Back to school

A is back at school today. After more than two months. Two months and ten days, to be precise. A sort of extended vacation. She had school in April and May, at a time when all her friends were at home, having their vacation. For a change, though, she was coming back early, after mid-day. So we had many more hours together. Even if she was doing her homework for a lot of that time.

When she finally did have vacations, it was June, July, August, a time when her friends had all started school. So there we were, with time on our hands, no friends to play with, the husband too out on a business trip for many days. At 9, she was not a very little girl anymore, and we had begun to relate girl-to-girl. In fact, we had long ago begun to relate that way as far as books were concerned. We had already begun to read books together, discuss them, and have our own private jokes from them that we laughed at together. Something that I've been looking forward to since she was an infant in my arms.

Image: Courtesy Flipkart 

So we made many plans. Of course, there was the holiday homework. A will be appearing for the Olympiad tests this year, and through our work towards this, I discovered many lacunae in her Math, which we have tried to eliminate. Not the least of which was her lack of mastery over multiplication tables. So everyday we went through tables from 2 to 12, something that we need to continue doing. Clarified the mysteries of factorisation, LCM and HCF, Roman numbers versus Arabic, and much more. In the process, we discovered  a fun book on Maths,  THE NUMBER DEVIL. 

A loved this one, and we are still working our way through it, so I'll save it for a later review. 

Books- yes, we read loads of those. As I had written earlier, we became members of Hippocampus at the beginning of these vacations, and we spent many happy hours at the library, some with friends from school, who were also having their vacations.

A finally mastered bicycling these vacations, and won herself a brand new and bigger cycle. Bicycling has since become the must-do thing for every evening. Even on days when we have been out the whole day or in the evenings, A makes it the point to take at least one round on it around the complex before she will agree to come home. I'm glad. It has given her another way of relating to her friends, all of whom have been bicycling for ages. Bettered her self-esteem, something I've been wanting for her. So she has swimming (something we planned on doing more of, but couldn't, as the pool filtration plant went out of order) and cycling now to count among her favourite activities after books and artwork. 

We met up with friends, too, a lot in these hols. Spent time with Choxbox and her girls at a book launch,

a Korean play The Tale of Haruk, at Ranga Shankara, and the Strand book sale. Went to a birthday party of A's best friend AM at her farmhouse, had a Friendship Day get-together, had a Bangalore Saffron Tree group meet, and rounded up all that with a magic show at Artnavy's older one's fifth birthday party. Of course we met with my friends J, P and R and their daughters too. We also had the Independence day celebrations in our complex, which were great fun. 

More than anything else, it is the lazy times we have had together as mother-daughter, just reading or watching a movie, doing some art-craft project, discussing something, sharing my favourite music with her, girl-boy talks, shopping, visiting the park, just lying-in on lazy mornings with nothing to rush around for, staying up late doing something interesting without having to worry about having to get up early in the morning for school or anything else, just the unstructuredness of the days that went by, that I am really going to miss as her school routine begins.

I am already feeling the emptiness of my morning, with just myself for company. Ah, well, we all adjust to anything that comes by, and so will I. For now, let me just finish this post and then go to find something to do. I suppose I have my chores, and I have this reading challenge to look forward to.

I'll miss having you to myself, A. I suppose we all have to look ahead and move on, but it is difficult.