Two years ago today, an almost three year old Lily and a two month old Virginie and I moved from our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in preparation for joining Didier in Barbados. We knew it would be a few weeks, never prepared for the nearly two months of separation that it would actually become, and had no idea what would be in store for us once we arrived. Memories of that day are fleeting as they morph and merge with flashbacks, dreams, next dimensional impressions that have clouded the actual events, but I do know that a moving company with six strapping young Eastern bloc gents arrived at the crack of dawn and got to tearing that apartment down like termites on a piece of sweet wood. Lily was off with her sitter, Liza for an extended mix of classic NY toddler time, Children's Museum of Manhattan, Central Park playground, pizza spot in her Peg Perrego, and Virginie, still a wiggly worm, was worn around my neck in the Baby Bjorn while I attempted to give directions with little success. These dudes knew what they were doing and this sweaty, postpartum baby carrier was not telling them anything they did not already know. My mother was there too, wandering about, watching, waiting for me to tell her what to do. We went to Le Pain Quotidien across the street for a little brunch and to get out of the way. Virginie was still a baby necklace.
The apartment was small, though pretty big by Manhattan standards, and had so many nooks and crannies to store things, bookshelves, drawers, cabinets, that these poor guys found themselves immediately swamped. They called in reinforcements and still had to reschedule their moves for the rest of the day as this little apartment was taking over. Move day was unseasonably hot, after days of cool weather and rain, so what was meant to be a half day job and then an afternoon at the Lucerne Hotel turned into a boiling hot, panicky race to the end. I remember standing on the street in my MBTs, a pair of harem pants, grey tshirt and Virginie swinging from my chest and catching my reflection in the glass pane of my soon to be former front door and wondering, "Who is this crazy bitch and where does she think she's going?"
Well, it turns out, she had no idea. In the haze of that afternoon, it was announced that Farah Fawcett had passed away that morning. Though that may seem insignificant to a late-thirtysomething black woman standing on the street in harem pants, the truth is that Farah Fawcett was my touchstone as a young girl watching way too much television. I was terrified of dying, morbidly attached to the subject, and only found comfort in the fact that should I die, when I did, Farah Fawcett would be there and I would be able to talk to her. Now she actually was dead and I felt time just stop for me as I knew for sure she'd made it there. I mourned for her and for her struggle which I'd seen well documented in a video memoir and then got back into the business of changing my life.
Once out of that apartment, I knew I was well on my way to becoming an American living abroad. Just had to get through that little stretch of living with my parents and my two children at their house in Florida in the house that is their house and not mine and never was because I grew up in New Jersey. In the house where I would stay in a guestroom with my two children, a toddler and newborn, without my husband or any family or friends close by and where I would contemplate my place, a place, any place, in the world for me after two glorious years in that small but kind of big apartment in the city that loved me that was ours. Everything was changing and spinning. I want to say I was excited, but I was postpartum, nursing every thirty minutes or so it seemed, fifteen plus pounds overweight, hot, scared, lonely, feeling unsupported, and slightly out of control. The call from my sister was a welcomed respite from the insanity.
Until she told me that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital and was unresponsive and that she thought he was going to die. Michael Jackson? With Michael Jackson, one did not even have to be a fan. He was ubiquitous. He was in the air, floating through the ether. Even when you thought you didn't really like him, you did. Something would catch and you would remember a time when everyone loved Michael Jackson, before Crazy Town and the kids sleeping over. When it was just the music and that stuff was damned catchy. It has to be good to hook you like that. And suddenly, sending a prayer for Michael Jackson, begging him to live, to hang on, was all I could do. I needed him to survive in a way that didn't even make sense to me. I needed him to survive because if Michael Jackson couldn't get through whatever it was he was going through, how the heck was I going to.
And he didn't. Sitting in the Lucerne Hotel, in a queen sized bed with my two children curled up next to me, with my mother in her queen right next to us, eating dinner and having a beer (for the letdown, you see) I stared in utter disbelief as it was stated, shouted, tossed in my face repeatedly. The King of Pop is dead. Over. Gone. The next morning we took a town car to the airport, my two girls, my mother, and myself. The cab driver and I, an immigrant from West Africa, talked about how Michael Jackson and his reach across the globe, changed our lives. Passing familiar streets out of the city to the airport, "You are not alone" played on the radio and I cried and cried and cried. Not just for Michael Jackson, but for all of the memories, relationships, stumbles, and triumphs I'd had in that city. I cried because I was leaving and I had no idea where I was going. I cried because Michael Jackson sang, "You are not alone, I am here with you," and I had never felt lonelier than in that moment. I was heading into the unknown. I was doing it all alone. I was leading my children there and I had no idea what I was doing. Two years ago today.
RIP Michael Jackson.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
On Father's Day
As parents, we want to create a safe place for our children, no matter where we live or where we are, a place inside of them that reminds them that they are loved, honored, and cared for. They are little kids, under five, though Lily will turn five at the end of July, and I get all kinds of advice and info from well meaning individuals about the resilience of children and how these experiences will make them great. Well, I do believe all that to be true. I am thankful that Lily and even Virginie, have an international perspective from living abroad and from being the product of a bi-cultural union, but the other reality, the unspoken part, is that we give a damn enough to put their feelings, their fears, their perspective, if not first then at least on the table. I care that Lily gets to finish the school year with her classmates, that she sees that saying goodbye and accepting change are difficult but also important parts of the human experience. I want her to know that I too am afraid but that it certainly is not her fault and that she does not need to take on my insecurity.
So I am insecure as hell about our future and a little scared, but other than picking up on small clues, she is not going to get the freak out/alienation from me. I think that that is one of the hardest things about parenting, about leading and teaching a small child to feel secure and safe. Just because I am worried, scared, confused, does not mean that I need to put that burden on my children. In these tense scary moments, one can be withholding, because of fear, or one can try, against it all, to show love, love, love and compassion. Lily knows we are moving, is even adjusting to it quite well. She is kissed and hugged and reassured every day with storytime, visits to the beach and locales not yet visited and tried and true spots. The other afternoon we walked through the St. Lawrence Gap, just Lily and me, holding hands and talking about our interests and our desires, and I felt her ease. I did too.
In all of us there is a tiny place, right at the solar plexus, where we know ourselves and one can hope that in there are stores of feelings of love, adequacy, concern, respect, connection, community, family. It is a place reserved, set aside, saved for a tiny soul by its welcoming parents, where one can return when the world is upside down and chaos seems to reign. That place is beautiful and warm and secure. That, THAT is our job. We must show our children that place or each and every transition in life will be fraught with tension, confusion, fear. I must give them the tools to trust their instincts, but also to know and believe that their father and I are completely in their corner.
The girls made Father's Day cards for Didier and drew pictures of him holding their hands. We took him for brunch at a restaurant called Tapas, right on the coast, and we sat looking out at the turquoise blue sea. He got to sleep in until 7:30, which is like noon in our house. The day before, we visited the Graeme Hall Sanctuary, a gorgeous spread of land with a pond of monster carp, monkeys running about, and flamingos and ibis preening in the sun. It, like so much in Barbados, is locked in a political battle between its owner and the government of Barbados that doesn't want to fund the project, but would rather free up the land to build more condos and expensive properties for no one to live in. It's a real shame and a tragedy, the place is a thing of beauty. It provides peace and sanctuary, hence its name. We can only hope that we do the same for our children. Provide them with peace and sanctuary when life is crazy, when there is joy to celebrate, when there is love to share, when there is something to overcome.
If you did it, are doing it, if you have made the difference, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. If you think you might do more, try a bit harder, make amends, make it right, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. If you get it, if you see, if you know that your love makes a difference for the rest of that child's life, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. And if you just couldn't step up, didn't do it, you still have time to be one of the greats. Show up for the next Father's Day.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
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