Voyaging in the strange seas of thought alone

It was not this way in the beginning. When Alma started learning the alphabets and writing, the school teachers had panicked. And we had panicked. She did not seem to know that words are separate entities and wrote them all together with no gaps. More worryingly, she would write b, d, p and q as their mirror images. Only the small letters, though. The biggest fear we all had was that probably Alma was dyslexic. We rushed to a child psychologist who had laughed it off. He told us that we were just overreacting. Yet, he said that Alma needs a lot of personal attention. She is not the kind you send off to school, sit back and expect great results from. She needs a guiding hand. A teacher has lots of students and she probably cannot give her the time she needs. He told me something about different children are like plants which need different conditioning. A rose needs certain conditions to grow while a pansy needs certain others.  I had realized then that Alma is like the plant which needs a lot of sun, a lot of water and a lot of love. I will have to give up my ‘me time’ and completely focus on her for some years.

And then followed lots of sessions with me teaching her the alphabets again. I gave up reading and even listening to music, just so that I could be with her and teach her. It was no use. She would continue to make mirror images. She was puzzled why that was wrong. Afterall does direction matter, as long as the formation is right ? Of course it does. But try explaining this to a determined four year old who refuses to see your point.  I realized then that Alma is a very stubborn child. Yet, I knew that this stubborn nature of hers  may take her far, one day in the future.  I also realized that she is a very imaginative and a creative child too, and therein lay the key to her lock.  

One day I thought of something and then said “Alma, did you know that ‘b’ loves you ?”

That got her attention immediately. Her big, round eyes widened up “b Loves me ?” 

“Yes ! Yesterday ‘z’ had come over and was telling me that ‘b’ loves Alma. That is why when you write ‘b’, it tries to hold your hand. It faces towards your hand, hoping it could hold your hand.”

Alma beamed with happiness and got her notebook and pencil. And just as I had expected, she wrote ‘b’ a few times, in the correct direction.

“And who else loves me ?” She asked in excitement.

“I have heard some rumours about ‘p’ loving you too. Sadly ‘d’ and ‘q’ don’t like you much. They turn away from your hand and refuse to look at you.”

She absorbed what I had said to her in silence, storing it all way in her memory. The rest of the day, she wrote those alphabets hundreds of times in her book, thinking hard. That’s all. She had mastered them. She never made mirror images of alphabets again. 

The rest of the teaching and learning followed the same pattern, with me realizing that conventional learning methods were not for her. So we both sang out the spellings of words, and made stories about numbers. We felt that ‘1’ was a little boy, ‘3’ was lonely, ‘7’ was rather handsome and ‘9’ looked arrogant. As she moved into higher classes, the stories only got wilder and more imaginative. It was perfectly normal to be up at  3 AM and discussing long theories on science and maths. Sometimes I would feel that she is doing fine and relax.  And then a falling grade would give me a jolt, and we would start the imaginative learning methods again, till she was back in form.

She loves science with a passion, bordering on obsession. She would buy books on Stephen Hawking. She loves to marvel on the theories of origin of life. Her eyes would get a faraway look, as she would talk about them. Once when I was listening to her, I smiled and said “The marble index of mind forever voyaging in the strange seas of thought alone ?” She loved it so much that wrote and pasted this on her cupboard. 

Living with Alma is fun, even though it is challenging at all times. She is an insomniac, which means that I have never really slept well since she has been born. It is perfectly normal for her to walk in at 2 AM, wanting to share an amazing scientific fact with me. It just does not occur to her that normal human beings need to sleep and wake up at a certain time. Somewhere along the course of time, I decided to junk the clock, just to keep pace with her.

And on one such day she told me that a green dustbin which had been designed and created by her and her team members has been awarded by ‘Kids for Tigers’. It was an original design, keeping the environment in mind. And on one such nights she tiptoed to my room and whispered in my ears “Lets go somewhere, just anywhere. Let’s catch a flight and just go.” My eyes were still closed as I made up my mind to take her somewhere, anywhere.

And then a phone call from her school. She has to go to Malaysia. To participate in the International Young Inventors Project Olympiad. All because of the famed green dustbin.  I usually do not send the kids for any trips on  their own. But this was different. This was not just a trip. As she looked at me anxiously with pleading in her eyes, I knew that there was no way I could say ‘No’ to her. There was no way I could stand between her and her destiny. She was going to represent her country in an international event. Her school. Her country. She had been chosen.  

Now as she is giving finishing touches to her new project , and packing for the journey, I look back and realize that this was coming. All the circumstances and each of the events in her young life were preparing us for this. 

It seems that in a life full of adverse ’d’s and ‘q’s, she has been found by the ‘b’s and ‘p’s.

She is going to spread her wings and she will fly. And I will watch her flight with a heart bursting with pride.

Go, my child, travel with the winds, and never look back. Don’t let anything come in the way of the  voyage of the marble index of the your mind.