More news from my parents, this time from my childhood home (see above), where my mother brought me back from the hospital after my birth. I remember so much though I was young. Note the lovely old brick paths--I can almost feel them warm under my bare feet.

One of my favorite memories or stories (when you are a small child they are often the same thing) is about Ebrahim, our old Bengali gardener who kept me out of trouble. My mother sent me this e-mail on Easter, for my birthday: "Here's a pretty gift. We were sitting under a shelter in the yard between what was our house and the guesthouse when a slight figure of a man with white beard and lungi walked up to us. My heart took a turn-it was for all the world Ebrhaim who was coming toward us. Turns out it was his son who insisted that we must come for a meal the next day. And we did, and they laughed and asked about Kimberly. You were born as the baby of the whole project, but as the special charge of Ebrahaim, who followed you devotedly as you went visiting house after house, spreading your joy."

I had just finished editing a poem about Ebrahim the night before, where I thank him for his tenderness with me and wish I could know him now I am grown up, a gardener myself with my own children. There was something so lovely about being remembered by people I have not seen in thirty years--when you grow up overseas, you rarely encounter anyone but your own family who has known you for that long. It made me long to see them again--Ebrahim himself, who died twenty years ago, and all the people who gifted me with their love so early, made me feel precious and worthwhile. I am deeply grateful.

Here's another photo, which took both my sister and I back to this familiar place--the jungle that Heather used to pull me away from, reminding me of snakes and death, the jungle that hung with orchids!--though in my memory the colors are purer and more vibrant.



But here is more of my mother's wonderful e-mail (just a part of the longer story of meetings with people we once knew):

So many memories flooded in as we walked from house to house...here's where the Ragans, etc. lived...here's the nurses' house where we went for tea and gamma globulin shots...here's the road (steep) where Meredith was on his freshly repaired bike, brake shoes installed backwards, went hurtling down the hill, across the main road, tossing him into the rice paddy....here's where the water buffalo went poggle (crazy) and stampeded down the path...remember taking the girls motorbike riding along here... We walked down to Mokamtilla, veering off up the hill where we would take Koolaid and M&M's on Sunday afternoons to picnic and watch the 4:00 o'clock train come by. It was stunningly lovely, walking along the crest of the hill, looking down across rice paddies, a cow here and there, ducks and woman w/her water buffalo, listening to a bird singing his 4-note song again and again.

In one of the houses, a leprosy patient still lives (illegally). She stepped out with her 12 year old daughter. The mother was bald and with only stumps for hands, and cradled her daughter with Down's syndrome so she would have the courage to step out. Meredith took her hands and talked to her until she began to smile; she was lovely. We rounded the corner and encountered Demond, who looked at Meredith in a shocked way and said, "Long Sab!" He had been a watch man while were there. I couldn't believe he remembered.

[My parents visit with people at two houses, and are fed well at both. At one of the homes the electricity goes out and they all sit on a bed and watch a magnificent storm through an open door].

Then on to Ebrahim's son's house, a welcome walk down the main road and across rice paddies to a surprise...a strong, cement house set up high in the middle of the rice paddies, complete with solar power lights. We were so happy to see how well they were living; they talked and laughed as they remembered you girls and we remembered Ebrahim together. They served us a bowl of noodles even before the curry meal arrived, and besides a chicken curry and vegetable curries, a special treat, fried duck eggs. We took pictures together, give them a gift in honor of Ebrahim and he hugged Meredith for a long time and cried. It was a precious visit.

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After this my parents went on for yet another full meal--"We just couldn't keep up that level of eating," Mom wrote. "We are overwhelmed once again, at the deep hospitality of Bengalis and realize how much we were shaped by the years we lived here. How rich it was and how privileged we were to be here."