A busy week, a memorable encounter

Last Sunday my brother visiting from India left for San Francisco to his daughter’s place. I saw him off at the airport. It’s funny, how things have changed for two people in their mid-life. We never hugged each other growing up in India. I used to be his able assistant carrying pebbles for his catapult. He is a retired professor now and I am dreaming of retirement soon. We hugged each other at the airport as we waved good-bye.

On Memorial Day, instead of usual barbeque (hard to barbeque for two), my wife and I spent a little money at the mall to keep the US economy going.

From Tuesday through Friday, I was sleeping on a bunk bed on an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Our days started at 5:00 AM. The sky was always overcast (it even rained cats and dogs for a few hours one day to torment me with the fear of a rain out day on my project schedule) and I never got to see the beautiful sunrise or sunset on the blue ocean that I had hoped for as in the past. On the positive side, the work progressed like clockwork. Those amazing workers (riggers, welders, crane operator, and others) do amazing things out of monstrous steel pipes and fittings. They worked 14 hours a day. Robert, the cook, fed us well (eggs, sausage, shrimp etouffe, chicken fried steak, biscuit, gravy, …). I had no way of working off that extra diet. Then again, I love good food. Who doesn’t?

A helicopter brought me back to shore on Friday. Then I drove home. My wife was still at work. I turned on my computer expecting a bunch of junk emails. Among that junk emails I had one of the sweetest surprise; an email from a stranger I never met. This stranger was my niece from India currently on an assignment in Minneapolis. Her email was full of emotions showing a desire to meet this unknown uncle she had heard stories about. She was born many years after I had left that country. We exchanged emails and pictures. On Saturday for the 1st time in our lives we talked as strangers, but connected somehow through that unseen bond.

She is coming to visit her uncle coming Saturday. Our older daughter asked me if I was nervous. Perhaps. I am not sure how to welcome a family member I have never met before.