of relative terms and almost winters…

When the weather changes, I hope. I am a Romantic by nature. My amma tells me that when I was born I was quite crude looking and the nurses had bundled me and left me on a table. My father, who was an Aviation pilot in the Pakistan Army, was radioed about my precious birth and landed a little while later. At the C.M.H, Lahore he came clicking his boots ( the sound I can recall crisply and clearly even now if I close my eyes) and asked fthe nurse about me. I was pointed at. My father picked me up and we looked at each other long and deep. He knew then that this child of his was going to be a dreamer. I have had several moments after that one moment where papa and I had to just look at each other and no words were needed. That is the way he lived and that is the way he died. Look and I was expected to understand the look. With my birth the weather changed and with papa’s death the weather changed once again. Every major event in my life has had inevitability written all over it. Each has come with a finality that meant that no matter how Romantic I may be, I cannot change nor challange any one event in my life. Not even one. Not a single moment in my hands. Thus the dreamer is reduced to.. well.. just dreaming.
Dreaming a dream, inventing it in your heart and then seeing it happen, has little if nothing to do with the final shape and face of that dream. Thus you dream it perfect and when it takes its shape for this world we live in, well, it looks… different.. Not perfect like the dream you had. Dreams are supposed to be different than reality and perfection is a relative term. Papa taught me that when he started giving my children the deep,long looks. Sitting there on the edge of the front lawn, quiet as the pause between each breadth, he needed no words and nether did the children sitting with him. With him everyone of them was perfect.
Perceptions are truly relative. Thats what you taught me papa and i dream of my life as an example of what you lived. I hope I can. i hope i do,
The weather is changing and I am dreaming a dream again… that I can re-learn my lessons for life.