Catharsis, confession and closure.

You know those ten ton anxiety bombs that fall whistling out of nowhere and level you emotionally? Good for you, if the answer is 'No, you loser!'.

I'm cleaning up the debris from more than a few such recent collisions.  Even as I make some progress towards avoiding them entirely.

I finally decided to write about this.
For catharsis, confession and closure.
To exorcise at least these particular demons and if only because the stress is giving me acidity. That in turn is doing a number on my gastronomic indulgences. And I do so so like to eat.

Here's a sparkling description of the visceral feel of anxiety from my freind Shreya:

             And though it's just an infinitesimal blot in the big picture of our lives, while it's happening, it feels like a free-fall into forever.

 

A 'free-fall into forever'.

Way to nail that feeling of being sucked inside-out: of having anxiety cramp up your muscles and squeeze the air out of your shocked lungs.

Shreya blogged this to qualify her insufficient angst over turning 40 but it applies pretty seamlessly to the many trivial freak-outs that embarass me once I recover from my tailspin and regain perspective.
So here are some utterly senseless yet stomach churning over-reactions from my recent past. The confessions are designed to embarass me even to myself in a half-baked attempt at preventative medicine:

Number inversion:
My 6 year old snuck in an unconsciously mirrored '9', '5' and '3' on a sheet of otherwise perfectly written numbers. For the Nth time.
             My resolve to let him remain pressure-free, account for age'n'stage (this kind of inversion is common in this age group) and not over-think things moved over for a few shorts minutes of panicked doubt over whether his day-dreaming isn't actually an undiagnosed  learning disability. I know it is'nt (and it would'nt be a big deal if it was). Common sense returned fairly quickly. But no more of these silly scares, thank you. There're already enough causes for real fear.

Mis-attribution of the spousal kind:
The husband posted a link to a song full of bitterness towards women on a common freind's FB thread about International Women's day (and don't even get me started on that load of crock).
             My heart hammered out, in accelerating rhythm, that his diatribe-by-proxy was directed solely at me instead of being the lighthearted exchange of meaningless banter that it really was. It took a couple of hours of feeling stung before this sheepish realization dawned (and I've had it more often than I'd like to admit lately): it isn't ALWAYS about me.
I need to hold onto that one. It's not as much a disappointment as it is a liberation...from bearing responsibility for other peoples' emotions. Especially when they did'nt even ask me to.

Over-critical critique
I think I may have over-harshly critiqued the writing of two freinds whom I admire as writers, in my writing  group. Part of the mandate of the group is to work on writing style so it was not completely out of line but perhaps I let myself go a bit too much with these two gals.
              One clammed up, giving me devastatingly guilty pause to consider if I'd broken her spirit when she had articulated and shared her thoughts with such brave conviction and trust. The other fought back articulately and convincingly from the corner I'd backed her into, making me feel like a heel for putting her there when she is so many miles more talented than I'd ever hope to be. The Fighter assured me she bended but didn't break and that my crtique was as constructive as it was harsh. The Quiet One has me still looking for the self-flagellating penance equipment I'd recently retired. She has lately been palling around with me on FB so I'm hopeful for a reprieve there too. I hold her dear.
But again, this sobering and liberating realization: I do not have the power I think I do over others.
I will rarely, if ever, make or break them with my words or thoughts.

Squeamish about romance
An honest discussion with a freind who is in emotional flux, over what he desires in his relationships by way of 'romance' birthed doubts about what 'romance', if any, there was in mine. Even more bone-chilling, the realization that I had given up on it as had hubby (who was also part of said discussion).
             Another squeeze of my heart and the cold chill of sudden certainty that the marriage was dead in the water. Followed by a brief exchange with hubby that helped the sun start to break through. Turns out that though neither of us have any of the popularly defined visions of  'romance' within our sight or memory, we've fair dollops of what makes us happy in our own closely matched definitions. The occasional 'good' conversation, exchanging hidden smiles over the antics of our whimsical progeny, sharing evanescent pleasures like the play of light'n'shade in a photograph and debating the alchemy of our favorite show that so deftly weaves cheesy drama with a rare idealism. On reflection, there have been overtly romantic moments too, though we did'nt waste time savoring the implict romanticism at the time and engaged in the moment instead. The postcard image that comes to mind is the worldess wonder of driving down a swooping, looping road in the Cape Breton hills of Nova Scotia last summer to suddenly come upon a snug little fishing cove, silvery in the sunshine. Or a giggling, stumbling moonlight walk in the forest on a camping trip after downing a half bottle of scotch, me trying to attribute 'the moon was a ghostly galleon in the sky' (while not falling down) to Hawthorne while he remembers it was really Tennyson even as he narrowly misses walking into a towering spruce. What's romance after all, if it isn't bumbling drunkenly around while spouting dubious poetry together and sharing a bottle of Gatorade the next morning for the hangover?

Cathartic rant over.

My position as the champ of over-thinking and senseless-worrying is undefeated and secure.
But I will have some hope, I think, as long as I let these things into the light of the day and free up my over-crowded mind for other, better thoughts.

No?

Oyon-isms (6 yrs):
Upon finding a nasty little scrape on his knee at shower time....
Me: When did you get this?
Oyon: During gym class, I think.
Me: It's kind of deep. Didn't it hurt?
Oyon: It did but I disturbed myself and it felt better.
Me: Huh?
Oyon: you know, I kept playing so my brain would not think about the pain.
Me: I see. I distract my brain too sometimes when i'm in pain. Would you like some ointment on that?
Oyon: That would be fine, thanks.

Of new moms and knuckle-dusters

I never intended to write a mommy blog but admit that the little ‘Oyon-isms' footer to every post screams that I missed by a mile. So I might as well jump in.  Here's something from my friend PSaw, a raw and honest opinion about what it really meant to be a new mother.

Am I normal? 
 
The fact of the matter is I hated being pregnant. Not being a morning person to begin with, I detested the fact that an already unpleasant part of my day was made unbearable by that nauseous acidic feeling in the pit of my stomach. Having struggled with my weight all my life, I hated getting even bigger. 
 
Have you ever wanted to punch those women in the face? … you know the ones who croon over their babies like they are perfect plastic dolls instead of a screaming mess of poop and puke.  And the ones that get that glassy eyed melodramatic look … ‘Oh I miss being pregnant! ….it was just so beautiful!’ 
 
Let’s set the record straight. It was uncomfortable, awkward and somewhat embarrassing.  One part of me thought that it was a ‘cool science fact’ that I could actually grow a whole human being inside myself and the same scientist in me was weirded out by the fact that I carried around a parasitic human for 8 months.  And let’s agree on one thing - nobody ever felt sexy when they’re the size of a house with the possible exception of Honey Boo-Boo’s mom. Of course, no one wants to **** her anyways.
 
Am I a normal mom?
 
So the big day arrived. Four weeks earlier than planned. He arrived with a little bit of a hullabaloo. My mommy wasn’t here. The nursery still had paint fumes in it. The crib and car seat were still in a box. And I had to be cut open to get him out. And then he added insult to injury with a big irritated hungry cry – ‘I am not going to suck on your big engorged boob. Sorry ‘eh mom?’ … but it’s not my type!’ So I took my stapled abdominals, my snubbed boobs, a hospital sack full of soy formula, and my Percocet-fuelled 3-eyed, long-armed zombie companions and came home to my 12-weeks of sanctioned maternity leave.
 
Have you ever wanted to punch those women in the face? … you know the ones who cry at the thought of leaving their babies for an hour or at the thought of returning to full time employment? Who cry at the thought of leaving their kid with the baby sitter? There were only so many ‘evil’ Sudoku puzzles I could solve before I called my boss and asked if I could come back to work, two weeks earlier than scheduled.  I researched and screened and interviewed a number of in-home baby sitters and day-care providers. And when I finally found the one – I was relieved to leave my son in her care before running to my 9 hours of normal working adult no-puke no-poop discussions. Three years on and not much has changed. I still need to get away and I still need respite. 
 
I admire, I truly do, women, who like my mom, stayed home and raised me... wasn’t I supposed to pay-it-forward? Am I not a normal mom? 
 
Am I not normal?

I love PSaw’s honesty and relate to much of her experience. I don't usually (note the qualifier please) share her urge for facial violence when faced with ecstatic new mothers though they did do a number on me in my first few weeks.

Already squirming at not being deluged by a gush of Mother love while grappling with my puling infant, those beaming Madonna’s tended to get my goat. Honestly, I felt little more than mild curiosity and intense anxiety for the new little man-child in our midst. Then I got myself even more confused that I didn’t feel any compunction about my lack of emotional high. Partly it was that my bandwidth was blown by recovering from childbirth and the critical learning curve the results brought. But I suppose I also had just enough faith in my capacity for love to know I'd come through for my ‘lil guy even if I wasn't staying up all night to adoringly watch him sleep in the early days. Well, I actually WAS given those relentless infant feeding cycles, but not from choice and not happily.

I didn’t want to deck the glowing new-Moms because I felt I got them most of the time and saw through them too occasionally. I decided that some of them were truly joyous about the experience and it was just a matter of taste: my inability to coo adoringly over a diaper blowout was probably matched by their inability or appreciate Marmite on toast. Different folks, different strokes. Others, I think, were playing a part unbeknownst to even themselves.

The fact is, a baby sometimes fills a void. Many of us plod along in our pre-set lives chasing degrees, careers, travel, half-hearted hobbies etc. until parenthood comes along to inject a sort of passion we've never felt before. I could be wrong but I think these are the folks who show the zeal of the new convert and make PSaw reach for her knuckle-dusters. I don't think they are posers or mean to condescend to the moms who're less gushy. Some have aspired to mom-hood all their lives and/or have maybe worked extra hard and long to get there. Their emotional highs seem fitting: well earned, deserved and easier to understand. Others see their lactating phase as some sort of biological validation that inspires, amazes and fulfills. I can understand this intellectually, even if I can't feel it emotionally. But these are the beaming Madonna’s who came by their haloes rightfully, in my eyes.

Just as many of us though, had a world outside of momhood and career - pre-baby - that we cherished and cultivated. There were  hobbies, friends, creative pursuits etc. I think these people split apart with a louder tearing sound. A part breaks off into a 'mom' shape but it has ragged edges and does not drift far from the rest of our persona. As our children become a more fixed part of our existence, that we can nurture and enjoy without the role being all consuming, the 'new love' wears off and is replaced by the quieter, stronger kind. I'm sure it's a Darwinian effect that moms are over-hormoned and somewhat obsessed in the early months when babies depend mostly on their mothers for survival. But it's also evolution that modern moms feel less anxiety and think more with the left side of their brain given the support they have. When you don’t have to worry so much about where the mammoth steak for dinner is going to come from or whether the velociraptor might sneak your baby away at night from your doorless cave, your mind has more space for other things. These are the people like PSaw, who love their children but equally love their lives outside of Mom-hood.

And here's my secret and rather incendiary theory about some of the Glowing Mothers amidst us: I think some of their euphoria is a subtle little piece of self-delusion. An unconscious coping mechanism for this overwhelming role of a lifetime. They convince themselves they LOVE their experience even though they do not (at least not all of it), because the alternate explanation scares them. There's little space for contradictory emotions in our judgmental societies, or even for degrees of belief. No one tells an expecting mom that you may not immediately love your child, will probably hate much of the first few taxing months but it will turn out just fine anyway. That would be too crushing and possibly a difficult admission to make for many women who are secretly distraught at their own mixed feelings about new-motherhood.

I think it’s partly due to the 'Supermom' ideal too. We expect to be stimulated by and excel in our careers while we achieve some sort of completion through motherhood. If we're not feeling gushy about our infants or fulfilled by our boobs-on-tap avatar we feel like bad mothers because of all we have absorbed about the 'natural mothering instinct'. On the other hand, if we don’t love rushing back to work (like we thought we would) because we inexplicably left our hearts at home in the crib, we doubt how independent or strong a woman we really are. Same for the stay-at-home-mom vs working-mom debate: you're taking the 'easy way out' in someone's eyes somewhere regardless of which cap you wear.

And what utter crap all this is.

The truth is that we can feel less than head-over-heels with our squirmy little babes and still love them to death when we're better acquainted with them and less physically over-worked. We talk of severe illness as 'trauma' but hesitate to label childbirth as such because of the negative connotations. If you ask me, it is a kind of trauma. One with a very precious outcome but it's overwhelming nonetheless. For most of us I think it's a difficult, difficult transition when we welcome a child into our lives and kicking sand over the grotty, ugly bits does no-one a service. I'm certain that most people feel like PSaw at some point or the other: drawn to the baby and wreathed in inexplicable smiles while feeling put-out at the overwhelming physical strain and mental dullness.

And I think we get confused by this contradiction of emotions.

How can we feel put-out by our little miracles? What does that SAY about us?

So sometimes we unconsciously amplify and glorify the beauty of it all to Just. Get. Through. The. Day. Because in our heads, all this pain, anxiety and tedium has got to be worth something......something worth giving up the job, abandoning sleep and good-health and shutting down a major part of the brain. Since that misty-eyed, redeeming moment of watching him graduate Summa cum Laude in crimson cap-n-gown is kinda far away, we seek and find it it in the more accessible (and realistic) joys. Like smiles and coos, impossibly delicate fingers curled up into tiny fists and those soft, whimpering sleep sounds. Alright, all that really is pretty adorable, regardless of your jaded-ness, but you get my drift. We can be emotionally moved and feel deeply satiated at the sight of our fragile infant even while part of our brain flops around in boredom. But what a confusing cocktail of emotions!

I won't even start on the unfair bias towards the‘Maternal Instinct’ that leaves fathers in the proverbial dust. I think it’s unfair and tragic that the many, many fathers with instincts to rival or beat the mothers’, receive no acknowledgement r respect. My son’s dad was as instrumental in deciphering infant cries and solving feeding dilemmas as he is now in teaching endurance and toughness, which is still the stereotypical realm of Paternal duty. Our baby would calm down as quickly in his dad’s hairy arms and on his hard chest as he would with me. No matter how much we ‘modern’ women like to boast about the equal parenting rhythms we have struck, we seem to pull back from that final acknowledgement that our husbands might have an instinct that is on par with ours even without the parturition credentials.

My point (if there even is one) is that it takes all kinds and every method of parenting is the right one so long as it grows happy, cherished children.

So everyone - take off your halos and put down those knuckle-dusters.

Its all good.

Oyon-ism

On replying to a question after claiming to not know the answer the first time he was asked:

Me: How come you didn't tell me this when I asked before?

Oyon: Because it just made it's way to my brain

Me: Oh? Where was it before?

Oyon: I'm not really sure. But it wasn't in my brain. It just got there.

'Slip sliding away'

My car danced to a Paul Simon tune in this morning's snow storm. It started 'slip sliding away' as I took a left turn.

The graceful spin swung me into oncoming traffic in the next lane. Uneventfully. The creeping cars had halted in time and left just enough space for my skid to achieve completion. Since the only thing to do in a skid is ride it out, i was as much a spectator as they. A few seconds worth of Eternity. In the short pause that followed after I'd finally stopped skidding, I looked at the cars frozen still around me. Through the snow filled air, I thought I glimpsed a bobble hatted head peering at me from the nearest car.

From concern, I decided, and gave them a reassuring little wave. Just in case.

Behind me the three MBTA buses, that moments ago had honked in symphony to speed up the left turn that I was gingerly taking, seemed silenced by contrition. They waited patiently as I straightened out and gently guided my wonderfully snow worthy Subaru back into it's rightful lane.

Finally parked at the sparsely populated train station (folks must be taking a snow day off from work, rightfully), I flicked up the windshield wipers in preparation for the additional foot of snow we would receive by the time I headed back home. Then I settled in for my short wait until the train arrived.  The cell phone showed missed calls from my husband. From 90 deg F Kolkata where he was attending to family matters. He had worriedly been planning and orchestrating our snow removal and safety in his absence.

When I returned his call the background noise was cacophonous. The usual honking, hollering and car/bus noises that their Kolkata flat is immersed in. Inside my car, enveloped in that preternatural hush that only thickly falling snow brings, it was surprisingly reassuring to know that we could have such diversity and still keep spinning on our axis.

I reassured him that we had easily dug out of the 4-6 inches that fell overnight (Oyon being worth his weight in gold for the way he cleaned off my car windows!). He reassured me that the 50 degree forecast for the weekend pre-empts any real concern: residuals would melt.

I found I didn't want to tell him about the skid right then. Not the least because the commonplace nature of it made it unremarkable. Also because I didn't want him to worry any more. I wish I could have told him though how calming it felt to be able to handle that skid. How it might have turned out much more unpleasantly if I had not heard his voice from 16 yrs ago advising me to shelf instinct, stay off the brakes and steer into the skid.

I deal with most icy-road missteps in my stride, like most people in this area, and seldom even remember that I've had them by days end. But today felt different.

Maybe it was because Oyon had ended up wailing in the car as we finally set out for school. His boots and gloves had gotten wet and he was freezing. Perhaps it was because my head ached so badly from exposure and remnants of Chicken Pox that I had yelled at him to just deal with it and quit crying. He had wailed even louder then shouted 'But I HAVE to cry. I'm so cold it hurts. This is the worst day ever!' . I snapped out of it just enough to go back in the house to fetch him dry socks and a blanket for the frigid car interior. I also doled out an apology and a hug. Not his fault my head hurt.

I guess I'd been skidding off track since 6 am when I woke up with that achy head. Recovering from the car skid was the easiest of them all. And I felt grateful for the person who hovered protectively in my life, even from thousands of miles away and 16 years ago.

Oyon-ism
Oyon: Did you watch 'woody woodpecker' when you were little too?
Me: Yes.
Oyon: I thought so. The show looks very, very old.
 

A pox on Chicken Pox!

Ever grabbed a bottle of Laxative pills when reaching for the headache meds? No? Me neither. But these little slips will happen. Hopefully with little more consequence than embarassment. Like here - Yash's adventure (over at Y on earth not) as her hubby tried to get the Flu vaccine and....well, read it for yourself. Fact-truer-fiction...you know the drill.

It reminded me of our own latest brush with bewildering medical advice.

Leading in solitude

Blog surfing is a great way to get arond the world and other peoples' heads.
It brought me across Revathi, who is lately on a quest to Keep calm and finish what you've started. Timely and sound advice, well written. Her quest warrants a post unto itself but she recommended this article in 'The American Scholar'  and it got me thinking.

The article is admittedly a dry read initially. Perhaps because it's really a commencement speech at West Point military academy. It also drones rather relentlessly through the first half about the sorry state of American leadership as of 2009 before winding it's way to an interesting thesis: to be a successful leader (and original thinker), you must be able to spend time alone with your thoughts. That solitude breeds leadership despite all conventional wisdom - which claims that to be a successful professional you need to know how to work with and around people. Arguably those skills cannot grow while you are navel gazing in a remote cabin in the woods.

Not much to argue with in his exacting logic. It's a familiar concept to at least the Indian mind in which the idea of ascetics and sanyasis mining wisdom from their solitude is firmly entrenched through centuries worth of traditions (and dare I say, fables?). It's a novel thought in our current age though, where the best minds are born from academics, research and industry, maintain high profiles and lay claim to their thrones through publishing, lecturing and being 'involved' in every way. Quite the opposite of 'solitary'.

Then I came to an interesting part about the information deluge we are all subject to. While this is not exactly breaking news, it is well articulated. An excerpt on why reading books can enhance original thinking more than cyber-information:

“Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality. Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.

So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today"

 
Here's my question and confusion about this otherwise convincing piece:  if you skip 'marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom' how do you know that your opinion is well informed and really unique? Blinkered thinking seems more fraught with the perils of missing other point-of-views than generating truly unique thoughts. Even the most concentrated effort at creating original thoughts in solitude cannot possibly account for the fact that the thinking is still done by one individual. One individual with their own biases, pre-dispositions and limited capacity for thought. If you do not listen to 'other peoples' thoughts', doesn't that trap you in an unreal world consisting of only you? How can any of your original  thoughts that originate in that very personal and limited world, retain any applicability for the rest of us?

I'm not denying the very real risk of self-delusion when you internalize the aforementioned 'cacophony' of opinions. I think there is a sound (if rather obvious) point there. I see so many people (self included) slipping into the insidious self-delusion of thinking ourselves unique after having adopting conventional wisdom and convincing ourself through unconscious, spin that it's un-conventional. Often it's only after I've opined confidently (and repeatedly) that I recognize that my paradigm-shifting epiphany is really just a very slight variation of one or more opinons I've absorbed.  Either those opinions have appealed to me and aligned with my inclinations or they turned my opinions on their head with enough conviction to make a zealous convert out of me. I have for instance, known more than one New Yorker who is a self-identified intellectual but channels an identifiable amalgam of opinions and reviews from 'The Village Voice' (an alternative newspaper representing the edgy side of the city) and the NYT. There was no malicious intent or intended hypocrisy: my fondness for some of these folks actually demystified how easily such self-delusion creeps even into an alert and self-aware mind.

Besides, the cynic in me is mumbling that there probably is no truly unique thought in the world. It's a fair guess that in the history of our civilization, every thought has already been thunk by someone. Not knowing of it is not the same as it not existing.

I'm just saying.

So like with everything, I suppose the ideal lies in between the two extremes. Aside: I wanted to name this blog 'Shades of grey' to reflect my fond prescription for equilibrium but that name was already taken. Now I bless my stars (and send out sympathy vibes) that I'm not getting hits from frustrated women looking for badly written sensual thrills. Aside over.

My take-away is that too much reading and getting 'informed' about other opinions can un-moor you just as easily as too little can anchor you to your unreal world of one.

I think I knew this already.
But it's nice to have it articulated by someone with a tad more credibility.
Because after all, if I'm stuck in my solitude with only my own thoughts, how do I know they're not just figments?
 
Oyon-isms (6):
Before bed time, Wednesday night:
When I grow up I want to invent a machine that lets people walk inside hot lava without melting.
Before bed time, Thursday night:
When I grow up, after I make the Lava Machine, I'm going to build an instrument that listens to what animals say and then tells it in people language. It will be called the 'Listener'.
Minutes after waking, Friday morning:
Mummum, how many days until I grow up?

"He’s a strange bird, but I know him."

This morning my friend Shreya was befuddled by a reluctant toaster. Or perhaps her 4 year old insisted on wearing shorts to school in winter (as 4 year olds often do). Whatever it was that unfolded in the house of the harried mom in the early hours, it made her take to FB and declare

“Nothing that's meant to happen is happening! So I'm asking The World, can it explain itself??."

From the warm recesses of my comforter, where I’d only opened one eye to meet 6:45 am, my arm snaked out to snag the iPhone charging on my nightstand. Ostensibly to check if I had time for another 40 winks but really to check in on FB (yes, I’m a junkie). Shreya’s angst was from 5 hours ago, the time difference between us. But I still felt the motivation to tap this out (mainly to yank her chain  even on a dated event but also to speak up for our already beleaguered planet):

The world was spinning gently when it looked closer at it's people
chanting on their prayer mats, chanting under steeple.
Then judging mats and steeples while intoning a sombre 'om',
Unspeakable acts of hatred that I won't put in this pome.
Killing and greed supposedly for the furthering of our Race,
That seems better gone when you see this side of its cruel and brutal face.

Eons of growth and changes in the original primordial mass
Just has to mean a little more than human chaos en-masse.

The world kept spinning on as to it's people it then asked,
"nothings working the way it's meant to: Explain YOURSELF…and fast."

In a separate but not entirely unconnected incident (bear with me!), last night my husband saw this on the public library bulletin board:

Amidst the ‘WTF?!’ vein of responses it elicited from his FB friends, were his own 2 cents:

the point is not to pick up new friends, but to not remain strangers. In fact, it does not prohibit you from not staying strange ! People can look at me, say "he's a strange bird, but I know him".

The mystery of our (16 year long) union was a wee bit lessened when I realized that this ad was part of the same ‘Hi’ campaign I blogged so giddily about recently. Hubby’s take is a lot more restrained but none the less potent for it. To me at least.

In between the incomparable yet nonetheless valid tragedies of soft toast and senseless slaughter lies the essential truth: shit happens and in oh-so many ways.

- The world neither explains nor rights itself, no matter how politely you ask.
- You never know which way your bread will land: buttered side down feels like your default until you meet someone without any bread (so to speak).

But imagine that you’re plodding along trying to taking stock of all that is right so you can get through all the 'wrong'. With sanity more-or-less intact.

You look up and a strange but friendly face is looking into yours.
A ‘Hi’ comes your way.
Someone opens the door for you.
Another offers you their spare plastic spoons.
Yet another chases you down the platform to return the one glove you dropped.

Doesn’t that just take the cake?

To be able to say ‘he’s a strange bird but I know him’.
Hey Shreya: I think maybe the world is explaining itself after all.

PS: please check out
The excellent folks at the REACH campaign with the poster above at http://www.reachma.org/
My freind Shreya's hilarious blog at http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/author/3503/shreyasen-handley.html

Oyon-isms:
As i'm putting Oyon's latest Lego 'creation' into his 'museum':
Oyon: That's delicate Mummum. Be careful please. It's also fragile you know.
Me: Isn't that the same thing?
Oyon: No! (with a condescending snigger) Fragile means it's shiny.
Me: (laughing quietly to myself)
Oyon (with dawning self-doubt): Or maybe not. Anyway, I KNOW it's delicate. I know THAT. 

Ash to go

That most of my human-nature related insights and epiphanies should occur at the commuter rail station is not surprising. Other than the 5 minute walk from North Station to my office , on the Boston end of my train ride, this is after all the only time I get a daily glimpse of other slices of humanity. Or at least the slice that goes to work in Boston. Once there, we're all usually hunched up against the wind tunnel effect, scurrying with heads down to our separate workplaces, suspended within those little bubbles that large(ish) cities so easily and instantly conjure.

This particular February Wednesday I met these folks on the platform in Waltham:

The Catholic observance of 'Ash Wednesday' is as intrinsic to the socio-cultural fabric of the Greater Boston area as the Pilgrim hat icons (on everything from Highway signage to tourist kitsch) that boast of the Mayflower's historic arrival. Irish immigrants followed the Mayflower Puritans a few hundred years later and brought with them Catholicism. Driven by Ireland's devastating Potato famine of 1847, the Diaspora arrived and grew not only in size but in a unique sort of eminence. Boston Irish Catholics came to own a spirit of industry, inquiry and even government here. Three guesses as to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's ethnic heritage. That's not to say that all Catholics here have Irish ancestry (the so called 'Boston Brahmins' are apparently descended from the Puritan founders) but many, many do. And I think of them whenever I think of Catholicism.

Ancestry (and quick trip to wiki grade Irish history!) aside, a forehead anointed with a smear of ash on any given Lent Wednesday here speaks not just of early morning Mass and Faith but generations of tradition in a long thriving community. It's easy to smile when these suddenly-identifiable Christians (I've come to think of them, not unkindly, as 'Wednesday Catholics') board the train preceded/followed by a dark haired Indian wearing a similar vibhuti teeka from their morning puja. I find it heartening somehow that outward symbols of two disparate religions should find not just such similar expression but full acceptance. I haven’t seen anyone spare a second glance at any ash-dotted forehead, regardless of it's underlying skin-tone.

Quick aside (again!): Not having ever faced racism in this country, I wonder at (and am mildly ashamed of) my surprise. Notch it upto skepticism. I often wonder if I haven't faced the racism that many of my peers have caught glimpses of, due to my low exposure to ALL of American society. I figure that attending Graduate school and pursuing a career in a field requiring a certain degree of education ensures I only come across people of a cosmopolitan bent, people used to the sight and sound of non-Americans because of the way we have saturated institutes of higher education and highly-skilled jobs in addition to the 7-eleven 'appu's widely caricatured in American pop-culture. Regardless of my confusion, what I've seen of the American spirit (if I can even summarize the plurality here into 'one' spirit), I like.

Which brings me full circle to the Episcopalians in the cold and slush, clutching their packs of ash to share with anyone who hasn't found time for it yet. For fear of gawking and/or intruding on what seemed a somewhat private act (though arguably, wearing an ash mark all day was probably not geared toward keeping the faith 'private'), I didn't stick around to stare down the actual 'to-go' ritual they performed. But their effort at bringing some peace and comfort to harried Catholics who might have struggled and lost their bid at religious observance, possibly from the due pressures of Life, was touching. They did not seem to be proselytizing and were open-minded enough to let me take this picture.

As a long professed Agnostic (and recently converted Atheist) I make no claim to understanding the joy people find in Faith. I come from a country ripped apart by religion and am aghast at the atrocities carried out in the name of 'tradition', leave alone Faith. I'll never agree that unthinking adherence to unchallenged rituals is a virtue. Especially when said rituals divide people and spread pain and intolerance. I find though that I've remained human enough to recognize the power of positive traditions in transforming lives in small, but significant ways. My intolerance of dogma doesn't prevent me right now either, from seeing the substantive example of brotherhood and compassion in a couple of church-goers offering up comfort and convenience instead of doling out guilt and defaulting to indifference.

They didn’t try to proselytize.

They didn't even call out to passers-by.

They just stood there - cassock edges (vestments? robes? my Christian lexicon is woefully under furnished!) wicking up melted grey slush from the asphalt. They smiled and nodded at anyone who made eye-contact and let their board advertise their purpose.

I wish I had thanked them for what they brought to their fellow Catholics.

And me.

My forehead is bare of any signs of Faith. But theirs did something for me anyway.

Oyonisms:
One evening a few months ago we were on our way to a birthday party. At the first chant of "I'm bored!" on the long, dark drive, his Dimmum (my mom) challenges him to count to 100.
Then to 200.
At 131 (or so), Oyon pauses and wonders out loud what comes after 1000.
I ask him to guess.
"Thousandty-one. Thousandty- two...."

Anyone who's shocked that an almost 6 yr old can't count past 1000: he can't do buttons either. But boy, does he have a great grin. :-)

'Say Hi to your neighbors week' in Waltham, MA.

    At the train station this morning, 3 ft high snow banks narrowed the parking lot drive-through lane to barely a car's width. Thank you, blizzard Nemo. Traffic flow had slowed to molasses. I made it in eventually and was working my car back and forth in the few inches available for maneuvering to squeeze into the last, tight parking spot as my train pulled in and then out (without me). Already irate from a rebellious 6 yr old's early morning tantrum, I let fly a few of the choiciest in the modest confines of my vehicle.
     Prepped to cool my heels and temper inside my frigid car (what, me idle?) for 20 mins until the next train to Boston. Lady to my left, who had no such compunctions, comfortably belched exhaust while putting on her face in the rear-view mirror. Man on the right blasted music with the engine running and a window half open to let out his cigarette smoke. One of those 'Why do I even bother?' moments flashed briefly through my mind.
     Then a dimly heard voice from behind the car caught my attention, saying 'Hi! Would you like some coffee?' . In my rear-view mirror, the bundled up commuter being addressed shook a wordless 'no' and scurried off as fast as the ice and slush would let her. She hadn't even made eye contact with the coffee-bearer. I watched to see what would follow and saw this gentleman (whom I later stalked for a pic):

He moved amongst commuters until his coffee stockpile was exhausted. Then he headed back to this temporary coffee station that I hadn't even noticed before. It was positioned strategically at the bus stop adjoining the Waltham commuter train stop:

He reloaded and set off again, as did a few other young women. Armed with coffee, grins and a cheerful, easy 'Hi!' they doled out these pamphlets with minimal fuss:

I would have been emotionally levelled by the sobering joy of witnessing this kind of pure kindness had it not been that they had an agenda. But just check out their agenda was (excerpted from the back of the pamphlet from above):

 Mayor McCarthy has proclaimed February 9-16, 2013 as

Say Hi to Your Neighbors Week!

Our goal is 2,013 "Hi"s

Will you Say 'Hi' to your neighbors and help realize our goals?

 

              We believe that saying 'Hi' to our nieghbors:
        * Helps create a safer community
        * Breaks the isloation that people experiencing violence often feel
        * Helps us be more likely to look out for each other
                     Don't pass someone by

SAY Hi and ask them to pass it on!

It's a message from REACH Beyond Domestic Violence.
They were'nt even preachy about it. When a coffee recipient responded to the pamphlet with 'Thanks for the coffee! I will try not to be domestically violenced!' in an errant attempt at wit, the coffee-bearer continued to hand over creamer and sugar packs with a grin and nary a word about the seriousness of the issue.

Sobering joy: check.
Emotionally levelled: check

In this age where various forms of social media are so easily and successfully brought to bear on spreading messages, this kind of physical glad-handing probably bears less of a 'wow' factor and  more of a taint of being backward and inefficient. The most casual user of social networks knows that you can spread a message farther, wider and faster with a few jabs of your thumbs on a smart phone than with hours of canvassing. But what the iGadgets and cyber social networks miss is the value of personal contact. Victims of abuse fly under the radar for as long as they do because they lack the connections that might enable them to call out for help. I understand people suffering from depression face a similar debilitating sense of isolation that makes them feel that they are suffering alone, that no-one can 'get' it, that their pain in unimportant or shameful or a sign of weakness.

In these situations no number of smiley pictures in chain e-mails or 'like' tallys on FB can match the value of a smile exchanged in person. Because being there, means BEING THERE. It means that each of us are not suspended in a bubble facing joys and sorrows alike, alone. That there may just be help and comfort a simple word away. That even when you don't receive acknowledgement of a smile/nod/hello, you might have changed that person's day. Or life.

If you suspect that this might be even partially true, why not try saying 'Hi! Pass it on, will you?', walk away and see how it makes you feel?

Or contact these folks: www.reachma.org, allison@reachme.org

Oyon-isms (6):
Trying to say 'Grace' just like his little freind who came to dinner last night (whose family follows the practise, one we join out of respect when we visit them for dinner). She thanks the Lord for 'food, house and freinds. Amen.'
Oyon clasps his hands, squeezes his eyes shut and says
"I hope there is more good news in the news because the bad news is just bad. Um, what's that word you say at the end again, Mummum?"
Amen, kid.

'Iron' tokens and dated ring-tones

A few reminders today of my age and stage in life.
Age = 41.
Stage = harried mom who is recovering her footing and self.

The Twilight Zone theme song
               Squished together with a fellow commuter on my 8 am train to Boston, the haunting theme from the '70s show 'The Twilight Zone' snaked gently into the air.

A baggie full of spoons

Three things happened today to startle me.

7:40 am at the Convenience store
An elderly man held a door open for me from inside the 7-eleven I was entering to grab a cup of Joe before catching my morning train to work. His jacket was faded and well washed. The crease on his faded navy pants was ironed and sharp. There was an insignia I couldn't read on his cap and lapel.
       My head had been down against the bitter cold and the sinus headache pounding at my temples since 7 am. So when the door opened on its own and stayed opened to let me in I looked up, startled, at that weather beaten face and sputtered an undoubtedly strange 'THANK you, SIR!!'. He grinned back a good natured 'Your'e WELCOME, MA'AM' before he slipped out.
    It was not until I  was dazedly stirring the sugar into my paper cup of 'Green Mountain Breakfast Blend' that I felt the first twinge of regret. Why hadn't I squeezed his arm quickly as I brushed past him? I know I wanted to. Or found a few quick words to tell him how good it felt to be taken care of in that small but important way on that particularly painful morning. That his consideration, even if it stemmed from an outdated sense of chivalry was about to alter the quality of my entire day. My headache still had me in it's grip but there was a slight lessening of the vague anxiety of the morning that yet another painful sinus ordeal was unfolding to plague me this dreadful winter. Whatever it was, I felt just a little less beleagueared.

1 pm at the first floor coffee shop at work
Said headache amped up by lunch time as the pseudoephedrine wore off. The chills I'd had all morning were getting annoying too. They sometimes have good soup downstairs and the blind veterans who run the store are nice. My second paper cup of the day held my favorite Italian Wedding Soup whose steaming chicken broth was sure to put a silver bullet in my whiny sinuses. I passed on the  paper bag in keeping with my son's reminder last night to try and be kinder to the earth and edged out of the tiny shop balancing a teetering pile that went cup-spoon-napkin-wallet. My poorly conceived stacking order wasn't helped any by the chills that were still shaking me. I dropped the spoon and napkins right by the front door.
      Another elderly veteran (I'm going to assume my gentle friend from the morning was one, by the way) was rushing out the door that had slid open at just that moment. A gush of frigid Boston air scattering my napkins efficiently all over the grimy floor of the airlock.
      This one was grizzled too. Lined, lean face and shockingly white hair. Dark cotton clothes,  functional parka and a smart bookbag slung over one shoulder. After collecting my things for me, he knelt and unzipped a side compartment in his bag. He pulled out this baggie of individually wrapped plastic spoons and balanced it carefully atop my newly restored pile:

A baggie of spoons at 2 pm

"Don't use the spoon you dropped. The Flu's going around and the Veterans' Health services is just here on the 2nd floor. Germ central." He told me he had plenty more as he zipped and re-shouldered his bag. Apparently he collects them to take to school. (He goes to school! He collects individually wrapped takeout spoons and packs them in snack sized baggies. He pulled out the only one in his bag, that he keeps there for HIS own use at school, and handed it to me, brooking no objection.)

I was still weakly protesting "But YOU need it for school..." as he bounced purposefully out the door.

Later that day, distracting myself from headaches and other woes.
Read this blog post from MadMomma:
http://themadmomma.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/that-girl-on-the-bus/
     She cites a touching personal incident from safer times in Delhi some years ago. It was still tricky to navigate the city as an unchaperoned woman, but not fatal nearly as often as now. For context: in mid-December 2012, a 23 yr old student was gangraped and killed while travelling on a sparesly populated public bus at night with a friend. In the above post MadMomma, an opinionated, articulate and sensitive young woman, makes a public plea on her much followed blog for mass opinion to shift mindfully towards a woman's right to be safe on the streets vs. her responsibility to be cautious. Delhi has always had a shameful history of casual violence towards women so many lay opinions have shockingly but also somewhat pragmatically (if you look at it from their POV), placed on young women the entire responsibility for their own safety. Of course, many reasonable people will see the the fatal flaw in this attitude that excuses men from all accountability. As MadMomma puts it "Every time you think she should have avoided going out late, she should have taken an auto, she should have, she should have, she should have, you’re missing the point. It’s not what she should have. It’s what he SHOULDN’T have."
Quick aside: To me the core reason for this puzzlingly morally skewed attitude in the average population of presumbly not-evil folks, lies in the fatalism inherent in our culture. People who feel powerless to change the world they live in, see reason in making whatever compromises are called for in order to ensure their own safety within an essentially broken system. They make small bubbles of thoughtlessness that coalesce into larger bubble of indifference and unwittingly perpetuate the very disregard they love to hate...but that's for another post. Maybe. :-)

So anyway, I full agree with MadMomma. But I'll remember this blog post of hers because of the shout-out to humanity it includes in the memory she chooses to share. While vocal advocates of gender equality make their necessary strides to alter public perceptions and demand more effective laws, I think we need more positive reminders of all that is right too.

Maybe it's as important to show people HOW to act as we are denouncing how NOT to act. Of course, it's idiotic to assume a man has to be told to not assualt a women but the truth is, that is the culmination of a thousand other mindless trespasses that preceded it, that flew under the radar and that men exercise with impunity on a daily basis. So we don't  want 'eve teasing' and condescension for women but what are we asking for in their place? Just chanting 'respect' and 'equality' does'nt translate to a hill of the proverbial rajma beans. What exactly does it mean?

How about freindship, understanding and the relaxing of rigid perceptions of gender sterotpyes?
Would it be as easy to rape a women when you'd watched the test match last night with a platonic female freind? Would you be able to snatch away a an unwilling dupatta if you'd shared a cup of tea and a chat with your sister's freind that morning? Why not even shift the focus from rape and speak of kindness to each other for a change. Imagine how THAT could trickle down!

What would happen if on one fine day we all woke up infected with a virus that made us be gentle, mindful and kind to everyone we met casually? The old man who offered MadMomma tea and stories that cold Delhi night when she was lost and scared, is still around. MANY such good folk are around. I believe (I HAVE TO believe) they are edged out into the margins of our collective consciousness by the more bestial facets of human nature that reveal themselves to us. Maybe it's because we have a sense of entitlement and expect kindness and goodness as the default state (even as we swear that it no longer is, if it ever was). Maybe bad news just establishes more lasting claims on our emotional bandwidth by virtue of its shock factor. And maybe we need to reclaim the importance of goodness and show it as the wonderful yet easy-to-excercise thing that is really is.

My 7-eleven Veteran, The Spoon-Samaritan and MadMomma's bus driver - they are as much a part of our society as the broken people who haunt our nightmares. For every deranged adolescent who murders innocent children in their classroom there is a 17 year old who wordlessly retrieves an errant soccer ball for a pre-schooler in the playground and kicks it around for a few minutes just to get him to giggle. For every disenfranchised youth who unleashes the kind of senseless violence that can only come from an entire lifetime's worth of cultural conditioning, on a blameless young women - there is a hard working, old bus driver who takes a few extra minutes to comfort and aide a young stranded college student.

I'm willing to bet that these human human's far outnumber the beasts amongst us. I think they nod at us and catch our eye in a hundred subtle and instinctive gestures that even they do not realize they have made, let alone us.

And I think we should each share more stories of people who are good, kind and helpful. Maybe we will all feel more validated, connected and inspired to make the eminently easier choice to be kind to each other. I'm sure that it's actually easier than maintaining a cold indifference.

Today showed me that all you have to do is hold open a door, offer to share your spoons or chat about a hot cup of tea with a nervous young girl.

POSTSCRIPT: Turned out that raging Sinus headache that had me in it's grip was really the onset of Chicken Pox. More here for how THAT experience went.....

Oyon-isms:
Age 6 - "The President should tell all the companies that make weapons to stop. What would they have wars with then? I think that's what he should do."

Of micro-scale scratches and corrugated surfaces

I pulled back the window curtains of my 6 year old's bedroom, intending to let the dawn peek in and help wake him up. This is what i saw:

6 am descends on window graffiti of the night.
Swirls and curls of cold intent, pick an evanescent fight.
Molten rays of sun enact a predetermined end.
Fractals fade away gracefully, power successfully spent.

Of course, I posted up on Facebook - with fittingly cloying pseudo-poetry (see above and accept my pre-emptive apologies). Amidst all the wonderment on my comment thread was an illuminating response to my query about  the possible driving forces behind the curious crystal growth pattern. Bindu, a scientist freind, wrote "Ice crystal growth patterns [are] seeded by corrugated surface (tiny microscale scratches on glass) and dust."

Imagine that.

I've no doubt our century old house has weathered a lot more than it's austere colonial facade reveals. Yet I'd never really thought about it beyond seasonal annoyance at windows that stick and floors that creak with extreme temperature changes. New England weather has exhausted it's repertoire on us during our long residence in these parts. Even a tornado once, to keep it fresh. So it was easy to populate my daydreams with vivid images of a hundred years of howling Noreasters pounding on this large, wavy sheet of glass. This thing that keeps the predatory elements out of our fragile little lives.

But I had never considered the invisible signs of strain. We look through it. Literally. As we are meant to. The faint battle scars that tell the story of a long, hard existence had eluded me with stunning success until this sub-freezing January morning.

And this is the story they told:

A bristling forest of ice calls out to denuded trees below,
Your lifeblood crawls in dormancy as I inexorably grow.
The golden light that succours you, will bring to me my end.
But what a dazzling time I had. I'm ready now, my freind.

I'll never be able to just look through this sheet of glass again.
 

The 'Just Married, Please Excuse' Contest

OR  Lord of the Rings – but not quite the way you might think

 

This post is in response to a contest being held by Yashodhara on her blog 'Y on earth not'. Her new book 'Just Married, Please Excuse' is out. UPDATE: turned out I was one of the 'winners' in this contest though that's not as much of an honor as you'd think given that 50% of contestants 'won' in one way or another. :-) Still, Yashodhara is a very funny writer and I'm glad I made her smile.

We got married twice, like many who have one proverbial foot in the U.S. and another in native India. The first was a ‘City Hall’ affair in California (over my spring break in grad school) where we actually understood the words sanctifying our union, while the other was the usual 3-ring circus affair in India comprising family, food, fuzzy shlokas and festivities.

Fat-finger Fumbles and grammatical travesties

The goriness of brutalized grammar on social websites has now surfaced in my life as an 'issue' for about the 523rd time. We've all encountered these travesties of vocabulary and grammer: they're/their/there, quite/quiet, its/it's, your/you're, to/too, then/than and so on. My friend Nan recently wrote a lucid opinion that got me started (watch this space for a link to it).

 

I seem to know as many victims as perpetrators of said crimes. However faulty grammar is a poor bidder for my emotional bandwidth, perhaps because there are so many more powerful daily irritants ahead in the queue, like judgementalism, boasting and self-promotion.

 

There’s also the fact that with the plethora of devices at our fingertips, a thought has barely to form inside our heads before we spit it out to our cyber communities via cell phone, laptop, tablet etc.

Imperfect recall: what if?

Memories are unreliable chroniclers of facts: sometimes bold,  other times, hazy. Almost always however, they are shape-shifting, shimmery little mirages thrown up by your mind to appease, humor, or...mislead. Are the hazy ones hazy because they are incomplete ? The bold ones trying too hard to convince you? Which ones are true and which ones your own fanciful creations? What do you believe if Belief itself can be trickery?

I read somewhere that the shocking part of Recall is that only a small portion of even our vividest memory is based on actual, retrieved facts. The rest is made up of intelligent cerebral interpolations to fill in the empty spaces and impart the right flavor. Poetic license of the Soul, if you will.

For instance, I know for sure that years ago, my brother really did build a small paper fire in our bedroom in Nairobi. To cook rice in a metal Smarties (like M&Ms) tube behind the bed.
I am less certain however that the rice tasted as creamy, fluffy and yummy as I remember it.

It's much more likely that my mom busted our covert ops at the first whiff of smoke and charred tin.

My brother was 8, I was 3 and I am told that in those days, nothing good had ever come of complete silence from us for over 10 minutes. Our harried and over-worked young mother was in a perpetual state of alertness. She had been primed, among other adventures, by returning to the kitchen one day, after hours of washing clothes in the bathtub. She found my brother lovingly lining up jam jars on the window sill. They were teeming with tadpoles and young frogs he'd 'rescued' from his school drain. She also found me about to start on a baby bottle full of his assorted pond life. My brother's scheme to get me off the bottle was a brilliant, if unacknowledged, success as a few short screams later (not all of them came from me) I was permanently cured of the bottle habit.

Anyway. The point is, she'd developed eyes in the back of her head and a 6th, 7th and 8th sense for what we were up to at any given time.

I'm not surprised though that I remember the taste of that forbidden snack (that never was) so well. We probably came way from the episode with smarting bottoms and sinister promises of our father's fury when he returned later in the evening. That last part was pure bluster, by the way: he was really a lamb.

Yet, our exciting adventure could not possibly end on such a mundane, forgettable note in the annals of my personal history. I'm guessing that history got quietly revised when I recalled our 'good old days' and the episode of the Smarties tube. My brain overwrote the anticlimactic moments with more fitting notes of triumph.

So how do you trust your memories, ever? Not so worrisome with the joyful ones: exaggeration isn't necessarily bad if it stays true to spirit. But how about the dark nasties that everyone harbors in the inner recesses of their hearts?

What if you were to discover one day that the resentment that you feel towards someone has been conflated by your mind? That the anger towards them has been swollen by a hardworking brain filling in the gaps or replacing compassion with angry notes befitting your hurt feelings? Maybe the person's trespass was real but contextually much smaller than it's long residence in your memory has made it?

What if every hurt inside you is only fractionally real?
What if with just one stroke of acceptance, you can banish the majority of your hurts?

What if?

Oyon-isms:
5.5 years old.
To his Uncle Mark as he walked through the door, "Hi Uncle Mark. I just had a tantrum. I cried, yelled and whined for things that were not right. It's called a tantrum and it's not good .Want to see my new 'Lion King' book?"