Dear God, Would You Like a Doughnut?
I want to hand him a box of tissues and ask gently, “Where’s your doughnut, God?
By Shekinah Jacob
There’s a reason why I never have any Mary-Poppinsy updates on my facebook status that read: “Marvelled at clouds with kids, and then we held hands and chanted poetry.” Or: “What a joy to have two children who help with grocery shopping and never ask for bubblegum at the check-out counter.” This is because when I do experience such moments, I’m struck speechless and cannot articulate my happiness, and thus its records are lost to the general public forever.
Before you conclude that I’m an inexplicably unbalanced person who doesn’t deserve to have children (I sometimes suspect the very same thing myself), I assure you that I do have my Oscar-winning moments when they queue up to chant, “I love you, Mama” but then I get busy calling local newspapers to see if they would like to cover the event, leaving myself no time to record it for posterity.
But what I can tell you is that these charming moments never ever occur on a Monday. It’s true that children are “sugar and spice and all things nice”– kind of like doughnuts–but you will agree that every doughnut has a hole. And don’t ask me why, but Mondays are all about the hole.
For instance, last Monday, I’m getting back from the grocery shop and it’s my six-year-old’s twentieth question in the car. It’s a tense moment. I know I have forgotten one item I really cannot do without. The stress mounts because every second we are driving further away from the supermarket. Then Jason pipes up, “SO, Mama, how did dinosaurs travel from one country to another?”
“They just walked, Jason.”
“But didn’t they need aeroplanes?”
“No, they had great big legs and so they just took great big strides.”
I’m still racking my brains for the one thing I know I have forgotten to buy.
“But which country did they travel to?”
In great relief, sensing that it could be the end of this line of questioning, “Oh I just remembered son, there were no countries, because there were no people when dinosaurs roamed the earth, so no countries, see?”
A one second pause. “But IF there had been countries, which country would they have walked to?”
I resist the urge to leap out of a moving car. I take a deep breath. “I would really need to ask a dinosaur and there are NO dinosaurs around, Jason”.
“That’s true.” He pauses long enough to take a quick breath, just enough oxygen for the next question. “Do fish drown in a flood?”
This is a trick question, I know it.
And the four-year-old who currently feels the need to do every single thing her brother does, now decides to contribute to the questioning with “What do germs look like, Mama?” “
Like worms, Sarah.”
“No, I asked about germs, not worms!!”
“Yes, I heard, and I mean that G-E-R-M-S look like W-O-R-M-S”.
Jason then asks: “When will I get a chance to see germs under a microscope?”
“Whenever you get a chance to visit a laboratory.”
Sarah, glad to be bonding during this happy time, asks “What is a laboratory?” And at this point I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember is my husband challenging them to a five-min silence. First one to speak is a loser. Turns out both were alarmingly eager to be losers. One of them began begging him to speak in Chinese. “Speak Dada. I just know you can IF you try. Why can’t you speak just one line of Chinese??”
I think I must have passed out again.
When I came to, I heard “I know that she sat on this side of the car yesterday and it’s my turn but she is sitting AGAIN in the very same place. I also want the BEST side! (whatever that means.) How come she always gets the best seat? How come you love her more?”
Why?
Somewhere in the back of my mind I begin to feel a small twinge of pity for God, because I’m sure that most of humanity in the throes of Monday-morning-angst lines up to interrogate him; I can almost see him popping an antacid and some paracetamol (and playing some blues in the background) to help him get through the questions which go something like this:
“Why me?” [pause] “I mean, seriously, God, why me?”
“I just know you can speak Chinese. I know you can engineer a happy marriage, why can’t you just do it right now?”
Often on Monday evenings, my daughter who since birth has been very committed to the art of electrocuting herself, reaches the zenith of her potential in this area. Our child is gifted with the ability to connect random wires to sockets and link them up with herself to create a sort of human bomb and I have unforgettable memories of conversations being interrupted with my husband yelling “turn around and grab her before she completes the circuit and disappears in a puff of smoke.” Or something to that effect. I never hear the exact words because one of us has leapt to save her life once again. And then she hollers as if she were Edison just on the brink of discovering the first light bulb and we had halted her progress forever. As the wails climb the decibel charts, I would be staring into the hole (you hold on to the doughnut image, ok?) and I hear one of my own Monday Questions:
“But why me, God? Why are you such a party pooper, always calling the curfew on my party? Why can’t you just let me be? Ok, so you know something I don’t, but SO WHAT? JUST LET ME BE, OK??’
Unforgettable
And in a rare moment of empathy, I want to lead God out of the dock and question him rather differently, “How come you haven’t allowed our stupidities to wipe us all out as yet? How is it that you give me a new chance every single day? How do you resist the urge to send us into oblivion when it’s just been one whine too many? Seriously. “But God” and “why god” and “why not God.” You have a couple of billion kids on your hands, me included, who refuse to grow up. Who do not want to lift our eyes off our minor mishaps and play a responsible role in the world. Who always want what other people have. “But she got two chocolates and you gave them both to her at the same time!” Children who would much rather complain than be grateful. Who think that happiness is our right, as if we engineered our own existence, as if we made the rules that you must now play by. Who think that life is a game where we must always, always win. At whatever cost, to ourselves, or to others. Who, unlike you, can’t see the end from the beginning, but who insist, nevertheless, on giving you advice. And sometimes try to arm twist you into following our bad advice. “Seriously God, if you gave me the new car AND a mansion then I would find it much easier to be pleased with you. Isn’t it crucial that I remain pleased with you, O Creator of the Universe?’
I want to hand him a box of tissues and ask gently “Where’s your doughnut, God? Sometimes I think all you’ve got is the hole. And a month of Mondays. There are times when I feel like a battered rose, that you just don’t treat me with the delicacy that I deserve, but I fail to see that you are still holding on to me by my very thorny stem.”
And so sometimes when Mondays come around and I’m fending off endless questions from my progeny, I really get what a Psalmist once said to God: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you [still] care for him?”
Although that’s an appropriate question, I don’t hang around waiting for an answer. I walk away, trying to act casual, humming a tune. When you know you’ve hit the jackpot, you’ve just got to walk away while the going’s good …
______________________________
About Shekinah:
Shekinah is a drama queen who lives in Chennai, India, with her knight (not always in shining armour because it tends to get too hot to wear metal clothing) and their two toddlers who make her laugh, and love her on bad hair days. Her idea of heaven is coffee, a good conversation, and cupcakes with zero calories. She likes writing about her family because it’s a good way to preserve the memories, and more enjoyable than taking photographs.
Natasha Files is Case Manager with a Mental Health and Addictions Team. She has experience working with youth and adults struggling with a variety of life-controlling issues and she specializes in eating disorders. Natasha’s passion for mental wellness began when she personally experienced the impact of a genuinely caring professional. That passion is paired with a love of espresso, only to be overshadowed by her desire to see women set free from life-controlling issues.
