Poornima Manco

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life

Failing forward

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We all know what kind of year it’s been. And I will not use it as an excuse, but I will admit that I have failed rather spectacularly at what I had so ambitiously vowed to do at the start of 2020. For those who’ve come to my blog a little later, here’s the link to my very public proclamation – New Year, New you & all that jazz.

Now, I had said that shopping has always been for fun and for fashion (for me), but this year it became my bit of frivolity too. When, with each passing day, all one read or heard was doom and gloom, I cheered myself up by buying a dress (or two), several lipsticks, some gorgeous shoes, and well… you get the idea!

In my defence, none of this is throwaway fashion. I made all these purchases intending to keep and wear these items for several years. Also, when I dispose of them in the future, it will be to a charity shop and not a landfill. However, even while I write this, I feel a twinge of guilt, because I had absolutely no need for any of these things I purchased over the year. I have a full to bursting wardrobe, outfits that range three sizes (for my fit to fat phases) and enough makeup to do over the entire cast of ‘Phantom of the opera’. Still, a girl with a credit card, an Instagram account and a desire to make herself feel better through any means possible, can end up doing a fair bit of damage to said card. I won’t even go into the psychology of what shopping came to embody in the year that never was. This was the chicken soup for my soul. Shallow, I know, but true.

So, as we near the end of this particularly horrendous year, I stand before you, a bit shame-faced, and quite rueful in not having followed through on my promise. However, with just a few days to go, I don’t see any reason to not want to try again. At some level I recognise that shopping is only papering over the cracks of anxiety, uncertainty and fear. It’s momentary joy in an unpredictable time. It’s comfort consumption, a crutch to handle that which there is no handle on. And each of us is ‘dealing with’ in our own unique ways. But equally, my original intent of doing something for the planet hasn’t disappeared entirely. I am still very cognisant of the fact that pandemics aside, our planet is groaning under the weight of our consumerism. And while I may have stumbled and fallen at the very first hurdle, I can still pick myself up and finish this race. With three days to go to 2021, now may be as good a time as any.

After all, in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day.”

 

It hurts!

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“It hurts mummy!” My daughter sobbed, pointing to her chest, trying to identify the epicentre of her grief, “It hurts here!”

“I know darling,” I tried soothing her, my heart breaking as I witnessed what bereavement could do to a person.

To a bystander, this grief would seem disproportionate. After all, it was only a hamster, a tiny little rodent that had a very short life span anyway. But, to my daughter, little Luna had been her world, a repository of her love and a symbol of life finally turning positive after years of pain and suffering that a series of health issues had caused her. Luna, the Russian dwarf hamster, had been bought for her birthday, after much pleading and cajoling on her part. She’d never had a pet of her own. The first two hamsters had belonged to her sister, the steady rotation of fish we’d bought for her had never really felt like her own pets as I’d been the one who’d ended up cleaning the aquarium and caring for them. So, this pet was meant to be hers alone. And she was as good as her word. She fed her, cleaned her cage and played with her daily.

Luna was a delightful little thing – full of spunk and vigour. She was incredibly sociable, always happy to be held and passed from hand to hand. We filmed her climbing her bars and swinging from them like a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist. We photographed her chucking all the food out of her bowl and sitting in it. Her antics became a source of amusement and entertainment for the entire household. Even my husband, not a pet person at all, found her to be a sweet little thing.

A week before she died, my daughter noticed her behaving strangely. She hadn’t come up to the second level to drink any water all day, which was very unlike her. Her food remained untouched. When we raised the roof of her little house, she crawled out uncertainly, wobbly on her feet, dragging her hind legs as though injured. Fearful that she might have broken a leg during her acrobatics, we started googling hamster ailments straight away. Nothing definitive came up, but the advice was to have her checked out by the vet. So, we rushed her to the clinic near our house. The vet wasn’t in and an appointment was made for later in the day. All-day my daughter worried about her, scared that Luna was in pain. In the evening we put her in the little pet carrier and once again, carried her to the vet.

As soon as the vet put her on the stretcher, she seemed to perk up. Running hither thither, she seemed perfectly fine, casting doubt on all our previous worries. We were gobsmacked! This was the same hamster that had been dragging her legs a half-hour ago. The vet discharged her with advice to give her a food supplement and just keep an eye on her. We were perplexed but happy that she seemed to have recovered on her own.

For the next week, Luna’s new ‘normal’ was an exaggerated version of her former self. She climbed her bars constantly, throwing herself down like a kamikaze pilot, she started to chew on them, as if wanting to escape her confinement. She also became increasingly nippy, chomping down on our fingers whenever an opportunity presented itself. Her increasingly bizarre behaviour seemed to transform her from a happy, peaceful little thing to an irrational, hyper, angry little mammal. We could not understand it, and I spent hours trawling the internet trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, a week ago, she didn’t emerge from her house all day, once again. Upon returning from her weekly physiotherapy session, my daughter noticed that Luna’s breathing was shallow and that she was curled up like a little ball. The internet revealed that she could be in a state of ‘torpor’ brought on by the cold, and extremely dangerous in little animals. We heated up a hot water bottle, placed a towel on it and tried to warm little Luna up. But it was too late. She had slipped away silently to wherever cute little hamsters go to when they die.

I took it hard because I had grown increasingly fond of her. But my daughter took it even harder. She didn’t sleep all night, crying into her pillow, weeping at the unfairness of it all. “She was just a baby!” she wept. Yes, she was. Less than two months old, Luna should have had at least another sixteen months of life.

My daughter’s back pain has come back with a vengeance, once again underlining how psychology influences physiology. She feels like the Universe is conspiring against her, that nothing seems to be going her way. But more than anything else, she is grief-stricken at the loss of her pet, her darling little Luna Yves.

For people who don’t own pets, this may seem incomprehensible. For people who do, this will be completely understandable. Pets, little or large, become a part of the family. In their quiet and unconditional love, in their reliance on us and their domesticity, they bind us to them in infinitesimally small and unseen ways. When they die, a part of us dies too. When they die unexpectedly and so very young, a part of us is wrenched away in the shock of the arbitrariness of it all.

Perhaps Luna had an underlying condition we were not aware of. Hamsters can be prone to heart issues and/or diabetes. Perhaps her bizarre behaviour was symptomatic of her condition, her ‘nipping’ a way of conveying her pain and discomfort. Perhaps. A lot of questions remain, but we didn’t have the heart to have her little body cut open for an autopsy. Instead, we gave her a little burial in a plant pot, with a beautiful yellow rose plant bought especially in her honour to commemorate the joy she brought into our lives. The little plaque I had made for her notes the date of her demise and how much she was loved by all. It is glued on to the outside of the planter.

Too much? No, not in my opinion. There is a reason that we have certain ceremonies or rituals after death. These are a very visible way of bidding goodbye to a loved one. They are the first steps that we take towards healing. After the pain of the loss comes denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression and finally, acceptance.

Right now, my daughter is trapped somewhere between anger and depression. The acceptance will come, I know it will. But in the meantime, it is important to acknowledge the magnitude of her loss and to show her that Luna’s little life on earth meant something to us. In time, hopefully, we can bring home another little hamster. But right now, we grieve the passing of our little friend. May she rest in peace.

Life lessons from exercise

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This is the heaviest I have ever been weight-wise. It’s showing in the clothes I wear, and more importantly, on a face that’s already chubby, it’s showing in the new double chin I sport. How have I allowed it to get to this point and why? Well, incrementally and because drowning my sorrows in food had become my go-to in the last few months. But photographs don’t lie, and the last lot of photos I had my husband take for my new book, showed all the lovely over-indulgence on my face, much to my horror!

For years my one big fear was of being overweight. The overriding reason being that diabetes runs in the family and having seen my mother and uncle suffer from it, I was acutely aware that I did not want to end up in the same boat. I tried to eat sensibly, not always succumb to my sweet tooth and exercise regularly. This worked like a charm for many years. But slowly that iron-grip I had on my diet started to slip, and a pound or two creeping up didn’t seem so bad. Till one fine day, I woke up 28 pounds heavier than my ideal weight! While it was all fun and games putting it on, taking it off is a long, hard slog, one which I have to prepare myself for physically as well as mentally.

Through it all though, what I am proud of is the fact that I have not stopped exercising. I may not be as fast on my feet as I was before, but I sure as heck am willing and able to move. I consider myself fairly fit and on the odd occasions that I have been unable to exercise for a length of time, I miss it horrendously.

You see, over the years exercise has taught me so much. At a time when I feel particularly low about my appearance, this list is a reminder to myself that I cannot and must not give up.

  1. Endurance: In one of my hyper exercising phases I fell into long-distance running. The first half-marathon I ever competed in, I was ill-prepared and injured to boot. But through sheer doggedness I ran the distance, hobbling the last mile or so, telling myself that I could not quit at that stage. I suffered from a bad knee for months after that, but I learned two valuable lessons that day. One, that the mind could conquer anything and two, that preparation was key. The next few marathons I competed in, I enjoyed and completed utilising the lessons I’d learned the first time around.
  2. Resilience: Ever tried doing an exercise class after a bad night’s sleep, when you are particularly tired and cantankerous? No? Well, I have. Those are the worst days, the days you want to stop before you’ve even begun. When the cheery warm-up seems like torture and every move designed to punish your already tired body. But it’s those days when you discover your reserves of strength. When you push yourself to do just that little bit more and keep pushing till suddenly you realise that you’re done and it wasn’t that bad after all. That resilience I have applied to many other areas of my life successfully. It is something I learn time and again on my bad days, and know that it is an invaluable tool that I will utilise for the rest of my life.
  3. It’s not a competition: I’ve recently joined a Body Balance class. I wish I’d done it much earlier as it is a class I love. It’s also a class I’m woefully inadequate at. A combination of Tai Chi, Pilates and Yoga, it truly balances you and fills you with a sense of calm. The first time I ever did this class, I looked around me and spotted many different age groups, but that told me very little about their ability. There were ladies in their seventies who were far more flexible and bendy than I could ever be. But nobody was judging anyone else, and no one was judging me as I tried to get into positions awkward and unfamiliar to my body. In time I have improved. Also, I’ve stopped looking at other people as I realise that there is no competition here. Each one of us is here for ourselves. It’s our journey and how we see fit to complete it, is up to us too.
  4. Happiness: This one has been bandied about a lot, but it’s true. In a crazy, rushed life, taking a bit of time out to do some good to your body by way of exercise produces the happiness effect. Physical activity stimulates the release of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, as well as endorphins. These brain chemicals play an important part in regulating your mood and overall sense of well-being. Sometimes a little bit of exercise is all it takes to lift yourself out of a funk.
  5. Belonging: Exercisers become a part of a community. There is an unspoken understanding between them, a recognition of why they do what they do, regardless of the reasons that propel them. Over the years I feel like I’ve grown to belong to this club of people who enjoy the many benefits of exercise without being preachy or ‘judgy’ about it.  

So, having listed all these wonderful things that keep me exercising, I know that all I have to do now is to get a handle on my food habits, cure myself of emotional/binge/comfort eating, get regular sleep, keep hydrated and fingers crossed, I will be well on my way towards getting back into my favourite pair of jeans. Wish me luck!

Why not me?

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Into each life, some rain must fall. So said Longfellow in his poem, ‘The Rainy Day’. Adversity does not discriminate, it does not pick and choose its recipients. So, when tough days come your way, as they inevitably will, is there any point in asking “why me”?

It is so easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when everything is going well. But life, well, life is never ever straight forward. Sometimes it doesn’t chuck just a bit of trouble your way, it chucks a bucket load and then some.

2019 was annus horribilis for us. It started out fine and then as the year progressed, my younger daughter’s health spiralled down once again. From pain in the back that was initially dismissed as a Vitamin D deficiency, then attributed to a muscle strain, I saw my active, mostly healthy and happy child become bed-ridden and dependant on crutches, while we ran from pillar to post for a proper diagnosis. This was not her first brush with ill health. She had suffered previously from other issues, nothing life-threatening thankfully, but enough to have affected her self esteem and joie de vivre.

The end of the year saw us turn a corner very cautiously, with hope in our hearts and a little prayer on our lips. Improvement was slow and steady with a few minor setbacks thrown in, but enough for us to see a little light at the end of this long, dark tunnel that we’d been trapped in for quite some time.

Then something else happened. It was a minor allergic reaction to something, but it brought all her previous fears rushing back. For nearly five years, it had been one thing or another, and my poor child was fed up, frustrated and at the end of her tether. She broke down in my arms, sobbing, asking – “Why me?”

I pacified her as best as I could, then calmly, almost clinically, asked her, “Why not you?”

It’s so easy for each of us to feel that we are hard done by, that no one else has the troubles that we do, that our suffering is monumental, that everyone else is living the dream while our lives are a nightmare. But look around, really look around. No one’s life is perfect. That social media perfection is the gloss that hides the daily grind and grime from each other.

Years ago, my mother had taught me a valuable lesson. She’d said, if you have to compare yourself to anyone, then do it with someone far worse off than you, because at that moment you will realise how blessed you really are.

I said the same to my daughter. I spoke about X, a young boy we knew well, who is now a young man, debilitated for the last 11 years, laid low by an unknown virus, unable to walk without aid, eat unassisted and completely unable to vocalise his thoughts or his emotions to his devastated parents. That, I said to her, is a tragedy. Yet, they keep putting one foot in front of the other and carrying on loving and taking care of their precious son.

I didn’t say this to diminish or ignore her suffering in any way, but to demonstrate that the Universe hands out its cards randomly and that what we are dealt with is our lot. We can choose to accept the challenge or be buried under the weight of it.

When life throws you that curveball, instead of asking “why me” which immediately casts you in the role of a victim, ask “why not me?” because that shows that you understand that you are not exempt from life’s woes, but more than up to the challenge of facing them head-on. You are NOT a victim. What you ARE is a survivor.

I’ll close with Longfellow’s poem as a little reminder to us all that rainy days will come, but if we are patient and resilient, the sunshine will follow soon enough.

The Rainy Day

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,

And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

– H.W. Longfellow

Turn back time

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Oddly, synergistically even, I have started to watch two TV shows about time travel. One is the series based on the books by Diana Gabaldon, called ‘Outlander’, and the other is a new French series that Netflix suggested I might enjoy, called ‘Il etait une seconde fois’ (Twice upon a time). I’m only two episodes in on the first and partially through the first episode on the second. Although hugely different in cast, location and treatment, the premise is one of returning to the past, through some strange, magical happenstance.

As humans, we are continually fascinated with the idea of time travel, and explore this in many mediums, whether that is in books like ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’, movies like ‘Back to the Future’ or television series like ‘Doctor Who’. The ability to challenge space and time is like an itch that needs scratching to be soothed. But why are we so taken with the idea of returning to the past? After all, unlike the future, where events are yet to unfold and therefore, there is a natural curiosity to find out more, we are already familiar with what has occurred historically, and indeed, intimately familiar with our own, personal histories.

Could it be, that in our desire to return to particular places and times in our past, we seek to amend or rectify our mistakes? Could it be, that having suffered bereavement or loss, we seek to spend time in the company of loved ones, knowing in hindsight that it will not last forever? Could it also be, that we seek to reimagine ourselves in our yet-to-be-determined futures once again?

Regardless of what we imagine or seek, turning back the clock is an impossibility. As they say, time and tide wait for no man. However, there are no boundaries to our imagination. So we continue to explore, examine and extrapolate the endless possibilities of breaking through such barriers.

Let us consider though, if ever, in the distant future, time travel did become possible, what life would be like. We could be stuck in loops of indecision, wanting to continuously examine the various permutations of a given choice and perhaps, returning over and over again to change seemingly minor moments that led to momentous shifts. How exhausting that would be! Would we be pushing the rewind button on our lives all the time? Would we ever be able to live with the choices and decisions we made at any given point? Would we grow, evolve, change or learn? What a great TV show that would make!

Hindsight is 20/20 and there may be several occasions in the past that we would love to be able to return to and steer our lives differently, but learning to live with the consequences of what we decided in that given moment, with the information and wisdom we possessed back then, is what maturity and growth are all about.

The fact is that life does progress linearly, from birth to death. Yes, it’s wonderful to imagine alternatives, but really, what is even more wonderful is to take nothing we have or do for granted. The inability to change the past, and the futility of trying to predict the future, is what makes life the thrilling ride that it is.

But when reality gets tedious and boring, there is always vicarious time travel to be indulged in. Go on, enjoy yourself! It’s Christmas, after all.

Success redefined

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Success means different things to different people. For some, it may be about fame and fortune, scaling professional heights, becoming a household name, amassing riches; for others, it may be about conquering fears, learning a new language, travelling the world, discovering a cure for cancer; for others still, it may be about finding joy in the ordinary and the mundane, about paring back and appreciating the little things, just waking up healthy and whole every morning and being able to put one foot in front of the other.

My idea of success has changed a lot over the years. As a young girl, success to me meant being the best in my chosen field of endeavour. I was competitive and found it hard to settle for being second, especially in the areas I felt I dominated in. English language, elocution competitions, story writing, dance and drama were all arenas I felt I needed to prove myself as being better than my peers.

In time, life softened the sharper edges of my ambition. I realised that I didn’t need to be better than anyone else to know that I was good. If there was any competition to be had, it was with my former self. The idea was to be better than the person I was yesterday, and by better, not just professionally or artistically, but also in my everyday life, as a human being, a colleague, a wife, a daughter and mother. 

As years went by and other priorities asserted themselves, ambition to prove myself took a back seat to my navigating life and all its ups and downs. I wasn’t spared loss or grief. I wasn’t spared guilt or regret either. I learnt that one could plan as much as one wanted, but life would laugh in the face of those plans and everything could and would collapse like a house of cards. At that time, success to me was just making it from one day to the next.

Well into my fourth decade of life, I consider myself fortunate in the many blessings that I have been bestowed with. I am healthy, first and foremost. I have a loving family, a career that I enjoy, a hobby that I can spend time and money on, a small but trustworthy group of friends I can call upon if needed, and a mind that takes none of it for granted.

What success means to me today is very different from what it meant all those years ago. To see my children happy and healthy, to see my husband enjoy his career and thrive in it, to be able to connect with friends all over the world, in some shape or form, and to be able to write this blog or my books, constitutes success. This may seem very mediocre to some, but to me, it is enough.

I’m sure if you were to ask me twenty years from now, my idea of success would have changed once again. It is a moving target after all. My point is never to get bogged down in the details of what success should look like. It is what it looks like to you, and that is and should be an evolving thing. After all, in the eternally wise words of Maya Angelou: “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”