Jan 25, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Meditations Upon Walking on Solid Water
©By Vijaya Sundaram
January 25, 2014
I had never walked on water in my entire life. Today, with quaking heart, I did.
It wasn’t too bad. It was lovely, in fact.
To think that there was a pond filled with water which teemed with possible life, which would, in springtime and summertime, have ducks and geese, and frogs and fish, which now supported my weight, and sang it’s safe, it’s safe to my internally trembling self!
(I was fine on the outside, although I wanted to get on it, go across and back as quickly as possible. For, despite all the assurances and reassurances by my husband, who said, “I grew up near a lake, don’t worry, this pond is frozen solid, look!” and jumped on it, all my cells shrieked, No! It isn’t. Don’t!)
My daughter, intrepid and impatient with me, said, “Come on, Mom! It’s great! See? And she walked on ahead of me, following my husband.
I knew that she was anxious for me to enjoy it like she did. So, I put on my brave face, and squared my timid shoulders, and did.
Something interesting happened then. I wasn’t afraid, anymore. I put my trust in my husband and my child, and walked on solid water. Ice is interesting. It has personality. It has stillness. It is mysterious, a presence that could be either kind or cruel. It was kind to us today. No betrayals lurked beneath its opacity.
Then, we went back to the main trails in the woods where we were walking. We walked in companionable silence punctured by occasional inconsequential chatter in the dark stillness of the night-time woods, lit by snow. We heard the creaking of an occasional tree, as we wound our way up to the very top of the hill in the woods.
There we stood on snow-covered rocks, and looked down on the intermittent shoals of cars, exotic fish of gold and red streaming towards us and shimmering away from us on the highways far below. The lights of the city gleamed jewelline in the winter night. A faraway airplane took off, glittering into the sky, from the distant airport.
Our daughter is a child of winter, and a child of these woods. The woods are hers, that hilltop and its tower belong to her alone (also to us, by extension), and that pond we walked on has been part of her consciousness since she was about twenty-two months. She gazed around and exclaimed over and over, “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it?” And she sighed and sat on a snow-covered rock, gazing into the night. My husband and I murmured in agreement, as we stood and gazed out, eyes saturated with the lights of the night.
Permanence is an illusion, I know, but I like to think that these words and that pond are part of the permanence of her memories. I want for us to build a universe of memories. These will sustain her (and us) through what is sure to come in the future, because the future is always jealous of the present.
And the present is our gift from the Lords of Time.
____________________________The End___________________________________
Tags: #Daughter, #Father, #Memories, family outing, illusion, mother, permanence, Time as thief, walking on a frozen pond, winter walk in snow-covered woods, woods at night
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:
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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.
________________________________________________
I am grateful for her. Thank you, Universe!
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Daughter, #Love, #Mother and Daughter, birthdays, Gratitude, mother
May 12, 2013 Kitchen Table Anecdotes, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Morning Silliness (A Kitchen Table Anecdote)
©By Vijaya Sundaram
May 12th, 2013
(Cross-posted on my FB page, because I really didn’t have time for a special blog-post this morning, nor any yesterday, it being a morning-to-midnight full day out of the house yesterday):
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A few minutes ago, at the kitchen table, a scene that was strangely satisfying to me (as you can see, my life is seriously lacking in entertainment!):
W (my husband, after I teased him about something): You never let me have ANY fun. You mock me in my infirmity.
(S, our daughter, is watching seriously, not sure whether he and I are being serious or not)
Moi: Never. I never want you to have ANY fun. And besides, (randomly) you cannot say “miaow” like a cat.
W (in a horribly deep, stentorian voice, because he REALLY cannot mew): MERWWOWW!
Moi (Collapsing with laughter): Choke! Gurgle! Snork!
S (getting it and joining in the horrible hilarity at poor husband — I know, I know, we’re terrible!): You sound like a begruddled cat, Dad!
Warren and I, not in unison: Wow! That’s great! Disgruntled and befuddled.
Moi: Get me to the InterTubes!
W: Our child is a neologist!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Daughter, #Father, Family silliness, kitchen table anecdotes, mother, neologisms
Mar 24, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Ramblings about Courage and Fear
©Vijaya Sundaram
March 24th 2013
My daughter is in the next room, playing “My Grandfather’s Clock,” which my husband is teaching her on the guitar, and it’s sweet to hear her trying to keep her composure while learning something new. She’s sounds good, very good, but she doubts herself at times, and that’s part of what she is learning to figure out.
This is because learning anything new is an unnerving thing for her in some ways, as it is for many of us, although we grown-ups have, through years of practice, managed to stifle that feeling.
Or, should I just speak for myself and my daughter?
Oddly enough, this is what makes her (and me) try new things, almost with a defiant upthrust chin, as if to say, “Well, so what if I’m afraid to fail at this? It doesn’t matter! I’m going to try it (although I might protest, weep and moan along the way)!”
So, she sails into new things now, with a much more cheerful, confident air than in the past, because the past informs the present, and the present gears itself up for the future. So, she is able to look back, when I remind her, and see how she’s changed and grown in all the things that used to cause her nervousness or outright dread. Children always want to triumph over their younger selves. That’s the only form of competition worth pursuing.
And I can try and give her a little bit of the wisdom I’ve gleaned from my own personal learning experiences.
Teaching myself guitar, finding a sitar teacher, applying to college in a city where I knew no one, except my family … all of these were things I felt proud of accomplishing, because I had conquered an unnamed, deeply buried fear (and I won’t bother analyzing why that might be — it might just be encoded in my DNA).
Flying solo to America only twenty days after having married my husband, who had had to return a day earlier on an already booked ticket (from having come to stay for a year in India) — that felt like an act of courage. Leaving behind my family and everything I had ever known, and flying far away to greet an unknown future in a new land where a whole new life awaited me was exciting, yes, and caused me a pang of pain, yes, but I felt quite valorous beyond all that.
Finding work in a place where I knew no one and nothing — that felt like a leap in the dark. Sure, I spoke English and knew rock n’ roll, jazz and folks songs, but that had nothing to do with the real America I met, so different from the America I read about. I remember I seemed and felt confident, but had nightmares those first couple of years. Here was a recurring dream: A faceless beast chased me up and down a nightmare house in my dreams, caused me the utmost terror for several nights, but one night, I had had enough. In my dream, I said, “Enough! Time to actually see this beast.” I turned around, and to my astonishment, the beast melted away. There was nothing to face. (How clichéd and symbolic was that?! That was quite a good nightmare, come to think of it!)
When I played music on the streets of Cambridge and in the subways of Cambridge and Boston in the 90s, and performed music with my husband in concerts, I felt brave.
Leaving my job after nearly ten years, and enrolling at a nearby well-known college for an M.Ed. in Middle School English was a leap in the dark. I had no idea whether the job market was good or not. Applying for a job immediately afterwards, learning to learn from, listen to, and teach, American teenagers, so different from any I had encountered in my own country — all of these acts were like falling out of a blue void, with a parachute, yes, but one that I wasn’t quite sure would work. It did work, of course, but I had to work harder than I’d ever done in my life.
Looking back, I remember feeling suffused with a blend of immortal strength and mortal terror. This new world, this new life was strangely scary and quite absorbing. I was fascinated and confident, nervous and diffident. I immersed myself completely in whatever I took on. And I felt strong and invincible through all the fears that seemed to dog my footsteps like that dreaded beast in my nightmares.
(Taking on new things does not extend to certain kinds of activities, however. I draw the line at skiing, snowboarding, skydiving, swimming and surfing. In fact, I will eschew many dangerous physical activities, because, for some unfathomable reason, strange as it might seem, I like being alive.)
Courage comes in many forms. We know that.
My daughter is brave. She learned swimming (which I can barely do), and went through it all, even though she absolutely hated it at first. She likes it now and swims quite well. She was nervous about learning to bike. She bikes well now. She was frightened of stilting. Now, she absolutely adores it.
She was nervous about learning to read, but she has loved to be read to since she was a baby. I read to her endlessly, patiently, lovingly. Suddenly, between five and a half and six years of age, she became an inveterate and passionate reader on her own. Now, she reads Asterix, Tintin, the first Harry Potter book (I’m not allowing her to read the others on her own yet, although she can), James Thurber’s short essays, A.A. Milne and Enid Blyton books, the Wizard of Oz, Heidi, and so on, apart from reading books about the elements, American history, astronomy, dinosaurs.
She was hesitant about learning Indian dance, but didn’t want to give up when she began. She is devoted to it now. She didn’t want to join the local Drama / Theater place (I don’t know anything about acting, Mom, Dad! she said. Try it. If you don’t like it, we’ll stop, was our response.) The result, of course, was predictable. She really enjoys her Drama Club. She didn’t want to learn guitar, although she has always been highly musical, and sings beautifully. She loves guitar now, and plays it well.
So you see, a pattern emerges. It sounds trite, I know, but seeing my daughter take on new things (with our encouragement) brings it home afresh to me: Face your fears. Don’t give up. Who cares what the world thinks? It’s what you think of yourself that matters most. Learning to love learning, and loving life matters most of all.
My daughter doesn’t like to quit, and neither do I. We hate to think of ourselves as quitters. We love to learn. We love life.
And she will go on to face more complicated fears than the ones I faced, because the world tilts always in that direction.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Daughter, #Learning, Face your fears, home-schooling, mother, parenting, struggling
Feb 10, 2013 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
I am, first and forever, a dreamer of dreams.
In the real world, I am a teacher of eighth-graders.
I am a wife and a mother.
I am a musician, a singer-songwriter, a guitarist, a sitarist, a poet and writer, a keeper of beats, a tapper of taps on the side of objects.
I wander in dreams a lot, except that now, I have to be practical and proper, a mother and a teacher in the real world. Leaves little time for dreaming, but I persevere, I persevere.
If I had my way, I would never wake up. Never. I love sleep, as one would love a lover. I never get enough sleep. This is a crazy world we live in.
I would love to find my way back to the stars, whence my atoms formed themselves. I would love to curl up inside the tiny compressed state of mind known as the darkness before the Big Bang.
But enough! Welcome to my blog. Leave me a note letting me know who you are, if you feel so inclined. Be gentle.
~Vijaya
Tags: Big Bang, dreamer, mother, musician, poet, Sleep, teacher, writer