Walking Home

Sometime, perhaps a week ago, I managed to coax Raghav to get out of the house with me.....just a few errands around our complex...it's been long since he stepped out of the house just like that with me...

The wind was strong that day, catching us in the gap between the two tall buildings, pushing us and whisking us. We smiled....we laughed....and held hands as we walked through it, with it, together.

"Amma, the wind has woken me up.....I was feeling sleepy before we came down....but now I am awake and so full of energy....I love the way the wind is pushing me," he said, his face lighting up like a bulb.

A few minutes later, we were at the office to hand over the cheque for maintenance. Grim, morose men looked at us. A few minutes later, overhearing a part of the conversation, I realised that they were in the midst of some argument of sorts....someone was being pulled up for something they had done or not done. I waited for the receipt and walked out with my son, thanking them with a smile. There were no smiles repaid.

We decided to take a peek at the clubhouse to see if the swimming pool renovation had been completed. While we were walking there, Raghav suddenly told me this: "Amma, I was feeling very tired at that office. I don't know why. But just before that I was feeling so fresh with the wind."

Words rose up to flow out. But something made me stop. I held them back and simply listened to him, acknowledging what he had shared with a simple nod of my head.

What was I trying to achieve by wanting to share my interpretations and opinions?
Why should I put thoughts into his head?
Why should I get him into this whole mind game of wondering why he felt that way, finding reasons, etc.?
That was all part of my drama. I needn't drag him in.
These were the thoughts that filled me. And I simply stayed with them.

Yes, I do have a sense of what happens with him. I've felt that for many years....that he is very sensitive to the energies of people around him and has kept away from some people because of that, although we have never talked about it. I simply trusted him and his sensing and didn't force him to explore things and places that he didn't want to. But I don't need to tell him all this. These are my feelings. I want him to develop his own sense of things....by listening to his own body.

Funny that this happens at a time when I am myself reviewing spaces that I am in......looking at my motivations and interests, whether I really want to be somewhere, how I feel in my body in those spaces....and sifting and cleaning up the spaces around me and within me. I am learning to listen to my body all over again, and to see how my mind comes in the way of that.

And it looks like we are on the same journey - me and him......our starting points may be different....but we are always walking each other home.

Minecraft and We Come Alive!

Of late, Raghav has been asking a lot of questions about his body and I kind of sensed what was on its way.....but never in my wildest of dreams did I think that it would come up through Minecraft!

Here are some of the questions that came up from him just before he was getting ready for a bath a few days ago:
What are these two things? (feeling his breast area and nipples)
Why do men and boys have them?
Why are they different for women?
Why does this (pointing to his penis) stand up erect after I go to the bathroom?
I have seen you 'nanga panga' (naked) many a time, but I haven't seen your thing (my genitals). How is it different for you?
Why do only men have these two things hanging (pointing to his testes)? I know they are the testes and I think they produce the sperm cells. But why don't women have these?
Does it hurt for babies when the umbilical cord is cut? Why do they have to cut it? Won't it just fall off by itself?
I think there are more girls than boys in the world. Is that right? Why is it like that? Why are there not equal numbers of both?

These were questions that I don't remember asking anyone while I was growing up. No one talked to me about growing up, puberty, sex and my body. All that I remember is that my parents handed me a book on sex education when I had just started my periods I think. And that was that. Most conversations on these topics were with school friends and our Biology teacher (he had an awesome sense of humour by the way, which freed us and our thoughts and feelings). Somehow I don't remember being so curious about my body and asking so many questions. Perhaps school and being with friends (it was a co-ed school from KG till the 12th) took care of all the curiosity. So in many ways, I am grateful to Life for not giving me experiences that 'conditioned' me (at least to a large extent) in a 'negative' way, at least in this one aspect of my life. I formed my own opinions about my body and my sexuality. And so I was able, today, to share my thoughts and some knowledge with my son with a pure innocence, without thinking about what I should tell him and how. However, I also remembered the day Raghav came back home from school and sobbed and sobbed asking me why he was not allowed to sit next to, hug and talk to his best friend (who happened to be a girl), when all he was doing was showing how much he loved her.....just like the way the three of us hugged each other at home.....and he was all of four then!

The questions for which I knew the answers, I gave him. I felt it was important to name all the parts by their 'real' names first. So that was what I did....and for the rest, reminded him about BrainPop, the Kidshealth.org website that we often go to and the Human Body Encyclopaedia that we have. And also suggested he have a man-to-man chat with his father when he came back home. Most often, I find that Raghav just needs this little nudge or a pointer rather, as to where and how to look or find out, and then he is often neck deep in whatever he has chosen to explore :)

He then went on to explain to me how he had seen a video on Brainpop about how sperms are produced and how when the egg meets the sperm, an embryo is formed. Then the conversation flowed to AIDS, what it stands for and how one gets it. In all this, there was no talk about 'how' exactly the body fluids meet and what actually happens. But I let that be and decided not give him what he did not ask for now.

I also had a feeling after this barrage of questions, that he would very soon ask me if he could see my genitals, as he has mentioned that before in passing. That is going to be a huge test for me and I also know deep down that I have to face the fear that I have about that. But I also feel that it is better if he asks me and I can tell or show him, rather than his getting misinformation from somewhere else some day. Not that that would make a huge difference, because we are all anyway constantly unlearning stuff! But I would. I would want to if it comes to that. However I feel about it now.

I also remembered a conversation some of us had at the special school I was working at years ago, on sexuality and the disabled. I remembered how a mother who was also on the staff rolls, shared with us how she would not hesitate to help her son masturbate or seek sexual gratification from a prostitute even, instead of curbing his natural urges. That conversation has stuck in my head. That opened up so much for me. And I am thankful to that truly magical place that has given me so much in my life, made me question everything that I believed in, and constantly spurred me to think and see things with new eyes.

Today, while we were driving for our weekly veggie shopping, instead of listening to music like we usually do , Raghav decided he would talk about a Minecraft Mod. The name of the Mod was "Minecraft Comes Alive". And what was that about? Marriage, having children, relationships, happiness levels, doing chores, and much more!
"Yes amma, this is much more real than the other mods," Raghav beamed, and went on to explain what one could do with this mod.
"But I don't understand why you would need to get married to have children. I mean....marriage was invented by humans right? It is not something of the body.....the body does not say - ok, now marriage is invented, so I can reproduce or have children...I am sure and I know that before marriage was invented people must have just had children....just like that," he added.
I agreed and also shared how some people adopt kids, how some people have kids and then get divorced, and so they are no longer 'married' in that sense, and how some people just have children without getting married at all. But I was quite baffled with his previous comments and asked him how he knew all that about marriage.

"I have been to marriages before haven't I....with you? I know because I have seen what we do in them....we have all those ceremonies and stuff.....all that has to be man-made right? But it is not what the body asks for is it?", he said.
"Yes....what does marriage mean to you then? How are babies born then?", I prodded on.
"I don't know....but I know that marriage is man-made, and that you don't need to be married to have children.... and when the sperm cells somehow are around the female, babies are formed," he added.
I smiled, realizing finally that this was the innocence of a child speaking. He knew so much and was even able to think through so much on his own and form his own opinions, and yet he did not know how exactly the sperm and the egg came together to form a baby. And so I told him. I gave him the word for it and explained how a baby could form - how the male organ had to get inside the female organ. We spoke about periods and how that was linked to the egg being produced. We also talked about what the chances were of girls and boys being born and why, connected it to pollination in plants and the countless seeds that a plant produces just to help it survive, how nature works and does whatever possible to make things survive.  Then he brought up 'happiness levels' and how villagers in Minecraft could go away if their happiness levels get below a particular point. And we spoke about how in the real world, we choose to stay on or walk away from relationships and why, how we don't always seek an easy, quick solution to a problem, just because we are unhappy and so on. He also wondered how the children in this Mod, can walk and talk and understand words, just soon after they were born! "How is that even possible amma?", he asked. And we laughed....at the realism and unreal-ism in Minecraft. What a conversation that was!

I am grateful to Minecraft for bringing these topics up in a fun, light way. I guess it made my job all the more easy, although I never dreamed that this talk would actually happen in this way! :)
I am also grateful to Life for showing me the way yet again, to trust my child, and trust what he wants to learn and how. I know that many more questions will come up, now that we have dug into this mine, and I will wait for them patiently, knowing that he will ask us without fear, and that Life will show me the way.

I just have to trust Life completely. I just have to wake up to being real and alive, messy and human, innocent and vulnerable, as many times as Life asks me to. There is just no other way. For me.

Pain

"Why do we feel pain? Do you know?"

The question jumped into my head from my son, who stood behind me as I was busy browsing something on my laptop this afternoon.

"What is our body trying to tell us through pain?", he continued.

It came too suddenly for me to respond coherently. And anyway, I need time to think through before a response forms inside. So I told him that while I thought about it a little more and found the words to share, he could tell me what he thought about pain and why we feel pain.

"I think maybe it is a signal....telling us that the body is hurt.....it protects us. I also think that pain tells us that the body is already starting to heal," he added.

"So you feel that when you get hurt physically, the pain that you feel is actually useful, because it is telling you that something is wrong, that you are hurt, and also that the body is already starting to heal?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

And then we went on to talk about how each of us experiences pain differently, how we have different levels of tolerance to pain, and about the pain we feel inside when we feel 'hurt' because of what someone has said or done.

It was a lovely exploration for both of us. I liked what he said about pain telling us that the body is already doing what it can to heal itself. It left me with so many more questions - some that had come up earlier, but which had sunk back into some forgotten corner of my mind.

Why do we want to get rid of pain? 
Why do we go to a doctor? 
Why don't we trust our own body and its capacity to heal when we are in pain?
Can we ever get to that space however great our pain?

As these questions bobbed up and down inside, I realised that physical pain is actually something that I feel only in the moment. The greatest physical pain that I have felt up until now - labour pains and  pain during childbirth - is something that I have no physical memory of...that is, however hard I try to relive those moments now, I cannot remember and feel the pain now as I had probably felt it then. My memory of pain is only through my feelings, emotions, visual images or words that are associated with that event.

So then, what is pain? 
Why is it that I do not remember 'pain' as pain? 
Is that in itself telling me something? 
Is pain just a reminder for us to get back into our body, stay with it and trust it? 
Is it a way of letting us know that all we need to do is to be aware of the pain and our body? 
Is it telling us to just stop what we are so busy doing, to just slow down and 'rest' into life or what is happening?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and I am okay to not know. Maybe I will discover something about it as I go along and live my life. Or maybe not. As of now, I am happy to stay with these questions and see where they take me and my son. He will learn what he needs to about pain and so will I. And every now and then perhaps we will meet to check and share what each of us has discovered about it and ourselves. What a beautiful way to live that would be!

So what is your relationship with pain?
What is your story of pain?