"The time has come", the Walrus said...

My recent trip to India invoked a flurry of reminiscences. Memories of childhood days, passed idly in my own company, wandering through the ample gardens of my grandmother's home, talking to myself and creating games, visiting the cows or finding abandoned kittens and puppies come flooding easily to my mind. Delightful memories. Though at the time, I didn't see it in quite the same light. I remember the intense sense of loneliness and boredom. Being the youngest in that family was no fun. I listen now to the tales of childhood holidays that my siblings tell. Stories of times spent in the joyous company of cousins, uncles and aunts. Times when gangs of cousins would gather together and get up to no good. Times when the house was filled to bursting with family, laughter and noise...and the many arguments that ensued.

My cousin remembers a time when they all played cricket in the upstairs hall at the ancestral home. Inside. The hall was huge and when the families gathered, this was where the children would congregate to sleep, reacquaint themselves with each other, tell stories, gossip and play. I imagine the excitement. I can see the hall filled with them all, their younger selves. I hear their voices raised in argument, jokes and storytelling in a variety of languages. I hear the giggles and squeals as they delight in each others' company. But they are not my memories. Simply my imaginings of their memories.

My memories are quieter, lonelier. Perhaps even tinged with a little sadness. My memories are of wandering that very same hall on my own. Of the stillness and silence that surrounded me. Of feeling the presence of ghosts and spectres, but not fearing them. My memories are of dusty rooms filled with decaying mounted deer's heads, of oppressive heat in the middle of the day and a silent house as the adults all slept off their lunch. My memories are of sitting in the windowsill of the upstairs room, staring through the ornate wood-barred window and imaging a tale of a princess trapped in her tower. The silence broken only by the call of the postman, the dog barking or the cows lowing. In my memory, there was a permanent heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Nervousness? Loneliness? I don't know. But discomfort certainly. I remember every inch of that garden, of the house, because for me, that was my company. The garden became my magical forest. The place where a thousand adventures befell me. The house was my plaything. Immense and elusive, keeping her secrets well hidden, but tantalising me with the hint of a hidden secret if only I cared to look.

Tamarinds, Alor, Indonesia (Photo credit: GlobalCitizen01)

I remember the exquisite tang of tamarind plucked from the tree, tingling my tastebuds into life. Followed quickly by the sharp slap of fresh green peppercorns, snatched from the vines that entwined the tamarind trees. Saliva fills my mouth as I recall the sourness of the bilimby pulli stolen from the trees on my way to the outside bathroom. Even that bathroom evokes a great sense of joy in me. The time spent waiting in the kitchen with the servant as she boiled the water for my bath. Her remonstrations that I shouldn't touch the pot because I was just a child and I would burn myself. Watching her heft that heavy pot past the well to the bathroom, and then return to the well for cold water for me to mix with the hot to achieve the perfect temperature for my bath. I remember those bucket baths with great affection.

മലയാളം: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember also the servants who, with extraordinary patience and kindness, would incorporate me into their daily tasks. Each of them assigning me a job that they would oversee with great gentleness. I remember laying tamarind, chilli and pepper on great white sheets, weighed down in the corners by large stones, out in the bright hot sun to dry. I remember having to shoo the crows who would try their cunning best to steal the drying goods, and claiming a stalk of tamarind or pepper as my reward. I remember learning to light a fire with nothing more than the husk of a coconut and a long metal tube, of nursing those early flickering flames into a healthy fire. Of the smoke that would fill my eyes, nose and lungs. The ring of the servant's laughter as she guided my feeble efforts at fire-lighting.

I spent a long time in my life feeling sad that I had missed the joy of the company of my cousins. I felt somehow cheated of that companionship, that consolidation of our relationships. Now, I choose to see the great gifts I was given by those wonderful people who worked for my family. Their patience, their kindness, their love are what sustained me through many lonely days spent over many years of Christmas holidays. There was so much that I learnt from them. So much about the simple things in life. So much about hard work. And most importantly, so much about generosity of spirit and pure love. For that and for the many joyous days of my childhood, I hold them deeply in my heart with gratitude and thanks.

My "Like Water for Chocolate" Moment

It was Father's Day today here in Australia. A difficult day for me. My father died 14 years ago and every year since, Father's Day and his birthday have been days on which I fall into a terrible funk. I remember him and miss him always, but these two days are the ones I set aside for truly indulging myself. I allow myself to feel completely sad and bereft, only pulling myself together on Father's Day for LomL's sake. My darling, long-suffering and patient husband knows how I am on these days. He allows me the latitude to miss my father, to feel sorry for myself and wish for what might have been. He understands, he checks on me and he leaves me alone to weep at the sink.

Usually, I skip the Father's Day gathering with the in-laws. It's more than I can handle. The blatant reminder that my father isn't here. This year, I found myself there and offering to make food for the occasion. I woke early, helped B1 and B2 to make LomL's Father's Day breakfast in bed, then got on with making pies for lunch. I was washing spinach when it happened. I made the mistake of thinking about the fact that I was making these pies for LomL's father, but would never again have the opportunity to do this for my own father. It occurred to me that I had only one year with my own father after I married. The pain was visceral. A tear escaped my eye. That one tear seemed to give permission to all the others waiting just behind. I couldn't stop. I found myself weeping uncontrollably into a sink full of English spinach.

Ironically, in the middle of my weeping, I couldn't help thinking about the Laura Esquivel novel, Like Water for Chocolate. The image of Tita, grief-stricken and weeping through the preparation for Rosaura and Pedro's wedding feast, and the magical effect of her sadness transported through the food, leapt to my mind. In the midst of my sorrow, I couldn't help but wonder if my emotions would be contained in the food.

I was too tired and caught in my own thoughts to really notice whether that was so today. I wonder still.

Fairy Princesses and GI Joes

Image by Cayusa via FlickrI was reading a blog today by Candace Lindemann about our progressive move as a society to limit the choices of aspirational goal/hero for our girls and it set alarm bells ringing for me. I've long thought that the choices we offer girls is woeful. In no way is this the fault of parents. When there is little variety on offer, there is little scope for parents to make choices that don't disenfranchise their children from friendships or exclude them from the norm. And we all want to fit in. Next time you go clothes shopping, turn the aisle into the children's section and take a peek at what's on offer for girls. Though not a parent of girls, I do have a niece and do periodically wander bug-eyed and bamboozled through the array of attire for girls. I'm constantly horrified. If it's not pink, frilly and princess-like, then it's something that's too adult, too revealing and positively salacious. Something that in my worst, most critical moments I think of as appropriate work wear for a full-body masseuse. These are not the clothes I wore as a child. Especially since I was the classic tomboy, happier up a tree or playing with my train set or cars in the sand than playing at fairy princess. Don't get me wrong, I loved the idea of magic and witches, but I was always more attracted to the darker side - Macbeth is still my favourite of Shakespeare's plays and the weird sisters, Hecate and Lady M are my favourite characters. I love these women. They are strong and wilful and ambitious. They live their lives as they please (in the case of the witches) and don't let any men tell them what to do. But pink and frilly was never me... and low-cut, leopard print and lustrous nails are not my idea of the alternative.

Image via WikipediaSo having vented my spleen on the pitiful choices available for our young girls, let me turn to what's on offer for boys. I started my parenting adventure believing that I was going to be different. I would raise children who didn't feel the need to conform to the norm. I would provide my boys with as many alternatives as possible and nothing was off limits. The toy room was filled with cars, trucks, planes, soft toys and dolls. Many many dolls. Of many many skin colours and national dress. Despite the concerned looks from LomL and the obvious discomfort of the in-laws, I persisted. Thank goodness for a loving family that support me in all my mad schemes. My baby boys were dressed in bright, happy colours. Bright blues, greens, yellows, purples and even pinks adorned them regardless of the tutt-tutts and dire warnings of retinal damage from all the older Aunties in the community. Not a single pastel passed my boys' bodies. And I was proud of the start I was giving them. Vibrant, full of choices to be who they wanted, uninhibited by the demands of peer pressure or societal norms, accepted always. But the baby stage doesn't last long. Pretty soon my boys grew into toddlers and the cute baby suits in bright colours had to be replaced with more age-appropriate clothing. But what was on offer? Gone were the bright colours. Gone were the purples and pinks. Gone were the sex-neutral baby suits. Replaced with khaki greens, navy blues, browns, blacks and greys. The colour and wonder of babyhood was rapidly replaced by an increasingly dull, monotonous (and it really did look like one tone when you squinted), drab wardrobe. This was depressing for me. It made me wonder whether this would start my children down the path of becoming another depressed teen boy statistic. Is this how it starts? In tiny, drab, monotonous choices? Do we wear our boys into depression by making them wear the colours of it? Perhaps I'm being a little hysterical, but for me colour and music are always key catalysts for my mood.

And what of the choices of toys to play with? Gone were the options for dolls and soft toys. That was all very well when they were babies, but now it was time for them to be proper little boys. Flooding in came trains large and small, planes and automobiles. I held off on the weaponry for as long as I could, but it was like holding back a tidal wave. Once the first knife appeared, it was quickly followed by bows and arrows, spears and eventually my greatest hurdle, guns. I finally gave up on resisting guns in the house when my boys started making guns out of sticks, coloured markers and even toast. I had to admit defeat. They had been enculturated and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't blame the media entirely since we didn't watch a lot of TV and what we did watch was almost exclusively on the non-commercial broadcaster or on video. But I realised quickly that I couldn't keep them away from the inevitable draw of the blinking box forever. So what was the alternative? Send them uncritical, unquestioning to face the onslaught of sophisticated and insidious marketing on commercial television? That was not an option I cared to consider. Instead, we've watched TV with our kids, commenting on the advertisements as they appear. We critique them, talk about how they make us feel, examine whether or not we want to buy the product and why. We talk critically about marketing strategies, times of the day that certain advertisements appear and why. We listen to the music used and explore why that choice was made. We talk about the choice of actors or characters in the advertisements. All in all we aim to make our children critical viewers of the media images they're exposed to.

I don't think it's realistic to believe we can shelter them from all advertising forever. So instead, I'd rather aim for developing a sense of critical viewing of the advertising and an awareness of what it's trying to do. I hope that this will equip them to protect themselves from being led, nose-first into making poor financial and life choices.

Some more personal writing

I'm working on many projects at the moment. This should come as no surprise to those of you who know me. I'm notorious for juggling many balls in the air at the same time... or as my mother would say starting a million things and never finishing anything.


So instead of my usual rant about a random topic, here's an unedited (very raw) section of a story I'm working on.

Every day of Sumi’s childhood was laced with some mention of Amma’s dream. It could be as innocuous as Amma showing Sumi how to cook fish molee and throwing in an unconscious comment about how she would cook that dish for her husband one day. Rarely did Amma overtly say to her girls that she expected them to have an arranged marriage. It was assumed by everyone in the house. So much so that Sumi had not even thought to fight the idea. She had always assumed that that was how her life would pan out. She never questioned that that was what she wanted too.

Sumi had never disappointed her parents. She went to Bharata Natyam classes because Amma had not had the opportunity in her childhood. As it turned out, Sumi excelled in dance class. She quickly became the teacher’s pet and with Amma’s strict overseeing of her practice sessions, she learned more and more complex dances. She learnt to swim because Amma had not. She went to Carnatic singing classes because Amma had missed that opportunity. She learned the violin at school because Amma had always wanted to learn a musical instrument. And in all of this, she was expected to bring home nothing but As on her school report. Acha was a teacher and had been a brilliant student in his time, so he would accept nothing less.

She had started uni with high expectations of continuing her demonstrated academic performance to date. She hadn’t expected to be distracted by boys and knew she was perfectly capable of having a friendship with a boy that didn’t automatically transform into a relationship. She’d watched friends fall into and out of some teenage approximation of love all through the summer holidays and knew it wasn’t for her. She was a sensible, practical young woman and had no intentions of finding herself entangled in some tawdry, love-lorn liaison. But then, she had not expected to encounter someone quite like Michael.

A new adventure

B1 and B2 started back at school yesterday. B1 is now in high school. A momentous occasion in our family, as it is in families everywhere. B2, on the other hand, has moved into his penultimate year of primary school. There was a heady mix of excitement, nervousness, jealousy (on the part of B2 who thought it was "totally unfair" that B1 got to wear a special tie and do neat stuff in classes) and hopefulness in the car on the way to school.

I was as excited for them starting this new adventure, as they were themselves. I know that B1 will thrive in high school. It feels like he's been in a holding pattern for the last seven years, waiting for something or someone to tell him it's ok to take off. Now it feels like he just got the go-ahead from air-traffic control. He was up super early, had organised lunch boxes for himself and his brother (except the sandwiches, which he left for me to do), made his bed, ate his breakfast, got dressed and was ready to go half an hour early. This was no one-of event either. This morning he had gotten himself organised and made my coffee (he let me do the lunch boxes this time).

B1 has always been an amazing kid; surprising me at every turn. He's always been involved in whatever I'm doing and always been keen to help. There are pictures in the family album of him at 2, standing on a step ladder, making salad. In so many ways, he's braver than I am. He faces the world with a mix of nervous excitement and self-assuredness. I've spent most of his primary school years worrying that he doesn't have enough (or any) friends, only to find that nearly every child in his year is saying hi or bye to him when I pick him up from school. I think I've spent more time worrying about his friends than he has. I admire him that ability to be so self-contained, so happy with who he is, so unquestioning of the love he's surrounded by.

It set him apart in primary school, I think. That was a time when being sociable and gregarious was everything. When having friends, making friends, being friends and losing friends was the raison d'etre. B2 does and will flourish in that environment. He's the gregarious one. He's the one who has inherited those traits from me; the oh-too-noisy-talker, the class clown, the joker, the performer, everybody's friend who is horribly insecure and uncertain of his own abilities. I'm grateful that B1 is more like his father in that way and terrified for B2. Insecurity has stopped me being my best, doing my best and giving my all in so many circumstances. I hope I can help B2 overcome the crippling inaction that accompanies this insecurity.

Words Said Too Much and Not Enough

There has been tension brewing between B1 and B2 for some time now and it all came to a head today. Being boys, the end result was a bit of argy bargy, but it brought to the surface some really important issues.

B2 has recently gotten into the very bad habit of telling his big brother that he "hates" him whenever B1 does something annoying. The words are spoken with great emotion but little real feeling and absolutely no thought. B2 is very quick to blame B1 for anything that goes wrong in a Bart Simpson kind of way. LomL and I have been trying to deal with it with humour, ramping up the stakes, suggesting that "of course B1 was also responsible for all the ills of the world, both world wars, the extinction of the dinosaurs, global warming and the sinking of the Titanic". This has helped B1 see that we understand that B2's claims are outrageous and unfair.

Naturally, B1 has not been dealing with the situation well. It's hard to brush off statements like "I hate you!" when they're shrieked by your baby brother. B1's level of confusion has also gone through the roof since B2 gleefully screams his hatred at him one minute then runs up and asks him to play the next. It had all gone on far too long and today I finally blew my stack.

As I was explaining the situation to B2 and making him understand exactly how B1 felt each time these barbed words were spat at him, it made me realise just how much B1 loves his brother. Despite being stung with these words on a regular basis, despite hearing "I love you" from B2 only when prompted, B1 continues to entertain his little brother, continues to play with him, continues to protect him and help him. I felt so proud of him in that moment, so proud of the man he will one day be and so very privileged to be parenting him.

Even B2 finally got it when I asked him how he'd feel if his best buddy screamed "I hate you!" at him on a regular basis and pointed out that despite this, his big brother continued to play with him, try to do the things he likes and suggest activities.

We've made a pact now. "I hate you!" is NEVER to be spoken to another person in this house again. Not ever. We're allowed to hate a particular act or a particular behaviour, we're allowed to hate an outcome or even a situation. But never, never, NEVER are we to hate another person.

The old myth goes that if you say "I love you" too much, it loses its meaning. Rubbish, I say. You can never say "I love you" too much if you really mean it.

And there's the key. Too often words are spoken without thought for the meaning behind them. One phrase, three words... I hate you...I love you...both said too much without enough regard for their meaning.