growing Up

When I published that little post the other day after all those months of…hibernation?…Yes, I think that’s probably the best way to describe my state of being…I realized just how much I have missed writing/blogging regularly. Moving to a different country brought with it change of proportions that I didn’t expect to encounter so quickly and for a while I was almost struggling to cope. My “home” here was the last thing on my mind. You see, when I first moved to Bahrain in July 2014, the husband and I thought it was time we took the “We two, Our one” (for the time being at least) plunge and try to extend our little family of two. Never did I expect to see those positive lines on the home pregnancy test just a month after we made that decision. I couldn’t digest the fact that at that very moment, I was already playing host to a baby and would be for the next nine months! Could I really be that lucky? I wouldn’t allow myself to believe the test. Truth be told, I think I only accepted that I was going to be a mother when my doctor pointed out the tiny little speck that was to be our child at my first ultrasound. (I needed her to show me where the baby was twice, because I couldn’t spot the baby the first time. I am hoping that is no gauge for how I will fare as a parent…sigh…)

I spent a lot of the first few months of my pregnancy like most other women, with my head bent over a toilet unable to tolerate the smell of food let alone eat it and shed weight so fast that at any other time in my life, the weighing scale and I would have been friends for the very first time. But, I was not in the mood to make friends and instead anxiously worried about the baby. I was also really lonely because since it had been just a month that I was in Bahrain before the onset of the morning sickness, apart from the husband, there wasn’t anyone else who I had the time to get to know well enough in the country to even spend an afternoon with to take my mind off things. Being at an emotional and physical low point (and being allowed to be extra fussy since I am expecting), I convinced the husband to let me have the delivery in India; in surroundings I know and with more people I love close by. So, here I am…back in the settings I ached for when I was all those miles away.

I didn’t write…couldn’t in fact…for months and months, but now, having reached the stage where my belly has begun to enter a room before me and people no longer just ask how I’ve managed to put on so much weight, I feel the need to get back to writing. In a little while, if everything goes well, the husband and I will become completely responsible for another human life. Am I excited? Of course I am! I adore children and knowing that I have one of my own on his or her way makes me thrilled. Am I also scared? No…I’m plain old terrified! I am after all the woman who for the longest time truly believed her baby’s movements were just gas… When I think of that part of me that wants to write, I wonder if I will be able to sit at a laptop or desktop and have the time to write what I feel. Somehow I don’t see that as a sure thing in the near future. But, I’ll never know if I don’t try.

I suppose it’s time for me to accept that the girl looking back at me from the mirror has grown up and a new chapter is about to begin – motherhood…won’t you wish me luck?

UBC14: This much is true

When she was little,
They pulled her cheeks.
They said she was cute
They called her sweet.

As she grew older,
Chubby she remained
But they no longer praised her
Just called her rude names.
So she didn’t go out much
Stayed at home instead.
Chose to be alone
Sometimes crying in bed.
When she flipped on the switch
To watch some TV,
The women on there
Were all so skinny.
She looked in the mirror
That hanged in her room
Instead of happiness,
All it increased was gloom.
Her face was too round,
Her arms too fat
Her hips were too wide
Her stomach far from flat.
All she wanted
Was for them to see
What she was like
Not her body.
She spent a long time,
Trying to become thin
She knew chubby was out.
Angles were in.
But try as she would,
She looked almost the same.
Slowly she came to terms
With the shape she would remain.

Holding her head high,
Now, she goes out,
Her chubby face
Wearing a smile on the mouth
The arms may still
Be too fat
But she couldn’t care
Less about that.
To feel accepted,
She knew this was true:

You need to accept yourself
Before others can accept you.
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