Misty Memories - January

2011 gave me goodies and made me bite dust, all too often, that I can’t decide whether it has been good or bad. Yes, I have started saying my goodbyes to the year that closes in exactly fifteen days and this challenge gives me an opportunity to do it, memorably. Thank you, Nimue.

It’s quite simple actually, capturing the essence of what each month in a year has had to offer to date in my life. I had never really thought about it but it turns out I do have special memories associated with each month.

JANUARY

The year’s new and I’m always full of resolutions. Some that I pretended to keep and some that just collected dust in the nooks of my head. Prayers for the year to be better, to be kinder than the last and wishful yearnings for gifts that I failed to receive the year gone by… wishes, some good and some wicked like the time I wanted the shopkeeper to stub his toe.

Also a month (in 1999) that took away my mother for more than a week, the longest I have ever gone without her till date. I missed her sorely and spent time bunking school and seeking comfort in her nightie that smelt of her.  I didn’t understand why I couldn’t visit her in the hospital either.

But when she came back she had a fat bundle in her hand. I was delighted when two huge, coal-black eyes peeped out curiously out of the bundle and the rose-bud mouth pouted as though, even then, he knew that I would be his best frenemy.

I shrieked with joy, literally. I wasn’t a single child anymore.

January will always be special for 7 days into the month, it gave me a handsome devil of a brother, one whose hair I’ll gladly pull out for over-heating my laptop, for making me BEG him to take a bath every single day, for all the dirty nappies he made me dispose, for snitching me out to Amma, for discovering all my hidden stashes of chocolates, for being taller than me at age 12 and being annoyingly better than me at Math.

But it becomes worth it when I tie him a rakhi and he promises to take care of me, once a year.

I dread to think of a January without him and his birthdays, he adds spark friggin' fire to it.

What are your special January memories?