Life's Milestones

It’s amazing how children grow up. I don’t think there is anything else that is as fascinating as witnessing the growth of his/her child for a parent.

My first born turns five this month. He is a loving-high-energy-curious-tantrum-throwing 5 year old, in other words, a normal 5 year old. His questions know no bounds. I am having so much fun with him and I worry that all these ‘moments’ that I spend with him will slip out of my memory. I feel that time is passing by so quickly that I want to grab as much of him as possible before he turns into this probably-not-accessible-teenager!

He understands the concept of irreversible time. When I was lamenting the fact that he is growing up too fast and I would have liked him to be a baby for some more time, he actually said with a very superior look on his face that “amma, time cannot be reversed, a toy clock can be reversed but a real clock cannot be reversed (Quote: “time-na hinde maaDoke agalla, aaTada clock na hinde tirgsbodu, real clock na tirgsoke agalla” )!

He is very interested in speed and relative speed. When it comes to driving the car/safari on trips or even inside the city, he always prefers to be seated in the front so that he can check the speedometer frequently. He knows that the bike cannot match up to a car’s speed, a car cannot match up to the safari’s speed, the safari to the train’s and the train’s to the airplane’s. He constantly says that he is very frustrated with his bicycle because according to him he cannot even drive at 10kmph on that! I am yet to introduce him to rockets and spaceships :-)

The other interest in his life as of today is the dinosaur. Again comparisons come into picture. How large is the dinosaur, as big as an elephant, as big as a whale, larger than them? What do they eat? Why do some dinosaurs have two legs and two “hands” and why do some walk on all their fours? Why do some have spikes on their backs? Of course, all these questions are in the present tense because he does not really understand the concept of extinction. I have tried explaining, but the repeat telecasts of Jurassic Park and Lost World are not helping me. I never gave up though. I used to pitch in whenever appropriate about how dinosaurs are not alive anymore. One such conversation led to this exchange. So how did they die, he asked. A shower of fire stones from the sky killed them off, I said. He had a terrified look on his face after that particular explanation. Hence I have decided to just stall that topic to another time!

He also wonders about the facts of life and death. He saw a cremation scene on TV the other day and he was horrified that a man was being burnt. I explained to him that the man was dead and he would not feel anything and it was mandatory to burn the body. He then asked what being dead meant. I told him that when someone gets very old or when people are very sick or if they get hit by a bullet or a bomb, that person dies and never comes back. He connected this to a dog who was hit by a bus that he saw on his way to school and asked if animals and birds die too. I said yes, they do. So now, he goes around asking his grandparents or any random stranger who has grey hair when they are going to die. It is all very embarrassing but I think that this is better than feeding him wrong explanations. This curiosity too will wear off when something more interesting comes his way and knowing him, that would not be a long wait. But I am not sure that the people who are questioned thus have a similar understanding :-)

I cannot chronicle all the moments that his daddy and I have spent like these but we are all warm and fuzzy in the heart for having such happiness in our lives.

I wish this lovely boy a great birthday and I hope to make that day special for him.