Holiday Magic

When I was a teenager, we used to put up a tree every year to celebrate Christmas, even though it was not our holiday by religion. There was something so magical about all the lights and the busy crowds and the frostiness outside that I bought into that my parents started putting up the tree and subscribing to Santa when I was young. As I grew so did my responsibilities for keeping up the holiday spirit and so the putting up and taking down of the tree became my duty. At the age of about 13 I started to write a letter to myself to receive the following year when I would again open the boxes of tree parts and tangled lights as an organizational guide of what went where the year before. I loved this part. I loved writing the letter and I loved receiving the letter the following year. I always started the letter by saying "To: Deepa 1993...From: Deepa 1992." Looking back I think what was so magical about that letter was the passing of time that occured in between and the realization that so much had happened in one year between the constancy of the yearly tree assembly. As a teenager, changing so much from one year to the next, writing the letter and receiving it felt almost like the exchange transpired between two totally different people - one slightly less aware of the world around her and one slightly more.

Yesterday I looked at Neil and said, "How lucky are we to have Sailee and to have so many friends and family that love us and love her so much?" 2010 is the amazing year we will forever talk about. The birth of Sailee marks the biggest change in our lives thus far that we could ever have imagined or ever hoped for. As I reflect on the past decade I am entrenched in wonder at the young clueless people we were in the year 2001, and the people we are today. Ten short years ago, Neil and I were just beginning our relationship with each other, leaving our lives as students (or so we thought), starting our careers as a teacher and an engineer, and embarking upon our adult lives. For a good part of this decade I clung to the idea of being young, and often still thought of myself as a kid....and now I have one.

Time is an amazing concept, and one that has played so differently in our lives at various stages. As a young child, waiting for the next Christmas tree or the next birthday to be a little older and a little taller seemed almost impossible to bear. As a young mother now trying to savor and capture every precious moment, time is fleeting and cheating me. And yet as busy as I feel now balancing a full-time job and a family, I am thankful that I even have the luxury of time to realize and reflect on how precious these moments are.

Sailee is ever growing and changing almost by the minute these days. She is developing quite a little personality and is starting to recognize Neil and me as her parents, and has more recently started showing preference toward us when others try to hold her. At four months, she started teething, and very shortly thereafter learned how to scream! Just in the past few days we saw her sit up for the first time with no support for a good 15 minutes. She is starting to imitate and is quite the babbler. She also loves to stand while supported, and can do that for at least an hour before tiring, but still is not at all fond of the tummy-time that we keep requiring of her to prepare her to crawl. We have started to internalize that while she may never roll-over or crawl, she might just go from sitting to walking before we blink.

And then there is the hair. Oh the hair. Most people cannot believe she is only 5 months old with that head of hair, but truthfully I think she came out of the womb with more hair than most middle-aged men. Her hair is straight, so far, for which I am so thankful, but has hints of wavy/curliness and some occasional brown highlights. Be it what it is, I wish for her good health and good hair. With those two things I believe one can conquer the world.

In 2011, Sailee will grow from a 5 month old to a 17 month old. By this time next year, she will be walking and talking and will be a completely different baby from the one we know today with more preferences and opinions than we can think of now. I cannot imagine what kind of things we will do, the places we will go, the firsts we will experience, and I am certain we do not yet know the magnitude of the joy we will feel. I can only dream of what life is going to be like.

To: Deepa 2011...From: Deepa 2010
Enjoy it, every little minute.