The Best Thing I've Ever Done

On the radio and in real life, parents are frequently telling me that, without a doubt, having children is “the best thing they have ever done.” Absolutely, I believe them. Though my conviction that I do not want children is nearly pathological, I do feel some remorse at the knowledge that my eternal tits will never expand and acquire the mind-blowing capacity to squirt the gift of life across the kitchen. People tell me there is time to change my mind. While we’re waiting, if anyone is wondering about the best things I’ve ever done, this is what I’ve come up with so far.

 

One

“Yours til the merry goes round.”

 

1992 to approximately 1994

Grade Three and Grade Four

I am seven to nine years old.

 

Every morning, I religiously wake up as soon as the hands of my Mickey Mouse watch reach 6:30. I walk my beloved husky dog Emma, and upon returning, immediately cover a few spoonfuls of oatmeal with a two-inch layer of yogurt and brown sugar. While I was walking the dog, I mailed a letter, and now it is time to write another one. The letter is for my grandparents, Olga and Julius Schmidt. They live in a manor in Dominion City, Manitoba. Each letter begins with “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, How are you? I am fine.” Generously I fill them in on all the fascinating details of my seven to nine-year old existence. Swim meets, Christmas pageants, violin lessons, chapter books, and excellent jokes.

 

For example, “What goes, ‘ha, ha, ha, PLOP!? Answer: Somebody laughing their head off.”

 

Ha. I sign off each letter with, “Yours ‘til plus something charming and delightful, such as, “Yours til the jelly rolls, Yours til the banana splits, or Yours til the merry goes round.” I meticulously decorate each envelope with Mr. Sketch Smelly markers. My grandfather, nearly ninety used to call me his “personal correspondent.” Both of my grandparents cherished these letters. On my end, these epistolary efforts were totally spontaneous, wholehearted and sincere.

 

It’s always nice to remember

Back when you used to be a darling.

 

Two

 

“It’s a hard time for you.”

Montessori School Bathroom,

May 2014, 28 years old.

 

In Nova Scotia, my Ontario-bred French is considered to be exceptional enough to teach three to six year olds how to sing some cheerful, catchy songs about robots and  how to push in their chairs, wash their hands and have a snack in French. As the French assistant, I was only allowed to speak English in the bathrooms. The theory was that it was already frustrating and traumatizing enough to wet or poop your pants at school. Some strange lady yattering away at you in a foreign language as you try to navigate through three-year-old fecal chaos would contribute to unnecessary overwhelm. So in the bathroom, I spoke English.

 

One little boy who often found himself navigating fecal chaos also struggled quite a bit with transitions. If the Tidy Up Bell rang and he was in the middle of something and not ready for it, impressively distraught meltdowns would ensue. Could I ever relate to this. For the one year and ten months that I worked at the Montessori School, the seven minutes leading up to when I had to head out the door were among my most hideous. Me and the Boatman, my boyfriend at the time, had actually devised a bribing system that would reward me with imaginary stickers every time I did not unravel entirely. Eventually I could convert a certain number of imaginary stickers into new pens. Not every morning brought me any closer to earning new pens.

 

So I completely understood where my bathroom friend was coming from. (And he happened to be one of my favourites.)

 

One morning, yet again, his sphincter timing was off, and there we were, in the bathroom as the tidy up rang.

 

“Oh no,” sobbed my little friend. “Tidy up!” His face was so sad.

 

I looked at him straight in his teary eyes and said, “This is a hard time for you, isn’t it?” The psychologists, they call this “mirroring.”

 

“Is a ard time for me,” he repeated, weeping, but nodding.

 

During my year or so at the Montessori School, I’m afraid I was sometimes grumpier than I needed to be. I was so grateful for the kids like this one who showed me I was not actually dead inside and that in fact, my heart could melt. And that moment in the bathroom, I totally nailed it.

 

Three

 

“Do you want some lemonade?”

Rue Waverly, Mile End

Summer of 2016, 30 years old.

 

On my side of Waverly, there’s a little old lady named Lena who brings out her chair and sits on her front stoop from the moment the sun comes out every morning. Sitting on the porch and watching people go by, this is what they call, “The Mile End Dream.” But I often wondered if maybe Lena was lonely.

 

“Do you want some lemonade?” I asked her one afternoon. I was procrastinating some project by buying Perrier. (Highly badass.)

 

“Oh okay,” said Lena. “The same as you.”

I came back with some lemon flavoured San Palegrino. As we consumed our carbonated beverages, Lena told me about her life in a combination of French and English and Italian.

 

“57 years married Good man. Since eleven years gone.” This was Lena’s husband. They had two children, “one boy, one girl.”

“No boyfriend, you. You live alone? Costs too much.” I told her I lived with two roommates.

“That’s good. Otherwise, costs too much.” But she still seemed insistent that I look for one good man, one boyfriend.

I tried to keep visiting Lena over the winter. Despite being a terrible cook, one time I even brought her some soup.

“Eighty-seven years me. Eighty-eight. 1926 Day of Saint Antonio.” Saint Antonio stands on a table in her dining room, surrounded by vases of dying and artificial flowers and some framed photos of her grandchildren.

“It’s a lot for you to clean this all by yourself,” I once asked her.

“Oh, not too bad,” said Lena. “I do just a little bit every day.”

Yes, quite a little bit. The last time I went inside Lena’s house, there were fruit flies flying through the hall and into the front living room. The air did not smell magnificent. Lena was in the kitchen eating some sort of ravioli pasta that maybe her son had brought her. The fruit flies, it seemed were coming from a slice of rotting honey dew melon. Lena didn’t want to throw the whole thing out, so I helped her cut off the offending layer and watched her eat the rest. This was back in December.

All through January, February and March, I just could not manage to knock on the door. I did not feel like facing Saint Antonio, or the fruit flies. Every time I passed Lena’s house, I would feel kind of guilty, and hope that she was okay. Then the sun came back out and there was Lena back on her porch. She was wearing the same outfit she wore all last summer and into December, with some extra wool socks, and a sweater.

“Hi Lena,” I said.

“Oh, it’s you. Since a long time you not come. Where you live now?”

“Oh same place.” I pointed a few houses down.

“You live alone?”

I told her about my roommates, to which she approved. “Otherwise, cost too much.”

As I said goodbye and walked through her gate, she called out, “One good man you find. Good man. Boyfriend.”

Probably I could have done a little better with Lena. But there’s still time. If you want to visit Lena, hit me up and I’ll give you her address. Or you can just look out for her a little old lady living the Mile End Dream on Waverly. Bring her cookies, bring her bagels, bring her coffee, bring her soup. Or apples. Or just ask her how she’s doing and let her tell you about her husband, and how the rent and the chauffage cost too much.

 

Four

 

Where is Emma Fillipoff

Asking People About Their Lives

September 2015

I am 29 years old.

 

2015 was a pretty prolific year here at the Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva. In an effort to be less self-absorbed, and because I love talking to people, I started this series called, Asking People About Their Lives. The format was unstructured conversations with people I found interesting and then I would transcribe the interview and convert it into a relatively coherent and readable article.

 

For my third interview subject, I met with my beloved grade-six French teacher Shelley Fillipoff. In November of 2012, Shelley’s daughter Emma went missing in Victoria, BC. Emma’s story is frightening, perplexing and haunting. We still have no idea where she is, or what happened.

Shelley was amazingly generous and candid in her account of Emma’s life and the months leading up to her disappearance. We sat on her couch for over three hours. So many moments, I felt so stunned.

 

I turned the interview into a nine-part blog series called, “Where is Emma Fillipoff.” In addition to Shelley’s account, I tried to include all the facts and perspectives I could find. Although some of the titles evoke Reader’s Digest, and of course things can always be improved, I am really proud of how focussed and dedicated I was to this project. I even persevered and triumphed through finicky formatting which I always used to outsource to my ex-boyfriend.  On a sadder note, we are close to where we started on the search for Emma Fillipoff. I never knew Emma all that well, and yet I often dream of her. When I wake up, I always wish I had more answers.




Where is Emma Fillipoff (One)



Five

 

L’Arche Montreal

2005-2007

I am 19 to 21 years old.

 

When I was nineteen years old, I was desperately seeking God slash Jesus and also inner peace. I knew about the transformative healing there was in taking care of people with intellectual disabilities, and so I quit McGill and moved to L’Arche. There I lived and shared my life with five people with intellectual disabilities, and two or three other assistants. One of my favourite parts was helping Isabelle with her morning routine. Isabelle has cerebral palsy and does not move all that much. If we wanted to make it in time for her 7:15 school bus, I had to fill her feeding bag with Peptamen by 6:05. As I rolled Isabelle down the wooden ramp to meet her busdriver Cynthia, I remember feeling like every person and every crevice of life was so important. And it all felt so connected.

 

After two years, I left L’Arche to finish university. This decision came with quite a bit of conflictand guilt. As though I was so essential, and I was leaving my people behind.

 

And yet the truth is, there was no need to feel selfish.

Someone will always show up to be with Isabelle.

But the possibility that I could show up for myself with the same grace and wholeness as Isabelle did,

This seemed more precarious and unlikely.   

 

Six

 

Valentine’s Day 2017

I am 31 years old

 

I mailed a French novel from the Dollar Store to my mother. The novel was called, “Ma Mercedes contre un tracteur, Tome 2.” I made a card and wished my mother a Joyeuse Saint-Valentin in French. She was thrilled.

Me and my own copy of the dollar store novel, which was so riveting I would never ever re-gift it.

The End.

Yours Forever,
Erica J. Schmidt


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Where is Emma Fillipoff (One)
What People Really Need
Yours Til Ekam Inhales


What I Think About When I Think About Brand Name Q-Tips

List

On August 4, 2010, Chad Angers sent me a message on Facebook.

2010-08-04 there are two types of men in the world
reasonable men and unreasonable men
the reasonable man adapts himself to the world and the unreasonable man adapts the world to himself
hence change is only driven by the unreasonable man

I met Chad Angers on a park bench, in a park on Rachel street, off St. Laurent. My arm was broken and I was about to go meditate at the Zen centre. A few minutes earlier, I had sat on another park bench in Parc Jeanne Mance. In four months, I would be turning twenty-five years old. I decided that it would be an excellent idea to stop getting drunk and sleeping with Simon. It was time to make a list of what I wanted in an ideal partner. I wrote down a bunch of qualities. I don’t remember any of the qualities, except perhaps that this ideal partner should be much taller than me. Simon was only five ten or eleven, and I am a tall five eight.

Chad Angers came right over and sat beside me.

“How did you break your arm?” He asked. He was at least 6 ft 5., with dark curly hair. As soon as he came near me, my vagina got all wet. This doesn’t tend to happen so spontaneously. Without considering any of the other on the list besides height, I decided that this was my man.

Chad Angers never capitalized nor punctuated. He had a very long, hard dick. I remember feeling it through his grey sweatpants, the kind Simon would have had to wear at his morphine studies. And once I saw his dick in his loft apartment in a secret neighbourhood. I’m not sure why I was there but Chad Angers took his pants off and his dick was hard and in my face. We were up in his bed. To get there, you had to climb up a ladder. Rapunzel Penis. That was the closest we ever got to having sex. I am pretty sure I never put his dick in my mouth.  I feel like this would have left a bigger impression.

That time in the loft was the last time I saw Chad Angers. A few months later, he called me and invited me to a movie. I said no. He hung up, then called me back yelling.

“You’re the worst shit stroke of bad luck that ever happened to me.” Some people might say that up until then, Chad Angers had had a lucky life. Others wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Years before I met him, Chad Angers drove his bike down a hill and ran into a tree. He hit his head and spent a whole month in a coma. Meeting me is either better than spending a month in a coma, or worse.

When I first met Chad Angers, for some reason I thought his name was Chad Angell. I always believed that this would have made all the difference.

The End.

Chuckie the Horse and His Penis
Chuckie the Horse and the Day Jack Layton Died
 

Cuts:

I wish I were disciplined enough to make things instead of just rambling incoherently and never polishing or finishing anything.

The children at the Montessori School polish glass, wood, brass and silver.  The silver is not really silver. Silver and aluminum and stainless steel all go into the same category. Same with brass, copper and any other brown metal. In French all the brown metals are called cuivre. In the dictionary cuivre’s first translation is copper. It used to be that the Montessori children would polish all the brown metal objects with licorice flavoured toothpaste, the natural kind without fluoride. There was a brass and/or copper boot, a brass and/or copper dog and a brass and/or copper mouse. For whatever reason, when the children covered the objects with the licorice toothpaste, the toothpaste would turn green. Most of the time, they would use so much toothpaste that you wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of surface they were polishing. I can’t remember if they were supposed to remove the toothpaste with a q-tip or a toothbrush. A toothbrush makes sense. Either way, they did a relatively terrible job. Now the Montessori directress has switched them over to some official metal polish. She gives the children individual servings of metal polish since they can’t be trusted to take a reasonable amount. Typically, children are not all that reasonable. Does that mean they are unreasonable? 

***

The Montessori directress let me keep the extra licorice flavoured toothpaste. I forgot it in Halifax when I moved away. The Boatman told me that he uses it, even though it tastes a bit disgusting and doesn’t really clean your teeth.

Post-Script:

Hair Elastics, Deodorant, and Dental Floss. In my life, I have found that these items exist in either great abundance or complete scarcity. Right now I am experiencing a period of relative abundance. Though maybe I could do with a little more floss.

This came up when I googled "Vintage Dental Floss" and I thought it was quite fabulous.

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Simon Says
Locks and Keys
Why I am Like Jane Fonda

 

Ecstatic Dance

With unrestrained enthusiasm and joy, a three year girl greeted me at the Montessori school. Her curly hair flew in every direction as she bounced up and down, arms flailing all over the place.

“Erica,” she asked me through her breathless exuberance. “How’d you get here?”

And so the “How’d You Get Here?” dance was born. From then on, I broke out the “how’d you get here dance,” approximately two and half times per week. The flailing and bobbing is quite becoming when you’re a tall five eight with very large, very curly hair and extremely long limbs.

“Hey babe,” I said to the Boatman, bopping around in the hall beside the bathroom. “How’d you get here?” Then I went to the yoga room to meditate for 35 minutes. I think my heart remained in overdrive for the first thirteen.

Now the Founder of the “How’d You Get Here?” dance is almost five. Despite all the time she spends exuberantly dancing, hopping around like a frog and crawling on the floor like a cat, her Montessori work folder is always bulging with imaginative creations. She paints and draws constantly, often without even looking at the page. I can’t wait to attend her shows when she’s in art school.

As for me, my Montessori career is somewhat over. I have left Halifax, and before settling in Montreal for the summer, I have spent the last couple of weeks in Toronto. Here I am enjoying this odd, in-between place where I don’t exactly exist and nothing feels like it counts.

One of the great highlights of the Toronto visit has been attending Ecstatic Dance. Having lived a somewhat sheltered life, I have never attended a rave; however, many people have told me that Ecstatic Dance is a bit like a sober rave. At Ecstatic Dance, a deejay plays a vast variety of music, and everyone is invited to express whatever is deep inside their bodies. You are welcome to wear a tutu, and the tutu can be green. Halfway through, if you change your mind, you can always take the tutu off. Anything goes.  Some people crawl across the floor like crocodiles, or lions, or hop around like frogs. You can dance with long phallic crystals or magical green rocks. No one is allowed to make fun of you and this is very liberating. It is also very liberating that nobody knows that the only time you could ever dance in high school was after chugging 2 bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade concealed inside juice bottles in the Student’s council room. By the way, my sister was the student council president.

Sister and Me, Restrained Ecstatic Dancing, Halifax Harbour

So far I have been to Ecstatic Dance three times. I find I frequently pull out the “How’d You Get Here?” dance. The bobbing and bouncing and particularly the limb flailing seem to truthfully match what’s deep inside of me.  I also do a great deal of bending my crooked spine over to the right and twisting it in circles over and over again. When I get tired, I roll around on the floor in incoherent ways. If I consider the unrelenting misery that was February, I never would have imagined myself participating in anything so joyful and uninhibited. Then again, why the hell not?

Despite the fact that I wrote a book called “I Let Go,” I always hesitate to tell people to get over shit. After all, as Margaret Atwood says, Old Neurological Pathways Die Hard. Even so, if you claim to be one of those people who can’t or just doesn’t dance, I say to you, Get the Fuck Over it. Ecstatic Dance is perfect for you. Be a tiger. Be an octopus. Jump around like you’re three and a half.

At the end of Ecstatic Dance, the music slows down and you might get the chance to roll around on the floor with another person’s body in a relatively unsexual way. Not everyone has a temporary or long-term source of cuddling slash sexual gratification and I feel like this end-of-dance floor union provides a viable option. Last Thursday night, I rolled around on the floor with a man who was wearing an extremely tight and short black spandex mini skirt. Although I’d assumed that he’d chosen the skirt to reflect his deepest creative self, I guess he’d actually forgotten his shorts and had resorted to raiding the lost and found. All he could find was the tiniest spandex mini skirt in the world. I didn’t find this out until afterwards and thus, I felt quite safe and dancing with a man in a spandex mini-skirt. In some ways, it was very safe and in other ways, not so safe. Still, we managed to avoid catastrophe.

When it was all over, the Man in the Skirt and I chatted about who we were, where we were from and what our creative lives were all about. Within approximately six and a half sentences, I pulled out the “Oh yah,my ex-boyfriend jumped off a building in January” speech. All the people of Toronto have been amazingly receptive of this speech and for this I have been immensely grateful.  
The Man in the Skirt asked for my contact info and on Friday, he sent me a poem. I think it was about someone else ejaculating. Or it could also have been about conception. It seems like both of these things are popular poetry topics. It is always a bit fun when someone sends you a poem.

“You have such a wonderful sister,” the Man with the Skirt told my sister before we left. Ecstatic Dance makes you feel so wonderful about yourself. Life is very exciting. How’d we get here?

The End.

I forgot to mention that at Ecstatic Dance, quite a few people wear Spiritual Pants. It was quite a delight to see Spiritual Pants again. That said, I left my spiritual pants in Montreal and kind of feel as though the low crotch would impede my How’d You Get Here? dance.

Spiritual Pants and the Darling Canadians in Mysore, Green Hotel

So I’ve started a new creative practice routine where I post every MONDAY around 4 or 5 PM and THURSDAY around lunch time. One of my relatives who also happens to be a Social Media Expert claims that this is not the most auspicious social media time, but I have a Kale Phone and don’t tend to take this sort of thing into consideration. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned and free to follow me in whatever capacity seems to best match what’s deep inside your body:

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I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

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Darcy, which features a blue tutu

Ecstatic Dance takes place on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays from 7:30-9:30 at Dovercourt House, 805 Dovercourt Rd.
Ecstatic Dance Thursdays in Toronto 
The Move (Fridays)

 

The part that searches

Tuesday, April 2, 2015

I will miss the wind in Halifax. Outside it always sounds like something is going on and I don’t need to anything about it. I remember meditating in the church at the Montessori school and the wind was always crackling the wooden a-frame ceiling. The last couple of times I’ve worked at the Montessori school, during my breaks, instead of meditating, I just lay down on the floor of the church sanctuary, beside the pews. Sometimes I would fall asleep and sometimes I would stare at the wooden ceiling and think about all the trees it took to build the church and all the people who had come to worship with their families, their people. Even though I was so exhausted, I was lucky to have had that time at the Montessori School. It made my life really structured and I was able to put practice at the centre of my life. I am grateful that my practice was given that structure, that focus, despite the fact that it was often too intense and physically harmful. Intention does count for something. Though there have always been delusions, I have always been sincere. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I have searched with sincerity. I love that part of myself. The part that searches.

The End.

 

My friends, the rocks on the beach
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You Cling to Things Until They Die
Last Practice before Vipassana
Recycling Day

Do Not Kill Your Baby

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.

 

 

Do Not Kill Your Baby

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