sidewalk scribbling

  "You know mama, there is a phone in school and it's always making noises. It says things like 'I'm in the backyard, I'm in the backyard!" Took me a couple of minutes and I'm not sure if this is one of the imagined tales or mostly real as seen and understood by a 4.5 year old ... I think Z was talking about the PA system? So far, one of the nicest things about school is what I was fearing to be the most arduous one - the walk to school, which theoretically and according to Google Maps is 8 minutes but anyone who has walked anywhere with small children will know that that can be anywhere from 15 to ohmygod-I-cannot-fit-any-more-sticks-in-my -purse-please-let's-just-get-there... It was this fear that made me leave early on the first day and we were literally the first people at the gates which hadn't even opened! The first day of school. As far as milestones go, that felt like a very big one. There were no tears though, just some nerves and tuggi...

There aren't that many things cuter than your 4-year-old fast asleep in bed, with a basket of cars perched in the middle of his duvet and the recently gifted toy traffic light blinking red, orange and green on his still round cheeks. Z has now reached that stage I used to think about wistfully when patting him back to sleep for the 3rd time in the night - the stage of falling asleep in his own room and then at some point, often after 5am (say what no way!?), padding into our room, holding on to one or four cuddly toys. I lift our duvet and he climbs in next to me, digging his heels into my stomach and then luck dictates whether we get to snooze all cute and cosy for a bit or get elbowed in the face with demands for breakfast, or my phone, which Z loves to record the most absurdly hilarious voice notes on. I know I say it about every age (while also secretly thinking how did I manage the earlier, less independent stage...), but four year olds are pretty great. I can now go for a s...

It hasn't rained for a few weeks, and the days have taken on a pale, watercolour look. Four children in faded sweatshirts push each other across the road, dusty trees edge the street and a woman in a red dupatta walks down the lane. As the sun slowly shakes off his blankets and brightens his face, it starts to get warmer. Soon I'll be able to slip off my socks and jumper. Soaking up the sun on the last day of December in 2023. I found a typed diary page from ten - no wait, actually  20 years ago. ( how am I already old enough to be reminiscing about things from 2 decades ago?) It was an ordinary journal entry on a summer day in Karachi and it made me smile. The mundane details of what I wore that day and what I ate, the comfortingly uneventful musings and vague dreams of a 16 year old watching TV all day instead of going to school. That snippet of my life from so long ago brought with it a languid and sweet kind of nostalgia, mild, soft, settling itself gently around my sh...