The order of things

I am the oldest child in my family having been born two years and one month before my sister, Sharyn, and five years and ten months before my brother, Jeff.  Expected on Valentine's Day, 1970, I came roaring in after New Year's Day to the shock and surprise of my parents and all their friends.  For years, I'd thought it was surely the champagne, but my mother swears by a medical condition.  Uh huh.  Whatever the case, I was their test doll and as a premature baby in 1970 left cooking in the incubator to get me up to snuff before being sent home, I can only imagine the terrors and freak outs with which I'd provided my young parents.

Lily was induced...and thank heavens for that.  The summer she was born was one of the hottest on record in New York City and the thought of commuting back and forth to the hospital for check ups after the 40 week due date because I was elderly (At least that's how it seemed when they kept referring to me as a "mature mother" because I was over 35.) was not appealing to my sweaty underboobs or swollen cankles.  Even with all that coaxing and pitossin, Lily still took her time and finally made her guest appearance with a piercing scream after nearly 22 hours of labor.  Joy.  Some of it brought on by the 1 1/2 epidurals it took to sustain my sanity.  Most brought on by my overwhelming sense of love.

I write all of this to say, that Lily, our first, takes her time.  It takes her a while to feel safe and comfortable.  Once she does, she opens up with so much warmth, love, and chatter, but she wants to be sure first.  At the 40 week mark in my pregnancy, I'd had very few contractions and was hardly dilated but Lily did keep kicking and twisting around.  Even now, she is a wild banshee close to home, but out in public, she bites her nails, whispers when she talks, gets a sly little smile when she knows she has done something well but doesn't want to brag.  She is shy and inquisitive and likes to figure things out for herself.  She comes home and regales us with stories about how other kids have behaved (badly) and how well-mannered and behaved she has been.  I love talking with her and hearing her views on the world.  And she definitely has a lot of views to share. 

Virginie is my brawler, shot caller.  One of my friends calls her "Roller Derby Girl" because she is such a bruiser, strong and sturdy.  Virginie barely gave me enough time to write my name on the admitting form at the hospital before she came barreling into the world.  My sanity was momentarily lost as, before I'd even had a chance to slip into that hospital gown, Virginie started terrorizing my body and had me dilated from three to ten centimeters in thirty minutes.  I screamed out, while cursing under my breath for Didier to stop trying to put some clothes on me, "Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, PLEASE have mercy on us!"  Seriously.  No epidural, no gown, no clothes, no prep.  Just suddenly, Virginie, who looked at us first and then started her cry as if first assessing whether she had picked some good ones.

Now, she is only 17 months old, but Virginie is a force to be reckoned with.  Still.  She comes into a room and takes over.  Her personality, her energy, her sense of self is so strong.  She is chatty, like her sister, and demanding and daring.  Where Lily says, "I don't think I can do that," Virginie charges in and though she might bump her head or fall down, goes for it.  Many times I have walked into a room to find Virginie standing on top of a counter or chest of drawers waiting for me to help her down, laughing her face off and grinning from ear to ear.  She hugs and kisses all of us with abandon and says, "Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi" to whomever is within earshot.  Even in the grocery store.

Lily and Virginie often remind me of my sister and me.  Sharyn, though younger, has protected me and guided me sometimes when I was shy or insecure or just a plain old freak.  I understand Lily and see her fears and frustration sharing everything with Virginie who appears to be willing to take it all if she had the chance.  Lily loves Virginie, but often doesn't want to share with her unless she has decided on her own that she wants to include that little bugger.  Virginie, on the other hand, would follow Lily into the classroom and sit at Lily's feet if allowed.  She brings Lily her toys and toothbrush and juice and whatever else she knows is Lily's, driving Lily absolutely batty.   It will certainly be interesting, and I hope I am still using the word 'interesting' to describe this, to watch them grow and develop into friends.  Enemies.  Frenemies.  Sisters.

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

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.