Today was meant to be my cheat day. Thought I’d skip the weekly post and just be.

I couldn’t make time to write something during the week. It was a busy week. Festivities do that to us don’t they.

Celebrating with friends & family, getting involved in the hustling & bustling of cooking and cleaning and dressing up for the occasion. It all just gets away from us at a point.

And then there’s the nostalgia. The specific memories of childhood experiences seeping in. Comparing the fun back then to the fun right now, wondering how we’re measuring up, if we even are.

I’ve been so focused on wanting to recreate those memories for myself, as well as wanting my children to experience them, trying to tweak them up or down a notch here or there to fit into our present day and current situations, sometimes forgetting while I am trying to recreate those memories, we’re actually creating new ones to add on as we go along.

This, what we do now will be data for our nostalgia in a few years. We may even want to recreate these then. We live sometimes so much in our past that we tend ignore the present.

I know now that I cannot be the care-free, worry-free child who used to be excited and looking forward to playing with all the visiting cousins and eating all the magically appearing food that came along.

I know now the effort and labor that went into making such occasions successful and fun for the rest of the family – the grandmothers & mothers locked away in the kitchens for hours after prepping for days just so the rest of us could have fun and have our tummies filled at the end.

I can now confidently say that I have joined that group of women today. My fun now is to watch the excitement on the children’s faces when they have friends visiting and the general enjoyment of everyone present while eating good food and socialising. This today, is my definition of happiness. I can see and feel now what my grandma saw then.

I find it hard though to comprehend that I enjoy being locked away, mentally and physically to ensure the happiness of everyone else around me, keeping mine aside for the general “selfless” good.

But, I also know that I am not locked away on my own like in those days the women were. Unlike the days when I did not need to know and could not care less how the food magically appeared on the table when it was time to eat, my children do know how that works and they appreciate me for it.

And unlike the husbands of the past who sat around reading their newspapers & talking politics till it was time for their meal and then yelling into the kitchen to their poor wives slogging away in the heat, “how much longer will it take?” instead of God forbid stepping one foot into that hot oven of a room for I don’t know fear of losing what, their manhood? the partners & spouses today walk in and ask, “ how can I help?” before grabbing a ladle and mixing whatever is in the pot on the stove or straining the rice, washing the dishes and wiping down the plates before helping serve the food.

It makes it that much more easier to find happiness in watching your children enjoy the meal you made, watching your partner laugh at something a friend said, watching everyone else laugh and talk about something you absolutely did not hear because of all the noise this happiness makes in that mushy part inside your skull, and you smile along just so.

This is what it all comes down to for me – my happiness is still the same. The only thing that’s changed maybe is that I’ve swapped out my measuring stick!