Shopping for Suitcases

I have not been to Goodwill in months. Why? Because I always come home with crap I don't need. Today I went in search of

a. cheap lightweight suitcases

b. shorts and skirts for Abi.


I came home with

a. one skirt for Abi

b. one giant Fisher Price dollhouse mansion

c. one Tiny Love baby mobile

d. a small laptop bag

e. two Magic Schoolbus books that we don't own yet

f. one paperback novel for me

g. one book about mummies for Abi

h. zero suitcases


So now the justifcation:

a. it fit her and she liked it. Fine.

b. Because Nitara looked at me with these big huge baby brown eyes and asked sooo nicely and it was only $5 and great shape and would be a good home for the thousand and one Little People figures that we had tried to get rid of earlier by putting them in the garage and they were forgotten successfully until a certain husband brought the whole mother lode back out when I was sick in bed one day. And now they are all over the whole house again, but hey, they are finally being played with and wouldn't this be a nice addition to the farm, airplane, school bus, and car that we already have?

c.Because Abi just fell in love with this thing and begged and pleaded and pointed out that she did indeed have $4 of her own money at home and she wanted to spend it on this, and it was in great shape after all, practically new, and they are expensive new (but come one she's 6!). And after we got it home I mounted it on the bed frame and she sat and stared at it and played the classical music and just looked so peaceful and happy and feel promptly asleep. So why didn't I buy one when she was a baby? It might have been THE KEY to her sleep problems. Kicking myself.

d. Because our current laptop bag is huge, and this one was really small and nifty and stylish, and who cares if I rarely take the laptop anywhere because it also needs the chiller tray and has no working battery at the moment. But hey, for the plane trip we are allowed to carry one carry-on plus a small purse or laptop. If I put the laptop in the rolling backpack that has a laptop sleeve it might be too heavy with the formula* in it too, so hey, I can put it in this neat little nifty stylish $3 laptop case and its weight won't be counted. Even though it's an old laptop and probaby weight 20 pounds, not including the broken battery. And I'm not even sure if the laptop is coming with us yet, but that's beside the point.

e. Because, wouldn't you know it, one of my life's aspirations is to own every single Magic Schoolbus book they have ever printed.

f. Because I can stuff it in the the nifty little new laptop case and read it on the plane. Yeah right, with two kids to take care of. Wishful thinking, but it justified the book.

g. Because she wanted to read it. And because somehow the fact that my daughter wants to see pictures of dried up old mummies and read about how they came to be that way makes me feel I must be raising her right.

h. Because they didn't have any. But the lady said check back every day because they do get them in but the go fast. So every day I will drive by Goodwill after picking up Abi from school and every day come back with another carload of stuff we don't need and no more suitcases than we bought the previous time.

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And now contrast this with parts of India. Our life is so different here. With a little begging my kids get some new (used) toys. In India I have seen children really begging. For money. I have had the juice box grabbed out of my hand and sucked down hungrily by a girl Abi's age. Exiting temples, I have had people beg for my half-eaten sweet prasana and when I give it to them, my appetite suddenly gone, they eat it as if it's the best thing on earth. Not all of India is poverty. I can easily walk down the street with child beggars, dirty and thin, with reddish hair from malnutrition, follow me. But they stop short of the mall I have just entered. And inside the mall there is air conditioning, shops with neat rows of luggage, handbags, shoes, furniture, books, and toys. When you are a child beggar, you have little need for all this. You want food. It is an all-consuming thought.

I look at my own children with everything they need, and more than a few extras such as the dollhouse, the huge collection of books, their bunkbed with clean sheets and they wear clean pajamas to bed, and they get a new toothbrush when their old one wears out, and if they are sick they can go to the doctor. Abi sometimes complains that I won't let her have certain toys, or that her backpack is not as nice as her friend's. India is an eye-opener. I wonder what it will be like for my girls to see children their own age begging in the street for a scrap of food? I hope that they come back from this trip appreciating what they have. I too am often caught up in the "I wish I had . . ". In the U.S. it is hard in other ways. We are so isolated from one another. We are so consumed with buying the necessities of life: for our kids things like toys, fashionable clothes, music and sports lessons.

To illustrate the divide between the rich and poor in India, here's a bit about my husband's life. His family is wealthy by Indian standards. Although here they would be considered upper middle class, there is not much of a middle class there. He was enrolled in an exclusive boys school as soon as he was born. At the age of four he started school which, like all schools there, required a uniform. At lunch time the household servant would bring him hot lunch, sit while he ate it, and carry the lunch container home. He took tennis and his sister took swimming and music lessons. He grew up not ever learning how to do things that most kids here learn from an early age: how to mow the lawn, fix a leaky faucet, drive a nail into the wall to hang a picture, clean up his room, dust, cook, maintain a car. His job was to study hard, and he did his job very well and with a lot of effort. He also had time for vacations, playing cricket in the street with friends, and buying as many books as he wanted to read for fun. When I married him he knew nothing about maintenance and he still struggles with simple things like yard work. He was born and raised to hire servants to do these things for him. I had a talk with a cousin of his who is working in the US temporarily. He said that in India it's easier to manage if you have a little money. For five cents you will have people lining up to do your work for you, because they are so poor. It is much more crowded there and there's just not enough to go around for the poor. Here if you offered someone money to hang a picture it had better be at least $20 or they will not think it's worth their time.

Today on NPR I heard a story about a girl named Neha, my daughter's middle name, selling candles near the Ganges for a living. She said she makes about 30 cents a day. Where is her childhood? When does she get a chance to play? When does she get a chance to sit in a classroom and learn to read, and learn about history and geography, eat her lunch at noon and play at recess for awhile? Is childhood a luxury that we feel our children are entitled to? In reality most of the children of the world work from a very young age. They learn a trade, they beg, they find odd jobs. they take care of their siblings, they are street smart. Whether that is a good thing or bad, or maybe a mixed bag, I feel that the children in our culture are given a childhood only because perhaps there's nothing else for them to do until they grow up. I am glad that my children are comfortable in life, I often wonder if they are not growing up as balanced as they would if they had an actual purpose in life-- if they felt needed not just by virtue of being alive, but because they play an essential role in the family and society. I wonder if some of the self-centeredness that many in our culture have arises from having their main childhood aspirations being to aquire the lastest toys, score the most goals, and make the best grades. I hope that this trip provides my daughters with a dose of reality-- not that they are really lucky because by the flip of the coin they were born outside of poverty, but that perhaps their lives are not as rich as they think they are. And that having a life of no responsibility for too long is just as harmful as having too much responsibility too soon.