Savage beauties

One of the things I missed most living in Barbados was culture.  This is subjective, some might say that I was surrounded by Caribbean culture whilst living there, but what I longed for were museums, curated exhibitions, galleries of painting, sculpture, media, theatre, music, concerts and surprises found on line or through friends or journals, little bars and cafes.  I wanted magazines, books, writing.  I would read in magazines either lugged in from the States from visiting friends or purchased at a mark up that would make your wallet explode, about exhibitions, books, TV programs, news articles, whatever connected me to the world and just dream. 

When I read about the exhibition, Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen, a collection of clothes, archives, collection videos, accessories of the talented designer, I knew that I could not miss this one.  With the Met just a short walk from my former address, I could taste it.  A little background.  I'd often thought, as a girl, that I would be a designer.  I loved clothes, breathed them.  Bought fashion magazines at twelve, before all the twelve year olds of the world were doing so, and dreamt of the clothes I could create.  I loved the artistry, as I'd loved all art then, and was especially drawn to the expressiveness of a collar, cut of a garment as it clung to the figure or gently caressed it, making the wearer even more than when naked.  It was the 80s and there was color and androgyny, accessories and shoes.  There was athleticism and energy and newly adored bodies hitting the gym looking for something to showcase themselves.  I could feel the change in my stride, in my mood when I wore different clothes and I loved that feeling.

Home economics, 7th grade changed all of that when I struggled with the "car pillow."  Nasty little stitches, broken threads, tough times threading that bobbin, pattern making, using patterns. All of it.  I didn't have the patience, nor the talent for it.  I continued to love fashion, however, and looked out for new voices, visions, leaders.  I loved Jean-Paul Gaultier, Claude Montana, respected the perfection of Valentino, Givenchy, Chanel though I didn't quite see my place in it.  And then there was Alexander McQueen.

When I first discovered Alexander McQueen I thought, this is one of mine.  He was shy and crude and elegant and tortured and so extraordinarily talented and skilled.  He was such a true artist that I whispered to myself, I want to wear that, even from the very first.  I waited for every collection, went into the boutiques selling his clothes to see them up close.  I worried for his gentle soul hiding inside that rough exterior.  And when he seemed to get himself on track for the "dream"--new love, weight loss, good looks, sales=money--the mile markers for happiness by most of our friends and family, I sighed with relief that maybe he had really found it.  I knew about emotional and spiritual pain, knew how it ate away at joy and achievements and milestones, knew how it could kill any sense of hope, success, love.  I saw it in his eyes, maybe loved him more for being a "tortured artist" unable to enjoy the mundane and routine.

But I didn't want it to end.  Never thought it would.  At least not as it did.  Those beautiful, beautiful clothes.  And I had to see them.  Today, with my cousin Kelley, after waiting two hours in a line snaking through Mesopotamia and Persia at the Met, I opened my eyes to Savage Beauty.  We must find a way to love and nurture artists.  In the creative, there is everything.  In the exploration, desire, longing can come magic.  Artists are wizards and no matter the medium, they ask/demand of us to consider the world differently.  Reading McQueen's thoughts on his collections, what inspired him, what worried him, called to him, all the things from which he drew gave a glimpse at a man not just tailoring.  He had the technique, the skill, the craft and he had the magic.

I came home living in his dream, wrapped in the world he'd created when my husband called to tell me that another of my beloved artists had passed.  Young Amy Winehouse.  Tragic, flawed, insanely talented, wounded.  The tears came not in a trickle, but bursting out of my face like Pop Rocks contained in a soda can, then suddenly released.  I was bawling in seconds, my cousin sitting next to me afraid something had happened to one of my girls. 

And something had.  Amy Winehouse was one of my girls.  One of the many artists, female voices that moved me forward, onward, through it when I knew I just could not get through.  She had gravel and pain and heartache and longing and love and dreams.  She got locked in her world, a sensitive creative soul who just could not work out the every day.  She was an addict and that seems to have made it easier for people to take potshots.  Don't.  She just wore the wounds on the outside.  She got ridiculous because she hurt so much and looking at her made us see, whether we wanted to or not, that it's hard, no matter the money, the fame, the accolades, and attention, this thing called life. 

They can both be viewed as reckless, Alexander McQueen and Amy Winehouse, in different ways, but they had genius.  They were artists.  Their beauty was savage,  natural and wild and from it, they fashioned something we could all claim, see reflected in our own souls, the beauty and the pain.  The beauty and the pain.  Rest in peace.



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

Limbo

In the game or dance of limbo, participants try to shimmy their way under a pole that drops lower and lower and lower until it is almost on the ground.  It is mesmerizing to watch as regular people contort, twist, and bend to the depths that bar takes them.  The metaphor is so obvious.  In the Catholic tradition, limbo, from the Latin limbus, meaning edge or boundary, presumably of Hell, is the place where souls wait in the afterlife in original sin (occurring in all of us due to the Fall of Man) but not having been assigned to Hell of the Damned.  The limbo dance has its origins in the contra dancing of Trinidad and the word itself is a derivative of limber in West Indian English.  The movements, similar to that of the African legba or legua dance (after the god of fate, chance, opportunities, and crossroads of Afro-Caribbean lore) reflect "the whole cycle of life" according to some African beliefs.


And so we find ourselves as we wait for a decision, are we in the house?  Did we get it?  Have we been approved? We are in limbo, not just in trying to figure out where we are going to live, but once we find a place, we will still be living in a hotel on the edge of New York City for two weeks while we wait until an August 1st move in. It's a strange place to be. We are not on vacation. Not on a business trip. Not in a home. We won't even live in the town where the hotel is, when all is said and done.


With my aching back, brought on by the children, both carrying them in pregnancy and then carting them around on my hip even now, bending like the willow and not breaking like a twig, is pretty tough for  me.  And with my contorted sense of self, just going with the flow and letting go and letting God, though I know the only way to weather life's changes, opportunities, crossroads is close to impossible.  But each morning I get up and ask myself how we are going to do it and try to do it with a smile.  Try to bend backwards and let life open to us and show us surprises. 

The girls, missing a pool, swam in the bathtub with their suits on.  They have built snow forts out of the pillows from the two beds in the suite.  We have gone into the city and walked in our old neighborhood.  Two years has not changed it much except for a few businesses that we feared wouldn't make it and didn't.  On our way to a walk through Central Park to go to the MET(to see Savage Beauty, the sure to be thrilling and haunting exhibition at the Costume Institute of Alexander McQueen's work), Didier and I realized that that was more than likely not the right choice for us.  We were travelling with two little people and where on the Upper West Side should we take these two little creatures while we waited for life to settle?  The Children's Museum of Manhattan, of course!  And it was a blast!  The girls ran all over the place with their aged parents in tow.  Lily spent nearly every single day there as a two year old when we lived right around the corner during the months that play in the park was too cold, too windy, too rainy, or too snowy.  Watching Virginie make her way through the Dora floor, the Curious George exhibit, fingerpaint, feed the letter dragon, I saw we'd really come back. 

We met up with friends not seen for two years and fell back into easy rhythms and patterns, everything seeming the same, except for older children and maybe a little more gray hair for us (probably caused in part by the older children).  There were parks in New Jersey, playgrounds and the zoo in Manhattan, a ride on the NY Waterway ferry between New Jersey and New York crossing the Hudson River, and our first trip to the movie theatre as a family.  We saw "Winnie the Pooh" and its one hour and three minute screen time was just about right for the ladies.  Virginie shouted out to the screen with questions and demands and Lily sat mesmerized.  Like bookends, Didier and I sat with the girls between us, laughing and smiling, getting lost in the picture.

And in limbo, that place, at a crossroads, a place of opportunities, a place of mirrors, a place where fate is decided, I bent backwards, squeezed Didier's hand, kissed our girls, and laughed outloud.  This isn't the first time we have done these moves.  We all do them.  And I am much more flexible that I ever expect, more agile, more light on my feet.  Love is burning in my chest and I trust that the fates are on my side and will help us win.  It might cost more money that I want to spend (I am cheap).  I might miss my things locked away in a container stuck in customs, as we are here.  I might wish I knew the answers already so I wouldn't have to sweat it out.  But maybe I should just stop sweating because it will all be decided anyway.  One doesn't sit in limbo forever.  The trick is timing the perfect moment, with the perfect backbend, at just the right height or depth of the stick, bending one's head back, and letting go.  I am always surprised when I make it under and up again.


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

Hotel, motel, whatcha gonna do today?

I am not sure what I was thinking.  Okay, actually I am.  I thought that if we were travelling for two weeks, living out of suitcases and crashing in hotels, we needed to do our best to save some money, especially as other expenses were soon to be mounting what with the new house, car, school, relocation, et al.  What I wasn't thinking was what an $80 a night hotel was going to look like, smell like, feel like, so I went into it hopefully optimistic.  A very fancy friend of mine had stayed there.  She said it was really accommodating, close to where we were looking for a home, and inexpensive.  She is still very fancy.  The hotel was...not as she remembered.  I think when we overshot the entrance and ended up, just yards away at the corrections facility where two forms of ID needed to be shown to get, we should have wondered what was up.  Or when the parking attendant said, "You know I hate that shit!" when we rolled up and then said, "Oh my bad, you need your parking?"that we were so not in Kansas anymore.

At many of the beaches in Barbados when one finally came out of the water and brushed off the sand, there were makeshift showers rigged out of plastic or metal piping, sometimes some twine, maybe, if the creator of said construction was ambitious an on/off switch other than a simple garden faucet.  Didier and I used to remark how easy it would be to draw tourists with a nicer set up, correct showers, paved floor to stand in, dare I say, hot/warm water even.  I could have made mention of this at the reception desk of the Ramada Inn over by the airport (see, I would tell you eventually about my foolishness.)  Standing in the dark (the dark because the two lightbulbs in the bathroom had burned out and we only discovered this when we returned to the room at night) with a faucet that read hot and cold and then produced the opposite or scalding or ice cold or a trickle with no rhyme or reason, I flinched and twisted and contorted and shivered. 

The girls were not able to take a bath as the stopper did not work and I was extremely grateful for that as I did not want those people sitting, swimming, kicking, soaking in that dark, dank tub.  We had to use the water from the tub to rinse water on our toothbrushes because the sink faucet let out eye dropperfuls of water at a time.  It was clear though.  Thank you for the small miracles.  I made them put toilet paper down on the seat when they had to use the bathroom.  Virginie is potty training.  These are things you learn even if you can barely get up on the seat.  At least with this mommy you do.

As we snuggled in for bed, all four of us a king-sized twin bed combo lashed together, I found a hair on one of the squishy pillows and promptly threw it, the pillow, onto the floor.  When I pulled back the blankets I was greeted with a lipstick kiss on the white cover, which found its place next to the comforter that had already been hurled to the floor.  (Look, I watch Oprah, I know what's on those things and I do that at the better establishments.)  And in a "you can't make this shit up" moment, when I went for the extra blanket provided, it has a cigarette hole burned through it.  We turned off the A/C and slept on the bed, sheet covered, rolled together sardine packing style with the two little ones in the middle and Mommy and Papa holding up the ends to make sure no one fell onto the dirty floor.  The floor that we were all disallowed to walk on without shoes.

It was laughable and we would have moved out after that first night, but we were scheduled to look at a large number of houses and condos in our hoped for new town and had to race out to make our 9:30 am appointment.  The hotel policy was to have notice given before 6 pm the night before check out and we just didn't think we would make it through all the day's events and still find a place and be able to check out by noon.  The search was thrilling, scary, depressing, exciting.  We saw lots of properties, some that had potential, some we adored, and some that were just downright filthy.  Didier, the superclean Frenchy, could not help but remark how dirty some people actually are.  Given a gorgeous property in a gorgeous location, could they not do better than that?

We were exhausted at the end of the day.  Excited that we found a few that thrilled us.  Hopeful that one could be ours.  Bummed that we had to go back to the hotel to think, consider, reflect when we knew it would be impossible to relax.  It was.  Impossible I mean.  We arrived at the same time that the guests from two different convention groups were arriving.  The first group seemed to be a large Latin family gathering from the United States and Canada who had not seen each other in at least the last ten years.  There was a lot of stopping in front of the front door, parking lot, reception desk, elevator, vending machines, business office, restrooms, water fountains, any place really to chatter on and on, "Ah que linda!  Ah que guapo!"  I couldn't be happier to see people reunited.  I wanted to get to bed.

When Bunny in her red wig, cut off jean shorts, tattoo of a cat on her upper thigh, lace front something or other showing her 55 year old plus-sized modeling wares got on the elevator with the Chinese food delivery man, I figured this shit was a rap.  When she said in her bourbon and cigarettes voice (and this from a raspy voiced woman myself), "Ooh baby, y'all's cute!" to my kids, I thought, nice.  Later that night a few of the crews from the Biker Club Convention revved up in the parking lot doing wheelies and giving pounds and hi-fives as I tossed and turned, dreaming of the speed packing I was going to get done to get us out asap in the morning.

In the morning, I awoke to read a message from my realtor with a twelve page lease agreement on a property that we absolutely loved that basically stipulated that we could not live freely in the house, as if it were our own, care for it like normal human beings, and raise our family.  It had clause after clause, loopholes in which to trap us into giving away, signing away our rights.  We had to give it up.  Strangely, I was able to honor myself and my family immediately upon reading this drivel, but never thought for a moment about what booking us into an $80 a night shit hole said about my feelings of worth.  I knew I did not deserve that.  Knew that no one in my life, in my family, would ever consider that for themselves.  Inside I must have known what to expect from a hotel by the airport, with such a low rate in a busy part of the country, (this wasn't some little town with very few visitors and travelers).  I had to have known that I was selling myself and my family short. 

My sister spoke out.  My dad bit his tongue saying only that I should move those babies if it was not good enough for them.  And for me, what is good enough for me?  There are eye opening moments if we stop and check them.  I read my internal gauge and reset it.  I am worth more than that.  I want to be comfortable, to feel secure.  I want my family to feel the same, Didier and the girls.  I used the excuse, and a valid one, that we could not afford it.  It is expensive to relocate, to start over, to change one's life, but what am I willing to pay financially, emotionally, spiritually for my own safety, comfort, security?  It is certainly more than $80.

I booked us into a family style suite hotel closer to the city and it costs much more that the first.  The girls came in, pulled back the sheets on the bed and snuggled in to play with their toys.  They said, "Mommy, we like this hotel better than the other one because it has a kitchen.  It is like a real home."  For the girls, a kitchen where we can sit around and chat while Papa (or Mommy sometimes) can cook, where we can listen to music or watch TV is home.  And when you are in transition as we are, providing any sense of home, of safety, or security is a blessing.  They are all sleeping.  Didier in his/our bed, the girls in theirs/ours.  It is quiet.  It is a hotel and for the next few days/week until we find something to call our own, this will have to do.



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

Hiatus

It has come to this, but I will be back.  When we arrived in the States on June 29th after moving first from our home to a condo in the St. Lawrence Gap to the Hilton Barbados and then finally to my parents' home in Florida, it was my intention to keep up writing.  Writing this blog, short stories, poems, anything really, changed my life and gave me purpose and a light at the end of an extraordinarily dark tunnel.  I need it maybe even more today than I did when I first started it in May 2010, but just cannot commit to it consistently while we prepare for our future here in the States.  I am overwhelmed.

I want to write something meaningful, something funny, something irreverent to put a smile on your face as you read this, but in truth, I am sitting in the mucky muck.  There are too many loose ends that need my attention and all I can think about is getting us to a place of peace.  I'll be back soon.  I hope you will wait for me.

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

Life in transition

And so we have arrived in the States.  The last days passed so quickly it wasn't even like we were on vacation and it certainly wasn't as though we still lived in Barbados.  Life was strange and surreal and transitory. Didier and I were talking last night and both have come to the same conclusion, though we are not sure why, Barbados seems like a dream, an hallucination.  I cannot say that I see our departure as freedom as we were not really trapped, but I have found myself coming to the surface for air as if I have been underwater for a long time.  We do not dream of our home in Barbados, do not pine even for the beaches.  Maybe we are in a state of shock.  Maybe the longing, the nostalgia, the warm and fuzzies will come later.  But for now, we are gone.  And yet we aren't really here either.

Living at my parents' home while we get our bearings, I feel like I am in a halfway house, debilitated by mental and emotional crises, unable to fully express myself, to feel, to cry, to scream.  There is anxiety and stress.  Sometimes I cannot really breathe.  Deep in my heart I know we are on the road to the next chapter in our lives, that it will enrich the experiences of this rag tag clan we have created, but in the real present moment, as I live and breathe, I am not so sure.  We are distracting ourselves and the girls with all the food and wine and fresh air we'd been denied for two years in Barbados.  We are on an all you can eat and drink that makes us feel like we are putting on a pound a day.  I know most people envision island living as full of fresh food, fruits, fish, vegetables.  But Barbados produces nothing but rum, a little sugar, and sunburnt English tourists.  Food was expensive and often what I'd craved wasn't even available.  Since our return we've eaten crab legs, French cheeses, good baguette (not made by my husband), cupcakes, ribs, gorgeous Polish sausages, homemade Mediterranean food from the fresh market, farm grown veggies that do not cost as much as first month's rent.  We've had champagne, wine, cordials, nuts, gelato, sushi at a reasonable price (and incredibly delicious), pretty much everything we can get our hands on.

Virginie, who appeared to be on the verge of asthmatic, is breathing easier.  The girls are having a great time with my parents and sister, as well as their older cousin, though they do find the water too cold.  We arrived half a week before Independence Day and though I have often enjoyed a barbecue and fireworks, afternoon beach or pool time with family or friends on many a 4th of July, this year was different.  Being here for this particular holiday felt like home, like a reminder of going down South to see my family as a kid, knowing that in my blood I am tied to this place, that my spirit is tethered, no matter where I go, to a place where my ancestors lived and died no matter how excluded, outside, marginalized we've been, this is the only place that is home. 

I never really considered what it meant to be an American until I found myself living abroad with very few Americans in the mix.  I spent much of my time with Barbadians, English, and a few Canadians.  I am always open to new perspectives, it is one of the true joys of life, but there is nothing like a common language, unwritten even, that I didn't know I had until I was alone.  A language that includes sitcom references, songs, TV shows, minor celebrities and other trainwrecks, a self depreciating  humor about how Americans see themselves and how the rest of the world sees us (and trust me, there are plenty of potshots).  I stepped outside of my comfort zone even though I'd always felt disconnected and uncomfortable while living in the States.  I was always sure that I belonged somewhere else.

When we leave Florida, we are heading to New Jersey, not to the town where I grew up, but JERSEY.  After a lifetime of believing I was a New Yorker first and foremost, of thinking I could shake the Jersey Girl, I realized that my children might not be and might need more space than we could provide in glorious Manhattan.  They are children of the world.  If we are lucky they will travel, visit friends and family all over the world, learn languages, open their hearts to the world.  For now, they will discover the United States, recognize the flag which right now just seems cool because it has so many stars, learn the holidays of this country, connect to their American roots, go down South, be with our relatives while we continue our adventures and strengthen our bond as a family.  I don't ever profess to know what is coming and I am wise enough not to even try to guess.  We had a choice, choose a life where transition was inevitable, new places, new adventures, new people, and let the world open to us or not.  This path is curvy, crazy cuckoo nuts, but it is ours and we are doing it together.





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

Two years

Two years ago today, an almost three year old Lily and a two month old Virginie and I moved from our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in preparation for joining Didier in Barbados.  We knew it would be a few weeks, never prepared for the nearly two months of separation that it would actually become, and had no idea what would be in store for us once we arrived.  Memories of that day are fleeting as they morph and merge with flashbacks, dreams, next dimensional impressions that have clouded the actual events, but I do know that a moving company with six strapping young Eastern bloc gents arrived at the crack of dawn and got to tearing that apartment down like termites on a piece of sweet wood.  Lily was off with her sitter, Liza for an extended mix of classic NY toddler time, Children's Museum of Manhattan, Central Park playground, pizza spot in her Peg Perrego, and Virginie, still a wiggly worm, was worn around my neck in the Baby Bjorn while I attempted to give directions with little success.  These dudes knew what they were doing and this sweaty, postpartum baby carrier was not telling them anything they did not already know.  My mother was there too, wandering about, watching, waiting for me to tell her what to do.  We went to Le Pain Quotidien across the street for a little brunch and to get out of the way.  Virginie was still a baby necklace.


The apartment was small, though pretty big by Manhattan standards, and had so many nooks and crannies to store things, bookshelves, drawers, cabinets, that these poor guys found themselves immediately swamped.  They called in reinforcements and still had to reschedule their moves for the rest of the day as this little apartment was taking over.  Move day was unseasonably hot, after days of cool weather and rain, so what was meant to be a half day job and then an afternoon at the Lucerne Hotel turned into a boiling hot, panicky race to the end.  I remember standing on the street in my MBTs, a pair of harem pants, grey tshirt and Virginie swinging from my chest and catching my reflection in the glass pane of my soon to be former front door and wondering, "Who is this crazy bitch and where does she think she's going?"

Well, it turns out, she had no idea.  In the haze of that afternoon, it was announced that Farah Fawcett had passed away that morning.  Though that may seem insignificant to a late-thirtysomething black woman standing on the street in harem pants, the truth is that Farah Fawcett was my touchstone as a young girl watching way too much television.  I was terrified of dying, morbidly attached to the subject, and only found comfort in the fact that should I die, when I did, Farah Fawcett would be there and I would be able to talk to her.  Now she actually was dead and I felt time just stop for me as I knew for sure she'd made it there.  I mourned for her and for her struggle which I'd seen well documented in a video memoir and then got back into the business of changing my life.

Once out of that apartment, I knew I was well on my way to becoming an American living abroad.  Just had to get through that little stretch of living with my parents and my two children at their house in Florida in the house that is their house and not mine and never was because I grew up in New Jersey.  In the house where I would stay in a guestroom with my two children, a toddler and newborn, without my husband or any family or friends close by and where I would contemplate my place, a place, any place, in the world for me after two glorious years in that small but kind of big apartment in the city that loved me that was ours.  Everything was changing and spinning.  I want to say I was excited, but I was postpartum, nursing every thirty minutes or so it seemed, fifteen plus pounds overweight, hot, scared, lonely, feeling unsupported, and slightly out of control.  The call from my sister was a welcomed respite from the insanity.

Until she told me that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital and was unresponsive and that she thought he was going to die.  Michael Jackson?  With Michael Jackson, one did not even have to be a fan.  He was ubiquitous.  He was in the air, floating through the ether.  Even when you thought you didn't really like him, you did.  Something would catch and you would remember a time when everyone loved Michael Jackson, before Crazy Town and the kids sleeping over.  When it was just the music and that stuff was damned catchy.  It has to be good to hook you like that.  And suddenly, sending a prayer for Michael Jackson, begging him to live, to hang on, was all I could do.  I needed him to survive in a way that didn't even make sense to me.  I needed him to survive because if Michael Jackson couldn't get through whatever it was he was going through, how the heck was I going to.

And he didn't.  Sitting in the Lucerne Hotel, in a queen sized bed with my two children curled up next to me, with my mother in her queen right next to us, eating dinner and having a beer (for the letdown, you see) I stared in utter disbelief as it was stated, shouted, tossed in my face repeatedly.  The King of Pop is dead.  Over.  Gone.  The next morning we took a town car to the airport, my two girls, my mother, and myself.  The cab driver and I, an immigrant from West Africa, talked about how Michael Jackson and his reach across the globe, changed our lives.  Passing familiar streets out of the city to the airport, "You are not alone" played on the radio and I cried and cried and cried.  Not just for Michael Jackson, but for all of the memories, relationships, stumbles, and triumphs I'd had in that city.  I cried because I was leaving and I had no idea where I was going.  I cried because Michael Jackson sang, "You are not alone, I am here with you," and I had never felt lonelier than in that moment.  I was heading into the unknown.  I was doing it all alone.  I was leading my children there and I had no idea what I was doing.  Two years ago today.

RIP Michael Jackson.


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

On Father's Day

After two days with the movers packing us up, loading up the truck, and shipping us out, well not quite yet, but soon, cleaning, clearing, and removing all traces of us in our former home (except for the man Lily drew on the front patio in pencil just hours after the house painters had left or the "hearts and stars" Virginie added to the otherwise dull hallway walls that one has to discover like the paintings at Lascaux), it seems that we can leave Barbados without a trace.  This Father's Day morning, Didier said to me, "In ten days, we will be in Florida."  He was contemplative, thoughtful, and quiet as he watched the girls run ahead of us on the boardwalk along the South Coast of the island where we have relocated for the time being.  He loves those people I am sure more than he knew he would, probably even knew he could, and it is for them that he worries about our next step.  When they took to the condo quickly and easily, feeling excited about the elevators, in house washer and dryer, balconies with views of the sea, I saw him sigh with relief.

As parents, we want to create a safe place for our children, no matter where we live or where we are, a place inside of them that reminds them that they are loved, honored, and cared for.  They are little kids, under five, though Lily will turn five at the end of July, and I get all kinds of advice and info from well meaning individuals about the resilience of children and how these experiences will make them great.  Well, I do believe all that to be true.  I am thankful that Lily and even Virginie, have an international perspective from living abroad and from being the product of a bi-cultural union, but the other reality, the unspoken part, is that we give a damn enough to put their feelings, their fears, their perspective, if not first then at least on the table.  I care that Lily gets to finish the school year with her classmates, that she sees that saying goodbye and accepting change are difficult but also important parts of the human experience.  I want her to know that I too am afraid but that it certainly is not her fault and that she does not need to take on my insecurity. 


So I am insecure as hell about our future and a little scared, but other than picking up on small clues, she is not going to get the freak out/alienation from me.  I think that that is one of the hardest things about parenting, about leading and teaching a small child to feel secure and safe.  Just because I am worried, scared, confused, does not mean that I need to put that burden on my children.  In these tense scary moments, one can be withholding, because of fear, or one can try, against it all, to show love, love, love and compassion.  Lily knows we are moving, is even adjusting to it quite well.  She is kissed and hugged and reassured every day with storytime, visits to the beach and locales not yet visited and tried and true spots.  The other afternoon we walked through the St. Lawrence Gap, just Lily and me, holding hands and talking about our interests and our desires, and I felt her ease.  I did too.


In all of us there is a tiny place, right at the solar plexus, where we know ourselves and one can hope that in there are stores of feelings of love, adequacy, concern, respect, connection, community, family.  It is a place reserved, set aside, saved for a tiny soul by its welcoming parents, where one can return when the world is upside down and chaos seems to reign.  That place is beautiful and warm and secure.  That, THAT is our job.  We must show our children that place or each and every transition in life will be fraught with tension, confusion, fear.  I must give them the tools to trust their instincts, but also to know and believe that their father and I are completely in their corner.


The girls made Father's Day cards for Didier and drew pictures of him holding their hands.  We took him for brunch at a restaurant called Tapas, right on the coast, and we sat looking out at the turquoise blue sea.  He got to sleep in until 7:30, which is like noon in our house.  The day before, we visited the Graeme Hall Sanctuary, a gorgeous spread of land with a pond of monster carp, monkeys running about, and flamingos and ibis preening in the sun.  It, like so much in Barbados, is locked in a political battle between its owner and the government of Barbados that doesn't want to fund the project, but would rather free up the land to build more condos and expensive properties for no one to live in.  It's a real shame and a tragedy, the place is a thing of beauty.   It provides peace and sanctuary, hence its name.  We can only hope that we do the same for our children.  Provide them with peace and sanctuary when life is crazy, when there is joy to celebrate, when there is love to share, when there is something to overcome.

If you did it, are doing it, if you have made the difference, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. If you think you might do more, try a bit harder, make amends, make it right, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. If you get it, if you see, if you know that your love makes a difference for the rest of that child's life, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. And if you just couldn't step up, didn't do it, you still have time to be one of the greats. Show up for the next Father's Day.



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