Fond Farewells and Wishing Angels

Ten more days. Next Monday, dad and mom are leaving for India. After nearly a year, making tea twice a day (with ginger and cardamom); fretting endlessly over how much we work; worrying constantly about why I sleep so late and converting each dollar spent into rupees, they'll be gone. Farewells are hard. Farewells are hard, but this is the hardest of them all. Because my dad is seventy and mom is not much younger than that, and when people are that old…

Lavanya tells me there are angels in the sky that say ‘Tha-Dhas-Thu' at random intervals. If you say something out loud , and it happens to coincide with a thadasthu, it will come true. So, she says, think good thoughts. I will. Maybe the angels will hear me now when I say I want our parents to come back here and spend a long time with us, make me more teas, call me lazy and play monopoly with us as we wait for hurricanes to pass. And that they get to play with their grandkids.