mother

Stroller Talk

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 4 Comments

I am pushing the stroller over city sidewalk.

We bumble through discarded cups.

“The earth is our mother.”

Why did I just say that?

“She gives us a place to live, food to eat, water to drink.”

Four year old ears listen to everything.

She chews on my words with her teeth.

She tastes something fishy.

“If the earth is our mother, who is our father?”

Damn! Keep pushing, keep moving, keep talking.

“The Sun! He keeps us warm, he gives us energy. And light!”

I am a genius. It’s all wrapped up in a neat package.

The wheels rattle and I scan for bumps in the concrete to avoid.

She spits it out. It tasted ok, but something in the texture was off.

“I don’t think the earth is our mother.”

I swerve to avoid hitting the tracksuit in front of me.

“It’s not?  What do you think it is?”

When in doubt, turn the question around.

“It’s a planet.”

Shit. She’s good.

“A planet is a planet.”

The wheels continue to rattle in my head.

Thank goodness we’re almost there.

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NaPoWriMo 2013: Day 2

Asha’s Sisters

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 3 Comments

Felissa was the first of the three. She lived a million miles away  in California. Melissa came later. We will have a playdate with her one day. Jafortu was the last, named after the label  J42 on the back of a plate, no story.

“Felissa is visiting her grandmother!”

“Melissa was mean to me in school.”

“Jafortu likes mac n cheese just like me. ”

The sisters were always nearby but never quite here.For six months, stories of their likes, dislikes, comings and goings, speckled her 4 year old chatter.

Then last week:

“My sister’s are dead.”

“Oh no!.  I am so sorry.  That is sad.”

“It’s OK.  Blankie, Puppy, and Other Asha are my sister’s now.”

A woven blanket. A small stuffed dog. A brown skinned, black haired puppet. Holdable, huggable, here.

THE SISTERS ARE DEAD!

LONG LIVE THE SISTERS!

 

 

 

Skin deep

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 6 Comments

I am driving the minivan. My four year old daughter is behind me, strapped into her booster seat. A purple balloon rises up from her wrist, a bottle filled with candy in her lap, her eyes still wet from goodbye tears, her voice twittering with excitement, exhaustion, and complete satisfaction.  We are on our way home from her “best friend”s 5th birthday at Pump it up.

A: “Kensington is my best friend mommy!”

Me:  “I know. You told me!”

I love talking to her when she is like this.  This time in the car becomes more special every day, now that I am working full time – now that she spends long days at her suburban pre-school.

A: “Kensington is 5 mommy! I am 4. But she’s my best friend! She’s in my heart.”

I melt when she says these things. What words will her 4 year old brain spin out next?  I ask a question, waiting to be dazzled or amused, to be impressed with her smarts, or chuckle at her silliness.

Me: “Why is she your best friend sweetness?”

A: “Because she has the same skin color as me. Can I have this candy tomorrow?”

My voice catches in my throat.  My brain goes blank.

Me: “Uh huh.”

Should I say something more?  Is it ok that she is choosing best friends based on skin color?  She has moved on to talking about The Wiggles, and something about flying to Mars with her baby doll.  But I am stuck. Skipping like a record.

Of course, I had noticed at the party. Asha and Kensington were the only non White-skinned kids there who were not members of Kensington’s family.  Both of them a golden brown tone, children of mixed parentage. Kensington’s mother African American, her father Latino.  They both played with the other kids of course. They did not band together, or isolate themselves. They did not self-segregate.

This moment is pregnant.  It has meaning for me.  We are moving to Philadelphia, exploring neighborhoods, trying them on for size, one a weekend,  our little family of four, one White, one Brown, two Golden.

Who do we belong with?  Where  do we fit? On a busy street in one neighborhood, I am the only brown skinned person I see the whole afternoon, except for the Parking attendant.  We are strangers to this town but does that mean we should feel strange?

I feel strange when I am the only brown person in the room. It’s no one’s fault. No one has to be doing something wrong. I just feel strange.  I search the room for another brown skinned person. I have done this for as long as I can remember. Then I know I am safe. I am not so strange.

Now, I know my golden-skinned girl child feels something like this too. I thank goodness for my question and her answer. I thank goodness for these moments in the car – these windows, these mirrors. I am certain now, I must find a someplace where we fit. I must find a place we all can be. Perhaps strangers together, but together, never strange.

I drew two pictures

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 1 Comment

I drew two pictures, just like the book suggested.  I was home alone, beads of sweat pooling in the crease between my thighs and the swell of my baby-filled belly.   The crayola box was covered in a thin layer of  dust.  I selected brown and red and peach and yellow, blue and gold and pink.  I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.

Fear: I drew a dark, windowless room. I drew myself lying on a bed. My big, brown bulging form was strapped down by black wires and cords. I drew two women near me and colored their  faces peach and gave them long blond hair.  I drew word bubbles rising from their mouths. “#*?! ”  they shouted.  On my right calf muscle I drew a large red X.

Hope:  I drew myself sitting up in bed and my husband Jon next to me.  I drew a brown-skinned woman smiling nearby.  I drew a river flowing out from between my legs and a small brown baby floating atop.  In the air above the baby, I drew a star.

A few weeks later:  I sat up on a delivery room bed at Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago and  pushed.  The room was bright.   I closed my eyes and went inside myself.  I sensed the people in the room: my husband, my blond nurse, and my friend Sandhya.  My right leg spasmed and I shouted incoherent commands to this team of supporters. “You!”  I pointed frantically towards no one with my eyes closed. “Rub my leg! Up! No, down!  Left. More left.  No. Outside!!”  I felt hands on my leg, easing the cramp into a dull ache.

The nurse’s voice warned me of the next coming wave.  “Focus on your bottom!” Words you only hear in a delivery room or at the gym.  I breathed in deeply, standing somewhere inside myself in the dark, wondering who this child would be. “Do you want to feel the head?”  I reached down between my legs and felt a patch of hard skull covered by soft hair no bigger than a quarter. I wondered why my baby’s head was so very tiny.  I imagined I was pushing out a small doll. It seemed very doable.

The doctor appeared between my legs.  “Hi Aarati, I am Dr. Starr. Your baby is almost here.  Let’s get another good push.” I pushed my soul against hers, willing her into the world. I felt a sudden gush, a rush, and thrust myself against myself. “Wow! That’s a lot of water! Here she comes!”

Asha. Hope.  Kimberly. From the meadow of the royal forest.  The hope from the meadow of the royal forest was born.  All hail brown-skinned, all hail pink-skinned.  Born on water and under a star.  She is here, she is here, she is here!

 

 

S.A.H.M.

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I never thought I’d be one.   I didn’t exactly plan it, or want it. It just made the most sense. Three months after earning my Ph.D. and becoming Dr. Aarati Kasturirangan, I left the world of the career-focused and became an S.A.H.M. – stay at home mom.

Now, I stand at the edge of my time as a S.A.H.M. I  I have sang silly songs, kissed boo boos, run races, and wiped bottoms day in and day out for 4 years.  I cannot say for sure whether or not being a S.A.H.M has been better for my kids than if I had been a full time Ph.D.

What I can say  for sure is this: I am not the same person that I was before I became a S.A.H.M.  For four years I subverted my own intellectual needs in order to be the primary care-giver, for better or worse, or just for different. I have woven my children into the fabric of my being.  This new me, now steps into a new role. No longer S.A.H.M, but firmly grounded, career building M.O.M.

What will this look like?  I hope it will go something like this.  In the midst of an important  meeting, when I am feeling frustrated, tired, and at my wits end,   I will hear a small voice in my head,

“Knock, knock.  Who’s there?  Pee!  Pee who?  Pee ewe, you farted.”

May the wisdom of the S.A.H.M. stay with me always. There is no problem so big that can’t be solved by a good knock knock and or fart joke.

On your marks. Get set. Go!

 

 

Helicoptors, Rainbows, and Quakers, oh my!

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 2 Comments

I am a helicoptor hovering, at once in motion and still.  I slowly push forward. The landscape beneath me is shifting slightly, but I am still here, waiting. I have plotted the course. The maps have been drawn. The gas tanks are fueled.  I can see the destination in my minds eye. Change is afoot.

Like all the changes that have come before, I felt the signs first.  My heart wandered away from the present into the future.  My brain churned through the possibilities.  My body grew heavy with the burdensome weight of the now.  Something new was calling to me.  “Begin the next chapter. This part of the story is coming to a close.”

The signs shifted from internal to external: tarot cards, dreams, spirit animals, unexpected books, songs I hear in passing, the unsolicited wisdom of an acquaintance.  The collective unconscious made manifest  is my guide.  This is part of who I am, how I navigate.

My six months ago tarot cards were clear. The cards said, “You want to reengage with your career.  Tough economic times will make for stiff competition.  You will struggle. You will need to be patient.” The last card, the final outcome in the reading was TEMPERANCE; a picture of the Greek goddess Demeter pouring a rainbow from out of a cup.  Demeter, goddess of seasons. Rainbows, the rare moment when rain and sun combine and show you the pathway to a new world unseen. 

I have not seen a rainbow in years.  I can remember most of the raibows I have seen. This summer there have been three. The first came in June, on a road trip to a the wedding of a close friend.  Driving from D.C. to Connecticut, we begin the passage through Baltimore and the air is a misty soup. Suddenly we see it to the east. A double rainbow spanning to entire sky.  Vibrant, unbroken, it stayed with us for over an hour.  My children’t first rainbow, the first augury of the summer.  Change is afoot.

The second  and third rainbows came a month later in the land of rainbows: Hawaii. It was a family reunion in paradise,  a memorial for a my husband’s grandmother, a once in a lifetime trip. Another double rainbow welcomed us as we drove off the lot of the rental car company onto the mountain highways.  The next one hung lazily in the sky the evening that my husband and I were out celebrating our anniversary.

After months of waiting, wishing, struggling, and stoking the flames,  the fires have been lit. Though I sit in my condo in D.C,  still at home, caring for my two children, my mind wanders into the now near future.  A job  in Philadelphia. A new job for my husband.  A period of transition living with my parents in Delaware. Then a new home in Philadelphia, a new life for my whole family.  Signs pour in more quickly now. I will be working for a Quaker organization. The words of an old friend, raised in a Quaker family, spring to mind, now full of meaning. “The way opens.” The new chapter has begun.