Long Walks On Leafy Streets

4/6/2016 Honolulu, HI
It has been a week or two since Prashant started to walk. He started with a few steps now and then. All of a sudden he is now walking all over the place. He has good balance, too. I have noticed that, most of the time, he doesn’t try to do something unless he is sure that he can do it. When he was first learning to walk he would take a few steps and as soon as he sensed a loss of balance he would get down. I haven’t seen him stumble too much.

With every day his “vocabulary” has been growing. He is growing emotionally and cognitively as well. These days I think he knows when one of us leaving for an extended period of time. He looks more and more hesitant to let me leave when I drop him off at the daycare center.

This morning as usual I dropped him off on the way to work. He has a friend, a cute boy named Ralph, who always comes up to greet him. Ralph was smiling at him and I asked Prashant to go play with him.
His teachers also greeted him. But I don’t know if it was because he had just woken up from a nap, Prashant looked puzzled and hesitant. I then left and was walking out the door when he started crying loudly. I guess he must have turned around and realized that I have left. I said goodbye to him again and then his teacher came and picked him up. Later in the evening she told me that he calmed down right away.

After leaving the hospital complex (where the daycare is located) I walked the mile or so to work on my usual route along the MacMillan reservoir. Much as I enjoy spending time with Prashant, mornings tend to be very hectic and so it is a big relief to drop him off and have a bit of time for myself. This walk provides me with one of the few moments during the day for relaxation and reflection. The air was unusually cold for an April morning. We had a few days of almost summery weather when we along with Nicole’s mom and brother went to see the Cherry blossoms. It was one of the largest crowds I have been a part of, apart from the inaugurations of Barack Obama, in Washington, DC. There were tourists on every square inch of the area around the tidal basin but everyone seemed to be having a great time. But then the arctic air from the north arrived yesterday and cooled things down. It is supposed to stay with us through this week.

I didn’t mind the cold air, though. The sun was shining on the rippling surface of the reservoir. The lake was calm and empty of birds. They are probably migrating back to the north, right now. My thoughts went back to Prashant. Although it was quite normal his crying brought to mind haunting images of children in war-zones crying while their parents lay dead near them. There is so much suffering in the world!

I prayed that we would always be there for Prashant. It reinforced my determination to take care of myself as well as possible. I then thought about Thich Nhat Hanh, our beloved teacher. A Vietnamese monk who cared for the wounded from all sides of the conflict during the Vietnam and as a result got expelled by the communists, he has developed a large following all over the world. I meditate with one group of his followers in Washington, DC. Thay (Teacher), as his disciples affectionately call him, recently suffered a stroke. We were all very despondent but he has miraculously pulled through. He has been able to recover enough to eat and walk on his own, although his speech is extremely limited. I wondered why Thay, who is probably beyond worrying about death, tries so hard to recover his health and continue his work. It then occurred to me that it would be against his own teachings, because he always tells us to treat this body like a temple and a gift from God. But I think it must also be because he loves us so much that he wants to be there for us as long as he physically could.

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