My six-year-old has a crush! :-)

Another milestone. Munchkin's first self-professed crush! He's six. She's five-and-something and his classmate. He's known her since last year but didn't pay much attention to her. The Sports Day Marching Parade changed everything. He was leading it and she was marching beside him, holding up the placard with the name of their class on it.

For a while now, Munchkin has had his life planned out. He has to study hard (not that he likes it too much) and get into a good college, get a good job, get married, have a kid or two whom he wants his grandmother to raise (because their mother will be !) Not me, his grandmother, please note. Erm...right. Grandma will be past eighty then, but he's sure she'll still be just as pretty as she is now.

So anyway, it took me a while to coax it out of him but here are the cute details. Her name is Shalika. Why does he like her? "She's nice." What else? "She's brown, like me. Almost everyone else in our class is so fair." (He says that without prejudice...it's just a difference in appearance, nothing else. At least he doesn't seem to be obsessed with fairness like the rest of the country.)

That's good. What does he like about her? "She says such funny things and makes me laugh." Like what? "I'm not sure. I don't understand everything she says. When she speaks in English, she speaks very fast so I don't always follow. But she's funny." And then his brown skin turns the faintest shade of pink and his eyes look like there are stars in them. Not bad, I think. He just likes her for who she is. And Sports Day happened more than two weeks back. As first crushes go, that's a long enough time, at least for a six-year-old.

I'm enjoying this moment when he announces: "I wish I could marry her!" Cough! Splutter!
"Marry her?"
"Yes. I like her. But I have to grow up and get a good job first," he says solemnly.

I don't know what to say. My mind goes back to the first time I saw such stars in his eyes, although that lasted around 3 days. It was the first day of school last year. I went to pick him up and he was standing in line, beaming. As we walked back to the car, he whispered. "Have you seen my teacher? She's so nice."

"Yes, she seems nice. She's pretty, too."
He didn't respond to the pretty part.
"What's her name?"
His face fell. "I didn't ask."
"Well, why don't you find out tomorrow?"
"What should I say?" he asked nervously. So I told him.

When I picked him up the next day, the first thing he said was: "Chetna. Her name is Chetna." And he was beaming from ear to ear. Oh how he loved that teacher. She liked him, too. When we met her at at PTA meeting soon after his first cryopexy last July - he'd missed 3 weeks of school - she hugged him and said: "I missed you. There was nobody to keep me on my toes." (Which was her way of saying that there was nobody else as naughty as he is! But she liked him a lot, that was obvious.)

Three months later, this wonderful teacher coming to school after she was diagnosed with a problem in her spine. He misses her terribly, often saying: "I wish my Chetna ma'am would come back. School is not fun anymore."

He doesn't like his new teacher that much and I must admit, I don't see her making an effort either. But the school year is almost ending, and I can only hope that he will get a nice teacher in the first grade.

"Mamma?" he says, jerking me back from my reverie.
"Yes, baby?"
"You and Papa were classmates too, right?"
"Yes, we were."
"That's nice," he says and closes eyes. I'm thankful he went to sleep that easily, but I lie awake for a long time after that. :-)

This is my life, and sometimes, I can't even remember what it was like before he was born. Thank you, Poppet. And yes, you can rant all you like when you feel I embarrassed you by writing all this. But hey, what are parents for? ;-)