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Loneliness and belongingness

PDA

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(Awakening Needs Cards Created by Linda Nolan and Karen Plumbe)

It was natural, spontaneous and normal in London. Now, we must look around to ensure no one’s watching us.

Holding hands in public? At our age? Oh my God! At any age. Strange.

A hug. Inappropriately bold.

A peck on the cheek? Unthinkable.

A quick kiss on the lips to say hello or bye. Absolutely scandalous.

“Your husband even holds the umbrella for you in the market”, an acquaintance remarked.

I had not given it a thought. “Yes. He’s very good”, I said. I was tempted to defend his actions by making statements like, it’s easier for him as he’s taller than me or it helps me use both hands to select the fruit and veg but I stopped myself. He needs no defending. I was learning about what is normal here.

Affection isn’t a thing here. Public Display of Affection (PDA) is prohibited.

Food. Yes. Gifts. Yes. Laughter. Yes. Folded hands as greeting. Yes.

Hugs. No.

A young man of seventeen studies Biology with me for an hour, twice a week. He wants to be a doctor. He showed me an MCQ that he did not understand. It was about Barrier contraception. I asked him if he had covered the chapter on Sexual Health in School. He said the teacher had completely omitted it. She had asked the students to read and learn that chapter on their own.

The next day I found myself retrieving a little square white and blue packet from the small cupboard outside the door of the local Health Centre. It was labelled Nirodh (the Government sponsored condom). I had not signed up for this, but I turned out to be the one to explain Sexual health to him.

In a society where men and women pretend, they never touch each other and it is somehow wrong to do that, how can the adolescents learn affection, let alone intimacy?

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.”

– CS Lewis.

Dad, boys and crow.

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“Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if they ever forgot things about their mother.

There were a lot of equations and transactions in their small family. One boy dreamed he had murdered his mother. He checked it wasn’t true, then a put a valuable silver serving spoon that his father had inherited in the bin. It was missed. He felt better.

One boy lost the treasured lunchbox note from his mother saying ‘good luck’. He cried alone in his room, then threw a toy car at his father’s framed Coltrane poster. It smashed. He felt better. The father dutifully swept up all the glass and understood.

There were a lot of punishments and anticipations in their small family.“

Eight years ago it was hard work and I could remember it only vaguely.

I read it for the second time this morning. It felt brand new, easy, fun and hearbreaking. Part memoir, part sound-poem. A bit more than 100 pages long. No more than 18 thousand words. The ‘missing’ in the life of a young family after the mother dies suddenly is palpable. In the background rings the sound of a crow flapping its wings. One big black feather has dropped on the ground. It lies near my right foot.  

PS: Losing a parent or a close relative or friend at a young age puts the young at a high risk of suicide.

Wolf-moon.

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Twelve years ago the word ‘lunatic’ was removed from all federal laws in the USA. It was replaced with ‘of unsound mind’.

Edgar Alan Poe has said, ‘I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.’

Emily Dickinson begged pardon for her sanity and claimed that much madness is divinest sense. Some days, sanity is a serious challenge as all I do is dart around from one home to another. I have five homes – illusion, reality, the past, insanity and my breath. I wonder if others do too. Do you have a few? Happy full-moon!

Heartless humans.

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In the interest of electrical safety, some trees had to be cut down. Luckily, not the one above as it is out of the way of the lines. I simply watched as a man scrambled up a tree with a machete and single-handedly, branch by branch, slayed it within minutes. It felt like witnessing a murder I had paid for. I wonder which one of these is more painful for a tree – to be hacked down bit by bit or to be neatly slit across the trunk with a chain-saw.