Object permanence in a temporary world

Our mothers teach us the concept of object permanence by playing peek-a-boo with us as infants. They do it so we’ll know they will come back to us, time and again; so we’ll have faith that they exist, even when we can’t see them. They do it instinctively, even if they don’t know why they do it.

But why teach children permanence in a temporary world? Is nature trying to fool us into thinking we will live forever? Or is it a lesson about our souls; that somehow we do go on, even when we’re not here? And what about the earth itself, whose geography has now been forever altered by a fierce tide? It is no more permanent than a footprint in the sand. Yet we build whole cities on islands of bedrock, only miles from the open sea, believing in the folktale of peek-a-boo.

Worriers like me wonder if the big boy generals and presidents will decimate the earth with their weaponry someday, trying to disprove their mothers’ theory. If they do, I wonder if the earth will renew itself with a more forgiving species.

These thoughts are products of the recent inconceivable loss of life in Southeast Asia, where more than a 100,000 people, too many of them children, were swept from the face of the earth in a moment. That this devastation was wrought by nature is both humbling and mysterious.

The day after the earthquake that caused the deadly tsunami, my friend Panchali moved to Singapore, an island nation between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Not knowing where she was exactly or what circumstances she would find there, I held on to the thought of her, with her husband and daughter, as I last saw them, packing up their New York City apartment for yet another trans-continental shift. Before she left, I found it necessary to have an image in my mind of where she was going. She said she would send pictures when they settled. Still, I pestered her to describe the building and the neighborhood they would live in when they reached Singapore. I am glad now that I did, because I can conjure an image of them safe in their high-rise apartment, towering over the seas below.

When Panchali and I first met, doing volunteer work at our daughters’ school library, I felt as though I was meeting myself, as an Indian woman. Although we grew up halfway around the world from each other, we shared a profession, many interests, a similar sense of humor and a dedication to our families. I am grateful that we also shared a language, English, with which we delighted each other on many occasions.

What do three lives mean next to the thousands who were lost in a momentary shift of tectonic plates? Everything, of course. In that one family is every family, no matter the size or nationality or circumstance. In India, Panchali’s surname is ubiquitous—Guptas are a rupee a dozen. But to those who know them, they are Panchali, Ditscha, and Sanjay —completely original beings who happen to share some of the characteristics of a hundred million other people.

Those of us who happen to live in the shadow of the World Trade Center—once an actual shadow, now a metaphorical one—can’t help being reminded of our area’s less massive but no less devastating loss of life. The sensation of souls hovering around us lasted months, maybe a year, on the site of that man-made disaster. You didn’t have to know a single soul who died, although everybody seemed to know someone, to feel the persistence of spirit that hung in the atmosphere.

In the presence of so much loss, our mothers’ game of peek-a-boo, if not an essential truth, is at least some solace. Memory can be a form of permanence when life and earthly things are lost.