Bittersweet.

“My tee-bee?” he asked quietly after taking a break from looking out the airplane’s window.

It took a couple more questions, each with an increasing sense of urgency, for me to figure out what was going through my sweet little boy’s head.

We were on airplane and, in almost-three-year-old math, the equation meant that we were moving. Again.

We had only just gotten our household goods after a ridiculous delay. Nicolas had only recently gotten reacquainted with toys he hadn’t seen since we had packed them up six month prior.

And it was true that we were getting the heck out of Delhi, finally. But this trip would only be a round-trip break from “pollution season.”

It was hard to explain “vacation” to a kid who had been born at the start of the pandemic and whose only experience with being anywhere not in-between-houses was a long weekend away via car. But a few more reassuring answers about the T.V. and bike left behind at our flat seemed to get the point across that this was just an adventure.

It really was.

Especially for an almost-three-year-old but even for his parents. We spent a week rickshaw-ing around Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, enjoying the sun and higher temps, fresh air, and coconut-infused everything.

And “his” T.V.?

It was indeed still there when we got home.