VIRUS

How do you handle illness?  I try to take every opportunity to learn something about myself, something I am sure I can apply later down the line, but I do not like to be sick.  We woke up a few days ago to a computer riddled with virus.  A computer that while we had discussed and planned to back up and make disks of sentimental material, we never did and now do not have the chance.  Everything we had on there, is gone.  If we'd been living in NYC, I would have just called the Geek Squad immediately and had them come over and do a diagnostic.  But we are in Barbados and I have not heard too many great recovery stories when it comes to computer viruses and breakdowns.  I panicked and was wounded, hurt, frustrated, and mostly angry.  At myself.


I have moped around the house for the past two days not just devastated at the loss of our photos and videos, but raging inside at myself for failing to realize that the computer was going to crash before I had the chance to get the photos saved and documents backed up.  Completely irrational, I understand, but I can be rather unforgiving of myself.  The computer has a virus.  With a hardly secured line in this country, out in the woods really, according to our provider anyway, we cannot get more secured than we are and yet, I was shocked to find us with some sort of crazy virus wreaking havoc.  I was angry and I think, I must admit, I did it all wrong.  I punished myself, could not chalk it up to fate or bad planning.  I thought of everything we'd lost and hated myself for losing it.  I said, why didn't I just do this or that, couldn't I have taken the time to back up, copy, save, whatever.  I didn't want to see anyone and saw the beautiful images of Lily and Virginie smiling at me, melting into the void.  I seem to have forgotten that the images and not the girls were gone.

The truth is, I will back everything up in the future, but for now, the pictures, the videos, the documents are gone and we are, technically, not the worse for it.  There is another camera with files and photos on it.  The girls do not have to have 500 photos of themselves on any given day.  And I am human.  I made a mistake.  I have to find a place where it is OK for me, and for everyone else really, to be so.  And herein lies the lesson. 

When I was nearly destroyed by post-partum depression, I was furious with myself for not being able to pull it together.  I hated myself more each day for failing to show my babies how I loved them when I hated myself and nearly every breath I took.  I couldn't believe how difficult it was for me to just reach for them and cuddle them without being exhausted or weepy or completely put out.  I didn't ask for help for myself, thought that if no one could see my pain, then it wasn't really so.  I said things like, you idiot.  What kind of mother are you?  You have the most beautiful children and you don't seem to realize it.  Get it together.  Women have been doing this forever.  Who are you that you need more than everyone else? 

When I fell to the floor with a kidney stone, I begged, please protect my children, and tried to keep a cool face for them and wondered, how the heck did I do this?  I looked for fault, for what I had done wrong to cause this.  It was even worse when my body was unable to endure the pain and I vomited for hours on end causing me to need admittance to the hospital, having been refused a release to my home on my own recognizance.  I was pissed.  At myself again.

Now, with a virtual illness, I have come back to my usual punching bag, myself.  I am trying to let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go.  I was sick.  The computer is sick.  Everyone is getting better and you go forward from here.  I have to forgive myself for being human, for being imperfect, for making mistakes, for fucking up some times, or I will always be sick, unable to heal, or grow, or connect to a deeper, more spiritual place.  While it is difficult to release myself from this inherent cruelty, withholding even the smallest kindness to myself, the thought of Lily and Virginie feeling the same makes me want to heal. 

I have done fewer absolutions than usual and have not denied myself small pleasures.  I have not reconstructed all the events of the past months when the computer started acting a little crazy and had to be rebooted.  We are just going forward from today.  And each day.  And the next, until we are just living and being.  All in good health.  With an external hard drive and back up disks.


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

(Pictures will start up again on the next posts.  Thanks for your patience.  I am only human.)

La Fete de Holetown

The Holetown Festival commemorates the arrival of the first English settlers, eighty in all along with ten slaves, some time between February 18th and 20th, 1627 in Holetown, a small town on the West Coast of what would become the English colony of Barbados.  The first celebration of this event took place in 1977 and has since developed into a week of activities that include a parade, the dooflicky, stalls selling traditional Barbadian crafts and tourist trinkets, food and drink, and music from gospel, tuk band, calypso, and anything else one might want to dance to.  I missed the festival last year because I just couldn't see myself walking with Lily and Virginie through the crowded streets and pathways of Holetown on my own, and to tell the truth, I wasn't really all that interested.  In my new lease on everything, I thought, why not?  Lily would surely find something interesting and anything that changes the weekend program is a good thing for us.


We took the first bus that stopped for us, that would be the fourth, as we were warned that traffic would be difficult.  As traffic is usually a pain in the ass in Holetown, I heeded the advice.  We were dropped just outside of town at the Limegrove Shopping Centre, and made our way over on foot, Virginie sitting comfortably in her stroller. There were stalls with shells and coconut sculptures, leather shoes, necklaces, and the usual crap--Dora balloons, bubbles, pinwheels, bouncy balls, and other silly toys and trinkets.  Food and beer stalls were in abundance as well and I partook like a fool.  Hot dogs, burgers, and the highlight, really the only thing worth trying, the fishcakes.  Definitely not something one can eat every day, but when they are made well, oh my, they are like little fish beignets or donuts.  Fried on the outside, soft and doughy with little fish bits inside.  When they are bad, they are horrendous.  We had some of those the next day.

I was pretty well prepared for all that was sold in the Holetown stalls, vendors selling trinkets and other stuff, for lack of a better word, from my years attending street fairs in Manhattan.  Except for the Peruvian sweaters, all the usual nonsense was there--sheets, compilation CDs playing reggae and dance hall, bras and underwear, shoes, sandals, dresses, tshirts, silly artist crafts, and YES, I mean silly.  I am not knocking the work of any artist out there moved by materials, but I think a bobblehead turtle made from a coconut shell can surely be called ridiculous.  There was face painting, cotton candy, ice cream cones and snowcones.  You know, all the stuff that says historical celebration. 

To cover that arena, there was the antique car show and the dooflicky.  A dooflicky, by West Indian definition is a special event or thing and this thing was...special.  Scheduled for 2 pm in the afternoon, it was delayed due to rain and rescheduled for 4 pm.  I would like to tell you it was worth the wait.  Seeing the guys up on the stilts and a little wild dancing made it so.  But the one and 1/2 minute show, and this is no exaggeration, left a little to be desired.  Before I could even begin to establish just what was going on, it was over.  I do know this.  There was a bride, some guys dressed up as green monkeys, mascots of Barbados, two dudes on stilts, and lots of wiggling and music.  Over and out. 

The meltdown of Lily began shortly after that.  She was dying for some full on attention and demanded more toys, cotton candy, and face painting at just the moment that I was about to lose my cool.  It was hot out there.  Had rained.  On us.  I had two demanding girls on my own and it was time to go home.  Only thing was, getting home was to involve another bus ride, carting a stroller, toddler, preschooler and now two big blow up horses that I had been suckered into purchasing.  Lily's total freak out would generate stares and snickers from the nosy busriders, more than usual because now she would not just be a mixed little girl with black momma going for a ride, she would be the badly behaved little spoiled 1/2 white child with her clearly poor disciplinary mother who was so out of control, she was carted along in a stroller when she should be walking.  (Didier and I often joke that once a baby can stand up, that's it, no mercy here in Barbados.  Get them walking on the street.)

So I did what any fool would do.  I walked home from the Holetown Festival, about a mile or so, pushing Lily in a busted, broken down stroller, and wearing Virginie in a "Hip Hammock," a kind of sling for larger toddlers.  It was totally insane, and as a gesture, I made Lily walk the last few yards so she felt like she did something and I did not feel like Doormat Mommy.  And even though my body was killing me the next day, I still enjoyed the whole thing.  Meeting up with friends, celebrating in the country that we have not adopted, but in which we live, watching the crowds, and exposing my children to something new, I felt like I had accomplished something and had given Lily something to discuss in her "news" at school on Monday.  For the rest of my life, I can share details of the Holetown Festival in Barbados the way other people reference Mardi Gras or Carnival around the world.  OK, maybe not that good, but you know what I mean. 

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

(A crashed computer with loads of photos has prevented me from being able to share images of this event.  My apologies.  I can assure you that I am more devastated than you.)

Moon Town, Clowns

I think I should have listened to my gut and heeded Wendy's warning.  After the sunset ritual at Zaccios happy hour ended, a group of us, celebrating Rachael's birthday and needing to feed our children, chose Moon Town, a tourist spot, sweeter, smaller, more authentic than Oistins, to continue the festivities and have some dinner.  Wendy did warn, multiple times, that it was later than she usually went and that a Friday night during season might not be the best time to go.  But we went.


Moon Town was quite adorable actually.  A tiny makeshift dining place on the edge of the sea, past Speightstown in the North of Barbados, tucked in by Earl's Funeral Home which also runs a taxi service and St. Elmo's Enterprises, Inc.  The hanging Christmas lights gave the place a sparkly, twinkly glow, perfect for sitting by the sea after a day of sunning, swimming, turtle chasing, snorkeling, diving, or for the locals, working.  Perfect if you have lots of time to spend and are able to imbibe like a champion, because speed and efficiency are not part of the program in Moon Town (or anywhere in Barbados really) and speed and efficiency were, unfortunately, exactly what we were looking for on Friday night. 


We got there past 7 pm, another bad sign.  Everyone got there past 7 pm as everyone tends to do when it comes to dinner.  In Manhattan, the witching hour is 7:30 as my years as a restaurant hostess, maitre d', and manager can attest.  Uh, we'd like a reservation, not too early.  How is 7:30?  I am sorry, sir/ma'am, but we are booked at 7:30.  Would you like 7:45 or 8:15?  What?  I cannot believe you don't have 7:30.  We'd really like to come at 7:30.  Well, in a place without reservations, everyone comes at the time they'd like.  Moon Town, Friday evening?  7:00.


Watching many tables order and get served, I started to get nervous as I realized that our table with five children, four of them five years or under, had not even been approached.  While Lily and Virginie had had a nap after school pick up and had woken up at 4:30, I 'd never really tested the theory that late nap would mean late bedtime.  I can say now that it was a pretty bad assumption that this would be so.  My people decided to start the meltdown pretty immediately.  I'd gotten a ride to Moon Town and man was I thinking I might need one of the funeral home's taxis home.  We did need to eat and we were celebrating, but I was alone with the girls (big surprise there) and I was coming to my wits' end.  The getting up, rolling on the floor, taking off of clothes, crying, begging to nurse (Very nice. In the middle of a busy dining room full of ogling Bajans, my child wants me to whip my boobs out on the table to give her some comfort.  I need to get her off these things.)  I'd like to say that the commotion at our table inspired our waitress to get a move on, but nothing of the sort.  We ordered with my friend Wendy and I both standing at the ready in the hopes that our vigilance would inspire her attentiveness and a little speed.  Again, not the case.  Over an hour after ordering, dinner was served.


Dinner, for Lily, Virginie, and me was chicken and chips/fries and pork, macaroni pie (a Bajan specialty, really macaroni and cheese with ketchup), and salad.  For everyone else, different fresh fish, the pie, chips.  On Styrofoam plates.  With plastic forks and knives.  Not my bag, but I do understand the charm.  It feels authentic.  The food is hearty.  One imagines one is eating "like a Bajan," whatever that means.  But I ate frantically, just trying to get something in my belly before the kids fell apart.  I got in a couple of bites and it all went down from there.  Wendy, who'd been holding Virginie for me so I could eat, saw her littlest fall on the floor and hit her head causing her to scream in agony and from complete fatigue.  She then had to pass Virginie back to me so she could tend to her baby. 

Much of the food in Barbados for me, save the fishcakes, is like eating ramen noodles late night in college.  You can take it or leave it, but often eat it because you are bored.  All the imagination about life on the island, an abundance of fresh food, fruits, veg, fish is just a myth, much of the food being imported.  There is fresh fish which is nice, but there is no celebrated national cuisine, so going out "Bajan" just means sitting with them and liming the night away.  All that to say, I wasn't really that hungry anymore and was certainly not inspired. 

At least there was consistency across the board.  We had to ask for the check twice and stand up as if to leave to finally get someone over to settle the bill.  It wasn't expensive at all, which is surely part of the draw, and while our visit was not ideal, I would still recommend a trip for people visiting.  It is definitely a little slice of Barbados.  But if you want to eat in a timely manner and keep the peace, take your kids long before 7. 


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

Beautiful Barbados

Now this is what I am talking about.  The winter in Barbados, some time from December through March, is meant to be pleasant.  Gorgeous warm sun, blue skies, azure sea and beaches at which sight one just sighs and relaxes.  While it has rained nearly every evening, something not typical of this "dry" season, the morning sun breaks through to provide a beautiful day with nice breezes.  The sea has been calm with just enough surf to make it fun here on the West Coast, something we have definitely tried to take advantage of on Didier's days off.  This, I will miss of Barbados.


Last year at this time, it was already getting hella hot, the sun laserbeaming through your skin as soon as it was approaching the top of the sky and our house, not the best place for cooling down, could reach sweat lodge temps by early morning.  But these days, we have had the windows and doors opened with a cross breeze that puts this huffy puffy mum on the verge of sleep or at least lulled to a state of calm and has Lily proclaiming that she is cold.  If you can believe that.


One of our new goldfish, Lemon Shortcake, picked up last weekend at the Brighton Farmers' Market and still alive five days later, thank you Jesus (RIP Plum Shortcake), is loving the atmosphere and the billowing curtains.  This past Sunday afternoon, we went in search of the "Lobster man," a guy who dives for the blue spiny lobster on the sea, sometimes as deep as 150 feet with his snorkeling gear, to see if he'd caught anything that morning and while we'd not found him, the drive to his little spot was lovely.  We'll get him yet. 


As I have spent a little more time in the car, I have passed cricket matches, football/soccer pick up games, Sports Day Color Wars, kids flying kites, along with the usual liming crowds at rum shops and chattel houses.  These images will stay with me when Barbados just becomes part of my history and no longer my present.  I know it is coming because I have made some sort of peace with the place.  And that is usually one of my signs.  We've got guests coming in March, for nearly then entire month and this time, I want to share with them the secrets and treasures I have discovered rather than the things I despise or that kick me into a frenzy of stress and frustration.  There is much that is beautiful about Barbados and like a traveller getting ready to leave a tourist destination, I can look at the time here with nostalgia, if not longing, and recall images of my babies learning to swim here, learning to stand, to walk, to talk (Virginie), to read, to speak properly and politely (Lily and Virginie), and chatting with a tiny Bajan accent that will follow them wherever we go next.

This is the place where Lily's memories are strongest, where she will recall her first school, her garden, pool, walks on the beach, collecting shells and coral each weekend, sunny afternoons liming about.  Though Virginie, still a baby really, won't have much memory of it, the countless photos and videos will prove to her one day that she was indeed an island baby.   Barbados was just a stepping stone for us (not sure where we are stepping to, but we are stepping), but for the girls, it was truly a place called home and in their eyes and their hearts, it was beautiful.  Barbados.


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

Teaching the truth

I have two little girls, beautiful babies, who I will have to teach to protect themselves, follow their intuition, use a sixth sense, live like wild animals in captivity because still today, all over the world, a woman is not safe.  The thought makes my blood boil and breaks my heart at the same time.  The prolonged beating and sexual assault of US journalist Lara Logan and the subsequent conversation following that attack on what she coulda', woulda', shoulda' done has not only stunned me and torn my heart to shreds, but has made me want to throw up.

 Yes, I know that this, a very public attack on a public figure, is bringing outrage and frustration that is not seen or expressed when assaults, rapes, beatings, killings happen every day, every minute, every second to ordinary, voiceless women, but it does not diminish the attempted seizure of this woman's power and sense of safety and security.  Because Lara Logan was brave enough to call it out, to admit it, to say it, maybe someone else will not feel as alone as she tries to put her life back together. 

And it is putting your life back together because an assault on a woman goes right to the core, to the center of who she is.  It is first and second chakra energy destruction--her roots, where she comes from, takes it back to her ancestors, her sense of creativity and wonder, her mother love, wit, her base.  It doesn't matter the act.  I have heard so much speculation as to "what exactly happened to her."  Are we really rubbernecking at a woman's vicious assault?  Do we have to know her pain, have it defined, know the specifics, have to experience it ourselves to be not only offended but wounded?  Wounded, cut open, bled, pained.  Revisiting these feelings has left me wrecked and hoping that I can arm my girls with the courage, intuition, and instinct to avoid danger, knowing that all the prep in the world cannot prevent it.  It seems to be the luck of the draw.

What I can hope is that I am able to instill in them a sense of self-worth, self-love, self-respect so they do not willingly walk into abusive situations.  I want them to know their surroundings, march to their own beat, lead their own way.  But don't go it alone.  Challenge the norms, change the world but have a friend close or at least a contact number.  And that is what breaks my heart.  I dare to teach them to be independent, to think for themselves, to trust their instincts and someone will still question why they were "in a country like Egypt all alone, reporting, being beautiful."  I want them to reach for their highest potential and yet want them to hide themselves in the face of male aggression and anger.

I don't have an answer.  I don't offer solutions.  I know as well as anyone else that humankind cannot thrive without the strength, the backbone of its women.  But I am preaching to the choir.  I am speaking to my own crowd.  I have two beautiful little girls.  Intelligent.  Charismatic.  Kind. And I will teach them.  I will show them.  I will tell them.  Lara Logan, the countless, faceless others, and their mother endure by the strength of their character, with the love and support of their friends, with the tenacity and spirit beating in their hearts.  And that this, while disgusting and maddening, is an unfortunate truth in the lives of many women no matter their culture, their religion, their background, or their status.



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

Drinking alone

I would like to say that after a long day and finally getting the girls to sleep, I savor a cocktail and relax on the couch allowing myself to unwind while reconnecting with myself and the things, outside of my family, that I hold dear.  But that would be a lie.  A lie because for what seems like the 100th night in a row, I leave the dark and soft snoring sounds of the girls' room and step out into the blinding silence of the rest of the house. Drinking alone, while a treat on some evenings, gets a little played when it happens every night.  And every night, my husband, the chef, works late and doesn't get in before 9 or 10 PM.  I know that this is the story of so many families.  I am not saying anything that has not been said before.

Tonight, Virginie went to sleep crying for her father, "I wan' Papa.  I wan' my papa." I don't even tell him these things anymore.  It won't make him feel any better and there is not much he can do about it.  I hate it.  I stayed with her until she fell asleep, well until I woke up.  And I didn't feel any better about it when I dragged myself out of her room and into the light either. 

Sometimes I think they aren't getting enough with just me.  I get irritable and I yell unable to listen to one more "question" from Lily or one more demand for "boo boos" from Virginie.  I feel like shit because after prepping another dinner of asked for foods, neither of them will eat it and ask for, instead, Dora popsicles and popcorn.  I have forced them both to brush their teeth when they don't want to and tell them, no I don't want to hear/read/listen to whatever it is they are asking me about.  I ask for, sometimes demand, a few minutes just so Mommy can think, only to have them think 3 seconds is the minute I am asking for.  Unlike my parents when I was growing up, however, I then apologize profusely and do silly faces and silly hugs and wacky dances until it's time for bed when I pass out with them hoping they don't have to spend years in therapy because of their crazy mother.

The truth is I am not really angry at them.  They are exhausting, but what kid isn't?  I am really pissed that this is so not what I was expecting and I am just not sure what to do about it.  Didier can't change the program.  He is working for a company abroad that makes more demands on its very small foreign staff while letting the locals, covered by archaic and bullshit union laws, have the run of the place.  There is such abuse of the union's power here, any expat in Barbados can tell you about it, and foreign companies and workers have little recourse when dealing with them. 

Knowing it and living with it, however, are two different things.   My family suffers because the husband and father has to give 100% while staff does whatever it wants and a delusional company, hoping to see a profit in this crazy market in a country, really a region, that is showing how little it cares for tourists and tourism when that is its only real industry and how little it understands that there was/is a world economic crisis, makes ever increasing and certainly ridiculous projections.  To his credit, he has given everything he has in the face of insane amounts of BS, where I would already have gone out with a bang.  He works hard.  Any company can count on him and he always delivers.  It's my company, my family, that now sees him the least.

In the quiet, in the loneliness of this great house on a beautiful property on an island with 365 days of sunshine and tropical weather, I don't want to drink another cocktail by myself.  I don't want to be the only one who hears the stories, knows the names of friends, listens to the questions and concerns, finds Strawberry Shortcake's vest, hat, or shoes, goes ahead and makes the popcorn after dinner is turned down.  I don't want to go to all the parties, cocktail hours, beach dates with the two girls in tow all by myself.  And I really don't want to be alone without my husband every night. How could Barbados be beautiful to us if it means distance, work, struggle, and separation?  I only ask people to consider this as they demand love for this place from my tight, black piece of coal of a heart.  It is my family that I love and I don't want to lose us.


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

Back in the Saddle

I was trained at the "School of Neurotic Parent Driving Instruction for Firstborns" also known as the "JesRPenn School of Driving."  I was terrified from the get go of driving and all things "car" and though given my license by the State of New Jersey, at eighteen mind you, instead of seventeen like my peers, was not give approval by the director of the JesRPenn School, my father.  There was a lot of shouting and hand-wringing and general freaking out by my instructor who did not realize that I was already pretty crazy and anxious myself.  This sad story begins my history with driving.  And it only gets worse.


I have a true anxiety, you could even call it a phobia, around driving.  While a competent and safe driver, I am not able to relax in the car.  I do not feel the wind in my hair, open road in front of me, top down,  and have dreams of discovery or get excited.  Instead, I get a bit sick.  Like vomiting or diarrhea sick every time I have to get behind the wheel.  It is part of my nature, however, to try to do things that I don't like or am not good at, even if I am going to make everyone around me insane as I go through fits and tantrums, tears and swearing. 

It was easy to avoid driving in most of the places I'd lived since getting my license the first time in New Jersey, (Yes I say the first time, as the damned thing expired while I was away at college and my parents relocated to Texas preventing an easy renewal, and I lost my driving "privileges."  I had to retake the tests, written and road, years later in Atlanta.) moving first to Boston and living there for ten years, a stint in Atlanta, and then on to the Mecca of non-drivers, Manhattan.  I did drive in Atlanta and did it well thanks to the teaching of my sister, an incredible driver and extremely patient instructor, but I never warmed to it.

Manhattan was heaven for me.  Heck the high school kids don't even have driving instruction!  No drivers education, written or road testing, and they are proud of it.  The city boasts an incredible transit system, subways, buses, walkable streets and avenues, taxi cabs, pedicabs, limousine services.  There, it was not strange to hear that I didn't drive or didn't like it.  I could relax and breathe easy.  Life was good.  Two children and living in a country like Barbados, changed all that.  Didier drove for the first year. Everywhere. Everyday.  If he could not drive me, I would take the bus or ask my friend Karl, an expatriate friend with lots of time on his hands, if he would mind shuttling me around.  No, I didn't love it and hated being dependent on other people, but seriously, I was scared shitless.  I just couldn't imagine trying to navigate these poorly paved, narrow roads, in a car with steering on the right hand side, driving on the other side of the road than I'd been taught.  I mean, let's make it a personal hell, why don't we?

But here I am.  With swimming lessons and Virginie starting nursery school and Didier's job growing ever more demanding, I just couldn't ask him to keep leaving work.  He still does the drop off and pick up for Lily, as her school is in Bridgetown and too many roundabouts (traffic circles) away.  (They were getting rid of the roundabouts in New Jersey when I was a kid because they were deemed too dangerous and all you see in Barbados is roundabouts and no followed road rules!)  But I do go along for the ride as a sort of peace offering.  "I am sorry I cannot make the drive, but I will not have any fun while you do it and will even come with you to prove it."  I do also go because it is one of the few times we get to see each other in the day, but there is a part of me that goes out of guilt.  Guilt because I am not good at something and am too scared to try.  Guilt because I am asking someone to do something for me, something I cannot do myself.

There was a commercial on television a few years back, I think for Volkswagen, that said something to the effect of "On the road of life, there are drivers and there are passengers.  Drivers Wanted." and it hurt me every time.  Hit me right in the gut.  I am a worthwhile individual.  I don't sit idly by as the movers and shakers achieve and do.  I achieve and do.  I just don't like doing it in the car.  But for my children, my catalysts for change, I will make an effort.  Add to my resumé, driver.  With blood, sweat, and tears, I am back in the saddle.

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