sunsets with my son

Watching sunsets have always been a kind of therapy with me, bringing into focus what are important, helping evaluate how the day has gone by, and more than anything to revel in the miracle that is nature. This is by no means my first ode to sunsets, read another one here but this one is different as in , this one is about sunsets I have been sharing with my 16 month old son.

A couple of days a week, and sometimes even more frequently, I take my 16 month old son to the beach , to catch the sunset. It helps that the beach in question is a five minute drive from home, and a high spirited walking and playing at the beach helps him sleep deeper at night.

Here are a few of my reflections on these precious moments I get to spend with him during the golden hour, of the sun setting in the sea.

Buddha and the boat.

He has recently begun to say the word ‘bu- da’ for the Buddha paintings at home, and while at the beach, we see a few fishing boats on the beach, and a few on the high seas as well. Pointing out the colourful boats and playing hide and seek around the boats always brings forth peels of laughter. But he calls the boat ‘bu- ta’ as well. And in his excitement we have what Iike to call the Buddha on a Boat chant, “booo-to, boota, butsa, buda, buda, boooda…”and so on. I know that soon he will manage to call everything by their proper names, and that is why this time is so precious, when he has just moved on to two syllable words from the monosyllabic conversations we had previously.

Making a run for it

The little one is enjoying his freedom and loves to run un-leashed, by the hands of mom or his nanny. But sometimes, he holds my finger, with his entire hand, and races forward. He realised a few days back that with a little support from mom, he can run faster, as opposed to him running on his own. He went from a phase of wanting complete independence to now cautiously asking for help. Whenever he wants to go like the wind, he turns, asks for my and and then runs… and I run right beside him. Two tiny feet and two big ones, running over the sand. When I look at our feet, they look just like in the movies, how a pair of tiny feet run, and the next thing they show is a pair of large feet , to signify how time has flown by. In that one cinematic shot, they cover years and years of growing up. Sometimes I feel I should capture those tiny feet running on the san beside mine, as we hold hands and run like the wind, to hopefully merge with a clipping from the future years, where a grown man runs with his aged mom on the beach.

Mama shell, baby shell

When we first began the beach walks about two months back, Shreysht loved the tiny white things which crunched under his feet. He used to make us sit, and hear the crunching sounds. Imagine three grown ups crouched , in the middle of the beach. But last week he realized that there were bigger ones too, and even better they were safe to touch, meaning Mama didn't start her ,”no no no no..” rant every time he touched it. Since then we have been on a shell collecting spree. The bigger ones are mama shells, the smaller ones are baby shells.

Sands of time

This one is my favourite, because this is the newest discovery, sand. Discovered just two days back, when we chanced upon a sand sculpture, made possibly by a child before him. it was one of a nest with very nice balls of sand made to look like eggs within the nest. Shreysht made a grab for the ‘ball’ only to discover it collapsing under his touch. He proceeded to smash every single egg in the basket, until everything had been turned to sand, once more. And then he picked it up and let it pass through his fingers, and a gust of wind blew it right out of his hands! Yes, I have a video of him picking up sand and letting it pass through his fingers. He did that for a whole mesmerized five minutes, before we dragged him off kicking and screaming, because of all the sand in his hair, face, and around his eyes. He did the same ‘sands of time’ routine yesterday aswell, and I wonder till when this fascination will last, but it’s amazing. 

 To see a child see beauty in a grain of sand, and wonder at the flight of birds, to point at the sun and know that when the sunsets, it is time for the stars and the moon. And without a hint of sadness at the setting of the sun, he gleefully makes a grabbing motion at the stars to indicate his ‘twinkle twinkle star’ routine.



I had begun to write about becoming a mom, and then a few during the first year of the little ones life. T
his new year, I plan to concentrate on the things that are important, and really value them, and this post is me saying hello as 'mommy moodswings' once more. Read my reflections of one year of mommy mood swings on the eve of my son turning one here.

if you feel I blog too much about my son read HERE