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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Dial "M" for Maternal


As all of you who read this blog know by now, one of the subplots of this story is that I am dealing with a relationship in which there is a strong connection between me and that person but I wasn't quite sure how to define our relationship or what exactly connection was. To make things even more complicated, Marisa is from a culture that teaches her next to nothing about energy and connection. It's so obvious to me that forces unseen do influence her behavior and mine as well but at times I felt at loss at how we were going to get good understanding on this connection between us.

For months now since my last trip, I have been trying to find out what exactly this connection is. During season 1, you could easily see that she is being drawn to me. Everytime in her cellgroup, she would sit specifically by me. She always wanted to give me hugs and kisses, more than what is the norm for Argentine culture. Everytime I walk into the room, I can feel a reaction from her. Did I also mention at least 4 or 5 moments where she would look at me with complete love and adoration in her eyes?

 I began to wonder alot about our relationship and was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery to what exactly this connection was. I know from reading the description above, you're probably thinking what I first thought having an adult female who wants to hug me, kiss me, and be with me all the time. Through trial and error (I'm not going to say what kind of trials or what kind of errors!) I found out that my our relationship wasn't exactly what I was thinking :) So I had to go back to the drawing board. There is still a connection between us but what was is it?

 Dial "M" for maternal, that's all I can say.  She has a deep motherly affection for me, so deep that her actions and her behavior could easily be mistaken for something else. It seems to me that her behavior towards me is alot closer to what goes on in the animal kingdom between a mother and baby. In the animal kingdom, after a baby is born the mother will sit very closely with the baby and allow it to stay close to the mother's body to help it bond. Sometimes the bonding process can go on for weeks or even months.

 A very interesting thing here is that the verb for "bond" as in when people or animals are sitting closely together and creating a connection actually does not exist in spanish. So it added a layer of complexity that something was happening between her and I that there is no word in her language for. But this to me explains her behavior and wanting to sit with me all the time or be near me, we were going through a bonding process like animals in the wild. She was making me her own even if she didn't know it consciously.

 Sometimes when animals in the wild encounter another animal that has been lost or orphaned, they will take them as their own. This behavior has been documented several times and on some occasions, the mother is a different species from the baby and there have been cases that the species of the baby is actually a species of animal that the mother normally hunts and kills! The power of the maternal instinct is still one of science's greatest mysteries.

 Thinking back to Rock & Vida last year, it somehow worked out that I ended up at her side following her while she walked through the crowd selling sandwiches on a tray to the attendees. I collected the money and while she sold the sandwiches. Come to think of it now, the sight of us does look abit like a mother sheep with her little lamb skipping merrily along beside her. Hmmm.....


Spare Rooms BA

Amorous Alpacas

Amorous Alpacas