Mornings with Children

The troubled light of December, seven o’ clock

the clucking annoyance of the second hand

These are the stains that describe your breakfast

your mouths are hovering-harmonium-talk

Now that the light is so bitter and literal

we lose one battle; we win other wars

You are made of just ghee and molasses--

and pools of unhurried, inundant memoirs.

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And after all that, Li'l A made off with a medal in the spelling bee today. Perhaps slow and steady does win the race :).

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So, HA!

Baby A turned three (in Oct), attends early Pre K now. (So not so much a baby, I know.) We'd like to blame Pre K for the following:

- playing with the stock photos of some fake/generic family that came with new photo frames.

- claiming to be "in love with this family."

- adding, "But they don't care about you; they only care about me. So, HA!"

- making Li'l A and me sitting with her at the kitchen table nearly die from laughing.

However, it would be nice if we had something to do with this next thing. With sweet J her 6-year-old-playmate, whose dad had taken all the kids to go see Miyazaki's Ponyo when it opened last summer:

Baby A: Ok. Let's play the Ponyo game. I'll be Soskye. You be Ponyo.

Sweet J: Ok. But no. YOU be Ponyo, I'll be Soskye. Ponyo is a girl.

Baby A: No. Ponyo is a little fishie from the sea. So, HA!

Is it horrible of me to be happy that my daughter is a bit of a brat too? Actually, I don't care. So, HA!

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Growing

Today, Mama.

From yesterday

today is tomorrow.

Her smile opens.

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And just when I thought I was over FB, my high school (Sacred Heart, Church Park, Chennai) friends started an FB group and it's been amazing to see. Even all the once-skinny-15-year-old girls have boobs now! 

Once More

armored flowers

the moon at its turret

the pollen is rusty

but an easier size

and more 

like my own.

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I've missed writing just for myself and any strangers Google sent my way. So the goals for the new year are:

* to write

* to keep in touch with family and friends like family on the phone or through visits 

(I guess, condensed, both those bullets signal my growing ennui with FB.)

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Crossing

My insect-like anticipation, the blind 

reach for a child's hand

I squeeze your small, wrinkled fingers,

call you my king

the curvaceous floating of laughter

flung from down the street

spilling empty, like letters faint 

but acidic with secrets

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Ammama (1921-2010)

deep sleep of the night

at another day's still beginning

simplicity occupies the mind

simply.

see:

hours follow each other like breath

the nights of ordinary sleep

and days of unaccustomed deaths

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A Sort of Buddhism for Beginners

Big A carries me to the couch because the floor is wet. (Yes, it doesn’t make sense.) He continues to hold me in a hug. It is a week where four of my/our friends have cancer or are undergoing treatment for cancer. It’s been a month of seeing children “removed” from their homes—some through guardian ad litem work, one of them Li’l A’s best friend. Which means that after I've been strong in front of my friends and my kids, Big A has been the one holding me through the frequent, circumlocutory, incomprehensible rampages.

He tells me:

One in five people that you know will have cancer at some point in their lives. Half of them will die from it.

And this next part was quite unnecessary, but he feels the need to tell me this every now and again:

You must know that 100% of all the people you know will ultimately die. 

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