Ode To P
Next week you will turn all of one
Another joyous year begun.
9 am, last Thursday , last March
Was the moment you entered this, our world-
A scrawny tyke with wrinkled skin
Your eyes shut tight, soft silky hair and fingers fine.
Your skinny arms and skinny legs were bound up tight
In swaddle cloth when first we got to see you.
And how we waited with baited breath
To see the colour of your eyes
Would they be black, brown or blue?
Don’t ask me why but we wondered too
What you’d be like?
Would you have your mother’s disposition?
Your father’s face?
Your grandpa’s hair?
Or granny’s smile?
It wasn’t long before the world
Saw you like a bud slowly unfurled.
Your eyes they went from grey to brown
Your hair fell off and how you grew!
From helpless, unknown infancy
To your own distinct personality.
The journey this year was a lot of fun
But also quite a bumpy one
The nights you kept us all awake
Wondering what it was that made you so
Cranky, restless noisy too
With wails and screams so scary.
Could it be the tummy monster? A bad dream?
Or just another pesky mosquito that disturbed you in the land of Nod?
We rocked and sang and walked a while,
Cooed and shushed till finally we found
A pacifier that soothed your soul and calmed our nerves.
You held your head, began to turn, sit up in bed
And smile a gummy toothless smile.
Then came the famous earthworm crawl like PeeWee
As you laboured all over the house.
Then came the turn of the erupting teeth that made you scream and yell in pain.
To top it all you then began
To crawl and find things so small that only you could see
and put them in your mouth quickly.
The wonderous year ahead will see
Your first steps,
Your first words,
As you unravel the mystery
Of this marvelous world and its story untold.
Happy Birthday Champ! Our Number One!
May you always have an umbrella in the bright sun.
You’ve given the whole year through
Of course we can’t forget those nights you slept
So little that even we
Forgot the bliss of a ten hour sleep
And were pleased to snatch just two or three
Hours of peaceful rest.
We loved the way you saw the world
Wonderful, amazing , challenging!
You smiled and laughed and cried and screamed
And reveled in the reactions each action brings
Your mountains were our
To see you greet the world anew.
As a mother of two thirty-year old daughters and a grandmother of a nineteen week old grandson, Sunita Rajwade has been there and done that. A hands on mom, she has seen two girls grow successfully through baby hood, toddler hood, adolescence and adult hood; solving their maths problems and contributing to their angst of growing up with a mom “who doesn’t understand”. But now as a grandmother, she’s being appreciated for her “wisdom” and “understanding” and would like to share my experiences of this wonderful journey from motherhood to grandmotherhood.
