Insanity it may sound, but the circumstances were such that we had moved to Cleveland in the last month of my pregnancy. To be precise, exactly 3 weeks before Chinipie was born. In fact, I attribute arrival of Chinipie, 10 days earlier than the actual due date, to the exertion and stress I had been going through coz of the whole packing, moving, buying and settling down to a completely new place. And we had moved from a settled life to a hotel, from a place where we owned a car to a place where we rented a car(we had to sell our two-seated solara for the obvious reasons), from west coast to the east coast, from the luxury of sun to the snow!
I had heard a lot about the scenic beauty of Cleveland and the day, Apr 6th to be precise, when we were to land here, I had excitedly looked out from the window of the aircraft to have a glimpse of the city which was going to be the birthplace of my child. There was not even a slightest hint of the greens that I had so much heard of, leave alone the flowers in vibrant colors! The only color that I saw was white all over. I did not believe my eyes and looked harder only to confirm the sights earlier. 'Is that snow?', I asked my hubby, who answered with a smile. "Oh no!! I wanted to go back to LA!!!", was all that I could manage to say in my state of disbelief. By now, every one aboard in the plane had started gasping and exclaiming. The flight attendant was announcing our arrival in Cleveland and very casually said,"Looks like we have an unexpected snow out there. Take out your woollens and enjoy your stay." Enjoy!! Woollens!! We had packed all our woollens and left with our friends' in LA to be shipped later when we have an address for it to be shipped to. So here we were, a man and his 35 weeks pregnant wife, in our summer outfits, standing in snow, renting a car and heading towards a hotel in a completely new city where we didn't know even a single soul!
I still remember how crazy we looked driving up and down on the snow-covered road, stopping at every leasing center in sight and asking if they had an apartment ready to be moved in! We had absolutely no idea about the place and were just going by the words of the helpful people at the CVS pharmacy store, hotel reception, the rental office guys(they often told them other properties that we could look) and a very nice couple(i don't even remember their face now!) at the hotel parking. As I told earlier, we were completely unprepared for the snow and so, when in the night we came out of the hotel to look for a place to dine, we found our car under the layers of snow. The rental guys had forgotten to provide us with the scrapers and the hotel didn't have them. DH and I had started removed the inches-deep snow with our hands and every bit of paper we had (we had couple of pamphlets from the leasing centers). This very nice couple had not only offered their scrapers, but they scraped the snow off our car, even before they did theirs!! In fact, meeting them made me like Cleveland for the friendly people who lived here! God bless them, wherever they are!! So, here we were in Cleveland, looking for an abode with the apartment guide and people's words as reference.
DH had taken a completely new job, which was our mutual decision after much discussions, denials, waits and tension-filled days. We should have moved here much before but the whole process took longer than expected. We could have gone for other options but our priorities made us zero down on this one. One of them being- moving closer to the family(for the moral and psychological support). The only family, we have in the US, is my first cousin's, who stay in New Jersey. We stayed with them for more than a week before moving to Cleveland and which was the place I got to rest to the fullest. This stay bonded the two families more than ever. We had loads of fun playing with the kids, talking, laughing. It was like a complete vacation for us. My bhabhi and niece had tried to guess whether the zee-baby would be a boy or a girl(we had decided not to find out the gender of the baby and let it come out as a surprise for all of us). My 3-yr old nephew had sung lullabies to baua's baby in the tummy and also given me a rattler for the baby (now! this was his momma's silver rattler, she used to play with it as a baby. So I was bound to return it when the nephew was not around. She, being so good-natured as she is, didn't ask for it or didn't even mention it but I knew what emotional values that rattler would have meant to her). My 8-yr old niece was so excited about the baby that she had wanted the baby to be born there! She had also expressed her fantasy of how my baby would be born there and how her mom(my bhabhi) would help me take care of the baby!! My bhabhi had packed veggie rolls for me, despite our protests, because she knew how hungry I would be and the whole process of claiming our baggage at the airport and settling in the hotel would not leave us with any time to stop for food. I am really grateful to her for this (and for much more!) as these rolls not only helped me survive the flight but also the hotel night when I got up at 3:00 am feeling very hungry!!
With so much love and affection, no wonder they were the first visitors Chinipie had!!
Chinipie's cousins wanted to hold her and play with her and eagerly waited for her to wake up so that they could at least get a smile from her. Her maama and maami waited for her to wake up so that they could hold her. And mom, dad and naani waited so that they could have their precious one snuggled around.. amidst all these waiting, Chinipie slept to her heart's content, waking only to nurse and then instantly falling back to sleep. We were all surprised as this was so unusual and concluded that finally she has adopted the sleeping manners that the newborn babies are known to possess!!
The next visitors for her were our friends from LA, who had come down to Cleveland to visit another friend of theirs. Since they were in the city, they didn't want to miss this chance to see Chinipie. They came when Chinipie had turned exactly 40 days old and came on a Sunday evening, exactly the next day after naani had left. Now this was the day she had decided to sleep over naani's absence but luckily, the friends came at a time when she had just woke from her sleep and decided to stay up though only for a brief period. These people were lucky enough to not only get smiles from her but also got to see her kick on the lovely tunes!
Chinipie's third visitors drove down on a Friday evening from Pittsburgh after their work. These couple, DH's old school friend and his wife, reached by the time she had already slept and were quite disappointed as they had hoped to find her up. As they were to stay the following day, we were sure that they would surely get a chance to play with her. The following day, Chinipie woke up at 6, her usual time, and momma decided to give her a massage and bath so that she has time to prepare breakfast later. After her bath, Chinipie refused to go back to sleep and both dad and mom played with her. Some time later, she fell asleep on momma's tummy and what could you expect then????? both mom and dad fell asleep too! only to get up at 10 that too when mom stirred in her sleep, lousily glanced at the clock at the nightstand and as she was about to close her eyes again, she remembered that they have guests at home!! She called out to dad that it's 10 o'clock and both of them hastily got up and thought would wake their guests up.. only to find that they were already up and patiently waiting for them to get up!! Some hosts Chinipie's dad and mom are!!!
Again, this was the day that Chinipie slept all day through and for almost the full day, they had to be content on just peeping over her crib watching her sleep. Only when they were about to leave in the evening that she thought would be the best time to grace them with her presence did she get up for brief 10 minutes, went in their arms, smiled to them and came back to momma and fell asleep!!
Everybody tells me what an angel I have and I am lucky to have a quiet baby who sleeps throughout the day and let's momma finish her chores. And both, DH and I, tell them that appearances are deceptive. We agree that we have an angel and we are lucky to have Chinipie who is smart enough to display all her baby manners to everyone else except her parents!!
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