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.