Jan 9, 2017 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
To My Daughter, On Her Birthday
©January 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Can it be that the entire known universe
Arises from a single, careening meeting
Of brooding star-egg and speeding star-sperm?
What sperm travels millions of miles
Full of urgent need, driven through nothingness,
While the warm, dreaming egg awaits?
And when they meet and mate,
What pleasure occurs, and what pain, and what
Amorphous thoughts gather and morph?
And what enormous soundless clashes
Create crackling cradles for stars and comets,
As they make great swoops through space?
And what forces all that void to expand
Endlessly, pushing outward, breaking off
Making stars, making room for planets?
And what fills all that room, in vain
Trying to defeat that yawning void
That looms always, a dark presence?
And what laughter echoes around that void
As we stumble into being, look around, love,
Light candles along the way to our end?
And how did you come to be,
A minuscule embryonic presence
Heavy like a gulp of self inside me?
And how did you emerge, whole, from this,
My body, and grow so tall, so sweet,
So full of song, so full of acceptance?
Twelve years flowing backwards endlessly
To that singular moment when you emerged,
I heard the sound of light pulled into air.
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Tags: #Birthday Poem, #Metaphorical poem, #Mother and Daughter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
May 6, 2015 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT – © Madison Woods
Genre: Realistic Fiction; current matters
Word Count: 100 words
Quench
By Vijaya Sundaram
©May 6, 2015
Rupa was in shock. Rubble surrounded her. She was thirsty, but the taps were dry. Her dust-covered cheeks had two tear tracks, streams lost in a desert. People were frantic, looking for their own. A neighbor offered her chappatis. Rupa shook her head, returning to what she’d once called home. Then, she gasped.
A hand was clawing through the rubble. She screamed, “Kamala!” Racing over to the spot, she began digging with bare hands.
Others came with shovels.
An hour later, Rupa held her bruised six-year old daughter close.
“Ma?” whispered Kamala.
“What, my lotus?”
“Could I have some water?”
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting Friday Fictioneers every week, a much-needed kick in this writer’s (my) derriere! Thanks to Madison Woods for the photograph prompt.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Mother and Daughter, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Flash Fiction, Nepal earthquake, Rescue
Oct 3, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
You know you are fully grown-up, when your child turns to you at bedtime, asking you to stay near her, because she’s newly afraid of the concept, the spectre of death and dying, because she’s read a book about Hades.
And when she says, “Parents make everything all right,” you hug your child and say, “Yes it will be all right. Go to sleep, sweets. I’ll stay near you till you’re asleep.”
And you sit next to her, holding her hand, reassuring her with a song and soft words, then with companionable silence, till sleep wafts her into sweet oblivion, and you know she’ll sleep until the day comes, and she will be all right, because you made her fears recede.
By Dreamer of Dreams
October 3rd, 2014
Tags: #Mother and Daughter, childhood fears, reassurance, Sleep
Jun 20, 2014 Teaching and Learning
I caught my daughter staring at the ceiling, looking thoughtful.
“What are you looking at, Sweets?” I asked.
My daughter replied, still gazing upward, “I was looking at that spider up there.”
“Don’t be nervous, Babe. It’s tiny. It’s not going to suddenly chase you.”
“No,” she replied, “I’m not worried. I was thinking how something so small could make such a BIG shadow on the ceiling.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
A second later, this thought occurred to me: Do atoms cause shadows? If everything that exists and has physical properties casts a shadow, do atoms cause shadows? Do quarks?
And what about the Higgs-Boson particle?
~ Dreamer of Dreams
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Tags: #Mother and Daughter, a thought, atoms, shadows, spiders
Jun 6, 2014 Original Poetry
Being Prepared (Or: Fiddling, While …)
©June 6th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Plunged in reality,
I discussed mundane,
But important, things
Like, “Educational Testing.”
“Why do grownups
Discuss dark matters?”
Asked my nine-year old.
I paused, hand on receiver
Suspended my tirade
About the Privatization
Of Education, looked at her,
And admired her
For her straightness
And her crystalline mind.
“Because,” I said,
Choosing my words
Like a person stepping
On shards of glass
On a tile floor,
“Because, if we don’t,
They come upon us
Suddenly, when we
Are unprepared,
And we need to be.”
“But why do you need to
Discuss it?” she persisted,
“Because, though I hate it,
I need to talk about it with others.
Think about it, be able to fight it.
It’s important, though awful,”
I said, feeling the weight
Of it dragging my voice,
And my internal voice
Asking, Why, indeed?
And I thought,
Because, I need to
Find arguments against it,
Look at it, discuss it.
Because, I need
To know my enemy,
And size it up,
Before it comes at me.
But I didn’t say it.
I think she already
Understood my world.
She looked thoughtful.
“I know it’s important,
But I prefer books,” she said,
And went back to hers.
So do I, I thought, and
Returned to my
Telephonic exchange,
Then hung up.
Outside, the coolness
Hung in dewy curtains,
Exquisitely damp,
Promising sweet rain.
Oblivious, my pup pawed,
At the kitchen door,
Impatient, eager to drink the
Evening air, dance in dew,
Pounce on a harmless stick.
And, somewhere,
Bubbles of methane
Arose to swampy
Siberian surfaces.
And animals fled,
Or curled up and died.
(But … we’ll have
No more talk of
Dark matters, shall we?)
So, I took my dog out,
Let her taste the
Beautiful evening,
Brought her back in.
Then, with a sigh,
I opened my book.
Reality receded.
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Tags: #Books, #Mother and Daughter, Being Grownups, Climate Change, dark topics, Educational testing, escape into stories, Fiddling While Rome Burns, Privatization of Education
Feb 16, 2014 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Post-Sled Languor
©2014, Vijaya Sundaram
February 16th, 2014
On my back, near my child,
Who is intent on packing snow,
I feel the rush of the earth
On her axis,
A spinning ballerina
En pointe.
Snow quiets someone’s heartbeat
(Mine? My daughter’s? The earth’s?)
Traffic rushes by, while I
Lie, staring at a pale sky,
With its light flurry of clouds.
And across my field of vision
Blank as I am, quiet as I am,
(But not quiet like death, not quite).
Slices an arrow, shot from an
Unseen bow, bent on its
Unknown goal, and the sky divides.
Silver, the airplane shoots across,
And I watch, blank as snow,
As the earth spins.
A flurry of thoughts
Moves across my mind,
I think (how could I not?)
Of the bow from which I
Was shot, and the end to which
I am headed, unknowing,
(for how can the arrow know, completely?).
But even that thought dies away,
As I lie on my back,
In the snow, gazing blankly
At a pale, pale, darkening sky,
While near me, my daughter
Makes a snow-fort.
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Tags: #Mother and Daughter, #Original Poetry, arrows, destinations, earth's axis, looking up at the sky, post-sledding, snow-fort
Jan 9, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
A new person entered our lives. She transformed us … into parents. We haven’t been the same since. Life has more richness, more depth, more beauty, more music, more love, more … dimensionality.
Below is what I wrote on my Facebook page:
_________________________________________________
So, today, our little girl turned nine!
It’s hard not to feel sentimental.
Also, a sense of amazement at how time shapes reality.
Nine years and a day ago, she wasn’t at our table.
I remember (in the days leading up to her birth) trying to imagine her in our lives, at our table, in our living room, playing with toys, making up stories, singing all over the house, reading, sprawled in various positions in her room or any other room.
I almost succeeded.
This is where imagination cannot match reality. Reality is a million times more beautiful and satisfying.
Happy Birthday, dearest S!
Poets have muses.
She is mine.
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I am grateful for her. Thank you, Universe!
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Daughter, #Love, #Mother and Daughter, birthdays, Gratitude, mother
Dec 8, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Why Should I Write? A Conversation
©By Vijaya Sundaram
December 8th, 2013
The child at the table, brow furrowed, writes about her day with her best friend.
Why should I write? she moans.
If only things didn’t need to be written down! she exclaims, plaintively. I have them in my head, she adds.
The mother says, Keep writing. Describe what you saw today, when you and your friend went to see The Nutcracker ballet. Describe what you liked, how you felt, what you both did after the ballet, where her parents took you and her afterwards.
Why should I write? moans the child, again.
The mother, sympathetic but strict, says, Because it’s good to remember it. It’s good to describe it all. It’s good to reinvent it. Don’t you enjoy reading? Writing is the same thing, except you’re making it happen. Write what happened today. That’s all. Write about your fun day. That’s how you’ll remember it.
I do remember it. I don’t need to write it down, says the child, stubborn, but still obedient, pencil poised reluctantly in hand.
Well, you describe everything so vividly when you tell me, so just write it all down, and then we’ll both be able to remember it, says her mother, kind, but firm, unyielding.
I do remember it. I don’t need to write it down, repeats the child.
But not seven or ten years from now, says her mother.
The girl pouts, But I will. How do you know I won’t?
The mother sighs.
Just write, darling, she says. It’s the doing and the practice that makes us get better at it, and we will look back on it, and enjoy it … later, when we’re older,
And she bends over her students’ papers. Several years of grading practice haven’t made her any faster, she thinks. Then, she thinks of the book she hasn’t finished writing.
A vast sigh fills the room.
Silence reigns.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Mother and Daughter, practice, why should I write?, Writing, writing rationales
Oct 27, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
October 26th, 2013
My daughter did nothing of note today.
She is radiant with life.
I love her madly.
~~~~~~~~~~ That’s all for now, folks!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Mother and Daughter
Sep 16, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
… except that it was lovely for me and my daughter, yesterday in the woods near our house. Here’s what happened (as I narrated it on FB):
Daughter and I took a long, two-hour walk in the Fells this evening — we got quite lost after a while, and were quite thrilled with our adventure. When we first entered the woods, we ran into an old student of mine from my first year of teaching. (Nice to have seen you today, Andrew!) Then, we went on, saw places in the woods we’d never seen before, huffed up hills and slid breathlessly down slopes, skidding on rocks, and stepping on heavenly piles of pine needles, lichen and moss, along the way. The hum of traffic receded and almost disappeared. A very mild anxiety set in when we could NOT find the main path, despite following many likely trails. I was sanguine, however. I knew I’d find my way out. Then, after a couple of inquiries I made to a passing jogger who had an i-Phone, and could check his map, we headed down a likely path. Just as the sound of traffic swelled, and the road came into view, a rabbit bounded out of the trees and sat in the brush, its dark, inscrutable eye gazing at us in profile. That was a pretty culmination to our sojourn in, and return from, the woods. Then, we reached the road with a sigh of relief, came home, had pizza and fruit and watched Red Dwarf, Episode I, Series I, and Red Dwarf, Series 3, Episode 5. Nice day!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Mother and Daughter, finding one's way, getting lost, the path less travelled, walk in the woods