The Chicken Soup....!

The Chicken Soup....!

I am an admirer of soups. Both chicken soup and tomato soup. My favourite of course, is asparagus.

When our son said he wanted us to have chicken soup, me and my wife were thrilled. He said he would reach it across and he did. When it arrived we were slightly taken aback. On one afternoon, he brought it gift rapped and in beautiful blue ribbon bind. On opening the rapper, we found it was “The Chicken soup for the Soul for Empty Nesters”.

Our son had got married the previous spring an our daughter a couple of years before that. Since his soup was only a book, which we may own in future, like all other books one owns, I kept separately to be read later.

The soup wasto be taken little by little, in the years to come. ! It was the experiences of hundreds of parents who had their children married off to suffer the ultimate bliss and loneliness of their lives.

We have a fw pigeon couples on either side of our apartment who routinely build and rebuild their nests and bring forth loittle ones time and again. Painstakingly they teach the little ones to fly and they fly away. The old pigeons are ready to rebuild and do another trip. However, we humans do it only once and when the nest is empty, engage in other activities or philanthrophy if we have the energy, some ofcourse, start praying for the long journey..!

I for one was not allowing myself to have the soup so far, even though it had been with me for the last four five years. But one of these days when I lost my sleep, my eyes fell on the book and I thought of going through it. It was about the lovd and angst and pain of parting with children whom we painstakingly prepared for life always under the false impression of being together all along,l as was the old custom in the underdeveloped country side. Electricity and motor cars were rare then and the lucky few (so it was thought) only went high up in the air in an air plane. Were “Chicken Soup” available then, people would have laughed at it. Times changed. Progress came. Countrysides started to become empty. Children flew off to distant places in search of nest and bread. At times they wrote letters, then telephoned and 'skyped'and always their work load increased.

The calls and letters became fewer and fewer and in certain weeks they did not call at all. Even if they did not call or write they still remained our little kids. We could never put away their thoughts. That is how I started to grab the full meaning of the chicken soup for the Empty Nesters.

Me and my wife are now empty nesters often times discussing our happy times to keep ourselves amused at the “wise” present given by our son..! His kissing wish on the inner cover of the book was “To Mom & Dad – For the youthful years of you two....”