Awaken

8A New Beginning

Our house was on a cul‐de‐sac in a “planned community” called Burke in northern Virginia, about five miles from the George Mason University campus. It was a small four‐bedroom house with a one‐car garage and a beautiful brick patio in the back. At $205,000, it was significantly more than we had expected to spend.

It was a relief to be in a new place after the humiliations and traumas I had experienced in Boston. George Mason was a fast‐growing, ambitious state school that had benefited from the explosive growth of the northern Virginia region.

Now that my dissertation was out of the way, I needed to publish. However, I had simply not developed that part of me and idled for the first year. Instead, I had focused on my teaching, settling into the new house, and dealing with our newly discovered pregnancy.

Exactly nine months to the day after I started at George Mason, our son Alok was born. Nothing quite prepares you for the experience of having a child. The love I felt pouring out of me for this little soul was overpowering. Within days of bringing him home from the hospital, I said to Shailu, “This is incredible! Let's have another one right away!” Initially, the experience brought us closer and distracted me from the underlying tension between us and the constant overhang of my father's rejection and banishment. I was teaching a summer course every morning. Each afternoon, Shailu was able to rest as I took over and delighted in Alok progressing just as the ...