The Motherhood Retreat

It all started with an intense search for the way to peace and strength. The search led me to this book called ‘Buddhism for Mothers’ that my friend and mother pointed me to.

In a Zen (Buddhist) retreat, one would ‘withdraw from the worldly busyness’ and learn to sit with oneself, breathe deeply, become mindful of simple things like eating, walking, bathing, etc. and sometimes sit in silence. In essence, one would learn to slow down and become intensely aware of the present moment, realizing that there is really nothing more important than that. Motherhood (especially spending the early years with one’s child) is a huge life-time opportunity for a beautiful experience. Here are all the various aspects of the retreat. Acknowledging and honoring all these made my second year of motherhood a powerfully transformative experience.

Living one moment at a time. I came face to face with my own addiction to being busy and packing my day with lots of things to accomplish. I had truly lost my ability to relax along with the ability to be fully aware of what is going on inside and around me in the present moment. Young children (whose minds are free from fear) are oblivious to the past and unconcerned about the future. They are fully present in their bodies seeing objects, people and events with fresh eyes and a sense of wonder. I am learning to bring back my attention to the present moment in two ways. When there are a few things screaming for attention at the same time, like Isha falling down and getting hurt, the water on the stove boiling, the phone ringing, the door-bell ringing, it is easy to succumb to the madness of running about in a state of frenzy, feeling like a helpless victim of the situation and cursing it. In those moments, I’ve learned to breathe deeply, taking complete responsibility for that situation, becoming intensely aware of what is required of me in that moment. This has always helped me to think and prioritize clearly, and act calmly without being flustered. There is really no moment to ‘wish away’ or ‘wish to extend’. Every moment is special and is asking for our fullest attention. The other way she helps me live in the moment is to drop what I am doing when she wants to share something with me. Not all the time and every time (it isn’t possible), but many times.

‘Living in the moment’ is not to be confused with ‘not caring about or planning for the future’. Even that planning happens one moment at a time. We travel a lot – within and outside Chennai – to people’s homes, to interesting places to explore. And there is a fair bit of planning involved in it – packing things, mode of transportation, coming back before bed time, etc. But Isha inspires me to make every thing a mindful and fun activity. No task is a chore. No moment is dull. I’m learning to enjoy packing my bag (as if that were the whole purpose of my being, in that moment of packing). Life takes on a different colour when you live it moment by moment.

Quietening down. Children are naturally quiet many times. Yes, even the most active and intense children naturally like to spend time in silence. I’ve been learning to tag along and just be with Isha when she is quiet, without disturbing it. Lazing on the bed when she wakes up, going on walks, watching the ant. It amazes me how hard it is to simply ‘be quiet’ and observe and soak in the experience without letting my noisy mind take over. These days, I don’t let go of a single opportunity to experience stillness and silence with Isha. I also think it is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children, the gift of learning to stay still and silent. Actually, they have it in themselves. Our gift to them would be ‘non-interference’ with it.

Child rearing as worship. I’m learning to see what an honour it is to watch a child grow and be a part of it. I’m increasingly seeing it as a blessing from God; a gift placed on my hands with love and trust. Every little thing that Isha did for the first time – there were at least a few every day – has been a thing of such immense joy for me. I am not talking about challenging moments, but quiet, cute, beautiful ones where children do such beautiful things. I have felt more and more compelled to drop everything simply to watch it. Like Swami Vivekananda said “Every soul is the Soul of God. Look upon everyone as God. You can only serve. Serve the children of the Lord if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help any of His children, blessed you are. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as worship.’

Every single time as if it were the first time. Children love repetition. When Isha likes a story, song or a game, she’d say ‘Once again!’ asking me to repeat it for her. And it can go on for as many as twenty times without a break. Yes, telling her the story about how the elephant went looking for water repeated twenty times. And each time, she’d listen to it with rapt attention as if she were hearing it for the very first time. When I sense irritation or boredom about narrating the story, I get the cue that I am not tuned into the present moment. I quickly learn to look into her wonder-filled eyes, let her excitement infect and inspire me, align with the moment and repeat it once again. I realize that it is very special to experience the elephant’s surprise at finding a tiny pond each time the story is being narrated. It is an amazing exercise in building awareness. I go on until my Zen-master is done with it herself.

Witnessing the miraculous in the mundane. “Amma, come look at these ants.” Actually, I’ve never seen ants with the kind of amazement that I’ve learnt to see them of late. They’ve always been around; been a nuisance. At best, they have been tolerated. That’s about it. But actually they are one of the most amazing creatures. When there is spilt food in the corner of the room and ants come to get it, we just let it be and keep watching it once every few minutes. They really clean up the place for us and leave! Isha can play with her shadow against the light streaming in through the window without getting bored about it. I am learning to see that the most mundane things can be the most miraculous.

Connecting to people: Taking Isha’s help, I have been able to connect to so many people I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Once we were sitting inside a bus in a bus-stand. A frail old beggar came up to us and put his hand up asking for alms. As I was reaching for my purse to get a few coins, Isha shook hands with him thinking that that was what he was asking for. It immediately brought such a beautiful smile onto his otherwise pained face. My eyes welled up! What an unexpected, pleasant surprise it must have been for him! I’ve seen countless long-faced people whom Isha is able to touch with her love, beauty and innocence. It is so healing to watch their frowns turn into exuberant smiles instantly! And I get to smile with them too. How often do we get to smile at people who are frowning? She connects to table cleaners in restaurants and ragpickers on the streets making them feel special. How easy is it for us adults to be able to do that?

Exploring things I’ve never done or haven’t done in a long time! Motherhood is a time to explore and get engrossed in little things that we do less and less of as we grow older, and things that were forbidden to do when we were young. Getting wet in the rain, dancing wildly to music as she’d call out to me ‘Amma, neeyum vaa!’ (please join me), singing along on the road, painting and crafting, watching the stars and really taking it all very seriously; getting really involved in life.

Understanding spirited children. Another understanding that helped me a lot was about children who are more intense, perceptive, energetic, persistent and sensitive. These children who can react strongly to any disturbance are more spirited than normal. But our society which likes ‘docile, quiet and obedient’ children who listen without questioning or disagreeing, labels these spirited children as ‘problematic’. Isha is a demanding and intense child, and very often reacts to things strongly. In spite of having a lot of freedom, being spoken to respectfully, being given choices, she is a kid who would like to assert herself, push my buttons, test my patience, stretch my boundaries, etc. just to see my reactions. All toddlers who are figuring out their sense of ‘selfhood’ do these things. And her tantrums and crying can sometimes be intense.

Understanding ‘spiritedness’ of children has helped me understand myself better. Times when her reactions are strong or her demands high are reminders for me to ground myself, take a deep breath and learn to diffuse the tension. The first step is to ask her ‘What is it?’ It helps her express what her emotional reaction is related to by pointing at the object (let us say, a book) that was taken away from her, for instance. Then the next step is to help her get in touch with what she is feeling and verbalise it. ‘Are you upset that the book was taken away from you?’ She’d nod her head. ‘Do you know why? You were very angry and were beginning to tear the book, which is not at all ok! I tried telling you many times not to tear it, but you were not in a state of mind to listen to it. And so I had to pull it away from you. Can I give you a hug until you feel ok?’ Well, she might agree or not depending on her mood. But at least, she’d soon settle down knowing that she was heard, and seeing that what she actually went through was acknowledged. And soon enough, she’d see that I was actually being reasonable. Actually, this works with adults too. Getting in touch, acknowledging and allowing the other person’s negative feelings without judging them, helps them feel at ease and become more cooperative.

Learning to let go. Conscious motherhood gives us a huge opportunity to learn to let go of our ideas about many things. Like a father of six children said “Before my children were born, I had six theories about raising children. Now, I have six children and no theories.” Each moment unfolds with its share of surprises. What she loved yesterday, she is completely disinterested today, and vice versa. Until yesterday, Isha disliked coconut chutney so much. Somehow today, she called it her ‘most favourite food’. If I ask Isha to come do something with me because she loved doing it yesterday, she can surprise me by refusing and instead badly wanting to do something that I begged her to do yesterday, which she had refused to!

Feeling and expressing gratitude. The motherhood experience in an urban nuclear family setting can make it look like it's all loaded against the woman. It usually brings up a lot of issues for me about 'being a woman'. It took me a while to reconcile the fact that the mother's role is indeed different and more intense than the father's, and to be able to acknowledge all the wonderful ways that close family members were actually being there for me. Learning to express gratitude allows very soothing life-energy to flow through you! It really deepens relationships.

What about career? Though I never had a 9-to-5 job, I did pursue my own career in ‘saving the world’. Activism (wanting to change the world from an egoic space) is highly addictive. If we don’t watch it carefully and do what we are doing from a perfectly grounded non-egoic space, it can keep giving us a ‘kick’ that we are ‘doing something very important, without which the world would go to the dogs!’ Well, I had been on this trip for a very long time. Even as recently as when Isha was only seven months old, I was actively involved in coordinating the campaign against Bt Brinjal. I burnt myself out after three months of intense action, since so much was already happening in my life even otherwise! In the first year of motherhood, I liked to believe that my life wouldn’t change much at all after Isha. I wanted to be unlike all other women, being able to do everything and carry on with life as though birthing a child was just another event in my life. Until I got burnt out and suffered exhaustion to the point of being forced to go on a retreat.

Slowing down has helped me take a break from everything to be able to reflect on and take stock of many things on many fronts; questioning my ‘work’, ‘relationships’, 'plans’, etc. Most times, all other jobs and careers have paled in front on the most important job of all times, being a conscious mother. And this retreat away from working on ‘social change’ has made me get more in touch with my true inner callings, which would not take me to any of the things I used to do earlier. I badly needed this time and space to re-evaluate things in my life. And I am grateful for it!

I personally don’t understand or feel the need for a career in my life. I know of some others who do, like being a dancer, singer and such. I am not to say what would be good balance for them! What is working for me is to live my motherhood fully, while getting short but regular breaks to do my own things.

Predictable breaks. Deciding to make my breaks more regular and predictable also helped hugely to remove anxiety. Once I started knowing when exactly to expect my space and time, I could relax more easily and be with Isha more fully. Yes, it’s absolutely important for the mother to find alone time, finding expression for things that cannot in the presence of a child. Again, let’s remember that never before in history has the mother had to spend all her time engaging with children. All said and done, it is unnatural. Haven’t we all heard our mothers say “Those days, kids just grew up on their own!” The truth is that there was an entire community of people who the child grew up with; community of neighbours and extended family.

* I hope this post does not read like 'I have attained enlightenment'. :) I have a very very long way to go. There are a lot of times that I lose it, feel frustrated, complain, give unwillingly, etc. But yes, I've wholly set myself up on the journey and it has been incredibly rewarding so far.

* Though I take a lot of inspiration from books such as ‘Raising your Spirited Children’ and ‘Buddhism for Mothers’, I find that they don’t question the larger framework of the modern society. It takes the ‘schools’, ‘offices’, ‘nuclear families living in apartments’ etc as the given and helps us with tools to cope with that living. But I think that such a lifestyle is itself unnatural and unhealthy. The way I use these tools is to find my peace in this moment, but keep my questions about fundamentally restructuring our lives from that grounded space.

* This article won’t be complete without acknowledging the role of family and friends in holding the space during emotional melt-downs, and taking over whenever I felt exhausted. :)

Challenges of conscious mothering

For about twelve years before Isha was born, I was a vagabond. Traveling thirstily to different lands to understand India and the world; meeting different people to see if I could connect and collaborate to change the world. I was preparing well (or, so I thought) to accept my new role as a mother – to deal with restricted mobility, inadequate sleep, giving a big part of my time to preparing food, feeding, changing nappies, cleaning, nursing, putting to sleep, etc. They say ‘You can never prepare enough for motherhood.’ and it is so true! Though I willingly signed up for the job, when I became one I did go through some kind of a shock; even depression accompanied by illnesses that took a while for me to recover from. Looking back, I was actually grieving the loss of a free-spirited life. We, as parents, made some choices like giving Isha only homemade food, using cloth nappies, not having a nanny or a TV, etc. which made our days so overflowing and overwhelming.

Little ones come with their own personalities and there is no way to know them before hand. They bring along with them surprises and challenges you never even remotely expected! At just one month, Isha would wiggle her way out of my lap on to the floor, ‘claiming her independence’. At 10 months, she started climbing the window grill all the way up to the ceiling. She could climb up the slide and come down all on her own. When only a month old, when I tried singing a lullaby to put her to sleep, she started screaming and wouldn’t stop until I stopped singing. To this day, Isha gets very distressed whenever I start singing (for unknown reasons) anything other than her rhymes. Music being a big part of my life, this has been very hard on me! Uninterrupted conversations with friends are almost never possible. Being a writer, when words come bursting out of me, I would almost never be able to get to my paper or computer in time. I used to beat myself up to keep up the deadlines for an article series I was writing for a magazine. Just when I’d sink into a chair to rest, I’d have to clean up spilt food or ‘poopy’, being unwell myself, being groggy after a sleepless night. It’s a very long list of things that can be frustrating, sometimes even traumatic! 

I would wait for my break every day. When I did get it, I’d get super-anxious about how I should use that precious time. ‘Should I be resting now? Should I be blogging? Finishing up my article? Cleaning up? Reading a book? Just sitting quietly with some hot tea?’ I would never make peace with whatever it was that I chose to do. No matter what I did, I was always thinking of all the other things that I was missing out on. And before I realized, the break would be over. And since there was no predictability to these breaks, I lived in perpetual anxiety about when my next break would be. Phew! It has been one long exhausting ride, physically and emotionally!

From what I have observed over many years, I’ve seen that motherhood, especially with an intense and spirited child like Isha, where the primary care has not been outsourced to a nanny or a day-care centre, can have such a profound effect on the mother. (On the father too, but that is Rajeev’s personal story.) And the nature of the profound effect depends on how the mother chooses to respond to the challenge of the critical few years bringing up an infant. In our strong areas, it makes us stretch and become stronger. In our weak areas, it really intensifies and brings up our issues and challenges us. Complaining mothers can become unrelentingly negative. Worrying mothers can become neurotic. Controlling mothers can become control freaks and nags. Submissive mothers can become more submissive to their children and spouse, feeling lost and victimized by motherhood. Mothers with low self-esteem can become more guilty and miserable and feel like losers who aren't anywhere close to being enough!

Between spouses, it intensifies issues that already existed, but could earlier be brushed aside more easily. Parenting makes them stare at your faces screaming at you for urgent attention. 

If you are wondering how all this is related to not sending children to school, here it is. Most parents choose to send their children to school early (sometimes as early as when they are one-year old) as a way to find respite from the intense experience of parenting. When children are out of sight, parents seem to have some sense of ‘peace’ at home. Isha is going to be three soon, and many parents wonder why I have not decided to get some of my (our) own time by sending her away for a few hours everyday.

The truth of the matter is that, for exactly this reason, we did try out two playschools for her, and pulled her out as we saw damage happening to her. After just a couple of weeks subjecting her to unhealthy treatment, we chose to be with her until other healthy options opened up for us.

If we choose to not get neurotic, negative, submissive, guilty or controlling as parents, then there is only one other way that I know of. It is the one where you choose to see motherhood as a wonderful opportunity to become stronger, more peaceful, more loving by going on a zen retreat, with a live-in zen master, your child. I chose that way. 

I would like to share what a fulfilling journey it has been so far! Read The Motherhood Retreat 

A day in the life of a family 'learning naturally'

Readers of my blog ask me, 'You've written about activities of a young child, alright. What about those of older children?' Here is something written by a friend and parent of two kids (eight-and-half and six years old) Hema Jain about a day in their lives 'learning naturally'.    

 

"As you know, my kids (Abhi 8 1/2 and Aparna almost 6) don't go to school. I don't follow any curriculum either to "educate" them. I let the kids' interest lead the way; I help them a little every once in a while in ways that I can. This approach is called "unschooling". Some of you have had questions for me about what we do at home all day. Here is a recap of what we did all day today (from 8 AM to 8 PM):

- breakfast (cornmeal, milk, nuts, raisins).

The kids chopped the nuts. We enjoyed the breakfast. It was past 9 when we were done with eating and talking.

- music (piano).

Aparna played the piano for maybe 20 min. She tirelessly plays her song over and over again till she is completely satisfied with her own performance. She changes the tempo, transposes the song and explores the music on her own. Abhi was playing the tabla (Indian percussion instrument). He didn't seem to mind sharing the same room as Aparna where she was playing the piano. They seem to be enjoying their music oblivious of the other one's presence. It was almost 10 when they got tired of the music they were making. Abhi wanted to play Monopoly. The kids were happy to set up the game which lasted 15-20 min. I played the piano until then and joined them once they had it set up.

- Monopoly.

We were playing a usual game. There was a lot of mental arithmetic work, permutations and combinations that were being exercised ("hey Aparna! try to give me $60 using the bills $20, $10 and $5"). All this plus a lot of silliness made each player's turn much longer than usual - I became a kid and enjoyed all that was happening. We had all the time on earth to enjoy the beauty of the moment. All of a sudden, Abhi got this (crazy) idea to take a loan from the bank. I briefly told him that we typically take a loan only when we don't have enough money for a particular thing. He didn't seem to care; he insisted on borrowing money and so I let him be. He wanted to borrow $1000 and wanted to pay an interest of 10%. Not willing live in a world with 10% interest rate, I negotiated it down to 1%. So Abhi calculated how much interest he owed. Then he asked me when we pay interest on our house loan. He moved on to figure out when he should pay his interest in this game; he thought and settled down with "we pay interest every time we cross GO (square 1)". He was so fascinated with the ideas behind loans, interest and paying back that our Monopoly game turned into some kind of banking game (except that it was all real for him). Only at night (while narrating this to Dev) did I realize that my recent trips to the bank had sowed the seeds for the banking game that we played this morning. This was till 1 PM. The game was interrupted by me several times because I was baking bread today and I needed to be in kitchen every 45 min. or so.

- music (vocal).

Aparna was humming a tune. Abhi tried to correct her and said that he could teach her that Raga. It went well for a while, but Abhi being bossy sometimes it didn't last long. This resulted in a fight and tears. They were upset with each other, but they managed to resolve the conflict all by themselves. They were back on track teaching and singing.

- Lunch. I took my afternoon (15 min) nap.

- We went to the park between 3 and 3:45; I did my exercise and they had great fun at the monkey bars.

- music (piano).

Abhi played some of his songs on the piano. I heard him transpose "the lion sleeps tonight", which was entirely spontaneous (the teacher hadn't ask for anything like that).

- cooking.

Aparna loves kneading the dough for roti. She started with water and whole wheat flour and transformed it into a beautiful ball in 10-15 min. It is almost meditative to just watch her do that.

- science.

Abhi found a used microscope at a thrift store yesterday for a few dollars. Having spent all of yesterday with the microscope and the only slide it came with, he wanted to look through more slides. But we didn't have any more. While I was cooking our dinner, he took some sticky tape and cut come of his hair and made a slide! He just loved his invention and made more slides - one with sugar and another with salt. He spent the next 40 min. at this.

- Karate.

Both of them absolutely love karate. Thanks to our teacher, Sensei Tony. Abhi took his microscope and his slides to show off to his friends at Karate. I meditated while they were at Karate. It was 7 PM when they got back.

- Dinner, bed-time reading (Aparna) and more microscope time (Abhi) concluded the fun-filled day.

I couldn't ask for anything more in a day. Every day has its own flavor. No two days are ever the same. I have always been able to cook, bake, play music, exercise, meditate, nap with them around. I am grateful for this stress-free life and wouldn't trade it for anything."

Isha's many activities

Whenever we have the luxury to let Isha choose, we ask her ‘What do you want to do now?’ Most of the times, we give her choices based on where we need to be and what we need to be doing. For instance, if I need to go to the terrace to put clothes on the clothes line, I ask her ‘You can feed the birds, or put clothes to dry, or put clips on them, or draw using chalk piece, or anything else you come up with while being with amma on the terrace.’ Climbing on the iron ladder on the terrace up to a safe point (and she knows which rung of the ladder) and coming down from the other side like a jungle gym is usually her most preferred activity while on the terrace. Here are all the different things we do together.

She measures rice and dals as we soak or cook them. She measures water in cups and pours it into the containers. Of course, she would not let go of the container without stirring the contents this way and that way with her both hands, or taking the water in a tiny spoon and playing with it.

Idli making is one of her favourite activities. She likes to oil the idli plates, pour idli batter onto them. This pouring happens in different ways. Sometimes she’d insist on pouring onto the plates herself. Sometimes she’d take a small ladle and pour out of it into my big ladle, which I then pour onto the plates. Before this activity, she’d go around the house asking everyone how many idlis they’d like to have. When we sit down, we count as we pour the batter and say “These three are for appa”, until we have poured idlis for everyone. She waits near the stove and catches the steam, holds it for a while and opens her palm to see the moisture on them. She is currently training to be able to skillfully remove the idlis using the back of a spoon (“just like how amma does”) without any piece sticking to the plate.

She puts back washed dishes into their respective places in the kitchen cupboards and draws.

Whenever I cook beetroot, we use the red juice to paint herself or on the paper. Last week, we marked a 4 sq.ft. white tile in the living room and we paint on it. It was fun using the brush and painting on the floor. We could wipe it off easily later in the day!

She uses mehendi cones which she uses to make her own designs on her left palm. She'd press the cone and allow the mehendi to flow out on to her palm, and then look at the different shapes and decide what they might be. Last week, she said she had made a ‘dragon design’. Then she'd ask me to make a design on her right palm. It almost always has an elephant with its baby (her favourite theme of all times), and a few other elements like trees, clouds, sun, etc. She’d go around doing things while carefully protecting her mehendi until it has dried sufficiently. After about 10 days, when the design fades away, we’d do another one. This activity is a lot of fun for both of us! I never knew I could put mehendi until recently. And these 10-rupee cones last really long!

We spend a lot of time preparing food and eating. Apart from her meals, she eats a lot of snacks in between. Cashews, raisins, dates, banana (her favourite), roasted gram, peanuts, almonds, grated coconut, tomato, cucumber, carrot sticks, fruits and the like – we sit together with them, sometimes have conversations and and sometimes just eat quietly. 

We cut vegetables together. She uses a blunt knife to cut only vegetables and fruits that are safe to cut, and only under supervision. For instance, she cannot cut tomatoes (for they are slippery) or carrots (for they are hard). She can cut the snake gourd, papaya, tender beans, banana and such. In the process, we may discover things together and allow ourselves to get distracted. We consciously build time into the activity for that. Yesterday, we were cutting tender French beans. I’d cut the ends and she’d pull out the fibrous string. As she placed them on the floor, they started curling up into different shapes. She started naming the pods after people in her life. Long pods were tall people like 'appa'. Tiny ones were kids - ‘Isha’ and her friends. Medium ones were short people like ‘amma, paatti’. Suddenly, she figured out that if I held onto one end of the pod and she, the other, and we both pulled it in opposite directions, the pod split into two pieces. She’d fall on her back with her piece with a loud giggle saying ‘Innooru vaatti’ (once more). After we did this for a while, she noticed a bean that had come out of the pod and asked what it was. I said it was the seed inside. Then I slit open one long pod to show her the row of beans inside. With a huge smile on her face, she said ‘Amma, this is just like how we play the ‘surprise surprise’ game!’And we slit open quite a few of the pods to see the ‘surprise’ inside. And yes, every single time it looked like she was genuinely surprised! Well, this whole thing took about an hour.

We go on long nature walks. We keep them as quiet as possible, of course allowing for conversations when they naturally happen. I would like to recount an experience here. Last year, Isha and I were taking a walk inside the forested 'Valley School' in Bangalore. Satishji (the chairperson of the school) was walking along with us. As we were walking, my noisy mind wanted to "teach" Isha about all kinds of things along the way - 'Isha look, that is that date tree' and on and on. After a couple of minutes, Satishji turned around and said 'Why don't you just let her soak in this experience quietly and make her own sense of it? She is too young to want to make use of the information about what a date tree looks like.' That gently shut me up, and his voice rings in my ears (gently reminding me) every time we go on a nature walk. I'm learning to quietly soak in the experience too without labels.

When we take the bus for long distance travels, we usually travel at a time of the day when we can get a window seat. Sometimes she looks outside the window quietly. Sometimes, she is singing loudly. Once, she was singing her favourite Tamil rhyme ‘Amma Inge Vaa Vaa’ in a fairly empty bus. An old lady sitting behind us got quite excited on hearing a long-forgotten song and started singing along. Soon, two other women joined in and all five of us were singing it a few times. And all the oldies in the bus, including the bus driver and the conductor, were smiling and humming along. It was quite an experience.

When we go on walks in our neighbourhood, she goes on speaking out loudly. She stops by dogs and cats (any animal) and talks to them. Watchmen and maids (resting under the trees and in front of apartment complexes) start conversing with her, and whenever she feels spoken to respectfully she stops to spend time with them. It is so beautiful and healing to watch them connect. Some of these older watchmen from the village also have a childlike innocence. They can smile from their hearts just as easily as they can get upset about things. A short walk of half a kilometer to the next road can take about an hour or more!

Watering plants, sowing seeds, scrubbing and washing clothes, sweeping, mopping – Isha likes (I’m sure all kids like) to do them all!

While waiting for the bus, we play games like spotting different colours and shapes around (on trees and sign boards), for instance. We make up stories with some standard characters (like Krishna and her friend Papu) doing different things that are mostly known to her.

I make playdough with wheat flour, and she can play with it for a long time inventing all kinds of shapes and things to do with it – putting it on her nose like a clown. Her imagination is endless.

The beach sand and water can keep her occupied for hours together! The sand can be anything from ‘the rain’ (when poured down), ‘sambar’ (when she stirs it), 'a hill' (when she piles it up) to all kinds of fascinating things.

Of late, she’s started playing with two-dimensional toys. Our neighbour kids have drawn a whole lot of pictures on the terrace floor using the chalk piece. Isha likes to go up to the terrace and play with these imaginary toys. She’d ask ‘Do you want a fruit salad?’ And then go “pick up” imaginary oranges, apples, pineapple, grapes, “pick up” the knife and "cut them up" into an imaginary bowl and offer it to me and keep some for herself. “Do you like my fruit salad?” she’d ask. The other day, she picked up a story book. It had the picture of a dog sleeping on his bed in his room. She said ‘Amma, I feel like going into that room!’ I said ‘Go! What’s stopping you?’ She smiled, turned around, placed her head on the page, closed her eyes and said ‘Now, I am in that room!’ She made space for me and said ‘Amma, lie down and close your eyes and you will be inside with me!’ I did that. Soon, we were living in that room doing all kinds of things. She said “shhhh… quiet. The dog is sleeping.” So, we whispered about picking up this and that, sitting around, examining the curtain in the room, playing with the soil, washing our hands in the wash basin (all of which were in that picture). Wow, I had never done that before. It was fun.

She gets to play with kids downstairs, and visit friends, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and spend time with them. She has unique sets of activities to do with each of them. She loves it when we have people over (which we often do!)

She has learnt to use the scissors quite well. Whenever she is around and I need to open a fresh packet of something, she gets to cut it with a pair of scissors. Yesterday, she skillfully held a real vessel with tongs and was pretending to make tea for me! 

I could go on writing about all the stuff we do, but by now I hope you've gotten an idea!

Now, if you add to all these fascinating and fun times, moments of Isha's tantrums and moments of my impatience and need for alone time and space, only then would the picture really get completed. :)

Now, where does a mother (or father) get all this time and patience from, to cut beans for a whole hour, or stop by every stray dog and cat? And how can one person give all her or his time to being with the child, however fun the activities are? Won’t he (she) need his (her) time? What about their career? In my next story, I’d be chronicling all my challenges of choosing to be the person who spends most of the time with Isha, with Rajeev stretching himself with all his available time too. (By the way, Rajeev has a unique set of creative things he does with Isha. If he gets enough inspiration to write about it, I’d post that too!)