Intimacy- language of communication!

The first pair flowers above, symbolised to me of two adults in courtship preparing to get married. The second picture is that of the two,  having got married growing together in intimacy and mutuality. 

The third picture represents the journey of a couple to 'become one', which is  the destination in marriage relationship. When that happens as seen in the background of the third picture, the buds, which represent the fruits of their relationship, children, would arrive to share in the joy of intimacy in their family life.  

The journey of the two married couple towards becoming one is often a myth rather than an experience of reality in the lives of many married people. When I watch a lady pulls along a trolly bag and carries her daughter on the other arm and the man walking ahead, I know that the journey to become one in marriage relationship is often abandoned and married people live as two single people, sharing the physical ambience of a home. They remain emotionally and relationally distant from each other. They co-exist in a home.

In the following pictures below, I find a language of intimacy, where a flower is open to give away its nectar to all those who come seeking.  

 

The hospitality message the flowers above convey, drew my attention to dwell on this theme. 

Anna stayed away from pursuing her post graduate training, till both our children were fairly independent and were in the latter years of their schooling. She was often asked; 'Don't you miss your professional career'! Her response was, 'My home is my attention now'. 

In 1997 when we relocated at the Christian Medical College, Vellore to start the  Developmental Paediatrics Unit,  at their invitation, Anna had an opportunity to think about her post graduate training. Dr Joyce Punniah, the director of CMC suggested that she pursued her training in Pharmacology, where younger leadership was needed. That is how Anna restarted her professional journey, which took her to make contributions in Continuing Medical Education, clinical research, founding and editing the continuing medical education journal, and serving as professor of pharmacology in three institutions. Her last significant contribution was to start the Institutional Review Board as its co-ordinator in the institution from where she retired two yeas ago. It opened the door for medical students to be active in research by getting ICMR scholarship. The faculty received impetus to pursue their research projects.

Ours as a family was, on a voyage from one unknown to another. We experienced eight relocations during our forty years in our professional   service, each associated with a change, which finally took us in to  pioneering in child development of developmentally challenged children.    

One factor, which helped us to live with some stability amidst all the changes and transitions was the wellness we sought after in our family life and home. 

A home is a place of formation for parents and children and a shock absorber of events, which occur when one is on a pioneering journey. A family is a place of giving, forgiving and upbuilding which take place as its natural habit! The family life, for parents is journey to find the fulfilment of their labour of love and for children, it is an experience of bering rooted in acceptance and affirmation. 

For a home to become a place of communion and communication, both parents need to make choices in favour of growing in intimacy. This would mean, that even job or training opportunities need to be viewed subject to the wellness in family life. 

I remember how I felt drawn by wanting to join the Paediatric Neurology course started for the first time in India at AIIMS, New Delhi in 1989. It involved a serious dislocation to our family life as well as discontinuing the Child Development Centre we started at Chennai in 1983. I felt disappointed and wondered whether I lost an opportunity to get trained in Paediatric Neurology ! I needed good grounding in Paediatric Neurology to pursue the frontiers in child development. 

A new opportunity opened up in 1992, when I was offered to join the PhD programme in Developmental Neurology at the Institute of Neurology attached to the Madras Medical College. That course and training suited me better, as it took me to some depth to the morphological and neurological events in foetal life, perinatal- neonatal life, early childhood and later years of childhood, which later adversely affected the child development process. I had sufficient exposure to routine child neurology and a deeper and wider experience in the neurological implications of developmentally challenged children.  

I feel alarmed when many families live their lives fragmented without experiencing the fullness in family formation.  

Many families feel compelled to attend to the existential questions of creating prospects and prosperity, keeping the material needs in focus. So husband and wife live in two different locations pursing their work and children often left out from experiencing the fullness of family formation. 

The disturbing trend we notice in the adolescent population of vulnerability to Substance Abuse Disorder, media addiction, gambling, and reckless living, might have their roots in the fragmentation they suffered in childhood, without experiencing the nearness and intimacy in family relationship.   

Parents give birth to their children; they are born into their home; they grow up to be wholesome when nurtured with care and attention; and they in turn become adults to make their future homes a place of family formation. 

I heard from a young professional couple, now on short leave overseas, about their response to their family situation. The mother had an opportunity to have advanced training in a specialty, which was not easily available in India. This meant husband and three children accompanying her to help her to do the training. He did not get an appropriate position corresponding to his interest and skills, but he accepted what was available and took the lead to be a home maker. His job requirements were not demanding. He was able to help children adjust to the schooling. He shouldered other responsibilities as his wife  had long hours at work. It gave him opportunities to give more time to reading. Recently he was able to get back to his specialty and register for formal training at the post doctoral level. Fortunately his wife's schedule has become lighter as she is coming to the end of her training programme. 

Listening to this experience, I was moved by the spontaneous self-giving role that the husband took upon himself to support his wife and be a home maker to stabilise the family and give attention to children. In fact, he was overseas for a while earlier, when his wife shouldered the responsibilities on her own. That was not an easy time for her, but she endured it to make space for her husband's aspiration. 

It is an amazing story of how a couple live their lives mindful of each other keeping the interests children uppermost in their mind and practice. I admire the way the husband did something rather unusual and did it most gladly and purposefully. I felt encouraged by the joyful family ambience this generated, to be an example to others,  while they lived overseas. 

We fear loosing some things in life, when we keep the family at the centre of all considerations and choices. 

Let me suggest that we redeem ourselves and safe guard our children to become their true selves, when a family keeps husband-wife relationship sacred and surround children with the fortress of love! 

When a couple chooses in favour of the family, they invest in the creation of a generation, born and brought up in the intimacy of their home!

That is the gift every family can offer to humanity!

Let me send this bunch of flowers below, which I gathered this morning from our garden battered by wind and rain of three days, to all those who keep family and parenting as a calling in their lives and make deliberate choices to foster that calling!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)