An emotional post

A recent bloom in our garden

The past few days, I have been feeling rather high-strung emotionally. We had quite a stressful week, worried about our work and jobs, our health, and being in tied up knots with anxiety over different things almost every day of the past week.

The weekend was set to be packed with party planning for my son’s birthday, laundry, organizing photos, baking and more, but proved to be exactly the opposite of that. On Friday, my son got sick and we spent the evening worried about him, but thankfully he improved by Saturday. I spent my entire weekend with him in my arms or by my side. Almost nothing else got done. I was running on very little sleep. I broke one of our drinking water glasses on Saturday morning, and as it shattered to the floor I felt my self confidence and motivation shattering as well. But the important thing was that our childrens’ needs were met. My son felt better even with fighting sleep all day, and was snuggled and held and made to feel secure and reassured all weekend.

Then, last night as I was going on four or five hours of trying to make him nap and trying to remain patient (it was a monumental effort but I succeeded), I read the news about the horrible incident that took place at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. This tragedy and senseless act of violence has shaken up all of us. It is so close to home (a mere 25 miles), and at an event filled with people having a fun day out. We have no walls anymore that separate us from being targets of gun violence. They have all broken down. This happened in California, in the bay area, and at a family-friendly event. Where are we safe anymore? For some reason, I had even been contemplating going to Gilroy just this week even though the last time I had been there was several years ago. But thankfully, for some unknown reason I did not get around to doing it.

Just a few days back, we were enjoying an outdoor concert in the park near our home while our children played in the playground and ran around dancing to the music with other children and families. I remarked to my husband how fortunate our kids were to grow up here in the US and in the bay area, with so many fun-filled and well-planned activities for children and families to do. He agreed, saying that even though both of us had great childhood experiences growing up in our respective home countries, that the infrastructure and level of planning here make it so amazing for young children. All of that was negated with this incident this past weekend. We have had this growing fear over the years, but this time it hit so close to home that we just cannot look away even if only to preserve our sanity. The thought of our children growing up around gun violence, learning safety drills at school and being taught by parents and teachers how to respond in case of an active shooter situation, living in fear (let’s face it, as much as we all resolve not to live our lives in fear, it is always there at the back of our minds, especially if we have children) of not being safe in a park, a movie theater, at work, at school, at a concert, at a shopping mall? It is terrifying and paralyzing.

This weekend one year ago, my husband and I spent our weekend just the two of us. I was about to go into labor to deliver our son, and our daughter was spending the weekend with my sister so we could go to the hospital when the time came. We were supposed to relax and enjoy the calm before the storm. We went out to lunch, tried to catch up on sleep and watched a few shows on Netflix together. But it felt lonely without our daughter around and very dull. We were so excited to welcome our son into the world the next day, on that Monday morning, as he arrived just as the suns rays were welcoming the morning as we looked out the window of our room on to the rooftop outside. We couldn’t wait to be at home with both our daughter and our son, as a family of four. We were looking forward to all the adventures we would have together as a family. The past year has been very difficult and challenging. It has required us to summon up strength we did not know we had, and we are sometimes unsure if we are even cutting it. But it has also been incredibly rewarding. We now have to learn how to give our children an amazing childhood, while shielding them from fear and worry over things they cannot control, and at the same time preparing them for the realities of the world they are growing up in. It is indeed a daunting task.

While I am struggling to reconcile all of these feelings, my perspective about this past weekend has definitely changed. It was not the weekend that was frustrating because I couldn’t get anything done since I spent all my time trying to make my baby nap and holding him. It was the one where I feel so lucky that I was able to hold him close, almost all 60 hours of it, and make him feel loved and secure, while feeling his warm baby unconditional love in return. Because, at the end of the day, that is all that matters.