Category — Grace In Small Things

In her princess dress. I love her.

I am thankful for:

* the little Solo boy who is sitting in my lap right now

* the love that emanates from our friends as they take care of us and feed us, as we cook together and talk together, sing together, love each other

* my camera

* pens and notebooks and sketchbooks

* the beauty of lines

* trees and rose bushes and virtually every green thing. They feed me.

* all of my kids. I can’t wait to see what they become.  I met an eleven-year-old boy yesterday who was almost as tall as me. That’s only three years away, for Kid A. Three years!

* My Chinua. The most amazing, caring, wonderful, musical, talented person I have ever met.

* The unexpected and all the possibility out there. These curvy roads that our lives follow.

* Every breath, whisper and resounding shout that signifies the presence of the Great Divine, Creator and Healer. I am living in the mystery of a life which is devoted, I am the devotee of my guru, Yeshu Ji, Jesus the Master, the Rabbi. He has me, the twisty paths of life are not frightening because we have history and I have never been led wrong. Every road that I travel on leads to love.

* Tea and coffee and salsa. Not together.

* Rhythms in life. Oh how my soul longs for rhythm of breath and heartbeat and gentle days…

* Water. Food, pillows, a spot on the couch.

* Even this tiredness which has suddenly overcome me. It slows me down, helps me to see…

*

Thank you for your giving. I’m going to leave the giveaway open for the same amount of time that Carrien is leaving hers. So, feel free to give all of Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday I’ll announce a winner.

I am plummeting, for some reason, these days my heart is constantly sad.  But even so, I can look all around me and see a blessing there, and there, and there.  Right over there!  Maybe the counting of these blessings, like beads on a rosary or tiny pebbles that I rub in my hands, is the most important kind of noticing.  I feel like I am sinking, and so now I need to say thank you over and over again, because there is no sinking harder to come back from than self pity. I know myself enough to know that at some point I will come floating back to the surface. For now, I need to become even more still, to notice the simple, beautiful things that are following me and to say yes to each one, to welcome them in, because they are the hands of my Master, bringing me along.

Here are some beautiful things from this day:

1. There is a small toad who sits on my back stoop every evening, just outside the door.  He blinks at me when I go outside.  I make a sweeping gesture to let him know he can come in, but he never takes me up on my offer.  He just sits there. I’m not sure why. Maybe he is bashful. He is a bashful toad, but he wants to sit just outside and be quiet, and maybe listen to my music, when it is playing in the evenings and the children are sleeping and the air has begun to cool down.

2. My little hibiscus bush has three buds that will most likely flower tomorrow.  I pruned it and now it seems to be putting buds out everywhere. (There is a lesson here.  Jesus, the Great Gardener, used this severe example of the branch and the scissors and the flowers.)   There are buds for tomorrow, some for the next day… The flowers are bright yellow with a red heart. I want more flowers in my life.  I will head to the nursery sometime in the next week, I think.

3. I have a papaya which will be perfect for breakfast, along with the yogurt I am making.

4. This evening kids and I went to the birthday party of a little boy that we met in the mountains, whose family is now here. We sat and talked and went for a walk and the kids were wild and the parents sought peace, and it was good and companionable.

5. Solo is possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen, these days.  Talking earnestly to me. Standing up, taking steps, falling. Standing up, taking steps, falling.  Shrieking with delight. This one’s a good one. I think we’ll keep him.

(The photo is of course by Chinua.)

1. Yesterday I put the kids to bed after Chinua had gone out to play music with some people in the area. When they were finally settled with the eighth glass of water and hug and prayer and bathroom jaunt, I walked out onto the rooftop and sat with my back against the wall of our house. (It is the rooftop and veranda at the same time; the rooftop of the apartments below, our veranda.)

For a while I just sat, with a book, kind of reading it, and kind of listening to the moths bonk their heads repeatedly against the bare bulb above me. Slowly a sound separated itself from the sound of the moths and their bonking heads, and floated towards me. It was unmistakably the sound of my Superstar Husband playing guitar, probably on another rooftop nearby. I sat and listened to him, from rooftop to rooftop, glad to be a part of the evening.

2. So, I already told you that Chinua was out playing music last night. Today I met up with a woman that I know from Goa and she told me that he had played a new song that he wrote for me, a song called “Weave.” She said many women were tearing up at the thought of a man who was so vocal about his love for his wife and his commitment to her. It is rare, it seems, in the world these days.

One woman called out, “Lucky girl!” when he finished, and he shot back with “No, lucky me!”

I am extremely blessed to be married to this man.

3. Renee and Becca and Cat are supposed to come back from their trip to Darjeeling and Assam tomorrow.

WOOOO! Oh, how I’ve missed them.

4. Yesterday I choked back all my fears and thoughts of my crushing lack of ability, and scouted the nearby big town for fabric for the kids’ clothes. We’ve been having most of their clothes made in India, and I found a tailor nearby who threw together the cutest little elastic waisted pants for Leafy a couple of weeks ago. YaYa and Kid A desperately need pants, since they won’t stop growing inches each day, and so off to the cloth shops I went. I entangled myself in a few polyester and sequined booby traps before making swift getaways, before finding my jackpot in a shop staffed by a lovely woman who let me know each and every bolt of fabric that was 100% cotton. There were many. There was also a man staffing the shop who was an Indian Mark Ruffalo look-alike. His Indian twin. And I emerged triumphant! Cloth for pants and shirts and one dress. Lovely.

(PS: It may sound strange or excessive to have your clothes handmade by a tailor, but it’s the way things are done here.  The other way things are done here is with large cartoon graphics on the front of extremely ugly and poorly made pop clothing, so we’ll take the tailor route, thanks. Tailors here are also very affordable. I paid 430 rps for three pairs of pants for Leafy last time (about $9.00) and I was all, “Man, that was expensive.”  Because I’m frugal. Chinua says I’m a cheapskate and I need to examine my priorities.  He continues to insist that clothing the children is a priority. Huh.)

5. And on that note, on the acquiring things note, may I say that my blender (known here as a mixer-grinder) that I bought in Dharamsala, works at least fifty times better than the one I had in Goa. It is like a brilliant dream of a blender, actually making the hummous creamy, the lassi frothy, the babyfood good for the toothless. I may try to find a way to get it on the train and bring it back to Goa. (PS: It cost 1000 rps less than the crap-meister we bought in Goa, the blender that believes we are asking it to tickle the spinach, rather than pureé it.)

Some Grace in Small Things

1. I walked home with Leafy and Solo from down the hill the other night, Solo snuggled into my chest, Leafy’s little hand in mine. Looking up, he said, “Mama! The stars are coming with us!”

2. Today I stopped thinking about whether my writing is any good and just listened to the characters. It was nice, like creative eavesdropping. They were having a husband and wife spat.

3. In this town there is peanut butter made by the women from the Gaddi people, the Himalayan tribe of the region. They make it and sell it in jars that are reused- old jam jars and honey jars. I love to buy it. I love to buy things that are purposeful. I was making peanut butter in Goa, to save plastic, but this is even better (and easier!)

4. Having a water crisis (it has been a week of little to no water, in the morning we have enough to flush toilets and maybe do some dishes, and I filter what I can before it is gone) makes me so thankful for the water privileges that I’ve had over my life. It also makes me much more conscious of how precious water is. They rely on run off in this village, and there was no snow this winter. However, the village across the gorge has plenty of water because they pipe it from a different source. I’ve been musing about the possiblities of us setting something up. We had something not unlike it at the Land. Any thoughts? (Tj and Mark?)

5. Bread does not come to my door here, but milk does, and a small boy delivers it in reused water bottles, before school. I hand him back the previous bottles solemnly, he accepts them just as solemnly. Today I will make yogurt.

And a bonus:

Yesterday I was a little concerned about the old man apparently throwing small rocks down the hill, dancing and shouting inanities while I was passing by. Was he about to attack me? But then I noticed his goats, slugglishly moving down the hillside, pausing to gracefully extract leaves from the wicked thornbushes. His antics were not aimed at me. Grace indeed.

And a PS: Is Chinua coming back from a long silence?  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Let’s just jump in, shall we?

1. I stopped my oldest son today, (oldest is a deceptive word; I shall endeavor to remember that he still is only six) because he was obviously trying to hide something from me as he went into the bathroom.  When he reluctantly opened his hand to show me what was inside, there was a kidney bean nestled on his palm.  (!)  Later I found the little family of peas that he was bringing the kidney bean to join, on the bathroom floor, in a bowl, floating in water, surrounded by peas and salt.

(He’s trying to make things grow.  A little futile with the peas, since they were roasted masala peas.  He may have fared better with the bean.)

When things like this happen, I:

a) Remember that he is a blossoming scientist and that I only need to encourage him to wait for a cue to begin the experiments involving beans and water and peas all over the bathroom floor.

b) Find it hysterical when I demand to see what is in his hand and see something as meek as a solitary pink kidney bean.  So harmless!  So beanlike!

c) Wonder how on earth I landed the job of mother.  I’m still twelve.

2. Whew!  Points within points!  I cut my sister’s hair tonight and it gave me creative joy like ice sculpting would if I had ever actually tried it. (I haven’t.)

3. There are two things that I am not permitted to do, now that I am married to my Superstar Husband, who never puts his foot down about anything.  They are:

a) Cut myself a mullet.  (I don’t want a big one, just a little tiny short-hair space at the front of my head.)

b) Wear leggings.

Tattoos, ear-stretching, body-building, tap-dancing.  All would be fine.  No mullets and no leggings, no negotiating. I can handle that.

4. My neighbor gave me a bag of cashew fruit.  I have NO idea what to do with it.  It appears to be inedible, while still being the juiciest fruit ever (in Reneé’s words).  I’m also quite flabbergasted to see that each piece of fruit, while being the size of a small green pepper, contains ONE cashew nut.  HOW DO THEY GET SO MANY CASHEWS ALL THE TIME?  Seriously, the world seems to be full of cashew trees.

5. Leafy walked over to me while I was working on an email today, holding a plate with three cups balancing on it.

“I got you some water-milk!” he said, handing me one of the cups that was precariously sliding around on his “tray”.

I looked into the cup.  It appeared to be water with a few drops of milk inside.  “Wow,” I said.  “Thanks so much!” And then I took a sip.

This will be short.  I had so many good intentions for taking photographs today, but then the day picked me up and started swinging me around by the seat of my pants.  Swing swing swing.  Somebody please tell me that this is just a phase.  I am so tired.

Grace abounds.  Small and big.

1. Yesterday a beautiful couple gave me a new baby carrier.  It is more comfy than my baby wrap right now, as Solo continues to morph into a toddler at the age of six months.  It was so sweet of them to give it to me.

2. There is a field by my house that is covered in flowering bushes.  Every color of butterfly imaginable is attracted to these bushes, so walking through the field is like walking through butterfly heaven.

3. I didn’t have to gut fish today.  Every day, since the day when I was around eleven and my parents bought several gallons of herring and we stayed up all night cleaning them, I am thankful that I didn’t have to gut fish today.

4.  I didn’t have to eat any herring today.  Yecccchhh.

5. Leafy is a hugging monster, the chai was good in the afternoon, I made the bomb soup for lunch, Solo said Dada, we danced (it’s Wednesday), SOMEDAY I will have our train tickets figured out, there are more things in life than having a clean house, and maybe I will be able to get up earlier than the kids at some point, so as to have some solitude before it’s all oatmeal and mashed bananas up in my face.

You can always hope.

Grace!

1. This photo (which a friend of mine recently uploaded to Facebook) of Kid A and Baby YaYa, sitting in their highchairs, eating salad at the Land.  This was right after we moved there.  A part of me feels so sad, looking at them.  Because those people are gone, and in their place are the wiry brown children that we now know, the ones who read, the ones who say things like, “I would like a scooter with only two wheels because it would be a lot more challenging for me.  (Challenging means harder, that’s why I say more challenging.)”

I know that somewhere deep within them, though, the chubby cheeks remain.  And we wouldn’t want them to have to eat in highchairs for the rest of their lives, would we? (Yes we would!) No, we wouldn’t.

2. There is always Solo, the cheeks and thighs of whom none have ever equaled.

3. Yesterday I booked train tickets for the beginning of April.  There are still kinks to work out with our trip, (there are ALWAYS kinks.  And high jinks.) but we are getting there.  We will keep this house for when we come back to Goa, in September or October.

4. Today I opted for not walking through the deep sand with the stroller, and decided (instead of going to the beach) to wander over to the house where Aunty Becca and Cat are living, through the village, with the kids.  They weren’t at their house.  (Where were they?  And why didn’t I have a prior consultation before they left?)  So their house owner invited me over to her place, a little stone Goan style house with a tiled roof and a cow dung floor.  She fetched us all Maaza, and we sat and talked for a while.

Her mother-in-law, a wizened woman with the huge black framed glasses so ubiquitous with elderly people here, kept indicating that I should give Solo some Maaza too.  I probably shouldn’t give any of my kids Maaza, since it is a “mango flavored drink” containing “some fruit” (we all know what that means, and it begins with an “S” and ends with a “ugar”) but especially not Solo.  Then she started joking in the way that I’ve noticed is common here, when you have a baby and older kids.

“I’ll keep your baba, you won’t have him anymore.” The answer from my kids is always a vehement shaking of the head, not quite a contradiction in a rude way, but firm enough.  Apparently they’re fond of him.

It was nice to sit and visit.

5.  And then we had ice cream cones, (packaged ones) and we sat on the steps in front of the shop to eat them. Leafy was ice cream face monster, Kid A scarfed his back with incredible speed, and YaYa made hers last for two hours.  Solo didn’t get any ice cream, either.  Just typical, you know?  A good Saturday.

1. I missed paying the electric bill by half an hour yesterday, I was supposed to pick up my van and some stepping stones for the garden today but I forgot, and I am supposed to be booking train tickets, but I never do.

Wait.  I think I forgot the point of this exercise.  Let me start over.

1. Fresh Lime Soda.  Club soda, a squeeze of lemon or lime, and some sweetener.  It fizzes! It’s cold.

2. It cooled off today.

3. Leafy: “I’m just giving my baby a snuggle.” (His baby is the cow that our friend left here for the kids, the same one he was nursing in a photo I took a while back.)

4. I am hand-sewing my daughter a skirt out of an old t-shirt of mine, because I like to do something with my hands while I talk, and it is too sticky for knitting.  (When the yarn won’t slide through my fingers it just makes me mad.)

5. There was a girl who came over today for lunch.  I think I had pegged her in a different light than I saw her in today.  She was difficult for me to understand, but today she seemed so soft, so needy of friendship and people to love her.  I was glad to see that in her, glad to not think of her as just a party girl.  I was reminded about not being hasty, even if someone is drunk the first time you meet them.

*

Grace is always around me, but I have been grizzling along to myself today.  Poor me.  Poor, poor me. I’m sooooo tired.  Who will take care of me?

Wealthy woman!  Stand up and sing, already!  The treasures in your house may loudly demand a lot of attention, but they are clustered around you like stars…

1. Here’s another fact about the sea: Sometimes a cloud covers most of the water except a glimmering bar throwing sheets of gold back at the sky, way out there. That way-out-there gold gives me the most exquisite yearning that I’ve ever felt.

2. There were many things that I ticked off of my to-do list today. I bought watercolors for my kids, picked up cushions for our rooftop space, bought tea cups, brought my van in to have the clutch fixed, visited a friend, and bought a 50 lb bag of rice. All in the heat of the market in the nearby town. I’m very proud.

3. The aforesaid friend cooked food for my sister and I, and continued to feed us throughout our visit. She fed us aloo tomato curry, chapattis, pulao, cookies, tea, and cake. We sat and gobbled food, and she gobbled up our appreciation.

4. I spent a day marketing with my sister. A treasure.

5. The hot season is breaking in on us like a sweaty tide. We are making plans to move to the Himalayas for a few months, and while we prepare, I have declared a school vacation. The grace part? Hope for cool weather ahead? Remind me of this post when I actually put on a long-sleeved shirt for the first time in ten months.

BONUS:  Eleanor‘s limericks in the comment sections of my last two posts are the BEST EVER.  What a special lift to my day.

1. There are these few drops at the very top of a wave, just as it crests, that seem to want to leap straight into the sky, shining. I love those drops.

2. Yesterday we used our new rooftop space for the very first time. Outside, above everything, in the shade, surrounded by the rustle of coconut trees. Beautiful.

3. Leafy would like us all to know that crabs like to dance, and that they dance backwards. Also, that they scare him, but not really, because the small ones don’t bite, but the big ones do, but a small one ate a part of his foot once.

And I would like you to know that although it is tiring to carry this great big boy down the beach just because he is afraid (but not afraid, not really) of the crabs that scuttle into their holes as we pass… I just love his soft face nuzzled into my neck.

4. The bread man waits for me now, honking his horn on his bicycle, instead of whizzing past like he used to. I run out and ask for das pao (ten rolls) and then I wave and say thank you, and he nods gravely and rides off until tomorrow afternoon, when he will wait for me again.

5. I kissed YaYa’s cheeks and her forehead before she fell asleep, and she kissed me back, even after an evening of her high emotions, of crying, of being unreasonable, of wailing loudly and inconsolably about things that don’t seem to make any sense. I kissed her and she kissed me back, and there was grace for both of us.