A. M. K

Starting over is not easy. I suppose I had underestimated how it would make me feel. When I saw the message from the class teacher saying he had been, not just pupil of the week but pupil of the quarter, I cried.

The last day of his nursery school had been a difficult one. I woke up not knowing what I would do, even though I had thought about it for a week, I didn’t have time to prolong my decision making any further. Both children had been sick during the weeks before. There was a virus going around that had not just been the usual cough and flu but stomach upsets too. An evening spent outside the paeditrician’s window and an a.m. trip to the hospital had not been enough. That morning, the little(r) brother was fast asleep in my bed on one of those nights where he had struggled to sleep. It had been fever after fever some nights before, so watching him fall asleep peacefully as daylight came, I let him.

They both needed the rest but I thought the older one needed a proper ending – a closure I suppose, since he had been there longer and being a little older, I thought it would have much more meaning to him. I had not known just how much the mind of my two year old had been impressed upon by school- its routine, the lively songs, the dancing, the activities, the people, registering them as ‘home’ long after we had left and even after the significant changes in all that he had known. Maybe, it would make sense then, that he would hold onto the familiar as an anchor.

The decision to formally call an ending was also because soon after the end of his last birthday, the older one had started planning for his next birthday- it had to be a Spiderman cake. He also had a list of who would or would not sit at his birthday table.

Birthday parties at the nursery school were untamed joy, drums by Teacher Halima, silly dance moves, bare soul wishes and parents forced to live in the moment with the little people who loved them the most. Now, with only two or three days notice, I had told him that this was his last week at school and that he should say bye to his friends.

There is only one place you can rely on to have a fresh full good enough cake on an early morning, an oasis attached to a petrol station that has revolutionized dining in the city. One moment, I was driving home and the next I was driving in the opposite direction of my route, weary from the voice of logic that would not let up. It was beyond my budget, unplanned, and careless, because I would telling the teachers about this big change which my own mind had left hanging and unresolved.

I handed the cake to the headmistress. Her eyes fell briefly when she realised what I was there to do, then she composed herself and immediately called a party in the classroom. The way she pulled everything together with kindness and calm was bad for my nerves because they suddenly felt at home. As they set the tables, called in the other upper class stream and started dancing, I noticed as I had before, the same confidence, eagerness to celebrate and not least of all, the same dance moves that all the students who had gone through Teacher Halima’s baby class had. “It’s okay,” one of the teachers said as she handed me the box of tissues on one of the short colourful desks; but standing there by the headmistress, I could not stop the tears. Day one didn’t seem so long ago, his first encounter with school. I suppose this was an early graduation day. I’m the parent. I’m the parent. I’m the parent. “I don’t know why I am crying,” I said aloud. She turned to me with an assuring smile and said, “This happens more than you think.” “Really?” I asked, looking up at her, eyes welling up again.

The thing about pregnancy

The thing about pregnancy, is that it has a way of peeling back the layers; what you know, what you love, who you are. I wonder if it is because carrying a whole life inside you, there is no space left to hide. Labour, is even more honest, the physiological release of a nine month inward experience, an other-worldly end and rebirth of the mother, a climax, a resolution.

Thunderbird

Moving from one place to another is something, moving from one world to another is something else but moving from one school to another, even though it is a microcosm of both, seems harder to me. I had held them all close to me, the one inside, the two outside, especially when the eldest moved from his first new school to the next, I had held my breath for weeks on end perhaps. One first day of school is difficult, but two first days of school is turbulent.

On the day he received the award, his father run into the house after picking him from school, dropped what he was carrying onto the floor and then run back outside saying, “Wait wait wait”. Then he came back in carrying the little boy up above his chest, jumping up and down, chanting, “Thunderbird! Thunderbird! Thunderbird” I joined in. “Thunderbird!” He joined in too. His face shone. Looking at them rejoicing, pieces of our journey to this moment came to my mind. I also remembered a strikingly similar moment in my life sixteen years ago. I hugged him and went quickly away to hide. There are things that are hard to explain.

…

A little later that evening, I sat with him to tell him that I was very proud of him but that, I was also proud of him even when he was not the thunderbird. I hoped that he understood.

“Keep shining.”

… when does it stop being trust issues and become life experience?

why is cutting an avocado very difficult for some groups of people- cutting it with incredible trepidation with a knife as big as a panga?

…”[B]ut hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently”

What does it feel like to be kicked when you’re down?

It feels like the end.

I had made myself smaller than I had ever been and still, I was not small enough. I looked around me and found nobody but the young people we had created. Where I had put my deepest reliance, the desertion was strongest. Then, one by one, the rest began to leave.

The wind was strong with whispers, and there were those who came to witness it, those who wanted to make certain of it and those who carried it like a final damnation as far and wide as their tongues could reach to whomever cared to listen. It was sweet and comforting to them I suppose, yet offering no lasting satisfaction. Regardless, my command remained the same; wait.

Voices they once knew and loved never came up anymore. They heard them drive in and then as they started dancing with glee and careless excitement, they were gone again, almost as soon as they entered. Tears from a confused little heart. I trembled. Now chastised as intruders, they received only offerings of confirmation of a perceived destitution.

The new shoes I just bought. I can’t find my black shoes. The toys that were just here. Questions as loud as conversations unheard.

I jeered at the bed which had become a place of torment- my torture chamber, I called it. It was filled with grotesque dreams, of people I once knew, of things even the inverse world of a dream could not explain.

So I fought back, and my nights became like the sound of violent rain and thunder, like hundreds of people quarrelling with their God in strange utterances. One night I stood up, boldly as I do, when I have no other choice, and walked into the shadows shouting the only name I knew to shout.

The children did not wake up. Except, a few times as I trekked the ghastly streets of my subconscious, on the verge of something sinister, the cry of the younger one broke through the night, just in time, as if he knew to cry in that moment.

I had wondered what I would do, now that I had stripped away one part of my identity. Then I realised that, that part had been lost for a very long time.

I slept whenever I could. First, in the searing heat and humidity of the first five months, in the house alone with a stranger in my kitchen, in the afternoon during school holidays; but sometimes, even in the day, my body awake but unable to move, I was once again completely accessible to whatever it was that was seeking me, or so it seemed.

I love you but I can’t do this anymore. I’m all alone. I’m scared. I’m tired.

Hang in there.

For what. What am I waiting for?

The bird upon the window pane, as naturally as one picking its feed, flew away with the message it had heard and the wheels were oiled and kept turning.

It was 29th May, the first day back to school. I was reeling from what the diagnosis said was a deficit of iron. I played a song of triumph and it led me to another and another. Finally I found, a group of people singing, dancing and rejoicing with a trumpet, drums and shakers, and their joy and assurance compelled me. They called it the Hallelujah Challenge. So I joined them every night and I slept until it was time to drive to school again. I didn’t mind.

Everyday that ended, brought up the pain and anger that had been pressed down into the depths of me. Then the challenge ended and it was as if all hell had broken loose. I was in and out of hospital with the children, rushing through the streets at the a.m. times when wild dogs get knocked. Then it came for me too and I fell.

Help came from the dry brooks, in places where I no longer expected it; and this time it was constant when I was certain it would wane. On the second night with the pipe in my veins taking antibiotics to my body, I sat up and spoke. My voice was crisp and clear. The connection was unfettered.

And just like that, it was time to go. We travelled with the honour and grandeur of those esteemed, beloved and wanted.

You said that You would never leave me nor forsake me.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified … for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Author: A. M. K

Thunderbird of the Quarter

Hope