Family Guy

It is not often that a man can admit that he is in sync with his spouse - but I must confess that that is true for me. In fact not only with my wife, but my kids as well!

How do I know that? you may well ask!

 

Well, the thought struck me a few months ago when .....

 

One evening I was contemplating and debating aloud on the various options I had to fritter away my time, when my wife asked me to run an errand with her. As we were driving to our destination, she turned to me and apologized for dragging me with her. She felt that I had been keen on doing something else, nevertheless she had wanted me to come along for the company. (For the record - I am always keen on doing something else! Whatever the plan - I want to do the opposite, and like any guy I have too many distractions - the TV, Xbox, Gym, Beach, the list goes on …) 

 

The reason I remember this occasion was that I actually 'wanted' to step out of the house and spend the evening with her. Internally, I had felt quite grateful that she had taken my indecisiveness by its neck and thrust a decision on to me. Hence I was quite surprised by 'her' perception of the situation.

As any man in a relationship knows, having a credit balance with ones better half is a tenuous and slippery slope and so I let discretion be the better part of valor. I turned to her, took her hand and said that nothing was a sacrifice for her. And (as I was driving) quickly turned my head back to the road, before she could see through my charade. She accepted my feigned acceptance with a look saying that she was in my debt "big time". Which only served to make me feel guiltier!

 

And as I continued driving and with my guilt acting as a catalyst, it occurred to me that it had actually been a while since I had disliked or not looked forward to doing anything with her, or the kids for that matter. We have reached a nice balance and are attuned to each other’s moods and idiosyncrasies. Our likes and dislikes, which a few years ago would have been light years apart, have now started to converge. Since our week days are quite regimented, we have all somehow fallen into a cadence and have started enjoying the time spent together. Our views on diets, exercise, school, etc. seem aligned.

Take for example:

 

Movies and Bollywood

We love Sci-Fi and big budget action flicks (even though some of them do stretch it a bit). My wife does sometimes drop hints to go see a Hindi movie, but there is really no teeth in it. Since neither of the kids understands much Hindi anyway, there is not much support from them - if anything there is only resistance! And to be completely honest the few recent Bollywood movies we have seen at home, have been very good.

 

I still believe that as bad as Indian cinema is on action and comedy, it gets into its own in the tear-jerking genre. I just do not know why but I seem to cry the most in Hindi movies - even the happy scenes have me dabbing my eyes!! (Maybe it is the residual reaction of being forced to watch them as a kid, with their absurd action sequences, interspersed by song and dance routines at the most inopportune times.)

 

Babies and Errands

All the things that seemed to irritate me in the past - like visits to the fish market or going shopping to the baby shop, have quietly faded out of our lives. The kids have grown up, so no more baby games and baby talk either - though my daughter had to step up to the plate a bit faster on her development. Even the guilt associated with my lack of desire to take my kids to the garden and push them around on swings and seesaws has dissipated as it is not relevant anymore. They are old enough to amuse themselves.

All the DIY stuff required around the house is taken care of by my wife, my friends or the professionals. She loves to tinker around the house while I am lounging on the sofa watching TV (with a big bowl of crisps on my lap). Even our visits to ACE and other hardware stores are coordinated, so that while she is checking out drills, paints and nails, I would be in the store next door browsing for the latest tech gadgets or sports gear.    

 

Night and Social life

Another thorn in our collective sides used to be weekend nights. I always preferred to tuck in early and my wife used to want to stay up till dawn. Notice I said "used to"? Even here we have reached a happy medium, with anything between 11.00 pm and midnight a sort of compromise.

 

Our children seem to be following suit, getting into bed at a reasonable hour. My daughter does seem more prone to following in her mother’s earlier footsteps. She is definitely not a morning person, but a cheerful and noisy awakening in the wee hours generally puts paid to that.  

 

Even the social entanglements, over which we used to have incessant arguments on, have receded. At one point in time, I used to feel like we were meeting and greeting every one of the Million plus visitors from Mumbai coming to Dubai. I still get this vague sensation of sometimes being in the center of a whirl of unknown faces and people, making themselves comfortable in my house.   

 

Education

As a bachelor my biggest fear of having children was about sitting and making them study. I had studied enough to last a few lifetimes and I had absolutely no desire to sit with textbooks again. My parents never made us study – and I wanted to carry that tradition forward. I was blessed that my In-Laws had a similar working model and hence my wife also felt the same way. In this matter though, there were two things in my favor, that I had not considered at the time.

 

Thing One

was the fact that subjects have evolved so much that if I had to go back to school today I would probably have to start in third grade. Hence helping my children with their studies was an impossibility. Both children were made aware very early on, that the best help is self help. We also clarified to them that we were not the sort of parents to visit the school incessantly, nor did we have a raging desire to befriend their teachers. As far as their grades were concerned, counter-intuitively it was effort that counted, not results.

 

Thing Two

was their school curriculum. Unlike the one that we grew up with, it is one that penalizes the teachers for the student’s non-performance, rather than the parents. That means that we are largely oblivious of what and how they are doing in school - an arrangement that seems to be eminently agreeable to all parties. 

 

There used to be one issue with their school which used to harbor a large population of resident “expatriate” mums, who with nothing better to do, would ramble around the school basically making a nuisance of themselves. Scheduling weekly coffee mornings and PTA's, as well as helping out as assistants, in addition to arranging hundreds of social events, which we never attended. And obviously their kids became the hotshots, being favored with more privileges. However under new school management, it seems that mothers are not that welcome anymore, which definitely relieves the pressure of guilt on my wife, as the only working Mum in the entire school.

 

The Cracks

I am not naïve enough to think that this will go on forever. I can already see some cracks in my utopia, but in the interest of the reader I will keep those for another blog.

In the meantime, I continue to enjoy this purple patch while it lasts.