During my
twenty months working with small children at the Montessori school, I
complained extensively and comprehensively. It was the perfect form of birth
control. Once a month, I sent emails to myself. “Never ever have children,”
they read. “Whatever you do, no kids for you.”
I finally
escaped in August so that I could deal with all my shit at Vipassana, and then
fly away to Mysore, India. There I would bond with my favourite cult and
hopefully discover my life’s higher purpose. By the time I got to India, I
missed kids. On the airplane, I felt envious of the mothers and fathers
comforting their babies. In chanting, when all the kids are running around
screaming, I wish I had a baby to hold, something else to do besides chant
about sun gods, peace and elephants.
“Awe, look
at this one,” I say to my Cool Friend From Belgium as we pass another toddler
on the streets of Gokulam.
“Oh God,
Erica,” says my Cool Friend From Belgium (CFFB). “Soon your boobs are going to
start leaking milk.”
I’m happy my
Cool Friend From Belgium mentioned this, because now I have the opportunity to
tell everyone about me and the Boatman’s potential business project called
Recreational Lactation (RL). Recreational Lactation means sucking on someone’s boobs
for so long that they start making milk. Somewhere the Boatman heard that maybe
this is possible. Since breast milk is apparently this magical and nourishing
liquid, we thought that we could use my recreationally generated breast milk to
make powerful and nutritious smoothies, ice cream and yogurt. During my early days in Halifax, I had all
the time in the world to make this plan materialize. Unfortunately, the Boatman
had a pretty time consuming job and so he couldn’t fulfill his sucking
responsibilities. My tits remained tiny and dry. Likely they will remain this
way for some time as I endure this extended self-imposed dry spell. Regardless,
I figured that somewhere in India, there were kids I could hang out with.
A couple
weeks ago while wandering around my neighbourhood, I came upon a stone wall
with this sign on it.
“Do not kill
your baby,” it read. “Leave it here.”
 |
| Do Not Kill Your Baby |
On one side
of the sign was a picture of Krishna. The other side had a picture of Jesus. I
walked in, passing a couple of young girls hanging laundry. At the front door,
a woman was combing through the hair of a young girl with Down Syndrome. It
looked like she was checking her scalp for lice. Inside, a very tiny child with
what was probably cerebral palsy lay on a mat on the floor. Her eyes squinting
and face disturbed, she bent her legs and straightened them repeatedly while
clutching her fists in front of her chest. Two children, maybe ten or eleven
were strapped into wooden high chairs. Their faces reminded of Isabelle, the
woman I lived and worked with at L’Arche, and Glendon, the young boy my parents
and I looked after when I was a teenager. So often kids with cerebral palsy
have similar expressions and mannerisms, the same great big joy in their faces.
I wondered how much money it would take to put wheels on these kids’ chairs. Or
to get them a proper wheelchair.
After a few
minutes, mobs of tiny children started wandering through the lobby and into a
dark play room. None of them seemed to be wearing diapers, though they looked
like they between one and three years old. A sturdier little boy in a red shirt
stopped to say hello to me. He gave me a big grin and then started to smack me,
laughing at each wack. I had a kid hit me repeatedly at the Montessori
School. At the time, it felt humiliating
and insulting to be rejected by a three year old. In this case, however, I felt
like I was getting special treatment. Even so, I waved my hands in front of me
and shook my head.
“Ah,” I
said, since I couldn’t speak one word of Kannada.
The kids
kept pouring into the dark dingy playroom. I didn’t see very many adults
around, but the house mother finally noticed me. She told me to email the
manager and come back later. It took about five days to get a meeting with the
manager. She arrived twenty minutes late which is pretty good for India.
“So the
police have cleared you to take care of children.”
“Yes. In
Canada.”
“That’s
good. Some horrible things went down in Canada.”
She was
talking about the segregation schools for First Nations people. I guess she
herself was First Nations, but in Maine, where she came from, land rights and
cultural respect were way better. Although I imagine she realized that I was
too young to be directly implicated in the segregation schools, I never asked.
“Well, I
think it would be great if you did some exciting Montessori things with our
pre-schoolers.” Most of the other kids went to school, including the kids with
disabilities. A couple of elders came from the sister nursing home to watch the
toddlers, and sometimes some older girls helped out. Otherwise, there wasn’t
much programming.
“You’ll be
able to model for the older girls how to deal with toddlers without hitting
them,” said the manager.
What a
wonderful idea, I thought. I told her I could come Tuesdays and Thursdays from
ten until noon.
The first
Tuesday, I arrived, the playroom was full. The only adult in sight was a very
old lady who paced in and out of the playroom carrying a wooden stick. Probably
there were 12 to 15 toddlers, interspersed with a handful of slightly older
girls who could have been nine, but looked 5 or 6. Whenever a younger child
cried, the bigger girls picked them up and swung them around. They continued to
do this after the little ones stopped crying, yanking them on and off the floor
and pulling them by their arms. Often this resulted in more tears. When I
walked in the room, everyone swarmed me. They wanted to be picked up and sit on
my lap. At Montessori, I was not the most cuddly or nurturing of teachers,
certainly not at the beginning. I feel like French teachers are some of the
more miserable people on earth. I have a saying that goes, All French Teachers
Cry in the Bathroom. At the Montessori school I cried in the bathroom. When the kids
cried, I wanted to cry too. I would have preferred to do anything else than
deal with their tears. Eventually I learned that not dealing with tears would
causes long term damage and thus I made a point of somewhat skillfully
comforting children when they cried, even when I was grumpy.
At the
orphanage, it was a no-brainer since now I have baby cravings and I’ve gone
all soft. Plus these poor kids didn’t have parents. So I picked up any kid who
wanted to be picked up. Everyone was allowed to sit on my lap. Nobody was
wearing very substantial diapers and it didn’t seem likely that very many of
them were potty trained. I decided that it was okay if I got peed on, but if
someone shit on me, I could go home. Beforehand, I had rubbed tea tree and neem
oil onto my hair to prevent lice. Within seven minutes, I realized that this
was a lost cause. If anyone had lice, I was getting it.
“Aunty!
Aunty!” some of the older kids exclaimed, waving at the ceiling. “Aunty!
Camera! Aunty! Camera!” Apparently the house mother or someone was watching
over the children from the office. How nice. One of the five or six year old
girls in a frilly purple dress grabbed my hands. She had fierce fiery eyes. I
could tell that expecting her to have any impulse control was unrealistic. She
started crawling up my legs. Then she wrapped her hands around my neck. She was
a little old to get picked up, but again, no parents. I decided it was okay.
“Yes, yes,”
I said before putting her down. By now
someone had brought out an old rice bag full of broken toys and dumped
everything on the floor. There were a couple dozen mega blocks, fewer pieces of
lego, three or four dolls shedding their cotton insides, some broken trucks and
airplanes, and two notebooks to go between all twenty kids. All this was being
mixed with the inevitable pee that was only cleaned up after several requests.
It was an
evolutionary race to see who got which toys. Just like in Canada, the most
popular activities were building with blocks and chewing on everything else.
Fiery purple dress girl was more interested in me. She wrapped her arms around
my waist again. Aunty appeared in the doorway.
“Do not
pamper her,” she said. “She always kicks other children.” I didn’t think there
was much chance of anyone being pampered in that room, but I nodded my head.
My favourite
toy was a notebook. Inside someone had written the abc’s. On the front inside
cover, there was a blue and green advertisement.
“Not all
chemicals are bad,” it read. “Without hydrogen and oxygen, there would be no
water.” One of the older girls pointed to these words and over and over again,
I read them to her.
At the
Montessori school, I felt like the children spent way too much time washing
their hands because they’d stuck their fingers in their noses. Some of the kids
could never leave the sink. And the staff spent way too much time spraying
tables and blocks with Lysol. What do you prefer, folks, the flu or cancer?
That said,
as soon as I returned home from the Lysol-free soap-free orphanage, I saturated
every inch of my body with thick layers of soap, and I scrubbed.
On Thursday,
the room seemed a bit calmer. Seven or eight school aged girls were scattered
around amidst the toddlers, and an older woman was sitting in a chair in a
corner rubbing oil onto each child’s hair.
“Songs?” the
older house mother asked me. During my Montessori days, I used to dread circle
time. Whenever I whined about it, the Boatman would make fun of me.
“Sounds so
stressful,” he would say. Well, it was. If the kids didn’t like the song, which
usually they didn’t, they would start rolling around on the floor and being
obnoxious. Then I would have to try and reel them in speaking only French,
which they didn’t understand. Hopeless and humiliating. All French teachers cry
in the bathroom. But at the orphanage, the kids were really into it. Although
it took half a century to get everyone into a circle, once we figured it out,
everyone belted out the ABC’s like their lives depended on it. I also taught
them the chicken dance. It was pretty adorable. The older girls went through
their repertoire of Indian songs with tons of actions while the smaller ones
watched in awe.
One girl called out, “Exercise,” and I made up
a bunch of exercises on the spot. Then the bigger girls left and it was just me
and the little ones and the old lady with the oil. A young mother came in with
her new baby. I don’t know if she worked there or not. All the kids sat around
her and looked at the little baby sitting in her mother’s lap. Seemed like a brutal
tease to me. There was such a noticeable difference between the baby with the
mother and the orphans. Their eyes were so different. Suddenly, the mother got
a really angry look on her face and wacked the little boy who was sitting
beside her in the back. I’m not sure what he did. He wasn’t more than three. He
started to cry and I put him in my lap. After the lady left, the kids started
playing with broken toys again. Another old lady joined the room. She hit a
couple of kids with her stick. I’m not sure why. I really wanted to leave,
though somehow I made it until noon. When I got home, I still missed kids.
The
following Tuesday, the weather was cooler and I wondered if maybe I could take
the kids outside. Because of their fragile health, the manager had told me she
didn’t want the little ones out in the hot sun. She said that they went out in
the morning and evening, but it’s hard to say. Nobody’s gross motor seemed
particularly awesome from long hours playing outdoors. I tried to ask one of the elder ladies if we
could go out, but she seemed confused.
“Songs,
dance, ABC’s,” she said. “Children like.” Dirty dark room it was. Before I
could start my brilliant circle time, I saw that one of the tiniest kids was
standing in a puddle urine. The oldest he could have been was eighteen months.
His shorts were super wet and the pile of toys was just a couple of inches from
the puddle.
“Wet,” I
said to one of the staff. She was sitting in a chair eating chapatti and rice.
“Pee?
Cloth?” I asked. Already a couple of kids had walked through the puddle and
were tracking urine on the floor. The woman put her chapati down, ripped off
the little boys shorts and used them to wipe up the pee. I remembered the rules
I’d set about pee and shit. The little boy kept continued to play with no pants
on. Within three minutes he was shitting on the floor. It wasn’t Delhi Belly
poop, but it wouldn’t have been a breeze to pick up with a plastic bag.
“Um, clean?"
I asked, pointing emphatically. The kid kept walking around with his dirty bum.
The woman with the chapati yelled something at a young girl in the kitchen.
Maybe she was twelve or thirteen. She sighed, yanked the little boy by his hand
and dragged him to the bathroom. There
she hosed him off without looking at him. In a nearby bathroom stall, a three
or four year old was squatting while excreting liquid diarrhea. This boy did
have Mysore’s version of Delhi Belly, and I wasn't sure he was old enough to
hose himself down properly. There was a sink outside the bathroom but I didn’t
see any soap.
“Sick?” I
said, pointing to the little boy in the toilet. There was still poop on the
floor so I pointed to that too. The girl who’d hosed down the little boy went
to the kitchen and came back with a pile of newspaper. She handed me a sheet.
What was this for? Was it some sort of toy? Then she knelt down and cleaned
up the poop with the newspaper. Only newspaper. I think maybe in India, there
is some sort of social stigma surrounding cleaning up shit. Having cleaned up
shit professionally for the better part of a decade, I feel no shame and
minimal disgust while taking part in the process. But not with newspaper and
not when there is no soap anywhere in sight
I used to
have this big rant about how kids in the west wear diapers for too long and it
is horrible for everybody’s pelvis and for the environment. Now this rant is dead.
I paced
around the pee spot, the pooh spot, and all the broken toys.
“Sit,” said
an elder with a stick. I didn’t understand how anyone could be in this room and
sit down. The kids continued to eat the broken toys, rotating around the room
like bees in captivity. A little girl, even smaller than the boy who had pooped
on the floor wet her pants. The elder knelt down and gave her a huge wack. She
was about to get dragged across the room when I walked out. It was 10:15.
I could have
made a meeting with the manager, but then what? Judge her life’s work, buy some
Lysol, make a big batch of play dough and then go home for Christmas. I really liked that kid who shat on the
floor. He was one of my favourites. Maybe he’ll be okay. It seems that once the
kids start going to school, they do a little better. In the meantime, I really
can’t watch toddlers get wacked, for any reason. And going twice a week won’t
change much long term. Perhaps this is a cop-out, a way to justify my blissful
experience here, which consists of one indulgent leisurely activity after
another. Or maybe it was just too much.
I regularly
devour podcasts by Buddhist teacher Michael Stone. Over and over again, he
says, “We are all happiest when we serve.” He says that we can’t keep doing our
practice just to make us feel good, keeping our blinders on, oblivious to
everyone else’s suffering. I am not oblivious, and yet, I am not doing a hell
of a lot. Often when I hear Michael’s spiel about service, I cringe and think,
please no. I can’t serve. I served when I was nineteen. I’m all done. I’m not
happiest when I serve. I would rather stay home and blog about my pubic hair. Let’s
hope this doesn’t affect my chances of getting my own orphan when the time
comes.
“Who am I
and what should I do?” Michael Stone says that everyone who goes to a
psychologist is asking one of these two questions, and usually both. Coming to
India is the equivalent of going to about seventeen psychologists, and at least
a few yoga students here in Mysore are asking themselves these questions. What
should we do? Some students are tutoring school kids with special needs. Others
volunteer at a centre where young people were rescued from human trafficking.
My friend fostered five little kittens, only three weeks old. Already four have
died. Yesterday there was a photo shoot
raising money for the kids at the orphanage.
This is a kind initiative and I’m sure it won’t hurt, but I just don’t
see how the money will prevent kids from getting hit when they pee on the
floor.
All my life,
I’ve watched my parents take care of people. They met at a group home for kids
whose families were in temporary crisis. Often, my father would bring home young
teenage boys. I remember them coming camping with us. At Christmastime, we
always had people with nowhere else to go around the table. When I was sixteen,
we started providing respite care for Glendon, a young boy with cerebral palsy.
Four years later, when his mother could no longer take care of him, my parents
took Glendon in as a foster child. Even
after they separated, my dad kept Glendon at his house for four years, while he
was working full time as a schoolteacher.
 |
| Glendon. Rocking out on Lakewood Road |
My mom has a
bit of a Mother Teresa complex. She feels responsible for fixing everything
and feels guilty when she can’t. Glendon is now 21 and almost as big as her. Every
week, my mom goes to take him for a walk. But she can’t take him overnight like
my father can, because she is too tiny. I always say that nobody loves Glendon
the way my mother does. My father takes care of Glendon in a way that doesn’t
seem to overwhelm him. As long as my father’s in town, he has Glendon
overnight, feeding him, bathing him, and taking him for long walks or for swims in
the lake.
I didn’t go
to the orphanage to serve, or to be the change I want to see in the world. As I
said, I just felt like hanging out with kids. Maybe if I was staying longer I
would have done more than just walk away. I keep thinking about what
constitutes a reasonable contribution. And how to make this contribution
without inheriting my mother’s Mother Theresa Complex or becoming an arrogant and obnoxious
white saviour figure. Until I figure this out, my contribution is postponed.
“Let God
take care of the world, you take care of your anus.” Pattabhi Jois said this
once. It is not one of his most beloved and frequently referenced sayings. He
is talking about squeezing your anus until moula bandha works its magic deep
inside your pelvis and everything becomes beautiful. Probably he was trying to
cure Mother Theresa Complexes. My mother doesn’t know about moula bandha, but
she always says, “Let God take care of it.” She has to tell herself this or
else she worries constantly about Glendon and all the kids in the world like
Glendon, and how she’s not fixing everything for everyone. Bless my mother, and
bless everyone out there who is raising money and saving kittens. Bless those
little kids eating dirty, broken toys, and you know what, bless the ladies
watching them. Whatever blessing means. I conclude with no wisdom, and no real
solution. People shouldn’t kill their babies, and I don’t know where else they
can leave them. I could say something cheeky about the pull-out method, but I
will almost surely end up sounding insensitive and obscene.
God may or may
not help. Only taking care of my anus will probably not yield fruits beyond narcissism
and neurosis. I wanted all the yoga students to read about the orphans in the
hopes that it might cure some of their self-absorption and sacro-iliac angst.
This is what the psychologists call projecting. When I was a grumpy French
teacher, I used to believe that I was totally dead inside. My experience with
kids in India and the orphanage has shown me that there is more in my heart than
cynicism, sarcasm and neurosis. I suppose this is somewhat of a relief.
At the yoga
shala, our chanting instructor has made some very subtle hints about not bringing loud
children to chanting. So now we can chant about sun gods, peace and elephants
without being disrupted. As serene and spiritual
as this is, I feel like something is missing.
I still
think about kids the whole time.
The End.
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