Yesterday was Lohri but we had no plans other than being huddled up in front of the TV. Unexpectedly, a friend sent us Lohri treats. For those who haven’t had them, it is a combinations of popcorn, and groundnuts and sweets made of sesame & jaggery.  

To give you context, What balloons are to my toddler; What Ice cream is to my 9 year old, groundnuts are to my husband.  
There is no holding back and in the whiff of roasting groundnuts and in the crunching of the peel, he is thrown into a portal, transported back to his childhood. It is his memory of his dad. Someone he lost way ahead of time, way before he was ready. It is his memory of a family that sat around on a cold winter evening finding warmth in the treat his dad had brought them. 

Meanwhile, unable to break open the hard shell, Zachary was getting frustrated. 
The problem solver, impatient me, thought it would be easier if I just did the job for him. 
But it wasn’t about having the ground nuts. My husband figured that the little one wanted to figure the trick. He wanted to play adult and break open the shells on his own. 
So patiently, he cracked it up a wee bit, till Zach could pull it open. 

And as I watched the father of my child trying to play ‘father’ while the memories took him back to being a ‘child’, I was reminded that we are all little children in adult sized bodies.

We pretend to have it all sorted, planned, organised.
Maybe some of it is. Maybe most of it is. 
But alongside the objective, the creative & the aspirational is a bundle of emotions. And right below the the sensible, the sorted, and the successful, is a pile of memories. 

And it is this emotions, those memories that truly move and make.