That morning I was seeing my younger daughter taking out golden tiny pieces of confetti from my wife’s hair. While going back to her room, she said, “Dad you don’t have that problem, Since you don’t have any hair!” I had slept 7 hrs and still was feeling sleepy. But hearing this comment , it was an enlightening “confetti” moment.
The day before, it was my younger daughter’s 7th birthday and she had started the preparation from Feb onwards. In fact she was on a count down mode. We never knew how she has decided to outgrow her fear of dealing with people. She went to the extent of calling her friends’ parents and informing them and inviting her friends. It was something we have never seen of her before. We thought she is still shy. There was also a time when we were checking with her whether she needs to call one of her new friend whom she doesn’t know much. With raw unadulterated honesty my daughter picks up the phone and calls her best friend and ask , “Hi , Is XX good or bad? Shall I include her in my invite list or not ?” We all were spell bound and we decided not to intervene in this business and decided to mind our own business.
The party started at 5PM and I came at 5.30PM. My wife was bursting at the seams of patience as she single handly was managing these 10 kids. They were all having loads of fun and were jumping all over, particularly in our new sofa. My heart was also bouncing up and down. Finally I decided to calm them down and took pictures and then served snacks and juice. The cake and candle was done and it was all about to be curtains for the evening, when suddenly from now where my elder daughter got the Party Popper and all the confetti was all over the place and some landing in their hairs. I was far away in the other room and so did not get these small tiny pieces on my head. All the guests left and when we looked at each other we could only see the shining particles in the house and all in the floor and it looked like a mess.
That is when we became really tired and felt “Oh God! Who will clean this in the night?” (internal diaologue). That is when I decided to do the quick cleaning and things started falling in place. The confetti reminded me of the good moments we had a few hours back, even though we had the challenge of handling so many kids. Over all what lasted was the kind of conversations we had with them. Also during those sweeping moments I remember some of those past moments from 1 year that swept me away. I was recollecting how I have learned so many things from my daughter. I had the chance a couple of times to see her favourite cartoon , Paw Patrol. It is nothing overly special but (it’s Problem Solving puppies which kids just eat up).Also it’s also full of the dogs using unique gadgets to do their problem-solving. I was very impressed. I had the opportunity of gifting her a Paw Patrol Coloring book which she loved so much.
The second thing I learned from her was to have the naiveté to ask questions and stick with it till you get a convincing answer. It was the day when her teeth fell off. My wife had a tough time answering all the tooth fairy questions. Last month I had given her a table top of quotes and she fancies every opportunity to reach out to my wife almost all days and ask her to explain the quote. I was jokingly telling her, “Husband posts the quote on FB in the morning and asks for her feedback and daughter feeds the quote in the evening for explanation.”
Finally one day she was writing with the permanent marker on the board. I could hear that my wife was about to scream at her. I told her to hold on and don’t scold her as I noticed that she was enjoying what she was doing. Let us leave it for the moment. Then after some time my elder daughter came to us and told us to go and see what she has done. Seeing that it brought chills down my spine and we were very much touched. It was written with a black pen on a white board, “I love my parents“. That was the confetti moment for me and it will be etched in my memory.
As Charlie Sheen says, “Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them“.
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