Coming around again

I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
It's coming around again

So don't mind if I fall apart
There's more room in a broken heart

One year ago, Lily participated in the Blossoms Nursery School Sports Day after 10 days with hand, foot, and mouth disease.  She was tired and weak and a little timid but the day was still great.  We spent it with friends and families at the Glendale Plantation in Saint Michael.  We ate rotis and samosas, hot dogs, cupcakes, chips, and cookies and I do believe I cracked my first Banks beer some time around 10:30 am.  The sun was hot, the earth dry and cracked after a wicked dry season.  I saw my first giant centipede there (another thing to be grossed out about, seriously, the sting is apparently incredibly painful) crawling out of the scorched earth.


Virginie, who arrived in Barbados as a tiny sack of new potatoes, just participated in her Sports Day, much like Field Day in the States, where she ran, walked backwards, did the egg and spoon race and a little obstacle race involving some blocks and more running.  There were hurdles and relay races, sack races and a tug of war for the older kids and parents (more on that later) and lots of refreshments and snacks to be purchased.  Sports Day is Blossoms' fundraising event for the year and a great opportunity for families to be together and celebrate the physical achievements of their children.  Many of the younger children were escorted through the events by either their parents or "aunties," many crying or looking completely clueless.  Virginie had a good time, it seems, though there was so little urgency in her step.  Perhaps we have been in Barbados too long.  Didier and I both participated and, like last year, I competed like I was on the field at FTHS some twenty odd years ago.  It seems I did not get the memo that I am 41 years old and that many of the other mommies were a bit younger than I.  No harm, no foul.  I had fun and came in second in my two races.  Hollah.

When Mother's Day was celebrated in England last month, two of my friends reported rather lackluster celebrations of their motherhood by their husbands and children.  One of the women, whose mother had passed away years ago, felt a bit raw knowing that she didn't have her mother with her and that her husband had sent flowers to his own mum but had not honored her. In fairness, he'd figured that as they were now living in Barbados, Mother's Day in Barbados would be her day and he did well last weekend with breakfast in bed and a nice dinner. The other friend did get an email from her husband stating that he'd remembered it was Mothers' Day in England, oh and Happy Mother's Day.  As he was out of the country last weekend, I am not sure if he did the right thing.


When I told Didier about these stories, for whatever reason I continue to bounce some of these things off his head, he said something along the lines of, "Well Mother's Day is like Valentine's Day, a made-up holiday to sell cards and candy and make everyone feel guilty that they are not doing enough to show how much they love." Hmm. Well that didn't sit quite right with me and, as one would imagine, I told him as much.  Valentine's Day, to me, is complete crap. It makes me think of overaccessorizing with one too many pieces of jewelry, hair up in some elaborate 'do, satin heels and clutch with rhinestones when really you are a let your hair blow, minimalist, natural kind of woman. It is too much because it is trying too hard and it is therefore, insincere. But Mother's Day? Mother's Day is for mothers. Something I certainly never really considered as I doled out another coffee mug for my mother as the day rolled around each year. To be fair, it is nearly impossible for a child to completely understand what this day could mean to a mommy. The dads, other mommies, grandmas and grandpas are meant to step in here. Even if you are not exactly sure what it is the mothers in your life are doing or have done, you know it's something.


I didn't know I was capable. Had no idea what all this would require, but now that I am doing it I must say, it is fucking tough. Harder than anything I ever dreamed about, and committing to the lives of other people forever, so that they can be better human beings who feel safe and loved and cared for and supported, is not for the faint of heart. From teething and fevers to cut knees to heartbreak, SATs, job searches, I have signed on. Weddings, babies, divorces if it comes to that, I am in.  And committed. Maybe all the mums out there have not. But Stephanie Penn-Virot has. 


So when Mother's Day rolled 'round again on Sunday I was looking for a little acknowledgment.  It had been a tough few months.  When the kids woke me at 5:30, I got them some snacks and marched my behind back to bed, MY bed (I'd been awakened by Virginie in her bed yet again.)  At 6:30 when the girls started reporting on each others' actions I told Didier that it was Mother's Day and it was time for him to get to it.  It's a good thing I did.  That's pretty much the full celebration of the day right there.  If my friend Holly had not been en route to Barbados from St. Vincent, the day would have been like any other Sunday, replete with laundry, floor mopping, toilet bowl cleaning, and total exhaustion.  The day seemed not to register at all with my hub.  I have learned not to make my dear husband feel like he has done something wrong because the idea of that will prevent him from even seeing his error when he is indeed in the wrong, so I expressed a little disappointment and then mentioned that Holly's visit just might make it right again.  Luck for him he can try again next year.


In an effort to put a smile on my face, he went to pick up Holly and her girls, taking Lily so that I might get Virginie down for a nap.  Virginie did go down moments before Holly arrived and just as I'd finished the last of the laundry and a good mopping of the patio.  Drinks were chilled and I must admit, I was nervous.  Holly was my best friend in the early months of living in Barbados, coming into my life months after I'd arrived, weeks it seems before I was about to give up.  She is funny and irreverent and shy and kind and exactly what I was searching for.  God works in mysterious ways and nearly one year to the day of her departure from the island, Holly came through Barbados on her way to St. Vincent, an island in the Grenadines, the famed locale of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.  We'd had just one hour at the airport and I'd begged her to see if there was any chance for her and her girls to come and stay with my family before returning to England.  The five days we all had together in Barbados solidified our friendship.  She met the friends I finally made here, saw me well-adjusted and not as crazy, and prepped to get the hell out of Dodge.With my old friend here, I saw just how far we'd come in her eyes.

Lily has become an incredibly poised young lady who is thoughtful and curious.  Virginie, a chatty little toddler who is intelligent and funny.  Didier, finally, a relieved, relaxed man.  And I, I came to terms with the straw I drew and found a way to recognize this as my life too.  As the saying goes, "It ain't a dress rehearsal.  This is it."  Holly and I didn't have a long time in Barbados together.  Like many other expatriates around the world, this is a transient life, and she was quickly back to England.  Having her here at the milestone marker, the end of our time in Barbados, was quite symbolic.  I feel able to close this chapter as she did, while taking with me lasting friendships and memories, both good and bad.

And so we will find ourselves by mid-summer back in New York.  Not in the city that I love, but closer still than Porters, Barbados.  All nearly two years older and, I hope, wiser.  I have learned much about myself and how I live during this time in Barbados.  Convinced I could be an international traveller, live abroad with ease, embrace new cultures and experiences, before we arrived, I discovered that it was quite difficult and lonely and challenging, more than I ever expected.  I now understand what it is that makes me a real American girl, what I love about my culture, my community, myself and what it was nice to let go of for a bit (materialism, consumerism, around the clock entertainment news and gossip, throw away items).  Maybe I don't need all the new latest products, to see all the new shows, to check out all the fashion magazines to feel in the know.  Maybe being in the know is overrated.  Maybe what I now know about me was worth going into the jungle and back.

And back.  That is the key.  I have new tools to take with me, a new mind, new goals, new dreams.  The nearly two years in Barbados felt at times like a dream or an alternate universe, but they were actually part of my life.  I did not waste those years, do not even regret them, but am happy to move on to a new chapter.  I fell to pieces here, actually broke down and broke apart.  Whether from post-partum or solitude that felt more like solitary confinement, it doesn't matter; it came, a crushing loss of identity that forced me to find myself all over again.  The things I once took painfully seriously, I can now recognize as inconsequential.  I realize that everything comes in due time, no point in freaking.  Things come when they come.  And I have found that I am a lover of many things--my children, my husband, my family, my friends, nature, cities, expression, creativity,new experiences, humanity, God, life, love.  But none of these things can be manifest if I do not first love myself enough.  Still working on it.  I'm sure I'll get another chance to learn.


And I believe in love

But what else can I do?
I'm so in love with you




(c)Copyright 1986. Carly Simon, Arista Records



(c) Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Paradise Lost



courtesy of Jean-Luc Virot

 I do finally understand people's utter fascination with life on the islands, whether it be because they actually live here and enjoy the slow paced, laissez-faire, year round sun and sea that big company salaries and /or expendable income (read riches) can provide, or because they do not live here and their dreams of paradise are far better than actually living on an island every day.  I fought and I fought hard against Barbados.  My slightly schizophrenic, obsessive-compulsive, reading-frenzied, brain-racing, artistic, chaotic brain just couldn't slow to the pace.  I was bored.  I didn't have my own group of friends and I didn't have my husband who worked all the time.  Every honeymoon story, cruise story, island hopping tale from years ago...I loved it.  Mount Gay Tour, Banks Brewery visit from the cruise ship, I feel you.  But living here after a life in a city that welcomed me as no other had, hurt both physically and emotionally.  It is beautiful here, someone's paradise.  But not mine.


I love the sea.  I love picking mangoes and limes and coconuts in my garden.  I love the strange fig bananas that look like regular bananas but have to be cooked to reveal their yumminess.  I even love the sun, just not all year 'round.  I have adjusted to the heat.  Foregone my best friends for new.  Traded cute clothes and haircuts for sun dresses, flip flops and ponytails or buns.  I wore no make up.  At all.  To the grocery store.  To a restaurant!  But this could only have been a temporary stop on our life path.  (I mean, I love clothes and make up too much.  I kid.)  Barbados, any island really, is for me, a place to settle down when all you were meant to do in the world has been done, or can be done from your home.  I don't think that is the case for me. I hope, no I expect that we will look back and smile about our time here.  After nearly two years, we are going "off island" for good.

Suddenly, I am looking at things nostalgically, recalling our first drive in from the airport in the middle of the night on August 7, 2009, waking up in a queen-sized bed sweating my face off with all four members of our family, one of them a 3 1/2 month old Virginie, cramped together being eaten alive by mosquitoes.  My friend Eva, in a gift that could only be given by God, just happened to be visiting Barbados and she witnessed with me, firsthand, the insanity.  Eva is a world traveller.  She has been everywhere and I could see on her stunned face that this was going to be a challenge. 

Our house had no screens, AC in the bedrooms only, no fans, save two poorly placed ceiling fans probably put in some time during the disco era, hard tiled floors, bars on every window and door wide enough to keep out people (did we need that?) but not wide enough to keep out curious monkeys, lizards, geckos, bats, moths, and blood-lusting mosquitoes.  They tried to kill us.  No really.  Drain our blood and make us look pock-marked so no one would love us, or at least recognize us.  We slept under sauna hot mosquito-netting, getting tangled in the middle of the night for diaper changes and bathroom breaks.  Didier worked for hours at a time and I was alone in the jungle with two little girls, one a baby, the other a terrified toddler who wanted clues from me and I had nothing to offer it seems other than hugs and a completely bugged out expression on my face.  I had no friends and no one wanted to call me from home because it was crazy expensive and I just cried and wailed all the time.  Who wants to talk to that post-partum inflicted, mosquito-bite covered, incredibly tan and shiny wench complaining about life in the tropics?  I got it.  I get it.  I have just always needed to sound it out.  I need to talk about it, process, figure out stuff and I need to run my mouth to do it. 

And so it happened that I started to meet people...running my mouth, as they say down South for "talking too much."  Didier put screens on the windows after much debating about whether or not this was even possible.  (Let me remind you that anything is possible.  Anything.)  We kept doors sealed at night after 6:30 pm to keep out the humidity and the house cooled down.  Lily went to a wonderful pre-school and then reception class where she met lots of great kids and I amazing parents.  We found a hot little spot for good music, dancing and sushi on the beach run by a sexy young couple, she is Guyanese and he, Iranian--HOT-- with whom we became friends.  (Shout out Cassareep!) 

On breaks and days off, we explored the island, though there is still much we would like to try before going--the submarine tour, swimming with the turtles, Aerial Barbados Zip Tours, a dinner at Cariba, maybe cool pics at some of the rum shops.  But honestly, it still felt like an extended vacation, a break from reality, a little bit like a black hole.  Professionally it did nothing for Didier or me, but it gave us better focus as to who we really are and who we really want to be when we return to the surface.  Yes, there was turquoise blue water, calm seas (usually), and a very laid back lifestyle, but it did not seem real. 

And now we are leaving.  Heading back to "home," wherever that mythical place is, to start again.  Start.  Not much is planned and we are excited, nervous, anxious, thrilled.  We are certainly preparing better than we did when we came here.  We know what to look for now, what works for us and what doesn't.  But what we have this time that we didn't have last is a sense of steering our own course.  I think a lot of people who come to Barbados do so to do just that.  Get off the grid.  Control their destinies.  Make their own paradise.  We came here for work in a pretty tough set up, and that as much as anything else shaped our minds about the place.  For us, Barbados can never be paradise, but somewhere else can.  I think it hovers in the space between us, all four of us, where we feel safe and loved and connected and free.  Let's see where that takes us.

courtesy of Jean-Luc Virot

(c)Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.

The Royal We

copyrighted image

On an island that was once under rule of the British and where nearly 80% of all tourism comes from the UK, it should come as no surprise that the wedding of Prince William to Kate/Catherine Middleton would cause a little stir and excitement.  There were cafes and bars that hosted early morning or all day events with traditional English food and Pims cocktails, hanging of the Union Jack in shop windows, as well as a denial by many of any interest whatsoever in what the royals were up to.  Of course I was told by a few that the Americans were more interested than they in the nuptials and then saw that played over and over again on many news outlets when royal wedding tourists from Tennessee and Oklahoma ended up being interviewed in tiaras and feather boas outside the Palace.  Nice.


I won't lie.  I watched the wedding at 5:45 am after a long night with very little sleep and lots of wake ups from the kiddies and would do it again, even knowing that it would be rebroadcast one hundred times that day.  I did the same for Princess Diana's funeral, rising at 4 am after my wake up call, from my dad, and sitting quietly sobbing in my tiny studio apartment in Boston.  I'm not ashamed.  My excitement was not really because of an attraction to all things royal, nor to things British, though I have often had a soft spot there, but because I am so moved by witnessing someone else's destiny.


Princess Diana was to the manner born and though she could not have known that she would be chosen an appropriate mate for a future king, it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.  But Kate Middleton, how could she ever have guessed this?  Maybe she dreamed it.  Maybe she willed it.  Maybe it was written.  I'm not sure; I am still working on that.  But I think often, probably everyday, about how I am where I am moment to moment.  A black girl from Freehold, NJ with southern family roots married to a Frenchman who'd moved all over France, to Belgium, travelled abroad, lived in different parts of the States and together made two beautiful crazies.  I consider fate and destiny every day when I think of our future and what we will do next and how we will do it and how lucky we are to do it together. 


During that period a few months ago when Dan Savage's "It gets better" campaign for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth got underway after a series of profiled suicides and humiliations came to light, I thought of how true this is, or can be, for us all.  I thought of how I could never have known I would find such happiness, but that also in tough, ugly, humiliating times, I could find a voice and a place where I could trust myself over the noise and the nonsense.  When I saw Kate Middleton in that gorgeous Alexander McQueen dress, I didn't want to be her, didn't even envy her.  It's just that she seemed truly present, truly accepting of that moment in all its facets in her life.  We watched and loved her and hopefully felt love.  Just love without all the other stuff, judgments, considerations, calculations.


When I first met Didier, on that first day before he was DIDIER and was just Didier, the chef at the restaurant I'd just started working, I saw a glimmer, a flash, a second, split second, and I sucked in my breath and said, under it, "Oh boy."  I just knew there would be a "we."  Some nights, say when I am running from our bedroom to the girls' room and then back after hearing one of them shouting, talking, crying on the monitor or when the girls are snuggled up under my arm reading a story complete with Lily's interpretations of all images, sights, and sounds or when, once they are fast asleep, Didier and I just look at each other across a paper and crayon strewn living room with a knowing look, I am stunned by the fact that we are, indeed, a "we."  My life as I'd known it has changed and my commitment to these people and to life has been made ever stronger. 

So when I watched the royal wedding, as when I watch any wedding really (you should have seen me bawling my face off at my brother Jeff's wedding to his insanely fabulous betrothed), I am excited by and reminded of hope, that moment when we trust in the good, suspend disbelief for even just a moment that the fights, poopy diapers, fatigue rage, and all kinds of things, serious and not so, will eventually enter into the picture.  I am tickled by the fact that two people, whoever they are, came together in that moment as their best selves (hopefully) or at least their best projections.  I am floored by destiny.  How did these people find each other in the rough seas of souls surfing killer waves all over the planet?  I am a sucker, I know.  But I'd rather be a sucker for love who held out for my prince, warts and all, than a tight, closed fist of a heart looking for all that is wrong instead of all that is right.  Even a cynical fool like myself, Depeche Mode/Cure sure that I was fated for loneliness am part of a royal "we."

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Holiday Season

I am writing today, with a cold severe enough to knock me out whilst trying to put Virginie to nap.  Virginie could not sleep because she was too excited to spend all of her waking hours with her sister Lily who was in their room pretty much swinging from the rafters.  Why, pray tell, are these two people home from school after two and 1/2 weeks off during Spring Break and then a four day weekend for Easter?  Well, it is Heroes' Day here in Barbados, two days after Easter Monday. 


Put the picture in your mind.  After two and a half weeks off of school for Spring Break, the girls went to school for about ten days and then had a long weekend for Easter.  Then, after attending school on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, they are now home with me on Thursday for another holiday.  They will both go to school tomorrow, enjoy Saturday and Sunday with Mommy and Papa and some visitors coming on Saturday and then spend Monday, May Day (Labor Day) at home yet again.  The holiday season in Barbados is full of bank holidays, I think twelve per year which does not include Spring Breaks or Teacher Planning Days.  On each of these days off from school, every facility, grocery store, shop, place of entertainment, everything save the hospitals and medical centers is closed.  Shut down.  Imagine scheduling a holiday vacation in Barbados during this week.  There would be nothing to do and with rainy season seemingly underway a couple of months too early, there has been rain for three days in a row. 


Heroes' Day, begun in 1998 to celebrate ten national heroes, nine men and one woman, who affected change on this nation either through social or political means, always falls on April 28th.  The children in school learn about the heroes and write stories or draw pictures about them and are then give the day off to honor them.  We had a play date and Didier helped a friend take down his family's trampoline for their move this weekend to another part of the island. 


In Barbados and many other parts of the Caribbean, flying kites is part of the Easter tradition.  For weeks before the long holiday weekend (Good Friday through Easter Monday) kites were sold on highways, in grocery stores, hardware shops, out of the backs of cars (trunks/boots, whichever you prefer) in a beautiful array of shapes and colors, made of paper or plastic.  There were color patterns or cartoon characters.  Most kites are made simply with a wooden cross symbolizing the cross on which Christ was crucified and died and the sailing of kites signifies the ascension and connection to the heavens or the divine.  It is truly a beautiful metaphor but also a great chance to get out and fly a kite. 

When is the last time you let a kite go into the air and watched it dance in the wind?  The feeling is exhilarating.  We went with a group of friends on Easter Sunday to Barkley's Park on the east coast of the island where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean swirled and crashed behind us.  We ran on the sand, pulling kites behind us, laughing and chatting and feeling the breeze that whipped up around us.  The sun was intensely hot and it was impossible to stare too long at our kites in the sky without hurting our eyes.  The kids tired long before the adults and at one point, all four kites were being flown by adults while the kids played in the sand.  We stopped in the park across the street for a quick snack and to watch the kids play a game of petanque under the guidance of Didier Virot expert in all things sporting and all things French.  It was so funny to watch him explaining to a group of 2-5 year olds and one 10 year old girl the "rules."  They just wanted to roll the balls which they ultimately ended up doing. 

From there we drove along the coast to Bathsheba to the natural pools.  We all walked through the cave and waded through smaller pools before Didier, the kids, and I cooled ourselves as waves crashed behind us, but never reached us with much force.  Didier and I had driven past this site many times and never realized that the pools were there.  They were such a pleasant surprise and a place we'd love to visit again before leaving Barbados.  Finally, we caravaned to Bath, another oceanside beach, where the waters are actually calm enough to swim in.  Because there were so many Easter celebrations going on, the place was packed, overrun by families and young teenagers throwing water balloons, people liming the day away.  Our little group was obviously a band of outsiders and we were watched and studied as such. While probably quite nice on a regular afternoon, on this day, Bath was no place to chill and relax.  We ended the day here and all went their separate ways as the sun sank lower and lower into the sky. 

Coming from New York where very few days actually qualify as holidays and where even when holidays are celebrated, shops, theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmacies are opened, it is strange to watch an entire country shut down.  While on one hand I think it is respectful and comforting that traditions are honored, on the other, I think a country with solely one viable industry, tourism, closing for days at a time, nothing opened, not a person in sight who is not liming, sunning, stone cold chillin' is wasting many an opportunity.  While we've enjoyed each other immensely, and bought all of our groceries ahead of time to ensure we'd have everything we liked, sometimes it's nice to have more to do than go fly a kite. 

But I will say this, I have never loved the Easter Bunny, always thinking it bastardized the true imagery of rebirth, fertility, fecundity that the early Christians borrowed from the pagans to emphasize the new beginning of life in Christ, from the Old Testament to the New.  A big, cartoonish oaf with a bow tie and goofy face delivering eggs, chocolate, and Peeps to children.  I could let go of that tradition this moment.  But kite flying at Easter, wherever we go in the world, will remind us of those special days in Barbados when we were with friends and loved ones soaring.




(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Over and over and over

Charise* is a young girl that we see nearly every time we go to PriceSmart, the Barbados answer to Costco or BJs or Sam's Club, just less and not exactly, but it suffices while we are here.  We get the items we need either in bulk or somewhat discounted prices than the highway robbery of the other "legitimate" stores.  We used to make an event out of it before we realized that we were overstocked with everything in the house and eased up a bit on the grocery shopping.  Truth be told, the visit to PriceSmart was once one of the highlights of the weekend.  I know, winning.


Charise took a liking to the girls immediately, chatting them up in the tightest of Bajan accents but with a softness to her voice than made it almost sweet.  Yes, I did cringe at hearing her misuse "she" and "he" for "her" and "him," something that drove me mental when anyone did it. "Look at she! She think she doin' somethin'!"   She played with their hair and tickled their legs while checking to make sure we were not trying to abscond with an extra pork loin or one more 16-pack of toilet paper than the receipt implied.  She was studying childhood development and education and wanted to open a daycare center.  I'd toyed with the idea of having her come and sit with the girls, but as she was always at PriceSmart, I just couldn't imagine when she'd have the time.  I was also a bit shy about having a woman we chatted with at the store come over to the house and be so intimately involved in our lives.  I know, paranoid.  But I just thought the level of mystery and separation was right in this instance.  I felt guilty about it almost every Sunday after she'd slipped me her number yet again asking if I knew anyone looking for a sitter.


We really don't know her.  Just our impressions from the mornings spent at PriceSmart.  She has a sweet smile, works very hard, seems to be well-respected by other employees on the job.  Her birthday is in April.  I know this because when she once asked about Virginie's birthday and I started to say April, I was unable to get the words out completely when she jumped up and said, "Mine too!  Mine too!" with the lift on TOO.  There is an innocence and openness to her that only the young possess and I was excited by it.  In a class system as structured and unforgiving as that in Barbados, I believed she would break out and create that day care center.  I'd seen her work her way through university, saw her studying in the aisles of PriceSmart, heard her talk enthusiastically about what she was learning.  I told other people about her and told the aunties at the girls' nursery school about her in the hopes that she might work with them before starting her own place.  I saw hope and opportunity for this young lady and I was thrilled.

One of the most heartbreaking and frustrating things about Barbados for me was how easily people accepted their lot in life.  Surely there are ambitious people, people trying to improve their plight, but in the working class, even with the offer of free advanced education, training programs, apprenticeships there is so much lethargy.  One can see it in the faces of workers everywhere.  A bitterness, a resignation, a hopelessness.  Life looks very long and exhausting when you are sitting on an island of 285,000 people working the same job, resisting the same boss/company/authority for your entire working life.  Didier and I often remarked to one another while driving through the country about the countless young people, boys to men playing checkers and drinking a Banks in the morning, girls to women carrying small children in the early hours, very young mothers, when we would take the girls to school, workers in the kitchens, grocery stores, shopping districts with hooded eyes looking at you with contempt or disinterest.  This was the Barbados that tourists, expats living high on a big company salary with little contact or attention paid to the locals, ever had to see or consider.  Maybe I didn't either, but that is not the kind of person I am.  I do consider.  It hurt to see.

So when we showed up at a jam-packed PriceSmart yesterday, full of people doing their Easter weekend shopping (from Good Friday through Monday is a holiday on the island with all days but Saturday completely closed) and spied Charise in the sea of craziness, I sighed with relief.  She came to me with full, rosy cheeks, a bright smile and a hug.  "Look at I.  Do you see I?"  And then I did.  I did see.  Charise was pregnant.  A little over three months but on her tiny little body it was already completely apparent, a little bump had formed low over her belt buckle.  I held her and congratulated her slowly.  She seemed happy, a little apprehensive, but happy and I did not want to appear tentative in my happiness for her. 

In stand-still traffic leaving the shopping district, I finally sighed and said aloud to Didier,"She was my hope for Barbados.  I am sorry that I am so sensitive about this.  I know it's silly.  But I wanted for her so much more."  There were tears, a quick surprising outpouring of love for Charise.  I know it's her life and it is certainly not written in stone that she will not achieve all that she'd dreamed, many have.  But I feared that the monotony and struggles of raising a child would get the best of her and she would have just her dreams as the proof that she got so close.  I don't know her boyfriend or her family or her situation.  I don't even know her really.  For all I have come to love about Barbados, it is the lost dreams, lost hope, monotonous existence that tear me down each time.  I can leave Barbados now.  I have seen the cycle so clearly and whether one lives well and comfortably or poor and with struggle, it's all the same.  All the same.  Over and over and over.

*Not her real name.

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Happy Birthday, Little Big Girl Now

When we arrived in Barbados, Virginie was only 3 1/2 months old.  Much of my fear and paranoia came from feeling unable to protect her (and Lily and myself).  I did not know this country, the Caribbean, anyone here at all and could not figure out how we'd found ourselves, a New York couple of something or others in the middle of this developing country, nearly out in the jungle.  There were lizards and monkeys and a mongoose and huge moths, bats, mosquitoes and debilitating heat surrounding me in a house full of boxes with wrought iron fencing on every window and door.  We had no neighbors on either side and the street was quiet and dark once the sun went down.  Virginie was nursing (ha! Still is, made you look.), could hold her head but could not sit up, and had not even gone to solid foods.  New mothers feel inadequate, but this was ridiculous.  I already had Lily but did not feel like I could even do any of the basics.  Virginie, though healthy and chubby and cherubic, seemed more vulnerable than tiny little angelic Lily had seemed.  The sensation was primal.  I felt terror and my fight or flight mechanism was on a hair trigger 24-7.  After the soporific experience of my pregnancy with her, this was a strange turn of events.


I carried Virginie heavy and low.  And by that I mean I had a big fat ass.  Seriously.  Each week as my ever increasing belly was measured, I was two centimeters larger than expected.  For example, at 20 weeks, one is usually about 20 centimeters and I was 22.  Funny, in the first trimester I actually lost one pound from the all-day-long sickness but made up for it in spades during the rest of the pregnancy.  At 25 weeks, with 15 weeks to go my doctor, in her sweetest "I am incredibly concerned you are going to be fork lifted out of your apartment to the hospital" voice asked if I was perhaps indulging in too many "too manys."  I really hadn't been, but Virginie was an insanely hungry caterpillar.  With Lily, I craved bananas and peanut butter on toast at 4 am and drank more orange juice than I would ever care to.  But with Virginie, we were so concerned about keeping her in there that I fed her everything under the sun under the guise of making sure she was inspired to stay.  Uh, yeah.  It wasn't that I ate too much, but I certainly didn't follow any plan to maintain a weight increase of 25-30 lbs.  I think that was pretty obvious to everyone.


My belly was just so big and I was still carting Lily around.  By early afternoon, I was on my face, even though Lily had a sitter 5 days a week in the mornings!  I was so nervous that Didier would get called away to Barbados before the baby was born that I had regular freak outs.  I wondered if I would have to give birth alone.  If I was capable of doing it.  If I wasn't, who would I ask to hold my legs, grip my hand, listen to me scream, have one of the most private moments of my life with in the place of my husband.  It did not come to that.


We already knew that we would be moving to Barbados and thanks to shoddy file management (It seems paperwork kept going missing while visas et al were in the process of being procured.) Didier was able to stay for the birth and even a few weeks after.  I suppose that should have been a premonition of things to come, but what did we know.  We were exhausted, overwhelmed, hopeful about a new position, a little scared about a new place to live, wondering how Lily would take to it all.  Secretly, I feared for this little wiggly worm.  I just wondered how this little girl would follow in the footsteps of Lily?  Lily who is so intelligent and sensitive and beautiful and kind and funny.  I cried so many nights imagining future confrontations between the "second sister" and the angel.  Lily with that gorgeous head of curls and the baby, yet unnamed looking all squishy and gooey on the ultrasound.  I said a prayer for her and told her I would look out for her, poor thing.


Didier had chosen Lily's name from the Marlene Dietrich song, "Lily Marlene" so it was "my turn" with Virginie.  We batted a few names around, leaning heavily on the French, mainly my suggestions.  I loved Eugenie and Clemence, deemed too old and too religious by Didier.  I also liked Vincent before we knew the babe would be a girl.  Didier liked Theophile.  Again, ah no.  When Virginie rolled off my lips, we both looked at each other knowingly.  That my father is from Virginia and that her name could hold a significance for the Penns too made it all the more certain. We chose Clementine as a softened Clemence and Belen for the woman who cared for us (my sister, brother, and me) when we were children, Belen Nortez Jones, a beautiful Cuban woman who sang songs to us in Spanish and taught us dance moves and demonstratively loved us.  I don't know that I ever showed her back the love she'd given me.  But I could share her forever with my child by giving Virginie her name.


Virginie let me wait it out until the end.  I'd heard rumor that second children often came earlier than expected and as big as I was, it seemed like a no brainer that even at 37 or 38 weeks that little babe would be fully cooked.  She came on her due date.  Thanks to the workings of my inventive doctor and something called "stripping the membranes" my water broke after an early morning appointment at both the hospital and her office.  Dilated 4 centimeters.  Not a contraction in sight.  And then--whoosh!  Walked into the hospital smiling and waving like a princess on parade.  Was screaming like a banshee minutes later and in well under an hour the most beautiful brown eyes I'd ever seen were staring at my naked, howling face.  Naked because I was so hot while giving my personal information to the nurse that I'd started to remove my clothes to put the gown on and found myself at 10 centimeters dilated before I had the chance to get the damned thing or the admitting bracelet on! 

I loved that baby right then and knew in an instant that she could hold her own.  I'd had nothing to worry about this one.  Virginie, though born in New York and a New Yorker, is a little Bajan girl at heart.  She loves the sea, the sand, the sun.  She is naked and cool and fresh faced and relaxed.  She loves Lily.  She loves Mommy and Papa and chatting and just being.  She is so Zen.

Each night before bed, when I kiss the ladies and we watch the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars slowly fade, Virginie tells me that she is a "little sesser and a big girl now."  Sometimes she gets tangled up in her excitement to talk and tells me that she is Mommy's little big girl now.  And she is.  Happy Birthday, Little Big Girl Now.  I love you so and learned to love Barbados for both you and Lily.  I'm a lucky mommy...and I know it.

 (c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Captured

Pulling back the curtains this morning to let in some light and the freaky white lizard's newest hiding place was revealed.  As expected, I screamed my face off, into the telephone while chatting with my sister who promptly advised me not to go batty over the lizard or the girls would be scared.  As I screamed, they did too, but more to mock their hysterical mother. 

Virginie kept shouting,"Lizzer!  Lizzer!  Get it, Mommy!  Oh no, a lizzer!" 

Lily, ever so calmly, directed Didier as the thing wiggled across the wall.  "It's over there, Papa.  He's going over the lights, Papa.  You can get it, Papa but you have to hurry up."  Didier, God bless him, chased after the thing with a plastic box and large mailing envelope but did indeed get the bugger into the box.  As my sister shouted into the phone, "Don't kill it,"  Didier took our white lizard mascot outside to set his beady-eyed pinkaliciousness free.  Far away.  In the grass.  Nowhere near the house.  And just like that the spell was broken and we were released from the fear of finding that miserable mosquito-chasing, wall-scrambling lizard behind just about anything in the house.  We are free.  At least until the next one gets in.

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.