Lost & Found
Lives of children - and us
lost & found
It was but a ring among many I possess
Another one bought in foreign climes
Clean rows of shiny stones I surrendered to
While you made me believe it should be mine!
*
Istanbul "harem ring" had me seduced
Your claim "perfect for my harem" only endeared it more
Acquired and worn with happy aplomb
I grew to love it more each wear
*
And then on this trip it went missing from me!
Frantic, and fretting spent precious minutes looking and lost
Replaying when I put it, where and why
Nothing! My barren finger - lonely, unadorned in protest!
*
And then after a day sunshine pierced through
A reverie on how it will return unannounced again
When I'm an old woman and tis' a long forgotten loss
It will be found nestling in folds of paper, an old pocket, some day
*
I will exclaim and laugh out loud to you
I'll say: remember how I fretted in Hanoi?
You'll nod your head and repeat it was meant to be mine
That which goes missing from view isn't lost-- like this love I can't deny.
*
I'll get on the phone and call our darling M
My discovery revealed, will she recall how she comforted me?
I'll tell her it's yours my sweet; a remembrance for how you played mom.
Ah! Such treasures we found - even when we lost - on our journeys!
--
reena | Dec 17 2012
From my debut book of poetry: Arrivals & Departures: Journeys in Poems
I wrote this poem nearly a decade ago on our travels to Vietnam. Remember when we left for foreign lands without too much fuss? I don’t either, but I do remember the buzz I felt in anticipation! Feels like it was another era altogether.
Too many people I talk to express exhaustion from our collective journey of the past two years. Not just because of the pestilence for which vaccines and therapies thankfully arrived at warp speed. But because we now suffer and sit witness to suffering in unprecedented ways. Our mental health and that of our children is in perilous decline, our cities fester as open wounds, we have lost faith in our institutions, and our trust in media is at an all time low! Our hyper-partisan politics is not serving us well, yet we remain so polarized we couldn’t find common ground if we fell on it face-first. One of these days I want to talk about what happened to us.
But today I want to contemplate a more personal yet not uncommon journey - joyful, curious and sometimes challenging - about raising the little girl in the poem who offers succor to her mother fretting a lost bauble. She grew up a whole lot (like the character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in describing how he slid into bankruptcy offers) “...gradually, then suddenly.” I remember a time being so exhausted - with photos to prove both - that I wondered guiltily when that phase would end. Then suddenly she was in school and it started to whizz by.
Raising a child is commonplace, yet every parent experiences it uniquely. So much of who we are and how we were raised comes into play. Being a parent is humbling, often calling on attributes we scramble to acquire, while skills that make us successful elsewhere get in the way. I used to joke that bribery and threats became my preferred modes of engagement. I became/remain terribly curious about the demanding, unpredictable and powerful little human I was attending to, and noted a few things. One that being a mom brought so much of my own childhood into focus. I noted how a dispassionate assessment of my own parents helped me sift through what I wanted to emulate and what I sought elsewhere. That also forced me to think about how I might show up in my kid’s future reporting! Yes, YIKES!
I came to a seemingly contradictory conclusion as well: Putting aside outright abuse or neglect, we parents have much less influence on our kids’ educational/ achievement outcomes than we’d like to believe. We contribute greatly to their general happiness, self-worthiness, and mental health - even that within limits - but “achievement” per se? I am much less sure (data you ask? here, here, here). So reading to kids at bedtime may not make them voracious readers but it sure can be a cuddly, love-affirming end in itself. And some kids arrive with their own adorable agenda so powerful that wise parents know to simply get out of the way (do read).
Child rearing extends a vehicle for finding meaning in our own existential journeys. I found a reconnection with my childhood, and a contemplation of how far I’d traveled. Others may find solace for their childhood transitions or traumas and an acknowledgement of the lost child within. But I don’t want to be overly sentimental. Raising a child is also time consuming, exhausting and expensive. Like so much in life, we may be dealt scenarios we are not prepared or resourced for. While opting out is rare - evolution kinda’ took care of that one - parents may suffer greatly. We can give too much, finding ourselves unrecognizable at journey’s end. But perhaps with a little self-awareness, some kindness for our own limits and the willingness to let go of OCD-parenting - seeing our children as agents for their own lives, not in service to ours - we can find treasures on this unforgettable journey.
Do write to tell me if any of this resonated — or if it didn’t?
Small victories
This blog just celebrated ONE YEAR. It all began with this simple announcement. Yay!
As if on cue, one of my poem-ponderings first published here was just published in the Tiny Seed Literary Journal. If you did not get a chance to read about these mysterious, demanding creatures that came to invade our lives - hint: NOT children - here it is!
Wonderful! So relate to the parenting journey 😊.
Oh my, childhood revisited. I am grateful that my children are kinder to me than I was to my parents. And grateful that I get to do differently. Thank you, Reena