Birds and other flying things

It was carnival in Arambol recently and the theme was super heroes. This is She Hulk and Super Diaper Baby. We also had a superhero named “Lightning Guy” and then Iron Spider, which is some kind of Iron Man Spider man combination that I never knew about until Leafy held forth. I went as nothing, but Kenya insists that I am a super hero because I am a super taster, which only means that my bitter taste buds are a bit overachieving and I can’t stand beer or raw zucchini. (Or kiwi, raw broccoli, and black coffee.)

There are many different ways to have your heart cracked open and I’m experiencing quite a few of them these days. One way is by your toddling toddler, who has discovered how to move backwards off of high things and onto low things and now likes to toddle right out of the kitchen, down the stairs, across the courtyard, and into the neighboring house at each and any opportunity. The heart cracking comes from his huge, tiny-toothed grin, or him peeking around a corner to find me, or walking into the room fresh from a nap, or really anything he does at all. Another heart-cracking sight is my oldest son’s smile which splits his face in half like the sun, as it always has. These things go around and around, the children tiny and then growing, everyone lovely and sometimes annoying, but in that way that means they’re yours. These are the best kind of annoyances, the yell from a baby in the middle of the night. It means you have a maddening little person with little limbs who loves absolutely all of you. And the way our older kids are behaving in our little community here is astounding! To see them this season, sharing in the circle or greeting old friends or meeting new ones! I’m in awe of them.

“It must mean that I’m doing an okay job,” I tell Chinua. “The fact that they’re so great.”

“Or it could mean that they’re great with a lousy mother,” he says.

“True,” I say, and sigh.

(Chinua’s actually very reassuring when I'm wracked with worry over my mothering skills, but he can't condone bad logic.)

I have my own baby bird who I feed bits of potato off my plate in the absence of a high chair or any restraining device. Now we have a second baby bird who fell out of a coconut tree when the tree was being chopped out of the middle of the road to make way for new asphalt on our bumpy brown street. “Isaac is a baby animal magnet,” Kenya says. “Ever since he was born, baby animals find us.” When I say baby bird, you may think of a little feathery thing. Take that image right out of your head and insert a dinosaur-looking giant gray mess of a baby crow with a face that only a mother or a Kenya could love. His name is Viktor Krum, and we (I use the word “we” lightly) feed him with a pair of tweezers that I bought to pluck my overgrown eyebrows. I have not yet found the time to pluck my eyebrows (the state of my eyebrows is always a good measure of how much spare time I have), but the tweezers are getting good use as they drop tuna down the gullet of a bird with a remarkably large red mouth inside its black beak. What an interesting way to eat. Have you ever tried to put your mouth straight up and suck food straight down your throat? Neither have I and I don’t recommend that you do.

Have I ever told you the game the vegetarian kids play with the omnivore kids?

“We’re vegetarians,” Leafy says. “You’re flesh-eaters.”
“Flesh-eaters!” Everyone laughs.
“Skin-chewers,” Kenya says.
“Knee-crunchers,” Leafy says.
“Head-munchers.”
“Leg-biters.”

And the omnivores just sit there, because what can they say in response? Sometimes the debate does get heated, though, and I have to tell them to back off and be respectful of each other. Ah, but India is a vegetarian’s paradise, with every kind of legume known to man available in giant quantities. I was trying to get away with not cooking very much, but after too many restaurant meals led to gut problems, I am firmly ensconced in the kitchen once again. I will bean our way to health. I will be a kitchen superhero. I will chop onions until I make a pile so big I will be buried beneath it, and Chinua will have to dig me out, finding that I am mostly alright, but a little teary from the fumes.

I made lunch for community lunch yesterday— aloo tomato curry and dahl with rice and beet, carrot cucumber salad, and I love this kind of cooking. It’s nice to cook for a big crowd. Many people came over for lunch and we sat around on the rooftop in the heat of the day until I went and made chai. I get twitchy and nervous in larger groups of people sometimes, wanting to flee, but I’m praying to learn how to give into it, to be okay with a big group of people, and yesterday God answered and I just gave in and let the afternoon sweep me away. I didn’t disappear, either, (which seems to be the fear I have) instead I grew happy with the hours of conversation and with feeding people, and with a little spiced tea on an Indian rooftop.