23/10/2025
Yes, the pumpkin inflatable is now a part of our garden by God’s grace ❤️🙏
It made me remember how we got to this point….
🎁 When Ary turned 5, his birthday gift was an inflatable bouncy house. It was the first birthday party I hosted on my own, at home 💪🏻. The day turned out rainy but the inflatable luckily fit in our garage. So the little humans at the party were delighted going down the slide on it. Later, the neighborhood kids would play on it every now and then in the following weeks.
🏡 We moved. This was tucked away in a storage behind the house. But it came in handy at Ary’s covid era birthday, again at home. The new neighborhood’s kids had the same fun. It became a staple yard decor during summer for their games, being towed away after a few days or season of being up, with my partner’s help….
Till….I was refused the help one day. I was asked to put it away myself. And also set it up myself for the kids to play on when they wanted to.
Now, I had not fully recovered yet from some right knee weakness from a meniscal tear that led to a surgery a few years prior. I had put off the surgery till I could not manage without it. In the process, I used a brace which weakened my right thigh muscles and had a mild limp. On a bad day, arthritic pain and joint swelling made it hard to use the stairs or sometimes regular walk too. Plus the on and off back pain and spasms following pregnancy made it hard to even carry Ary as a baby, let alone a big folded inflatable. And, lack of time to recover fully from two back to back surgeries, while working full time….while going through a complicated divorce…while relocating between cities…while sleep deprived from parenting a toddler who woke up every 2-3 hours…plus my own undetected diet related health concerns…all would make me feel tired easily with significant exertions.
😢 How was I to manage to put it away myself? And worse, how was I to set it up? I was not used to setting up inflatables, especially of this size. It seemed an insurmountable task! I had so badly wanted to go camping in childhood and learn the different scouting skills (tying knots etc.) but where I grew up, there was not a chance for it. I sorely missed the knot making skills, staking skills etc. that I only remember reading about in one of my dad’s beginner first aid books in middle school.
But a broken children’s wagon and a few willing 8-10 year olds became the answer. Together, we folded it, dragged it on the wagon back to the storage shed. I did some heavy lifting that day but without any back or knee issues too luckily! Phew! Similarly we dragged it back to the yard when they wanted to play…we figured out that the tarp goes down first, then the unfurled bouncy house and then the stakes, then the power connection, and voila!…We had a choice to have a good time.
This withdrawal of support heralded a divorce a few years later. I thought I was lost in terms of decorating for Christmas. I used to believe setting up the lights on the bushes, the inflatables etc was a stupendous task and admired the skill of the person who did it. I could not even imagine me being able to do the decor to that level.
When we moved out, I so badly wanted to decorate our new place but wanted to find something that worked with my limitations. Being a big time fan of all things solar, I ended up finding net lights for bushes that were solar, so that I didn’t have to mess with electric connections where we had only limited external power line access.
When we finally moved out to a place with a yard, I set up my first Christmas snowman inflatable last year: all by myself this time! 😎 I was ready to use my bouncy house skills except the snowman was built slightly different: it asked for sand bags to weigh it down.
Who needs sand bags when you have an abundance of unused Kerala Matta rice in the pantry? Ziplock bags filled with rice held down the snowman. The yard orientation made us be creative with extension cords to bring power near the inflatable. Ary and I problem solved about series’s connection, voltage, electric load, extension cords with multiple connecting outputs etc. and the snowman came to life.
This year we got this Halloween pumpkin inflatable. This became the easiest project of all by God’s grace. It came prefilled with sand bags too. I was familiar with staking this time (though the stakes were a different kind this time but I managed to create a knot in each that stayed in place). This time it was closer to the power outlet so the extension cord still on the ground from last Christmas 🤭 came in handy. This was set up in 5-10 minutes compared to about 40 minutes of problem solving with the snowman.
Staying grateful for the time when help was refused 🙏❤️ It taught me that:
❤️ I could depend on myself even through my perceived physical limitations.…that my limitations were not who I really was
❤️ I could find decor to my liking that matched my skill levels for set up (solar bush lights and battery operated string lights). We could still enjoy the holiday spirit even though I may have been new to a detailed decor set up
❤️ more importantly, I am enough just the way I am, when I was not as familiar with the decor, and also now with greater experience about the decor
❤️ a set back is an opportunity in disguise for creative brainstorming, ending up with things that work better for us
Thank you for witnessing my journey ❤️🙏
