Understanding my place in this space. Thank you, Mr. Sendak.

I was listening to one of the most intimate interviews I have ever heard (now twice) again a couple of weeks ago, replayed on Fresh Air, upon the death of the beloved Maurice Sendak. Terry Gross interviewed him for the last time last September. I remember the day I listened to it then. I was visiting my parents in Missouri, and I was in the kitchen preparing food for the family. I recall stopping chopping to sit down and enter in. Someone posted part of this interview on their Facebook page on the day of Sendak's death:

I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.

Many may or may not know that Sendak never had any children of his own, and as a gay man (who came out quite late in life, although he had a long-time partner for four decades who died in 2007), this could have been perceived to be a result of being gay in a time where it wasn't as prevalent for gay men and women to have children. However, he rejects this notion. He tells Terry Gross that he never wanted children (well, maybe one daughter who he thought would be nice to have around in his latter life — but only if she came out fully grown so he wouldn't have to worry about how to dress her every day, etc.). He loved his life of the mind, so to speak, to be able to read, write, and submerge himself in his work in a way he would never be able to do had he had even one child. He understood the commitment of parenthood and how that would, ultimately, take him away from his life's purpose. And this was a choice he was not ready to make. Ironically, the major canon of his work has been beloved by children and families for years.

The New York Times began their article on Sendak like this:

[Sendak was] widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century... [and] wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.

I understand this quite well, as the only book we own of Sendak's is his picture book Brundibar, created with Tony Kushner (who wrote the text) in 2003 and based on an opera originally composed by a Czech Jew who died at Auschwitz and originally performed by children in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. It's darkness is captivating. I've often wondered to myself the affect of this book on my children as I read it to them occasionally. It is a beautiful and haunting story. The other book we know quite well from several library borrowings is In the Night Kitchen, which I've thought often of writing about in this blog, with its enticingly nocturnal journey through an idyllic New York landscape and the baking of bread with a naked little hero ("nangu boy" as my boys call him in Hindi) named Mickey at the center of the story.

But I digress just a tad. What I've thought about most often the last couple of weeks since his death is this very conversation he had on Fresh Air, where he opened up so genuinely about his choice not to have children. Here is someone who has touched the lives of children in ways a parent can only dream. And yet Sendak, like so many other children's book authors, has created worlds centered around the hero child, with the parent in the proverbial background, either asleep, sick, overworked, you name it. I don't have his books in front of me, so I hasten to say this will fall short of any sort of true literary analysis, but from what I recall in reading his books, some more recently than others, the parent figure is both villain and savior. Their actions, either purposeful (like a punishment) or inadvertent (like an illness), tend to pave the way for the break of independence that sends the child off on his or her journey, and yet the very bond of the relationship lures the hero back home in to the arms of the waiting, perhaps even remorseful, and loving parent. This brings to my mind an inherent conflict: in what ways do we truly shape our children, as they explore the world on their own terms. And as well, Sendak's seeming understanding of what one gives up to be a parent, at the expense of oneself or even one's child hangs like a cloud over his landscape. For certain, endless articles and books have been written on these subjects, but I come to this from a purely emotional place.

My love for my children has changed my life, as have the choices I've made to be a parent. And my own journey to the land of the monsters, with the fear and trembling along the way, reminds me that Sendak's work is much more universal than what sits before us on those beautifully illustrated pages. We are all seeking that same unconditional love and acceptance, along with an ever-present desire for independence from those most close and devoted to us... our partners, our children, our parents, our friends. It is the loneliest and most exhilarating place all at once. And Sendak's greatest gift may have been that he led us to that place where we abandon the familiar in search of the new; and when we go back home, we have all changed for the better.

An unlikely communion

Okay, I know I'm going to sound a bit strange now, but one of the things I miss most about working (outside the home, that is) is riding public transportation. No, I don't miss the constant stale and body-odorous smell of the red line in the winter or the traces of spilled or neglected food or drink left behind in the seat crevices; what I miss is the interaction, however brief, of my being in contact with other beings in small and [hopefully] speedy containers. Most of the time we are all involved in our own insular worlds, with our smart phones, headphones, perhaps even a novel or two, but the understood trust and camaraderie, even if forced, is inherent in the air around us. Jason Kottke recently posted a fantastic photograph taken by Stanley Kubrick in the the 1940s of a subway rider when he was working as a photographer for Look magazine. The Museum of the City of New York has a collection of hundreds of his photos taken on the New York City subway during this period. You can check out some of the photos here. It is interesting note that some things are still quite the same amongst subway riders from city to city, from time to time.

These days, relying on my well-driven minivan (yes, I did become one of those moms), I cart my kids to preschool and activities and drive myself to the gym and grocery. You see, Chicago is one of those big cities that has a relatively good public transportation system but still has a remarkable number of drivers, unlike New York. Part of that is that we actually have places to park those cars for the most part, unlike that other large city on an eastern coast. We may not be quite as car-reliant as LA, but we're probably close. Most families I know in the city have one or two cars, although those working in the city almost always take public transportation to work. Several mornings, I get texts or emails from Nalin on his way to work. He's been browsing his phone or iPad on his commute down and sends me some invaluable story or tweet to get my day started. I envy this time to melt into oneself. I read many novels and magazine articles just in the time I was on the bus or subway after Ettu was born. I was still working, and this travel was the only time I found I could really have all to myself (well, in proximity to 50 others, that is).

So perhaps this post is ill-named. After all, it doesn't seem that we share much with anyone we ride with on these trips of necessity — with the exception of the brief bodily brushes and occasional head nods. But perhaps communion doesn't necessarily have to involve true intimacy with those around us. The greater power is in knowing that we are part of a larger fabric, and this precious time we have to ourselves with the present awareness of a bigger and, yes, sometimes stranger world is what gives us our humanity. And that's a communion I can really dig.