I turned forty today. Significance of forty? My cousin grounded me humorously about new aches and pains of the forties. Same reminder I inferred when the sale pitches for anti-aging products poured in—I was aging, only young in my heart and imagination. But perhaps “wiser” will be an accurate assessment of forty. One lesson I learned the past weekend is the expression of love is probably as important if not more than love itself.
And my lesson at forty is: never assume people you care about know how much you love them, how you love them just because you put food on the table or married someone or have play dates together or you call them mamma or papa. Love needs to be put into words, beaded into actions, harnessed into a force for it to exert its influence. Unless you do, in dullness, love hides, overwritten by busy routines, shrouded by misunderstandings and external circumstances.
When my mum asked me last week how I planned to spend my fortieth, I casually responded to her: I will pass my day with no mention. Why? I’d been too busy in my life to reflect. So was my husband. I was a person who had lived long enough to rationalize I’d back to back meetings the entire day—in other words, I was too busy to celebrate.
But last Sunday, when I talked on the phone, I saw my husband rolling dough in the kitchen. I panicked because he never did that. That was my job. All he said was change; we have company soon. I didn’t have time to question him, knowing I didn’t want to look like a freight train had rolled over me in front of people. I changed bedsheets when one of our friends joined us in the backyard, then our relatives trickled in, shouting surprise! And I shed COVID rules and hugged them. I needed one after months of zoom and social distancing.
Under the breezy, pleasant umbrella of trees, we sat and chatted. My aunt had baked a cake; my husband had cooked, and then he outdid himself: he surprised me with a compilation of messages, messages that had me, an author, speechless. Special occasions have a strange way of showing who your true friends are. So, I want to take a moment and thank: Mamma, Papa, Jasmine – my best friend, Taya, Tayi, Big Taya, Big Tayi, Ma, Rumana aunty, Mukhtar uncle, my cousins Niti, Raman, Ayesha, Roopa, Manu and Aman, and my sister, Gultaj, my nephews, Harpreet and Sartaj, my brothers, my children, and last but not least, my husband, who pulled this together. You took the time out of your day for me, and because of you, I now have words of love and care I hadn’t before, because of you, my day didn’t pass without a mention; it became the world’s best canopy of love, the kind that protects you from all that is bad with this world.
Thank you!
