How do you explain physics

… to a little boy who can’t understand why his buildings don’t take the fluid, fantastical shapes he wants them to?

How do you watch each little failure as the shapes collapse and not break your heart over the disappointed droop of a baby mouth?

How do you control your heart from exploding with joy as he figures it out himself and makes stronger and taller buildings?

How do you suppress that twinge of disappointment when you realise he is giving in to what is logical and possible instead of realising his wild and crazy shapes?

Is it silly to dream that someday he will conquer physics and gravity and all the rest of it and create things that we deem impossible today?

Oh well.. a fond mother is allowed to dream and pray and encourage and support…

The little girl has a simpler solution. If the building blocks don’t do what you want them to - just eat ‘em.

 

Two steps ahead

They were at the dinner table at the end of a long day.

Soft music, good food, kids tucked into bed. Discussing their day.

He tells her about the deal he is working on.

She tells him what the kids have been up to, what some idiot troll had to say on the blog and which appointment got cancelled, holding up the article she is working on.

Dinner done, they move on to dessert….

He looks up casually and nods at the centrepiece on the dining table. ‘That looks nice. Smells good too. Good job babe.’

She nods absently, finishes the last bite and starts to collect the dinner dishes.

He grins pointedly.

She ignores him - pointedly.

He grins wider. ‘I foiled your plan didn’t I?’

She, grumpily - What plan?

He: You were waiting for me to leave the dinner table so that you could go for the jugular and tell me I don’t notice anything you do around the house. Weren’t you?! I knew it. So I decided to let you sweat it out till the end of dinner before I appreciated it.’

She stomps away in a huff.

Damn the man for always being one step ahead.

This is the centrepiece that was the cause of much heated discussion in case you care… a few summery buds in a wine glass.

 

A holiday in the hills

… yes, yet again! But this time with the kids. Was it fun? Well if you’re stupid enough to choose a rustic, close to nature vacation on a farm that is rocky and unlandscaped, with kids, during the monsoons - then you can’t complain. We’re okay. Arms are tired and aching. Throats are sore from yelling COME BACK AT ONCE!! NOT SO CLOSE TO THE EDGE!!!

Fortunately we went with friends and its always reassuring to see the cute little boy you usually see asleep, running around and jumping off the bed while his mother pulls her hair out and his father looks drained. Its reassuring to see the normally quiet, well behaved little girl pick up a plate at a restaurant and throw it purposefully on the floor or whine and cry for hours on end. Ah - you say - so I am not doing something wrong - all kids seem to be naughty. So may as well sit back with something tall and cold and enjoy the babyness…

I share with you, some pictures.

The Bean and Joy baby on the luggage cart…

(The Brat watches butter-byes while the Bean picks flowers…)

(The Bean watches raindrops form ripples in the little drain outside. It kept her entertained for an hour)

(The Brat digs in and cooks lunch for us. Yes, I had to chuck those jeans when we left.)

(Joy baby follows the Brat up a slope - his mother’s heart is in her mouth. Maybe I should have got a picture of her instead of him!)

(The Bean makes her own way. Fearlessly. Even where adults stumble.)

(Give a little boy a stick, open space and some goats to chase - and he’s achieved Nirvana. Just don’t attempt taking him back home after that… You’ve been warned.)

(Synchronised baby throwing - we’re practicing it to take to the Olympics. Mine spoilt the pic by comng down too soon - mainly because I couldnt throw as high as the other two… )

(The OA takes over both his terrors around while wife tries to vault over the bamboos)

 

Let’s talk about sex baybee!

… let’s talk about you and me,

let’s talk about all the good things

and the bad things that may be.

Didn’t you just love this Salt and Pepa number? If you’re my generation, that is! I remember blasting it at parties and wondering at what point my parents would come out and shut the whole shebang down. No, they didn’t. Ever. God bless them!

So actually I was feeling rather bashful as I planned this post - because it was about .. you know.. sex! And then I was all - what the hell - I have two kids and there’s only one way they could have got here - so it’s too late to get bashful! This has been a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while. No..not sex… well partly. Gah. Okay. Let’s go back to the abortion thing. Yes, I know you think it’s done to death but hey - my blog, and I’m still thinking about it, so …

Life, sex - all important things. All, I’m beginning to think, things that seem to be losing their value. Now poor Carla Bruni is back in the news (when is she not?!) for having confessed that she slept with 15 men before she married Mr President. Setting off debates on how many is too many. Really - is that even a question one should be asking? How do you set a limit on it? If 15 is too many - then is 14 just perfect? Or if going into two figures is sacrilege, should 9 be the perfect number? Does anyone who has a higher headcount than 9 immediately slip down the morality ladder? Its possibly the stupidest thing I’ve heard of. This lady is a little more lenient in her thinking and yet I can’t seem to find comfort in her argument either. I’m don’t condone sleeping around indiscriminately - there’s got to be some mental connection - and if you find a mental connection with 85 people… err.. maybe we need to redefine the mental connection thing too!

And then I read this piece and they want to know how ridiculous is too ridiculous. How far would you go to spice up your sex life? Well how about this - how ridiculous a question is that?

Far be it from me to diss your S&M choices, your sexual preferences or anything. I just want to know where and how a line can be drawn! Who draws the line and says ‘Alright - you can tie me up with stockings and put on some edible underwear and blindfold me with a leather belt and dribble chocolate syrup on me- but that champagne you want to drink out of my navel - that is just pushing it too far. According to The List.’

In all the attempt to ‘keep the spark alive’, be a yummy mummy’ or an MILF or ‘do it at seventy’ - we sometimes forget the main point - the act of creating life.

I kept getting embroiled in the darn abortion debate and using all the wrong words and ended up saying things I didn’t mean. I’m going to give it another shot today. Bear with me. A wise teenager gave me clarity of thought and I owe her. And this comment by Sudha convinced me that I should go ahead with the post I was toying with in my head, regardless of what readers think.

So maybe this is a simplistic way of looking at it. But we seem to have lost the integral connections between sex, birth, control, life, death and abortion. Sex becomes only something we do for pleasure, forgetting the organic link between having sex and creating a new life. Abortions are just a way of getting rid of that inconvenient foetus that is totally the contraceptive company’s fault - or just the result of a drunken, poor protection night. I don’t want to get into debates on which week the foetus magically becomes an entity or go backwards into the theory of how even sperm can be considered life. I plan to be totally emotional here and I am not at all ashamed of it.

Yes, yes, sex is also for pleasure- in fact for most people, only about pleasure. And no, not everyone has sex to procreate. But you can’t totally ignore the fact that its meant to procreate too. And that a natural consequence of sex is procreation. In fact while I don’t really believe in them, abstinence-based contraceptive methods preserve the organic link between having sex and creating a new life. On the other hand, hormonal options like the Pill take that link away, and pregnancy - instead of being seen as a consequence of sexual intimacy - becomes a sort of betrayal by the contraceptive. That link between sex and life helps keep things in perspective. Not just whether your body is ready, or whether you are emotionally ready for the way it changes things between you and your partner - but also - are you old enough to deal with the fact that this is the act that creates a new life?

Its something I feel we should be teaching the next generation. It’s something we’ve forgotten. I can’t stop my kids from having sex when they choose to. The best I can do is ensure I din the concept of safe sex into their heads. But I do want to also point out to them that to be responsible is not just to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancies and STDs. But to realise that this act they’re indulging in, creates life. And a new life is not something to be taken lightly. Neither should taking that life be taken lightly, no matter how much the abortion laws change.

Now to make it very clear, I am not of the opinion that we all skip birth control and go around populating the earth like bunnies. I believe in taking care of my body and my children to the best of my ability and if that means two children and no more, then so be it. But it also means that if I were to accidentally get pregnant right now - I’d be in the midst of what rightly deserves to be called a dharam sankat - anyone know the appropriate English word for it? Dilemma just doesn’t cut it.

I wouldn’t be able to shrug it off with a - ‘Oopsie, the f**k up fairy visited!’ It would really really rip me apart if I had to choose not to do it. And so - while every time we get into the mood I am not really thinking ‘What if I become another statistic!?’ - I am still very aware that this is the act that creates life.

I am going to quote in part, a comment from this post - We’ve begun to see consequence free sex as a fundamental part of life. We’ve come to think of pregnancy, not as a joyous new beginning but as something akin to being struck by lightning or getting cancer. Failed contraception is a terrible accident - and so we should not have to deal with the unexpected and undeserved consequences.

Here are some disjointed thoughts - I think we all need to be a little more aware and a little less hedonistic. All those self proclaimed foodies - food is good. Fine dining even better. So live it up - but don’t forget that the original purpose was not to please your taste buds but to fill your stomach and to give you nutrition. Don’t in the pursuit of pleasure forget the original purpose.

Sex is good. Its fun. But it is also meant to make babies - so be careful. Don’t forget that link. An accidental pregnancy is not just a contraceptive f**k up. Its what is bound to happen when you have sex. Its what is MEANT to happen.

Babies - are what we make when two people love each other and are committed to each other. And I think you need to think over the consequences of making babies. There is a good chance that they will have some defect, some shortcoming. But if you chose to make a baby - then it might be a good idea to accept and love it for what it is. Because it was your CHOICE.

For those who didn’t buy the argument against a society that is headed towards making designer babies - here’s something you might want to read - perfectly healthy women going in for IVF so that they can choose what kind of baby they want. From centrifugal spinning of sperm to douching with baking soda - parents are desperately trying to control the whole baby making thing. Apparently just the ability to make a life is not enough - now we want to control the gender, the IQ levels and physical fitness….where will it end?

I’m still struggling with my pro-choice, pro-life stand - but do read this post for its clarity of thought. I am not Catholic and I am not in favour of abstinence based forms of contraception - but I like what the blogger says about our changing views on sex and babies. On our inability to respect the power to create life and the magnitude of taking life.

Oh - and here’s a warning - anyone who decides to try the religion angle and attack me personally - I will delete your comment without a thought. So anything else important you might have to say - will be lost in WWW. Be polite and respectful and we can talk.

I’m reading this post through once and I can see it sounds a little preachy. And confused. I’m hoping for more clarity over time and as ever, from you guys. So be generous. Tell me your views. Share with the rest of us, what you think about life and birth and sex. Go on. Just be respectful to me and to the others. Anyone who isn’t - oh well, you know we’re capable of ripping you apart! Don’t make us!

And no - I am not done with this yet, so expect to hear more on it.

Disclaimer: A friend kindly told me that she has no idea where this post is going and has read better stuff from me!! As have some others. I agree. But I am trying to clear my own mental garbage and hoping for clarity. its a work in progress. Maybe in some years I will have a better idea of where I stand. For now, bear with me. If you wanted organised, clear posts - this isn’t the place for them anyway

 

Differently abled

…but definitely able. Yes, I am back from vacation but we will talk about that later.

While I was away - poor Niketa lost her baby. I can only imagine the trauma… God bless the poor child’s soul and the parents. A baby that kicked and turned and made her dream. A baby that had a heart defect and put her through the trauma of having to make that hard choice. A choice that has now been taken out of her hand. While the country and judges debated and made statements, God or whoever you believe in, made the right choice for her and her family.

They say that feotuese that are terribly disabled, don’t make it. You miscarry. It’s nature’s way of selecting. It takes the decision out of the parents hands and in a day and age when there was no technology to determine disability, this is the way they were spared a life of indiginity and pain.

The most recent issue of Outlook carried this article by Ranjana Pandey - on bringing up her daughter Devika - a Down’s syndrome child. She is also the founder of Jan Madhyam - an NGO that works in the disability space. I read the piece close on the tail of all the debate we had over the rights of a foetus and where one would draw the line as you begin to discern disability in utero.

I recently went for a friend’s son’s birthday party and was admiring this beautiful young girl. Actually envying her youth, poise, lovely eyes, perfect features and the confidence with which she carried herself - as I ran around struggling with feeding my children, dishevelled and hot and bothered. She played with my kids and then went on to serve dinner, ate and left with her family. My friend told me later that this was a cousin she often told me about when we were in school - she cannot speak or hear. Deaf mute. The parents had this child and tried again hoping for a child without any special needs. The second daughter is the same. They stopped trying for kids after that and worked on ensuring that the two children are equipped to deal with the world and well integrated. And what a success. The two girls have excellent jobs, make themselves understood, can speak pretty well and are not even bothered with the marriage market.

All this makes no sense to those who don’t realise their background. These are girls from lower middle class families from small town UP. Their families don’t want girl children and if they have a girl, start gathering dowy and hunting for prospective grooms really early.

It’s rather trite to use that much used and abused word ‘inspiration’. It’s cold comfort to have a stranger walk up to you and tell you that you are inspiration to them - when actually you hate your life on certain days as you change diapers for an almost adult child or help wheel them across the road. And yet - what else can you call them?

I read this piece and reproduce it here for you.

——

Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994), the superstar Olympic athlete who was discovered to have polio at the age of four. In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games, despite running on a sprained ankle. The fastest woman on earth, Rudolph elevated women’s track to a major presence in the United States and was known in America as “The Tennessee Tornado,” in Italy as “La Gazzella Nera” (the Black Gazelle), and in France as “La Perle Noire” (The Black Pearl):

“As a child, Wilma was underweight and sickly, and also special and spoiled–not an easy circumstance in the boisterous family of railroad man Ed Rudolph and his wife, Blanche, who together brought home less than $2,500 year and lived without indoor plumbing in a dusty red-framed house at 644 Kellogg Street in the poor and black section of Clarksville [Tennessee]. … The Rudolphs had twenty-two children between them, although only eight together and rarely more than that number living with them at one time. Wilma was the fifth of the final group of eight. Her siblings, competing for attention in the cacophony of the overstretched household, did not begrudge her the time and care she needed, though they groused that she never had to do the dishes and teased her for being a crybaby.

“During the worst years of Wilma’s childhood infirmity, they took turns carrying her from room to room. They massaged her polio-crippled left leg four times a day and were part of the troupe accompanying her down to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, the nation’s leading training hospital for black physicians, for heat and water therapy on the one day a week that their mother, a maid, did not have to work in the large homes on the white side of town. ‘The trips to Nashville, we would always go to the Greyhound bus station and get on this huge, big bus, and it seemed like such a long ride to Nashville because of all the stops in between,’ recalled Yvonne Rudolph, her older sister. ‘We would go to the hospital, and it seemed like a huge building, so different from anything in Clarksville. Wilma was shy, and sometimes she would just cry because she didn’t like it at all. But we kept telling her that it would make her better and she would feel better, and she would not always have to wear the brace. I think that’s what really kept her going, because she knew one day she would not have to wear it.’

“As Wilma later described her early childhood, she was depressed and lonely at first, especially when she had to watch her brothers and sisters run off to school while she stayed home, burdened with the dead weight of the heavy braces. She felt rejected, she said, and would close her eyes ‘and just drift off into a sinking feeling, going down, down, down.’ Soon her loneliness turned to anger. She hated the fact that her peers always teased her. She didn’t like any of her supposed friends. She wondered whether living just meant being sick all the time, and told herself it had to be more than that, and she started fighting back, determined to beat the illness.”

David Maraniss, Rome 1960, Simon & Schuster, Copyright 2008 by David Maraniss, pp. 207-208.

————-

I read all this and while I hug my kids close and thank the Lord for their health and the teeny setbacks I face with them

And then I can’t help but admire the success these differently abled people make of their lives. Regardless of economic background - Remember the boy going to IIT in a wheelchair?

Their parents didn’t have a choice - and sometimes when you don’t have a choice, you work hard and are a success and an inspiration (gak! uninspired word) …