Mother Superior!

When at home, the kids fight and whine a lot. The minute they step outside - away from the walls and the box that is the bane of childhood - to say hello to the wide open, they are skipping and laughing and running. They become, in an instant, happy kids. As for me, I start to cruise on my feet, at peace in my suddenly unshakeable belief that I am a wonderful mother.

Is it the ease infused by the soothing greenery, the caressing breeze and the open spaces? Yes, it’s Mother Nature; who nurtures and nourishes; who is wild and yet systematic; fun and full of surprises, yet organized. Like my little ones, she knows how to take dirt and mess in her stride. She knows that the slow-moving, the fleet-footed, the beautiful and the repulsive, the rough and the smooth, the meek and the aggressive all have their place in the sun.

We now live in a place akin to a village. Behind the house, there is a canal and waterlogged areas thriving with water birds, fishes and snakes. The people living in the area have not cut themselves off from the land and the animals. This is great for the kids because there’s abundant, semi-wild vegetation and apart from the indigenous fauna, hens, goats or ducks in almost every house.

What is it about children and animals? And what happens to us when we are all grown up? Why do we fall out of love with tails and wet noses, ears that twitch and bizarre guttural animalspeak; with fallen feathers and exquisitely painted fluttery buttery flies? Why do we deny ourselves that?

I can’t love like that anymore. I do say ‘Wow!’ but its only that and that‘s that. I don’t touch and I don’t stare and I don’t have to fight the temptation to stay on. I don’t love like my kids anymore.

I know what it is about children and the rain though because it’s the same for me still. When they strip down to their undies and run into pouring rain with whoops of joy, I want to too. Their lit up faces, mud-smeared legs and their wild rain dances transport me back to a time when I didn’t need a glass of vodka to make me giddy. As for Nature’s hundreds of shades of green - something that’s totally lost on the kids - it peps me up though I can’t say why.  

So when my children grow up to be guitar playing, karate chopping, biking, trekking, techno-savvy, shiny haired, smooth complexioned, loving, caring, happy women who are great with basic electronics, I do so want them “to see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower” ... even if they can‘t “hold infinity in the palm(s) of (their) hands, and eternity in an hour.”