ACROSS THE MILES

AS TIME GOES BY..........

I looked out of the window, it was a cold, gray, rainy morning. A good day to curl up with my favorite book, and thoughts of a nice romantic lunch creeped up in my mind. I enticed him to stay home from work by offering him good food and my company, he fell for it, I think it was the thought of a good breakfast. The morning rolled by without much ado, J was on his computer logged on to his work. After having lunch ( which did not turn out the way I had imagined) we settled into our respective seats in the house, me on the couch and J in his Lazy-Boy, to watch a malayalam movie.
Suddenly there was a power outage, everything in the house stopped working which included the lights, TV, computer, phones , the clocks and the furnace. We found ourselves sitting in the cold staring at the blank TV. We decided that we just had to wait it out, then we started to talk, first about his childhood in Bangalore, his parents, and his sisters. What a wonderful person his dad was, all the things he had accomplished in his short life, and the kindness he had shown even to strangers.
The summers when his cousins used to visit, how they would be awakened with the smell of hot Dosas , Appams and stew.The long stays and the fun they had , it seemed endless.
How he looked forward to going to his ancestral home in Kerala every year, the many stops along the way to either have some fresh coconut water, tea or some good Parota and mutton curry made the trip more exciting. He talked about the time they had to gather around to say the Rosary every evening which carried on even into adulthood and how this ritual slowly died down as each one left the house.
He talked about his life in boarding school, his fears and his joys, the things he should have done and the things he should not have done. His many trips home for the holidays and how he used to look forward to the special Macaroni and cheese dish his mom used to prepare. I could especially see the pain in his eyes when he related an incident of how when his father came to visit him in school, he was only interested in playing cricket. He thought of what his school friends were doing, what they had done in their lives and if they had families of their own.

He talked about his college years, from his first crush and the many that followed , to the regrets he had for not doing better in school. We talked about the unusual circumstance under which we met, and what our lives would have been if we had taken different paths. About our early years in the U.S, the good times and the bad, the different milestones in our childrens lives and if we had equipped them with the necessary tools to face this world.

There were so many things that we would do differently if we could go back, but now it was time to look forward. We talked about growing old together either here or in India, the many trips we would take and especially the drive from Bangalore to Kerala.We dont know if the roadside cafes still exist but we felt it was still a drive worth taking. There was still so much to talk about but suddenly the power was back, the lights and TV came on. we had not realized that six hours had passed. In all the years that I have been married I can really say that it was the best six hours that I had spent with him. He had taken me to places I had never seen, met people I had never known. I felt like he had held my hand and walked with me, down his memory lane.