Niece

N just turned one on Dec. 9. She toddles around a lot now. She mimics sounds and simple actions like clapping and putting a cell phone to the ear (and so it begins..). She’s grown so much from when I last saw her at 3 months, but isn’t at all as big as she seems in pictures. She is the splitting image of R and M.

 I cannot help but sound matter-of-fact when discussing N because I am unable to find a way to adequately describe the presence of a child. See, I’m not one of those people whose ovaries flutter at the mention of say, baby lotion. My ovaries, in fact, are unusually impervious to baby talk of any kind, and I almost never get the urge to procreate. Baby pictures do not move this stone heart of mine, nor do videos of babies bobbing wildly to the theme song of Jack’s Big Music Show. But there is something about actually having a baby around (and also, perhaps not being the one who has to do all the feeding, bottle-sterilizing and diaper-changing) that has made me vaguely fantasize about my own spawn.

 It might be her voice as she coos in excitement at the discovery of her belly-button. Her giggling at her mother’s exaggerated laughter. Her wobbly gait from room to room as she explores the home in which she’s growing up so quickly. But I think the thing that gets you most of all is when a child comes up to you and looks at you imploringly with her arms outstretched, wanting you to pick her up. This total dependence, while probably very hard on the parent that has to devote every hour of the day attending to the child’s every need at the expense of his or her own, can be intoxicating to visitors like me. This child actually needs and wants my attention! I don’t really have to do much but I am needed and my attention is wanted. I want to attribute some of this to how much of a lonely pathetic loser I am sometimes, but I think most of us have a primal urge to be needed.

 N needs to be engaged. Every. Waking. Minute. At any given point in time, N has at least one adult reducing his or herself to a human generator of animal sounds. The animal sound generator stops only to tell N to take a potentially lethal object from the crevices of the sofa out of her mouth. And then gets right back to squawking like Bongo bird next second. 

 But how will I squawk, breast-feed, lull to sleep, pull the loaded guns out of my child’s mouth and manage to dress myself and shower all at the same time?

 

Winter Trip to Colorado

We spent the winter break at M’s sister R’s place in Louisville, CO. The original plan last December was for all of us (M and I, our parents, R and family, my brother and Peter Pettigrew (he invited himself so it was awkward to refuse)) to fly to Chennai last December. That way we would get away from it all (i.e. winter) and conduct M’s father’s 60^th Birthday celebrations with the requisite Hindu rituals. For the uninitiated, (I belonged to this category till right before M’s dad turned 60) the 60^th birthday is kind of a big deal in Hindu culture, what with your life presumably having been all fruitfully-lived and and your marriage having yielded offspring who are now old enough to throw you your 60^th birthday well, rituals. The ceremony involves the presence of all those who are near and dear and everything, so at the heart of it, it’s really just a big family re-union.

 

But you know how the economy is bad and times are bad and everything is bad and so it was decided that we’d just have a low-key get-together at R’s place for around a couple of weeks.

 

Those ten days at R’s were as close to an idyllic vacation as we could probably have had, in our current state of joblessness and apartmentlessness. We spent a lot of our time with R’s one year old N, sipping wine (not always at the same time), playing scrabble. On one isolated occasion, I puffed my first ever cigar while discussing the nuances of female masturbation with R and her best friend V. We puffed and nuanced away till the wee hours of the morning. That was something.

 

What else? We had our parenting skills scrutinized by the manager of Med, but you already know about that (see post below). Oh and we went snowmobiling one day in Winter Park, CO and I spent a week after picking icicles from the roof of my mouth. 

Poor Service at Med, Boulder, CO

This tale of heartache and abysmal customer service begins on New Year’s Eve 2008 in Colorado. Having failed to get dinner reservations at a few other restaurants on this busy day, we decided to try Med, a Zagat-rated restaurant on Walnut Street, Boulder. We were a family of 6 adults and a baby, we informed the Med representative on the phone earlier that afternoon. She informed us in return that we wouldn’t be able to make a reservation since we were a party of under 10 adults, but that if we came by at around 7pm, we would have no problem getting a table. This sounded odd to us, considering the occasion, restaurant’s award-winning culinary fare and, according to their website, their status as a “Boulder Institution.” Still, we took her word for it and made our way, baby in tow, for dinner at 7pm.

 As soon as we got there, it was fairly obvious from the crowd and bustle that we were nowhere close to getting a table – the staff at the front desk told us that we might have to wait as long as an hour and a half to be seated. Not seeing much of an alternative (other restaurants around the area were similarly full), we decided to wait it out. So for an hour we jockeyed amongst the crowd of other waiting guests, cramped, hungry, and vaguely annoyed at the restaurant representative who’d misinformed us earlier over the phone that we’d have no trouble getting a table, even without a reservation. Still, we had chosen to wait, so we kept our spirits up, talking about the amazing veggie paella we’d had the last time we were here and engaging the baby (she was a trouper, barely making a sound even as she grew progressively restless).

 Then we hit the one and a half hour mark. An announcement made to an unknown party of 6 informing them that their table was ready. We did not take this well and at this point, even the baby was starting to make her displeasure heard. We asked to speak to someone who might explain this to us. The manager was with us in a few minutes and began with a cursory apology. Said unknown party of 6 had originally been a party of 10 and had a reservation, he informed us. The restaurant was still obliged to honor its commitment to this group despite the dwindling of their number. Fair enough, I suppose. But if the management isn’t going to insist on 10 people actually being present after a reservation has been made for 10 people, why be so strict about the 10-person rule for families with babies? We were 6 adults with a baby who had waited for an hour and a half. Surely, the restaurant staff could have been a little more understanding?

 The manager turned his nose up at this suggestion from my sister-in-law who balanced her impatiently-wriggling one year old on her hip as she tried to reason with him. “I’m not going to tell you how to parent..,,” he began his response. This felt like a slap across the face even to me, though he wasn’t speaking to me and I wasn’t the parent in question. But having been at the receiving end of verbal attacks from men I barely know, on matters such as my attire, my refusal to be submissive and even how I raise my voice sometimes, I am only too familiar with the situation in which a man thinks it’s his place to criticize a woman he doesn’t know, on an issue he doesn’t understand (this manager wasn’t a parent himself). I barely heard the rest of the conversation through the indignation welling-up within. I only vaguely remember pointing out that he was completely out of line in commenting about someone’s parenting. He apologized hastily, but it was a superficial apology – one after which he proceeded to defend himself for the outrageous remark. “If I had a kid, I wouldn’t wait this long, that’s all I’m saying. I meant no offence.”

 Seriously? Ok, I don’t even know where to begin with this. See, I get it – the guy is overworked. It’s new year’s eve, guests are clamoring for tables, it’s crowded, it’s noisy, it’s insane all-around. I know – I’ve cooked at a pizza place before, and I know how hard it is, especially with customers being rude and demanding. But we were not rude and demanding. We were only eagerly looking forward to the meal and we were polite. We had waited patiently an hour and a half, like we were told to, and we had kept our baby from crying and annoying other guests even in the slightest bit. So firstly, how was it fair to take the frustration of serving an unusually large crowd out on us, who hadn’t even been served at this point, and secondly, how dare this manager presume to imply that a woman he had just met was not parenting adequately?

 We pointed this out to him, though not in so many words. We kept the tone of the conversation civil, even through the manager’s repeated defense of his comment about my sister-in-law’s parenting and a vague suggestion that he didn’t quite believe that a representative from Med had told us that the place wouldn’t be crowded on New Year’s Eve and that we would easily find a table. What good would an indignant outcry do, after all? At some point, the management insisted on paying for half of the dinner for our table. We protested, emphasizing that all along we had wanted only fair, not preferential, treatment. We also somewhat resented the idea that the manager thought he could say whatever he pleased and then pay his way out of the situation. Eventually, they wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they did pay for half our bill, which amounted to around $85.

 At the end of the day, if a family cannot go out to dinner to a restaurant on New Year’s Eve without their parenting skills come into question by the restaurant staff, I think it’s safe to say that the customer service at said restaurant could use a little improvement.