I remember the foggy morning I had clothed you in a cyan co-ord set, handed you over to the conductor of the preschool bus, and waved goodbye as you struggled not to cry. I came back home and cried over a cup of coffee. It was the first week of you starting school and it took me a while to get used to an empty home till you returned at noon.

Your Pops and I stand with you near the campus cafeteria after breakfast; you with a moustache that has still not seen its first shave and a face a little less transparent than it was all those years ago – but I can already sense the misery that will consume me the moment I take that train back home, after hugging and wishing you good luck in your freshman year.

When, why, and how did all those years fly past?

Back home, it takes me a few days to muster enough courage to enter your room. At last, when I do, I come out withered, a bit. I resume cleaning it as usual but leave your sheets unchanged for nearly a fortnight.

Weeks crawl by. You seem to be getting along fine in your new college; at least that’s what you tell us. I am ashamed to admit I resent it a little.

I don’t feel like preparing elaborate meals anymore. Your Pops has always been a frugal eater anyway. With no one to turn my attention to (of course, there’s your Pops, but he seems a bit wary of my repurposed attention) I turn it onto myself. And I don’t like what I see.

When did the wrinkles on my belly make their way to my knuckles and eyelids? The first ones, even though startling at that time, had a sense of pride attached to them- as the battle scars of bringing you on this earth. But what explanation could I give for the other two, except that I had let a lifetime pass me by, leaving on me its mark on the sly? No, I should have been the one to leave my mark on the time I lived my life, isn’t it? I know, that sounds pompous and idiotic. Let me take it down a notch. At least I should have lived a life true to myself, right?

Now, who is me and what does being true to myself mean? It is such a confusing and painful question. It’s as if I have entered a chamber of smoke and mirrors. No wonder I hid comfortably behind the roles of playing a wife and mother for such a long time! Now that I’m summoned to climb down the stage and go back to the green room, I am afraid of taking down my costume and facing an uninteresting, or worse still, an invisible person in the mirror.

One knows what to do with one’s life when there are expectations from them. What does one do when there are no expectations by anyone, including oneself?

Is this what people call a midlife crisis/ empty nest syndrome/onset of menopause? Whatever it is, it’s not letting me sip my coffee at peace.

I wander with my coffee mug into your room. With the passage of two months, it has become more bearable to do so. Soon, I will give it a thorough cleaning and prepare it for your end-of-semester homecoming. For now, it just needs a bit of fresh air. I draw the curtains, push open the windows, and take a deep breath.

Winter in the plains of South India is a subtle affair:  No bone-chilling cold, no spectacular foliage or dreamy snowflakes. Just a wafting nip in the air, nudging you to take things slowly and to be grateful for having made it through the year. The evergreen gulmohar tree stands, stoic as ever. I spot a nest on a branch close to the window. And spit a mouthful of coffee on the floor.

Sleeping in a fluffy, brown grass nest are two or three baby squirrels. Three fresh lives-unaware, unmindful, and uncaring about the world around them. Nestled close together, they radiate such warmth. Enough to melt the glacier in my chest.

I close the windows and draw back the curtains. I don’t want to disturb them or scare away their mother. I keep peeping through the curtains several times a day though. As days pass by, something akin to hope takes root in me and I begin to look at myself afresh.

What was I drawn towards the most as a fresh life? The pieces of that puzzle keep floating in my mind.

With each passing day, the baby squirrels grow noisier and more eager to come out of their nest. They latch on to their mother greedily every time she comes back to them; as if to fill their growing bodies with the wisdom of the world she carries.

The last piece of the puzzle clicks into its place as I clear out your loft filled with half-used stationery.

Connections… emotions…places… and words. The connections that made me feel the emotions. The emotions that strengthened my connections. The places that spawned more connections and emotions- all forming a growing spiral that kept pushing me towards one tool that was readily available to feed it- words.

I reopen the long-forgotten boxes in the attic and browse through my old musty journals, picture albums, and treasured volumes. It takes me a while to find the old young me hidden in them and reconcile her to the young middle-aged me. Once done, I begin to outline my invisible form with an unsteady hand. I don’t know if it can hold the new me or just morph into something else altogether. But the new lives thriving outside the window give me an impetus to go with the flow.

When you visit us next time, don’t be surprised to find your half-used notebooks filled with scrawled drafts. They may never find their way out of these notebooks. But they would have helped create a new me- the one who is not afraid to embrace the world anew, joyfully.