Giggly fathers

The VCR whirred into life at the exact moment when my mother had overpowered my father. He was lying on his back, trying (and failing) to defend himself from her tickle-happy fingers. The camera jiggled in my brother’s hand as he shook with laughter.

My brother had returned home to Kolkata for a visit, after a year in the US where he was helping our aunt set up her fledgling business. He had acquired the videocam with the first of his American earnings and zealously recorded our family life. 

In agonizing detail. 

A percolating jog

A little boy travels on the Commuter Train to Boston with me most mornings. He's about 4 years old and hard to miss once he hits the platform. The toy Thomas trains clutched in each hand (usually James and Percy) are as distinctive as his exuberant little jog. He also has a kind of barely contained energy that convinces you that the only reason he doesn't flat out sprint, is the inconvenient office throng crimping his style. He makes up by percolating between people as Dad does an erratic jog to keep up.

Otherness

A slightly edited version of this post also ran on https://humanwriters.blog/2017/01/19/otherness//

Fourth grade, 1980, Doha, Qatar.

  On the first day of first grade at the Doha British School in Qatar, I discovered that recess was hot, dusty and not entirely pleasant. What it was not, was Nairobi where I had lived until recently; cool and green. I found myself shunning the overheated, running, shrieking kids in favor of the small playground area where the metal play equipment baked quietly in the desert sun. I was testing the creaky swing with my hand (before trusting it with the rest of me) when my new classmate, Jennifer Bentle, approached. My heart leaped at the thought of making a first friend. I offered Jennifer a shy "Hello" as the swing groaned to and fro on it's own.

     She looked at me with a frown, scrunched up her freckled, button nose and whispered into my ear, "I hate you. You have brown skin."