April was a brutal month for both Shanthala and I. Work consumed our lives. Shanthala’s days were long, Thursdays her only mid-week relief. All the backlog at work from the time we were in India finally caught up to me and I was working practically full time. I hardly managed to lift my head from work and Maya. When I was done, I was so tired, I didn’t want to write, didn’t want to exercise, didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to go away some place, all alone, just get a moment to catch my breath and clear my head.
May was supposed to be better, but then one of Shanthala’s colleagues got laid off and she was back to looking at a month with a punishing schedule, with the dimming of even mid-week relief and a little break that we thought we might catch in June.
Thursday evening, I was spent and mentally exhausted. Every pore in me screamed flight. That night, Maya didn’t want to sleep. I lay with her for almost an hour, in darkness, as she struggled to fall asleep. Eventually, I got up and asked her if she wanted to go down. “Yes”, she said, the relief apparent in her voice. The clock said eleven, but my brain said forget it. I brought Maya down and took her to the second bedroom and I asked her to read something while I read some stuff on the web. Eventually, a little after midnight, we both fell asleep.
The nanny was off on Friday and I stayed home to care for Maya. Maya decided to finally pedal her tricycle. She pedalled almost 1.5 miles. We followed it up with a lazy afternoon and a mild evening. I had a great day. And then on Saturday, it was still early when she and I left home. She pedalled a little over a mile to the nearby park and played there.
After a brunch at the farmer’s market, I lay in the backyard and read “Poet’s Choice”, a selection of poems by Robert Haas. Maya played in her sandpit nearby. The poems I picked at random were luminous, peaceful. I put the book down and gazed at the leaves of the tree. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, but was still brilliant enough to be almost blinding. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. As I watched the leaves sigh and sway with the breeze, a hummingbird flitted amongst the leaves. Just feeling groovy, I guess. The chiaroscuro weather that characterizes spring finally seemed to be ebbing. Summer felt close.
Maya stopped playing and came by to examine the book. She then asked me to read her something from the book. I turned a page and found just the perfect poem for her. She lay next to me and listened silently as I read Denise Levertov’s “In Summer”. When I was done reading, she smiled and said “Chanaga”, which in her version of Kannada meant she liked it a lot. I read it again to her. Summer feels close.
When the light, late in the afternoon, pauses among
the highest branches of the highest trees,
they stir a little as if in pleasure. Light and a passing breeze
become one and the same, a caress. Then the lower branches,
leaves or needles in shadows, take up the lilt
of that response, their green with its hint of blue forming
what, if it were sound, could be called
a chord with the almost yellow of those
the sunlight tarries with.
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