Ah, childhood!

Auro watched a clip on Instagram today. It was a clip from the movie The Namesake. A father holding his son’s hand, taking him close to the sea. The mother with her daughter in her arms keeps telling him, “Don’t go so far that I can’t see you. He’s too little.” As the waves wildly crash on the shore, the father waves his hand in an assurance that he has listened to her concern and that they are safe. The child is safe. The child is safe with the father holding his hands. They are safe! The child is safe. The child is safe. The child is safe.

As they reach closer to the crashing and roaring waves, he suddenly remembers that there is no camera. They left the camera in the car. “What to do?”, the father asks his son. “The camera, it’s in the car. All this way and no picture, huh?” 

The child doesn’t move his eyes from the sea. 

He keeps looking at the sea. 

He doesn’t care about the camera, 

about the pictures, 

about the lost opportunity to capture a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime view. 

He is in the moment. 

The father scrunches down, gets closer to the child, smiles at him, and says, “We just have to remember it then, huh? Will you remember this day?” It is then when the child speaks as the intensity of the responsibility suddenly pulls him back to reality. But his eyes still don’t move. Eyes affixed on the sea, the child asks, “How long do I have to remember it?” “Ah, remember it always. Remember that you and I made this journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go”, the father replies. 

All Auro could think was, “How long has it been since I left my father’s hand? How long has it been since my mother lost me from her sight? How do they feel knowing that they had to let go of my hands, let me go out of their sight? How scared have they been, for how long?

Am I scared? I don’t think so. Not since that night. Now I’m more afraid to let them see me. What do I tell them? How do I tell them? 

        I’m not your little girl anymore! I can’t be, not anymore!”

Auro can’t tell them that. So, she just sends this clip to her sister and writes, “Ah, childhood!”

She tells herself, “No, it doesn’t break my heart. It doesn’t break my heart.

…

As if it doesn’t break my heart.

As if 

it doesn’t revive the silent sob screeching in the corner of my heart 

that desperately, 

violently, 

brutally, 

inhumanely 

dumped my childhood somewhere without telling me, 

without letting me know where to find it if I ever needed it back, 

if my parents ever needed their little girl back!”

Humming in love, humming with love

 

 

Love looked at me like Van Gogh looked at the sky

With hope, with grief, with attention

With expectations and magic in eyes

With no space for condescension or pretension

With a sense of belonging that is too far to reach

And a little bit of longing that hums in a silent screech

rootless branches

 

That sheer feeling of despair that comes from the feeling of rootlessness. You know you don’t have roots, so you try your best, you keep trying your best, and in doing so you frantically try to branch out to as many places as possible. But at the end of the day, you know that you have no roots, so it does not matter how many times and much you branch out. It might all come off at the end of the day if just one storm comes. So, you are always careful, too cautious about not getting every part of you ripped out. You panic even at a minor inconvenience. What if this time not having roots cost you all the branches that you worked on so hard? And when these thoughts encroach your mind entirely, you either try to branch out more and more until you literally cannot carry the weight of them anymore or you go deep into the ground, searching for your roots or maybe just sit there with the despair of realization that no matter how much you search for them, they are just not there. That light feeling or the feeling of weightlessness from being rootless… you try to cover it up with the cumbersome branches. But when nothing works out at all, you curl yourself up under the ground and in an effort to not see anyone or to be seen by anyone, you let everything go

...

until you remember your branches are waiting for you. So, you pick yourself up and give life to your branches one more time, again! You let them grow. You decide you’ll wait until the storm finally comes and takes everything away or until you see some sign of life breathing under the ground. 

Till then, you keep branching out, keep growing, and keep giving life. Until when? 

You don't know...

You don't know...

You don't know...

Where’s the sky?

“Look mama, balloons! So many balloons! I can’t see the sky mama. I can’t see the sky mama!”

“But why are you crying, honey?”

“Because I can’t see the sky mama. The sky mama, I can’t see it. Please mama, the sky! Please, mama!”

The child kept crying and pointing at the sky. She kept pulling her mother, trying to somehow (anyhow) transfer her desperation and fear to her mother by pulling her hands and tugging her clothes. She kept asking her mother for help. Engulfed with despair, the mother didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t understand her child’s cry for help, she couldn’t see why not seeing the sky was like a life-and-death situation for her child.

“Mama, I beg you. Please, the sky’s almost gone. Do something, mama.”

“What can I do honey? I don’t know where the balloons are coming from!”

Slowly, there remains no sky, just balloons. Balloons everywhere!

“Mama…”- last cry for help.

The child sits down on the ground.

“Mama, shouldn’t I be happy to see balloons? I’m just a kid. Why is not being able to see the sky so scary to me mama? Why can’t I be happy like those kids?”

Both looked at the other kids following the balloons with a smile on their faces, childlike joy in their running feet, wonder and excitement in their eyes, while the mother and the child held each other’s hands with bewilderment and vulnerability.

Her mother replies, “Look at me! Don’t you see my helplessness?”

“I do mama. Do you want me to run after the balloons like the other kids? Would that make you a little less sad mama?”

“But what about you honey? What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh Mama, I think I have no hope at all. The sky, I can’t see the sky mama. I’m, scared! Not seeing the sky is scary mama. It shouldn’t be this way, right mama? Something’s wrong with me, right mama?”

The mother looks up, cheeks dampened, eyes questioning something or someone up there, while the child lets go of her hands and runs anyway.