Oma is weg

Posting this  a couple of days late. Am sincerely hoping this is not the theme for September for me.

We are up early for a Saturday. There are only the four of us, sitting in the living room, doing our stuff. I am being interrupted often by the kids. Frown! And then it sinks in. My MIL left for India today. The house seems a bit empty, the sofa seat which she preferred to sit in unoccupied, the bathroom shelf where she kept her toiletries now bare, lil G will shift to her room to sleep with big sister.

So how was the month-long visit? Overall there was a sigh of relief that the visit went just fine. She did not leave disgruntled like last time, when she had come to help with baby Big G, for the fact that we did not take her out to all the places she wanted to go. Actually, methinks we overdid the tourism bit this time. But she did not complain about that either. On her part, she reiterated and point taken, that she had stopped here only to see the grandchildren. I just did what I had to do, service with a smile, managed decently!

Since she and the husband are both opinionated people, they did get into a couple of arguments at times regarding bringing up children, how we treat our children, politics, her life and issues regarding other family members. At all such times, except for my children bit, I added a temporary ziplock to my lips. Believe me, more peace that way.

I remember surrendering the kitchen to her more often this time, because she volunteered to make stuff. And I finally cottoned on to the trick for making great-tasting upma.  First roast the rava in ghee. But after that, stand in front of the cooking pot, pour oil from  the bottle, close your eyes, recite a mantra, hum a tune, whatever and then do not react visibly or any other way when you see the amount of oil in the pot. Oil in pot can't be returned or reduced. Now please proceed to make yummilicious upma! Simple, isn't it?

But all the petty stuff aside, I can say I did bond better with her. Normally our trips to Bangalore co-incide with the visit of her sister and brother from the US, and with my brother-in-law now married with a wanting front-scene wife, I had secretly come to dread Bangalore visits. I could barely find time to talk to her and she would be busy organising food and the mandatory trip that we have to take everybody on - it's exhausting. Forget me or my husband, it was my kids who never got any decent Ajji time and I always maintain that is a bit unfair.

So on my own territory, yes, if you have to come down to being that, things were infinitely better. She was more relaxed and kids had a good time with Oma (grandma in Dutch) as lil G insisted on addressing her. And of course, people are what they are, our innate natures and characteristics manifest in everything we do and neither of us is perfect at any given time . With that perspective, yes, it was pretty good relating.

The husband and she would watch movies late into the night, almost every night. I would slink away to put the kids to sleep, only sometimes volunteering to see a complete movie. So Fatso and Shanghai are the 2  full movies I saw, and nodded away or even slept through a lot others. In all, we've had a pretty eventful summer  - for more reasons than I will write about.

 She left Saturday morning - the kids were still sleeping and I guess because of their ages they took her departure pretty stoically - Oma is weg (Ajji is gone), said lil G peeping into her bedroom. I, who dread goodbyes, and am literally spend my last day choked with tears and emotions when I have to leave my mom's place, had a few goodbye tears too.

And now, we are literally on our own. No relief!