Lessons

If there is one thing that the world tells us today about parenting, then it is the constant hammering in our heads of how difficult it is, and how responsible and serious you have to be to bring up an emotionally healthy child. Thankfully for me, sometimes Divya makes me see it all in a simpler perspective.

A few months ago, she woke up one morning and said to me -

'Papa, I'm so Happy.'

In that beaming, positive, gushing with delight way that only babies and toddlers seem to have. I burst out laughing, making nothing of it. It sounded cute, probably something she picked up from us, after all, when she did something good, we always told her that we were happy. And aren't kids supposed to be like parrots at 2 years of age? Everything they hear is recorded and replayed, which can cause embarrassment, eapecially when she turns around at a party and yells out 'FUCKIN' HELL' potentially hazardous parenting.
So, just like I didn't pay too much attention to the swear words, I didn't pay too much attention to 'I'm so happy' putting it down as a phrase she has parroted. Time passed, and a few days later, Divya turns around and says to me.

"Papa, I love you too much."

Needless to say, the beauty of those words hit my heart like a jackhammer (in a good way), a wrenching pain started right at the core of my heart and I could feel it shoot up straight through my throat and from somewhere through the back of my mouth and nose, find an outlet as tears. It was me who was gushing that day, My daughter had just told me that she loved me. And even though I didn't know it then, because I didn't think she was capable of expressing it that way, I have since come to realize that she means it. See, what I have learnt in these months that she has been saying these things is, that at two years of age, kids don't know what to filter and what not to. they say what they absorb. If the child absorbs swear words, she utters expletives. If she hears, and feels love, attention and care, that's what she gives in return. So I learnt not to swear in front of her, not to smoke in front of her, and not to scream in front of her. Instead, all I needed to do was hug her sometimes, give her a kiss every now and then, and tell her that I love her, for her to make me feel like the most fortunate man alive every single morning.

Her mother thinks I spoil her, but then, I'm sure that if I don't spoil her, then she'll be the first one to question me.
We share some awesome times now. We wake up in the morning and dance to cheap hindi music. both of us can't eat without dropping our food all over ourselves, we read to each other, she makes me talk in a funny Yoda voice and I make her tickle my back, we go to feed the ducks sometimes, and sometimes I light up the barbecue while she just watches and waits till she can get her claws on the chicken. But at the end of it all, We lie down in bed, she stretches her hand out and asks me to put my head on it. And when she is satisfied with our sleeping position, everyday, she says
'Papa, I love you too much!' and gives me three kisses... is what makes me realize that parenting is not as difficult as the books and the world make it out to be. If my two year old can understand the concept of love and happiness, and appreciate it, then I must be doing something right. And going to sleep with that knowledge is what makes life so great.