My darling child. PART 2

These are those musings, which I never shared with you. Thoughts just kept crowding my mind & I kept everything to myself. We ended up writing about more mundane things, daily almost.

I picked up e-mailing & working on the computer, so fast, I could not believe! Me, who used to be so put off by the computer! That little box became my lifeline. It kept me going when you were gone. Every time I sat in front of it to open my mail I prayed intensely. Oh, please God let there be few lines from you. How much I missed you! My heart ached with love & longing. Every night I dreamt that you were still with me. I could touch you; that your parting was just a bad dream. And the morning rays filtering through my windows would wake me up to the rude shock of the reality. You were actually thousands of miles away. The Truth would not sink in. Is it true? You are not just a call away?

Your e-mails became the highlight of my day. I deleted many. Wish I had saved & taken printouts. It occurred to me much, much later.

Open Heart - PART 1 INTRODUCTION (Forthcoming book "From Distant Horizons")

This is about a strong, yet almost invisible bond between a mother & a daughter. She is always in the present while I keep going down the memory lane with agonizing nostalgia. Keep peeping into a future of which she will not be a constant part. For me, her departure to the U.S. created an immense vacuum. Despite several hobbies & interests in different arenas, I felt lost, almost cheated. Somehow I had never foreseen this. Never prepared myself for it. Never visualized my darling daughter leaving India. These things happened day in & day out, but never to me. My kids always will be around. They may travel abroad to gain experience, as my son did when he went to Sweden for a few months. How can they uproot themselves? But then, just because my roots were here, their movements need not be restricted. They were bound to explore more & more possibilities. Somehow when I educated them I forgot about the ultimate consequences. The birds were bound to spread wings & fly away to distant horizons. Those horizons, that were neither within my sight nor within my reach, for whatever reasons. It took me long to accept. Accept, I did, reconcile, I wonder.