You never know what you've got till its gone

Yes, sounds like a crappy line about some old flame. No, I’m not talking about a person, I’m talking about a life.

It happened again, I hate myself every time it does! I fell asleep putting my baby to bed.. I even let the maid go out , taking a cab to buy me a couple of frappuccinos since I was looking forward to a long night on line with my PC. I have a lot of things to catch up on, some correspondence, on line banking and people to talk to , including my mom, who’ve I’ve been appearing off line to for some weeks now just to avoid the “ so, what’s you plan?” question.

Since I slept so early , I woke up at around 5 am. In a bad mood of course. Took one of the melted fraps from the fridge and went on line. I just wasn’t in the mood to do anything and to top it all I knew that in an hour or two I’d have to start getting ready for the “drop off”. So I started getting ready, I was thinking to myself.. I need to let the nanny come back, I had given her a week off when I started noticing that baby was getting attached to her again. I figured with school starting and all the memories of last year’s play school where Nanny was always there, she was in a regression period. After all, how can she trust mommy when mommy wasn’t there in the first place!!

So, there. I took over the whole thing, with the help of my maid ( preparing the milk and arranging her toys) I achieved my objective. We have bonded mightier than mighty bond but I’m losing myself. Basically my personal life has been put on hold. Well not really on hold but it’s hard to think about serious things or make fate determining decsions with one eye on what you’re doing and the other watching over a kid 24/7. I decided that it might be time to call Nanny and ask her to come back. I haven’t gone to the gym or even deep conditioned my hair in a week and I can feel my body complaining about it. I made a note to myself to call her later when she’s awake.

On that note I noticed the sun was up, I went to the bathroom and abluted ( washed up for prayer) , I prayed my fajr and went back to the room, baby was sleeping on my bed, I tried to make some noise, the earlier she wakes up the earlier she goes to bed but alas! The snoring was louder than my clumsiness, laid down beside her , played with her hair , held her hand and maid some high pitched good mornings.. It was about 6 am , school is at 9 . I gave up and closed my eyes too. At around 8:30 the maid was knocking on the door, Madam it’s already 8:30.. whaatttt?? I looked to my side and baby was still sleeping.. must have been a long day yesterday at her grandparents place. I woke her up, gave her a shower and we were on our way. I myself didn’t take a bath, we were running late and I figured I’ll just do it later since I had no plans for the afternoon.

On my way out I received a surprising sms from Ann, it said “ Tam, I have a problem , where are you?” I msged her back saying meet me at the café in 30 mins.

After dropping my baby at school, I headed to my favorite place, there she was, sunglasses and all.. I apologized for being late.. . she looked at me and asked me how I did it.. taking baby to school everyday in the morning with all the shit I have in my life and managing to keep in control. I smiled at her and told her that things are not what they seem and that I’m actually losing my mind.

Ann and I both have something in common, our husbands are in another country and we don’t know what we really want. It’s a little more complicated for me because in addition to not knowing what I want , at 24 I don’t know who I am! And Religion as I discovered has a big say on my marital status , way of life and mentality.. something I’m slowly trying to accept and deal with.


Turns out that , may God rest her soul, Ann’s nanny’s mom ( the mother of the nanny of Ann) passed away yesterday, suddenly and just like that. She woke up to her 18 year old Nanny’s weeping and had to endure the emotional drama of it all!! Something which she just didn’t need at a time when her f ( or so she would like to think) was losing his money on Forex trading and taking it out on her .
She dropped her Nanny off at the bus station , gave her all the cash she had left with her and faced the reality of her might not coming back since she had brothers and sisters that may need her now that her mom was gone.

I was thinking of what to tell her, I asked her what was really her problem.. Is it that someone’s mom died unexpectedly reminding us of how short life is and how selfish we are ? Or that the nanny is gone and she’s gonna have to “toil”( a word I got from her ), for her kid like never before? With him starting to go to school while she is a student too.

She didn’t say anything, realizing I just made it worse, I offered that my nanny stay with her till she finds a replacement. She got into the never ending discussion of how unfair life was and how she just needs to get out of here.

Now, I’ve been there and one thing I could tell her was not to take her life here for granted, when I left this sub urban heaven, all I could think of were the things I didn’t do, the crisp air of dawn, the silence of the night and the accessibility to everything you can think of.. things like scuba diving, mountain climbing , shopping sprees, barbeque, golf courses, island hopping and spur of the moment late night outs.. things that need time, money and planning anywhere else. Herbal medicine, beauty salons and foot scrubs, the mere fact that we could play tennis or go swimming or just have a snack at the country club at our subdivision whenever we feel like it. Time here is still and life is what you make of it not the other way around. She got my point , and was excited about when we could go scuba diving. I just repeated that anywhere else would be so different.. even the time she can spend with her kid now and the things they could do together here more than anywhere else was priceless. Instead of thinking of how to get out of here when it’s just a matter of waiting , we should invest all our time and resources in getting the best out of this place and even then we’d still have to come back here at least once a year to reload. Satisfied and planning things in our minds we smoked a cigarette and sipped our ice teas. Look at the time, time for her to pick up her kid.. we said goodbye and she left.

I still have an hour to go, I took my laptop out and started to blog while listening to Stained’s so far away…