As I watched Alia sleep last night, her chest rising and falling rhythmically under a velvety red blanket, tiny hands curled around her face, and her mouth slightly open with a hint of drool dribbling down her cheek, I wished time would just stop. I took a couple of pictures and then a couple more, wanting desperately to hold on to the moment. My memories are dominated by the big events in my life; its these fleeting but precious moments that seem to get lost in the haze of everyday life. Like the time I was attempting to cut a rapidly melting mousse cake during teachers week and watched it slide down the table and splatter quite spectacularly on the floor. Or the time I commented on the rather large bosom of a girl passing by when my friend sitting right next to me politely informed me that she was his sister. If you go through my Facebook photos you’ll come across one where I am lying behind a lanky young man, seemingly admiring his long, slender legs. Awkwardness and embarrassing situations are to be expected when one is in school or college, but to have them doggedly follow you through almost fifty years of existence requires a special talent. We recently invited some family friends over for lunch which ended up being more of an early dinner because I had texted them an address that mixed up the house number of my Gurnee house with the street name of my Aurora house and it turns out there is a house in Naperville that has the same exact combination. There was also an incident in a busy parking lot where I tried to push in a hanging bumper on Anjum’s car, complete missed and my acrobatic kick crashed into her tail light. Then there are the nicer moments, like watching Bilal playing with his trains or Anjum coming back home after a long, tiring overnight call, or listening to funny family stories or fixing that elusive bug that turned out to be a mechanical issue when all indications pointed to some badly written code. And just I was struggling to find a way to end this meandering and seemingly pointless note, Alia plucked out a smiley face sticker from her book looked at it and said, you know what Baba, this looks like orange, but its really peach.
May we continue to be blessed by many such sweet moments and of course wishing you all a Happy New Year.