The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan Philipp Sendker

Like the stereotype of a bookish woman, I am extremely near-sighted. Without my contacts even a large human nose and bushy eyebrows blur together into one muddy featureless head. With my contact lenses, the world sharpens into clear shapes, colors and forms, and yet I am often surprised by how unobservant I am. I can rarely remember what people wear, notice a new haircut, or find my way again to an address I’ve traveled to before.

In Jan Philipp Sendker’s fabulous novel, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, true sight comes not from seeing but through hearing. Tin Win is a Burmese boy who goes blind after his mother deserts him. Slowly other perceptions leak into Tin Win’s world. His hearing sharpens to the point where he can recognize a butterfly by the sound of its batting wings and an unborn chick by the beat of a heart. He can know if a person is happy, sad, tired, angry or even dying by the different heartbeats, and he can move through the village by the sounds of the breaths of a horse, a worm gnawing on a wood fence, or a woman chopping ginger in a nearby hut.

As the world comes into a new focus for Tin Win, he meets a young disabled woman, Mi Mi, and falls in love. With her words, Mi Mi helps Tin Win give names to the different sounds that he hears. Crawling about, she explores till she finds the worm that Tin Win heard or the egg in which beats the chick’s little heart. With Mi Mi, Tin Win learns the truth of his teacher’s promise, that nothing is more powerful than love. His blind world, now no longer empty because of his love for Mi Mi and his magical hearing, lights up.

“What is essential is invisible to the eyes,” Tin Win’s teacher tells him. When his uncle takes Tin Win away from his village and pays for surgery to fix his eyes, the young man struggles not to let his eyes come in the way of his hearing. He looks at all the colors, objects, shadows and curves, and they remain a photograph for him, lifeless. He longs to return to his village, to marry Mi Mi, to go back to how his life was before, but fate and his uncle have other plans for him.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is a love story, a mystery, and a tale of the magic in ordinary things. For Mi Mi and Tin Win their love is a source of inner happiness whether they are together or separated. Carried on the gentle waves of this lovely novel, I could glimpse both the selflessness and the selfishness of their love and the impact it had on the lives around them.

Sight and blindness come in different forms. Seeing eyes do not see everything, but -- much though I would wish to have a hearing gift like Tin Win’s -- neither does a listening heart. The humanity in this book, the tragedy of decisions made and connections severed and kept, make this novel linger in my mind over two weeks after I finished it.

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Feeding the Children, or Is Preventing World War Three Necessary?

It didn’t take me long to discover that my two kids require feeding when I pick them up from school. Even when I lived in Palo Alto, and home was about ten minutes away, they couldn’t wait. Eden especially, if I don’t catch her the moment before irreversible sugar-low crabbiness, will refuse to eat and make it complicated to bring her back to an agreeable (read: manageable) mood.

I have taken to bringing with me sandwiches, fruit, candy, cookies, cakes. For a while the kids loved bagels with cream cheese. Then it was pretzels from Esther’s Bakery. Uri had a donut period. Apples came and passed, then came back again into fashion. Popcorn. Girl scout cookies. Baby carrots which Eden devoured by the bag. But every so often I’d bring something they didn’t care for, and thunderous silence battered me from the backseat.

I wondered, am I feeding the children into pleasantness? I sometimes offer a treat when they are upset, but even as I do, I cringe. I can’t believe I’m teaching my kids that food can cheer them up. Yes, eating is enjoyable and fun, but I’d like my kids to have other methods to relax. I’d like to argue, however, that more than a calming after a long day eating binge, the after-school snack is an important transitional aid, shifting the children’s focus and energies from school to home.

For the past few weeks I’ve participated in a parenting class through Hand in Hand. Hand in Hand philosophy says that a parent needs a place for releasing the emotions that parenting brings, a listening partner that gives whole-hearted support and no criticism. The idea is that in order to really listen to and be there for our children, we parents must be listened to in our turn.

According to Hand in Hand, children need tantrums in order to let go of feelings and upsets. In the last class, we were talking about tantrums that happen during transitions, and how sometimes it is good to leave some time to allow the tantrum to happen. I instantly thought about the moment of school pick-up. I’ve been hurrying the kids away from school, giving them their food in the car in order to be on time for our after-school activities, but perhaps I could plan for a few moments to sit and have a treat at school. Then again, I can’t say I’m eager for tantrums in front of all the other moms....

Without doubt, this parenting business is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. At so many turns I hit a wall, and so often I feel like any choice I make will be a bad one. However, just as I feel better after I cry, perhaps so will the kids. And after their tantrum, maybe they’ll finally have their snack, become grounded again, and we could move on to have fun.