To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

20 Jun 2009 Leave a comment

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Uncategorized

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."

This is from Macbeth(Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

I have not written for a while… will bring matters up to date.  I'm sitting here with Chris Futia who has returned to help, and to enjoy the children.  We were speaking about getting things done, or not done, here in Kolkata and she spoke those words, "tomorrow…." and I googled the words and found Macbeth's soliloquy upon the death of his wife.  It is full of despair and my first thought was, "Well, he didn't have these children to love."  Those are always my thoughts — these children whom I love so much and want to protect so much.  They are my antidote to "… full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

 

How are we all?  The children are wonderful.  They have been on school vacation, a big reason I had little opportunity to write.  I have greatly strengthened the teaching program at Shishur Sevay, while the girls also continue at the government school.  I have an extra teacher for homework now until 8:30 in the evening.  The basic schedule for the big girls is:

6:30 am to 10:30 am    Sahapur Sabitri Balika Vidyalaya — School

AT SHISHUR SEVAY:

11 am to 1 pm:   English

2:30 to 4:30        Bengali

4:30 to 6:30        Math

5:30 to 8:30        Homework teacher

We break at 6:30 for evening prayers,

For our girls with disabilities:

6:30 am to 8:45     Sahapur Sabitri Balika Vidyalaya — School for Ganga and Bornali

8 am to 2 pm     Special educator at Shishur Sevay for classes for all four girls.

4 pm to 8 pm    Combination of cognitive education and physical therapy.

One afternoon a week a special workshop for children with cerebral palsy.

Speech therapy twice a week.

Massage six days a week in morning

Physiotherapy – formal, once a week

Special teachers seven days a week

Learning disabilities expert once a week for big girls, working on strengths and weaknesses so goals and expectations can be identified and measures.

Adaptive communication expert once a week.

Expert in language and communication once a month workshop and supervision once a week.

Dance has been cut to once a week, on Saturday evening, because the school work load is too heavy in the week.

Drawing class is once a week with a rising star local artist.

 

We have also hired a House Supervisor to take over many of the responsibilities I was carrying — of the hair ribbon, check cleaning, laundry, etc realm.  She hasn't yet mastered the digital washing machine so Bijoy and I still run the machine.  It's a grounding experience.

 

The crisis upon us is that I may have to be out of the country for a short while.  I don't even like to talk about it… but we will do what we have to as best as we can.  Chris is prepared to take charge.  I want to strengthen the back up as much as I can.  The girls are worried but OK.  The little ones will have a hard time… For Ganga I am the center of her universe.  And to be honest, she is pretty close to the center of mine.

 

A funny story but it tells something about life here, or my life with the girls.  A teacher came to me a few days ago and said that four girls had just announced they intended to be naughty in class.  Yes, this was odd… and she said she would have to come and tell me and they said fine.  As I walked up the stairs I really didn't know what I would do… I walked in the door and saw them sitting at their little desks, and then I turned away from them, to the wall and began to wail and wail!  "MY BACHHAS (my children) NAUGHTY!  MY BACHHAS NAUGHTY!"  I threw my hands up over my head wailing and wailing.  Then I paused momentarily and looked to see if they were watching and wailed again.  it's just what they do when they are crying for effect, check to see if anyone is watching….  Well, by then they were rolling on the floor with laughter.  It was fun… I told them I love them, even when they glare at me on the way to school, which they had done that morning.  (Of course they were amazed I'd noticed). Like I said, I often don't know how I'll deal with a situation until I get there….

 

It's sort of like my life, unfolding…. page at a time.  I'm always scared when the page turns that I will lose something, someone — but over my life the pages, the people, the spirit of love is stronger and stronger.

 

I love the page I'm on.  I love the life I have.  I love. 

I think I've included this before, but here is a poem:

One

Worse than unloved is

To be unable to love,

The stars will not sing,

The trees will not bud,

The moon will not smile,

The earth will not thaw,

The wheat will not grow,

The sails will not fill,

The mind will not think,

The heart will not feel,

The night will not end,

The cradle will fall.

 

mh

 

 

 

 

 

The Washing of my Feet

24 May 2009 Leave a comment

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Uncategorized

This picture/post is not for the orthodox politically correct reader.  Those are my white feet and those are my brown Indian girls who are washing them, with loving care as you see, and as I felt. Race and skin color cannot be the single identities that define our relationships.  The children don't see it that way and the rest of us shouldn't.  But I am aware of those PC opinions and judgments of what I do here, which is why I address the issue.  From the beginning I have talked about what it is like being white in an Indian world.  Sometimes it is irrelevant.  This is good.

Foot-Bath_0264 

The girls love to massage my head with coconut oil and to wash my feet and then massage with coconut oil.  They do this sometimes as I write at the computer.  We had just spent the morning cleaning the garden.  So what happens when they scrub my feet and my legs?  They remember their families, their mothers, fathers, siblings…. and they talk.  I heard more stories yesterday morning.  As they scrubbed I heard more about violence, about drinking, and about beatings.  A couple of times they stopped to show me scars, places where knives had cut, nails had been poked — and of course I already knew of the burns.  When we shaved their hair two years ago, we saw so many burns and scars…

 

I learned about villages where they had been… and they talked each repeating what the other said, as Greek chorus, in case I had missed it.  These girls love to nurture!  They are constantly alert to any scratches I might have, my scars, how I got them.  They want to take care of me.  This reminds me of another poem I wrote:

 

 

One

Worse than unloved is

To be unable to love,

The stars will not sing,

The trees will not bud,

The moon will not smile,

The earth will not thaw,

The wheat will not grow,

The sails will not fill,

The mind will not think,

The heart will not feel,

The night will not end,

The cradle will fall.

Ganga and Bornali are seven years old.

23 May 2009 Leave a comment

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Ganga, Uncategorized

I took Ganga and Bornali to the dentist this afternoon.   I'd taken Rani two weeks before.  Her teeth are unaligned and she sometimes bites her tongue.  Ganga has two blackened teeth, still milk teeth, but I wanted to know if they posed a problem.  She also has one badly decayed tooth with gum swelling around it.  The dentist will try to do this in the office but it may be necessary to do the procedure in the hospital under general anesthesia.  Given my experiences with the health care system here, that is a frightening prospect. 

The children were seen elsewhere last year but no one offered a dental age.  Today I learned that according to their teeth development they are seven years old.  It is hard to describe how horrible that feels, because when they came, two years, three months, and one day ago, they looked like babies.  Here is a picture of when we first saw them at the institution.  I took the picture and wrote their names on the palm of my hand because I knew we wouldn't get records that would identify them… I at least wanted to know their correct names, or their names on record.

4-babies-edit1-   

Many thoughts go through my mind at once.  The most repetitive is, "where was Ganga for the first five years of her life?  How can a child so social, so engaging, so curious, so aware of everything around her, so dependent on me — how could she have arrived with no motion, no expression, no relatedness, just passively being moved, changed, fed — a rag doll that could be left in any position, arms that just hung, hands that did not close.  Where was she for those five years?  How could no one have noticed, for if they had she would have come with some of the vitality she has now? 

Ganga had her eyes, the eyes that begged me to take her upstairs to the classroom, the eyes that watched the Bengali movie Damu, about a father who was able to get an elephant for his daughter.  So I wonder about her past.  Did she spend all those years in a hospital?  Was she hidden away in a room with a TV?  Did she have people she loved, grew attached to, lost?  Was she loved at all?  When we meet old people, especially when they are dressed in white cloth, she tries to talk to them, as if to take up where life left off.    She looks to them with a sense of familiarity and with expectation that they will know her.  Saraswati_4745 

Sabitri_0164w

Bornali's ears are pierced so she had to have had a family at one time, a family that abandoned her.  A child with no mobility cannot run away, or get lost somewhere in a train station or on a road.  She had to have been left, given up — ties broken.  Someone had to have said, "We don't want you."  Bornali showed no emotion for a long time.  She bit anyone who came near — not aggressively really.  She was like a little alligator squirming on her belly, mouth open, ready to clamp onto any flesh she came near.  I had a separate crib built for her because we couldn't leave her near the others.  Bornali didn't laugh and she didn't cry.

 My first goal with Bornali was to stop the biting, which I did by offering my arm, and really yelling when she started to bite.  She either had to learn not to bite or she was doomed to a life of isolation.  She learned; I took apart the crib.  She has blossomed into the child in the pictures in my last post.   She is a sweet little girl, but on the shy side.  She is smart, and learns quickly.    She is exceedingly vulnerable to loss and separation.  She has her favorite care-giver, and especially her favorite Didis.  And of course, I am mummy to all of them.  How should she be seven?  How could she have been five when she came?  Who did this to her?Bono_0147w

 

Rani of course we know about as we found her mother.  She too has changed incredibly, now being present among us.    She has left her isolation.  We welcome her.  In her case there was no way her family could have kept her, and no facilities that would have taken her.  So she was left somewhere, to be taken by police to Sukanya home, where we found her and brought her to us.  For a long time she required one full time caregiver just to manage her.  She is funny and silly.  She has incredible rhythm sense and she and I tap surfaces together or she takes my hands in hers and claps them together.  When she came she only spun around in circles.  The girls love her and one of the older girls taught her to stand.  Now she stands on her own.  Her mother has peace of mind.  This is nice for all of us.

IMG_4801

Sonali is our youngest and the only one with medical records.  She is visually impaired and microcephalic — but we really don't know yet what is ahead for her.  She has had severe seizures.  Her latest effort is to put food right up against her left eye and then taste it with her tongue.  She is trying to coordinate visual and taste.  She has also begun to seek more social contact.  Much of the time she was in her own (seemingly delightful) world, climbing and swinging on anything her hands could find.  One of our teachers is determined that she will be a gymnast.

Saraswati_4726w 

Sona_0143w 

 

This is not just about India, for children all over the world are abandoned, particularly children with disabilities.  My mind goes to cold hearts, to people who only love those whose protoplasm is formed according to certain social conventions.

 

I love these children.  That's the bottom line, and it hurts that they have had such loss, isolation, hunger in their lives.  Because I love them I will continue to to everything in my power to provide those experiences that make life meaningful and allow any of us to grow.  But it still hurts that Ganga and Bornali are seven, and that so many years have been lost.

Saraswatiw_4755 Saraswati_4746-

 

*********************************

I am up at 3 am, thinking about this post, what is still unsaid.  Looking back, the children look like pictures we sometimes see in the news of children who have been locked in closets, basements, never taken out, poorly fed… a seventeen year old who looks like seven.  And what we are seeing at Shishur Sevay is that our children somehow preserved a sense of self, identity, even throughout their earlier years of neglect.  How does this happen? Ganga and Bornali are normal children.  If they had normal motor function, speech, and early care, they would easily blend in with any other group of children.  Ganga would be outgoing; Bornali would be shy.

So the question on my mind when I woke at 3 am was,  How does the human spirit survive intact when there is no reason, or does it live like a hidden spore, ready to grow when/if it is touched by human warmth and love.  For both of these girls there was some hidden protected place.  I'm reminded of a poem I wrote, about a protected place…

 

There are Cobwebs in my Heart

There are cobwebs in my heart

Where mama used to be,

A room preserved…

Frozen in the moment of her

Leavetaking.

The growing strands of thin floating filaments

Encroach,

From the corners of

Her room,

And gather over time to mark the emptiness.

Enshrouded,

An alter of love remains,

Built long ago to call for God,

— Just in case he was listening –

A dainty layette,

Delicately embroidered

White on white

Awaits the newborn,

Booties, hand sewn in some distant land,

Where women feed their own

Knitting for the children they’ll never know.

A lullaby plays, the needle jammed —

The cradle will fall.

The cobwebs soften the harsh notes of the broken music,

They blur the searing loss,

And comfort the dying infant

Like gentle shrouds of lingering memory.

Oh mama, if only you had stayed.

 

A “Bad Hair” Day

26 Apr 2009 2 Comments

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Uncategorized

I found this in “drafts” as I was going through old posts, saving files, making hard copy….  Some old drafts were starts that didn’t need to finish.  This one seemed worth posting as it made me smile so much.  Too bad I didn’t take a picture at the time. 

Yesterday was literally a “bad hair” day and probably the very worst hair day i’ve had since I was 12 and the perm chemical burned my scalp and I broke out with blisters all over my back.  So, for the next 44 years I have not had a bad hair day until yesterday.  I realize in writing that I don’t even consider my loss of hair from chemotherapy in this category.  Yesterday, and age 12 were about “screw-ups”.

 I needed a touch up and finally found time Thursday evening.  I’ll cut to the end, which is that I went in looking for touch up of my reddish brown and came out with BLACK hair.  This was not an accident or a mis communication, but a hair dresser who was angry that I’d turned him down many times when he wanted to massage my head and I’d been using other people.  The salon told me I could come back and they would lighten it.  This is an “upscale” place I’ve been going to for at least a year.

In the spirit of celebration , I decided a special treat would be to take out “First in Class” winner to the salon with me, to have her hair cut (which she wanted) and to have a first manicure, and I’d have my hair fixed.   We had a great time.  BUT, my hair was a disaster.  First they tried to dye it reddish but after an hour it was clear that black could not be lightened.  I was actually quite relaxed about it, but insistent it wasn’t OK.  So, they bleached it to get out the black.  The problem was, and I could see from how they put it on, that they didn’t cover all areas.  So I sat wondering what this was going to look like and I knew it wasn’t good.  My “First in Class” and I laughed and I ordered up croissants as it was taking so long.  I kept whispering to her, “I think this is REALLY bad!”  In the meantime she’d had her manicure, and loved it, with pink sparkly polish that matched the salwar suit she was wearing.  The haircut was layered to her shoulders, and is really beautiful.

After the bleach — I think they were just in over their heads (no pun intended) as they didn’t seem to register how bad it was, they put on the red dye.  I’ve written before about Holi, the festival of colours.  People put powder dye and spray water with dye.  I look like I’ve just been “Holied” as my head is a combination of orange, red, and black streaks and patches.  But what to do?  So I said it was fine, and I’ll go elsewhere. 

So, “Beautiful First in Class” and Mummy skipped out of there laughing at my head and came home.  The girls love my funny looking head.  I don’t have to look at it except when brushing my teeth.

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