Summer Vacation

Every year when school reopened after the summer holidays, like all parents, we’d be thrilled. Thank God it’s over! But this time was wonderfully different. Maybe it was because my daughter’s grown up (a bit) and can handle boredom better. Or maybe it was because she can now go to classes in the apartment unescorted, which in turn allowed my wife to enroll her in multiple classes: skating, yoga/art, and swimming (Advanced Batch, as she proudly said, not Baby Batch). Followed by play time in the evening, of course.

One time, when I took a day off to keep her company, I realized how packed her day was: I barely saw her as she went from class to class. In fact, the poor thing looked exhausted by lunch time itself. I knew I’d regret it, but I told her that she could skip the odd class on the odd day…

It also helped that she was finally old enough to go to other kids’ homes on her own and have a good time there. On days she’d call me at work to ask, “Can I eat lunch at my friend’s place?” Did she like the food there? Or was it because she feared that if she came home, the prison doors might slam shut?

Then there was the odd birthday party. Which became an “event” because my wife was in the US around then. I was told to pack one of my daughter’s (unopened) gifts. I couldn’t find a wrapping paper large enough, so I joined a few of them together and voila! A weird combo of wrapping papers + a poorly wrapped gift + lots of cellotape to hold it all together = what else can you expect from a guy?  She came, saw the wrapped gift, and accused me, “You must be giving away one of my gifts, right?”. “I don’t know what it is”, I lied, “I asked a friend at office to get one since I was busy”. She fell for it. Whew! Next morning, it struck her that if the gift was packed with our wrapping paper(s), then I must have packed it, and therefore seen the gift. She confronted me with her impeccable logic. I told her I had given the wrapping paper to my friend; so he wrapped it before I saw the gift. She fell for it. Sucker! Anyways, what matters is that she had a good time at the party, and got the customary return gift.

A few days later, when I forced her to help clean her shelves, we discovered a ton of unopened packets of sketch pens, crayons, erasers and pencils. Return gifts from all those birthday parties. Even she thought there were too many of them: “Maybe I should say kutti to some of my friends. Then I’ll get fewer return gifts”…

Add to that the customary pilgrimage to Wonder La, a petting animal farm visit, a restaurant where she could pet dogs, splashing around in the pool, picnics with her friends near the pool (an excuse to “munch”, her favorite form of eating, since they’d all carry the widest variety of junk food possible to the picnic. And juice), movie screening at the apartment followed by snacks being sold, 3 hour art classes (It was a promo by a professional artist in the building, free for the holidays)… and you get the general idea. And let’s not forget the holiday we took at Kabini. All in all, I guess this is how this vacation turned out for my daughter:

Sadly, however, all good things must come to an end. On the last day of her vacation, unhappy at the prospect of school the next day, she said, “Call the school and tell them I quit”. A common feeling, kiddo, a common feeling:

And like Calvin, she too had to go to school the next day… with a deep sigh. Here’s to many more fun filled vacations, munchkin.