Minute One
I think that life is a little prejudiced when it comes to the matter of minutes. Sometimes she skips over them and hours are gone in a flash. Sometimes she favors them, dragging them out until it feels like I've lived a whole day while waiting for the clock to tick once.
I spend the minutes that make up this week in three different ways: eating, sleeping, and teaching.
I teach my English students how to add predicates to subjects and how to pronounce the word "righteousness." Not to call out boys as a general population, but if I'm being honest I think that girls are internationally more apt toward lovely things. At the end of one class, I asked each of my students to write a sentence (four word minumum) containing a subject and a predicate. The girls handed me flowery sentences such as "The sun rises in the east" and "A bird soared across the sky." The boys' papers were littered with phrases such as "He walked," and "Dog barked."I guess I lost them before I explained the four word minimum.
I teach my music students the chorus to a song that I wrote and I show them how to harmonize. When I ask them if they know what harmony is, I am met with a sea of blank stares. At first I think that my question has been lost in translation, but as I begin seperating the sections and teaching the parts, I realize they truly have no idea what harmony is. They bellow valliantly on, however, wavering off key and forgetting where their notes are headed, but the Good Book says to make a joyful noise, not a perfect one, right?
I teach my kiddos how to yodel and when I tell them, "This is your chance to be loud and obnoxious and call it school. Use the power wisely." The sound of all of them "practicing" at once is like nothing I've ever heard before. But I imagine it is not unlike the sound of banshees charging chaotically into war against an army of donkeys.
Minute Two
And I've realized something that marks the difference between this place - along with so many other places to which I have traveled - and the place that I call home. I live in a modern country with young roots, and what little "old" culture we have is nodded to, written about, and then pushed aside to make room for the bright, shiny future. I live in a country where the culture of my parent's generation in considered "vintage" and in every town I seek out stores devoted to leftover relics from the past. The places I have traveled aren't like that. They don't have to seek the old because everything is old. They are fighting to be modern and shiny and bright. But they've never let go of who they used to be. A computer store stands right next to a colorful, ancient temple. One day a girl will come to class wearing jeans and a sweat shirt and the next day she will be wearing the traditional saree. The silk stores by the trash piles. The skycrapers by the labor factories. Something old, something new.
Minute Three
And life is slipping away through the crawl space beneath the floor and the cracks in the windows. Sleepless nights and sleepy days. Insomnia following me halfway across the world.
"No dreaming! Eat more!" At dinner, Ruth dishes shovel-full after shovel-full of rice onto my plate.
"I can't," I say, holding my stomach.
"You will."
"But-"
"You are hungry."
There is no arguing with her. I take another bite, coming to terms with the fact that I will come home fifty pounds heavier.
They say behind every successful man is an amazing woman. That is exactly what Ruth is. It seems like she is the glue holding all of India together. People in every corner of the country know her name. And so I can't complain when she tells me to sleep every five minutes or force feeds me her incredible food. "Strength and honor are her clothing; she shall rejoice in the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her."
-Proverbs 31:25-28
Minute Four
And three weeks are down.
And three weeks are left.
I miss you all.
Goodnight.
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