Tag: Daughter

“No, blood does not matter anymore”

We have had tea together a thousand times in these cane chairs facing her curry leaf tree and windows hung with old silk curtains.

Sia is a good woman with friends and folks who love her; why wouldn’t they, she is not just strikingly entertaining, she is one of the loveliest persons I have ever met. Dark long classic almond eyes in a determined oval shaped face set in wheat gold skin you want to paint! ( I’ve tried painting Sia and will try again; she is a hundred stories and I must wait to capture all their colours, oh she’s generous with comment and has booked a canvas from my battered easel). I was saying though, beneath that nice surface is soft steel, easier to break than I suspected possible.

“I should not insist on being loved by my only sibling, but uhm, who said blood is thicker than anything else? It is a liquid and it can dry up like a forgotten river.”

Sia talks that way between better days, so I’m not all surprised, and yet today the moment simmers like her eyes: they brim with aloneness.

“One should know they are not needed or loved anymore, but I still hang on, I follow my sister, I wait for her to come home, I remember our childhood too much, now…it changes? Because...?”

I have not one nice warm thing to say. Her gold lemon tea with mint leaf waits in white ceramic; I cannot breathe, her hurt has to ebb. It doesn’t.

“..is alright,” she continues as if she heard me. “Let’s have that mint from my herbal pot, hehe!”

Just when I was settling into her sorrow she turns into the rising sun.

“You know, Ray. I do not feel bitter anymore?! They do not want me, that is fine. We fight for those we need to keep. Once that is not there anymore, what is the fight? How is the painting coming up?“

“What painting?!” I ask without thinking and her face blows up in laughter. Without warning, Sia Mayben is a skyful of crackers!

“This is what I love best about you, girl. You are not picking problems, you do not care, you walk in a Light that is not the sun.”

I do?

“…and there’s a God and He loves you, loves me. My entire life I hate Him, but He never leaves. Never. Nah….Yem! ” She says that for ‘yes’ occasionally, it’s her unusual upbringing; I will never know where she totally grew up in. She sounds like ghettos sometimes- raw, dismembered, and then she is a fountain of healing.

Today for some reason I’m the cause of her healing? I said / did nothing, but the woman isn’t listening. At 80+ she’s earned that right. She talks about her dead sis like she’s there in the next room, then she turns into the Psalmist.

I promise to finish her painting as soons I get more time between comforting Kitsy our second daughter whose Crayfish ate up her beloved Molly– I didn’t dare tell her ‘I told you so’,

Oh but I did tell her,

that, and our youngest fantastic blind 21 year old declaring hatred for his walking cane-

yes, must paint Sia. She is the color of an earth poised to smile: the blood in her runs deep as a river that never forgets. Did her sister really not love her? I’ll never know – Alzheimer’s is a deadly treasure trove.

Though, it makes Sia all the more a mystery to peer through – at a world aching for rest.

“Blood doesn’t matter …” Is a sentence laced heavy with truth. I know at least 2 adopted human beings whose love is not enarmoured by genetics.

Weaving my way back home between Bipolar auto rickshaws and pre- monsoon showers pelting the sidewalk, I can’t help feeling Sia’s feelings. Yem. There’s more that matters, than just blood.

Not the easiest job in the world, ‘momma hood’, but the perks!

_{^{Today, outside her old School, our lil girl and I}}

I had made an error! Wrote my own name wrong in an important document; let’s spare you the details.In the half hour, we seriously request School Admin to bear the burden of an errant momma’s mistake, oh no I couldn’t do the Legal route, I’ve never even seen a Judge, like in a court room, help. They finally look me in the eye with compassion, I could hug the lady but she’s wearing the steel armor of School Admins, though with a tender smile that says this document is a School leaving certificate and will need endorsement by the State, so. I can’t imagine anyone more powered than the young lady in powder blue sari and curled bun at neck nape. She could run for Prime Minister; I’d have melted by now at a momma’s misery, though she’s right y’know. Mercy & justice meet and kiss as I finally exhale: they are going to “see what they can do.”

Yessssss’m. Hadn’t I prayed just this morning, and hadn’t the God of Moses Himself told me this was a Red sea, but it could part at the power of prayer? Did I have the faith of even a mustard seed? Maybe. Maybe a hundredth of a mustard seed, a shrunk one!

As we leave school campus, there are teachers and bus driver who chat with Kitsy; School Principal is an angel, National Treasure I’m telling you. They didn’t want to send me away with a big No, they were kind.

When last had an Academic Institution spent that much time explaining a tangle?

Yea or nay, Judge, no Judge, whatever route this takes, I love these people who felt my heart pulse in my ears.

Hmm, things like this still make me turn into undiluted pulp. Like when their school socks, or shirt had a stain; when homework was not done, a lunch box missing, ugh, bus pass misplaced, a text book lost.

Old familiar feelings run through me, like lost sheep returning home. These were / are simpler troubles compared to the monsters staring us down this day and age: neighbor nukes, pandies( pandemics), bills in parliament… Ouch prices of this and that.

I’m resting, enjoying the panic of years that gently eased themselves out of our schedules: early morning frenzy between kitchen and front door, ribbons, badges, dog eared books and excited kids running back home with news they had to spill before properly getting off the bus…

Kitsy and I head back home as she exhales, “Oh Ma!”

Two words she uses on a whole variety of occasions; today it is wreathed in a peace I so admire in her. She’s a strong girl; where’d these kids learn to be so composed and calm while I’m swinging off the earth in great big arcs?!

we grin without words, at the way I am, then discuss how being a mom (and daughter) is being a mountain mid valley, a desert in an oasis and vice versa, a river, a drought, an ocean, an island, a forest, a volcano and a mighty rain fall all in one.

We have momos, a bowl of Thai soup.

“Ma, my treat,” she says. What can I say.

Pieces of God

Her eyes sparkle then dim as he walks out and leaves her to pay their bill. I didn’t dare take a pic while they were there.

Next to us a couple (late 30s?)….her eager smile full of pink lipstick; his laughter, …careless? The Cafe reeks of a few worlds the names of which I try find, they’re there in my sensitivities.

Another couple exchange photographs in their mobiles, then he stares long at his phone; she beams at him, waiting, then looks at me. Her paper thin cheeks crease in a smile that reveals one broken tooth, was I imagining that? What do I know except that we are pieces of a Life too complex to understand just yet and yet, aren’t we each fantastically full of pieces with or without God.

I ask our eldest daughrer Vi, why Cafes draw me so hard and she grins back, “Oh its stories…ma?” Hmm,

this is real, raw; they unmask certain some unseen things?

One solitary diner talks into laptop, two humans across the long low roofed cafe huddle in peppered ponytails and bright colors, a couple with resting faces burrow into gaudy salads:

people with words, or none, via a miracle of timing: we have coffee together celebrating a victory, a sadness, Hope…

Outside, before our flyover:

👇🏼

images mutate, then sink like rats in the sewer. Old crinkled velvet chair seat: it will go to dust. There will be new furniture for someone…

a flower seller insists we buy her 2Roses. Kitsy our second daughter returns one rose to the girl who flares with the indignity of that. The dignity of Humility, oh. She receives her Rs 50/-, not thinking she could’ve priced it a bit more; didn’t dare offer her another note, her jaw defies pity?! This is new in my country of a billion contrasts and every contrast falling in me like a psalm;

like pieces of God brewing our attention to detail: perhaps we have misunderstood a few events between here and heaven? Perhaps what we call pain and suffering are truly Bridges into God raw real, screaming for Peace with man….

Woman

_{Not just raised as}_suns:

_{if you were sat in a chair in a room with closed door, your light spilt out Thresholds}.

_{You did school, college & scrabble: got triple scores & blanks, double dares and heart break in crosswords where you}

^{wrote Lyrics of Peace}

✨

_{Nah, you were/ are not only as sons}.

_{You, He calls “…} _{Pillars of the palace”}*.

^{There will be bows of white satin &} ^war,

^{there will be love} ^and ^dances ^and ^chances

^{to seek treasure in Pain; uh games of gain,}

^{of songs} ⁱⁿ ^{Gethsemane Gardens}*

^{where the Root of you~ will blossom o’ernight, as Lilies}*

✨

_{Suns might fall in the sea but Woman, you}

^{were summoned to breathe by the breath of God} :

^{from the womb of the crust of the dust of stars:}

^{lest you forget you are} ^{first born}

_Natives _of _The _Light. _of_Lights.

^{Lest you forget}.

***

^{Innerdialects}.

” daughters as pillars of the Palace ..”(psalm 144:12)

Hosea 14 :5:

“_{^{I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots;his young shoots will grow. His splendor will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.}}

_{^{Gethsemane (/ɡɛθˈsɛməni/)[1] is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus underwent the agony in the garden and was arrested the night before his crucifixion. It is a place of great resonance in Christianity. There are several small olive groves in church property, all adjacent to each other and identified with biblical Gethsemane.}}

The Greatest Human Need*

You see It* in naked mouths, in burdened markets, in death cells & cathedrals; we all await the same thing.

I saw It last week in a wee apartment & momma with sick child,

saw It crying in the Street yesterday outside a Cafe: a man sat in Crossword puzzles; his face sunk. A couple in phones, not touching shoulders like Love sits; she refused cake, he shrugged, got a green mango ice cream, the silence only stopped now and then when the happy eyed waiter grinned. He grinned as he walked between polka-dotted giant cups perched in high wooden open cabinets and acrylic fern;

we diced snakes & ladders at this Cafe called Narcos. Hmm. No drugs, just us in chilled sweaters and hungry for chat as mothers and daughters can be when needing to know we are loved – no conditions, no time to comb hair. There was that need, to taste a satisfaction…..

a diamond waiting to be sharved (just made that word) ;

It….is like Water waiting to Fall, like a Niagara e’en. We say, What. That….! But we turn into terrorists at Traffic messes, we become brooding hens over interruptions, we snarl at headlines, and run like headless chicken when ignored. Oh and this – we absolutely evangelize on the meanness of God when there’s an earth disaster, then we build Cathedrals of mistrust….

It was there yesterday at Happa Stationers‘- guy in dull red cap o’er few flat locks, he strung them over his shoulder, his face dead-fire, as we traded notes for exam accessories for my Kitsy,

she with eyes like stars over an unknown future. Some people are Bearers of Good. They go like a Lighthouse searching the dark:

Clover grass ‘neath step at Stationers.
Pic Courtesy : Kitsy Ruth.

****

we retrace steps back home, the sun is warm in our cold toes. Yea an Indian cold. Cold enough to shiver my pigeon;

am scared to read the papers – they lie face down in a jute bag under chair turned to the trees outside, as if asking these skies for Noah’s rainbow;

today’s unopened Times sun bathes next to Rosie, with her 50+ tiny spiky leaves and rose pouting…..

like us Humans rearing for relief.

We’ve schooled our Self to hiss like serpents in gardens of Grace. We rap our own knuckles if we fall prey to God’s Love. We skid, stop stare like rabbits caught in headlights, stammering- afraid to give in to Humanity’s best-masked need:

(Terrified of what we do not know, what we do know holds us safe among ‘relatables‘; eaters of edible bad news);

I saw It Staring at me via a Cartwoman selling tomatoes. No Cross tattoo in her throat like some of us Church goers host, no prayer beads except rich busy fingers at brinjal and coriander leaf, like she were a branch off Him who made her veggies! As if there was nothing to fear. Yeah her purpose to be the Bearer of Grace.

Yeah I can talk of Love and Valentine trophies all day but if I didn’t receive this Thing, I wouldn’t know how to give it. ‘IT’ …a 5 lettered word one sees best on a Hill far away.

Soon we’ll be doing Lenten fasts and Anthems to woo It back in our lanes, aye Grace– lurking in corners like a lost Lover, a jealous one, aching to forgive, bless, heal, restore, love:

aching that we believe *Its reach, Its depth, Its width, Its unfathomable Power to raise the Human Spirit from the Store Rooms of hell.

Yea, yes- the most under-rated, least accessed, the Greatest Human need there is- Grace:

Love always follows. No matter the odds.

Grace : unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b : a virtue coming from God. c : a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.http://www.merriam-webster.com › grace

Thankyou & looking forward!

Okayeeee! My first attempt at this, shaky albeit, in our messy:) creative space at home; but needed to say thankyou and too, if you’re on U tube – will be putting out Vihan’s Debut album EVENING WITH GRACE, the best in contemporary worship music I’ve ever heard! Description in Utube has a bit on that.

It’s a season of gratitude in my heart and home, gratitude to friends who’ve been so supportive, and God, the source of my Joy!

I’ve been writing a bit more than usual, hence the quiet days here at Innerdialects. However, I might be trying to talk Vlog here. Let’s see how this works. Happy thoughts, but let’s see. My heart is full of reasons to say thank you Lord God! It’s been an insane year for us all as Nations, but also a season of inner dialogue…. for me, and for you too I guess? Hmm. I had to absolutely conquer my fear of the camera to do this one…. for my little girl who does every possible thing she can to get me going! ‘Evening with Grace‘ happened to her all in one evening as she sat with God: 9 songs in exquisite arrangements and vocals (all hers!)that make me cry everytime I hear snippets in passing as Noe and Vi edit these beauties. I’m blessed to be able to put this out.

Thankyou dear Blogging community for every Like and Comment or Read,

in a time like this one, this space has been a Den of Joy for me. God bless you for being there, and for being who you are, fabulous!

Vision

From my daughter Vihan’s insta post :

“Eyes with no vision or vision with no eyes? Who can see better?”

No, not inside!

My daughter took this pic of me the day before her 25th bday Oct2019. Now its all changed so fast. Did you even know we’d miss our little easy trips in a time when there were no ‘untouchable surfaces’?

We grew from ponytails and little shirts to grown up wear & tear. We learned to rise when we stumbled; learned to be patient with new fatigue. We got new ways of doing old things. We matured, we regressed, we sat down and broke a little then mended. Hey. I’m not giving all that away.

God and life taught us how to take pressure, ride it like a bike to the beach somedays! Now I must sanitise my trips every which way one can and cannot imagine, fine. But I’m not adjusting my inner balance, I’m not going to make any ‘Covid’ feel it owns me, in any grip of fear. Not going to let my home believe for one moment we are victims, though we must be careful of a whole new array of things. We will not court dragons and dance with demons, but we will not forget we walk among angels.

I am not about to go from being a child of God into a frightened bear: a sore one with claws that gnaw my insides, hehe no. I will remember the ways in which I’ve grown and outgrown childish thought processes: oh no, there’s no monster under our bed. There may be a physical threat, but not anything that dare touch our spirit.

So we cannot go out as much but we can go in and remember everything else.

Everything else better not be forgotten for the sake of a sick virus. Nope. I like to think of the Human Self as a person totally under the control of One who brought you & me this far. That’s all I’m thinking on. It frees my mind. It reminds me of when I first learnt to bike.

We were in Gujarat, western India. Dad told me he was behind me….. he wasn’t. I was so sure he was there, I went on ahead. Was a few minutes before I realised he wasn’t holding on. He was there a few meters away, but I was on my own. It did not matter though, I still felt he was holding on. There was no new aloneness. He was right there.

I feel that now, the heavenly Father who brought us this far, mayn’t be visible but He is there. The ride ahead may have its bumps, but we got this life, this bike: we got our lessons, we can’t lose it now, we cannot forget….

“FOR YOU MY GOD, HAVE GIVEN US THE SPIRIT OF POWER LOVE AND DISCIPLINE, NOT FEAR AND TIMIDITY…!”(quote,Bible)

Do join us for SUNDAY Family Fellowship here

@raylarn

You are your own brand!

This Post is for anyone celebrating their birthday today, (and everyone else) I have this urge to celebrate you, and offer a tiny prayer too from my son who’s incredible gift is prayer. If you’ve been following posts you’ll know he’s not just blind but recovering from a series of disturbing issues, but this isn’t about him;

whichever part of the world you’re in: what a ride this is, and yet we are still the same people we were born as…

Was my birthday couple of days ago: “..no fuss,” I warned them, but there they were @ midnight, cake and candles, hushed whispers: in the morning among mysteriously bought gifts, was a Heart full of blue crystal stars from Kitsy, and Perfume from our eldest, my first name ‘Diella‘ hand- crafted in with scores of words like “Light”. (I got that name in a dream, after a long crazy illness. While I healed, there was a dream: it had my name written on a white stone. Diella means Worshipper);

mid- birthday joy, now there was announcement of national 21 day curfew; our entire street & surrounding areas went quiet, no bustle of traffic or twitter from Myna in trees running between our home and army acres across.

Within our walls, my family had strung out little lights, there was music and the smells of great cooking,

(I have officially surrendered cooking baton to second daughter Kitsy, who is master chef! (On left is how she used to be), now 👇….sigh, they grow so fast.

*Kitsy in our last visit out in a park…. why’d that seem so long ago?*
…

D’you sometimes feel guilty to feel happy? You know it’s a mess out here with virus and anxiety attacks, but now and then there’s a celebration,

so here’s the thing: we were going thru’ all our pics, and my Jeff he rounded off everyone’s words with, “Ray, you are … you are… unique….” ….words that make me stare at everyone else now…..

that, there is no one like you either!

No matter the news, nothing changes who you are, your essence is unique, novel! Yes they say ‘novel‘ for all kinds of things, but here we are, citizens and strangers and basic people born to mothers and families and lives that can change in the twinkling of an eye. We been warned of all that, but when it arrives it’s a thief in the night, it’s a touch between life and death…

We got two bone chilling letters from people we love, one from our precious nephew in a hospital in Germany, he’s a doctor; and the other from a very dear friend in the U.S. They wrote loving notes, asking family to pay attention to how deadly this Covid thing is, the pace at which it mutates, its silent stealth. These precious ones lives are at risk because of their professions: I can’t tell you enough what it felt like, to be gazing at/ celebrating life in all its hues: to hug across the miles, and cry tears of love and pain;

to know that we 7 billion are strong and yet we are this vulnerable. We are beloved and fragile, our life is like grass, and yet we are one-of-a- kind- each, Designer made, no matter that our breath can be whisked away; we are phenomenal, a Force to reckon with. The day we were born, people paused or clapped, kissed? …. wept.

We can die, and even that occasion is phenomenal. It causes chaos / maddening grief, because humans as a race cannot be ignored. If one of us is attacked in any unusual ordeal it is News. The entire planet of us under siege is another thing altogether, nothing competes with the vastness of that: the fact that we are under this kind of common indefinable, insurmountable distress is totally New.

If we survive this, and many will, there will be the aftermath of it and it may be unlike anything recorded in the history of mankind: I don’t want to go much there: this one is about birthdays and how it feels to celebrate humans, mid- international crisis; it feels strange and provocative -beautiful and Quiet.

This morning I woke up feeling different, younger and older, like I had more in my 206 bones. It’s an awareness… of what? The immortality of life, or its brevity? I’m staring at books we used to read, it’s like from another life: movies, talks. Some Quotes feel more right than before. Oh, bouquets and birds, they don’t change, they are like paintings and classical music; they have Eternity in them. But our conversation…. it is halved in a new way.

Birthday hugs: they are tighter.

Gazes and strummed guitar, candle lights and the clink of glasses… they say new things. I can’t say what, just new. And old. And somethings we never knew before. We thought we knew it all. Our parents and grandparents taught us how to say Grace and say please, thankyou and sorry. As we grew we thought we understood things a little more than yesterday. It felt sweet, sometimes sour.

Now, I don’t know… and that is a New Thing. It reminds me of how little we all truly know about each other as humans. You are a person with feelings and heart and we must care deeply for each others’ well being, must pray for one another’s lives/ souls…

this is more than birthdays: you can see this Post hovers around that word and how I want to wish you a beautiful life without sounding patronizing, even if it’s not birthday zone. Even if life’s not short and we’ll survive this and other wars.

Our daughter Vi does these Videos and I’d love for you to listen to this one. She’s a lot like me and feels deeply about things;

then our son walks in on her recording (he cannot bear closed doors), but the moment turns around, he prays and brings you right into our room facing palm trees on it’s right, with my large painting in the back drop. It is called DaySpring, and I wish you that Inner Spring of Light and Life.

Vi does her own take on Michael W. Smith’s Agnus Dei; we looked up those words and it means “Emblem: a Lamb bearing the Cross of Christ.”

All sounds so serious. D’you get the feeling life is way more than mortal detail? That there’s more besides thinking on Cures and everyday bread/ rice/ health… that oneday we might all be someplace else besides this planet?

And that we matter incredibly more than we suspect…