Category — Family Creativity

It just screams potential, doesn’t it?

I want to live in a house like the one YaYa drew.

And have a tree like hers growing in my yard.

Leafy likes the potential of chalk, too.

He loves to show off his work.

And I love to see it. I’m his biggest fan; his drawings are so whimsical and lovely.

Solo, on the other hand, is all: If I can’t eat it, I don’t want it!  Just take it, already.

We’ll give him time.

So what is it that we have been doing, that has kept me away from this computer for so long?

We have been coughing and blowing our noses, but that is not it. That is not all.

First, there were our gift projects.  I found some lovely cotton canvasy type fabric in the Mapusa market (I really must take you on a tour of the Mapusa market one of these days.  You won’t understand my life if you don’t come with me) and had cloth grocery bags made by my new fabulous tailors.

* A note on the tailors. I’ve had so much trouble with tailors over the last year that I’ve seriously considered just buying a sewing machine and making all the kids’ clothes myself, something I would LOVE to do if I had a clone who could finish my book and host all the people who come over everyday. If there were two of me maybe we could get it all done.  What I did instead was took a deep breath and walked into every Nepali shop that I’ve been avoiding here in my tourist town since I arrived.  I hate shopping. Remember? Loathe it.  And there is nothing that will frighten an anti-shopper like myself more than an overabundance of choice. So I took an afternoon and forced myself to go and talk to all the tailors.  I found some with a wide open space in the back of their shop, so they were practically outside, but with a shade cover.  Good working conditions. Check.  Polite, not smarmy. Check.  Understood what I meant. Check. Good stitching on the samples. Check.

I found my dream tailors and I have loved everything they’ve made. Wonderful, because the kids always need clothes and there are no thrift stores here and don’t even get me started on the horridness of things that are sold in the shops. *

So anyways, I had the bags made, and then the kids drew simple designs and embroidered them.

The gifts were a hit. We gave them to our neighbors and close friends.

We decorated our Christmas tree; this year a tiny spruce.

We got the rooftop ready for a Christmas party that we had on Christmas Eve.

And then we had the party.  It was so sweet. There was plenty of food, and the decorations were so peaceful and nice (the stars were made by Miriam and Johanna, members of our community from Germany and Switzerland.  Some are made of paper and some they made out of palm fronds) and I read the Christmas story while the kids acted it out. The child who played Mary had a bit of a nervous problem of picking her nose, so the video may prove to be an embarrassment one day.  We sang carols, with Chinua, Miriam and Johanna singing three parts, and Chinua performed his arrangement of the Little Drummer Boy, which never fails to bring me to tears. The guests went away happy and blessed, and we were all happy.

(Kid A took this photo at the party.)

Christmas day was beautiful and sweet, except for my sleep deprivation from going to Midnight Mass the night before. I may tell you about that at another time. (Mistake!)

Oh, the kids were so excited and Chinua and I made crepes together and then friends came over with hula hoops they had made for the kids, and then the other members of the Turbans (the band Chinua was in in the Himalayas) showed up (we haven’t seen them since we left the mountains) and then we went for a family swim.I’ve been worn out, lately, and missing my family, so this soft, sandy Christmas was just what I needed. God always knows, doesn’t he?  He always, always knows.

The other day, Leafy drew a picture of me in the sand while we were on the beach, and it looked like this:

I so badly wished I had a camera.

His picture was much better than my rendition, and it was drawn in sand with his finger, which was priceless.  He told me it was me looking up.

You know how there are the natural swings of motherhood; the days of clumsiness and grief, and the days of moment after perfect moment? Or, in actuality, they are much more connected than that…  Leafy draws a portrait of me that stuns me with its grace, and then he cries all the way home because there is sand on his belly. YaYa is so much a little girl that I catch myself staring at her, open-mouthed, because the very fact of her being a little girl makes me feel more free, but then she cries all the way home because I let Kid A take a turn pushing the stroller.

Sigh.

And then I see them bend together to lift the stroller over the loose sand, puzzling out a problem for themselves and finding a way, and I believe again that the shining moments are much more weighty than the others.

Update on the confusing am I or am I not a preschool issue: I think we have it cleared up now.  Chinua was pretty clear (stronger than me? less apologetic?) when the lady got back on the day she dropped her son off, that a) we are not babysitters, and b) she should call before she brings her son over, but they are welcome to come and play. Together.

I think it was a combination of a) a language barrier, b) the fact that many foreigners here *do* open up kindergartens for other international kids, c) the fact that I homeschool my kids, something that is not done in many countries and is very strange to some people, d) the fact that someone TOLD her that I had a school, and e) her own boundary issues.   But she is very sweet, and I’m glad we have it straight now.  It was just funny there for a minute, because on the phone, I’d be saying “I am not a babysitter.  I do not have a preschool.  I do not babysit other people’s kids.” and she’d say, “Maybe we can talk about it when I come to your school.” Oh dear.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear. At one point, I said to Chinua, “Maybe I should just open a preschool.”

This is the way my brain works, which is why it’s good for me to have people around who say, “Rae, you really don’t want to do that.”  And then I say, “Oh, you’re right.  I don’t.”

There is so much work to be done, especially in a family of six.  It almost never stops. When one load of laundry is taken off the line, another is ready to go on. When one meal is cleaned up, it’s almost time to begin the next. Sometimes we work very hard for leisure, also (as any mama knows who has gone camping).

A woman can work very hard. She can organize and make lists, and she can tidy and straighten and wash and reorganize and dunk her baby in a bath and dress him and put him to bed.

But not all of a woman is made to work. The soul of a woman contains so much more- there is a girl-child inside, ready to play!  Sometimes the girl-child is upset, because there has been no time to play, no time to laze around and read on a window seat on a rainy day.

But there is work to do. So, there must be a way to bring the two together! Surely God did not make us to forget how to be children (Jesus suggested the very opposite when He said, “Unless you become like children, you will not see the Kingdom of God”) and surely He is not a great taskmaster, always hovering and waiting for us to account for ourselves.

My dear friend in Varanasi said to me, when we talking of this very thing, of making pots and pots of chai and running around and serving and hosting, “But what about the Girl inside?!”  Other people may forget the girl-child, but I don’t think we should forget her.  And if you are a man, you should not forget your boy-child. Actually, this is one of my favorite things about my husband. The small boy that he was is always lingering just below the surface, so close that sometimes they are one and the same. Sometimes that boy bursts through (often!) and rolls on the floor laughing or picks up a sword to play with the kids. I want to be like this.

And yet, the children who are children both on the inside and the outside, they need to eat!

So. I am making a list of ways to play while I work. Tomorrow I will show you my list.  I think I will illustrate it and put it somewhere in my house, somewhere I will not forget it. It is necessary, for my survival, as a woman, a girl-child, and a seeker of the Kingdom of God.

I think that I have decided to join Schmutzie’s Grace in Small Things challenge.

I say I think because I am not so great at following through with thingy-ma-jigs that fall in sequence. But any number of days that I notice five positive things and write them down is better than no days, right?

And it might just jog me out of this blog apathy that is not really apathy, but a desire to say so many things and the fear that I won’t be able to say them. (Oh no, there I go with the fear again.)

*

So here goes: (The rules are: list five positive things every day. Simple, eh?)

1. I was having a stern talk with Kid A this morning about the need to be kind to his little brother, the Leafy Boy, and to think about his brother rather than just doing whatever he wants and ending up hurting him. All the while Leafy was piping in with, “Hugging is kind, right Mama? Kissing is kind, right?”

2. Tonight after I got the baby to sleep, my Superstar Husband put the kids to bed so that I could head back out on the scooter to join the girls at their favorite coffee shop. (The only coffee shop.)

3. While we were there, we were discussing the differences in age between siblings in my family, and I said that my younger sister and brother are exactly two years apart. My sister, the ever zesty Becca, shot me a look and said, “Two years and one day,” and then mouthed threateningly and absurdly, Not EXACTLY two years!

I collapsed in giggles, something I haven’t done in a while.

4. After our community lunch today a few of us sat and created some things together. I worked on a drawing and then wrote a letter to someone who is leaving tomorrow. The kids painted on paper, the floor, and themselves, Renee mixed colours and kept exclaiming, “I LOVE painting. I LOVE painting!” And we all just played and listened to music for a couple of hours. It was nice.

5. I didn’t make it down to the beach in time to dance, but I did watch the dancers with the late afternoon sun and the water behind them. The kids drew in the sand with sticks. I met some new people. I invited some people over for dinner tomorrow. I will make pesto and attempt to use cashews. We’ll see how it goes.

A few weeks ago, the kids and Renee and I got in our little white van with a friend and her daughters to travel in the sun to a nearby Banyan tree. A Banyan sends shoots and roots up throughout a large area, many of which look like other trees, but are in fact all part of the same tree.

My friend was from England, from Devon, with daughters so round and brown-eyed and freckled that I wanted to scoop them up and keep them forever. (Not to mention their accents: “It’s all rather muddled, isn’t it?”) She’s gone back since, so this was a special farewell trip, to a tree that another friend had told us about.

“The canopy is as big as this whole restaurant,” he said, throwing his arms out expansively.

We drove along, our directions limited to: “When you pass the petrol station and then look off and to the left, you’ll see it out there, in the middle of a big field.”

I wasn’t ready to stop driving, we reached it so quickly, so I drove a little farther and got myself into a bit of a pickle trying to turn around, while small British voices in the back called, “I want to go back to the tree!”

We parked. As we approached the tree, about 20 huge Langur monkeys departed, swinging down effortlessly and loping away to a distant spot. They watched our invasion of their perch impassively.

I thought the tree would be kinda neat, but it was not merely neat. It was majestic. It was peaceful, it was shady, it was a perfect play place in a hot field. Perfect for monkeys, perfect for people. The Banyan is quickly becoming one of my favorite trees. Like the Madrone, or the Sequoia. Or the Oak. Well, I could go on and on. I guess I just like trees. Big surprise.

After I wandered around for awhile with the camera, I handed it to Kid A, so that he could take some shots. Later, when I looked through them, I was happily surprised by what he saw and snapped.

Here’s the day through Kid A’s eyes.

Then YaYa took the camera for a while. Here’s some of the day in her eyes.

At the end of our time we all joined hands and wove in and out of the branches singing, “The Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, God made the Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, lots of shade for you and me…”  And there were other verses, but I won’t trouble you with them here.