Resolution

The promise of the new year brings the promise of self improvement.  For me, this year, as in years past, is the hope, the desire, the drive to speak French, the language in which my husband dreams and which my children will need to speak if we are ever to relocate to somewhere more desirable for us outside of the US.  France, silly!   (or some other French speaking country)


We have been down this road before.  When we moved to Barbados, I pronounced that my job would be to take care of the children and to learn French.  My kids are running wild and save my expertise in French wine drinking, French baguettes made from scratch by said husband, French fries, and a little Charlotte et Serge Gainsbourg, I have failed in my job miserably.  I should be fired.


It isn't that I don't speak any French.  I have a basic understanding until someone who actually speaks French talks to me and then I rack my brain for all the basic school supplies, family relations, and foods I know.  Un stylo.  Les copines.  Le fromage.  What are they asking me again?  I desperately want to speak.  I love how it sounds, what it communicates, how it communicates.  I love that we can tell secrets and that Didier might actually listen to me if I speak in his mother tongue.  Very few French speakers I have met have considered that I might at least want to speak with them, save my friend Sophie who recently left Barbados for Switzerland where she can parler away, and Didier's brother François who once heard me say something, who knows what, and decided from that moment forward that not only did I understand, but that he should speak to me and tell jokes and use innuendo as though I'd lived my life in a banlieu of Paris.  What I am saying is, I do not understand too much after the greeting.  But he is as cute as a bouton.


I do not think the French are rude.  They are trying to spare you the indignity of speaking their language incorrectly.  Even my husband, when I speak French to him, answers me in English.  But no more.  I am using the Rosetta Stone.  And this year, it will be mastered.  French speaking will be mine!


I only made room for this and one other resolution this year so that I could concentrate all my efforts into success.  So far, I have had about 2 hours of Rosetta.  I like the technique but had to train myself to care less about getting 100% on each lesson and more about learning how to speak.  Old habits die hard.  The thing with the reading and speech sections is that my voice is so low that it often does not register if I am scratch whispering into the mic trying to avoid waking up the cherubs, that I get the task "wrong" because my voice is not detected.  Curses.


My friend Jack Dillon is relocating to France in less than a month and in weeks completed the entire Rosetta package.  He put a fire under my butt.  I need to get those conjugated verbs into the grey matter immédiatement!  It doesn't matter that Jack swears to me that he doesn't "understand a lick" (He is a Southern sweetie pie, after all), I know that he will arrive in France and with total immersion in the culture be ordering baguettes, wearing his striped jersey t-shirt and beret, smoking rolled cigarettes, and reading Le Monde while having lunch for three hours discussing the finer points of wild mushrooms.  I am jalouse beyond comprehension. 

Thinking positively and looking ahead, whether we go directly to France without collecting $200 or find ourselves somewhere else on the path to our final destination, a new skill, the gift of language, something to share with my family, is a pleasure I will not deny myself.  This time.  Unlike the new gym membership, diet plans, forbidding myself to swear or use curse words (Sheesh, like that is ever going to happen), Rosetta Stone French lessons are going to stick.  That's the plan and I am resolute.


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

No sudden moves in the jungle

You have to tread lightly and choose your footfalls carefully in the jungle.  The landscape does funny things to your vision.  What you thought you saw clearly in front of you just seconds earlier has receded into the scenery and now, feet from your face, is a monkey eating an unripe mango.  Walking along the footpath you see nothing but pavement until that wily mongoose dashes right past your legs and scurries into a hole you'd never noticed before.  The sea is calm, blue green, inviting, until an incredibly strong current pulls you under and throws you back to the shore, sand in your teeth and corners of your eyes.


I have always felt both at peace and uncomfortable in too much nature.  All that open space is meant to give one a break from the tension and closeness of city-dwelling but can often be just as overwhelming.  Once, in Ibiza with a past love, on a gorgeous boat, floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, I realized that I could not see land at all on any side.  The water was so clear I could see all the way to the sea floor and watched schools of fish layer over one another in my view down.  I freaked.  Literally.  I had to get out of the water, slow down the heart rate, regroup.  I just felt so alone suddenly.  Not just alone by myself but "we come into the world alone and we die alone" alone.  The existential crisis was mind blowing and I nearly threw up.  OK, I did throw up.

Now I cannot believe that it is possible that I am having a midlife crisis of sorts.  I am a young 41.  But I often feel  like I am out there in the Mediterranean not seeing any sides as I live my day to day these days.  Nothing to grab on to.  What the heck am I doing here?  Here AND here.  Part of why being in Barbados is all wrong for me is that I still feel like there is something else for me to do in the world, something to contribute and I for damned sure am not going to be doing it here.  I would rather be the tiniest fish in the hugest pond, trying my best to get to the top of the food chain than a medium sized fish in a teeny tiny fish bowl where one just can't breathe.  I do find myself holding my breathe sometimes as I anticipate the monkey in the tree, the lizard on the other side of the opening window shutter, the sudden stop of traffic to allow the front car driver's fantasy woman to cross the street bringing everything to a halt.  It feels like at every turn there could be something and the somethings are not good.

The other day I ran out to open the front gate for the pest control service and nearly fell into passionate embrace with four monkeys swinging from the mango tree eating unripe fruit.  I didn't want to act a complete idiot in front of the locals, you know, I can handle the monkeys if they can, but my heart was beating out of my chest and I feared that the panic of leaving Virginie at the front door a few yards away was scribbled all over my ever increasingly lined brow.  I shouldn't have run.  No sudden moves.

I realize now why everyone moves so slowly here on the island.  One has to keep one's eyes peeled for craziness and monkeys and swishing asses, newspaper and flying fish sales on the side of the road, crazy bad drivers.  Of course there is the heat too.  Put all those ingredients together and it is a wonder that anyone moves at all.  I'm from Manhattan, even eight months pregnant I power walked through Central Park and carried grocery bags from Zabar's to my walk up apartment on the Upper West.  I don't know from standing still. 

I do know about the stealth, Zen-like moves that help one slide into the last subway seat in a sea of moving bodies.  I know how to avoid the complete lunatic on the street who wants to talk with me urgently about whatever is tormenting his poor soul, the young person being paid $10 an hour to canvas my neighborhood for whatever cause might be in favor that month, the ice cream shop, candy vendors, toy stores en route to home at eyesight of the small people.  I can use those skills here.  What I didn't know, but am learning, is that acting on impulse to answer the door, race to the swimming lessons, threatening to leave my husband may cause avoidable damage and suffering.   Whoa.  I need to choose my steps wisely and carefully.  I just might make it out of here alive.

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

Returning from the Black Hole

Going away for the holidays is a lot like going into a black hole.  Time stands still and disappears and there are exciting, terrifying moments that occupy one's every thought and also erase one's mind.  I am back from the Black Hole and I survived it.  T-shirts to be printed in the near future.  I have done this so often that it now feels like no big deal, but the travel was done with a four year old and 20 month old in tow.  It involved airplane travel, a meandering through immigration and customs at the worst airport in the modern universe, Miami International, currency change, car rides, train rides, alternate wardrobes for daily changing seasons, snacks, games, DVDs, and a four year old and 20 month old.  Did I say that already?  I had my carry on bags packed to bursting on my shoulders, pinching my nerves, while pushing Virginie in the stroller and holding Lily's hand AND her carry on which held the portable DVD player, 4 coloring books, crayons, dolls for both girls, snacks, and a change of clothing for each as inevitably one of them has to hold her own juice and sip it from the cocktail straw provided by the flight attendant while also looking out the window and flirting with the person in the seat behind her through the tiny peep slot made between the seats.  Please note that while said bag does have wheels, its handle is too short for me to drag without hunching over like the Grinch marveling at one last piece of Christmas, so I carry that in my hand while pushing the stroller.  It was in that position that I waited for ten minutes on the immigration queue and then wrangled a SmartCart with which to pass through customs and then meet my parents.  That was on the first day.

My parents love the girls very much.  The screaming, squealing, jumping from couch to chair to couch to glass table, not so much.  They love collecting pictures from them and marveling at Lily's sticker books, but care little for marker, even washables, drawn on marble floors and stickers glued and rubbed onto the wall or on their clothes.  The constant walking inside, outside, inside, outside made them dizzy and the regular strip tease done by both ladies accustomed to complete nudity in Barbados was enough to peel their eyelids back.  I thought it might be a good idea to visit with my sister and her kids in Atlanta for a bit to give a reprieve to all.  Good idea.  One for Mommy.

While it was much cooler in Atlanta than in Florida, cooler actually than Virginie had ever experienced in her little life, we felt warmed immediately with Auntie Shayboo.  My sister is all black momma love.  Hugs and sugar and kisses and she just knows exactly what the kids want even before they do.  Don't get me wrong, she is as Fancy Nancy as I am, that is Fancy Nancy talk for "bougie" (look it up), but she is kind to babies and old people and strangers and talks to people that she doesn't know about herself and themselves and makes them feel good.  She is all rounded, smoothed out curves to my straight lines and I am not talking about what we look like, I am talking about how she feels.  I love from far away and she loves right up close.  Sure it can drive me batty out of my mind, but she is my sister.  She is supposed to do that.

We stayed for three days and visited with some family, auntie, uncle, cousins, cousins' children and replenished our souls and our hearts.  My Aunt Hallie, from whom my sister must have gotten some of her open heartedness, was a hit with the girls and her kindness, her genuine caring for me and my family was startling.  I forget sometimes how pure love can energize.  She and my Uncle G took those little girls into a room adjacent to their room where they store toys and games for their grands and played their hearts out.  I can see that playing and looking at things through a child's eyes can keep one young, at least at heart, and these two people have got that down.  They also look great too.

I returned to my parents' house still tired but rejuvenated in spirit to celebrate the new year at my mother's annual New Year's Day fete.  A catered affair with a guest list of impressive friends and relatives all doing their thing--doctors, lawyers, educators, real estate agents, executives, world travelers, thinkers, all brought down by the cuteness that is Lily and Virginie.  The girls were on their best behavior and while they are still young, I am glad for them to see people living their dreams having found their way there through education, hard work, drive, and chutzpah.  I want the girls to dream big.

After every New Year's Day comes the day where I dream and hope for my new year.  My birthday.  While I have always been asked if it seemed like a curse to have my birthday after all the year end and new year celebrations, for me, the proximity to the new year has always been magic for me.  I always knew I could start over, rewrite my story and the calendar and the universe supported it.  We returned to Barbados on the evening of my birthday, delayed by two insanely unruly passengers, but on an otherwise uneventful flight.  The two weeks gone felt like a lifetime and the immersion back into life in Barbados has been challenging.

In the rewrite, we are in place where we belong. that feels like home.  Where we love each other as we did before we got here.  My cousin, Nira, who left for Cali, Colombia a year before we came to Barbados has found a spiritual home in the place.  She loves the people, the culture.  The friends she has made are mates for life and she is even considering citizenship. 

Back from the black hole, we find ourselves in another, bigger than the previous one.  I want us to come out together.  There are small wishes.  I want to go through the airport with all of the family present.  With no one left behind.  Because as I try to figure out what the heck just happened to me, Didier, who was not with me, cannot help me and I, who missed the torture of his stay during the holidays, cannot help him.  And after all that space travel it would be a shame if we got in our own capsules and blasted off in different directions.

Definitely to be continued...

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