Remembering Appa on his birthday
It is Appa's birthday today, and I am a hairball of emotions. I am thinking about how we celebrated his birthday last year - not on his actual birthday, but when he was here in Boston in July last year. My parents in law were here for the summer, and my sister & family had brought Appa to drop him here, and he was to fly back to India a couple of weeks later. Both his daughters, his sons-in-law, and all four grandchildren were here, and I do not remember the last time this was the case. It was a good occasion for us to celebrate, and we celebrated his 70th, a few months after his (fake) official birthday, and a few months before his actual one. I had to think hard about how he would like his birthday to be celebrated, and we settled on doing a puja at home. Lots of new arrangements needed to be done - had to cook for about twenty people, Indian flowers needed to be organized, etc etc. It was super fun and satisfying to do the puja, that we kinda forgot about Appa's birth