Tag Archives: parenting in a foreign country

My First Quince Años

13 Dec

I had always thought I might barf from disgust if I went to a quince años, but this one was unavoidable. A quince años is a birthday party for a fifteen year old girl, and it’s a really, really huge deal. It’s sort of like an old fashioned “coming out” party- you know, coming out into society, being presented to the world as marriage material- mixed with being princess for a day, mixed with enough ceremony to be its own pagan ritual almost. It’s long, it’s intense, and parts of it are precisely the melodramatic patriarchal moments I envisioned. But I not only refrained from throwing up, parts of it also made me tear up (What can I say? I’m sensitive. Don’t take me to the movies.)

On one hand, I emphatically and voraciously love the idea of celebrating a girl’s coming into womanhood, and a boy’s coming into manhood, for that matter. It’s a crucial, trying, and beautiful part of our lives and we need family and the rest of our close community to stand by us, to teach us, to bring us into the fold. It’s something that’s seriously lacking about US culture (and many other cultures these days). So I love this idea of officially saying goodbye to childhood and it being this giant celebration.

On the other hand, I hate the idea of presenting a girl as marriage material, as if she were a thing being put on offer. Not that it’s exactly saying, “cool, go get married tomorrow,” and definitely not, “you’re ready for sex now” (this is a Catholic country, after all). But that is where it comes from.

According to Wikipedia (not the best source in the world, but I was curious what the interwebs had to say about it), “Quinceañeras originated from Aztec culture around 500 BC. At age fifteen boys became warriors and girls were viewed as mothers of future warriors, marking the age in which a girl became a woman.” While we don’t have Aztec warriors running around, it’s not at all uncommon for teenage girls to become mothers, or to “get married” in the unofficial way of going to live with their boyfriend. Here, if you run off to live at your boyfriends house (called robbing you, which also makes me want to vomit), you’re as good as married as far as society sees it. I certainly don’t think it’s morally wrong or any of that crap. The “problem” of teen pregnancy, for me, is not that you’re a teen who’s sexually active, or even that you’re not “grown up enough” to be a mother (who is?). For me the only problem is that it’s likely to drastically limit your options and your independence and mobility in life, and you are potentially more likely to get trapped in an abusive or otherwise awful relationship.  Becoming a mom in your 20s or 30s has a similar effect, you’ve just had a little more time to maybe get your act (and finances) together. But enough of that diatribe.

Wikipedia goes on to say that with the changes over time, the quinceañera is now a party for girls who “are honored for having maintained their virginity up to this point in their lives.” Ick. It’s 2015 and we’re still all about girls’ virginity? Enough said- you can see why I was hesitant about this whole quinceaños thing.

Down here, I think it’s also acknowledged that it’s the biggest celebration for them that they’ll ever get in their lives. Girls dream about it the way that some girls dream about their weddings. In a way, it’s cooler than a wedding, because it’s just about you. You’re not waiting around for Prince Charming or Mr. Perfect or whomever for your big day. Lots of girls know they might not get a big wedding (or any wedding at all, since when you move in with someone people say that you’re married), so if your family has enough money to give you a quince años party, this is as good as it gets.

Which brings me to my other drama with it: Part of me hates the idea that this is your crowing moment in life. I mean, if somebody told me that life at 15 was as good as it was going to get, I would have been fairly likely to go ahead and slit my wrists. Thank goodness, I wasn’t buying that bill of goods, and my life is leaps and bounds more enjoyable now than when I was 15.

Regardless, this type of celebration is definitely not anything anyone could have talked me into at 15. No, siree. I would have preferred more of a walking-over-hot-coals / vision-quest (preferably with drugs) / let’s-just-sit-around-and-drink-wine-with-my-womenfolk (and plot to change the world while laughing hysterically) kind of coming of age when I was 15 years old. You couldn’t have paid me to act out my goodbye to dolls and get lifted into the air numerous times by 8 teenage boys.

Not everybody gets a quinceaños, even if they haven’t shacked up with someone by then. It’s too outrageously expensive for many folks. But let me tell you about how this one went before I get distracted with more social commentary.

First, everyone got fed: barbacoa, which is like slow-cooked meat in a sauce that’s nothing like barbeque. Some waiting around, and then the elaborate, hours-long ceremony begins. There’s a crowning ceremony that the grandmothers do where they put a tiara on her. There’s a lot of dancing with the special boys called chambelanes. I especially liked one dance where they each bow and give her a rose, she bows and graciously accepts before tossing it aside carelessly for another boys’ rose. There’s a changing of the shoes where her cousin takes off her Chuck Taylors and puts some high heels on her. (I also loved that she wore this crazy princess dress with some Converse for most of the night.) There’s a weird doll dance where they give her her last doll. There was a thing with her dancing in front of a mirror. There were fireworks and confetti galore. A waltz with different family members, similar to the wedding waltz. I loved that at the end, she came back in a mini-skirt and did some fun dancing with one of the boys. And I loved the cake at the end, because her mama makes the best cakes.

15 dance

a princess in all respects

15 dolls

part of the doll ceremony

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ceremonial dance with her chambelanes, the boys who dance with her

 

And I really did almost cry a couple of times. It was sweet and touching to see this lovely girls’ parents publicly acknowledge that their baby isn’t a little girl anymore, even though she’ll always be their baby. The father of the non-bride shed a couple tears during his speech. The quinceañera balled on her mama’s shoulder during their dance. And in this case especially, I know just how much her fabulous mama worked to give this to her daughter. She stayed up all night making the fifteen cakes. She made ALL of the recuerdos by hand- fake flower arrangements made out of mostly recycled material, dolls with green dresses like the one her daughter was wearing, the dolls encased in glass (did I mention the parents are glass makers?). I can’t imagine all the lost sleep and the debt creation that went into this party.

15 mesa

Handmade table decorations that people take home as souvenirs

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Fifteen cakes, made by her mama the night before (the best 3 leches cakes ever)

No matter what I would have wanted or not wanted,  I think it was worth it for everyone concerned. Even though the fifteen year old is still a fifteen year old, and had an angsty, pained, and/or self-conscious look on her face half the time- that’s par for the course when you’re 15, even when you’re getting something you desperately wanted. You guys know I’m already planning Lucia’s alternate version to welcome her to womanhood when the time comes. I’m crossing my fingers she won’t want princess dresses and dances with dolls, but no matter what I’ll shed the same bittersweet tears as these parents.

15 my nena

Me and my future 15 year old, all dressed up

 

 

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Just Keep Breathing

25 Jan

The year that I was pregnant with Lucia- my first pregnancy- two children I knew died in completely separate incidents. First, a friend and coworker’s only child, a ten year old girl who was charismatic, smart and super caring, died in a car accident. Then my best friend’s second child, a beautiful baby boy, died of SIDS. They were different kinds of deaths, but what they had in common most in my mind was the suddenness, and the total injustice. Their parents in both cases were doing everything right. Ruby, the little girl, was wearing her seatbelt, in a car with both her parents, in the back seat. Neither her father’s caution in driving nor her seatbelt saved her. Likewise, Charlie’s parents could practically be poster children for doing all the things we know reduce the risk of SIDS- putting your baby to sleep on their back and all those other tips that I don’t even remember, but that they always did. And it didn’t matter. He still died, suddenly and unexplainably. Unfairly.

I got pregnant for the second time over the summer, and a month or two later another baby I knew died. (Is me being pregnant causing children’s deaths? Jeez, there’s some negative thinking….) It was the son of a really nice lady who, with her three sons, was renting a room from my mother-in-law. The lady had become a good friend of Paulina’s, often sharing meals and conversation as well as space. We had gone to visit and gotten to know her and her kids as well, including Chuy, her adorable, totally easy-going baby. He was sick part of the time we were visiting, with some kind of cold-like illness. Then he was sick off and on for a while. His mother took him to various doctors, and they gave him various medicines, and he seemed to get better, and then suddenly he was really, super sick and in the hospital. And they couldn’t help him by then.

Part of me can’t help but wonder if his death could have been prevented with better medical care. Certainly, Chuy’s mother did everything she could and used every resource and suggestion she had available. I absolutely don’t think it was her fault in any way, shape, or form, and I hope she doesn’t think that either, even in her darkest moments. Babies die in the U.S., too, despite some of the best medical advances out there. But how can you not question yourself, question all the events and circumstances, dwell on the what ifs and whys and why nots when life takes away someone you love that much, someone who’s not “supposed to” die until after you? How can I not imagine myself in Chuy’s mom’s place, with the same lack of options that I feel confident about when it comes to my child’s (and soon to be my children’s) health? Even while I do not believe it was her fault, I wonder if me finding more and possibly better options here could potentially prevent my child’s death in the future. 

Mostly, though, through all of these deaths, I cried and mourned for the child and their parents, and I stubbornly refused to consciously think about the implications and possibilities for loss in my life. “It’s not gonna happen to you,” my best friend tried to reassure me, even in the midst of all her grief and sorrow. But I think you can only fool yourself into believing that if you think that you are somehow fundamentally different from the person experiencing loss, or if you find a way to blame them and can therefore convince yourself that it can’t happen to you because you won’t do x, y, or z. But of course I knew that it wasn’t their fault, and that I was no different, and that it could happen to me. It can. SIDS or a car wreck or cancer or a million billion other things. So I promised myself, I decided resolutely, in the aftermath of those two great losses during my first pregnancy, while inhaling and exhaling grief for what seemed like weeks on end, that I wouldn’t- couldn’t- let fear run my life. That instead I had to try to just be grateful for my child’s existence the days that she exists in my life.

So Lucia’s entire first year of life, no matter how exhausted and sleep-deprived-delusion and burnt out I felt, I thanked the universe profusely every time she woke up, even as I gritted my teeth and wondered how much sleep deprivation might kill me. She is no longer at risk for SIDS, but it doesn’t mean a kajillion other things can’t happen to her. I think that I am prepared, I think that I can deal with (some) bad things that might happen to her, but thinking about her dying from one of them, thinking of her not existing in my life, is so tremendously painful that occasionally I start to panic.

My angst and anxiety mostly only flare up when she’s having a health problem that’s not a normal cold, which thankfully is not very often. When it does happen, though, I get alternately angry and scared. I get angry imagining that if I lived in Louisville still, I would have the answers. I already had our perfect pediatrician there. When I needed a gynecologist, I told my friends what kinds of attitude/practice I was looking for, and they recommended me someone fabulous. My life was full of information and options to make informed choices about the health of myself and my child (and to recommend about the health of my partner). Here it’s just not.

I feel like I’m not being a good enough mother, because after a year in Puerto we still don’t have a doctor here that we can trust, that we have any confidence in. Lots of people, ourselves included, for convenience and price, go to the “pharmacy doctor”- a doctor who works in a pharmacy and sees patients on an acute basis. But pharmacy doctors have prescribed me an antibiotic that is dangerous during pregnancy even though I told them that I’m pregnant. They’ve given Lucia medicine that I’ve read isn’t used anymore for that kind of infection. For these and other reasons, I don’t think they’re a good option. But I don’t know what the good option is.

Many of our friends with kids go to the public health clinic, either because they’re happy enough with it or because they don’t have any other options economically. I was not happy enough with it, but neither were we impressed the one time we shelled out half a day’s pay for a pediatrician. Charging a lot doesn’t always mean they have qualities that you’re looking for. I also haven’t even bothered to sign her up on my insurance, because it’s a toss-up on them being more or less useless than most of these pharmacy doctors.

Thus, I feel like all health problems are on our shoulders, as parents practically acting as her doctor. I feel this immense stress that we have to figure it all out and advocate and push and prod for what we hope is the right kind of treatment. It’s a lot of pressure, to say the least. Not knowing where to go for health problems makes me feel ignorant and helpless and full of indecision. I am terrified that I’m going to make the wrong (uninformed) decision and it could be life or death.

I don’t think I realized just how badly I was handling the situation, emotionally, until the other night when I put myself into a panic imagining that Lucia was having an allergic reaction to a medicine we were giving her for a urinary tract infection. Her breathing seemed too labored, and I just felt like something else was wrong. She was getting worse instead of better, despite a couple doses of antibiotic she’d already taken. Her fever wasn’t going away even with fever reducer and cool compresses, and I just had a feeling that she needed a better doctor than the stupid pharmacy doctor we’d taken her to. Although she was sleeping, I wanted to take her to this expensive private 24 hour clinic right then and there. Conan wanted to wait until morning. I insisted. Well, to put it outright, I said, “I’m taking her whether you want to or not because if anything happens to her I’m going to kill myself.”

Whoa. Where did that come from? I had most definitely not been sitting around contemplating suicide because of her health problems, but I sounded eerily decided and sure of myself when I said it. Perhaps I was just trying to shock Conan into action? (I’m gonna go with that explanation, thanks.) I even kind of freaked myself out at that point, but I was too focused on getting her to what I hoped would be a better doctor to worry about it.

The doctor there certainly seemed more competent. She prescribed her a different antibiotic. We talked about allergic reactions (Lucia was not having one). I calmed down. Lucia’s fever went down a little more in the night air on the way there (she still had one, though). We couldn’t actually acquire the antibiotic until the next day, though, so yes, it probably really could have waited till morning (although points for my team, we probably waited less time at the clinic because it was late at night, and the price was the same). Days later, lab results showed that her infection was indeed resistant to the antibiotic that the pharmacy doctor had prescribed her, so I was right that it wasn’t helping.

By far the best things, for me, that came out of our nighttime trip to the doctor / my little panic attack were 1) knowing there is someplace decent to take her for emergencies, 2) calming myself down enough to get through the night, and 3) convincing myself to keep trying other doctors and pediatricians. I decided that even if we spend a whole month’s salary trying out doctors, I have to find a doctor that I feel is knowledgable and a good fit for my child. Even if we have to go to other towns to find it. I can’t take the pressure I’m putting on myself for her health. I can read lots of books and internet articles, I can take care of my kid in general and be a great advocate, but I’m not and I can’t be her doctor. If we have to go into debt to have a good doctor for her, it’ll still be worth it, better than late night panic attacks and suicide threats.*   

Meanwhile, I’m trying to wrap my heart around this lack of control, still. Intellectually I know that my kid can have the perfect doctor, that I can “do everything right” and there’s still zero guarantee of her safety. Intellectually, I know that bad things happen to “good” and “bad” people alike, and that life isn’t some cheesy movie where things turn out fairly.

I know all this, but internalizing it emotionally, especially in the context of your child, is a horse of a different color. I mean, starting in pregnancy there’s such a fine, weird line of being totally responsible for them and yet still not being in control of what happens to them. Like you can wash their hands after they use the restroom and before they eat, and breastfeed, and give them only healthy food (for a while, anyway), but it doesn’t mean they won’t get sick. When you’re pregnant you can give up coffee and medium-rare steak and follow all the other rules, but it doesn’t guarantee you won’t have a miscarriage or a stillbirth. And then there are all the women who don’t follow the rules, to whatever extent (like my mom who smoked cigarettes throughout her pregnancy- gasp!), and who still have perfectly healthy babies. So what’s the point? Why even bother to act like it matters what we do, if it doesn’t give us the desired outcome?

Intellectually, I know that it’s a good idea to do the best you can because at least you’re more likely to keep your kids safe and healthy. But where do you draw the line? Up to what point can we pat ourselves on the back for having healthy kids and/or blame ourselves when our kids are not healthy, or when something bad happens to them? I mean, who are we kidding? I don’t even have all that much control over my own life and what happens to me, so how could I possibly really control what happens to my kid?

I don’t have the answers. I doubt you have answers, either, dear reader, parent extraordinaire though you may be. I don’t think there are real, solid answers. So before this new baby arrives and I stay up half the night watching him or her breathe, I’m trying to re-learn how to breathe myself. I’m trying to get more comfortable acknowledging my life in this gray, indefinite, uncertain universe. I’m not trying to prepare myself for the worst. I don’t think “the worst” will ever be anything but unbelievably, excruciatingly painful, and I don’t think having imagined it or practicing for it would make it any easier. I suspect it just makes us have more fear.

Instead I want to embrace my joy. I want to be able to nod at my fear, and let it go. Inhale it, and exhale it back out. I want to appreciate this great privilege (and great trial!) that is being a parent. I want to be able to emotionally internalize this knowledge that I don’t “deserve” this- be it a positive this or a negative this- any more or less than anyone else, that I can’t control what happens in life, period. Of course I want to strive to do my best, to be my best, as a person, as a parent, just because I want to. But I want to live knowing that I get to mess up and not be perfect and not do everything perfectly, and that it doesn’t make me more or less responsible for what happens. And when in doubt, I’ll try to keep breathing. Inhaling and exhaling, hopefully more joy and pleasure than guilt and fear. Breathing. And hope that my kids will, too. 

*I’m pleased to report that we’ve since been to a pediatrician that we all feel good about- even Lucia felt comfortable in the doctor’s office for the first time ever! The doctor charges quite a bit more than these cheap (and crappy) pharmacy doctors, but she’s trilingual, and experienced, and nice, and totally, totally worth it for our piece of mind. Thank you, universe!

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Redefining “School Readiness” (A Cautionary Tale of Manipulating your Child)

14 Dec

My two and a half year old appears to finally be potty trained, just in time to give me a couple months more or less diaper-free before we start all over again. Really, though, “trained” is quite a stretch; it would be more appropriate to say she’s decided that she does not need diapers anymore, thank you very much. There was really no training involved, because my stubborn, determined child refuses to be trained on anything.

First, of course, we got her a potty, and started talking to her about it. We talked about all the other kids she likes that use a potty, how Mommy and Papi use the potty, etc. etc. She started repeating back to us all kinds of useful information about the potty, but she definitely was not going to use it. Not for a sticker. Not even for sweet bread. So we waited. And waited.

Around here it seems like everyone has their kids out of diapers well before they turn two, but I’m not really sure how they manage that. Conan was potty-trained by his grandmother by the time he was 8 months old, but since it was his (now deceased) grandmother who pulled that off, his mom had no major insights for me. I knew that lots of people just sort of took away the diapers and let things run their course. I had witnessed moms walking around wiping up their kids pee all over the floor, all day long. It did not look like the way I wanted to do things.

But eventually I tried that whole “just take her diaper off” tactic, too. And by then she was at a good stage for it. She did great with not peeing on herself, except she also wouldn’t pee in the potty. She just insisted on having a diaper when she needed to go. I tried “rewarding” her with stickers and all kinds of other treats, but she was having none of it. Until she suddenly decided that it was time, and that was that. At least for pee pee. 

It’s been a similar situation for #2, with her recognizing when she needs to go, but insisting that she needs a diaper, no matter how much I try to cajole her out of it. To try to talk her into it, among other things I’ve used, I remind her that she can’t go to school until she learns to poop on the potty. Kids here start school at age 3- there’s mandatory Pre-kindergarten, and Lucia is already dying to go. She wants to go play with all the kids, and she wants her backpack, please and thank you. “Kids that go to school don’t use diapers,” I tell her from time to time before I reluctantly put her diaper on her. She was interested in this fact, but not at all concerned, and it definitely did not motivate her to retire her diapers. Welcome to life with a strong-willed child.

Her Nonna just brought her the book “Everyone Poops,” which I was hoping would make a difference in the situation. She loves the book, but when we get to the part with kids pooping she’s like, “He goes poopy in the potty, and he goes poopy in a diaper, like Lucia” and that’s that. Alas. But perhaps just talking more about poop without talking about how or why she should poop on the potty was helpful. Or maybe it was just time, finally. But suddenly, last Sunday, she decided to go on the potty. (Maybe it helped that I gave her a book to read while she was sitting there, too?)

She was ecstatic. She wanted to call her Papi, who was out on an errand. “Papi, Lucia went poop in the potty!” she shouted into the phone. “I ready go to school!” Then we called her Abuela. She told her Nonna when she called later. She talked about it all day long. But the next day, home with Papi, she insisted on her diaper again. “Oh, well,” I thought, “sooner or later.”

But the day after that she used the potty again. “Lucia go to school now,” she told her Papi triumphantly. And she used the potty again the next day, and the next. But now every time she goes to the potty she reminds us that she is now ready to go to school, and can she go to school today? No? How about tomorrow?

What have a gotten myself into? I mean, it’s not like I told her that she could go to school as soon as she used the potty. I mostly told her she couldn’t go to school if she didn’t use the potty. I told her that kids who go to school don’t use diapers. I didn’t mean that she could go to school the second she started using the potty. Unfortunately, two year olds are not famous for their comprehension of subtle grammatical differences and the implications of such. She can’t actually start school until next August or September, unless we send her to some private school or day care center which hopefully would convince her that it’s school-like enough. All of this was definitely not in the budget, for the record. Ooops. Every day I learn more things not to do with baby #2. 

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Fighting with Bureaucracy, Oaxaca City Style

9 Nov

It´s a bit confusing to have a daughter with dual citizenship, and it´s about to get more complicated, with a new kiddo born here soon. Lucia was born in Kentucky and moved down here at 7 weeks of age. We barely managed to get her US passport, her birth certificate, and her Mexican birth certificate from the consulate while we packed up and sold all our stuff and learned how to be new parents at the same time. It was a whirlwind, but we made it.

Lucia and I both entered Mexico on a 6 month tourist visa, although we knew we´d need to sort out that situation for both of us sooner or later. We´ve been out of Mexico enough times so far that it hadn´t been a problem, until this last trip when her tourist visa was expired by one day. They wouldn´t let us get on the plane in Mexico City until we sorted it out with immigration there, which is a totally different epic story. Luckily I had her Mexican birth certificate and other relevant documentation, and we did make it to the plane on time. But they warned me then that we had to sort out her status before her next tourist visa expired.

Apparently, the way to sort it out is by obtaining her Mexican passport. So even though technically she is already a Mexican citizen by virtue of her Papi´s citizenship, we still needed another document. I put it off and put it off, because Mexican passports for children under 3 years old only last one year, so it´s a lot of hassle and money for something very temporary. On top of it only lasting a year, the three of us all have to be present in Oaxaca City to get her passport. So what would only cost about one day´s salary is really a multi-day expensive trip, including me having to take off of work unpaid for 2 days. And it has to get done before her latest tourist visa expires in a couple weeks, or we would be fined.

The good news was that we worked it out to get a ride with a good friend of Conan´s who had some business to take care of in Oaxaca City this Thursday and Friday, and we have a fabulous family friend who lives there who was willing to put us up for free and keep us company to boot. I got the official permission to miss work on those days, prepped my classes accordingly, got us packed during my break on Wednesday, and was feeling pretty optimistic about the whole situation when I walked out of work right at 7pm, where I was going to get picked up so we´d arrive in Oaxaca City around 2 or 3 AM.

There had already been some obstacles that I hoped we had overcome, but that I was still nervous about. First off, to provide identification for a two year old, you have to get a special note from their doctor, with the doctor´s signature on top of the photo and some other special details. Nevermind that my child already has a US passport, it has to be the doctor´s note to prove it’s her (bureaucrat logic). Since we don´t have a doctor we like to take her to regularly in Puerto yet, our only option was to either bribe a doctor, or go to the doctor that knows her in Juquila (a 3 hour venture from home). We went to Juquila for Day of the Dead last weekend, so we thought we´d get it then. But her doctor said he wouldn´t have time to do it till Monday afternoon. Paulina said she’d send it to us in one of the vans that go from Juquila to Puerto, but I was terrified it wouldn´t be how we needed it and we’d be scrambling at the last minute to bribe someone in Puerto. But we got it on Tuesday and it appeared to have all the requirements listed on the internet, so I was hopeful.

My other big fear was over our appointment. When I went to make it online, I had to put in a CURP (Clave Unica de Registro de la Población, sort of like a Social Security Number in the US). We haven’t gotten Lucia’s CURP yet, so I asked the online help line if I could put in my CURP to make the appointment.

“No,” Marta or somebody told me, “it must be the CURP of the person the appointment is for.”

Breathing deeply, I argued my case. “But they told me when I called for information that we didn’t need her CURP to get a passport.”

She wrote back, “Correct. You don´t need it for the passport. You need it to make the appointment, which you must have in order to get the passport.”

“So I can’t actually get her passport without her CURP then.” I gave up on Marta and her online unhelpfulness and tried to call the 800 number to make appointments. The nice guy on the phone let me make the appointment with my CURP. But I was still crossing my fingers they wouldn’t turn us away at the door for using my CURP instead of Lucia’s. After all, we are talking about bureaucrats, who I often believe are not in their human form while on the job.

But there we were, ready to go, múltiple copies of everything filed away, pretzels and oatmeal cookies for the road, and the first glitch happened. I walked out of work and Carlos’s car was nowhere to be found. Conan’s phone was busy. Not a good sign.

“Carlos is going to Oaxaca next week, not tonight.” Conan announced when he called me a few minutes later. I still don’t know if Carlos changed his dates or Conan misunderstood or what exactly caused this glitch, but it didn’t matter because the result was the same- we didn’t actually have a ride to Oaxaca. I utilized all of my I-have-a-toddler-and-it’s-also-not-my-first-day-in-an-unpredictable-country skills to not have a panic attack. I did send my mom a message that was more curse words than real words, however, and then I continued to breathe.

We went and got tickets for tbe 9.30 PM van trip to Oaxaca City. It was just too risky to take our car on those winding mountain roads with zero preparation and zero extra time before our appointment the next morning if anything went wrong. The worst part about the van situation was that we now weren’t taking Lucia’s car seat. Partly because we didn’t have the money to buy her own seat and partly to not lug around a car seat in the city. I briefly entertained the super nervous Mommy guilt of “so if something happens to Lucia I have to tell the family it was because we didn’t spring for her own seat on the trip”…. and then I continued breathing and let it go.

We got to our friend Argelia’s house around 5.30 in the morning with no accidents and no major glitches, thank goodness. Except that I hadn’t slept at all, had only dozed for about 3 hours in that half-awake, making-sure-my-sleeping-kid-doesn’t-fall-out-of-the-seat way that parents do. But Arge’s warm reception and good conversation, combined with coffee I made stronger with Nescafe and a warm shower, did wonders for me, and we were ready to go to our 9AM appointment by 8.

We arrived early and waited in the first line, for the preliminary inspection of our documents. “This letter from the doctor isn’t right,” the woman told us, and I almost stopped breathing. “Where did you get this? You didn’t get the format from here, did you?” She asked, showing us a generic example format for the letter.

“No,” I explained, “We got the requirements from the website. And I called and talked to the Subdelegada who told me that all the requirements were the way it is detailed online. That example format is not online.” Did they really expect people to travel from all over the state just to pick up an example form, travel back to their town and show it to their doctor and then make the journey all over again? You just can’t be sure about these people. I mentioned that we’d come from Puerto Escondido, that I’d taken off work for two days to be there, just in case there was any bit of sympathy in her little bureaucratic heart. “I’ll go check on it,” she told us, only a little reluctantly.

“Okay, you can use it,” she told us when she came back to her post. She gave us another form to fill out and sent us to go fill it out on a bench. She did not give us a pen (but I always have about 10 in my purse, so no glitches there).

After filling out the form we went and stood in line at a different counter. I realized the appointment thing was only another excuse for them to turn people away, and did not signify anything in terms of when our paperwork would be seen. But it was our turn pretty quickly with Mr. Grumpy Older Guy, and the process continued. We started signing and fingerprinting and all that other good stuff. It seemed that things were going smoothly until we got to the backside of the form, almost at the end.

“I need the father’s birth certificate,” Mr. Grumpy announced.

“What?” I hoped that I was hallucinating that. Surely he’d said something else, because there was no indication or mention anywhere about bringing Conan’s birth certificate. Not in the online requirements. Not in the two phone calls I’d made to ask specifics about our situation. Not in the online help center chats. I most certainly did not have Conan’s birth certificate with me.

“You have to prove the little girl’s right to Mexican citizenship.” he explained. I guess the Mexican birth certificate was not enough.

“I have his Mexican passport!” I announced hopefully, smiling a tense, clownish version of a smile.

“Let’s see it.” I handed it over, along with the copy I’d made (yay for being prepared!). Mr. Grumpy pulled out his white out and started blanking out the numbers of Conan’s other ID on the form. He let it dry and tried to write in the passport numbers in its place. It looked messy. He frowned harder. “No, it’s no good,” he said, and I held my breath again. “You’re going to have to fill out the form again.”

Once I realized that we just had to redo the form and not this whole trip I proceeded to breathe and went to go rewrite the form. I finished that and we got back in Mr. Grumpy’s line, beginning the fingerprinting and signature thing anew. Finally we successfully completed that round and Mr. Grumpy smiled at us and sent us to the next step- the photographing area.

We’d already gotten Lucia’s photos made but in that room we did digital fingerprinting and signatures. Then we got sent to the next counter and turned it all in to a different lady and another inspection. “Come back at 1PM to pick up the passport,” she said, and my heart did a little dance of joy.

We had breakfast and strolled around Oaxaca’s pretty downtown with Argelia to pass the time. We returned to the office shortly before one and approached the final counter. The lady handed Conan the passport, telling him to make sure it was correct, and then sign that he’d received it. Then I looked at it and was about to sign when she said, “Oh, wait, let me go check on this problem.” I breathed deeply. The passport was already printed and ready to go- what could be the problem now?

“Can I see your identification again?” she asked wheen she came back. I handed over both my passport and my permanente resident card. “Ah, yes.” she said, almost to herself. “Here’s the problem.” She pointed severely at my signature on the the form we’d filled out twice that day. “Look at this.” I looked. It looked like my signature. I was sure I had been the one to sign it. I nodded. “Now look at this.” She pointed at my signature on Lucia’s Mexican birth certificate that I had signed over two years before. Also definitely me that signed there. I nodded again, without a clue what her point was, but understanding that I was in trouble for something. Sloppy handwriting? I waited for the punchline.

“They look nothing alike. Can’t you tell?” I think I just looked at her, unsure what I was supposed to do. It’s true that I have a sloppy signature that I rattle off quickly, the letters not forming their true cursive form, and that is never, ever exactly the same. It always has enough resemblances, though, that I’ve never been questioned before. But Ms. Patient Teacher was not pleased with me.

“Okay,” I told her, like I’d learned my lesson. “Sorry. You see how it is a bit different on both of these IDs, too.” All of them were my signature, though, was my point.

“Well, to prevent the theft of children these signatures have to match,” she told me. “You’re going to have to sign here,” she pointed to the place beside my unacceptable signature on the form, “exactly like you signed here.” She pointed to my signature on Lucia’s birth certificate. “If you can’t sign it the same then we’ll have to do all of this all over again.” I’m pretty sure all the color drained from my face.

“But here,” she said cheerily, “I’ll make you a copy of this form with your correct signature and you can practice it.” And I practiced. And practiced. And every single signature looked different, like always. Argelia tried to help me trace over the copy, but the light wasn’t good enough to trace effectively.

I practiced some more. I shed a few furious, frustrated, sleep-deprived, indignant tears. “This is so ridiculous!” I raged quietly to Conan. “I have multiple forms of ID. They watched me sign the form. They have my fingerprints. My child is here calling me Mommy. And I’m not going to get her passport because I can’t appropriately forge my own signature!”

Some of my 80,000 attempts to write my own signature "correctly"

Some of my 80,000 attempts to write my own signature “correctly”

Finally I managed one that I believed looked more or less like the target signature. I went to ask Ms. Patient Teacher if it would pass. She went to get approval from her boss. I got the ok. I got a no on whether I could just cut and paste the approved signature. I had to reproduce it on the correct form. I tried to continue breathing and not cry. I practiced it some more, trying to copy exactly what I had done, the slowest form of my signature ever. At last I announced that I was ready to try it on the real thing. If it didn’t work, I supposed we’d come back the next day and try again. I was out of energy.

I signed next to my inappropriate signature, slowly and steadily. And then I had to sign exactly the same again to say that I’d received the passport. I got a bad start the second time and had to lift the pen and take some deep breaths before I could continue. I hadn’t been prepared for the second one. But I signed it, and Ms. Patient Teacher went to go see if it was okay or not. I held my breath.

She came back and handed me the passport. “Here you go. Bye.” And that was that. I was actually in possession of Lucia’s Mexican passport. A miracle had happened. It was over, and we accomplished the feat we’d set out to accomplish, despite all the unexpected demands and absurd obstacles. It was another win for humanity, another triumph over mindless, cruel bureaucracy. Granted, they got a point or two in for my near panic and those couple of tears shed, but we walked out of the office in just one day with our desired document in hand. And now I have several months to keep practicing my signature before we have to go back and do it again. Bring it on, bureaucracy, I am ready for you now.

TA-DA! Mission accomplished! Dual passports for our first little dual citizen!

TA-DA! Mission accomplished! Dual passports for our first little dual citizen!

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Trading Out Halloween

2 Nov

“Look at this sweet baby, 100% Mexican now” my father-in-law, Arturo, would say about Lucia soon after our arrival. Although even then, despite my hormones still raging, I suspected that his intentions were not malicious, it was still difficult not to let the steam shoot from my ears in offended rage. “Nope, she’s still just 50% Mexican,” I had to insist every time. Because it felt like I was being written off in that equation- my half of the genes, my more than half of the work of bringing her into this world, not to mention whatever unquantifiable portion of raising her that I am responsible for. It felt painful and malicious, even if my vague sense of rational brain 2 months postpartum could theoretically not take it personally. I think I can assert now, 2 years later, that Arturo was mostly just excited to have Lucia here (mostly, though, because he does have a bit of a nationalist streak, too).

I can’t predict exactly how Lucia will feel about or choose to represent and explain her “50/50” identity when she’s older. I imagine that it will change tremendously at different points in her life, just like everyone’s identity does. All of us, of course, no matter where we grow up, are a giant mix of influences. I doubt anyone thinks of themselves as exactly 50% like their father and 50% like their mother. So what does it mean to have parents from two different countries? What does it mean to have dual nationality? What does it mean for my “half” of the heritage that she grows up in her father’s land, in this culture? And when my half is a weird mix of a mix of cultures anyway, thanks to the strong Italian influences on my mom’s side of the family?

All parents want their kids to be like them in the good ways, and hopefully not follow in their footsteps in their faults or weaknesses. If only life were that neat and tidy, right? Similarly, I would like Lucia (and her future brother or sister) to have only the best of both (all) cultures, please and thank you.

I hope she appreciates all the fabulous parts of Oaxacan culture, and can reject some of those nasty sides, or that we can minimize their impact at least. For instance, I hope she shares her bag of chips or cookies with those around her without needing to be asked, the way people automatically do here (such a small gesture,but poignantly important). I hope she can learn how to rely on friends and family for help without having a complex about it, just knowing that we all have to help each other to get by in life. But we’re gonna have to figure out some alternative educational situation, because the public school system down here is a famously poor and corrupt one. (Although her Papi went to public schools and still managed to have enough outside influences in his education to actually learn things, so there is hope.) I’m sure her Papi could give a much bigger list of things he hopes to impart to her from his childhood culture, and pitfalls he wants to avoid. But that’s his part to tell, not mine.

For my part, for her Kentucky (and Italian-American!) half, I’d like Lucia to have some fabulous corn bread and greens recipes, for example. I’d like for her to avoid entirely that whole “the U.S. is the biggest-baddest-bestest place on Earth that should control the rest of the world because it’s really the only place God approves of” sort of mentality. I hope she can appreciate a good bourbon with her mama (and her papá) when the time is right. I hope that she can spend enough time in the U.S. or somewhere else with more racial and ethnic diversity than here. That she can learn first-hand about many people’s customs and heritage that are different from hers (and not just different because she’s the weirdo half-gringa)- something possible in Louisville, Kentucky, but not too likely here. I want her to be able to appreciate the importance of a good stoop or porch, to sit out on in the evening and be social with the neighbors, perhaps with some iced tea (or bourbon!). I hope that despite the distance she can have some equally strong bond and pleasant associations of her grandparents in the U.S., the way I think about my Nonna getting together with my mom and my aunt, eating Doritos and Diet Coke, salami and really good quality whole wheat bread that my Nonna would buy.

We can already see some of this working itself out. Conan and I, thus far, are her biggest influences, and she mostly does what we do. She eats her vegetables and tries chorizo with her Papi. She devours tamales and al dente pasta with equal gusto. She speaks English and Spanish. She says please and thank you and washes her hands before meals, because that’s what we’ve taught her, mostly by example. Most of the things from my upbringing and heritage that I want for her I can (attempt to) instill in her myself. I can cook her cornbread. We can listen to Hank Williams (Sr.) together. We can even catch fireflies and sit out on the porch.

But there are some things that I loved as a child, some things that I still hold dear, that I probably won’t be able to provide. I can’t teach her to lick honeysuckle. She’ll probably never know about snow days, and getting off school and going sledding. And sadly, tragically perhaps, I don’t get to share my joy of Halloween with her.

Missing Halloween is a really big deal to me. Bigger than all the other U.S. holidays that we’re not there for. (About as heartbreaking as missing WorldFest, the yearly festival of cultures in Louisville) I adore Halloween. Starting with costumes and the whole idea of dress-up. When I was a kid, I loved deciding on a costume, which usually my parents would put together (not those store-bought costumes). I dressed up as things like a camera, a 3-headed alien, and Catwoman (with homemade “boots,” shiny plastic-ish material with holes cut for laces to put on my shins). As I teen I had fun with ironic dress-up, going as Barbie one year, helping my mom dress up as a punk rocker. I still love seeing what my outlandish friends can come up with, too, although perhaps the trio that one year that did the twin towers with airplane costume crossed the line.

As a kid, we would trick or treat for hours on end, my friends and my sister and I complaining that we were ready to go home, my mom and her friend denying us, telling us we were crazy to give up on the candy so early. They’d convince us to go a while longer, and sure enough, it was always worth it in the end. My dad would go crazy in competition with the neighbors to have the scariest, most creative Halloween decorations on the block, adding new stuff every year- a skeleton hanging from a noose, a stuffed Jason-like character sitting on the porch swing.

I love the idea of Halloween as a night when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living is thin. I love the scariness of it all, the horror film reruns, the possibilities that come with invoking something beyond the day-to-day. I love that it is a day (a night, really) of fun and magic and sweets, and not the sort of high-pressure let’s-hope-the-family-can-get-along holiday like Christmas. It’s not a shady celebration of colonization like Thanksgiving, nor a holiday based on a religion that I have lots of issues with. It’s the U.S. holiday I most want to share with Lucia. And it’s not celebrated where we live.

But there is Day of the Dead, a two-day long celebration which is equally fabulous, although different from Halloween (I wrote about it in detail two years ago- https://exiletomexico.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/a-visit-from-the-dead-multi-cultural-style/) It’s something her Papi grew up with and loves, and it’s a holiday for the whole family. I have to accept that I can’t give her all the same good things from my childhood, but there’s lots of good stuff from Conan’s childhood, too. There is plenty of joy to be shared, from here and from there, adding things we make up all our own as a family. So I’ll keep cooking pasta al dente for the Day of the Dead altar, to honor my Italian grandmother alongside the mole for Conan’s grandmother. We’ll have to appreciate all the good stuff no matter where it comes from, take some bad with the good, just like everyone else. And Lucia will be 100% Lucia, Mexican and Kentuckian and Italian and whatever other bits and pieces of identity get thrown into the mix. Perhaps the most important thing is just to instill in her that her identity is perfect and right just how it is, no matter how different from everyone else’s around her. I hope that she can learn to appreciate all the parts of herself, without having to put anyone else’s identity down, still knowing that everyone else’s culture and identity is just as unique and wonderful as hers, in their own way. If we can pull that off, then I can deal with not sharing Halloween with her. After all, parenting is always an exercise in compromise.

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