Saying A New Hi
Ever since our baby girl arrived 5 years back, we’ve been lucky to be staying in a place that instantly connected us to some other like-minded and similar-age parent couples, with similar age babies as ours.
As we were busy setting up home, our baby was happy seeing other little ones, all in their walkers and strollers, gradually getting off their strollers and learning to take those first steps together. As much as our babies were making new relationships and learning about the first bonds of friendship, we, the parents, were also kind of doing much the same.
Ever since my daughter remembers, this has been ‘home’ for her. She has never seen the changes that shifting a house means, as neither us nor any of her friends have moved home really. So it was that her room was in all sense ‘her’ own room, her window and balcony were ‘hers’, the pigeons that came every day at 3 in the afternoon at the kitchen balcony were ‘her’ own birdie pets to feed, the parents of her closest friends gradually became her family, their home merging into her ‘extended’ home, her friends more of bosom buddies and foster siblings than just friends.
Living in a city away from where you have lived your entire life, living in a place where you don’t have blood-relatives or anyone from your ‘real’ family, your closest friends and their children slowly take the place of your own family, and they are the ones who you run to with all your troubles, secrets and gossips, the ones you rely on through thick and thin, the ones who you want to spend all your fun and special moments with. As much as my daughter was forming her own special bonds, so were we. And even without realising it, we were already comfortably set.
Till now, when we happened to buy a home of our ‘own’, in the literal sense, and the prospect of finally moving out of that other ‘home’ suddenly became a reality. As much as we knew this day would come, we weren’t really mentally prepared to leave our home of more than 5 years and try to start a new beginning. And as I slowly started preparing those first mental notes, I realised I was in denial.
The shifting has happened though, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, I guess my daughter has handled it better than me. One thing that has worked in our favour is that we are almost walking distance from our earlier place, and it’s really not that difficult for me to take my little one to see her friends, and for me, to see mine. Of course my daughter was reluctant to shift, she was not happy to let go of her ‘space’ and her friends, she was worried that she wouldn’t get to see them as much and spend as much time with them as she was used to. But she has adjusted better than I expected. So much so, that she has taken the effort to talk to other kids in the building, and even though she realised that she is the youngest in the entire building, a fact that she doesn’t like, she is willing to say hi to new people, to let them try to be a part of her life, and she is trying to accept and include new friends, in addition to the ones she has made for life.
I am still trying to learn from her. As someone who doesn’t like change, I prefer staying close and connected to my special few chosen friends, and I’m not very open to make new acquaintances, let alone friends. So I am trying, really trying, to learn to meet some new people, to learn to say a new ‘hi’, all over again.
Debolina Raja Gupta loves being a mommy and best friend to her 5-year old princess. A working mom, voracious reader, social activist, photographer, poet, travel freak, beauty writer and an everything-of-sorts. Best fun is story time and our fashionista time together. My blogs: The Book Worm, A Few Thoughts Here And There, My Little One And Me, Beauty Makeup And More.