Limbo

In the game or dance of limbo, participants try to shimmy their way under a pole that drops lower and lower and lower until it is almost on the ground.  It is mesmerizing to watch as regular people contort, twist, and bend to the depths that bar takes them.  The metaphor is so obvious.  In the Catholic tradition, limbo, from the Latin limbus, meaning edge or boundary, presumably of Hell, is the place where souls wait in the afterlife in original sin (occurring in all of us due to the Fall of Man) but not having been assigned to Hell of the Damned.  The limbo dance has its origins in the contra dancing of Trinidad and the word itself is a derivative of limber in West Indian English.  The movements, similar to that of the African legba or legua dance (after the god of fate, chance, opportunities, and crossroads of Afro-Caribbean lore) reflect "the whole cycle of life" according to some African beliefs.


And so we find ourselves as we wait for a decision, are we in the house?  Did we get it?  Have we been approved? We are in limbo, not just in trying to figure out where we are going to live, but once we find a place, we will still be living in a hotel on the edge of New York City for two weeks while we wait until an August 1st move in. It's a strange place to be. We are not on vacation. Not on a business trip. Not in a home. We won't even live in the town where the hotel is, when all is said and done.


With my aching back, brought on by the children, both carrying them in pregnancy and then carting them around on my hip even now, bending like the willow and not breaking like a twig, is pretty tough for  me.  And with my contorted sense of self, just going with the flow and letting go and letting God, though I know the only way to weather life's changes, opportunities, crossroads is close to impossible.  But each morning I get up and ask myself how we are going to do it and try to do it with a smile.  Try to bend backwards and let life open to us and show us surprises. 

The girls, missing a pool, swam in the bathtub with their suits on.  They have built snow forts out of the pillows from the two beds in the suite.  We have gone into the city and walked in our old neighborhood.  Two years has not changed it much except for a few businesses that we feared wouldn't make it and didn't.  On our way to a walk through Central Park to go to the MET(to see Savage Beauty, the sure to be thrilling and haunting exhibition at the Costume Institute of Alexander McQueen's work), Didier and I realized that that was more than likely not the right choice for us.  We were travelling with two little people and where on the Upper West Side should we take these two little creatures while we waited for life to settle?  The Children's Museum of Manhattan, of course!  And it was a blast!  The girls ran all over the place with their aged parents in tow.  Lily spent nearly every single day there as a two year old when we lived right around the corner during the months that play in the park was too cold, too windy, too rainy, or too snowy.  Watching Virginie make her way through the Dora floor, the Curious George exhibit, fingerpaint, feed the letter dragon, I saw we'd really come back. 

We met up with friends not seen for two years and fell back into easy rhythms and patterns, everything seeming the same, except for older children and maybe a little more gray hair for us (probably caused in part by the older children).  There were parks in New Jersey, playgrounds and the zoo in Manhattan, a ride on the NY Waterway ferry between New Jersey and New York crossing the Hudson River, and our first trip to the movie theatre as a family.  We saw "Winnie the Pooh" and its one hour and three minute screen time was just about right for the ladies.  Virginie shouted out to the screen with questions and demands and Lily sat mesmerized.  Like bookends, Didier and I sat with the girls between us, laughing and smiling, getting lost in the picture.

And in limbo, that place, at a crossroads, a place of opportunities, a place of mirrors, a place where fate is decided, I bent backwards, squeezed Didier's hand, kissed our girls, and laughed outloud.  This isn't the first time we have done these moves.  We all do them.  And I am much more flexible that I ever expect, more agile, more light on my feet.  Love is burning in my chest and I trust that the fates are on my side and will help us win.  It might cost more money that I want to spend (I am cheap).  I might miss my things locked away in a container stuck in customs, as we are here.  I might wish I knew the answers already so I wouldn't have to sweat it out.  But maybe I should just stop sweating because it will all be decided anyway.  One doesn't sit in limbo forever.  The trick is timing the perfect moment, with the perfect backbend, at just the right height or depth of the stick, bending one's head back, and letting go.  I am always surprised when I make it under and up again.


(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.