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The girls and I have been down for the count for nearly a week. After an emergency visit to the doctor on Monday morning, which followed a night of Lily coughing and hacking her lungs onto the floor, we discovered that it was most likely Virginie who'd been carrying around a virus in her little sinus cavities who'd passed it on to all of us. It now looked like an ear infection and wheezing for Virginie, full on cough, nasal congestion, and wheezing for Lily, and sore throat, sinusitis for me. Joy. And the weekend that it all developed, Didier was working a wedding at the hotel which meant hours and hours alone with the girls.
I am curious. How is it that in the middle of the night, these two girls are so full of symptoms, coughing, wheezing, crying, calling my name, demanding hugs and tissues and kisses and trips to the bathroom, but come morning, once confirmation that they would not be going to school had been given, these two people are in total play mode? I mean nudity, high heels, strollers with babies, My Little Ponies, puzzles, Strawberry Shortcake movie on loop, juice, snacks, play-ING. Playing like it was a professional sport. Sure there is the occasional cough or break for Mommy to use the aspirator but in general, these people are full on and all I want to do is lie down on the floor and sleep for 12 hours. The floor. I am not too choosy. Don't even need a bed.
Times like this, Barbados, which has steadily grown on me, shows its serious lack of services. Where the heck is the delivery? And I mean of good food, not crap Pizza Man Doc. To have to make food for two little kids and yourself when you feel slightly better than ass is difficult. Add to it that my princesses don't eat very much and I have a home economics nightmare on my hands. We had noodles. Pasta. Homemade pizzas. Soup. Lots of liquids. But I really wanted something from the Japanese restaurant I used to order from when I was sick. Yummy soups, dumplings, a tiny roll just because we'd ordered.
I'm not crazy though. New York right now is a snow cone, cold and slushy with an ice coating on top and so cold it gives you brain freeze. For all my missing home, I am surely not missing it right now. Yeah, I want the delivery, the New York Times, corner stores, culture, but I definitely don't want the frigid temps and wind chill to whip into my bones while I stand in front of the window. With the girls home from school, we went to Farley Hill and the East Coast to get salty air in their lungs. We walked in the garden and had a picnic out back. No point in trying to keep them in the house and certainly not in bed. I'd need a straight jacket for each to do that anyway. I do not want them to get other kids sick, but there is no rule that says that have to sit tied to the bed to get better. It wouldn't work anyway and the running around passes the time quicker.
We're all taking our meds. Getting lots of fluids. And waiting. The girls and I are home sick. But these days, with that weather in the States, I have not been particularly homesick. I guess there's a lesson here.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
My first real day home alone I spent a good 20 minutes just sitting on the couch staring into space. It has been years since I have spent any time on my own since having the girls and I have completely forgotten what I love to do, how to be, when no one else is looking. That is not to say that when i am with them there is a show, but I am aware of their gaze, of their need to see me and be seen by me. The same goes for afternoons home with my husband. I am aware of everyone's need to be adored, cared for, and giving it, adoration, is by now, second nature. Perhaps I should not say "by now." Whomever finds themselves in my circle will be loved and adored and cared for. It is what I do. It is as sincere as it is a defensive mechanism, so much a part of my survival that it is me, even if I wished it were not so.
I got on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes while I read an article in Vanity Fair. I hadn't intended to work out for so long, but the article i was reading was rather long and interesting and there was no one to interrupt me to ask for something, plead for something, need for something. I showered, did my French studies, ate an apple without sharing it or cutting off the skin. I did miss Virginie. She is a wonderful companion, chatty, intelligent, interesting, oh so funny. Her liquid brown eyes veiled by a brush of gorgeous eyelashes that flutter when she blinks just draw me in. We'd had fun since she'd started moving about and playing with me but lately I could see that she needed more stimulation, activities, conversations, and games that I could not offer. She needed to be with her contemporaries and away from her fuddy old mom. And her fuddy old mom needed to find a place for herself in the world again.
I am having a bit of an identity crisis. Having seen artists much maligned during my young life, I have had a hard time admitting that my life's work, my true passions have been in the arts. There was little respect for the arts and creative people unless they were in the big time, and then, Yay artists! The dancers, painters, actors, voice actors with whom I have shared space know how I have thought, felt, and lived. I was lead to believe that being an artist, choosing it or having the spirit choose you, was frivolous and careless and certainly impractical. There is a selfishness to artmaking, however, that is hard to reconcile with being a full time mother. For me, it has truly been one or the other and for the past few years, motherhood and mommying has taken over.
In the quiet of the house, I am considering myself again, trying to give voice to the me that is not Mommy and Wife. I am a little afraid, quite anxious. Once my mind is allowed the freedom, I wonder how I will be able to juggle the two roles. Sure that the unleashed beast will have to be tamed. This morning, on the third day of school this week, Virginie screamed for me as I was leaving, something she had not yet done, and it threw me. I immediately felt that I was pushing her too soon, too quickly, too much. She'd said she loved school, the kids, the toys, the aunties. But she did act out in swimming lessons yesterday as though she needed to control her situation, maybe punish me for leaving her at school days before. Maybe she just needed a little more time with me this morning. Maybe I don't have to be so hard on myself.
Today I will embrace the solitude of the morning. Not just the quiet, but the possibilities. I have always heard from women, mothers, grandmothers, aunties that I cannot lose myself in family life or years from now I will resent what I'd missed of myself. I am working on it, struggling through. It's like learning how to do simple tasks again with the aim of gaining independence and becoming not only a role model for the kids, but someone I could love too.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
I like the time before the girls, well Lily, goes to sleep because we sit in the dark and whisper questions and ideas to each other, sharing details of the day's events and stories of when Mommy was little and hopes for our future. Lily is tickled to pieces that I was once a little girl who was learning new things, fought with and loved my sister, Auntie Shayboo, and didn't listen to my mommy and daddy either. Sometimes. The time is so special and intimate. I feel like I am laying groundwork for our relationship. I have said, and do mean, that I hope she will talk to me about anything and not be too intimidated by my possible reaction or fear of judgment. I'd wished and sometimes still wish for this sort of openness in communication with my own parents with whom I speak more generally and certainly not about matters that could shatter my heart.
Tonight, Lily did just that with a sudden outburst and a flurry of tears. It started with a question about how old she would be when Virginie was almost 4 1/2 years old as Lily is now. I told her she'd be 7. She then asked. "How old will I be when she is 7?" and I told her 9 1/2, almost 10. There was silence. She said, "I am getting older and older than Virginie every time," and I told her she would always be older than her little sister. Again silence and then, "I don't want to be older because I don't want to die!" Tears welled up in her eyes and she bawled and wailed in terror over the prospect. I was stunned and shattered. How could I tell her that we were all going to die? That none of us really wanted to, but that it was inevitable. I sat, holding Virginie in my arms while she nursed, and bent over to hold Lily close. She was shaking with fear, her tears dampening my shoulder and Virginie's hair. I stroked her face. Kissed her cheeks. And struggled for the words.
When I was eight years old, I spent the better part of that year sleeping with the light on and still needing to creep into the bed of my younger sister for comfort as an incredible fear of death and dying overtook me every night. Every night. I can still remember the sudden panic. The realization that at some point, there would be no me. And I had just come around to connecting to the me that was me. I could feel the sensation, in that half sleep where we dream and where we go when we are under anesthetic or totally blotto from drinking too much, where you kind of remember and also don't remember at all. I thought that that must be what death felt like. A long semi-conscious sleep where you could kind of hear and keep up with the things going on around you, but also just drift into another dimension. Of course at that time I could not articulate that but I could feel the sensation. That scared me just as much as knowing that I, along with everyone I knew, would one day pass, cross over, no longer be of this earth.
With Lily sitting before me, clearly in crisis, I wanted to offer her some sort of comfort, but did not want to talk down to her or diminish the seriousness of her concern. Fighting back tears of my own, I held her and said nothing at first. I wanted to feel that moment, be there, truly connected so that I would not say some BS and leave her feeling dismissed. Lily, I told her, I know that it is a scary thing to think about dying. It does scare Mommy too. I hope we all get to live a very long beautiful life, one where we can meet all kinds of people, try new things, travel, see things we never thought we'd see. Things that are breathtaking and inspiring. Mommy likes to think about the things that make a good life.
I suppose I could have offered up the perfect Heaven scenario but, to be honest, it never offered me much comfort, only presenting me with the other realization that everyone else was going to die too and maybe even before me, causing me to miss them terribly and convulse at the loss. I could not bear to bring up meeting her loved ones there when we are all here right now. She would be completely uninterested in angels and fairies and princesses if Virginie, her Papa, and I were not going with her and truthfully, I don't think she'd really care for that alternative. She wanted to hear that she could live forever. That I could somehow tell her that it would be. She is four years old and a spiritual discourse and discussion of the infinite universes was not going to help her as she lay there in tears.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." It all started with this. Meant to provide comfort and put me at ease in that I was loved and tended to by God, it actually had me in a state of terror that I just might "die before I wake." And while Lily and Virginie will probably not ever say this night time prayer, (we say a modified version of it without the dying in one's sleep part) I know there will be more questions, tougher questions, as they get older and life gets more complicated. I know that even when I am not sure of the answers, when I am pained by the events, disasters, heartbreaks that this thing called life can offer, when I ache with them in loss and celebrate with them in pure joy, when even I am near to tears or they are streaming down my face, I want them to wipe their tears on my shoulder, to wet my hair to dry them. If all I can give them in the dark hours is me, I hope it is of some comfort.
I imagine that when we die there is the silence, much like the quiet right before that tiny baby entering the world screams his or her face off, taking that first breath. On our side, we know that our faces and our hands and our hearts are open to receive the little one and welcome him, care for him, prepare him. I guess we won't know until our moment comes whose arms are reaching out to guide us, help us on "the other side." But here, on earth, in this life time? For my girls, it will be me.
I kissed Lily and held her until she fell asleep which was almost immediately. Sitting in the relative silence of the girls' bedroom, holding Virginie's hand, I realized that I have been sweating the small stuff for too long. Life is just not about middle managing myself, my husband, my children. I stopped, even if just for a second, to love them, just love them and nothing else. Rather than shatter, my heart swelled like a deep breath. (c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
The third time is a charm. Yeah, right. After cleaning up urine from the wool carpet in the living room, left by one adorable, but torturous 21 month old darling, followed by a slip and slide on the floor in the girls' room that had Lily in complete fits of laughter, you can imagine the delight, the charm I might even venture, I felt when I sat down on Virginie's bed for a good night nursing session and found my pants drenched.
"I peeped." Thank you. I will be sure to make a note of that. Hold on while I rip the comforter, duvet cover, sheets, mattress pad, feather bed, pillow, and pillowcase from your bed and remake it just minutes before you were to be drifting to toddler La la land. I want to say that this scenario had me in stitches, that the cuteness of her tiny little chattering voice and smiles, offer of a hug and one of her gauzy tissues turned my frown upside down, but alas, I cannot offer that. What's a mother to do? She can talk. She's advanced. Totally. She is so not ready for complete potty training.
But she is able to remove any and all clothing and accessories including diapers and pull ups. Insisting that she keep these things on and let me know before she needs to pee on the potty is beyond ridiculous. The absurdity of the thought has me in stitches, the evening wind down cocktail can do that. I want her to have the freedom to move about. It's hot in Barbados and it is most certainly most comfortable unclothed. Her sister is just as naked as she, in fact, I think Lily's nudity is what precipitated this new interest. I'd had Virginie in diapers and no other clothing for months. She even sported that look in the cooler climates of an Atlanta winter and unseasonably cold Florida. Suddenly a diaper, not even a pull up, is good enough for the gal. Maybe she is preparing to train herself?
When traveling in China, my cousin sent me some pictures of little kids walking around with pants with the crotches cut out. At the time, I was training Lily and telling her often how difficult it was to get Lily to recognize the sensation and then act on it before going in a pull up or other training pant. The photos she sent offered another solution. The children basically just went when it suited them. Right through the hole in the pants. A little pee. A little poo. At the Great Wall. Walking down the street. Until they just got tired of it running down their legs?
I don't know. I think I am better off with Virginie at least being completely naked so I don't have to remove soiled clothing from her little body, but the vigilance, and you know I am not about to have no "stinking up to be damned" pee pee smell warmed up in the Barbados heat all over my house, is just wrecking me. I have to keep my eyes on that little behind and hope I can catch the squat or the grimace or the drip before the spill. I have the mop at the ready and now the laundry soap, ammonia, baking soda potions, Febreze, and paper towels and damp cloths. There are little baggies, plastic gloves, and immediate delivery to the outdoor garbage cans for the #2 pencils and I don't mean pencils.
My sister always said to me when dealing with the developmental milestones of her children, whom she had long before I ever thought I would have any, "You don't see too many six year-olds, doing (and you fill in the blank)." I know this is part of the process and that my baby will end up using the toilet like all the rest of us. That ain't nothing to write home about. And while she mostly just sits on her little potty beaming at me and wiping herself and putting paper in the pot (without actually going, of course), I am charmed.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
It has been raining on and off, pouring actually, for the past few days, which doesn't say much for the dry season but has provided a pleasant break from the scorching hot sun and sweltering afternoons. Some would even say that it has been downright cold here. I am not one of them, let's not get too crazy, but it has been lovely. I wore jeans this morning and kept them on ALL DAY! Returning home from the drop off this morning, a downpour threatened Bridgetown which floods almost immediately with more than five minutes of rain. The sky was navy blue velvet and the palms and other trees glowed neon against that backdrop.
In Barbados, every day is like Sunday. What I mean is, every day on the road is a day for Sunday drivers. Lots of really slow-paced cruising, looking out the window daydreaming, even in morning "rush hour" traffic. It drives Didier nearly to the brink of madness and his fits of rage with outbursts in English with a French accent would be hilarious if he wasn't nearly slamming into the back of whatever it is tiptoe-ing in front of us. "What he's doing, this one? Why he is doing this to me? They love to get a red light these snails!" You get the picture. We are, in general, fast-paced folk, New Yorkers before we ever were and we have not succeeded in the "When in Rome" or more accurately, "When in Barbados, do as the Bajans do" mentality.
But this Sunday, we attempted to do just that. The morning was overcast and though we'd planned a morning trip to Accra Beach or maybe Sandy Lane (with friends of course, otherwise we'd not have been able to get in!) the hours got away from us, so we stayed home and swam in the pool treading through downpours, then sunshine, then more downpours, followed by rainbows. Virginie who had been a bit temperamental of late in the water was swimming like a little fish, and I remarked to myself what an incredible gift we'd given ourselves to have the girls learn to swim at such an early age. Lily, once absolutely terrified of going underwater, was now diving and flipping and "circle and rocketing" across the pool. We were relaxed and carefree, as we'd hoped we'd be when we moved here nearly 18 months ago.
Once we'd realized we would not make it to the sea, we made plans to visit with our friends that afternoon for some drinks, time in the pool, and a visit with their brand new menagerie. After the sudden death of their cat by hit and run, an unfortunately common occurrence on the island, they'd bought their daughters a hamster and a bunny for comfort. After visiting the pet shop for accessories for the new pets, they fell in love with another hamster, another bunny rabbit, and two land tortoises that, though teeny, are said to be quite old. , After the loss of Sweetie and Salty the cats, I don't think I am up to falling in love with any more pets, though we have promised Lily a miniature poodle once we leave Barbados, so I thought vicarious pet ownership through the B's would be great fun for all of us.
The animals did not disappoint. We chased the bunnies up and down the hallway, cuddling with them, feeding them, petting them, and just falling in love minute by minute. There was swimming and chatting and 80s music rocking on the patio. No plan. No program. Just being with each other. This I love about Barbados. Twelve months out of the year there is sun and sea and an easiness like Sunday morning. If we were so easy, it would be perfect.
But we aren't so easy and the circumstances of our being here are starting to weigh on us. Heavily. A relaxed Sunday gives way pretty quickly to long work hours for him and lonely nights of solo child rearing for me. It isn't that we can't find a way to love it here. There are things that we so love. Our friends. The sun and sea, though maybe not always. The garden. The pool. Beautiful rainbows and untouched vistas. Our children are happy. They are sun-kissed and so are we. Kissed is always good.
Sundays are easy. Didier usually has off from the trials and tribulations of his grueling work week. We have nice mornings together with homemade gauffres, no rushing, and two parents doling out kisses and listening to endless conversation from both of our chatty Cathies. I miss the New York Times, but I can endure it for the calm of an afternoon spent in the presence of good friends and loved ones. And Didier, when we are driving close to home at least, can survive the torture of the Sunday drivers long enough to realize that it's nice for us all to be in the car together, going in the same direction, slow-paced cruising, looking out the window. Daydreaming.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
It started with the egg. And I unfortunately do not mean to answer the question, "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" The brown doves, aka Bajan pigeons, have been trying to set up a nest in the vault of the patio for the past few days now and every day Didier and I have unraveled the branches, sticks, and grass to prevent them from doing so. They would seek out a new place, still under the patio roof, and we would remove their set up.
A little background. We have housed about four baby pigeon births/hatchings under the patio since we moved here. Sometimes there are two babies, sometimes one. Until the babies are able to fly off on their own into the Barbados sun, there is a lot of cooing and pooing and just general messiness on the patio where Lily and Virginie play and we often eat lunch and dinner. Once we have been sure that an egg has been laid, we do not touch the nest. Hence the daily knock down which, until now, has prevented the birds from getting a real footing. We have even put up coral along the edge to make it difficult for nesting.
On my afternoon knockdown, I saw it fall into the bushes below. A tiny white egg. I gasped and swallowed hard. I went to have a look and saw it, still intact, resting in the bushes, tiny and smooth and perfect. The proud parents returned with more sticks and branches in a state of shock, searching desperately for their little one. Shit! was the first thing I said and that brought Lily out to the patio immediately. I called out to them, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was there! I gestured for them to see her there in the bushes, afraid to touch the egg because I remember hearing something, probably in third or fourth grade, that if you touch an egg that has fallen the mother will never return to it, smelling a human scent on her precious. I let the egg lie and went inside. Distraught.
It has been a long time since I have wept like I did this evening. Probably since the postpartum started to lift when it seemed I cried about six or seven times a day. I'm exhausted and while I am usually able to distract myself with daily chores, dedication to the girls, concerns for our future and monkey madness, Virginie's refusal to wear a diaper, even as she was going to sleep, just put me over the edge. I couldn't help feeling ashamed about the egg and I was still injured by my error. I lashed out in one minute and held on to the babes in the next. They were surely wondering what the heck was up with me, so I told them. I told Lily and Virginie's smile, because though Virginie is a genius, I was not sure she could grasp my hurt and my sorrow.
I told Lily that when I'd tried to remove the birds' nest as I had often done, a tiny egg had fallen out into the bushes. I told her that I was incredibly sorry and saddened that this egg would not get to be a baby bird because I had been so insistent on having my way. She listened intently and asked where the mommy and daddy birds had gone. I told her that they were trying to find more branches to protect their little egg that Mommy had knocked down. She understood that it was an accident and told me as much. While I agreed with her, my heart hurt and I was really sorry and sorry for myself. I should have been more careful, more considerate.
The tears tonight were for me, I have had enough therapy to know that. I was feeling so tired and alone and ashamed and without anyone to build a wall of sticks and branches around me. I was just over being the mommy tonight and wanted to curl up and finish reading my book, practice my French with abandon, watch some trash on television. Instead I found myself a murderer, a hack Momma who dully went over Lily's vocabulary words with her and read two Fancy Nancy stories without the usual character voices. The girls, God bless them, went to sleep quickly tonight and gave me a chance to sit in the relative quiet of our home and try to write something. My husband, no surprise to anyone, was still at work handling a party and prepping for tonight's cocktail party. When he did arrive, he found a shrunken lady on the couch still wrecked over the never-will-be baby bird.
The same thing happened to me once, he'd said. He'd felt so badly he hadn't even wanted to tell me about it. Said he'd thought about it all night when it happened. Was hurt and sad. Tonight, he put his arm around me and told me that I was a good mother, that he loved how I cared for them all, even a tiny egg. Sometimes, that's all I need.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
