10 years later, the perfect anniversary gift

“I want to borrow some of your brash confidence,” I said to my husband. “Some of your quick fearlessness.” Years after we exchanged vows, I wanted to exchange each other’s best parts.

Our little one came up to me. Her name is Naseem.
“Say pencil,” she said.
“Pencil,” I said.
“Your shaadi is kencil,” she said.
“Oh no,” I said, pretending to be aghast that my marriage had been cancelled.

Then she went up to her father. “Say pencil,” she said.
“No,” I yelled. “Don’t, don’t. Please don’t cancel his marriage,” I pleaded with Naseem.
“Why,” she said.
“Because he is married to me,” I said.

Aliza, our middle child, came to the rescue.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “you can still stay with each other.”
“Just that you won’t be able to celebrate a wedding anniversary,” added Sahar, getting technical.
“Well, we can get married again,” I said.

“NO!” said Naseem. It was her turn to declare emergency. “Don’t do lippy-lippy kissie again.” Her hands waved wildly, her face contorted, she almost fell over backwards.

Afzal choked on his tea.

“If you kiss on the lips again, you will have three more children,” said Aliza.
“Six children,” said Sahar, shaking her head. “That won’t work.”

Where do these little people come from? That’s all I want to know.
The older they get, the more I like to listen to them. In the 10th year of our marriage, they were 9, 7 and 4 years old.

As for us, we had learnt a few tricks too. Like balancing the lows of marriage with the highs of love. Juggling between one’s gentle side and the more street-smart self.

Building a bridge from one’s essential solitude towards togetherness. Moving back and forth between the two with ease and comfort.

“I’m not married yet, but everything you write rings true to me,” a friend texted me.

“I’m not surprised,” I wrote back to her. “Everything we know about marriage, we found out in the first five years of our life.”

I watch our children watching us. Their attention is sharp, their insights startling. They are keen stakeholders in this venture. There are things we don’t admit to ourselves that our children can spell out to us simply and articulately. And they do.

Afzal and I were discussing “big people things” at the table. Work, money, property, cars, it must have been something like that. There was a long pause. Afzal repeated the same question a couple of times.

“I think she wants to change the topic,” said Sahar to her father.

We could have tried to dismiss her with the default adult response, “Children don’t interrupt when grown-ups are talking to each other.”

But something about the sureness of her response disarmed us. I wasn’t admitting it to Afzal, he wasn’t seeing it in my face, but she could see it. And she said it.

It is when we refuse to listen to children that they begin to express themselves in other ways. They get crabby, clingy and sickly. They throw tantrums and look for solace in new toys and things. We do the same as adults when we’re stuck in a conflict that we are unable to fathom.

Anniversaries demand gifts and in our 10th year, I had figured I wanted an unconventional present for ourselves.

I wanted to have a few good arguments. A good fight as an act of intimacy. Fight to heal. If we cover up the cracks, they will never go away. And the cover-up always shows.

“I want to borrow some of your brash confidence,” I said to my husband. “Some of your quick fearlessness.” Years after we exchanged vows, I wanted to exchange each other’s best parts.

Also, there is some clutter I want to give away. I want to open my fists and let go of fear. Fear of hurting you, fear of being misunderstood, fear of being dismissed. Fear of being seen as fearful.

I want to let go of silences. And pretences. The ones that take up so much space, everything else crunches up into a mess in the corner.

I want to embrace…well, what should I embrace? Embrace us. That’s all.

In the beginning, we love like our life depends on it. Then we learn to live, because our love depends on it.

Excerpt from Immortal For A Moment : Small Answers to Big Questions About Life, Love and Letting Go