closure

Jispa is now ten years old and that makes her a very big girl. Of course she is tall. Pretty tall. She comes to me chest and almost to my chin. That makes her a few inches short of 5 feet. She is also now the tallest girl in her class. But she also amongst the eldest. A year apart is a lot of time if you are in school.

But what is most interesting is that she is really maturing as an adult. She is fast getting understanding skills and emotional skills. She is now ready to give back, answer back, reason back. All in at varying levels. She is ready for a fight now. So if I say something or scold her and she thinks something is out of whack she is ready to point it out. So we better be careful while scolding her. OF course we as parents can always win any argument. We simply use or should I say abuse our position of power and say – shut up … do it because we say so. But that would be the wrong thing to do for us ‘enlightened’ parents. We have to think more. In fact I am trying my level best to control temper, shout a lot less, understand a lot more and generally, get off her life in many ways. I don’t want to control her life now and she is pushing back as well. I also can’t give her crap and get away with it, she thinks, argues back and worse, even if she doesn’t argue, she feels that she has been wronged. As a child I too felt many times that I have been shouted at uselessly and felt completely discriminated against. It felt so helpless. I don’t want Jispa to feel helpless on this front. She may not like my decisions if they are forced on her, but I want the channel of communication always open.

On Saturday at night there was something I shouted at her at. She gave me a retort. I gave it back. But then she was pissed as she thought she was scolded at for no reason. OK. I was still speaking to her after that and she was still talking to me but she was pissed. I always try not to be pissed for long. I always talk properly. I try my best to eat my anger and talk properly after I am angry with her. The way I look at it, fundamentally I don’t have a problem with her. Just we are angry on something, so I always keep my cool and talk to her soon afterwards. Talk about the issue, apologise if required and try and understand / explain issues. So this time also I spoke with her and chatted with her. She also spoke back, but she refused to give me a goodnight hug. Her friends were having a sleepover. I just smiled at her and tried to force a truce. Nothing worked. She walked out of the room, but not disrespectfully. I guess as a father I had to respect the space she wanted I left her alone. It was a fight and she had the right to get and remain angry at me. I wasn’t exactly free of guilt in any case.

I remember the last fight I had with my dad. It was regarding my marriage. The hall that was getting booked by Jasmine’s parents was under construction and they proposed another hall. My parents weren’t happy about it and this is when I wanted to put my foot down. During my sisters marriage also we took a hall that her in laws were not too happy about. We did not like that. And I reminded this to dad. It didn’t go down too well and we had a smallish argument or something. The next day I was leaving for Gujarat to resume work and mom and dad decided to drop me. We weren’t talking to each other still. Just as I got off, I said bye to mom and then… I thought about it and I said bye to dad as well. Bye dad. Bye. That was the conversation. I think as a father son relationship goes – that’s a truce reached. That was also my last interaction with him. I never met him after that. I can’t do anything about it but I was happy that in the end I had enough humility to eat my ego and say bye. That ended up as the last interaction. Who knew then?

So on Saturday as I was getting ready to sleep, suddenly from behind I get a huge hug and I feel Jispa. I smile. I was pretty upset till them. She said “Sorry Dad”. I said “Sorry Jispa, will try not to shout, but you also try not to shout back! It’s easier and quicker”. The I also told her, “forget anything else, its important that you came back and hugged me and brought this to closure. You canget angry. Its ok to get angry but you must always forgive and bring to closure. It’s a nice thing to do”.

I didn’t tell her about my closure with dad. I guess it was too much. It did cross my mind but I spared her the story… for now. Possibly sometime later….