Category — Kid A

The other day when I was posting photos for the cooking post, I noticed my hand in this photo.

It reminded me of something I saw when I was looking at pictures with the kids.

It reminded me of this photo of me holding Kid A as a newborn, seven and a half years ago.

Oh my word, he’s cute.  But the real point is that I never, ever change my rings.  To me, rings become a part of your body when you put them on.  They are not something to be taken off and put back on.  You just wear them.  I’ve been wearing these two for fifteen years.  FIFTEEN YEARS.  Gosh I’m a jewelry fuddy duddy.

(Although yes, Eleanor, sometimes I wear Wonder Woman bracelets.)

When I was nursing, though, I used to take one of the rings off and put it on the other hand to show which side I needed to feed from for the next feeding. Rings are also useful that way.

But really, baby Kid A is so cute in that picture.  Why can’t I just have that back for a day?  I’m sure I would appreciate him even more now, now that I know him so well and stuff.  Sigh.  I want to kiss his addictive forehead.  Maybe I’ll go sneak a kiss on his big ol’ head that is about as huge as a table now.

It is 5:00 in the evening here. The light is getting softer, the wind is picking up, like it does in the evenings at this time of year. I am on our rooftop, looking at red stones and multicolored glass panes, watching the wind move the coconut fronds.  A man in the village is getting married tomorrow, and the tape of wedding music has begun its long loop.

I’ve been on the rooftop since early morning. Sending out query letters, my self-confidence dying a little more with each click of the “send” button. Did I mention that I finished the book on my writing vacation?  And did I mention that I’ve been home for two weeks?  Just in case you’re thinking that I’m on a really really long vacation. But today is my writing day and instead of writing, I’m, well, beginning my journey to publication. I want you to read the book.

I’m writing now, and it’s feeding me. The wind in the leaves feeds me, the breath of God feeds me, hanging laundry on the line feeds me, and writing feeds me. Also, finding treasures on the shore, a scooter ride through the jungle, and cooking good food.

I’m nobody important, that’s what I feel when I look through all the agency websites. But that’s what I find to be beautiful about life, that we’re nobody important, just small, lovely people who extend a hand of welcome to one another. My book is about small, lovely people, my life is full of small, lovely people, and everyday I meet another person who is fascinating and insightful and nobody important at all.

Kid A, who barely acknowledges that he missed me when I went away, had his own way of letting me know he was glad I was back. Almost as soon as he saw me, he asked if I would like to help him and YaYa build their new invention.

It’s a bacteria smasher.  The big stick person is Chinua, and the little stick person is Kid A.  They’re there to show the scale.

Inviting me to help him build it was his way of welcoming me home. Of telling me that I was important. Every little frond, every little brick, every pane of glass. Every small trouble, every word, every little blogger, every one of our long, tiring, beauty-filled days.

It was Kid A’s first barber shop haircut.

His Superstar dad usually cuts his hair, but I grew impatient and his hair was getting to that point where it gathers lint and makes my life unnecessarily difficult.

So off we went to the village barber.  There was a drunk man outside of the barber shop, which made me feel like I was in a novel.

Maybe I am.

Kid A had the best flinchy faces the whole time.  Like the barber was pulling his hair out instead of using a pair of scissors.

The excitement was almost too much.  We were all in awe of the coolness of the barbershop.

And the coolness of the large face brush.  I would like one, please, for home.  Just for those moments when you want to run some soft bristles over your face, you know?

You may be surprised that we stuck with the original plan of getting Kid A a haircut, and didn’t get a massage at the Body,Face Massage counter. What the photo doesn’t show is that this is the door to a room that was approximately 1 inch x 2 inches.

I also declined a cold wax.

Though it was tempting.

Today Kid A turned seven.  I made pancakes with Nutella (a super birthday treat!) and fried eggs (the fried eggs were on special request) and we sang.  He was up long before I was, but still wanted to eat breakfast in bed.

We had an early birthday party last week, because some friends were leaving and we really wanted to include them, so today was just about pancakes and badminton and video game time and a special dinner out with Daddy.

I absolutely love Kid A.  He’s just the coolest kid.

(All photos by Chinua)

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.

The good news is that it’s a baby tooth.

The bad news is that it will be three to five years before it grows back in.

The good news is that he’s cuter than ever.

But still… I have this wistfulness that comes from knowing that his appearance is changed permanently, now that there was pushing going on in the shower and he slipped and fell and he cried for about five minutes and then was better, now he will never look the same.  I wasn’t ready for that baby tooth to be gone yet.  Sigh.

***

I have added new layers of BUSY to busy.  We are beginning a meditation center in the Christian tradition, here in our village, and construction is commencing right now on our rooftop.  (Eventually we may get a building, but, as they say here in India, slowly slowly.)   The construction has nothing to do with me- Cate is designing and overseeing the building, but what DOES have to do with me is the week of teaching and workshops taking place right now.

Our friend has come to do some lectures and expand our knowledge of meditation: Eastern, Western, and all the middle bits.  He leads a monastic life with his wife, the type of life where one prays in a cell and builds buildings with rocks that one has quarried, and one bakes bread with wheat that one has not only ground, but grown, harvested, and threshed.  And one has no electricity.

His knowledge is of the doctorate variety, and his presence with us is of the fun and fresh variety.  We’re enjoying the lectures, the meditations, and the conversation.

(Kid A:  I had a conversation with Evan the other night.

Me: I noticed.  What did you talk about?

Kid A: Oh… almost grownup things.)

But we have been busy, meeting until almost eleven every night, and then starting over in the morning.  Yesterday everyone drove off to look at churches and ruins in Old Goa, and I stayed home because, as I told everyone, it wouldn’t be fun for them or us, to drag the kids around for the day.

Staying home looked like this:

Watering the garden. (I’m obsessed.  I touch and whisper to the new growth on our plants everyday.)

*

Walking to the painting for kids workshop.

(Me: If you can’t behave, Kid A, I won’t bring you back.

Kid A: That’s okay- I don’t really like painting.

It’s true- he never has.

Me: Sigh.

Kid A:  Do you know what my real job is? (Announcing to the class.)

Elaborate pause.

Kid A: STUDYING DOLPHINS.)

I refrained from telling the teacher that once upon a time I was a painter too.  I just let her tell me about colors and mixing and sat with my baby, laughing into his face, in my new life.

*

Bringing a friend home for the afternoon.  There is a coffee house here which is run by the friend of a friend, a man from Manali.  His daughter came to the painting workshop with us and then spent the day at our house, braving socially inept attempts to impress her by the boys.  (Kid A, painting on his face and spraying others with the spray bottle while at the workshop.)

*

Having a Belgian friend who is here studying massage give me a free TWO HOUR MASSAGE.  Wow.  It was the nicest thing that has happened to me in a long time.  What was happening with the kids?  Ratatouille.  The movie, not the food.

*

Eating the kimchi that our Korean friend made.  He is going to teach Chinua how to make it, and then I will be in heaven, sitting on the floor cross-legged, throwing it into my mouth.  I LOVE KIMCHI.

*

Having the surprise delight of Cate volunteering to sit with the kids after I put them to bed so that I could go to one of Chinua’s concerts.

I sat and dreamed of the day that I first heard those songs.  I watched his every move from the front row, singing along, clapping loudly.  His biggest fan.  It was wonderful.

I had no idea when Matty and I left the house with Kid A’s hand wrapped up in a bloody clean cloth diaper, his arm held up with a tournequet tied around it, that we would be gone for almost twenty-four hours.

It explains why I didn’t bring a book, my phone charger, a change of clothes, a toothbrush, or enough diapers for sleeping Solo, coming with us because he always needs to be with me.

I had no idea that we would be sent from one hospital to another.  No idea that I would wear a labyrinth into the floor with my aching feet, there in the trauma ward with people in varying degrees of pain all around me.  Broken leg, broken arm, someone hurt enough to need oxygen.  All on small hard hospital cots.  I was thankful that Kid A’s hand was only cut, not broken.

I had no idea how angry I could become, feeling trapped and marginalized in a hospital where no one was nice to me or my brother or my son.  Or how angry I would feel when too many doctors prodded (no less than eight) and hurt him, already hurting.  Matty stayed with me, and I was so grateful for him as I sat, woozy and exhausted.  Eventually one of us had to go home, and Kid A wanted me to stay.  So Matty reluctantly left.

I had no idea what love I would feel, what great shining love, as I lay with my two sons on one of the cots, finally able to rest, waiting for the operation to repair Kid A’s tendon.  Solo lay between Kid A and I, my hand rested on Kid A’s curly little boy head, and my love swelled up like a great shining bubble, golden and filling the room, blocking out the dirty ceiling, the terrible hospital smell, the hunger that I was feeling, the exhaustion.  I waited until he was asleep to cry.

(They gave him some anesthesia, and he spoke sweetly to me as he drifted off: “When you smile with your lips closed, you look like a stranger with lips… you have three eyes…”)

I padded out of the cot every half hour or so, asking when he would be operated on.  Finally, at 4:00 AM, they told me to put him on the gurney.  It had been twelve hours since he cut himself playing with a glass bottle, something that threatened to flood me with guilt every time my brain skittered back to the moment that he ran up screaming, covered in blood.

I was asked to wheel him to the place where he would be taken into the operating room, and it was not a nice place.  Unfortunately, he woke up, and he was afraid.  I kissed him and prayed for him and then they wheeled him away from me as he wailed for me. 

It was my least favorite night so far.  Give me childbirth anytime.

I returned to my labyrinth, walking quietly in circles past sleeping forms on beds who were still and quiet.  Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.   Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.  The Jesus prayer seemed to be all that I had brain power for, that and the occasional, Oh God, help. My boy my boy, which really means the same thing.  It was enough.

We had ended up at the wrong hospital, sent there because there might have been a plastic surgeon there who could do a better job.  I have since been told by a man who has lived here with his Indian family for ten years that he would NEVER take his children to that hospital.  The question is not of the work that they do, but the way that they treat the patients.  It is a world away from how I would suggest treating hurt people, but I was the foreigner at the hospital. It was not my place. I was lying beside the goldfish bowl, gills quivering in futility.

Eventually I lay down, again, beside Solo, and I think I drifted off a bit, because the next thing I knew was Kid A being wheeled out to me.  He was naked under a blanket, and I lifted him from the gurney to the bed.  He smelled, incredibly, like his newborn self.  We were all reborn.

The morning was old and tired, but we made it through.  I ran back and forth trying to find food, carrying Solo in my baby carrier which made everyone stare, occasionally crying which made everyone stare, sitting in silence which made everyone stare.  Staring is a way of life here, which I don’t usually mind.  But everything is different at the hospital. 

I have never hated any place as much as that hospital, with its hardness and mosquitoes, the abandoned IV next to the sink on the floor in a bathroom which smelled like the bathroom at the Delhi train station.  I don’t usually rail about hygiene here.  But this was a hospital.

He was groggy, and didn’t want to eat, and after hours and hours of sitting (trying anything to keep myself occupied, even reading the scraps of newspaper that were used to wrap my food) I decided to get us sprung.  He was coming out of the anasthesia just fine, I told the nurses.  We needed to be discharged.  It was a teary process.  They wouldn’t send for a doctor to discharge us. 

But I have children at home.  I’ve been up all night.  I’m so very tired.

You’ll just have to wait.

I’m going to pick him up and take him out of here.

I’ll call the doctor.

Finally the doctor came and we were all set free, like birds.  The taxi that we took home had carpet on the ceiling and fake fur on the dash, as well as a very glitzy queen of heaven display on the console.  It seemed heavenly, and the trees had never been so green.  I didn’t even mind the heat that pounded away all around us. 

Kid A will be fine.   He has a cast to wear for six weeks, to keep his thumb still while the tendon heals.  He has analyzed it all to little microns, and as usual, his analysis is surprisingly accurate and intuitive.  I like to see him solving problems, figuring out how to eat, whether or not he can play cricket, how to get dressed.  When to ask for help and when he would prefer to do it himself.

Chinua arrived home yesterday and got all caught up on all the news.  We spent some time just being together, and then all seven of us walked home last night along the dark beach, our feet in the water, tired and yet content. 

I have a diplomacy question for you.

The other day I made lunch, and it was pretty good. It was some kind of leftover redo, some flip and flap creation that I had tossed together, but it tasted good and had vegetables and protein, hooray!

Kid A ate a few bites and then said, “Mama. This isn’t good!” You’d have to hear his tone. His tone rhymed with “Mama. I’ve got more toys than you!” Sort of a sing-songy-I-just-thought-you-should-know-so-I’m-telling-you tone.

I said, “Kid A, just eat your food.”

He scrunched up his forehead and rolled his eyes and yelped, “It tastes like Monster Food!”

So I had no choice but to say, “Kid A! That’s a terrible thing to say to someone who just cooked lunch for you.”

My tone rhymed with “You ungrateful wretch, I cook and I clean and I rock the baby and I slave away, and all you do is play and talk about Monster Food!” It’s a tone l reserve for small children and baby animals.

(I find it’s good to use this tone to make empty threats that you know you will never in a thousand years carry out. Like, “If you talk about my food like this again, I’m going to stop feeding you.” Effective.)

Anyways, Kid A pondered this for awhile, and then he asked me a perfectly reasonable question.

“Mama? What is a nice way to tell someone that you don’t like something that they made?”

I had to say, “I don’t know.”

What about you? Do you know? Especially where a six-year-old is concerned? Is there a nice way?

I remember once, when you were younger, that someone told me about a certain age that boys enter into. I shuddered, looking at you, curled in my lap, to think of this fabled time; the time when you would no longer want to hug me or snuggle with me or hold my hand. I couldn’t imagine it. I thought it would be horrid, like eel pie or a lamprey shake.

That time is here, and what I want to say is… it’s not so bad.

In fact, it seems totally natural to me, you with your bony angles, your longer than possible legs, your quick smile and sense of humor. You’ve moved away from me a little, and right you should.

It is as natural as the fact that every day I kiss Solo repeatedly, unnecessarily, and obsessively, all over his little, perfect, infant-acne’d face. It’s as natural as the rare kisses I get from Leafy, along with the fact that when I pick him up, his little arms squeeze me tight around my neck and his little legs go around my waist, like he is a monkey boy and doesn’t want to let go. It’s as natural as YaYa with her kisses and hugs and cooed, “Oh, you are so Beee-you-ti-ful, Mama!” All of these things are here, and now, and none will stay the same. Naturally.

I still want to hug you, still reach for you when you do something great, until I remember and snatch my arms back to my sides, then give you a high five instead. Sometimes I just use words to tell you. Every so often, if you’ve fallen, you’ll come to me for a quick kiss- or a hug that lasts about four seconds.

And then there is the way you idolize your dad, because he is just the COOLEST THING EVER. Cooler than cool, really. I’m glad that you recognize this about him. I do too. He rocks. It was pretty funny, the other day when we were reading that book, and there was a little girl who lost her mom when her mom was giving birth to her brothers. I looked up and saw your face, as I was reading. “That’s pretty sad, isn’t it,” I said, ready to talk about it if you needed to.

“Yeah,” you said. “I would be so so sad if DADDY or JED died.” Jed is your best friend, far across the world now, but still ranking higher than me. I laugh without sting because I know you don’t really mean it, and because I also know that this too, is natural.

This is because we have done our bonding, the way that Solo and I are now bonding, almost the same person, but slowly edging apart. And I know that you are secure enough in me that I almost become a reflex to you. You never have to wonder if I’m there. This is beautiful.

I love to see you and your dad together, see how you clench your hands a little when you talk to him, because it is so very important to you, what he says in response. Will he laugh? Was that funny? You think it was funny, but you’re not quite sure. I love it because you have a dad who will laugh, who will show you card tricks, who will praise you when you get things right, and even when you try.

And then you come and lean on me and we read together, and I am happy with this little bit of unconscious affection. I don’t ruin it by trying to cuddle, because I know you’ll edge away, and so we sit, just leaning, just reading. Just laughing at what we read. You turn a brilliant smile up at me and I smile back.

I’m always here, my Kid A.

But I know that you know that.

Love,

Mama.

Photos are Chinua’s

Pics of the kids with their new clothes on.  YaYa is wearing a Salwar Kameez, a traditional Punjabi garment that is now worn all over India.  I think I may dress her in them from now until forever, because they suit her so well.

And because it is almost pointless to be a mom with a blog unless you can include your cute kid anecdotes, I will tell you about this conversation between Leafy and I. ( Just so you know, I’m not some kind of psycho mom who buckles my son down for school at age 2; the kid feels left out and wants me to teach him as well.)

“Ok, Leafy, what is this letter?”

“A T!”

“That’s right!  And what’s this one?”

“A O!”

“Uh huh!  Good, and what’s this one?”

“I don’t know. It’s an umbrella!”

“Well, kind of… It’s a U.  U is for umbrella.”

“Me is for umbrella?”

“No, not you is for umbrella.  The letter U is for umbrella.”

“The letter me is for umbrella?”

And so on.  Sometimes Leafy seems like the very stamp out of what someone would make if they were inventing the quintessential toddler.  Totally cute, totally crazy, totally mischievous, throwing out quotes left , right and center.

And as for our shipping.  I really think I understand the term now, when our ship comes in. Before you tell me to shut up already about it, you have to know that it contains my entire curriculum, all of our books, all our toys except for the five that are here with us, that have been with us since Turkey, our instruments, oh, and the mattress.  Sigh.  They say two to three weeks for processing through customs.  Sigh again.  When our ship comes in.