The year in passing

When you meet a close friend after a long time what do you say after the pleasantries are exchanged? Where do you begin? I suppose you give them bullet points on what happened over the days, months and years you have not been in touch. And then if the momentum continues and you meet him/her regularly for a fashion, slowly a pattern emerges, the minor details are pulled out one incident at a time and the dots are slowly joined.

That is how i feel right now. More that a year has passed since I wrote anything on this blog. What do I say now? What do i write about? Does it even matter?

Still, the year that has passed has been the most significant one in my life. I had a son, battled post partum depression, juggled work and motherhood sometimes successfully, most of the times by the thread of a hair. All my life I've tended towards cynicism, towards the glass-half-empty-point-of-view. Having Sanjay put some pink fluff on my somewhat jaundiced eyes. Not that I’ve been transformed overnight to the new Miss Sunshine but I don't pass my life under the microscope every opportunity I get as I used to either.

How did what was obviously the most stressful year of my life turn out to be the most significant? I don't know. Maybe its hormonal. Maybe its that fact that I have a whole new opportunity with a whole new person who believes, at least for now, that I’m rather hunky.

Here are some other ways I’ve changed (the bullet points):

I take the color and texture of my son's poop seriously and have serious discussions with other mothers about it.

babble.com has supplanted New Yorker as my favorite reads.

I think about him several times at work.

I do not correct my mother when she suggests that he is a musical genius.

I feel tenderly towards the people who remembered his birthday.

I call strangers to discuss my concerns about my son.

I send flowers to his pediatrician.

Names like Dr Spock, Dr Sears, Gina Ford, and Richard Ferber are integral part of my vocabulary, although I follow nothing and have no method to my parenting madness.

I 've started writing mushy posts.