Barbados Staycation

 Didier's two week vacation has come to an end and my feelings are all over the place.  These two weeks were meant to be spent showing his parents the island and allowing them time to be with the girls after not seeing them for about 2 years.  With the pregnancy and the relocation, and now a very difficult journey from Barbados to Le Pouliguen in Bretagne, we have not been able to see them as often as we'd like.  We'd managed a once a year visit at Christmas time for a while, but Didier's job now demands that he stay on the island to cater to the tourists who flood the island at that time.  That, is another entry all together. 

Didier's father, who is 80 years old, had an emergency gall bladder surgery a few months back and as they began to operate, discovered that he also had a very slow and shallow heartbeat, so a pacemaker was inserted to regulate his heartbeat.  Happy to report that he is improving daily and should soon be in relative good health for an eighty year old man who likes foie gras and Bearnaise sauce.  But the extreme heat and stress of travel prevented their visit and we were left with two weeks on island without our scheduled guests.  If Lily had not just been enrolled in school, we would have left immediately for anywhere-but-here.  Instead we planned for our staycation and hoped to spend time on the beaches, lunching at new spots, and trying to build relaxation into our daily program.

We were not off to a good start when Didier came down with dengue fever, followed by the girls hacking their lungs onto the floor with the first school cold of the year.  We had cleaning lady visits, landscaping teams to wait for, who never showed (no surprise there), and our usual household chores and tasks.  I don't think a staycation can really happen if you are still at your house.  Well, unless you abandon all responsibility and let your house go to pot.  There were afternoons in the pool and morning walks in Bridgetown after school drop off, but mostly, we just did what we always do, only with less urgency as we had time. 

Beautiful beaches aside, there is not much to do in Barbados if you live here, unless heading up to the Animal Flower Cave, checking out the waves on the east coast, shopping at Sheraton Mall turns you on all the time.  Choices are limited.  Throw in a toddling 17 month old who needs a nap in the middle of the day and time is severely limited.  I was happy to have Didier home, being with him is always more fun than being alone for long stretches, but my routine was also compromised.  With Didier at home, I wrote less, didn't exercise at all, and ate more.  Nice. 

Besides touring Bridgetown, we hit the Brighton Farmers' Market one Saturday morning with our friends Wendy and Chris and their little girls and found, not only fresh fruits and veggies, spices and seasonings, pies and quiches, but loads of ex-pats sitting around at tables having a chat about life in Barbados and a play area for the kiddies to go wild.  Didn't see too many locals, certainly not buying anything, as I have been told the locals know how to find the source, ie the farms, where the produce comes from and avoid special pricing reserved for the "visitors."  The market is still small compared to the Union Square Markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays in Manhattan, but the social aspect and feelings of good will were still there.  We had a good time and were happy to do something new. 

With some friends visiting from New York, we hit Accra/Rockley Beach, a family favorite, for one of Didier's only beach days.  Even though we were not there too long, everyone left happy and tan, if a little salty and sand-flecked.  We ate Chinese food for lunch, which we'd dared not do before and probably won't do again.  I'd forgotten how much MSG does not agree with me.  A thank you to the maker of Tums.

This past Saturday, Lily's school hosted its annual fundraiser, the St. Gabriel's Fair with the theme, Under the Sea.  There were mermaids, crabs, divers, all sorts of fish and coral reefs decorating the campus and rides, food, games, prizes, balloons.  This is apparently the biggest fair in Barbados, so add to that list, chaos.  We arrived early enough to explore without crowds, but with a heat that could hobble a camel.  But once the crowds came, it was every man for himself.  Heat, loud music, long queues twisting through the field, and a sea of people in all directions.  On arrival, we had Lily play all the games and get on all the rides so we could get them out of the way before the throngs of people arrived.  To have her face painted, we'd pre-paid to have Lily "fast-tracked" so as not to have to wait on line.  She was, surprise, a princess.  (More an Indian goddess to me, complete with a gorgeous purple bindi and pink lipstick, but whatever.)

In the middle of this staycay, Didier celebrated a birthday with little fanfare.  We rarely go crazy over birthdays for ourselves, this coming from the woman who had a 40th birthday party like some people celebrate their wedding.  It's usually a casual affair.  But yesterday, we'd booked a table at Mullins Restaurant with two of our favorite families here and ate and celebrated together.  After lunch, a song for Didier, and a quick dessert, we all retired to the beach for a late afternoon swim and castle-building.  Everyone was happy and I said to my love that while I didn't pick this place, and probably wouldn't have, that this day and this moment were among some of the best in our lives together.  Our staycation in Barbados ended with what everyone back home thinks we experience every day--sun, sea, sand, smiles, and love.  On this day it was true.

(c) Copyright 2010.   City Mom in the Jungle.

And then the deluge

Barbados has two seasons, rainy and dry.  Both last about six months each and can be characterized as they are described--rainy and dry.  Lots of water and lush green vegetation followed by a wasteland of straw and cracked tree limbs.  We are currently in rainy season and while we do get a little rain almost every day, never anything to write home about.  Until a few days ago.

The island is quite far out in the eastern Caribbean so the weather patterns that eventually threaten Florida and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States rarely pack the same punch out here because they are just swirling around as tropical depressions trying to build up enough momentum to grow up to be hurricanes.  What we get is some wind and rain.  And on an island with a less than stellar drainage system and much of the island built up on the coasts which is at seat level or below, with hills and barely paved roads in the middle of the landscape, there is flooding.  It is usually immediate, comes in a flash and is absorbed by the porous soil.  However, as happened this past week, the rain didn't stop and it came fast and furious with a score to settle apparently, and the water in every crevice and depression on the island started to rise.  And rise.  And rise.

Whenever we take Lily to school, passing through Bridgetown, if it has rained for more than ten minutes, the streets begin to flood.  After two steady days of rain, I imagined that the capital city was underwater and probably impassable in many spots.  The Ministry of Education figured as much and all schools on the island were closed.  Lightening, thunder, and heavy winds brought high tide waves crashing over the highway barriers, leaving sand and other debris strewn in the road.  There were stray palms and coconuts, hideous snails and toads, and mud everywhere.  Surprisingly, and it truly was a surprise given how often we suffer the loss here, the electricity did not go out.  We did not lose internet connection and the fuses did not blow on the walkway and security lights surrounding the house.

We just watched and waited to see if the water was going to make it to the door, overflow the pool, lift the swing set from its place in the yard.  Both Didier and I made projects with Lily--decorated tshirts, painted cardboard jewelry boxes, created colorful collages of torn, cut, and stenciled papers.  We danced, played dress up, cooked special treats.  All to distract the girls from the fact that there would be no outside play. 

While awaiting news of a number of other tropical depressions thought to be out at sea and in the Atlantic Ocean, hearing word of spot tornadoes that ripped the corrugated steel rooftops off a number of chattel houses, we saw a peak of sunshine from behind the clouds.  And before we could blow up the life raft, the sun was back out and we were all sweltering in the sauna like heat brought on by the soaking soil and dense cloud cover of hours before. 

Today, as we pulled into the drive, I saw that the earth below my feet was cracked.  Only days later and the scorching hot sun has dried the moisture out of the ground.  You'd never know that the garden had just been completely underwater. 

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Tennis Elbow

Didier was determined to find the grip tape used on tennis rackets and baseball bats, so when we happened upon a sporting goods store at the Sheraton Mall, he was pretty excited.  I wasn't quite sure why there was such urgency.  We hadn't played any sport in a while and Lily used her baseball bat pretty infrequently.  I went along silently and saw the joy in this eyes when he discovered that is was, indeed in stock.

When we got home, the Honeybun immediately took out the tape and went to the kitchen to tape up the handle of his machete.  It seems that keeping us well stocked in coconut water has been hell on the old tennis elbow and a better grip on the coconut splitter would make keeping us in supply a bit easier.

Definitely wouldn't have had this experience in New York.

(c)  City Mom in the Jungle.

The paper earplug is the new nose paci.

Lily spent just about three years with her pacifier and another "nose paci" on cords around her neck.  The paci was meant to soothe and she took it whenever she felt it necessary, nothing too remarkable about that.  But the nose paci, basically a broken pacifier that Lily would balance on her pacifier between it and her mouth, was something else.  Pretty strange and completely hilarious.  Had never seen anything like it or since.  Until...

The paper ear plugs and mustache were introduced by Virginie.  These people are totally bizarre. 

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

40 the new 20?

Turning forty really wasn't such a big deal. I felt young, looked cute, was surrounded by people who'd made my life sweet, except, of course, for my husband who had to stay in Barbados to work.  Story of my life, the wife of a chef.  I felt like I could do anything and that 40 really was the new 20. But it's not the new 20, not for me.  Maybe 40 is the new 20 for people who had their kids right out of college, in their early 20s, and now find themselves empty-nesters while still hot, active and energetic.  I could use some of that energy right now.  I am bone tired and too old to be chasing after these people.  My kids are four and 17 months and are not considering, for one second, giving me a break.  More like breaking my back. 

I am sitting here in Barbados where the toads and creepy crawlies at night are chirping and burping and doing whatever their mad as a hatter conductor's got them doing and I am wondering how the heck I think I am going to make it on so little sleep again!  That is not a 20, that is so a 40 going on 60.  When I was twenty I could sleep three hours after a night of hellish partying or studying (mmm hmmm), open my eyes, brush the teeth, get on some clothes and stroll into the next day looking camera ready.  With five hours pasted together from all the stops and starts -- "I need a drink of water,"  nursing, checking diapers and beds for wetness, toads, toads, and more toads, a bit of snoring from the French nez next to me, and my oversaturated, never to have a kidney stone again bladder urging me out for one more go, I now wake up looking like I'd rubbed Vaseline all over my face, blinked in some sand, and gone to sleep with that white elementary school paste in my mouth.  It takes until about 11:30 am for that look to start wearing off. 

In my twenties I said funny things like, "I sometimes forget to eat.  I am just so busy," or "I just keep losing weight, I don't really know how."  I slept in, went to the movies on a whim, got funny looking haircuts that kind of looked cool, made love whenever, even wherever I wanted to (gasp!).  Now that is definitely not 40 over here.  (Imagining the look on Lily's face were we to allow ourselves that adventure.)  At twenty years old I lived for myself. Didn't have enough self-love or connection to anything really to love as I do now, to live as I do now. We have come to terms with the fact that we are older parents and that there will be some level of sacrifice to raising decent human beings.  We are none the worse for it. 

Maybe if we were back in New York with the lure of a nightlife worth committing to, museum exhibitions, gallery showings, concerts, lectures, adventures fun for the kids and parents alike, we might try to maintain a level of hipness, of cool.  Maybe in the youth culture perpetuated by the creativity, raw energy, and tension of the Big A, we would be working out, updating our looks, be able to show our children a little of the world's cultures all funneling into and surrounding the island.  But that would still, for me at least, have come with the wisdom of age.

Forty definitely feels like a beginning, but not a "just starting out in life" beginning, but the culmination of all those stops and starts, successes and failures, hideously beautiful moments that brought me to the place where I know one thing to be true. I love these people. I was meant for these people. I want to grow as a human being for these people and share the rest of my life with them. Even as they send me hurtling towards insanity or something close.  Sometimes the day to day is a real pain in the ass. We are tired and irritable and short-tempered. But the truth is, when I look at Didier, when Lily and Virginie wrap their arms around me and hug and kiss me, when I hear each of them breathing at night over the sound of those damned tree frogs, I don't want to be doing it with anyone else. There is a lot of life in my life right now and it is my experiences, getting to 40 that have given me the grace to appreciate it in spite of it all.   That's a good start.

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Under the weather

Last week I left the bedroom to check on the girls after hearing one of them on the monitor and returned to Didier shivering, wrapped in a sweater and all the blankets on the bed pulled up to his neck.  He was burning with fever and asked for even more cover from the chill.  He had pain in the lymph nodes in his neck and seemed a bit crazy, like insane, to me.  Dengue fever.  After watching him take some Tylenol and drink lots of water, I took my pillow from the bed and told him I would sleep with the girls.   I checked on him twice that night to make sure he was OK, well, alive actually.  I had never thought of losing him, but the way he looked and the way he was acting, I felt a tear in my heart.  I just wasn't sure.


I slept very little that night as I worried about him and was kicked and nuzzled, first by Virginie and then Lily, each in her little bed calling or crying for me, sensing my presence in the room.  Even though the weaning had begun the previous evening, I couldn't bear to drop off the screaming puppy in the bed with a boiling cuckoo nut, even if it was her father.  So Virginie nursed heartily and snuggled on me while I was with her, and then I moved over to Lily's bed when she asked me to be with her.  A lot of back and forth.  And checking.

Two days later, Didier felt better and Lily came down with a vicious cold most likely caught by one of her classmates.  She stayed home with us for two days playing like it wasn't just her job, but that she was on the Amazing Race or something and could score some points for some of the reckless craziness. Then she would pass out at night and snore, hack up a lung, sneeze, basically convince me that she was surely not ready to return to her formal education.  I sat up with her too, listening to her breath, adjusting her position, carrying her to the bathroom since I thought the medication might prevent her from getting up on her own to go.  On the first night when Lily coughed out loud and nearly shook the girls' room, Virginie woke up and said, "Mimmy no night night.  Hi."  I feared that our morning was about to begin at 3:30 am, but she was just acknowledging her sick big sister.  Sending her the purest love by thinking of her, considering her.

Now the sick torch has been passed to Virginie.  The poor boo boo is coughing and has mucus caking her little nostrils, but she still refuses to take medicine or be aspirated without an unfair wrestling match of Mommy and Papa versus la Petite.  How she manages to evade two grown adults for so long is something to behold.  She shakes her head and writhes around on the floor once caught.  I feel awful waiting for Didier to finally pin her down, arms and legs finally still under his weight so I can give her the medicine or free her nasal passages.  You'd think we were going to torture the poor thing.

Ever since the kidney stone put me on the floor of our bathroom in a pain reminiscent of unmedicate, immediate childbirth, something I had experienced already, thank you very much, I have thought more and more about my life and how I live it.  I always hated being sick and often felt like I had done something bad or wrong to be felled by whatever ailed me.  But I can see that sometimes we get sick because we need to slow it all down.  Regroup.  Recuperate.  Check in with ourselves and take stock.  Now the girls, well they get sick because they are with little germ generators all day long.  It would take daily Hazmat wear to prevent them from bringing the stuff home.  But Didier and I, we know better.  It was time to slow down.  So we are.  All together.  Medication time is at 6:30.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Vanity kills

I know it does.  I haven't had a healthy relationship with vanity, but I did pretty much give her whatever she wanted.  Since I was twelve years old, I have been lying on my side on the floor doing leg lifts while watching TV, talking on the phone, having a family meeting about the next vacation or why no one is talking to each other, whatever.  I have done sit ups my entire life and have slathered my face with pimple creams and potions every single night, even at the end of baccanalian celebration of the arrival of Friday or Thursday or hell, Monday.  I have done squats at my desk, squeezed my glutes while riding on the subway, and hauled six bags of groceries ten blocks rather than pull them in a wagon or cart.  What I am saying is that, if there was something I could do to control the way I looked, I was doing it and a lot of it.


Even after having Lily, when a whopping 25 pounds remained committed to my frame, I would get up at 5:30 am before Didier or the wee one roused and sneak out for 45 minutes to one hour in the gym.  I felt great even though I was bone tired and rewarded myself with an aloe and pete moss smoothie or something like that, I cannot remember.  You get the picture.  I took care of myself . There was a tiny bit of punishment involved, but the results were worth it.  Detoxes and cleanses two to three times per year.  Walking all over the city pushing the stroller rather than taking the subway or shut-your-mouth, a cab!  I ate sushi and seaweed, lots of salads, lean meat.  I believed I looked better naked than with clothes on.  Now who even thinks that who is not vying for a position in a magazine with a staple going through her goodies or some other zone?!  Really.


Well, not me anymore.  I am really tired.  And it is too damned hot!  After Virginie and my 55 pound weight gain, I had little time to even think of taking care of me, let alone getting into fighting shape.  We moved pretty quickly from the apartment to my parents' house where my main source of exercise was walking across the spacious foyer to a comfortable couch to nurse the baby.  I might get in some real lifting picking up Lily who at that time weighed in at a whopping 25 pounds.  When we got to Barbados, the sheer intensity of the heat and humidity stunned me into my best freeze tag position and I am just now beginning to snap out of it. 


Don't get me wrong.  I know it could be worse.  My general shape is still there.  But I am softer, as I think is kinder to say, in some areas than I'd previously been.  My darling husband said something along the lines of, "You might, perhaps, have a coating or something and not even know it."  Hmmmm.  So, what should I take from that?  It's not just about the cellulite or the jiggly tummy when I brush my teeth, I am surprisingly over those.  It's the mommyness of my whole look right now.  I don't wear mom jeans bc it is too damned hot here but I have started to see a look on my face that looks a lot like my mother circa 1979.  Cute inside of there but unable to set that lady free. 


Ponytail or bun.  T-shirt with shorts.  Flip flops.  No jewelry (other than the wedding ring as a buffer to the freaks who hit on everyone with boobs and to prevent losing my earlobe to a hard tug by Virginie).  Soft, mushy spots where, as they say, the shit was once tight!  There are no leglifts here.  No sit ups except for the just  finished watching a makeover show I can do this reps followed by weeks of Twix cookie bars in bed and the leftover chicken hotdog chunks from Virginie's snack tray.  Sigh.


I promised myself I would try a little harder.  Get on the elliptical more.  Stop using it as a playground for the girls or a clothing rack.  Snack less.  But mostly I just visualize.  And then go to sleep.  I can't do it all.  Lily and Virginie definitely think I am pretty.  That's what I am going for right now.  So I am totally hot in an alternate universe kind of way.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.