When kid middle was a toddler she had a dream in which she
saw her favorite toy, a toy crab, in the deeper side of the pool. In order to get her toy back she would need
to go under water to retrieve it and this was not her desired action. Going under water caused her ears to hurt and
she wanted to avoid the pain. She woke
up whining, “I wanna but I don’t wanna”.
This phrase has stuck with our family to mean I want to do something but
I have some hesitations, I want to avoid the pain it might cause.
This is the phrase that has been in my head for the past
month. Many of my good friends have
already left Delhi. They have moved onto
their next homes or have escaped the Delhi heat for the summer time and will
return after I have gone. I find myself
walking around a bit slower and just breathing.
Although with the Delhi air one should be careful about doing this too
often. I will miss Delhi. The way of life is one thing. Having a fulltime housekeeper to manage my
house and a full time driver to drive my kids and myself through the annoying
Delhi traffic will be missed. The
persons who filled those jobs will be missed as well.
It is not so much that the tasks in my house are done for
me and I don’t have to do them but the time I have because these tasks are
done that I will miss. I love having the
time to sit on the couch in the living room and just chat with my family. It feels like we have gone on vacation and
are sitting around enjoying each other’s company but it’s every day. I love that!
It’s not just having someone else drive the car. As a passenger I have
the capability to look at the other passengers in the car with me and speak to
them while looking at them, eye to eye.
The actual face time with my loved ones I have been afforded here will
be missed. Back in the US one of us will
need to drive the car and do the housekeeping work and manage the household
maintenance, this will all be spread evenly among us but it will take away from
our time together, and that will be missed.
There are things I will not miss about Delhi and I look
forward to after arriving in our new home.
The release from the dependency on the staff will be nice. If I want to go somewhere I can just take the
car and go. No need to wait for the
driver or arrange the transportation details, I can just go. Seems so simple but it will be a
pleasure. Set and know prices, no need to ask for the price and then insist that the price was not this same price yesterday. We are all looking forward to
some better air quality. Three out of
five in this household have been using an inhaler while in Delhi. Some people here believe the doctors are too
quick to place people on an inhaler but when I was the one suffering I must
admit, it sure felt good to breathe. The
chest pain and the feeling of my collar, no matter how far away from my neck
line it fell, was always too tight for my comfort. The feeling that I had just been in an
inverted position with all the blood gone to my head and now am walking upright
with the blood not going back down past the neck. Not
that sinus blockage feeling but the blood in my head not flowing south of the
neck area is a very uncomfortable feeling.
I was reluctant when one and then two of the kids were placed on
inhalers. I began to think like so many
others, that doctors are far too easily prescribing inhalers for issues related
to lungs. I reluctantly had the kids
follow the doctor’s orders to use the inhaler but I was not really a big pusher
of the “twice a day no matter what”. Not until it was myself who suffered from
it. Wow breathing is really a nice
thing, and I have really come to value that very reflex we are born with. Breathing is good. Take some of that ability to breath away and
at first it isn’t all that missed but slowly you really do miss it. For the sake of breathing I wanna. Also for the sake of those who I left in
order to move to India, I wanna. To hug
and kiss my baby nieces and nephews, I wanna.
To be in the land of convenient stores and easy access to gluten free and the knowledge that I will pay the same price as everyone else who enters this same store will pay for these same items, I
wanna. Ready or not here we go, we will
miss India and all it was for us but it’s time to move on. I wanna but I don’t wanna-go.
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