Out of the Jungle

"We are connected here," Sam, my five-year-old, tells me, pointing to his belly.

"We are?" I ask. "Because that's the part of me that gave birth to you?"

"Yes," he says. "Our organs are still connected."

"Sometimes I think so, too," I say quietly.

Sam does not want to grow up or for me to grow older. He could hardly bear to be just the "shopkeeper" with me as a "customer" last night when we played a pretend game of Motorboard (fake surfing on sticks on the carpet). In the end, his heart melting at our connection, he asked to play my child.

This morning, all three of us snuggled under the covers and read Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. It was my first reading. Somehow it did not appear in my childhood canon. As we read the first story, "Mowgli's Brothers," Trinidad and I paused frequently to take in the beauty of the words, the wisdom of the wolf-pack leader, Akela, and the depth of tragedy in the plight of Mowgli and Bagheera as they navigated worlds to which they did not entirely belong. This line also caught my attention: "And [Mowgli] grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat." Mmmm.

At the end of the story, my heart splayed open in awe. As I staggered in the prose of a master, I noticed that my tears were not alone. Mowgli finished his speech to the wolf pack, acknowledging his presence as a leader in the hierarchy beyond the jungle, waved the fire before the council to punctuate his point, and then dissolved into tears as the pack departed. I saw a tear trickle from the corner of Trin's eye. It is the first I've witnessed in response to a story. Just as Mowgli's tears were seen by Bagheera the panther as a rite of passage into Manhood for Mowgli (and I am touched by Kipling's sensitivity here, again), Trinidad's tears marked an awareness and understanding of nuance that we have not shared before.

For an hour after, Trinidad and I chased the tragic aliveness of this tale, the title (who were "Mowgli's Brothers," really?), and the choices of Akela, the wolf-pack leader. "It seems to me that in our culture, people are not taught to fight with wisdom, but instead with violence," Trinidad told me.

Sam began to fidget and asked why we kept going on about the beauty of this story. He pulled himself into my lap and began to poke at me, connecting by body our souls. Looking into Trinidad's slate blue eyes across the table, I could see reflected the territory that he and I are now stepping into. With compassion, both of us rested a hand on Sam, knowing he could not understand the connection of minds moving out of the jungle, thoughts beyond the Mother Wolf.

We are Growing.