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Let Me Introduce This Year’s Children

Yes, I have the same two children as last year; stores here don’t usually take returns or exchanges, after all. But it’s been a year since our last visit to my hometown, and a lot changes in a year, especially when you’re young. I thought it’d be nice to paint you a brief picture, so you don’t have quite so much catching up to do. Plus, I’ve been talking to the kids all about you guys that we’re going to see in Kentucky- about everything we’re going to do, all the fun times and the naps to be had (cross your fingers for me on nap time). It’s only fair to give you guys the same type of introduction before we get there.

And if you’re not in Louisville, Kentucky, then you can still have a little virtual introduction to my ferocious little treasures. Somehow they manage to fill my whole being with joy and gratitude, even though they’re undomesticated terrorists in their spare time.

My sweet Khalil Michael couldn’t even crawl on our last visit, and now at a year and a third (hehe), there’s no stopping him. He is running amok and imitating his sister as much as possible. He can wash his own hands, put the lid on something and take it off, go and try to find his shoes (nearly always MIA). He attempts to jump, although he can’t quite pull it off yet. His most important job in life right now, according to him, is giving the empty garafón (giant water bottle) to the water delivery man. As soon as he hears the truck honk its horn outside, he goes on alert. If you tell him, “Get the garafón,” he starts screaming in urgency, and tears across the floor to get the empty bottle. Then he races from the kitchen, across the living room, to the front door, carrying the bottle that’s almost as big as he is, making his excited yelling noises the whole time. He’s no longer satisfied with just handing over the empty one, either- he wants to help pick up the full bottle and carry it inside. He even makes the loud grunting-with-effort noise as he tries to pick it up. It’s a pretty important job, after all.

washing hands together- Little Brother loves to do what Big Sister does.

This is serious business, people. Somebody has to get the garafón out the door.

This is serious business, people.

I love how when he asks a question he holds his arms out just like I do, granddaughter of a gesticulating, expressive Italian that I am. I love all of his unique invented sign language, like the way he flexes his fingers when he wants to be picked up, like his version of a “come hither” signal. I love the way he blows kisses to me when he realizes I’m about to go to work. I love his tender, prolonged hugs and even his disgusting, gooey kisses, where he opens his mouth wide and slobbers over yours. He is so affectionate when the mood strikes him. The other day, as we were leaving somewhere, he turned and twisted from my grasp to dashed back down the sidewalk to a little girl he’d played with, and he gave her a big fat hug. I also can appreciate his firm boundaries, like that he yells belligerently if I’m trying to love on him when he’s declared that it’s playtime.

I love that he doesn’t wait for story time. He picks up a book and pushes it at you, grunting and insisting until you read it to him. But he doesn’t want you to read it to him the way it says on the page. He wants to open to random pages, point at the things he’d like you to discuss, and go from there. There’s no reading just front to back- reading is multidirectional and the book is finished when he decides there’s something more interesting to explore elsewhere. And in case you didn’t want to lift him up so he can reach the books, he has now learned to push one of our plastic chairs over to the book shelf and climb up onto it by himself. (This same chair-pushing/climbing tactic also means that NOTHING is safe from his tiny hands in our house anymore, unfortunately.)

Even though this book has totally fallen apart, he loves this lone page and “reads” it constantly.

Then there’s little miss Lucia, who is now a big ole FOUR year old. And boy did she get the talking gene from her mama. She has all kinds of great four year old reasoning to entertain, cajole, and madden us. For example, she refuses to believe that she and Khalil were in my belly at different points in time, even though she witnessed my pregnancy. She’s always telling me about how she was pushing Khalil and sharing toys with him in my belly. Shrug. Life is mysterious.

Lately she’s really into figuring out the time in all kinds of funny ways. “All day” is one of her favorite expressions, although I’m not sure she can really grasp it in the same space-time continuum that I’m in. Like when I cook something and she’s displeased about it, she says, “I don’t wanna just eat that ALL DAY!” As if that were the only thing available for consumption the entire day, or week even. The other day, after I told her she needed a nap because it would make her feel better, she told me that no, she really needed to watch a video, because that was going to make her “feel better all day.”Also now she says, “What time is it?” Then you tell her and she asks, “What’s that mean?” She’s working on days of the week, too, although the only one that really counts is sábado. It’s all about ‘how many more days until Mommy stays home from work’. Yep, she’s a Mommy’s girl.

She also obviously has not been exposed to much television. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her videos- her current obsession being “Big Dora” (the teenage-ish version of Dora, where she plays guitar in a band). But she takes creative license with whatever she sees around her, and runs with it. Like she asked one of her tias (aunts) to make a princess dress for her birthday, like the “purple princess.” (I have no idea which one that is or where she saw it, but it’s cool.) She told me one day that she doesn’t want to brush her hair because she saw that princesses just wear their hair “like this,” she says, fluffing out her already curly, tangled hair even more. (Good try, kiddo.)

In her “Purple Princess” dress with her new rocket ship (the only thing she wanted for her birthday, besides a party)

Her conversational skills paint a pretty fascinating picture of the little kid mind at work (fascinating according to me, although I might be biased). Here’s an example conversation with Lucia from a couple months ago:

“Mommy, can I go see Dr. Seuss?” She’s impressed because I’ve just told her that Dr. Seuss wrote the words AND drew and colored all the pictures for the book. She’s noticed that most books have the person who wrote the book and a different person who drew the pictures.

“No, because he’s in heaven, like Paw Paw.” (Yeah, I know- I didn’t really plan to teach her about heaven, it’s just worked out that way.)

“Mommy, where’s heaven?” (Previously she’d asked me, “Mommy, where’s Kevin?” which brought on a ridiculous who’s-on-first kind of accidental routine)

“It’s way, way, way up in the sky, past where the airplanes can go.”

“Is Dr. Seuss dancing in heaven?”

“Maybe so, baby. I’m not sure. If he likes to dance, he’s probably dancing.”

“Can I go to heaven someday?”

“Yes. But not for a long, long, long time. When you’re older than Mommy.” (silent prayer)

“And then I can be with Dr. Seuss?”

“Yes, and Paw Paw, and all the other great people in heaven.”

Finally satisfied, we manage to read approximately 2 pages of Green Eggs and Ham before there are more questions about other important matters. Like, “Why doesn’t he bring the plate of food on the first page of the book?” We’re at that age when the word ‘why’ is constant, and when the commentaries and questions about the book are wordier than the words on the page, even in a big girl book like this. I try to remember, despite my sleepiness, that this part is more important than the words on the page, anyway.

One of my favorite things about both my kids is that they are voracious and unconventional eaters (considering the standard idea that kids don’t like anything interesting or healthy). I love the game Conan invented with Lucia for when she proclaims that she doesn’t want something on her plate. He says something like, “But you don’t want this bite? This one’s chocolate flavor.” Then she starts asking, “What about this bite? What’s this flavor?” And before you know it she’s eaten all of what she supposedly didn’t like today, and might be asking for more. The best part (for me) is that sometimes I make up flavors that aren’t even “exciting” and we still get excited about it. I’m like, “Oh, this is hummus and carrot flavor!” and she’s like, “Mmm, hummus with carrot!” (Bwahahaha, the Mean Mommy wins again.) She told me one day that sometimes she doesn’t eat all her lunch at school because her teacher doesn’t tell her what kind of flavor her food is! I adore four year old logic, when it’s not making me tear my hair out in frustration.

Lucia, below, pretending to eat raw nopal… She is such a silly, outrageous, kind, creative, expressive little monster.

Part of the bonus of raising kids in my adopted country is getting to take these trips back to visit. I can think things like, “Oh my goodness, a year ago, Khalil hadn’t even tried food! And now he won’t eat if he can’t hold the spoon himself.” It’s such a good chance to remember, compare, and reflect. And this has been a good excuse to write a little about these two bright, bright lights in my life.

I’ll leave the re-introduction at that for now. See you soon, Louisville folks!

Tags: bicultural children, family, home, immigration, Kentucky, parenting in a foreign country, raising children in Mexico

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My Kentucky Heart, Sautéed, Not Fried

26 Jun

Kentucky Fried Chicken has ruined my state’s good name. I don’t actively despise KFC when I’m in my hometown; it’s just one of so many fast food joints, a place for mass-produced, cheap, low-quality, low-nutrition eats prepared and served to you by under-paid workers. It is not a place I typically eat (okay, pretty much never), but I understand it’s purpose and I don’t hold it against anyone who eats there. I would not, however, say it is any part of what I want people to know about my great state.

Unfortunately, outside of my state, and especially outside of my country, it’s the only damn thing anybody knows about where I’m from. In Italy, in Chile, and lots of other places in between, people bring up fried chicken like I’m supposed to be pleased and feel recognized. “Ah, como el pollo,” (Oh, like the chicken,) my students say when I tell them I’m from Kentucky. Luckily, the actual restaurant doesn’t even exist down here in Oaxaca, so people just know it as a style of cooking chicken- breaded and fried. That makes it less appalling for me, but it still wounds my Kentucky pride. We have all this amazing culture and incredible nature and wonderful people, but nobody knows about any of that. Instead they’re applauding a stupid fast food chain.

I do my part to educate the public about Kentucky. Down here I take advantage of my job as a teacher to consistently plug facts about Kentucky wherever I can fit them in the curriculum. Like when we read an article about mammoths, I told the students about Mammoth Cave (the world’s largest known cave system, for those of you who don’t know). In the unit about pirates, when we’d discuss movies about pirates, I used to always mention that Johnny Depp is from my state (although he’s officially been cut out of my Kentucky pride spiels, now that I know he’s abusive). I am determined to leave the Oaxacan people with a better impression of my culture than some breaded fried foul.

This semester I taught a particularly sweet group of computer science kids in level one who were always asking questions about me and my life. For the most part students are a bit curious because they don’t get to have conversations with foreigners on a regular basis, so all of us on the English-teaching staff are a bit exotic and exciting. (You guys should see all the girls drooling on my Scottish, red-haired, blue-eyed coworker. Talk about exotic!) This group said they really wanted to hear more about Kentucky, so of course I had to oblige them. I sat down and wrote a list of my favorite things and turned it into a power point, which you can see here. Kentucky Home presentation

Granted, I had to put some things on the list which I don’t really care about or downright dislike, just for the sake of honesty. Despite my personal opinion, my state really is famous for the Kentucky Derby, also known as “the greatest two minutes in sports.” Although I think that horse racing is exploitative to the horses and the underpaid folks who train them, it is a big part of our economy and claim to fame. I also had to mention the 30 minute fireworks show, Thunder Over Louisville, even though I think fireworks are mostly absurd noise and air pollution, not to mention terrifying for some people and animals. I’d much rather have included festivities like KenDucky Derby or that race where servers see how fast they can open a bottle of wine and run with a tray full of wine glasses. But I had to put a limit on the amount of information to inundate the students with, so, you know, some of the more mainstream events won out over my preferences.

For the most part, though, I got to talk about things that I love. That my city, Louisville, is such a close-knit, friendly place. I tried to explain about the miles and miles of beautiful park space- not just a little playground and a bench, but so much green, right inside of a big(gish) city. I got to highlight the good food, the hundreds of restaurants which do not serve fried chicken. I explained about the injera at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant (injera bread is a not so foreign concept here in the land of corn tortillas with everything). I tried not to drool when I mentioned the avocado milkshakes at Vietnam Kitchen. I didn’t even mention the Japanese/Mexican fusion food at Dragon King’s Daughter, or about 15 other of my absolute favorites.

I got to talk about the best part of my city- that it’s full of beautiful immigrants and refugees, constantly adding to our culture. When I looked up the statistics, it said that the foreign-born population accounted for less than 5% of the total, although I am pretty sure that is an underestimate. Even if it’s not, the foreign-born population of Louisville, Kentucky, take up something like 70% of my Kentucky heart, so screw the official stats on this one. In Louisville, teaching English to the grown-up immigrant and refugee community, I learned that being a teacher means constant learning- on my part. I had the grand privilege of teaching professional folks from Mexico and Taiwan; brilliant, wise, multilingual yet illiterate women from Sudan; a father of 10 from the Democratic Republic of Congo; loving and tough mamas from Guatemala; a funny, adorable couple from Cuba, and so many others from so many cultures. And that was just my professional, English-teaching life! Aside from that I worked in restaurants with cooks from Senegal and various Mexican states. In my free time I hung out with generous, smart, nice, world-changing folks from Peru, Guatemala, and so many other places. Even though there is a foreign population in Puerto, being let in to the foreign-born community in Louisville is one of the things that I miss most.

In general, what I miss most is the intimacy of my community there. I sat in my office and cried watching all the outpourings of love in my city when Muhammed Ali died. I miss my family there- the ones I was born with and the ones I’ve chosen since then. I’m coming up on 4 years of living outside of Louisville, and luckily, I find myself feeling nostalgic and homesick less and less often. Especially now that my dad’s gone, the aunt I’m named for is always off on her boating adventures, and some of my other favorite people have moved away. My mind is less and less set on Louisville, because I know that it could never be the same place it was for me before. You can never go back to the past, so even if I went back tomorrow, it would be a readjustment and adaptation process all over again, even though it’s where I was born and raised. But big pieces of my heart still reside there, so creating and sharing my little Kentucky presentation was a good moment of catharsis for my eternally-divided little heart.

And most of all, I did the world some good in showing students that bourbon, annual zombie walks, and a moonbow at Cumberland Falls are all way, way cooler than fried chicken. Take that, impersonal capitalism! My state will rise above Kentucky Friend Chicken! Click on the presentation for lots of pictures!

Tags: exile, home, immigration, Kentucky, living in oaxaca, moving, teaching english

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Castles Made of Tin

23 May

Like driver’s tests and many other formalities, zoning laws don’t seem to exist here. This means that you are S.O.L. if your next door neighbor decides to put a karaoke bar on the third floor of his house (true story, folks- it happened to my mother-in-law). It means you have no recourse if your neighbor is sawing through aluminum all day long. It has all kinds of potential consequences that are really, really ugly.

As with everything in life, though, there’s a bright side, too. What I love about it is that you can build whatever kind of house you damn well please. Okay, well, whatever house you can afford, but nobody’s trying to regulate it. You pay a fee to build on your land, but basically you tell them if you’re building a small house or a big house and pay accordingly. That’s it. Building a house here is the three little pigs in real life, except the materials that each person picks aren’t due to work ethic but rather to economic situation. Thus, we have neighbors with a house made of wooden boards hammered together. We have a neighbor with a mammoth house; it’s three stories, all concrete, fenced-in with concrete, including garage. We have neighbors who seem to have multiple concrete structures and yet still can’t manage (or don’t use?) an inside bathroom. I only know because I sometimes bike past the matriarch in all her nude glory bathing herself in the yard.

I got stoked to write this post because I was watching some neighbors building the other day. It only took about two or three days to get her house livable, not like the months it took us. She put up a tin house with a slanted roof (which is not common at all here- they’re almost all flat roofs). It was so fun to watch her little sisters and other random family members, all over there hammering away at some pieces of aluminum. And that’s that- for now. It’s awesome that you can throw something together pretty quickly when you need somewhere to be. Conan built a quick aluminum structure to have a place to be while our house was being built, and it was a cheap and needed home (that we continued to use as a kitchen for a good while afterwards, too). It’s sweet to see how within-reach something like shelter can be, when in the U.S. building a home is a distant, complicated, super-regulated, long-term affair. But watching this family all help to build this quick structure made it seem as if I could almost build a home for myself, too- not only Conan and all the builders, but little ole me! That feels outrageously cool to me.

our “garage”- the house Conan lived in while ours was being built

Different bits of tin pieced together make for a quick home when you need it

The downside of this kind of housing is that any passing hurricane or serious earthquake will likely destroy it completely. That, and the lack of bathroom regulation, which is a health problem for all of us, are the major rain on my parade. Granted, most people have some kind of decent bathroom situation, which is enough. Maybe it’s an outdoor commode that you have to pour a bucket of water down to make it flush, but it probably goes to a septic tank. The shower might be a curtained-off area outside where you pour water on yourself in lieu of a shower, but it works just dandy in this heat. (Why can’t my neighbor get a curtain at least? Geez!) Those situations are fine, but when there’s not even a septic tank, it’s a problem- for the person living there and for the rest of us and our gardens. Oh, well, at least there’s disinfectant for fruits and vegetables.

Whatever you can get together is home, and if it’s just a temporary throw-together, at least no mortgage shark is out to take it from you. Instead of paying mortgages their whole lives, people work on improving the home that they’ve got. As Conan pointed out the other day, “Rich people are the people who finish building their houses before they need to live in them.” For everyone else, home is a work-in-progress. It’s common to see, for example, one story of a house made of concrete and a second story put together with wood or tin.

Our house continues to be a work-in-progress, too. We have two indoor bathrooms but only two out of eight of our house’s window frames have windows that you could close. (Don’t worry- the others have mosquito netting and bars.) We still need another layer of concrete and a paint job on the outside before the rain can stop seeping in when it’s windy. But our house is big, and made of concrete, and it’s ours, ours, ours. It’s a work in progress that belongs to us, and I love it!

And I love that if you have the money for paint and want to paint your house a vomiting-cosmo-cocktails pink, nobody will say a word about it. Everyone will mind their own business and let your home be your castle, no matter what it’s made of, no matter how it looks. Just like it should be.

Tags: building a house in mexico, home, living in oaxaca

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Excess of Vitamin D (Ode to my Adopted Coast of Oaxaca)

15 May

It’s that time of year again, folks! Spring time on la costa, when I wake up at 3AM with my sheets soaked in sweat and pull myself out of bed just to go take a shower so maybe I can sleep some more. (Granted, this happens less often now that we have electricity.) My hair is a frizzy frazzled mess, thanks to the 85% humidity. The water in my shower is tepid even though we don’t have a hot water source. The baby is battling some sort of fungal diaper rash. I don’t ever actually dry off because I’m soaked in sweat again as soon as I turn off the water. But I love it! I love it! I adore my hot, sweaty, beloved, adopted costa!

I appear to be suffering from GLEE(VD) Syndrome, the opposite of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). My current disorder stands for Gringas Loving Everything due to Excess of Vitamin D. One of the side effects is inventing cheesy acronyms, so beware, folks, if you plan to travel to a tropical climate for an extended amount of time. You, too, might find yourself making up stupid names for things because you’re giddy with the realization that you are living the dream of eternal summertime.

Frizzy, sweaty, and smiling! Yipee!

My mama always said you can only complain about one season. If you’re gonna gripe about the snow, don’t talk bad about the sunshine. If you’re gonna moan about raking the leaves, don’t whine about the raging April showers and storms. Pick one season to complain about, and that’s it. You don’t get to hate everything all year long.

It’s a good policy, and it’s serving me well. When I walk back into my office in the most outrageous heat of the day at 4pm, and I’m dripping sweat and running out the door to go teach, I try to keep myself from bitching by saying something like, “I’m so glad it’s not cold out!” or “Thank goodness for this sunshine!” One of my coworkers has declared that, “This is much better than negative 40 degrees,” and I’ll be adding that to my list of things to say in the 4pm heat. Because if I only get one season to complain about, it’s winter. I loathe and despise the cold. I abhor the way cold weather and lack of sunshine seeps into my bones, all the way into my soul, sucking the joy right out of my very existence. Seriously. Winter is my arch nemesis.

Not that winter exists here in Puerto Escondido. Despite being on the coast, however, there are seasons. They’re just way more subtle than the drastic seasons in Kentucky. Sure, there are the official two seasons- rainy season and dry season. Rainy season is from May to early November, and dry season the other half of the year.

But there’s more to it than that. Like right now, we’re in the April to June ungodly humid season, the Satan-himself-is lightheaded-from-sweat-induced-water-loss season. Granted, it may rain some starting about the first of May, but it won’t actually cool anything down for more than 3 minutes. But I’m not complaining! No, siree. Sweat is good for getting those toxins out of your body, according to the internet. Some people complain they aren’t motivated to exercise when it’s this aggressively stifling in the air, but I figure you might as well exercise because even if you’re just sitting there you’re going to be sweating. It’s a lot like summer in Kentucky, which is my favorite season. This is not Kentucky, though, where I had to carry around a hoody in July because the air conditioning everywhere would nearly freeze me to death. There’s practically no A/C anywhere because it’s too expensive. One less thing to worry about!

After this, from July through the end of September, we reach the more-likely-to-rain-or-have-a-closeby-hurricane season. At that time of year, if there’s a hurricane off in the distance bringing some of its effects in, it’s liable to be cool enough for a cup of hot chocolate. (Yum!) This is when you have the Puerto equivalent of snow days. Classes might be cancelled, and even if they’re not officially cancelled, most parents won’t send their kids because the roads flood, making it too hard to get them there. (I still have to work on “snow days,” unfortunately.) Granted, roads flood temporarily pretty much anytime it rains hard, but they’re extra flooded when it rains for days on end. You try to stay home as much as possible, watching movies, making popcorn and hot chocolate. (What? Did I mention that already?) In the rainy season, it usually just gives us a shower or a storm around the time that I get off work, or a little later, and then it’s over. It’s nice and sunny again the next day- nothing like the days and weeks of gray that can happen in my city.

October and November are pretty uneventful. It’s hot and sunny (yipee) and a bit humid, with some ever-so-slight coolness from time to time. It’s nothing to write home about, but it is nice to not have to think about possible hurricanes once we’re out of the rainy season. March is another transition month, just your average hot and sunny time.

December through February is our pathetic imitation of winter. Except that that makes it sound sad and negative when really it’s f#~!ing fabulous! It reminds me of parties I had, as both a child and an adult, where we’d crank up the heat as high as it could go and wear shorts and tank tops, drinking icy drinks out of fancy straws with little umbrellas, imagining ourselves laying out on the beach. Except now I don’t have to imagine. It’s real! It’s hot and sunny on my birthday, even though I was born in sub-freezing temps. Bwahahaha!

In Puerto, my trusty hoody and some pants are as prepped as I need to be for the cold. On those days I’m stoked because I get to pull out some pair or another of awesome boots, which is the absolute only thing I appreciate about the cold (or slight chilliness, as the case may be.) Lucia is stoked to wear those pajamas that have footies and long sleeves during this season. Khalil is thrilled to not lose half his body weight in sweat every day and night. Conan’s tickled pink at being able to put a sheet over us at night (some nights). I heat up water on the stove for the kids and me to take warm showers, and there are often appropriate moments for more hot chocolate! (Seriously, guys, I’ll bring you some good Oaxacan chocolate if you’re nice to me.) And I’m thrilled that it’s- you guessed it- hot and sunny everyday, even though it’s chilly at night.

Showing off her monkey footy pajamas, which she would totally wear no matter how hot it is if we let her.

What I love most of all, though, is that I’m living the Janis Joplin song: “Summertime… and the livin’s easy…” ALL YEAR ROUND. (If you don’t know this song, you have to listen to understand just how blissful summertime listen)

I mean, year round hot and sunny means, for example, no hoarding every kind of clothing and accessories. No bibs for the baby, because we just take his clothes off to eat. We let him run around nearly nude most of the time. I don’t have to fight with Lucia to get her shoes on if she doesn’t want to- I just throw her sandals in the backpack. I don’t have to constantly be wearing layers and changing my kids’ clothes 3 times a day based on the changes in temperature within every day in Juquila. I don’t have to put on a bunch of clothing just to be able to get up to go make coffee. I don’t have to put 5 layers on a baby just to get up and make coffee. My skin doesn’t dry out from the scalding hot showers my body requires when it’s cold. I don’t feel stuck in the house, because it’s almost always a good time to go out. Besides which, my house doesn’t even have windows that close (though we do have mosquito nets on our windows), so it’s almost like I’m outside all the time anyway. I’m not constantly shoveling food into my mouth to try to store up body fat. No covering the windows in plastic.The constant sun gives me plenty of vitamin D (excess? perhaps) and prevents a lot of my grown-up acne. I ride my bike to and from work most days of the year. I can ride a bike or exercise without feeling like my lung is caving in from the cold biting wind. I can wear skirts and tank tops all the time, even to work. We don’t need a clothes dryer. I don’t live 4 months a year hunched over, scrunched up, shriveled up, trying to somehow magically make more body heat.

I could go on for days and days like this, extolling all the benefits of what others deem infernal life on the coast. Partly because, yes, truly, I love hot and sunny weather. But I also stole another of my mama’s philosophies: if you’re going to be happy, you might as well do it right now. I quit telling myself I’ll be happy once x, y, or z happens. It’s like a dear niece of Conan’s, who when she lived with us never wanted to go out because she was always waiting for the heat to lessen up. She’d say, “I’ll go just as soon as it cools down some,” even though that might be in another 6 hours, or maybe not at all. I cannot wait for the heat to lessen up to be happy, or for anything else to change in my life, or I could just be waiting the rest of my life. So thank goodness for this unrelenting sunshine! And if you really want to hear me complain, just send me back to Juquila’s perpetually cold gray mountain weather.

Tags: adaptation, heat, home, oaxaca, puerto escondido, summertime livin's easy, year-round summer

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Duct Tape & Therapy Techniques To the Rescue

10 Jan

It was all fun and games until water burst forth from the wall. Our household improvements and reorganizing was going swimmingly, brilliantly even, in the few days since we’d been back from Juquila on my winter vacation. I’d gone through three years worth of kid clothes and organized the sales/giveaway clothes, plus reorganized the kid chest of drawers. I did laundry and put away all the clean clothes. I reorganized all the toys. I finished cleaning out my closet (I’d mostly gotten it done over a 3 day weekend but there was one little section left). Conan put up new shelves in the kid room and the kitchen. He did a ton of cleaning. We bought thrilling new gadgets, such as a napkin holder. It was feeling like a sensational vacation.

Behold! A napkin holder! On our new kitchen table!!!!! We’ve moved so far beyond our piece of plywood on saw horses….

My new spice rack!

Okay, so I haven’t gotten to the kid books yet. But the kid toys are organized by type of toy, whether you can tell by the picture or not. It’s a miracle!

New kitchen shelves and a new faucet to replace the leaky one!

We were a cheery and energetic bunch. It really was how I wanted to spend my vacation- at least part of it. For one thing, it felt like claiming my space, making this house even more into a home. Conan and I desperately needed the sanity from more organization. The constant clutter from not having a place for everything was driving us crazy, even though we’re not exactly super organized types.

Khalil was the other motivating factor. He is suddenly not a little baby- he’s a giant and active baby who can’t be contained to a small space in the living room. It was totally unsafe for him anywhere else in the house, which was frustrating for everyone. So once I reorganized and he was suddenly able to go into the kid room and play with all the big toys, it changed his whole outlook. He was ecstatic, and we were pleased as punch to watch him crawl and semi-walk around and play like the 10 month old he is. It’s so satisfying to see the toys getting used at age-appropriate times. For example, Khalil can play with all the shape shifter things and the blocks because they’re all accessible to him now. Lucia can play with her puzzles because they’re properly stored where she has to be supervised to play them so we don’t lose half the pieces. It’s earth-shatteringly wonderful, even if it may not sound like it to you (in which case you must not be the parent of small children- you don’t have an existence based around total family chaos!).

It was my second to last night of vacation, and most of our projects were completed when Conan started drilling to put up the last new kitchen shelf. He dropped the f-bomb, which he doesn’t do nearly as often or as easily as I do. I rushed over to see a little fountain raining down out of the wall. Yikes. “How can I help?” I asked, calm because there’s always something to do in the midst of an emergency. “Hold here,” he said, and I put my fingers over the hole in the wall (only partially effective) while Conan turned off the water.

Once the flooding of our house was safely averted, the black rain cloud of doom came out. I asked Conan what we’d need to do to fix it. “Bust open the concrete wall and change the pipe,” he said. Immediately, tears welled up in my eyes. My doom cloud of worst-case-scenario hovered over me. Panic squeezed my chest. I envisioned the last little bit of my Christmas bonus money, the money we were using on home repairs and some upcoming needed dentistry, going to this disaster instead. I imagined that it would send us into more debt. I lamented that all of this fabulous, life-improving repair and organization we’d done was all for naught, that this instant of miscalculated drilling had ruined everything. Not that I blamed Conan; it was the fault of bad luck, miserly fate, etc. Fault or no, though, it felt like the end of the freaking world.

Because I’ve now had many years of practice with these end-of-the-world moments, and thus far the world has yet to come to an end, I managed to refrain from real crying. Bless my little heart, I was even able to tell myself that yes, it felt like the worst thing ever, but it really wasn’t. It wasn’t even the worst thing this month! Plus it wasn’t even certain that all the horrible consequences that I could imagine would come to fruition from this. Thank you very much, these three decades of having a therapist for a mother is totally paying off. I finally took advantage and continued breathing. The world continued to revolve on its axis, and continues to this very day, believe it or not.

But welcome to Oaxaca, where two different plumbers have stood us up for days on end (and those are the recommended plumbers!). Despite this, thanks to Conan’s craftiness, we’ve had water this whole time. Even that first night, we just let the water spray out into Khalil’s plastic bathtub so we could take showers quickly (always a necessity in my tropical paradise) and then Conan turned the water off again. The next day, Conan knocked out part of the wall. But it wasn’t as much of the wall as I had imagined. Then he rigged up a fix for the pipe until a plumber deigns to visit us. And it’s the dry season, so we’ve got some time before we need to fix our wall. It definitely doesn’t negate the wonders of our other home improvements and the joy that they continue to bring to our whole family.

The original quick fix for drilling into the pipe. Crafty and stylish.

Getting even craftier as the days go by without a reliable plumber. Welcome to Oaxaca!

The duct tape that Conan used to fix the pipe gets the gold star award for most useful thing on the planet, by the way (brought down from Kentucky by my mom- way to go, Mama! Everyone here is jealous of my duct tape). It has not only saved the day in our renovations, but it is also my go-to fix for nearly everything. I’ve used it to cover holes in our window screens, like the hole some stray cat made trying to get at an empty can of tuna. I use it to make these cheap cloth boxes more durable and less likely to be eaten by moths and ants. I use it to put Lucia’s name on her lunchbox and other school stuff. I use it to hold my cell phone together- my oft-dropped, two-year-old, cell phone, the one I used as a flashlight at night for the year and a half we were without electricity. Now when I drop it or a child throws it to the ground, the battery doesn’t come out. And it looks cool (according to me)! We all knew duct tape was useful, but this tape with multicolored designs on it is the bee’s knees, for sure. And now we are using it to tape up the hole in our piping. It’s the most stylish house-flood-prevention ever!

My too-cool-for-school cloth boxes, remade with cardboard and rockin duct tape

Thus, I’m continuing to bask in the glory of an organized and clean house. I feel all smug and satisfied every time I walk in the door, like a cat that’s just presented you with the innards of his recent kill. When I told my students that I spent 5 days of vacation binge cleaning my house and that it was fantastic, they all just kind of looked at me in disbelief. Indeed, 20 year old me would never have believed it possible, either.

I’m exceedingly proud of Conan and myself for getting all this done with two mini-hurricane children under foot. But I’m also still patting myself on the back about not having a major breakdown over this plumbing disaster. It was like my little rational mind made a nice cup of chamomile tea for my little emotional mind in the midst of disappointment and panic, and it was a lovely little tear-free moment for everyone. I wouldn’t exactly call it wisdom, but it’s close enough for me. So thanks again, Mama, for all these years of free therapy, and the duct tape to boot.

Tags: building a house in mexico, duct tape rules, home, home improvements, living in oaxaca, puerto escondido

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From the Weeds Up… Building a House with Sand and Rocks and Magic

4 May

the big empty box

Don’t tell Conan, but I was less than thrilled with our house when I returned from my stint in the U.S. It was a big empty box- an extremely budget-busting empty box- and I was terrified that we’d never manage to fix it up and furnish it with the little bit of money we had left. Two of the rooms had dirt floors. There were lots of window slots and doorways but zero doors or windows. No separations between rooms, no water tank, no nothing. Did I mention we were already way over budget, and neither of us had a job? Nobody could tell me how long it would take before it was livable, either.

It took a month just to figure out who could work on the house within our budget and still do a good job. We hit the jackpot when Conan’s adult niece Lili agreed to come along with her partner Uriel, a master constructor (albañil). Uriel worked hard on our house for much less than what he deserved to be paid, and Lili helped with the cooking and watching Lucia to boot (especially putting her down for naps! She is our resident hammock expert). We never could’ve done this without them. On top of that, they were great company. Thank the universe for family!

Uriel stoking the fire so our black beans cook. Our albanil, our sobrino, our friend.

Uriel stoking the fire so our black beans cook. Our albañil, our sobrino, our friend.

Lili and Uriel on our roof. Lucia adores Uriel, who she calls “OO-wa” since she can’t pronounce Uriel.

Lili, hanging out outside while we wait for beans to cook

Lili and Nery, hanging out outside while we wait for beans to cook

Again thankful for family, we spent the first couple of weeks in Puerto at Conan’s Aunt Artemia’s house, waiting for our house to be livable. We slept in a tent on their patio, folding up the blankets and taking down the tent every morning, only to rush and put it all back up again while Lucia was in the middle of a meltdown because we didn’t get back to the house on the other side of town until it was past her bedtime already again. Plus I was doing all of this tent-arranging and meltdown-calming solo because Conan was working from sunup to sundown at least, trying to make the house livable as soon as possible.

But the allure and romance of having one’s own bathroom is powerful, and “livable” can be redefined at any time. By the time we got our very own toilet, sink, shower head, and even tile floor for the bathroom, I was ready to be in our house, regardless of the rest. I was thrilled at the prospect of sleeping in a tent that I wouldn’t have to take down and put up every day. My good friend Luz, who’s also family by marriage, borrowed a tent from her sister for months on end so that Lili and Uriel had their own tent, too. Lili and Uriel left the crappy room they were renting and moved in to our construction site/future house with us. The night we all first stayed there was Christmas Eve. We ran out of gas for the stove but Lili grilled meat over a fire pit. Our friend Nery came over with beers, too; it was an appropriate and fortuitous start to living in our own place, both positive and representative of the tenacity and flexibility that would continue to be required of us.

our bathroom and bathroom floor, with the hanging shower thing that came later

When we did have gas for the stove, the kitchen consisted of some plywood on top of horses that we used as a table, and a two-burner stove. It was in the tin shed. That was the only part of the house that we could lock up, since our big box still didn’t have a door or window protections. We locked it every night and three different times I was accidentally locked out from my wake-up necessity of coffee. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was when, months later, we finally got to move the kitchen to inside the house and there was no chance of being separated from my morning life serum.

When we first moved in, there were two rooms with rough concrete floors and two rooms with dirt floors. There was a big hole in the floor where originally Conan had thought he might put a staircase connecting the bottom floor (the “in-law quarters” which will eventually be two more rooms) to the kitchen. The yard was all dirt, hilly and uneven, with big piles of sand and rocks being used for construction. There were tools and raw materials pretty much everywhere. All of this made it nearly impossible for Lucia to play without someone being on top of her at all times- which also made getting anything else accomplished nearly impossible. It was boring and maddening a lot of the time, and it required me to totally (temporarily) redefine success. Every day that we managed to cook our meals and do the dishes and work on the house and go out to buy tortillas and ice for the cooler and run any other necessary errands and prevent Lucia from any major accidents was a hugely successful day.

And progress was made. Suddenly the cousin that was making our window protections came over and installed them! Since we had waited for them, the fact that most of them reminded us of prison bars was easy to overlook. Like with so many other things, I learned to think, ‘we’ll fix it someday.’ Conan and Uriel painted the two nice ones that Conan had gotten a deal on, and we got those two up, too. Just in time for us to visit Juquila for New Year’s, the cousin who made our doors (without charging us any labor cost) came over and installed those. The house started to look like it was owned by someone and wasn’t just being squatted by bilingual hippies.

our jailhouse window bars

Big magic happened on my birthday. Conan borrowed Arturo’s truck and brought down mattresses that fit in our tents! He brought down a bunch of Lucia’s toys, a couple more chairs (we had 2 or 3 before and put more plywood on horses to make a bench), more dishes, more clothes and shoes, a dresser, the changing table for Lucia (oh what a luxury to change her somewhere besides the floor), and several other random yet important odds and ends (like the hanging thing for the shower so our soap and shampoo aren’t on the floor). He brought down a big gas tank so we wouldn’t run out of gas every two weeks. And Paulina (my mother-in-law) gave me the aloe plant I had wanted and needed so sorely in the heat (and sunburn) of Puerto. It might not sound exciting, but it was like camping for a month or so and suddenly having civilization brought to you. Lucia’s utter joy at throwing herself backward on the bed and landing on something soft was a birthday present all alone, never mind all the other benefits from the things Conan brought down from Juquila.

Slowly but surely things kept on improving. We all (except Lucia) stayed up till midnight putting down the first floor. The guys had laid the concrete during the day, with the help of an extra hired hand, dumping five gallon buckets of sand and gravel into a big machine to mix with the cement to make the concrete. Then they carried buckets of concrete from outside to the appropriate spot on the floor. Then Conan and Uriel smoothed the concrete out, which is a lot of slow and tedious work. They used a 2by4 and this thing that looks like an iron, and by sundown they were not even close to finished. Since you might recall that we don’t have electricity, and timing is of the essence in this whole concrete business, there we found ourselves, Lili and I, shining lamps on Uriel’s and Conan’s work for hours on end. Our rechargeable lamps both went dead and we shined our cellphones on the floor until they finally finished. The next day they spent the day, still hunched over, drawing lines on the floor to make it prettier and less slippery. I had never seen the perseverance needed to make something so seemingly simple as a floor. We wrote Lucia’s name in it, too, and it sunk in a little more that when you build from the weeds up, it’s really all yours.

the floor! smooth concrete with pretty lines on it (not a great picture, mind you)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=646012868789097&l=0d4540635d

The other floor, months later, was an even later late-night project. Because our entrance opens to that floor, Conan and Uriel and Nery (bless his heart for coming to help us after he got off work) did it at night so we wouldn’t need to walk on it while it was wet. But by then our good friend Epig (who you may recall from my post about his amazing burgers https://exiletomexico.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/hamburguesas-epic/) had lent us his small generator, so they worked by the light of Thomas Edison’s amazing invention. I went to bed so I could be useful the next day but Lili told me they were up till 4 in the morning finishing it. I made the coffee for them the next morning at 8 so they could start the back-breaking job of hunching over and drawing lines on it.

Once the second floor was in we moved the kitchen to inside the house. It was exciting, but still frustrating because we had to schlepp the dishes from the house to the lavadero (concrete washing tub/board) out in the yard and back up to the house. About a month later I finally got a kitchen sink! Not even my mother-in-law has an inside sink and a fancy faucet like mine! Beyond the convenience of not running dishes back and forth, beyond the convenience of a completely indoors kitchen (not super common around here), it is a bigger convenience because we don’t have to put on Lucia’s shoes and sunblock etc. so we can go outside to wash dishes. I had no idea I would someday appreciate the ability to wash dishes, but here I am.

the now finished kitchen sink!!!!

And more and more happened as the weeks passed. There were lots of boring things that had to happen, like adding a layer of concrete to the walls to make sure they don’t leak in the rainy season, smoothing out the windows so we can put in screens (we have half of the screens in now; the other half is still in the works). Things that before sounded boring became exciting, like putting up curtains. Uriel made us curtain rods and Conan’s Aunt Artemia took me out thriftstore shopping. Some of our curtains are repurposed sheets, but they do the job just fine. And thanks to Nery, we have a big, beautiful bed with mosquito netting to tuck us in at night. Lucia has her own bed, too, and some nights she even sleeps in it. Paulina paid to do the second bathroom, and Uriel put a moon and stars on the ceiling for Lucia. We’ve got mint, oregano, epazote, watermelon, tomato, cantaloupe and chiles. We’ve got more furniture. Our magnets are on the busted refrigerator we use as a giant cooler. A piece my Nonna embroidered hangs on my wall, reminding us to have a good day, everyday. Everyday, the house becomes more ours.

a key holder my Nonna gave my dad and mom long ago

our “fridge” and magnets from my niece kayla and my mom

a gift from my Aunt Julia, made by my Nonna

our bed, a wedding gift from Nery (Conan’s b.f.f.)

Lucia’s bed

the moon and stars in Lucia’s bathroom

the new bathroom

There are still plenty of other things that we want to do in the future. The porch is still at half mast. The “in-law quarters” downstairs is going to remain an open box for the foreseeable future. Eventually we’ll replace the bathroom curtain with a real door. We can’t do it all now, but what we have now is enough. Now, I am grateful that Conan had the foresight to build us a big budget-busting box, to change our original plans for something bigger and better, for something we can grown into over time. Like the rest of life, our house is a constant work-in-progress, a labor of love.

This time last year, when we first concocted this crazy scheme to build a house, when we were about to lose our minds from living in Juquila, where I am sitting now was a big patch of overgrown weeds and trash and stray-dog poop and uneven dirt. To make this house possible, I went and worked a restaurant job in Kentucky and my parents and stepparents rearranged their lives to take us in and to watch Lucia while I worked. To make this house possible, Conan lived in the tin shack he built, day in and day out, even when it rained for two days and our land flooded, even when there was no running water, even when it was 100 degrees (most of the time), even when he was all by himself making sure the materials weren’t stolen. He had to orchestrate everything: find the albanil, the plumber, the electrician (because someday we will have electricity), buy all of the materials, oversee the work, and a million other details. It’s been anything but easy, but it’s been possible thanks to help from our families.

And all of our sacrifices are part of what makes this house our home. It is what will make this house a legacy for Lucia and any future brothers or sisters she may have. It is what will make great stories for her when she’s in the mood to complain. It is the way to learn that you can’t take kitchen sinks and flush toilets and concrete floors for granted. Most people around here who have their own house have similar stories, only many are even slower than ours. It took Paulina some 20 years to get her house into the shape it’s in now, and she still has her kitchen on the list for the future. Some people are not even able to make slow progress on their houses. Although of course, some people have bigger and better houses than we do, too. But this one is all ours. We dreamt it when you needed a machete just to walk the parameters of the land, when it seemed totally implausible. And in all the moments when it was a struggle just to wake up and put water on for coffee, it was a struggle for our very own house, for the first time ever. Even when I felt disappointed that the house we dreamt of was just a giant empty box, it was our giant empty box.

So we’ll keep on developing our house and our family, day by day, rethinking our expectations, redefining success. We’ll keep learning to appreciate what we have when we have it. We’ll try not to pine too hard for what we don’t have. And we’ll give you the best Kentucky/Mexican hospitality there is whenever you come to visit.

May your home be as marvelously, royally yours as ours is, from the weeds up.

our dirt floors (Lili and Lucia pictured)

our dirt floor before laying the concrete (Lili and Lucia pictured)

under construction… our house and the in-law quarters below

Conan’s house- the tin shack he lived in for months/ our kitchen for a while

our land, getting the weeds out

Tags: building a house in mexico, home, oaxaca

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Building My Own Yellow Brick Road

14 Apr

“Envy has some pretty major flaws,” I thought when folks expressed that they’d love to be in my shoes. I was pretty sure that none of my friends would kill to be in my dusty, worn-out Chucks, scrubbing their family’s clothes on a washing board with a scrub brush, constantly trying to sweep the sand and dirt and dust out of their sleeping and living area, battling the onslaught of mosquitos at dusk so intense it sounds like an oncoming freight train, spending like 3 hours just to make coffee and breakfast in the morning because only 1 burner on the crappy camping-style stove works at a time. Although if you are, indeed, dying for that authentic Mexican* experience, by all means, come on down to my house.

my lavadero (washing board) – with my bike in the background!

In fairness, I think my Facebook friends and family must’ve seen one of our pictures from the beach (the few times we’ve gone to the beach) and mistaken our life here in Puerto Escondido for the life of some of the gringo bloggers I read before moving down here, the people writing (and living) stuff like it’s so great to live in Mexico because we can afford all the domestic help we want for practically nothing. Or maybe they imagine us as semi-retired snowbirds, drinking some cafe con leche by the beach in the morning, spending the suffocating afternoon hours in the pool or the air conditioned house, and then… um… what else would we be doing? Lounging around? Biding our time till we go out to dinner with the other ex-pat friends? Getting our nails done? …Have you guys met me?

But the truth about my life here lies somewhere between these lines, neither in the depths of abject poverty nor in the blissful ignorance of material wealth. I could feed you all kinds of anecdotes to wash away any twinges of jealousy, tell you all the gory details about things we’ve had to do or things we’ve had to do without in this journey of moving and building a house, but really I want to tell you about all the things that make me head-over-heels happy with my little space in the universe. Today I am gonna revel in the confidence of knowing that I am exactly where I need to be.

So lemme tell you that yes, it is sunny and hot most of the time (while you’re freezing your butts off, dear gringo compatriots), and then even after that it’s still hot and mostly sunny with a bit of rain or a couple hours of coolness. This means I can wear skirts and tank tops most any day of the year, which already practically proves I was meant for this place.

And lemme tell you that I, the walking-talking PSA for seatbelts, have discovered that it’s exhilarating to ride in the back of a pickup truck, with the wind blowing my hair everywhere (and my skirt, too, a la Marilyn Monroe if I’m not careful), seeing all the scenery up-close-and-personal, grabbing leaves off of trees in a contest with 7 year old Emmanuel. (Yes, seatbelts save lives still. They are also mostly not an option here, so you might as well enjoy it.)

Lili -pictured with Uriel- demonstrating how I feel riding in the truck

And lemme tell you that my sense of accomplishment is off the charts when I arrive somewhere on my bicycle, without hitting any sheep or goats, or being bit by disgruntled dogs, or flipping over on any of the plethora of speed bumps that I may or may not have seen first, or having been discouraged by the sand and dirt and rocks that is my road. I feel like me when I get home from the supermarket (“Me hunter/gatherer,” I grunt at Conan), my thigh muscles pounding from the uphill first half of the ride with umpteen pounds on my back, my heart racing and my smile plastered on crooked from the downhill second half of the ride, bathed in equal parts sweat and triumph.

And lemme tell you how I smirk at the Julia of four months ago who couldn’t get to and from her own house by herself, not even by taxi, much less any other way. Because the Julia of today goes all over town by micro (bus) and colectivo (shared taxi, 3 people in back and 2 in the front seat), by bike, by foot, or haggling with taxi drivers trying to charge me the tourist price. This right-at-home-here-thank-you-very-much Julia can tenderly make fun of the anxious woman who thought Puerto was so big and complicated, when it’s really so much smaller than my small hometown city of Louisville, Kentucky.

And lemme tell you how I marvel at subtle cultural things that contrast so sharply with Juquila, things someone who hasn’t lived in a town that’s like an emotional and intellectual coffin would surely take for granted. For instance, many people rest on Sundays. You have to go farther away to get tortillas because even the women that normally make and sell them give themselves a little break. Brilliant! People often walk down the street together as a family; it’s not just women and children doing their thing and men doing their own thing. Miraculous! Friends and family randomly drop in on each other for visits on a regular basis. Amazing! Strangers mostly refrain from unabashedly gawking at you and asking pertinent personal questions about you, addressing questions about you to persons whom are not you. This is madness, I tell you! Here in Puerto, there are universities and poetic graffiti and playgrounds and a million other things that add meaning and spark to life, and every time I notice all these beautiful details it adds to my sense of belonging here.

And lemme tell you how I feel tsunami sized moments of joy when I stand outside on our (still-in-the-works) porch and look at the incredible amount of stars in the universe that I can see right outside my door, when Lucia says “home” as we’re coming up the path to our house, when I can hear the giant waves from the comfort of my bed (even though we’re relatively far from the ocean), when Conan and Lucia walk around our yard calling out to all the lizards to come out and play, when I eat a hot pepper or a watermelon from our magical garden (that sprang up from spitting seeds without any work on our part), when I’ve got fresh mango or papaya or pineapple juice dripping down my chin, when I spend 100 pesos at the market and come home with an overflowing bag of vegetables, when Lucia makes a b-line for the ocean and screams giddily as she is nearly carried off by a wave, tethered to the land only by my arm. In all of these moments and many more, I feel sure and secure in our decisions to come live here, to raise our family here. (So secure, in fact, that I won’t even edit my run-on sentences! Take that, perfectionism! Ka-zam! Right in the kisser!)

the first ripe tomatoes from our magic garden

And lemme tell you, sometimes my battle with the ants in my kitchen feels like it could devour me, sometimes the lack of electricity makes me bleak and weary inside, sometimes I miss people and past routines so much that I stumble, unsure of my path. Some days I want to turn back. But the real problem with envy, even envy over your own past, is that it distracts you from this adventure here and now, from forging ahead on your path, rugged and unpaved as it may be. And lemme tell you, some things and some days are horrendously miserable, and some moments are astoundingly fabulous, and then there’s everything in between. In the end, it’s just like your life, except it’s mine. So don’t be jealous, ‘cause my Chucks wouldn’t fit you anyway, and you’ll get your sunshine when it’s your time.

*I don’t mean this is the experience of all Mexicans in all of Mexico, by any stretch. Mexico is a vast and diverse country. I mean that it is a singular experience taking place in Mexico and that it is not like a tourist’s experience in Mexico.

an iguana visiting our house… Conan using the banana to show to-scale size of iguana, not to feed the beast ; )

beautifully melodramatic poetry on the street

more graffiti makes me happy

my chile tusta from the garden

the beginnings of our porch

the view from Arturo’s truck one day

holding on tight as Lucia prepares to throw herself into another wave

a float from the carnival celebration- another reason Puerto’s great

Tags: adaptation, home, immigration, joy

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Home is where the peanut butter is… or where the queso is…. or wherever the hell I left the apple core!

2 Jun

looking out over juquila

I read somewhere once that when you are bilingual enough, you actually become “nilingue,” an invented word meaning you don’t speak anything because you’re so back-and-forth and mixed-up between the two. That’s a little how I feel about home now- that no place is really home now, because part of me constantly is missing other parts of me. It’s like someone took an apple-slicer to my heart and it can never be made whole again. Which isn’t all bad (don’t tell me to be positive, Conan, just keep reading!), but it can be painful and confusing to say the least.
Like now. It’s official. I’m going home. Kinda sorta. I’m going to one of my homes. To my hometown, anyway. To live for a very short time, or to visit for a very long time. I’m going with my kid but not with my partner. For three months! I’m ecstatic and anxious and guilty and joyful, among other things.
I’m incredibly excited to see my family, of course. My parents will get to spend some time with their littlest grandbaby, and with me. Lucia and I will finally see family members we haven’t seen since she was a few weeks old.
I’m stoked to see my friends, especially after all these months of more or less zero social engagements. There’s lots of catching up and reconnecting to be done; for instance, my best friend has twins that I have yet to meet. I’m dreaming about riding my old bicycle. I’m even vaguely excited about driving a car again. I’m dying to see the new pedestrian bridge, to look out over my river, to show Lucia my favorite parks and places to walk. I’m pleased she’ll be using a car seat and she’ll be overjoyed to ride in a shopping cart again.
I can’t wait to peruse the dozens and dozens of cheeses in Valu Market (here there are only two kinds of cheese). I’m longing for a farmer’s market and all its “obscure” vegetables like eggplant or winter squash (here you can buy local, but with much less variety in veggies). My belly does cartwheels just thinking about the Ethiopian restaurant, or the avocado milkshake at Vietnam Kitchen, or the pesto pizza and beer cheese from Richo’s. And speaking of Richo’s and their astounding selection of beer, there are only 3 types of beer in my town, and I haven’t had a beer with my best friend in two years now, thanks to one or the other of us being pregnant or out of town. And I’m drooling over the mere idea of ginger and bourbon at The Back Door.
I mostly haven’t let myself think about these things, or lots of other things, for many months now. Even as I write about it, my excitement is tinged with bitterness and anger about leaving my partner behind. Part of me feels like I’m betraying the solidarity we established in moving to Mexico together when my country kicked him out. He doesn’t feel like that, but I do. I hate that our daughter won’t see her Papi for a quarter of a year, when she’s only been alive a year herself. I hate that I won’t see him for so long. I hate that I will have to go visit some of his friends, without him. I hate that we can’t share the joy that I’m going to feel for reconnecting with my town and my “people,” which is also his, after 10 years living there.
I’m going to miss some things about here, too. For those of you who have listened to me complain and be miserable and cry and giggle hysterically about being here, thank you for listening. But now that I’ve spent 10 months adapting and trying to appreciate everything I could possibly appreciate, I’ve gotten kind of comfortable here. I mean, Lucia and I say hi to people on our errands now. We chat with the folks at our favorite produce stand. There are many people I can smile warmly at and have pleasant small talk with. I know where to go for most things I need, even though there are no street names, even though people tell you how to get somewhere based on the name of the person who lives or has a business nearby. There are folks I play volleyball with (when it’s not raining) on the occasions I can get out of the house without Lucia. Our next door neighbor started a bar with two pool tables, so Conan and I have a quick and easy date spot. It’s gone from miserable to pleasantly comfortable, finally, finally. Now that I’m leaving for a while.
Is this town the best place on earth for me? No. I’m still dying to move to Puerto Escondido, and to visit Louisville. But finally I’m comfortable enough that I’m going to be in culture shock when I get back “home”. I’m going to miss the random horses and donkeys and chickens and (unleashed) dogs walking down the street. I’ll miss the smell of just-made handmade tortillas brought to my doorstep, the taste of café de olla with cinnamon. I’ll miss the lady that sells the best toasted pumpkin seeds. I’ll miss how every corner fruit and veggie stand has cilantro and epazote. I’ll miss the all the medicinal and edible herbs and flowers that are everywhere, in people’s makeshift potted gardens, or growing up amongst the weeds. I’ll miss being able to walk to all my errands. I’ll miss seeing all the women with baskets on their heads selling bread and other goodies. I’ll miss other, harder-to-define sights and sounds and feelings.
I’m going to be in withdrawal from the lovely folks in my family circle here, too. Conan and I have gotten closer in many ways since we moved here, seeing new sides of each other, learning how to have a decent fight with each other, having to depend more on each other. He has become an excellent father for Lucia and a perfectly imperfect partner for me. He will be the biggest part of my case of Mexico withdrawal, although luckily not the only part.
While I might not have a social life here, the good company in my household, and their support and laughter makes up for a lot. We live with several people, including his cousins Liliana and Noe. Plus Conan’s Aunt Meya stops in once or twice a day, and Arturo, Lucia’s Abuelo (grandfather) is here for a few days a month when he’s not working. All of these people adore Lucia and help a lot in taking care of her. They also make up most of my social support and fun. Even Aunt Meya’s coming by to “scold” us for something or the other on her way to run an errand has become a fun family joke. Fourteen year old Noe’s rapport with Conan, who constantly makes fun of him in a sweet, teasing way, is a guaranteed giggle for everyone pretty much daily. Liliana is a staple in my life, with her fantastically shameless pot belly (“Let your body take whatever form it wants!” is her now famous motto that we all use when we want to convince someone to eat more or to eat something “bad for you”). She’s got a knack for uncontrollable laughter that can be contagious for all of us.
And of course there’s Paulina, my baby’s Abuela (grandmother), who I think is the person who gave Lucia her love of dancing. Paulina, with her feminism that feels like a breath of fresh air in a burning jungle around here, is always nice to be around. We have a blast laughing about her extremist tactics for saving money, too. “Mejor dame el efectivo- Just give me the cash instead,” is one of her famous lines now- telling us she wants cash instead of a Christmas present, so she can save instead of us spending. Her other famous line is, “Esta guardado- it’s stored away” which is what happens when she finally does spend some money to buy something. Like when we first got here and Conan invested in some new frying pans because the ones she had were scraped-up, banged-up cancer-causing beasts. He brings home the new ones and she scolds him for buying them when she’s got 3 brand new ones. “Well where are they?” Conan asks. “They’re stored away,” she says, which is what she’ll repeat about a billion other things. She’s got clothes and shoes that people have given her that she’s had for years and never worn because she’s saving it for a special occasion. You can imagine how much we poke fun at her for all this. And all this family here pokes fun back at me, and takes care of me, and nourishes me. And I’m really going to miss them.
I am an expert at missing people, at getting attached to and nostalgic for people and places and food. I’ve lived and travelled in what seems like a boatload of places now, leaving pieces of my heart here and there, taking away what generous souls give to me- salsa recipes and Cork (southern Irish) slang and a thirst for terere, Paraguay-style yerba mate, for example, not to mention some outrageous stories. My life is much richer and more colorful thanks to some wonderful people and places, and truly it is a great privilege to miss them.
My past experience also means I’ve done this tricky readjustment thing several times now, so it’s about time I shaped up and quit being so torn up about it. Yes, this time is unique and different in some ways, but at the end of the day, no matter where I am, I am leaving behind people that I love. No matter where I am, it’s only partially “home.” This means that I have an exceptional opportunity to enjoy the best things from these multiple worlds. I hope it also means that Lucia will transition between her worlds with more grace and flexibility than what I have, that she’ll teach and inspire me to be better. So be patient with me, dear friends and family. I’ll be trying to enjoy what I’ve got and where I am while the moment lasts, to let go of the melancholy and appreciate that I am lucky enough to have multiple homes, to know so many fabulous people in multiple places. If the price for all of it is having a heart cut up into apple slices, then smear on some peanut butter and pass the queso, and I’ll enjoy it both ways.