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The third time is a charm. Yeah, right. After cleaning up urine from the wool carpet in the living room, left by one adorable, but torturous 21 month old darling, followed by a slip and slide on the floor in the girls' room that had Lily in complete fits of laughter, you can imagine the delight, the charm I might even venture, I felt when I sat down on Virginie's bed for a good night nursing session and found my pants drenched.
"I peeped." Thank you. I will be sure to make a note of that. Hold on while I rip the comforter, duvet cover, sheets, mattress pad, feather bed, pillow, and pillowcase from your bed and remake it just minutes before you were to be drifting to toddler La la land. I want to say that this scenario had me in stitches, that the cuteness of her tiny little chattering voice and smiles, offer of a hug and one of her gauzy tissues turned my frown upside down, but alas, I cannot offer that. What's a mother to do? She can talk. She's advanced. Totally. She is so not ready for complete potty training.
But she is able to remove any and all clothing and accessories including diapers and pull ups. Insisting that she keep these things on and let me know before she needs to pee on the potty is beyond ridiculous. The absurdity of the thought has me in stitches, the evening wind down cocktail can do that. I want her to have the freedom to move about. It's hot in Barbados and it is most certainly most comfortable unclothed. Her sister is just as naked as she, in fact, I think Lily's nudity is what precipitated this new interest. I'd had Virginie in diapers and no other clothing for months. She even sported that look in the cooler climates of an Atlanta winter and unseasonably cold Florida. Suddenly a diaper, not even a pull up, is good enough for the gal. Maybe she is preparing to train herself?
When traveling in China, my cousin sent me some pictures of little kids walking around with pants with the crotches cut out. At the time, I was training Lily and telling her often how difficult it was to get Lily to recognize the sensation and then act on it before going in a pull up or other training pant. The photos she sent offered another solution. The children basically just went when it suited them. Right through the hole in the pants. A little pee. A little poo. At the Great Wall. Walking down the street. Until they just got tired of it running down their legs?
I don't know. I think I am better off with Virginie at least being completely naked so I don't have to remove soiled clothing from her little body, but the vigilance, and you know I am not about to have no "stinking up to be damned" pee pee smell warmed up in the Barbados heat all over my house, is just wrecking me. I have to keep my eyes on that little behind and hope I can catch the squat or the grimace or the drip before the spill. I have the mop at the ready and now the laundry soap, ammonia, baking soda potions, Febreze, and paper towels and damp cloths. There are little baggies, plastic gloves, and immediate delivery to the outdoor garbage cans for the #2 pencils and I don't mean pencils.
My sister always said to me when dealing with the developmental milestones of her children, whom she had long before I ever thought I would have any, "You don't see too many six year-olds, doing (and you fill in the blank)." I know this is part of the process and that my baby will end up using the toilet like all the rest of us. That ain't nothing to write home about. And while she mostly just sits on her little potty beaming at me and wiping herself and putting paper in the pot (without actually going, of course), I am charmed.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
It has been raining on and off, pouring actually, for the past few days, which doesn't say much for the dry season but has provided a pleasant break from the scorching hot sun and sweltering afternoons. Some would even say that it has been downright cold here. I am not one of them, let's not get too crazy, but it has been lovely. I wore jeans this morning and kept them on ALL DAY! Returning home from the drop off this morning, a downpour threatened Bridgetown which floods almost immediately with more than five minutes of rain. The sky was navy blue velvet and the palms and other trees glowed neon against that backdrop.
In Barbados, every day is like Sunday. What I mean is, every day on the road is a day for Sunday drivers. Lots of really slow-paced cruising, looking out the window daydreaming, even in morning "rush hour" traffic. It drives Didier nearly to the brink of madness and his fits of rage with outbursts in English with a French accent would be hilarious if he wasn't nearly slamming into the back of whatever it is tiptoe-ing in front of us. "What he's doing, this one? Why he is doing this to me? They love to get a red light these snails!" You get the picture. We are, in general, fast-paced folk, New Yorkers before we ever were and we have not succeeded in the "When in Rome" or more accurately, "When in Barbados, do as the Bajans do" mentality.
But this Sunday, we attempted to do just that. The morning was overcast and though we'd planned a morning trip to Accra Beach or maybe Sandy Lane (with friends of course, otherwise we'd not have been able to get in!) the hours got away from us, so we stayed home and swam in the pool treading through downpours, then sunshine, then more downpours, followed by rainbows. Virginie who had been a bit temperamental of late in the water was swimming like a little fish, and I remarked to myself what an incredible gift we'd given ourselves to have the girls learn to swim at such an early age. Lily, once absolutely terrified of going underwater, was now diving and flipping and "circle and rocketing" across the pool. We were relaxed and carefree, as we'd hoped we'd be when we moved here nearly 18 months ago.
Once we'd realized we would not make it to the sea, we made plans to visit with our friends that afternoon for some drinks, time in the pool, and a visit with their brand new menagerie. After the sudden death of their cat by hit and run, an unfortunately common occurrence on the island, they'd bought their daughters a hamster and a bunny for comfort. After visiting the pet shop for accessories for the new pets, they fell in love with another hamster, another bunny rabbit, and two land tortoises that, though teeny, are said to be quite old. , After the loss of Sweetie and Salty the cats, I don't think I am up to falling in love with any more pets, though we have promised Lily a miniature poodle once we leave Barbados, so I thought vicarious pet ownership through the B's would be great fun for all of us.
The animals did not disappoint. We chased the bunnies up and down the hallway, cuddling with them, feeding them, petting them, and just falling in love minute by minute. There was swimming and chatting and 80s music rocking on the patio. No plan. No program. Just being with each other. This I love about Barbados. Twelve months out of the year there is sun and sea and an easiness like Sunday morning. If we were so easy, it would be perfect.
But we aren't so easy and the circumstances of our being here are starting to weigh on us. Heavily. A relaxed Sunday gives way pretty quickly to long work hours for him and lonely nights of solo child rearing for me. It isn't that we can't find a way to love it here. There are things that we so love. Our friends. The sun and sea, though maybe not always. The garden. The pool. Beautiful rainbows and untouched vistas. Our children are happy. They are sun-kissed and so are we. Kissed is always good.
Sundays are easy. Didier usually has off from the trials and tribulations of his grueling work week. We have nice mornings together with homemade gauffres, no rushing, and two parents doling out kisses and listening to endless conversation from both of our chatty Cathies. I miss the New York Times, but I can endure it for the calm of an afternoon spent in the presence of good friends and loved ones. And Didier, when we are driving close to home at least, can survive the torture of the Sunday drivers long enough to realize that it's nice for us all to be in the car together, going in the same direction, slow-paced cruising, looking out the window. Daydreaming.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
It started with the egg. And I unfortunately do not mean to answer the question, "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" The brown doves, aka Bajan pigeons, have been trying to set up a nest in the vault of the patio for the past few days now and every day Didier and I have unraveled the branches, sticks, and grass to prevent them from doing so. They would seek out a new place, still under the patio roof, and we would remove their set up.
A little background. We have housed about four baby pigeon births/hatchings under the patio since we moved here. Sometimes there are two babies, sometimes one. Until the babies are able to fly off on their own into the Barbados sun, there is a lot of cooing and pooing and just general messiness on the patio where Lily and Virginie play and we often eat lunch and dinner. Once we have been sure that an egg has been laid, we do not touch the nest. Hence the daily knock down which, until now, has prevented the birds from getting a real footing. We have even put up coral along the edge to make it difficult for nesting.
On my afternoon knockdown, I saw it fall into the bushes below. A tiny white egg. I gasped and swallowed hard. I went to have a look and saw it, still intact, resting in the bushes, tiny and smooth and perfect. The proud parents returned with more sticks and branches in a state of shock, searching desperately for their little one. Shit! was the first thing I said and that brought Lily out to the patio immediately. I called out to them, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was there! I gestured for them to see her there in the bushes, afraid to touch the egg because I remember hearing something, probably in third or fourth grade, that if you touch an egg that has fallen the mother will never return to it, smelling a human scent on her precious. I let the egg lie and went inside. Distraught.
It has been a long time since I have wept like I did this evening. Probably since the postpartum started to lift when it seemed I cried about six or seven times a day. I'm exhausted and while I am usually able to distract myself with daily chores, dedication to the girls, concerns for our future and monkey madness, Virginie's refusal to wear a diaper, even as she was going to sleep, just put me over the edge. I couldn't help feeling ashamed about the egg and I was still injured by my error. I lashed out in one minute and held on to the babes in the next. They were surely wondering what the heck was up with me, so I told them. I told Lily and Virginie's smile, because though Virginie is a genius, I was not sure she could grasp my hurt and my sorrow.
I told Lily that when I'd tried to remove the birds' nest as I had often done, a tiny egg had fallen out into the bushes. I told her that I was incredibly sorry and saddened that this egg would not get to be a baby bird because I had been so insistent on having my way. She listened intently and asked where the mommy and daddy birds had gone. I told her that they were trying to find more branches to protect their little egg that Mommy had knocked down. She understood that it was an accident and told me as much. While I agreed with her, my heart hurt and I was really sorry and sorry for myself. I should have been more careful, more considerate.
The tears tonight were for me, I have had enough therapy to know that. I was feeling so tired and alone and ashamed and without anyone to build a wall of sticks and branches around me. I was just over being the mommy tonight and wanted to curl up and finish reading my book, practice my French with abandon, watch some trash on television. Instead I found myself a murderer, a hack Momma who dully went over Lily's vocabulary words with her and read two Fancy Nancy stories without the usual character voices. The girls, God bless them, went to sleep quickly tonight and gave me a chance to sit in the relative quiet of our home and try to write something. My husband, no surprise to anyone, was still at work handling a party and prepping for tonight's cocktail party. When he did arrive, he found a shrunken lady on the couch still wrecked over the never-will-be baby bird.
The same thing happened to me once, he'd said. He'd felt so badly he hadn't even wanted to tell me about it. Said he'd thought about it all night when it happened. Was hurt and sad. Tonight, he put his arm around me and told me that I was a good mother, that he loved how I cared for them all, even a tiny egg. Sometimes, that's all I need.
(c) Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.
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.
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.
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.
