LIFE AS IT IS

I am a parent, and as such I feel the onus to teach our children the difference between good and bad is squarely on us. We the parents, both fathers and mothers, are our children's first teachers, and it is our responsibility to inculcate the right kind of knowledge into them, so they can become worthy members of the society when they grow up.  As a parent, I also feel that if my child fails her society, I am also partly, if not fully, responsible for her failure.  We now live in a fast-paced, selfish, materialistic world where we are so busy making money and living our own lives that many of us have no idea what our children do on the Internet all day long, what they play, read and watch, who their friends are, and how they spend their free time.  We do not sit together at the dinner table, we do not watch movies together, and we do not chitchat over breakfast on weekends. We do not know if our children are depressed or secretly frustrated, or if all they want is t...

What happens when your toddler mistakes your wall for a canvas? You have very unique works of art all over the house. Not only unique, these artworks are abstract and priceless, too. But no matter how unique they may be, you don’t want them hanging from the walls of your house!  On one morning of June 2015, my daughter took my kitchen and living room walls for canvases. When I caught her, she was already done drawing on three walls and wrapping up her artwork on the fourth. She drew with a pen in one hand and a pencil in another for greater speed and coverage. An ambidextrous person in the making? Perhaps.  Her drawings, which resembled the humps and waves you see on an ECG (electrocardiograph) report, made me act like a mad woman. I was so angry that I cried. Being someone who is fastidious about cleanliness, this incident was similar to someone pouring buckets of black tar on white walls. I knew I had to find a way to remove these medical reports from the walls, my...

There are days when I wish I had nothing to do. A day when I will not have to leave my bed after my daughter wakes up at 6:30 a.m. in the morning. A day when I will not have to read aloud for half-hour to feed her just 8 spoonfuls of oatmeal. A day when I will not have to run after her after she poops and refuses to let me change her diaper. A day when I will not have to pretend to be a singer in order to make her go to sleep. On some days, I do not even feel like washing the dishes after a meal or preparing a lunch for myself. On those days, I just want to spend time with myself, and no one else. We have too many days in our lives when we push ourselves to do things that we do not feel like doing at that moment. On some mornings, our tired bodies and minds (even though we just woke up from an 8-hour night sleep) tell us to skip work. But we cannot do that, because if we did that then there would not be any money to pay rent, buy food and health insurance. I don't have to worry...