Category — Messing with Me

I’m so exhausted.  There doesn’t seem to be anything left of me.  I search in my sleeves, after the kids have fallen asleep, and my arms have fallen away.  I can’t carry a single thing, and I slip through cracks in doorways, even when I not planning to enter. I wonder if there is anything remaining, anything that has not been taken by cooking and talking and staining furniture and teaching.

The phone rings.  I cringe.  When it is like this, I know I am in a bad way.

And yet, things are not bad.  There is always another stone to leap on, just in front of me, whether or not I am in spectral form, whether or not there is any solidity to me. I jump from stone to stone. I take my time.

Small fish make their way through the river below. The sun is blinding me as it flashes off their scales.

Solo really started walking today. Flash!

YaYa drew a beautiful picture of Jason and the Golden Fleece.  Flash!

Leafy said, “What if I took my head off, and it grew small little bones that became feet, and small little bones that became arms, and it walked around all by itself and drank water?”Flash!

And there is this picture of Kid A:

Which reminds me to watch for fish. Flash! Don’t stop seeing their beautiful, rainbowy scales, even if you are just barely able to stumble from stone to stone.

Also, check out this awesome website, and this one. (Made by the same people.)  I fell in love.

I had just finished cooking when the boys showed up. The rajma was bubbling away, and everything else was ready.  They brought a drum, a violin, a guitar, and Oshan with a fistful of flyers.  “All right, kids!” he shouted when he had some breath back in him, after they tackled him. “Time to color flyers!”  We sat down around the table and started in on the concert flyers.

“You color very neatly, Oshan,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.  “I’m the best colorer in the whole world, pretty much.” I love British hippies, because they may look wild, but their accents give them away.  When I was having juice with Oshan and Darius last week, they used the words “mollycoddle” and “persnickety” in a ten minute span of time. Not to mention that when I walked up, Darius was eating baked beans on toast; a food that is utterly mysterious to me.

“Well,” I said, feeling that he’d better be brought down a peg or two, “you’re not very creative at coloring, are you?”  He held out his work and looked at it. “No, no I’m not, am I?  I’m more simple, really.”

The boys and Chinua discussed where they would practice for the upcoming concert, and the rest of us sat at the table with our crayons.  When they decided to go to the nearby restaurant with the Nepali cooks, Darius asked if the art entourage could please accompany them. I hemmed and hawed, since I had just finished dinner, but in the end, decided that time spent with these friends was time well spent, and we could eat the food I’d made tomorrow.  So we all rounded up jackets and left.

And we colored more flyers, and we ate.  And there was a hailstorm, and it grew increasingly cold, and you can sense the impending doom, can’t you?

On the way back, Chinua lovingly hiked back up the hill with me, so I wouldn’t have to do it alone in the dark, and we all shivered (when we leave in three days we won’t shiver again until perhaps next April) and I thought thankfully about the fact that our house had been warming up all day in the sun, and would be pretty warm, compared with how frigid it was outside.

And then we reached our door, and we smelled the smoke.  Chinua and I looked at each other, wide-eyed.  “I didn’t… I’m not… I thought,” I said, cleverly, and dashed into a huge cloud of smoke which escaped when I opened the door,  pursuing the children around the deck. First I turned off the stove.  Then we began to open every window, every door, to let the horrific smell out.  Not only the smell of burnt beans, but the smell of burnt pan.  We gathered around outside, glumly, looking into the pot which Chinua illuminated with his flashlight.  Nasty black bubbly beans, all charred and stuck to the bottom of the once-pan.

Bummer.

Now our house is refreshingly chilly, and still smells of something you’d rather not be close to.  YaYa said, very distraught, “We should check all of those things, before we leave, shouldn’t we?”

“I did check, I looked a few times.  I didn’t realize it was still on.”

“What about looking under the pot, to see if the fire is going?”

“Yes, that would be the best thing, wouldn’t it.”  Yes, yes it would.

The other day was a writing day for me.  Chinua has been giving me all of Friday to write and get some work done on the book and another project I’ve been working on, and I LOVE it.  I feel like for the first time in seven years I can really focus.  Or, focus as well as one can when one’s children keep opening the door and asking if you are done with the computer yet because they’d like to watch a movie, or as focused as one can be when one’s baby crawls to the door of the room that he KNOWS you’re in, and when it doesn’t open, bangs on it, yelling, with two open palms.

I take what I can get.

This Friday, however, I needed to try to get a truck up to our house to pick up the boxes that we are sending to Goa by mail. (Since we travel by train, the post is the easiest way to get things like our books, toys, and anything else we don’t want to carry on our backs to our house down south.) I really didn’t want to do it on a Friday.  It’s my special day, see?  But I also saw the wisdom in not putting it off.

Chinua said, “I don’t want you to do anything that’s going to make you angry later, because I don’t want you to be angry.”  Fair enough.  I needed to do what was necessary and deal with it in my own cantankerous soul, rather than letting everyone know how put out I was by doing this work for them, and they’d better appreciate it, because my whole DAY was ruined, practically my whole LIFE. Also, it was raining.

I made myself a list:

Tips for Making a Lame Day Better

(by me)

1. Draw stuff

2. Take photos

3. Talk to people

4. Notice things

*

Well, I couldn’t take the camera because it was raining and I was walking, and my little camera is broken, so we only have the big one. And I didn’t draw anything.  But I did talk to people.  And I did notice stuff.

I noticed a cow walking down a steep flight of stairs, onto the street below.  I’ve never seen anything like it before!  I peered up the stairs, to see what the attraction was.  Nothing up there. When I asked her what she was doing, she totally ignored me.

I also noticed, when I took my mobile phone to the shop to have it looked at (it’s not working), that the man checked to see if my battery was full by ducking his head down and putting it in his mouth. The battery, not the phone.  I thought this was odd.

I bought scarves.  And I talked to the man in the shop where I bought scarves.  (I can’t find the link to the post, but me buying scarves is a big deal! I have a hard time buying anything for myself.) He showed me some nice wall hangings, but I didn’t buy any.

I talked to my pregnant friend when I bumped into her on the street. I noticed that her eyes are a very brilliant blue.

I talked to the jeep men about bringing the jeep to my house.  I asked them how far they could bring it, and they said, only to the upper road. I asked them to bring it down the steep sort of road and along the non road and up the stairs and over the definitely not a road, but they stared at the ground and muttered.  So I asked if they could just bring it down the steep sort of road, and they stared off into the air and muttered.  My problem in India, you see, is that I am far too polite.

I loitered all day, waiting for the rain to stop because we can’t move our stuff in the rain. The rain never did stop, but I talked to a few more people, including a couple of begging kids, a Tibetan tailor, and a man from Mumbai whose wife teaches a cooking class.

Finally (when the rain let me know it was not a day for me to move boxes) I went home and found my family.

So I didn’t get anything done, but I noticed some things and I talked to some people.  All in all, not a bad day.  And at the end of it, I wasn’t angry.

Epilogue

This morning the sky was a big bowl of glazed blue pottery, and our neighbor, who is moving his stuff as well, persuaded a taxi driver to come all the way to the definitely not a road.  Chinua and Cate loaded the boxes up, had them stitched in white cotton in the Indian way, and had them sent off at the post office by noon. I spent the morning drinking two tiny cups of coffee and cleaning, and that was that.

Oh dear me, am I ever in a funkedy funk funk.

An I-fed-my-baby-kidney-beans-and-he-didn’t-fall-asleep-until-4:30-in-the-morning funk.

An I’m-worried-about-money funk.

A look-at-the-big-stack-of-work-in-front-of-me-and-no-brains-left-to-do-it funk.

An I-miss-my-family-and-friends funk.

A NON STOP RAIN AND FOG funk.  The monsoon is romantic, is necessary, is green, but gets old with cabin-fevered kids and very little space.

Thank God for water colors.

Other things I’m thankful for include:

* food on our table

* the lush beauty all around me

* the many impromptu hugs that Kid A has been giving me

* Chinua playing the mandolin in my living room right now

* the prospect of sleep (maybe) tonight

* coffee and chocolate

* Tripta

* train rides, long walks, learning about space, movies, cuddles, a cat appearing in my house, drop-ins from friends, the cheesecake Cate recently discovered that actually tastes like cheesecake, muesli, chilies, and Jane Austen.

(Deep breath, dive into the day, don’t sulk in the corner, give more because there is always a spring welling up for you and you will not be empty.)

I thought there might be nothing better than a couple of photos to show that although Solo is recovering from amoebas, he is certainly all right.

Better than alright, even.  Thriving, crawling, wrestling alligators, trying to steal bread from my plate, learning how to use his teeth and not to use his teeth, smashing me in the face with his mouth when I ask for a kiss, drooling on all of us, making friends everywhere he goes.

Yelling “No!” Attempting escapes out the front door. Wriggling and shrieking if he catches sight of one of his siblings. Cuddling up in bed. Dancing.

And laughing.

I have my hands FULL for the next year.  (Because obviously, my life has been too boring up till now.)

Ugh.

It happens, I knew it did.  In fact, I expected it more than it’s happened.  We haven’t really been sick.  Everyone’s been growing and twitching and leaping from high objects to demonstrate their caped superhero abilities.  Everyone eats mangos and papayas with gusto, waits for the apples to be ripe patiently, starts fiddling with tape and paper and crayons practically before the day begins.

And then my littlest guy started having yucky poos, but more than yucky.   Yucky with (mucus) and (blood).

Scary!

I took him to the doctor a few days ago, and it was one of those experiences where the doctor barely listens to you, and you want to shake him and say, I could diagnose better than this!  But you don’t, because you didn’t go to medical school and he has the medicines.  He told me that the yucky poos were caused by his cough, a slight bronchial infection which wasn’t concerning me.  IT WAS NOT THE REASON I WENT TO THE DOCTOR.  He prescribed antibiotics for the cough. (Again, not the reason I brought Solo to the doctor.)

So, today, when the poos were still yucky and scary, I took him to the Tibetan Delek hospital (remember the place with the sample fiasco?) with a poo sample with me, and they:

1. listened

2. did lab work

3. diagnosed

Turns out my baby has amoebic dysentery.  Amoebic dysentery!!! My BABY.  (Wrings hands.) (Shakes head.) (Runs over to sleeping Solo’s bed to kiss him again.)

The only way I can even imagine that he got amoebas is from the bath water, which he’s been splashing rather enthusiastically lately.  They gave us the stuff to take care of it, and we left with Solo singing in my ear and flirting with the doctors over my shoulder.  He has been so active, so happy, so easy-going.  It’s crazy that he’s been sick with amoebas.  Most adults would have been staying in bed sure that they were dying.

Now I’m wondering about everyone else.  I think that in the next few days, I’m going to go down to the hospital with a whole lot of poo, from all the different members of my family.    Labeled, of course.  Amoebas can be asymptomatic, so it would be good to get us all checked out.

Stool samples for everyone!  Just me and my bags of poo and the rickshaw driver, vs. dirty rotten amoebas up in my family’s business.

Perhaps you are looking for something hair-raising.  If so, Chinua has the something served up, especially if you are looking for something concerning snakes and my children.

(But don’t get your hair raised too much… the snakes were harmless.  Although still… snakes.)

And speaking of animals, today the kids cornered me.

“We need to get a yak,” Kid A said, truly serious.

“A yak?”  I repeated, a little dumbfounded.  “What would we do with one?”

“We don’t have aaaannnnyyyy animals,” YaYa added, doing her wide eye thing and waving her face in front of mine, in case I wasn’t paying attention.

“We don’t have anything, not even a cow, or a buffalo,” said Kid A.

“We don’t have a GOAT, or a chicken, or a SNAKE.  Or a rabbit, or a cat, or a dog…”

“Or a sheep!”

We do have Solo, but I suppose that’s not enough.

(Photo by Chinua)

*

You know, my husband is a juggler.  He’s tried to teach me, but I just can’t keep everything in the air.

And that makes me wonder about my life, how I keep trying, and trying to keep it all suspended, hitting each of my palms at precisely the right moment.

1000 words… beans on to soak… time for math… Solo and the potty… burn the trash… painting… someone coming over for dinner… prayer in the morning… pick up dominoes… listen to the kids reading aloud… emails… phone calls… time to deworm…

A breeze comes.  It has been sunny for two days, and today I’m hoping for a great big storm, a rouser and a crasher, something that will sweep through and happily scare us.  Just a little thunder and lightning and a real downpour.

God knows we need it.

1. We are going on a little adventure tomorrow.  I’m ready for a way out of here for a few days.  It’s true that we live in India, (which is adventurous) but it’s also true that we rarely venture beyond walking distance, and if that, only to buy paper, go to the tailor, or get some cough drops.  (Though sometimes we drop in at the local Korean restaurant.)

Tomorrow our jeep will pick us up at the nearby road.  We will walk along the stony path, down the stairs, by the creekbed, and up the hill, and then off we go in the jeep to Manali.  I think the journey takes 7 hours, but I don’t think that’s calculated for children.

2. It was quiet, today, in the Stage Carriage, until Cate asked if I had heard that Michael Jackson died.  She was sitting in front of me, beside a Tibetan woman wearing the traditional chupa.  The Stage Carriage is a jeep for public transportation.  It has three bench seats, and doesn’t drive for anything less than four people per row.  It’s a cozy ride, to say the least.  (And it’s really called a Stage Carriage.)  For 10 rupees, you can hop in the Stage Carriage in McLeod Ganj and ride to Lower Dharamsala, where you can find a tailor to make you yet more children’s clothes which your children will grow out of in six months.

Anyways. Suddenly the jeep was alive with discussion.  The Tibetan woman beside Cate shook her head.  “It’s because he was trying to make himself whiter,” she said.  A Polish Buddhist nun in maroon robes was sitting next to me.  “His music was so so beautiful.  Did you like him?”

“I liked his music very much,” I said.  “But I think his story is very sad.  He got too famous, too young.”

“Yes,” the Polish Buddhist nun continued, “he gave all of himself away, and had nothing left for him.”

Cate was still talking with the Tibetan lady up front.  “Yes, he was very young, it’s very sad,” she said.

“Everyone, everywhere, is sad,” said the Tibetan lady.

“And did you ever see his dvds?  He was such a great dancer,” added the Buddhist nun.

And I shook my head.  Reminiscing about Michael Jackson in India in the Stage Carriage with these two ladies was almost too much for my grip on reality to handle.

I popped over to my friend Carrien’s blog to see if she had written about one special afternoon, many years ago, when we sat outside Michael Jackson’s gate on top of our van, singing worship songs with gusto. (She had.)  My best friend Dori had such a strong sympathy for him, and she desperately wanted to try to tell him that God loved him.  We weren’t allowed in, so the four of us sang with the rolling hills of Los Olivos swelling all around us. Dori also wrote him a letter.  I do hope it was delivered.

3. I should have known better.

Sometimes when your husband is away and you are tired and not getting a lot of sleep and you live somewhere far from where you have lived before, you might have a small crisis and cut your hair.

But the good news is, you only cut off the bottom half.  You emerge from the bathroom with a handful of dreadlocks that have been with you for almost seven years.  Your neck is much cooler, but you need it cleaned up, made the same length, so you head to the barber.

You should have known better.

What part of “I just want it tidied up” sounds like “Go ahead and shave it.”

I couldn’t really find a good after pic, probably because it only looks different from the very back.

I should have known better, but at least I can say I’ve been to an Indian barber.  And it’s SO much cooler.

(First 3 pics taken by Becca, and the last one was taken by Chinua)

Some of you may be wondering how my new set up with groceries and babysitting is working.

Groceries:  Awesome.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.  This morning I called down, and forty-five minutes later the groceries were delivered to my door.  I’m paying the coolie personally, and a little more than is normal, so the whole employment bit feels good too.

The only thing:  today I asked for two bhaingan (eggplant), and they heard two kilos. Eggplant is not particularly heavy, so now I have a fridge FULL of eggplant.  I batter fried slices of two of them tonight, and said to my sister… two down, only thirty-two to go.  I exaggerate.   But Kid A couldn’t get enough of the batter-fried bhaingan, so that’s a silver lining.  You gotta love a kid who loves eggplant.  (I was not one of them.)

(Of course, as I said to my husband on that fateful day nine years ago when we ate the cockroach in Bangkok, anything tastes good when it’s fried with garlic and salt.)

Babysitting:  Sometimes I want to pull my hair out.  My writing times tend to be full of so many interruptions that I am tempted to crawl under my bed and never come out at all.  There are water problems, a puppy runs into the house, Solo wakes up. Somebody needs me at the door and it turns out to be some weird masseuse guy with dirty bottles of oil.  “Why did you interrupt me for that?” I ask Ankit. “He said you called him here,” he replied.  Which is a strange business strategy for a masseuse: the outright lie.  Like I’d say, “Oh?  I called you here?  I guess I just forgot!  Okay!  Massage away with your dusty oils and strange tools!”

But there is something about employing someone so that I can write.  I’ve turned into a machine.  I WILL GET MY 1000 WORDS OUT TODAY OR DIE TRYING.  No matter how many interruptions, I’ve been managing.  It’s been good.

Tonight was another story, though.  I asked Ankit to come over at 8:00 so that I could go out with my sister for a little while. He came, and sat patiently while I tried for what seemed like forever to put Solo to bed.  This is how the evening went.

8:30- Finally Solo gets off to sleep. My back is breaking.  (Have I mentioned that this is a very heavy child?)

8:34- I am trying to play a dvd on my computer for Ankit.  I have the wrong hard drive.  Arggh.

8:36- YaYa is “itchy.”  She heard a bug.  Something was on her forehead and that makes her want to cry and cry and cry, because something was on her forehead.  She’s scared of her bed now.  She can’t sleep.

8:46- I’m lying in bed beside YaYa, stroking her face.  She’s still crying, clutching me every few minutes, saying, “I’m sooorrrry,” and “I can’t sleep.”  Finally I ask her if she wants to sleep in my bed.  I move her and it’s like magic; all her itches go away, and sleep comes quickly.

8:56- Success with the dvd for Ankit!

9:00- Finally out the door with Becca, I heave a huge frustrated sigh and refrain from throwing rocks.  Where should we go?  I’m so tired, Solo is teething and I haven’t been getting much sleep.  It seems too hard to walk down the mountain, so we decide to walk over to the closer village.  Maybe we can have a lassi or something.

9:20- “Becca,” I say, “this restaurant seems depressing to me.”  We hand the menus back and decide to walk back over to the restaurant near our house.  It’s familiar.

9:35- When we get back to the restaurant, I have to go to the bathroom.  When I get out I see Tripta (the restaurant is on her rooftop) and she laughs at me because my hair is up in a wrap.  She thinks it looks silly.

9:40- The phone rings.  I can hear Solo crying.  “I’ll be right there,” I say.

*

Well, we had a nice hike through the moonlight.  So, that’s how that’s going.  But I’m sure it’s the same for any parents of young children anywhere.  It’s funny, isn’t it?  I feel as though I can stretch so far, with my kids, but when they are up past their bedtimes, I’m like, wait, what?  I was with you all day!  I fed you and watered you and we read together and played!  Now that part’s done!  What’s going ON?

Stttreeeeetttch.  I will one day be the most flexible person ever to roam this earth.  Metaphorically speaking. (Rubs aching back)  Maybe I should get that masseuse back here.

We are sitting at an internet place, since our home internet once again is not working.  I’m looking at the photos that I posted of Solo, and Chinua looks over my shoulder and says, “Aww, cute.” 

I say, “Yeah, I only wish I had remembered to wash his face.”

And Chinua says, “As if you ever wash any of their faces.” (Not really joking.)

I say:  (!) (!!!)

There are no words.