I came to the hospital with my dad this morning to work in his office. I have an assignment to finish before we leave for Chicago and it’s impossible to get anything done at home because if you answer the question “Aunty Meera, what are you dooooooing? You can come up to my room and play now, okay?” with “I’m sorry, Asher, but I have to do work,” the look you then receive would break a granite* heart. Also the urge to squish Sophia is difficult to resist, although she is less interested in being squished than in waddling around the house picking things up and putting them down someplace else. She is a very busy baby.

Anyway, I accomplished my work goals for the day—yay!—and in between bouts of productivity (bouts is the right word, isn’t it, for something a little bit painful?) I reminisced about coming to work with my father when I was a little girl. My sister and I always used to buy potato chips from the hospital convenience store, watch bags of blood zoom along the ceiling from department to department in their little black boxes, and draw pictures in my father’s room. This was before he had his own private secretary (how swish) and before I had homework. As a result of these excursions I have always found hospitals vaguely comforting, which is something for which I count myself lucky.

Oh! I’ve just been brought wine, sausages, cherries, and a chicken wing from the office Christmas party, so I shall leave you for now to consume them, and perhaps, after all, to draw a picture.

*We went to visit a Hindu temple built by one of my father’s oldest friends yesterday. Apparently granite is more “powerful” than marble; also statues made with five metals instead of one have more “power.” How little I know.