Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A mother's evening out

Merry was I when I got a call from my husband from work about a plan to spend the evening out in the city. Apparently, another new father like him had come in for some nagging from the wife about the grind, bustle and bother of newly blessed motherhood, and together they had decided to treat the moms to a few hours away from baby-related sights, sounds and smells. Having worked actively full time on a non-sedentary, ‘nomadic’ defense job for six years and then finding myself sitting at home changing nappies and sterilizing bottles, such occasions saw me going all gaga with anticipation and euphoria.
Came six of the clock and my baby and I were all decked out and ready. The other merry family, also of papa-mama-baby constitution joined us as planned and we set out for an evening of festivities at a local fair to be followed by dinner at a mouth-watering hole. Babies cooperated very nicely; the fair was user-friendly without being pocket-pinching. At nine of the evening, still floating on a cloud, we came out of the fair to make a beeline to the eatery, when: with a near-audible thud! I landed from the cloud I was in – I just remembered that I had forgotten to turn off the gas – I had set a huge vessel to boil water for babies’ things. What a to-do resulted, only my otherwise calm husband continued to be cool, calm and collected. He called our neighbor, gave him helpful directions to break open a meshed door to the kitchen from the garden, and waited till dear next-door-Samaritan gave a graphic report on the condition of the vessel he found glowing like coal in my ‘work-place’. Well, the faithful follower of Norman Vincent Peale that I am, I took it in my stride towards, well, dinner.