LITTLE GIRLS IN A GARDEN

I remember when the twins Mitsuki and Miasa were about 4 years old, we were doing garden work and I handed each of them a rake. They looked at the huge objects in their hands the way I would look at a 50-quon Grongorch from the Gas Jungles of Saturn, then their eyes turned to me with a glint of a hint at what a bonehead I was, for assuming that one is born knowing how to use whatever a "rake" is. 

This characteristic of mine doesn't seem to diminish as I get older. The other day I and the twins (now 10 years old) were out in the same garden and I gave each of them a packet of spinach seeds, showed them the new furrows I'd made, asked them to plant the seeds about 2 cm apart, said we could thin them later. 

They started at opposite ends of the long rows and worked toward each other, reaching into their packets and carefully lifting out just one seed at a time, grasping it softly between two fingertips, like a tiny egg, then reaching down and placing it gently upon the soft cushion of soil - just there - like putting a tiny doll to bed, then patting it into place with the end of a loving finger, taking each seed at its true value, even tucking it in with a little earthy blanket, then extracting the next seed in all the same way and placing it, as precisely as possible by eye, about 2 cm down the row. The rows of seeds filled slowly, but perfectly. 

With a row-and-a-half per twin, it took quite a while to get all the seeds arranged in comfort and sleeping softly, but M&M seemed to enjoy it, they were fully absorbed and far away, and I'll bet it was all worth it: that spinach will be the happiest, most nourishing, spiritually balanced and tastiest spinach I've ever grown.

But it was a rarer treasure to watch the twins in those natural moments, of the patient and caring kind that only free-range kids seem able to embody in this fast-forward world; all the more precious to the lucky elder nearby who has to go far back in his own museum to get hold of anything that real anymore, the way real used to be, that now seems to live mainly in fading recollection... 

The pure breath of life, these little girls, who still wear the aura of the eternity whence they came, still live in a when where each new thing is impeccably new, infinite with possibilities and deserving of tenderest care without embarrassment, up to a point; I was a boy, myself...

ANGELS ALL OVER THE PLACE

When as grownups we fall and rise again, hopefully each time closer to the angels, it is to us a matter of integrity, of struggle and betterment, of progress and growth, the rooted aims of a living life...

And then later down the snows of time on an Asian mountainside, when of a blue winter morning at a certain age we observe our young descendants fall backward into the whiteness and make wings of their arms, laughing and unable to rise because it is so wondrous to lie there, warm and cradled in the soft cold, gazing up at the highest of sky from this perfect point of view, it is heartening to us elders beholding, in the simplest of ways, that true living is, at its heart, a matter of light...

As is so often the case I had different plans for today, but this time it snowed during the night, to my amazement and baffled surprise, this being late January-- or nowadays, early Spring. Until yesterday I had been under the strong impression that the balmy zephyrs would continue until the glaciers melted, inundating coastlines and shifting sea currents, unbalancing the earth and sending us whirling off toward maybe Mars, but some things never turn out the way you think they might.

So the trio and I spent the day not following Work Plan A, but rather shoveling off the deck and sledding for a while, I then leaning on the deck rail watching while the twins made angels in the snow below until there were angels all over the place, with angel faces in between, and we couldn't walk anywhere around the firewood without stepping on an angel.

Never had a better reason for calling it a day.

GOODNESS AND JOY
(From when the twins were born, 6 years ago this month)

Well, the newborn twins are with us for a while, and are they ever new. And since we know from experience that newborn newness is as temporary as a dewdrop we are making the most of it, short of keeping the little sleepies awake too long.

After each of the babies in my life has grown up, I've somehow managed to forget how tiny newborns are, a lapse absolutely corrected by the next newcomer. Throughout their ephemeral awakenings, how wrinkly and skinny and endearing they are, with their tiny actual legs and feet with genuine toes, hands and fingers that work, professional yawns as though they've been yawning all their lives, which in fact they have been.

Between yawns they lie there patiently, practicing all the many faces, smiling a full-bloom smile before they even have a sense of humor; then there's a look of heartbreaking disappointment, hopefully never to be used, but practiced nonetheless. And rage, and glee and other excitements: all rehearsals.

Even when their kitten-cries pierce the air like arrows, carry upstairs and downstairs, penetrate thick walls and doors and bring instant silence to the most important adult conversation, they aren't really crying, they aren't in actual despair; like humor, that also requires personal experience of the highs and lows of the world out there, for which they're busy rehearsing. So as they weep and laugh it is our pleasure to feel it on their behalf.

And before they drift off to sleep, they watch for miracles with those bright brown eyes, as the faces of ancestors drift through their own by the minute, as clouds through a sky: there is their mother in the smile; now their father about the eyes, then the look of an uncle of mine, and then the young face of my mother, as they pass through all the faces they have come from, including me, I guess. It is startling to see one's own memories flow across those tiny others, who just got here. At no moment in our lives are we apart from eternity.

Hence the familiar ancient feeling one feels, on peeping in through the bedroom door to see them at last asleep: two tiny quiet bumps in the coverlet beside each other, two tiny lifesteps out into the world that we will do our best to ensure are continued on pathways of goodness and joy.

THREE SISTERS

The Granddaughters in their kimono
for shichi-go-san in November last year.
That's Kaya (now 6) in the middle,
Mitsuki with the formally positioned hands on the left
and Miasa, the younger twin (both now 4), on the right.

THE LOST SHEEP

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? --Luke 15:4

I just have one sheep, which for my needs is a good as a hundred. His name is Sheepspeare. He wears a wool sweater. One of the stars from Wallace and Gromit's famed short A Close Shave, he lives atop the speaker next to my computer screen, up in the loft. Sheepspeare is an alias (his real name is Shaun). Nevertheless he's very helpful and cooperative, with sheepish patience holding papers I'm editing so I can retype them when necessary. He requires no upkeep other than occasional sweater spiffing and general dusting.

One day over the year-end holidays, one of the twins (pick either one) spotted Sheepspeare while I was showing her some neat kidstuff on the computer. Quicker than you can yell "Mine!" she snatched Sheepspeare and held him so close to her toddler heart in such an endearing way that it melted my own heart to behold so keen a display of affection from one so young, yet already so capable of emotional attachment to vulnerable furry animal objects of no familiar history other than belonging to grandpa.

We then had our Christmas party, and through the many holiday events I forgot about Sheepspeare, until I was editing one day and, reaching to hand Sheepspeare a paper to hold, found that he wasn't there. Where did he go? I never-- then I remembered a twin grabbing him and loving him dearly. She must have carried him around close to her precious heart all the while she was here, and at some point put him down while distracted by something that had to be monumental, then she fell asleep or something; it wouldn't have been easy to break that tender bond she'd had with Sheepspeare.

Since he must be somewhere in the house, I asked Echo if she had seen Sheepspeare. She said Who? I said Sheepspeare, the little sheep in the sweater who sits next to my computer and holds papers I'm editing so I can retype them when necessary. She said I haven't seen him. If Echo hasn't seen him, that means he isn't in the house. The little booger had taken him away! Such is love.

I right away emailed Kasumi (mother of the twin), providing the details of the disappearance. She said there was no such animal in their menagerie. Sheepspeare was neither here nor there. He had fallen out a car window or something. I held a little mental funeral for him. His place went unfilled, since in the fickle ways of commerce they don't sell sheep dolls around here anymore.

Then one day a month or so later, still in mourning, I was upstairs typing unassisted with difficulty, jerrypropping up the papers on my own with postits, pins and gimcracks, when Echo called me from downstairs. What, I said. Come downstairs, she replied in an odd voice, I have to show you something. I went downstairs, where she stood in the living room, pointing upward. I looked.

There atop one of the support logs that bridge the living room lay Sheepspeare, where he'd fallen, lying on his side, staring forlornly into the upper reaches. He had been lying there since the twin had taken him not to her heart, but to the loft railing and thrown him over when no one was looking, then forgot about him completely. So much for heartwarming.

It appears to be a common error in grandparents to assume total cuteness and altruism in the grandkids, and to overlook that remnant smidgen of Attila the Hun. Fact is, each of us at birth is a culmination of all human history; if raised with care, in time we improve. Which I guess is the point.

The victim in situ
















Just before rescue

Grandfatherly sketch
of possible perpetrator

LIVING FOREVER

"It is a scene of ongoing and apparently undending destruction, of natural chaos: a kewpie doll gazing upward as if pleading with heaven, an abandoned spaceman, a deflated something, pajama parts, a doll carriage on its side, one green frog slipper, an empty finger puppet, a fire truck, a magic box, a wooden spatula, something unscrewed from something important somewhere in the house, a toppled toy ambulance, a calculator, lots of books opened up and thrown face-down in a random pattern, a deflated big pink boxing glove - the list goes on - one twin perpetrator sits on the big gray elephant, the other dressed as Pooh chews strategically on a pink toothbrush, while Kaya cleans up some sox that have been thrown around…"

That's just a brief and harried excerpt from some notes I managed to scribble yesterday afternoon while minding Kaya (who helped with the minding, actually) and M&M for two gigantic hours, hours jammed with minutes packed with seconds made of a special age-old material that stretches to infinity without breaking or showing any other sign of change, apart from what kids can do to scenery.

Out in the snow, in by the fire, upstairs spilling water, downstairs spreading ink, scissoring paper or curtains, magic-markering table or floor... One twin, pausing in her labors, runs to me and opens her mouth to show me how full of cookie it is, then heads off to crumple up some playing cards while the other dances with a pink plastic coat hanger, shouting in Twinlingo "An jeeyan, an jeeyan!" ("Look at this, look at this!" or in Japanese: "Mite, mite!"[meeteh, meeteh] just to show how far Twinlingo is from either)

Neither twin can stand still for long, but soon begins helplessly bouncing forward with no particular destination in mind; as a direct correlation I too can't stay still for long, but I'm not bouncing. When I manage to grab a quick sitdown, Mitsuki (or is it Miasa?) comes up to me and in all earnestness strikes me three times on the forearm, then runs off to shake a pink elephant watering can full of cutup paper fragments as Miasa (or is it Mitsuki?) comes up in her turn and earnestly strikes me once on the knee, before bouncing off to chat privately with a small tiger.

With afternoons like these, who says you can't live forever?

THE GOLDEN KEY

What lessons babies are, so many lessons in all the things we've forgotten we knew, lessons we perhaps need badly by the time the babies come around, and perhaps even moreso when their babies come around, and we have at last the time and inclination to be instructed in these eternal arts, perhaps the biggest lesson being that babies smile and cry so easily, so freely, so fully; and as for happiness, give them a bright ball and a crust of bread and they are in heaven.

How have we undone this skill in ourselves? How is it that as we grow, we push heaven and its happiness further and further away from our every moment?

I look at the twins with all their easy smiles, their frequent giggles, their utter fun, their heartfelt, shortlived tears, their soul’s fascination with even a speck of paper on the floor, and I wonder how it came to be that former children cannot be so easily and genuinely joyfilled…

And now that Kaya and the twins have departed for their home up north, they leave a vast (and perversely welcome) silence in which to ponder these things, perhaps discover a tiny door I never saw before, beside it a golden key…

TWIN TODDLERS TAKE NO PRISONERS

It is a courageous, perhaps insane grandfather who escorts his newly walking twin granddaughters, who have in their short lives seen little of the world beyond carpets and adult knees - amateur toddlers, in other words - it is a grandfather heedless of hazards, as I say, who dares take such a fearless duo to a large toy store.

I now count myself among that questionable number of men, and am changed by the experience. As a result of my time in a toyland where everything happens at least twice, my hair is whiter, and there is less of it. Say the word 'toy' and a tremor passes through me, though the shaking diminishes within hours.

As we entered the bigger store than they had ever seen, the cute-as-identical-buttons twins, who operate as "M and M" (they're about that easy to tell apart) or - more notoriously - "The Ms," at first toddled slowly and cautiously with what I initially took for naive awe, but soon realized was reflexive planning.

Their big brown eyes were taking in everything and its exact location, how it had been placed there for their very own delight and so belonged to them and was theirs to do with as they pleased, as for example those delicately high-stacked tubes of superglue beside them or the crunchy-looking balsa wood airplanes just a toddle away. Or straight ahead: so many smiley dolls in cellophane-paned boxes! Fun to poke with two Hello Kitty ballpoints!

Though they didn't yet really know what all these toys were, they were good at throwing them. Not much accuracy, but impressive speed and savage abruptness. For example, the metal toy car being closely studied by M - as I could see from afar with her boot in my hand - was instantly ballistic, passing within inches of the brow of M, who had relentlessly toddled out of a side aisle with a glass jar of model paint in each hand, and lacking both boots.

As you may have gathered, one cunning tactic in The Ms' arsenal, in addition to their devilish strategy of being so small while looking and dressing alike, was to let their boots fall off. Not both boots at the same time: one by one. It's an evolutionary trick to distract the pursuer, much the way lizards lose their tails.

I would notice a socked foot, run back and get the boot, return and both twins would be gone (toddlers move at feral speed when unobserved). In different directions, of course; The Ms are not so foolish as to operate together. They know they can cover a lot more territory and get a lot more done if they work separately, in telepathic coordination. This is especially true in a big toy store with only one pursuing grandfather of questionable mental status, who within 5 minutes wants to take a nap.

After must've been a week of chasing up and down the aisles (amazing, the places two small creatures can hide) the twins had had enough of their first big toy store experience to last me forever. At our departure, i.e., me with one squirming, toy-reaching M in each arm and two boots in each hand, the store - like myself - was in need of thorough rearrangement much the worse for wear. The Ms, though, giggled all the way home at the fun it had been, looking forward to our next big toy store adventure, ha ha. We didn't buy any toys of course; they had all been played with anyhow, and no way I'll have those hazards around the next time M and M come to visit.

YOU NEVER HEARD SUCH SILENCE IN YOUR LIFE

It's not exactly a vacuum, there's a fairly steady sheen of insect song that threads and laces the otherwise silent air like an infinitely voiced chorus. No longer competing with that, however, is the syncopated wailing of the twins, an astonishing phenomenon I'd never heard before, having never been protractedly around infant twins before; but Mitsuki and Miasa can really get a thing going with their wall-piercing wails, working together quite synergistically as though it's built in, as though they can sense the approaching syncopation, then they go for it, and as they max out in sync, riding it like hanging ten on a sound wave, an amazing thing happens: they take on the resonance of a flock of ducks hovering low over a herd of irritated cats for as long as they can hold it, then the caterwaul just fades with the syncopation, but it'll be back any minute and the twins seem to know it, will no doubt use it to their advantage as they grow in intelligence and interspiritual cunning. But right now you never heard such silence in your life. Kasumi left yesterday afternoon to live in the house across the Lake and try to get into the groove of handling three kids as the one-woman band every multiple mother is. Thus Kaya is gone with all her cute and endless questions, the twins now three weeks old are gone also, taking their syncopated medley with them. As a result, you never heard such a deafening absence of sound as there is around here. It would fill an empty heart easily, and overflow into the surrounding countryside.

GOODNESS AND JOY

Well, the newborn twins are with us for a while, and are they ever new. And since we know from experience that newborn newness is as temporary as a dewdrop we are making the most of it, short of keeping the little sleepies awake too long.

After each of the babies in my life has grown up, I've somehow managed to forget how tiny newborns are, a lapse absolutely corrected by the next newcomer. Throughout their ephemeral awakenings, how wrinkly and skinny and endearing they are, with their tiny actual legs and feet with genuine toes, hands and fingers that work, professional yawns as though they've been yawning all their lives, which in fact they have been.

Between yawns they lie there patiently, practicing all the many faces, smiling a full-bloom smile before they even have a sense of humor; then there's a look of heartbreaking disappointment, hopefully never to be used, but practiced nonetheless. And rage, and glee and other excitements: all rehearsals.

Even when their kitten-cries pierce the air like arrows, carry upstairs and downstairs, penetrate thick walls and doors and bring instant silence to the most important adult conversation, they aren't really crying, they aren't in actual despair; like humor, that also requires personal experience of the highs and lows of the world out there, for which they're busy rehearsing. So as they weep and laugh it is our pleasure to feel it on their behalf.

And before they drift off to sleep, they watch for miracles with those bright brown eyes, as the faces of ancestors drift through their own by the minute, as clouds through a sky: there is their mother in the smile; now their father about the eyes, then the look of an uncle of mine, and then the young face of my mother, as they pass through all the faces they have come from, including me, I guess. It is startling to see one's own memories flow across those tiny others, who just got here. At no moment in our lives are we apart from eternity.

Hence the familiar ancient feeling one feels, on peeping in through the bedroom door to see them at last asleep: two tiny quiet bumps in the coverlet beside each other, two tiny lifesteps out into the world that we will do our best to ensure are continued on pathways of goodness and joy.

NATURAL HAPPINESS

More multifaceted feedback on the incident of the sudden twins and how they went undetected until they were born: Miki-san the midwife said she missed hearing two heartbeats not only because the beats were very similar in sound, almost synchronous, but because the smaller twin Miasa (2450 gms) was in back, in breech position, where her heart was not audible at the normally positioned site of the larger (2910 gms) Mitsuki's heartbeat, which took all the checking.

Then, after Mitsuki was born Miasa did an instant somersault out of breech position, and her heartbeat showed up right where Mitsuki's had been. If Miki-san had heard two hearts, as I indicated in my last post, she would have refused to have the birth at her clinic, because multiple births often pose complex problems involving low birth weight, tangled umbilicals etc.

Miki and her assistants were surprised at the largeness of these twins (twins are usually closer to premature birthweight, ca 2000 gms), and they were very impressed with the quality of the placenta. Seems a lot of the placentas they see nowadays are less than optimally healthy, in one way or another, which is no surprise.

Anyway, Kasumi hadn't wanted to go back to the hospital she'd been sent to last time, because there they took Kaya away as soon as she was born, and against Kasumi's wishes fed her formula instead of letting Kasumi breastfeed. Mother and baby were just stats to them.

So as chance would have it, Kasumi came to Miki's clinic early in the morning, barefoot and bent in labor, unable to tell Miki-san for example that she had gained 3 kg in the last few days, which would have caught the midwife's attention for sure; she would have checked very carefully and had to send Kasumi again to the noisy hospital where the food was terrible, where Kasumi would be drugged and perhaps advised to undergo a caesarian so as to free up the schedule, followed with treatment by dour clock-punching nurses (not to knock the nurses themselves, who are worked unbelievably hard in Japanese hospitals and simply have no time or energy to be as personable as they no doubt intended to be when they chose their profession).

Instead Kasumi was given no drugs, in a bright house where three cheerful aunties gave her all their attention, smiling and laughing and singing and talking to the babies (babies love that), whom they kept with their mother, to whom they brought fine home-cooked food. So it seems the twins worked out all that subterfuge on their own; they did it on purpose, so that they and their mother could be together in natural happiness, right from the start.


[Please note new Midwifery links in side bar, inspired by these events; many more excellent links can be found at TreeOfLife. (Added Aug 11) RB]