Tomorrow, 22nd June 2023, Shahaar turns 18! In the blink of an eye, our first born went from being the easiest and most adaptable baby (we moved 9 times in our first turbulent 3 years in UK) to a shy and gentle toddler, to an energetic, sensitive and cheerful young boy, loved by his family, friends and teachers in England and New Zealand. Then came the transitional pre teens and teens starting a new life in Bangladesh and now we are so proud to see the confident, kind and pretty cool young adult that he is today ☺️(It is now 8 days past his birthday and am finally able to post! this is mostly due to technical errors- lost the draft twice, also figuring out changes in the website as I had last blogged 5 years ago, plus I was on a boat past 7 days)
It breaks my heart that I won’t be there to celebrate Shahaar turning 18 in person…I remember the one other birthday I had missed when he turned 14..the tap kept running the whole day..but such is life and in reality we couldn’t be happier and prouder of him than we are today.
I had reflected on the first ten years in this post on Life and travels with Shahaar but as enters the world of young adulthood, I wanted to capture a few core memories (ref: Inside Out) that we can all look back for years to come. Here starts the journey down memory lane of the wonderful 18 years with our golden boy 🙂
Endless of memories when it was just the three of us, especially of the many camping trips from when he was 10 months through to when we left England 2014 at the age of 10. He had his special ‘ahaar camping chair’ as he called it when he was 2. Even now we reflect on some of this trips, when it went from 16 degrees to 2 degrees overnight and we huddled in our tent in all our clothes with 1 year old shahaar between us! Many hours chilling at campsites like this after long hikes and birdwatching. We were really blessed to have the most chilled and easiest baby and toddler.
2) Shahaar was obsessed with animal figurines and knights. He would spend hours after hours lining them up, doing battle scenes, the two movies he loved these early years – Narnia and Kung Fu panda, he would re enact the battle scene from Narnia and let’s not count how many times we had watches these two movies! When he was three, shama was 5 months, we had done a 10 day camping trip from Bordeaux, France travelling down south to the Pyrenees and back up to Lyon. Visiting Carcassonne along the way was a dream for him, as was the special souvenirs he got in a little French village – a random Spiderman Horse!
3) One day when he was five, he comes back from school and talks about his conversation that he had with his friend on Clone Wars…and that started the wonderful journey into the world of Star Wars, much to the joy of his Samir Chachu and us who are all big fans 🙂 This journey continues till today and needless to say his knowledge about this intricate world is way more superior than ours 😁
4) Proudest moment getting ready for his Black Belt award ceremony. He trained from the age of 4 till he turned 7.5 in Mixed Martial Arts. His final exam was a day long event, very grueling, had to run 5k, with push ups, sit ups and other drills. Plus the demonstrations with different weapons, and so much more!
5) Shahaar had seen us fire spin since he was young and I had expected that both kids would want to fire spin as well. I hadn’t know then what a natural Shahaar would be (just like his father), and how much he would enjoy fire spinning. It was so much fun and so nostalgic to see him spin with Naur, then at his Mamoni’s wedding but the core memory would be when he did his first performance with the crowds cheering on, with the music we used to do shows with, with old crew Naur spinners at an Eco festival.
6) Shahaar learnt the Tabla for a few years, he even went to Kolkata for a month to study under a proper Tabla Master. It was his first trip being away from us for so long and he did great. But the core memory from his few years playing tabla is the jamming he did with our good friends who are musicians, who had seen him since he was a baby. It was great watching him jam with them.
7) Shahaar and Shama both love to read and are voracious readers! Shahaar reads less now but it had been a pleasure sharing common love for some of our favourites – Dragonlance series, Dune, Dark Materials amongst others. Memorable moments include the hours reading during our 2 month campervan trip in Australia and the pile of books we would carry, going through one particular charity book shop in Bangkok, Shahaar’s earlier years and his favourite books, many of which are still on our bookshelves!
Few random memories, wouldn’t really call them core memories but will be fun to remember over the years..which won’t get into details for privacy reasons 😉
8) Shahaar’s memorable first school trip to Egypt
9) Shahaar being a good friend to a young person in need, in fact him being an awesome mentor to many young kids
10) Shahaar dancing with me after I had come back from my PhD Upgrade meeting. Both kids and I had such a fun time that short period! Dancing with Shahaar again in the campervan during our Australia road trip
11) Graduation day at Sir John Wilsons, seeing Shahaar so happy with his friends, made me nostalgic, remembering my own graduation and my school friends. I am really happy to see that he has a small core group of good friends that he loves dearly.
12) How much importance and value Shahaar gives to family, how he call Nana and Dadi from Bromsgrove on a regular basis, how much he want to learn about his heritage and family history, the time he spends with them…very endearing
13) Picking Shahaar and Shama up from school in New Zealand and stopping for the amazing ice cream there, sometimes going to the beach opposite our house. Our year in NZ was super special, will always cherish that year, the campervan trips, the fishing, the weekend cricket, learning the national anthem, doing the Haka and more!
14) Super special Vietnam trip with Shahaar and Shama, especially in Sapa and the 10 days we spent in Germany before Shahaar left for boarding school, watching him getting more independent taking trains across Germany to see family and friends
So I lost half of this post already and had to rewrite and I don’t want to do that again so am just going to wrap up here.. last but not least – core memories of the four of us, floodgate of memories, all the time we spent together travelling, playing boardgames, hiking, camping, visiting museums, spending time with friends and family, watching movies, doing sports, video games, fishing, reading, laughing and just enjoying being together. Memory highlight would be the two months we spent travelling Australia, being together 24 7.
Happiest of Birthdays my love, you are the best of Baba and I, and then you are your own wonderful, sarcastic, funny, kind, driven and confident self 🙂 May you continue to thrive and be the best that you want to be…we are very proud of you and we love you so much Shahaar and can’t wait to celebrate your birthday in a few weeks time!
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A wonderful boy – wishing Shahaar a fantastic 18th birthday and life ahead. Happy I could be a part of it however small.
Much love,
Alti Chachu