Like Riding A Bike

Writing is like riding a bicycle. When you don't write for a time, the calluses at the tips of your fingers where the constant banging away on the keys have flattened them, start to soften, and they round out again, just as fingers should.

And when you start to write once more, you wobble quite a bit, just as you would on a bike. Striving for balance and control, like Woog when he was learning to ride.

Sometimes there are ruts on the road, and you ride over them, forgetting to swerve. You don't actually fall, but you do get a good jostling. Up and down, bump and bump. And you put a protective hand on your figurative crotch, hoping you haven't damaged any of your soft tissues beyond repair...

January

Changes come fast, blowing all over me like inclement weather. Unexpected expenditures eat up at the wide margin of my budget surplus. I am broke all over again. Still hung-over from the holidays, I cannot seem to stop eating, and I take to wearing my old maternity dresses as no pants will close over my girth.

At work, the old frustrations bury me in so much mud and silt, and I defiantly send in my resume somewhere else. After two phone interviews, I am told, very gently, very tactfully, in a very round-about way, that I have been relegated to the reject pile. It seems spending 10 years in one company, working with the same people, has eroded my market value. I am ready for the scrap heap. Or a change. Whichever comes first.

January

We have new neighbors. They are dark-skinned Indians of the five-six variety, and they settle next door where Inday and family used to live. The adults keep to themselves, just as they keep their car covered in its canvas jacket. They prefer to ride their three motorcycles, even to bring their daughter to school.

They have two kids. Samantha is nine and a first grader. She enjoys singing at the top of her voice, especially during siesta time, and has a habit of entering the apartment without knocking. She immediately starts mothering Woog and Eli, as well as the little boy who lives in Door 1. Very Wendy Darling.

Harkirat is three and cries at the drop of a hat. He and Eli eye each other warily. Soon, Eli is crying at the drop of a hat, too. My son, the mimic.

Not in any way racist or disparaging, Atch takes to calling them “the Boomies”, short for Bombay. We don't realize how much Eli is picking up on adult conversation until one morning he points at the father and yells: “Tatay Boomie!” It is a good thing we are in the car and the windows are rolled up. Atch drops the moniker pretty quickly.

January

It is raining outside again, and the cold is seeping into our bones. My head is buried in work that I barely glance up at my whining younger son. He is clinging to the doorknob, all set to cry at the drop of a hat again.

Belatedly, I realize that he is whining the longest sentence I have ever heard out of him, “I waaaaaant to go ouuuuuuuuut!”

Bemused, I unlatch the door and send him out into the rain.

January

We meet our new landlord and landlady. They are in their mid-twenties, very up-and-coming. They hail from the capital and do not speak the local dialect, but they are keen on keeping things the way they are. Very wise. I am hoping it includes the rent.

He is soft spoken in an upper class college-boy sort of way, with long fingers and a penchant for designer labels. She is short and feisty, with a voice that would rival a fish seller's at the market. They are pregnant with their honeymoon baby. Sweet.