Category — The YaYa Sister

Beat up art supplies in the morning with a bowl full of marigolds.

“Mama! Take a picture of me!”

Some sort of interesting archaeology by the YaYa sister.  A paintbrush and a rock.  Brush brush brush.  Knock the dust off.  Brush brush brush.

Enough bananas and onions for everyone.

The opening of a neighborhood dance studio.

Renee’s lentil soup for lunch.

New friends.

Leftovers for dinner.

YaYa: “Come here little gecko.  I’ll put a star sticker on you if you’re really good and you come to me!” (Assuming that the gecko is dying for a star sticker.)

The light here.

Her hands.

“Mama,” she calls from the next room where she is busily combing her My Little Pony’s hair. “What does a comb do, anyway?”

I laugh to myself as I pour my coffee. “It takes the knots out,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, and her voice sounds disappointed.  “I thought it made your hair longer.”

*

She is five years old and doesn’t know what a comb is for.  It’s all you can expect, really, from a little girl who has had dreadlocks since she was two. I combed and braided her hair until I had an operation to remove a tumor in my neck. Coming home from the hospital I couldn’t face the snarl that her hair had become during my recovery, and thus began the beautiful dreadlocks of the YaYa sister.

I didn’t teach her about the use of a comb because I figured it was obvious.  It wasn’t obvious, as it turns out.

We don’t make a big deal about dreadlocks, in our house.  Most of our family has them.  But we don’t have to make a big deal about YaYa’s dreadlocks, because practically everyone else does.

*

We are walking down the hill into Baghsu, and YaYa suddenly says, “I want you to be the beautiful one, the most beautiful one in the world!  I don’t want to be beautiful.”

I attempt to digest this. “Why?” I ask.

“Because then no one would talk to me and tell me I’m beautiful. Even when they don’t say anything, I can tell that they are talking to each other about me.”

The extraordinary thing about this conversation is that YaYa is so completely outside of herself most of the time that I had no idea she even noticed the people pointing at her, talking about her.  I knew she dodged many of the reaching fingers aimed at her hair, and declined an answer when people oohed and aahed over her. But she spends most of her time drawing, or running, or climbing, or falling down, or coaxing snails along to places that are safe from our snail-smashing neighbor, or making snakes out of plasticine and curling them up in their nice soft beds. (”Look, Mama!” she said, the other day. “This one is a teenager snake and it’s bigger than it’s Mama!”) She also loves to crack eggs, peel garlic, and make her bed.  She is the originator of most of the pretend games that are played around here, and if she uses the word beautiful, it’s usually to describe a dress or a butterfly.

“Oh YaYa,” I said.  “You shouldn’t wish to be different than you are.  The most important things are being kind and polite, anyways.” I was being sage.  And I know there are many other important things, but I was mainly talking about when she’s out in the world, where people point and stare.

“I know, Mama,” she said.  Not really exasperated, but ten steps ahead of me.  “But I can be those things and not be beautiful. I just wish you were the one.”

Thinking about it, as we walked along, hand in hand, I realized that she wasn’t really talking about beauty.  Those are just the words people have used when they’ve pointed her out. And believe me, there are many, many beautiful little girls in the villages of India.  As much as I think YaYa’s a stunner, I know that she’s a rose in a rose garden.

She was talking about attention, about being different.  She would like to shift it to me, someone bigger and stronger in her life.

This is one thing I can’t do for her, though.  I can’t shift attention from her to me.  She will always be different, no matter where we live.  And it’s good for her to be among the people of India, so kind to children.  She is not teased for being different.  But she will have to learn how to bear attention, to take on its weight and then smile and shrug it off.

It was a small moment, this little conversation of ours, and the monkeys on the road soon drove it out of our heads, but it showed me that she is paying attention, and that she notices.  I can’t take the strain of being noticed away from my daughter, but she is always welcome to turn and meet my eyes when it is becoming a bit much. We can make a quick exit, the two of us, and go and rescue some snails.

Chinua took the kids out this afternoon for a rousing game of backgammon, so that I could write. Of course, he can keep the kids here while I write, but he probably had a bit of cabin fever.  You have to have cabin fever, to want to take Solo to a nearby café while you attempt to play backgammon.  Solo’s presence is not conducive to the playing of backgammon.  Or any other board game or card game for that matter. Which is why the kids are always asking me to do something about his habit of crawling over the chess board or eating the jack of hearts.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask them.  I’m helpless. “Play your games on the table,” I say. I mean, I tell him not to eat the cards, but he turns a deaf ear.

But I am chipping away, over here, just chipping away.  And you’ll hear all about it. I finished Chapter Nine today.

Googled:

popular songs in 1937

history of sign language

humboldt county established

nubian goat milk

*

That’s a bit of a spoiler.  Let’s just say the book is not about India.  Okay, I totally need to go cook dinner now.

Last night for dinner we had:

Paneer Butter Masala

Zucchini and Carrot Subzhi

Rice

Chapatti

and Cate’s wonderful sprout salad (with sprouts, tomatoes, olive oil, paneer, honey, and lemon)

It was delicious.

Tonight?  What can I rustle up?

The gang just got home.  Time to cook for sure.  Here’s a photo of YaYa with her babies. In the makeshift baby wrap that I tied for her.

She asked me to wrap a scarf around her hair, so that she could look more like “a mama.” It always surprises me that to her, a mama looks like me.

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.

YaYa: Leafy I just love you so much, and I hold you so tight like this because I want to protect you! From life! From falling! From yourself!

Leafy: YaYa, I know you do, but sometimes your holding me like that makes me CRAZY.

YaYa: Oh honey, it’s for your own good.

Leafy: AAAHGHGHGHGH!!! Ack. Cough. Arg.

YaYa: Yes, but did you know that if you put your fingers at the sides of your mouth and pull, it looks really silly?

Leafy: Yes I did, you’ve told me a thousand times.

YaYa: Well, let’s!

Leafy: Well, okay, it is REALLY SILLY, after all! And you know I’m all about silly!

Let us now take heed from Leafy and Yaya’s example.

(Thanks everyone as always, for your kindness and affirmation, and thanks, Kay for bravely explaining about your intent. We disagree, but it is plain that you are a friend.)

I just wanted to follow up to the last post (which I needed to write, to be able to write the story and have it down, leave it behind, and take up what is in front of me) with some great news.

We are all okay!  Kid A is doing remarkably well.  He’s annoyed, as well he might be, by a big white heavy arm, but he’s playing cricket in the yard with his left arm, so I’d say he’s doing okay. 

I still don’t have a computer at home.  It’s frustrating and a mini-unplugged blessing all at once.  (What is a mini-unplugged blessing?  Why did I hyphenate that?  Does anyone know?)

We have lots of new neighbors in this international neighborhood.  Our next-door neighbors are Russian, kitty-corner (should that be hyphenated?  Does anyone know?  Am I just a random hyphen-ator?) are two Israeli women, across the way is an Irish-French couple, and down the street are some more French friends and some British friends.  We are getting to know everyone, and it is fun and challenging, all at once. 

YaYa is a great lover of all animals and insects and reptiles and amphibians.  Her love for them is so strong that I sometimes fear for her.  “I draw the line at spiders,” I told her once, as she ran up to me to show me the jumping spider that she was playing with. 

The other day she said to me, “It’s like the mosquito was telling me a secret.  He got all close to my ear and said mmmmmmmm.” 

The curiously horrifying whine of a mosquito, in my daughter’s world, is cuddly and cozy and kind.  If that’s not beautiful, what is?

Yesterday you asked one of the sweetest questions I’ve ever heard.

“Where did we start?” you asked, and then furrowed your brow and thought a little.

“Where were you when Kid A came out?”

Where did we start? Such a rich question. We talked for a long time about how Kid A was born in a little town far north in California, and how you were born when we lived with lots of people in San Francisco, and how Leafy was born when we lived at the Land.

You love to talk about this.

I’m writing this letter just because that question struck my heart, and because of what shone through you today.

I had to go on some lame bank errand which involved going from bank to bank searching for the right services. You wanted to come with me, even though it was raining. It’s not raining very MUCH, you told me, putting your raincoat on. Even the fact that we were going by scooter did not deter you.

And I think I’ve never been happier. Riding along in the rain with my girl child on the scooter, both of us getting soaked, you turned to look up at me and grinned, not at all perturbed by the rain. You kept me company in each bank, you were polite to all the people who wanted to talk to you, and you kissed me a few hundred times, just to remind me that you were there, that you love me.

I see a lot of me in you. You are always searching for beauty, and when you point small things out to me I see the way that my eyes are often scanning the hillsides, looking for those elusive wildflowers. You find beauty everywhere. You love the gaudy tinselly things hanging from the ceilings of most of the places of business here. “OH, I LOVE that pink one,” you sigh, eyes locked on a burped up metallic explosion dangling from a ceiling tile.

When we walk outside, stepping around a few strewn pieces of trash and over some steel rebar lying in the road, you look up. “Flowers!” you call, exhaling happily and pointing at some wilting garland looped over the doorway.

Later, when we’re home, you collapse in tears over the prospect of walking on the floor in the bathroom, damp from someone taking a shower. (The bathrooms here have an open space for showers, no separation.)

I think of you happily looking up at me, your face covered in rain, and think that I will never fully understand you. I don’t think I have to. I’m so glad to be riding around with a small girl on my bike, I’m bursting with pride over you. I’m glad that this little clan started somewhere, in a small town in the far North of California, not so long ago.

I love you.

Your Mama.

She was gently moving her “friends”, some ants, from one spot to another with a clothespin.  Good times.

Sometimes you just have to.

I’m a tough mom. In my family, once you’re able to hold a spoon in your chubby tiny fist, you’d better be feeding yourself, or you’ll go hungry.

Well, it’s not that bad. But my kids generally did feed themselves. That is, until we met up against the formidable obstacle of the grandparents. Otherwise known as the ones who would like to halt the development of my children.

Or so I thought. Because I’m tough like that.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve come back from the bathroom, during dinner at my parents’ house, to find my dad guiltily jumping violently enough to spill four glasses of water, holding a spoon next to some child’s mouth. Some child who should be feeding herself. Sometimes he would go so far as to post my mother as a lookout. “She’s coming!” I’d hear, as I walked down the hallway as quietly as I could.
I was gracious about it, of course. “It’s fine to feed the kids,” I’d say, “as long as you don’t mind making my life about a thousand times harder.” Notice how well I share the raising of my children. All about the village I am. As long as everyone does things my way.

Anyways, now we are here, and we are here with Jaya, who, though she rarely gets involved with kid stuff, informs me that my kids are too small to eat by themselves.

And I am giving in. Perhaps I am just too pregnant and tired. But the end of every dinnertime sees Jaya coming back to the table to feed YaYa the food that she hasn’t finished. I mean, the girl is practically a teenager. She’s four, right? So she’s only nine years away.

I think, though, that the reason I’m giving in is because I love it that YaYa doesn’t even protest. Even when my parents would feed her, she wasn’t silent like this, accepting bite after bite gallantly, gulping water in between when it’s spicy. I know a good thing when I see it. About 25% of the time.

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.