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Dad's Surprise 60th

Today my family and I threw Dad a surprise 60th party. We had 18-20 people, mostly Dad's closest friends. I cooked, cleaned, invited guests, prepared the house, bought all the decorations, organized all the details.. but my cousins were the real heros. One bhai (cousin)took me to Sam's Club before work. One cousin helped us change Wasim's flight, and ordered all the food. My husband paid for things, picked up the cake, and helped me plan the guest list. Mom cut mangos and tied the balloons for decorations. My cousins set up the dishes, and organized all the platters. I was the "architect."

I woke up at 8AM after working until 2AM cleaning the house, cooking my rice pudding which took an hour, vacuuming, and confirming with the guests. I woke up to find a wonderful waffle cooked and waiting for me. I ate it happily, knowing Dad probably made waffles, got dressed and headed to Pathmark to buy groceries. I came back home at 10, showered, and got ready for the party. I cooked kidney beans for my dip, cut fruit for the centerpiece, set up the chutneys, and dipping sauces. I gave mom the balloons, and decorating supplies. I worked as fast as possible but apparently, my working fast is not fast enough because my Aunt and Uncle and their son arrived before I had finished cleaning up everything. I am not that great at "making things perfect" and I am tolerable of slightly imperfect things. For example, if there is a pile of unopened mail in the living room, I may make the pile straighter, but will not file the papers immediately. Life skills take practice, so I practice when I can remember..

Overall, the party was fun, and Dad was surprised. We presented Dad with a gigantic birthday card, which in retrospect I should have gotten signed by all of Dad's customers at work.

DIGRESSION: Sometimes I am not sure how to act because there are moments when I question my judgement. When I am free to do as I please, I am almost always content with the results. When I am restrained, or cautious, I find that I am almost always unhappy with the results. So, for example, one time I was talking to a patient almost at length about the virtues of religion, and sharing some information with him about death (this was an elderly man) and I was reprimanded immediately. I realized that that was NOT the sort of professional relationship I was supposed to have with a patient. Yet, following that moment, I felt that my role in customer service was not to have meaningful relationships with customers (which is how I imagined the relationships at the onset) but rather, to simply perform a function. Once I was relegated to a function, I did my best to just perform the function, without consideration to what those functions entailed. I think for the most part, people are happy with their basic function: to audit, to manage, to write, to clean, etc. But I wonder about the goal of that function, the larger system in which that function performs... I cannot be satisfied with mere functions, without understanding and appreciating the function on a larger scale.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of doing something for someone I cared about... It was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed the work, and the objective was clear and attained. Thank God for family.

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