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Last night I went to my friend Wendy's house after dinner,as she had gathered a group of women for a "Girls Night In," where we could all sit together and listen to music and chat and drink wine...and drink wine. Man, it's been a long time since I had a night on my own with no children and no husband even. Talking with these women, all of whom have kids who swim with Wendy, about the trials and thrills of raising and loving our children in Barbados was thrilling. I realized what I had been missing all this time. Friends. People to commiserate with. Not bitch and complain about life, but to talk, work things out, mull things over thoughtfully and always, always maintain a sense of hope.
I am a hopeful person. Many times in my life I have lived with hope as my only guide through tough patches, even the roughest patches, and had lost that during those early months in Barbados. I don't beat myself up. Post partum, roving bands of monkeys and bugs the size of my eyelids would probably do that to many. Add to that, new acquaintances who found little joy in their lives as my only contacts and one can imagine the hopelessness. I can't live like that.
Daphne, Edna, Vicki, Wendy, and Katie, my friend visiting from New York, and I represent a range of cultural and life experiences, yet we all spoke the common language of motherhood. Daphne and Vicki are both Barbadian, Daphne as a transplant at four years old and Vicki born here but raised in the States and here. Edna is German and has been in Barbados for eleven years. Wendy is English and Katie and I rounded out the group, an Irish-American and African-American respectively. Many of us have mixed children and the conversation about the Bajan take on our relationships and kids left us all in stitches. Daphne, married to an Asian man from Trinidad, has been asked about her "Chine-y babies." Vicki, Edna, and I have little girls with curly hair and brown skin and we often hear obsessive comments about their looks as though doing some sort of math problem to determine who they favor our husbands or us. The answer is both. They are ours. Ours.
It felt so good to share. To chat. To laugh out loud again. I left at 11:15, sure that Didier was worried about me, but more concerned that Virginie would wake up to nurse and find me gone. The ladies continued into the night, the last leaving at 1:30 am! With Lily's 5:45 wake up that would have given me just a little over four hours of sleep. Forty is not the new twenty. I have been recuperating all day and I was the first to leave, something I am completely unfamiliar with. I hope we will do it again soon. Maybe I will take a nap and stay out a little later than my bedtime next time.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
In my twenties I was fond of saying, "You will know if you are meant to be a couple if you can travel well together. That is a true test." I am not sure where I heard it first, but I thought of it often as Robert and I traveled in Europe together (Germany and Austria to see his family and then other cities as we could navigate) as a gift from my parents for my college graduation. As history would show, we did not fare so well. We were not great traveling companions as truthfully, our relationship was probably over before we'd even left. I just wasn't ready to let go. Robert had opened my eyes to an artistic, laissez-faire lifestyle, where one could follow his dreams and money could allow you anything. He was a true Bohemian and philosopher, an extraordinary musician (he played a classical guitar that could bring tears) and thinker, but also a rich young man with a tortured youth who was trying to reconcile this dichotomy in himself. The times were heady.
He was magic to me. A diamond with sparkling eyes even as the torment of injustice clouded the clarity. I'd loved no one like him not only because he'd allowed me to see myself too as more than suburban, as beautiful, as an artist with a voice and a vision, but because he had a compass for truth and was not won over by flash, smoke and mirrors. We read The Illuminati Trilogy and saw black and white magic everywhere. Losing him broke me on a psychic level because I still could not see the magic in myself and I'd believed our coupling to be celestially ordained. I thought all the shine was his. We were victims of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of youth, but there had been light.
My heart was rescued when Ismael, a gorgeous Spanish sculptor, creator, cyclist, reggae connoisseur, whom I'd known for years as a classmate and friend, came back into my life. He was, he is, like no one I had ever known then or since. No one had been as gentle with me in my life. No one had honored me, treated me like a queen, loved me that way. When we were first together, I melted in the pleasure of him. He was tactile. He handled everything with care, a real naturalists long before this was popular. He showed me nature and taught me to seek the special quality in even the smallest thing. We walked in the woods of Vermont, considered life and the abundance in nature in such a real and present way. He did not mess about with chatter but talked with conviction about the things that mattered to him. He was so lithe and sensual and physical and present. We lived in different states and he would not settle for a life in the city on my terms. In the end, he was right, but at the time I did not want to give him up. I fought and fought viciously, I am afraid and regret the small things we did to hurt one another to make the break.
Foolishly, I ran to the arms of Khalil, a phony record producer in Atlanta and got myself so twisted and hurt and confused, that I feared allowing myself to love ever again. After him there were lovers and affairs and hopes, but I was not able or willing to commit myself again. Fear racked me and while I hoped there was a love for me, I did not hang my hat on anything or expect it to come. I truly let go and was rather shallow in my relationships for years.
When I think of how I have come to find myself living in Barbados with a husband and two beautiful little girls, and I often do, I can really cherish the lessons learned, the loves, the heartaches. It is because of this incredible journey that I wonder about the expression "soulmate" as it is usually used to describe one's current love partner, and embrace it as a collection of people who guide us to this penultimate moment. This moment too is not perfect, but there is a comfort, a security, a sense of our need to do it together. Even in the blind moments of rage, there is a desperate pull towards Didier that is thrilling and romantic and terrifying and calming all the same.
I have been thinking about love for the past week now, after reading of the love between Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter, a love affair and marriage that lasted over thirty years, after both had been previously married for eighteen years! Before our paths crossed, Didier had been married for fourteen years. On seeing him that first day in the restaurant, I just knew that this would be a significant love and it is. I have been driven to the edge of sanity by this man but have also experienced the calmest me I have ever known. I can close my eyes and see us as old people, see our daughters trusting in life and love by the look in our eyes.
Save Khalil, I have been in touch with my lovers past and I have seen them grow more into themselves and find loves that have helped them soar. They have started families, continued creating and developing into fine human beings, artists, fathers, loving partners, and I love them for driving part of the way on our journey. And with Didier, always driving the car, literally, but letting me navigate some times, figuratively, we have found a way to travel together. Well. He and the girls are my life and I am not sure where we are going, but I hope we will all go together and do it for a long time.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle
