Malinda Words: Those made of love will fly

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 214th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

They were tiny at the time. They would grow and pursue destinations unimagined in that tiny-time. They would become something of who they want to be that obliterated who their parents believed they would become. In time they’ll get closer to preferred destinations or may start off on some other path as yet unknown or unloved.

Back then they were tiny. Tiny but not so tiny that individuality could not be observed. The error of the observer imprinted itself on the observed, naturally, but then again some of it was unmistakable. One was made of dreams and the other made of love.

Made for love, both were, of course, but just as the one was dreamy and often lost in thoughts that seldom translated into words but would leave a trace as a smile and a tear, the other was, simply, all cuddle. She didn’t have to demand and never objected either. So she was made of love. She was made for love. Love of the cuddling type. The other was loved from a distance. She exuded enchantment that called for distant appreciation.

She was made of love and made for love but at the time she was given that moniker she was probably too young to know what it meant. Anyway, she wasn’t too conversant in English. So she offered an alternative: ‘mama made of love nevei appachchi, mama bird of love (I am not “made of love,” father, I am “bird of love”).’ She probably didn’t know what ‘made’ and ‘love meant,’ but probably knew the meaning of ‘bird.’

Children dream. They imagine. And in their imagination they can be who or what they want to be, whenever they like, wherever they happen to and whoever happens to be around. Children, when loved, are invincible. They are unfettered. Made of Dreams, Made of Love: these are just names. Terms of endearment. Either way, they can fly if we let them and if they so wish. They are birds, after all.

They fly when no one wants to listen to them and they decide to talk to their stuffed toys, pets or, if they have no toys or pets, the creatures around them, animate and inanimate. They talk to squirrels, ants, butterflies and birds. They talk to trees, plants, leaves, flowers and pebbles. They create imaginary friends and alternative relatives who listen to them, offer advice, comfort them and take them to happier places. And if they don’t have toys, they make toys of their own. So in these and other ways, they fly, not so much because they are loved but they love.

For kids loved and loving, characters are willing to step out of books and tales. They stay long after stories are told and books are put away. They are secret companions present but invisible to adults who have plugged their imagination springs and have tightly embraced the popular untruth that only that which is tangible at all times is real. And they fly with these friends.

And then they grow up. They are no longer tiny except in the memories of those who knew them when they were small. They grow up and they sometimes outgrow their secret friends. They lose language and can no longer talk to ants, squirrels, birds and butterflies. They no longer share sorrows with blades of grass and are no longer comforted by a the sturdy trunk of a tree.

Like their parents before them and like all parents, relatives who are very old and ancestors who have passed on, they start losing eyesight and imagination. The wings fold and become part of their skin. They can no longer fly or rather they forget they can.

But this is known: they are still made of dreams and they are still made of love. They remain birds of love. They can fly.

And sometimes when all seems lost or unbearable, almost as though they’ve recovered their tiny times, they recover memory of doorways that took them once to valleys and hills no one had ever visited but which was an alternative home to them.

The storms that seem beyond their strength are but intemperate queries that don’t deserve answers. The barbs, the taunts, the glance calculated to irk and trip are no more potent that nidikumba — easily put to rest with but the slightest touch. Such things are re-recognized.

A father, not unworried but proud and remembering a little child who didn’t know ‘made’ or ‘love’ but knew ‘bird,’ could say, ‘soar!” Perhaps he won’t. But there will be flight. So it is written in ‘The Love-Bird Book’ jointly authored by an adoring father and a cuddled daughter a long time ago.

05 September 2023

Those made of love will fly

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