Arbivation

Arbivations: Those rare quality-of-life experiences only attainable through spontaneous indulgence in open-ended arbitrariness.

Last night, once the little one was snug in bed and we’d had our dinner I turned off all the computers, even the amplifier and the study’s lights. Lit a solitary candle posed on the mantle piece above the fireplace. Poured a glass of not entirely unpleasant red wine and sat down on the couch next to Je’anna.

Initially I was actually quite stunned at just how hard it was to do the kind of inner gear-shift required to just sit and enjoy a few undirected moments with each other. I still do a fair bit of freelancing over weekends (I tried to fire most of my freelance clients, but a few-die-hards just refuse to accept it) and usually come Saturday night I’m tying up a few last loose ends, catching up on emails that I couldn’t get to in the week etc.

It wasn’t a particularly long arbivation, but it felt very special, and we realized that it would be one of the last calm times together for the two of us before my trip to the US next week. Béo is about 20 months old now and hasn’t been way from me for more than 24hours – ever – and I’ll be gone for a week.

Amazing how one’s life changes over the years, in the last week one day I suddenly remembered evenings way back in varsity days when I’d spend hours on end with friends listening to Leonard Cohen, and getting goofed on top of way too much cheap red wine and sherry. I did some freelancing back in those days as well but back then it was relatively short spurts of frenetic work, interspersed with healthy doses of decadence and occasional heathenism. But I remember times when I practically embodied the saying – ‘Sometimes I sits and does nothings, and sometimes I just sits’ – there were times I was so laid-back had I been any more laid back I’d've had carpet burns on the back of my neck :-)

Last night again I realized again something of how much of the magic of life, like that something special and still mysterious in the subtle warmth of feeling the skin of the one you love against yours, one can miss chasing the many devils that play hide-and-seek in the ultimately mundane, if critical, details of everyday life.

/me makes a mental note to take and have more arbivations

Sunday mornings is ‘daddy-day’. The Idea is that I take Béo for at least the morning, usually ‘off-site’ to give Je’anna a bit of a break from mommy-dom. A bit of time for a peaceful meditation, maybe reading a bit of some novel, uninterrupted time in a hot bath – whatever. Yup, I’m the kind of dad whom, if it wasn’t scheduled, probably wouldn’t get round to it – just the way me and my life are hard wired.

This morning was great. It constituted something of a developmental milestone for me, not specifically of Béo’s development but of something in our relationship.

We took the car down for a wash at the CarSpa at the Caltex station off Glenhove. They use those gun-shaped high pressure hoses to rinse and shampoo the vehicles. I wasn’t sure how well Béo would cope with the noise and drama of experiencing this from the inside of the car, but after being a little stunned by it he absolutely adored watching the water spray, the lava-lamp like patterns of foam floating down the windscreen glass.

We left the car for the valet part of the process knowing full well that cleaning the interior was going to take significantly longer than the half-an-hour the attendants were estimating, anyone who’s experienced the full impact of toddler-tornadoes will know exactly what I mean.

Popped Béo into his trike and we pedalled down to Glenhove road to pick up some veggies, and some out-of-season artichokes all the way from Egypt before sitting down to breakfast at Europa.

Béo used a straw to blow bubbles in his cup of Peartizer and played with a Greek salad, sans dressing. I had a cappuccino, some toast, strips of delicious pig flesh and fried eggs. But mostly we were just, you guessed it, out on arbivation.