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.

(A friend emailed me today, encouraging me to take all the goodness and kindness from family and friends as treasures into my heart, storing them well.  I thought that phrase, storing them well, is so exactly representative of what I have been doing.  Storing up rest, and ease, and peace. The kids are storing up on pet love.  It’s a far cry from the beach dogs of Goa.)

YaYa, getting her horse ready for riding.  She’s an industrious little brusher. Charlie is an elderly horse, very gentle, very slow.  Good for kids. Sadly, he’s getting to the end of his life.

Tj readjusting YaYa’s helmet.That’s Johanna, in the background.  She’s Tj and Mark’s lovely new daughter-in-law.  She and Eric live here on the ranch, in a cabin a few miles away, and she and Tj have been wonderful about giving the kids riding lessons.

At first, Johanna led Charlie.

Then Tj gave YaYa a riding lesson in the arena.  She’s concentrating pretty hard.

Oh, just look at her!

So cute.  I just want to squeeze her.  She rode back to the barn on her own. (With us close by.)

Kid A also did some riding, and got his own lesson. He looks handsome on his horse.

And Leafy! Leafy turned into a warrior. Charlie was led around the yard with the warrior on his back.

We’ve also been working on schoolwork while sitting in the sun.  We need to take every opportunity to get the last books read from last year’s curriculum, because the new one is coming soon.  But the kids are definitely getting a well-rounded education.

I’ve also been making necklaces, which I’ll be putting up on Etsy. I was looking for some jewelry to sell, when I was in Bangkok, something to help with the cost of traveling, and I realized that I wasn’t crazy about anything that I was seeing.  I was crazy about the stones and beads I saw, however.

So I’ve been making some stuff.

I miss India, also. There is always a feeling of immense blessing and happiness over being here, and just underneath, a thread of longing for my little house in the village, for lunchtime on the roof. For crowds and dusty hot days and severe, staring faces. But here we have grass and mild breezes and animals to love. Friends and dinnertime around the table. So the longing is just that little thread, put away until it will be time to go back. It is the traveler’s curse, I think. The little thread of longing that weaves through everything.

“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.

“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.

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.)

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.