Sunu P. Chandy
Learning to Hold the Candle
Solo parenting a nine-year-old during a Buddhist evening peace ceremony, we are asked to walk from the meeting hall to the pond a block away and place our boats with candles on the pond at dusk.
The flames all flicker out during the walk to the pond given the extra windy evening, but the Buddhist monks come by with lighters and give us all second chances.
After the second lighting, we learn, only through practice, how to hold the candle closed to the wind but not closed enough that it goes out.
After we place our candles in the water, my daughter runs off into the dusk with new friends somewhere on the opposite side of the pond. She is no longer in view, and I am afraid. My spouse is miles and miles away making sure Great-Granny doesn’t fall again this week. I am sitting alone on the side of a ledge knowing that the spouse is somewhere and this child is somewhere, but neither of them are with me.
My typical action would be to call out to her, but it is evening and a peace ceremony, and that would be wildly inappropriate. And so I sit. I sit in the dusk and ponder all the biggest dangers nearby. The water, the fire, the woods. I cannot see my child and feel for the first time, something like empathy for my parents. For all the times they wanted me to call when I arrived after running into the woods, after going off with friends, for all those times I was out of sight for so long. All these years, out of sight.
I do not call after her. I walk quietly until I see her with the other kids at the far side of the pond, poking boats with fire with their sticks, watching what the fires will do. Literally, they are playing with fire. I see the kids running to another group of boats that have clustered, again they are poking. Then, running out of sight again.
And then seeing fireflies, she runs to the edge of the woods. She is again out of sight. I see some sparkling that could be her, or it could be those fireflies. What if she gets lost in the forest?
We are at a Buddhist meditation retreat. I know these people. I don’t know these people. People are mostly sexually assaulted by people they sort of know, not actual strangers. She is out of sight. She could be in the woods, she could be in the water, she could be on fire.
I sit quietly on the bench and wait. I see a flash of her running by, and I do not call out. I sit. I sit and wait so that she can enjoy the pond, the fire, the fireflies, these other children. I trust in her judgment. I trust her judgment. I trust her. I trust.
There are 100 things here to be afraid of and 100 things to believe in. I have swallowed all of my mother’s fears, but I am trying to breathe, and to sit on the bench and to wait.
Fear of water, as in
Floods – in the basement or in a city
Super Storm Sandy
Water as in, your child is actually okay but she had to be pulled out of the pool at camp today.
Water as in that time walking home from school on the bridge from Woodley Park⎯when we both got drenched. Nowhere to seek shelter, no place to go back to. The only way out was to keep walking, sopping wet, both of us, all the way home.
Fear of Fire, as in
My parents and me, their three-year-old, and that hotel fire just as they arrived to work in Kingston, Jamaica. To think of us, on the street in our bedclothes. My mom lost all her wedding finery and gold. Decades later, I finally understood it was likely in this moment that my parents began thinking of themselves as survivors.
Fear of Woods, as in
Where children or teens are taken, after they get kidnapped and assaulted.
Or even just the scary stories, like Little Red Riding Hood.
***
I do not call out.
I trust in her ability to find me. I trust in my ability to find her.
And when it is time, I go and find her and say it’s time for bed.
And she fights me, because that’s her job.
But then, as we are walking back to the lodge
she says: Anyway, I was sort of getting tired.
And later that night, before bed, she moves her mattress on the floor.
She moves it over, the entire six inches closer to mine.
Just close enough, so that they are touching.
Photo credit Sarah Sharaf-Eldien
Sunu P. Chandy is a queer woman of color poet. She is a social justice activist including as a poet, parent and civil rights attorney. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her family, and is the daughter of immigrants to the U.S. from Kerala, India. Sunu’s award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published in 2023. Sunu serves on the board of the Transgender Law Center, and as a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward.