Woven

It's not how I was planning to spend my day.

It was the end of a busy week, with a busy weekend ahead, and I was looking forward to spending and extended amount of time at our Kalighat production unit (where I don't get to spend as much time)

And then I got a phone call. It was D. He is 14, and his mom used to work for us, until she died 2 years ago. His father had died 9 months before his mom, and 9 months after his mom died his sister died. Often, when I think of him, I think of him as a boy, far too young, set adrift in the world, with no one to anchor him.

When I think about this relationship I am humbled by the privilege that it is to know him. And, at time I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the responsibility of trying to love him. It not up to me, not nearly, he has extended family that takes care of him, and he attends a really good boarding school.

But I can't think of any other relationship that makes me feel so inadequate. I hate that I am such a foreigner. When I'm with him I wish I could be more Bengali, or that I was a guy, or that I was pretty much anything other than a white 36 yr old woman (which, I think, is the most opposite to him that I could possibly be). I wish that I could offer him something more familiar, or more in tune with his culture. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

His year end exam results were out at his school (he's on a month long school vacation right now) and he had gone to pick up his test results. He needed a guardian to sign for the results, so he asked me to come, and I checked with his aunt and she said that was fine with her, so off I went. His school is not close.  So it took me about an hour to get there, and then we waited around for a while trying to sort out the test results, but we couldn’t, so we left, empty handed.

I was headed to the Kalighat office, so I asked if he'd want to come visit (sometimes when he's on break from school he just stops in the office to visit). And so he ended up coming in, to the office that is close to where he grew up. The one where his mom’s good friends work. The office where there are women who have known him longer than he can remember.

I watch as they welcome him.
"Hey, Rina's son is here"
"You're so tall"
"Why have you waited to long to visit us?!"

And I watch him sit, called by his aunties to sit down and visit.

I watch them love him

I watch the gentle conversation, and the affectionate nagging.

I hear them say, "you know you can come visit us anytime"

I watch as he interacts with one of the ladies who went to the same boarding school as him. Someone familiar. And someone who knew and loved his sister.

I sit back and watch, and soak it up.
Each of these women a strand.
Each one providing something unique, beautiful and necessary in his life.
How none of us is enough, but when taken as a whole we are woven together onto something that is exactly right.

And I am thankful to be the strand that is the crazy foreign auntie, and to offer what I have to offer.

And to know that there are other strands that are good Bengali aunties who offer what they have to offer.

And somehow we are beautifully enough.

And he is not adrift in the big scary world.

Not at all.

He is woven.

And together, we are held by this community.