"What do you want to be, when you grow up?”

What do you want to be, when you grow up? I asked this question to my second grand daughter who is by nature an active child. She is three years old. She couldn’t fully understand the impact of the question. ‘Engineer and Doctor’ words also she couldn’t tell correctly. Instead of Doctor she remembered big injections, and told that she would administer it on grandmother. While closely watching our room, she commented, “You are not keeping the room clean-Books are there on the cot. There’s no bed in the place. Computer is closed/covered with clothes. There is more dust on the table. My mother keeps our house clean” and so on…. She was in full form, bristling with enthusiasm and energy.

Now a days she spends time with me on Saturdays, when her mother usually comes and helps us. It is always a pleasant moment to be with kids. They are innocent, and at the growing stage are talkative; they also crave for good food too. Today she was commenting on food too while taking lunch. Though her mother, in her house too prepares, she told today that preparation was nice here. A keen sense of observation and more important plain talking. After lunch I went upstairs; she followed me. She did not want to sleep while I was getting tired. She reminded me of my mother .My mother never slept in the afternoon, especially after taking lunch. This attribute, I want to internalize in my life and still it’s an elusive goal. I am learning from my grand daughter, as to how to remain active on Saturdays. Children are always active, vibrant and dynamic. After troubling her mother for a while she went for a good sleep, in the late afternoon.

The first grand daughter phoned up and told in pure and chaste Tamil, that she would come along with her mother and meet me positively. She told, it was more like a promise. At 10 o clock in the night I again phoned and asked her why she had not come. She replied with all seriousness that her father had not returned yet and mother was tired at home and she was very keen to keep up the promise of visiting and advised me to remain awake, until their arrival. I merely told her: Thank you for your stubbornness and tendency to keep up the promise.

Going back to the question asked /raised at the beginning, Muriel Anderson has narrated the experience in a party. It appeared in Readers Digest long ago. The guests were asked to answer this question on a piece of paper. Here are some insights, given by the guests on the theme, what so you want to be when you grow up?

Allow myself to get angry without feeling guilty
Trust the running of the Universe to God instead of trying to upstage him so often.
Be able to cry when it hurts
Say no to my children and stick to it
Make peace with death at 29 .. ..I don’t have to waste time for the next 40 or 50 years.
Laugh at myself more often
Be able to pray again
Refuse demands upon me that destroy my inner peace.
Be able to give my family less affluence and more of myself
Take as good care of my body as I do of my car.
Tell people that nice things I often think about them but all too seldom say.

We shall revisit to all these at a later date. At 60 plus I want to do a lot of reading and writing. The first step is to clear my academic debris and locate my dairies and edit little so that they will reach a larger audience.