Diary of a mothering worker. July 1, 2014.

Post 152.

In my mother’s era, even girls could roam their neighborhood unsupervised, playing with children, visiting neighbors and collecting assorted species of fish, frog and fauna in ravines or nearby streams.

The majority of children of Ziya’s generation will never have that experience. We adults have almost irreversibly polluted many of the rivers near our homes with garbage and poison. It’s risky for any mother to allow her young daughter to wander freely. Living at odds with our environment and each other is a cost that will be borne by those now being born.

I try to make up for that generational loss by taking Zi to clean streams or empty stretches of beach as often as I can. I avoid Maracas, and dream that the $78 million planned upgrade includes rehabilitation of the river’s ecosystem. Anything is possible with a vision, and we are responsible for protecting mangroves, coasts and fresh watercourses for our children.

Teaching Zi that girls can be explorers, not just the “princess-mermaids” that she and her school friends pretend to be, we study tadpoles in various stages of growth, assess the shape and colour of shells, rocks and plant life, and look for fish and crabs. Mostly, I’m hoping that her trips to Yara River, Avocat waterfall or Balandra enable her to become the kind of woman who is curious about and committed to the earth, wildlife and science.

I don’t want her to be afraid. I want her to be aware of what roles bats, lizards, bees, bachacs and snakes play, and why they have a right to be here. I want her to be willing to hold grasshoppers in her hand, catch little crabs without harming them, and carefully dissect unfamiliar dead insects.

This weekend, we showed Zi a dead Titanus Giganteus beetle caught in the backyard. Even lifeless, it is intimidating, and I had no plans to hold it in my hand. To Stone’s horror (I mean it, I saw him sway on his feet with herculean effort to appear nonchalant) and to my own surprise, Zi nimbly picked it up like she was selecting a cupcake from a tray. The body was bigger than her hand, and the legs and antennae dangled for inches. Girl didn’t flinch. I was impressed. It was one of those mummy moments when your child surpasses you, does something that you’d been teaching her to do, and just so shows you how it is done.

It seems irrelevant, but children, especially girls, are taught so much fear. We parent through fear. We teach girls to fear strangers and especially men. We teach them to fear their bodies and their sexuality. We teach them to fear being seen as too powerful or too dominant or too unstoppable or too feminist. We teach them to fear the wild, the dark and being outside alone.

Resisting this, I want Zi to learn everyday fearlessness, like Jane Goodall who went out into the forest and sat with gorillas for hours by herself, like my youngest sister Giselle who handles cobras with skill and due respect, like my women friends who are not intimidated by local tarantulas or by surfing the deep ocean. I want her to fear everything less than I do, to show me her nurtured instinct for a braver world.

Curiosity, courage and connection with the planet don’t seem like skills that girls most need, but they translate to confidently asking questions of the status quo, valuing widespread freedom and diversity, understanding how to contribute to a bigger ecology, and bringing fearlessness to whatever vision Zi decides should succeed.

 

Diary of a mothering worker. April 22, 2013

Post 94.

Recently, a river in Balandra told Ziya this story:

Once upon a time there was a little river who wanted to be a linguist. She knew that only fancy people at the United Nations or in stuffy universities got to be linguists, but she didn’t care. Even if she was only a small river on a small island, she was ambitious beyond anyone’s expectation.

Little river had already begun to make her way all over the island, rushing out of rocks, flowing slowly through settlements, leaping off little cliffs, bubbling through forests and meandering her way along villages. She did this because she loved to listen to the languages of her world as they were being spoken by all the people who lived on her island, and even by the birds and animals.

Soon, she learned all the languages that there were to know, from Yoruba, Urdu and Bhojpuri to English and French Patois. Little river also came categorise the sounds of many hundreds of birds, the buzz of thousands of insects and the day and night-time calls of mammals. Yet little river felt that there was so much more for her to learn.

One day as she was running quickly along the edge of the island, humming to herself in six languages, she heard the most remarkable sound. It was like many different words were being said, all at different pitches, all with different accents. She slowed in wonder and wound her way closer, listening as the noise got louder and more jumbled, like a Saturday morning market. Just as she thought she discovered their source, she hit a wall of rocks too high for her to reach over and too deep and solid for her to flow under or crack through. Little river sank back, stared at the rocks for a long time and could not figure out what to do. She began to cry, thinking her dreams had ended. Even the flowers’ whispered consolations could not stop her tears.

She cried so much that the sky, who usually minds nobody’s business but her own, noticed little river’s broken heart, wrapped her in her arms and began to wail for her. Their weeping continued until river began to realise that sky’s tears had filled her and made her tall. Through her sorrow, little river became powerful and strong. She lifted her wet eyes to the rocks and, without pausing to feel fear or doubt, leapt over them, cascaded over a cliff, skidded down a hill and tumbled in sharp curves toward the sea. Breathless, she plunged head first into the vast ocean.

‘Hello, little river’, said the sea in ten thousand tongues. ‘Hello’, said little river, proud that she knew a few. ‘So, you are a linguist?’ ‘Yes’, said little river, ‘and you know all the ancient and new languages ever spoken. How can I learn them too?’ ‘Simply drink me’, said the sea, ‘and I will drink your island’s languages from you’. Each opened her mouth and began to fill with the other. Little river twisted in currents she never knew existed, and heard the sounds of people and animals who no longer roamed the earth as well as those who still visited the world’s oceans and rivers. She wove through them all, soaking up knowledge beyond her dreams.

And so, today, whenever people, birds and animals want to learn languages and knowledge, they visit little river’s mouth, where she still fills with the ocean and where the ocean still drinks her in, and in these visits, it is best to just sit quietly and listen.