Categories
Childrens non-fiction

The Truth About Santa Claus

Moist tremors awoke me a few moons ago. An abrupt awakening removed from our awareness of our own body, from the life we have built at a time when only the soul stridulates in the arms of an imagined dream or a nightmare, is alarming. At that hour when your mind hasn’t bound to your human body, and you jump back into it, a question percolates: for how long? How long do you have in your body, which enables you to kiss those you so love for so short? A rude reminder echoes that one day our life will end without knowing how deep the separation or the memory. You coax yourself that it was just a nightmare, only a night, and after you lull yourself to sleep, a new day will begin. It does.

And then I tell my children what I tell myself: I don’t know if they exist: Santa Claus or tooth fairies or any magical creatures they believe. But it isn’t until the darkness of the inky blind night you force yourself to ponder on life on the other side, the unseen world. Our life is a speck in the spectrum of the unknown. The unseen is more than us. So, maybe Santa Claus is real. Maybe fairies fill the eternal world. Life on Earth is attached to our bodies for a limited time. We live at different times, but memories carry, or so we hope. There has got to be magic if there is God. So why not Santa Claus?

I don’t lie to my children anymore that unseen is unreal. It is more permanent than real. Dreams are true.

My forthcoming book, House of Milk and Cheese (originally Land of Dreams), is about such dreams, unseen but unrealized, that need a fight, first to believe, then to realize. Stay tuned at www.bookofdreams.us for more on its release. If you subscribe , you enter a raffle for a chance of a free copy during the book launch.

Previous blogs on the Book Launch Series: The World Behind Words

The Boy With a Strange Hat

Myriams-Fotos image from Pixabay 

Categories
Childrens Poetry

The Recycle Bin

Oh, how useful the recycle bin
It helps us reuse cans, cups, and bags
And stops waste in its tracks
Oh, if you did not exist what would we do

If people put recyclables in garbage bins
The garbage bins would fill
Oh, how useful the recycle bin
Oh, what would we do without you

Categories
Childrens moral non-fiction Opinion

Amplify the Chatter of Birds

“Seventy-Five,” said my son as my head tilted up in pride.

The journey to seventy-five was not linear. Eight years ago he was born. Any one that held him exclaimed, “He is so tiny.”

He was tiny, weighing a meager five-pounds, eight-ounces, having barely crossed the underweight threshold of newborns, his size presented a contrast to the whirlwind of energy he gyrated in, storming into busy streets, pounding his legs in a constant bounce, the invisible strings under his legs, a permanent dimension of his personality.

That was Sahir. Six years later, when Sahir held his little brother, mesmerized, speechless, admiring Mir, that was the longest he had sat still. His reasons for not moving needed to be grand. That was quite unlike his tearful welcome to his sister, born three years before Mir. Crocodile tears were not of joy but of heartbreak of having been left alone so we could get Dua, the reason for all his misery.

Seventy-Five was not a score on a school exam. It was better than any lesson I could have taught him in the confines of a book or a classroom.

When I learnt I was pregnant for the very first time, as I and my husband stared at the test, I envisioned what lessons I could teach my child that would equip “it” to face the world with dignity. I guess the seed for “Seventy-Five” must have planted then.

So, this morning as I placed the call to the local gym bowing to the ferocity of my laziness to cancel, I knew I was going to miss working out (the only healthy act of the week) on one condition, and that was to invest the sunlight of a warm Chicago Spring day in the confines of nature.

So, here we were, hiking along Fox River, on a hill over numerous islands in the river as Dua hopped like a bunny on my right, behind me Mir sat like a king on his stroller pushed by his dad, and Sahir played with my left hand when I came up with a game of silence.

The game was to stay silent and ward off all noises, the occasional cries from Mir, the tick of the stroller wheel against the hard concrete, the swish of the fast bikers overtaking us, or the whir from the factory we passed along the way across from the river. We were to focus on but one sound, the chirps of birds and really hear the chirps, how different they were from each other, their pitch, was it a cry for help or a song of joy.

I explained my game to them with one thought, “Ah, they are but an eight-year-old and soon-to-be, five-year-old. Let us see how far this goes.”

At first, it was hard not to discuss the sounds that were now reaching our ears. Soon, seconds melted into minutes. A heavenly tranquility transcended into our hearts and minds and my kids, miraculously, played along.

As our happy hike breathed its last whispers, we started to notice the multi-colored, yellow, orange, birds that were making the sounds. When we reached our mini-van parked right next to the shimmering waters of the Fox River, I asked them, “So, how many sounds did you hear?”

Dua said, maybe, five, and an, “I don’t know,” despite the fact that she was the most serious “silence observer.”

Sahir thought a moment and said, “Seventy Five.”

He made my day. I needed to train their minds to hear these little treasures of nature most ignore. I needed them to stop and stare at the river flowing underneath the hill we were on. And, I remembered Sahir, the little peanut, always skinny and tall, jumping around like there was no tomorrow, pausing to not dilute the noise of birds by the chatter of every other noise. He practiced amplifying the chatter of birds this evening and for that I will always be grateful.

Categories
Childrens non-fiction Opinion

Give Your Child the Gift of an Unrushed Life

~1506646047~DSC_0116

The world is scrambling at a maddening speed. I am perplexed where it is headed and why the rush and yet, sun rises in a lightning and sets shamelessly eating monotony for breakfast. Life, like sand, keeps slipping between the fingers.

Stuck in the middle of all this chaos are little souls who keep no business with schedules. They are involved with sweet business with earthworms and slugs, they search for rainbows over rainy skies. They make sand angels and emit sweetest pitter-patter of the world. They dream of houses with go-carts and rockets. They are the innocence we lose as adults. We get so used to the status quo, the politics at work, or demands of daily lives that no toy in the marketplace can replace the innocence God gave them at birth.

What happens to sap that innocence out to make them adults?

Rush.

Rush to get places. Rush to grow up. Rush to make money. Rush to rise up the chain.

Rush.

So, if you must gift them just one thing – skip past the toy aisle, cancel that meeting you put on the calendar to please your boss, and take the afternoon off. Break that routine. And, linger with your child like you were a child yourself, not aware of the seriousness of life. Children are gifts only for some to enjoy during certain parts of their lives. Because they grow up. Teach them now before it is too late to be unrushed. Career can wait. Promotions can wait. But time we have with each other never returns. So, teach them how to live their entire life, unrushed, just the way God created them.

Categories
Childrens Poetry

A Giant Scary Bus

imageimage

Today my boy took a step
Into a giant scary bus
Trembling with fear, a hard goodbye
A necessary must, the letting go of hand

Today my boy took a step
Into the giant scary world
A baby no more, a big kid now
How do I shelter you no more?

Today my boy took a step
Through that large yellow door
They called you a “little peanut” when you were born
Now my peanut is on the road alone

I wait for a ring on my phone
To tell me you cried no more
To tell me you smiled some more
I wait for that ring my boy!

Go now, my boy, fear no more
Don’t you worry; Don’t be shy
Be happy, be proud
You are a fantastic little boy

Don’t hold back; Don’t look back
A new road waits for you
Sing a happy tune, now sprint away
Go now my boy, live full your day!

Categories
Childrens non-fiction Poetry

Tread Gently, My Mir

IMG_3786

Not like a mother doting with love
More like a lover afraid to indulge the heart
That pines away in secret love affair
Writing a thousand love letters
Stashed away in wooden drawers

Overworked paparazzi with a fancy camera lens
Shuttering, Stuttering, opening and closing
Noting each smile, each frown
Breaking and unbreaking my heart in a million pieces
Waiting around the corner for your next move
A tear waiting to drench the cheek

So, just like that wordless, nameless, countless lover
My Mir, my knight in shining armor
Keeping me awake into the night
You danced away in pious grace
Tread carefully, my love, my mir

You may not see the veiled admirer
Being killed with an innocent smile of yours
Bruised with the sheer intensity of love
My Mir, my buddy, my loving treasure
Tread Carefully, my Mir
I love you beyond hearts can imagine

Live Well, My Mir
And when you go out there
Remember your first follower
Will be loving you endlessly for times to come
So, tread carefully, My Mir
I am so in love with you!

Categories
Childrens fiction

The Walking Snowman

It was a beautiful crisp winter evening. Few flurries hung suspended outside. Little Sahir sat there staring out the window with joy in his heart he felt each winter. He rarely sat still but waited patiently for his mother to finish her kitchen chores. He had some exciting news for her. But he was afraid she would not believe what he had to share. As she came with her coffee mug oozing warm vapors and sat next to him, Sahir wasted no time.

“Mama, I want to tell you something about my day.”

That elicited a quick response from Sahir’s mother who was used to asking Sahir all sorts of questions about his day, but always hearing the same response, “good”. How can all days just be good?

“Great, I am listening,” she exclaimed with anticipation.

“Mama, I climbed on top of the snowman in our backyard, and it started walking.”

Sahir’s mother chuckled in response. “Wow, that’s some awesome imagination!” was all she said as Sahir suspended his head low disappointed. He whispered to himself, “except it wasn’t imagination.”

Why wouldn’t anyone ever believe him? He walked over to his father who was pressing buttons of his phone.

“Papa, guess what?”

“What Lolo?”

“I sat on a car and it just started moving.”

“That’s very nice. You want to drive a car?”

“I did it, for real!”

A few hours later as the dining table was cleared up, Sahir’s parents overheard their children talking.

“Guess what Dua, yesterday I sat on your big yellow horse and it started moving.”

“Woooooow” gasped Dua. They both erupted in crackling laughter. They emitted out sounds of a horse galloping, imagining riding it through the forest as their parents glanced at them fondly.

Soon the day ended in darkness and silence of the night. In the morning, while Sahir’s mother performed the daily monotonous chores thinking, may be it was possible for all days to be the same as one another. She peeked out in the backyard and noticed something peculiar. Sahir’s snowman was still intact under the cold, but it indeed, had moved. Sahir must have moved it, she explained to herself.

But from that point each morning she walked up to the window. And, each morning the snowman shrunk a little and moved a little. One day she grabbed hold of Sahir who had long stopped talking about him climbing on top of things to watch them move.

“Sahir, you want to tell me more about your ride on the snowman?”

Sahir did not answer. He was busy making buzzing sounds and rolling his favorite orange school-bus toy back and forth.

“Sahir, are you listening?” repeated his mother.

“Yes”

“What happened to the snowman, did it move again?”

“No”

She sounded disappointed and didn’t probe him anymore.

That night dense fog enveloped the area. It appeared as a still from a scary movie with mystery shrouded in each nook and cranny. Her footsteps were gentle as she climbed down the stairs careful not to wake her family. Despite the fog, the outdoors was lit from the reflection of all the snow on the ground. And up very close you could see for a few feet past which the fog drenched the view in total whiteness. She could hear the crackling laughter, mumbled conversations as her heart raced. She imagined herself part of an animation movie except the crackling of the wooden floor beneath her feet was real, the coldness of the door knob to the backyard was hand numbing, waft of ear reddening winter breeze was chilling, and the sound of snow crushing under her feet was ambient as the laughter grew louder and louder.

And at that moment, from under the canopy of the fog emerged the waddling snowman with a shrill voice with Sahir atop it, his hair rustling up and down, his cheeks red with cold and eyes closed in joy. Round and round they went buzzing and electrifying.

And, the next morning, nothing had changed. Fog remained suspended in the air. The children worked on their omelets and fussed over milk. As Sahir’s mother stared at her son, with fresh memory of his hair flying in the air and cheeks red as watermelon. It must have been a dream, she dared not cross check.

As Sahir put his plate in the sink he winked at her and disappeared into the garage on his way to school.

That evening as temperature rose and lifted the fog, out came the sun, and the snow man melted away. There was an old carrot and couple of sticks where it once stood. The snowman was gone but little Sahir’s mother could never forget what she saw on that foggy night, and it didn’t matter if it was real or just imagination.

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: