Taking care: the big whoop

I wake everyone in the house with my coughing except my husband.  The fits can be hysterical and leave me spent.  If she's around, my littlest continuously says "God bless you" and "I hope you feel better" until the coughing stops.  My eldest asks if I need a glass of water.  I always take it but it doesn't really help.  Then I try to get up and continue the day as though I do not have whooping cough, but a mild summer cold.  My husband is doing the same.

Sickness is weakness.  It is vulnerability and it is getting left behind whilst the pack proceeds.  It is side eyes and hands thrust on my warm head angry that I came down with whatever it is.  It is fear and loathing.  It is the frightening sense that I won't or can't be productive, that someone will find out I am not as strong as projected or promised.  That I am not invincible.  That I am not superhuman.  That I am human.  It is the stories of drowned Africans thrown overboard because they might infect the entire cargo.  It is sick slaves killed or left to die lest they not infect the tiny quarters of the others.  It is the infirm in a tribe left at the edge of camp to fend for himself or to find a place to slowly die in private or be attacked by ferocious animals.  It is the prisoner in an internment camp ravaged by disease and giving up his food for someone else to survive.  It is a Darwinian belief that I am not at the top of the human evolutionary chain and that I will die.  I will.

I used to joke that I didn't want to tell my father when I was sick because I was afraid that he'd be mad at me.  I knew he was hurt for my hurt and afraid but I couldn't do much to get better any faster and his pacing made me feel guilty and scared.  He couldn't talk to me.  I would try to will myself to good health as I drifted off in fevered dreams or try not to let it out when I felt my insides twist and threaten to force me to vomit or worse.  My mother would look in periodically but would stay at her usual distance.  She didn't talk to me.  It was when I was able to care for my own sick children, nurse them through colds and fevers and sore gums and teeth breaking through, and lay cold compresses on their heads and stroke their arms, snuggle them close as I wished their pain away, that I accepted that illness is just part of the human experience and that I surely didn't want them to feel a burden or a failure as I had.

Whooping cough is called the 100 days cough and though I can't tell exactly where I am on that timeline, it does feel like I have been coughing forever.  It came on like allergies or a summer cold and hit my oldest daughter first.  She coughed for weeks and at night she'd sometimes vomit from its force.  I'd get cross with her, certain she just wasn't trying hard enough to clear her throat, and would then spend the night by her side.  I asked her if she was sure it was as bad as all that and then rub her down with Vapor Rub.  She woke up in the morning OK and then it would start up again in the night.  That was as school was ending.  In June. 

I took her to the doctor as soon as school was out for summer.  After careful review of her body, her lungs, her eyes, ears, and nose, the doctor concluded that she had just a run of the mill upper respiratory infection.  He couldn't see anything and advised me to give her a cough medicine at night to ease the cough and encouraged me to continue with her daily Claritin.  Of course this didn't feel right to me but I left her to herself and followed the protocol.  And she didn't get better at all.  In fact, she got worse.  She coughed and gagged all night.  She fought to breathe.  She'd inhale and seem to stop breathing for a moment and I'd run to her rescue, always finding her in the middle of a massive inhale that stilled the room.  A week before we left for Barbados, I sent her back to the doctor and demanded antibiotics.

She never developed the whoop, the curlicued bark at the end of that desperate choke of a cough and though her symptoms matched the basic description of pertussis or whooping cough, this diagnosis never crossed the minds of either doctor.  Children are vaccinated for pertussis as part of the DTaP and then Tdap booster.  There are five doses of the DTaP that are given from 2 months until some time between the ages of 4 and 6 and the Tdap is recommended for people between the ages of 11 and 64 and what comes next will alert you to why.

The DTaP decreases in effectiveness as children get close to the age of 11 when the Tdap is administered.  But because whooping cough has been out of the general health conversation for so long due to these vaccines, very few have memory of it or expectation of seeing it which allows it to spread quickly and silently.  One week before my daughter returned to the doctor for a course of antibiotics, one of her best friends developed a cough so severe and violent that she too nearly threw up each time she coughed.  And then the big whoop.  The big whoop is a big deal because with the whoop there is no denying.  With the whoop there is concern and there is testing.  Her friend was tested first with a swab that was negative.  After meeting with a pulmonologist, her mother decided to follow up with the more precise blood test.  The blood test confirmed that it was pertussis.

Immediately I began trying to solve the puzzle to which, until moments earlier, I'd not realized I'd held so many pieces.  My daughter had been coughing for months.  So many around us described a cough that could not go away, bruised ribs, vomiting, and tears.  There were the endless nights of kids getting up coughing and having difficulty breathing.  It seemed like just a terrible allergy season.  So many diagnoses of bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses that seemed not to go away with multiple rounds of antibiotics.  Without a rash or telltale sign to certify its presence (not everyone develops the whoop), whooping cough was weaving through the community without a batted eyelash.

Fortunately, my daughter was treated with the antibiotic prescribed to render pertussis no longer communicable and her symptoms lessened.  We went on vacation.  Our friends were treated and, as is necessary when a positive diagnosis is made, were contacted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to whom they'd reported their symptoms, contacts, and treatment.  

My cough came and went so I felt confident that it was caused by my allergies.  I got back on my allergy medication even though it made me drowsy when it wasn't supposed to.  I continued to cough.  While on vacation I'd cough and occasionally find myself short of breath but I was sure it was my excess "vacationing" and thought nothing of it.  I was tired, I figured, and my body was letting me know that I was too old for these shenanigans.  When I was back home and taking a dance class, I noted that I felt short of breath again but assumed it was due to my sluggish, sunbed-and-cocktail lifestyle over the past week and change.  And then the cough that dropped me to the floor.  I couldn't breathe at all.  Heaved and then vomited and then continued coughing.  I was crying on the floor in the bathroom and couldn't catch a breath.  I just kept coughing and coughing and coughing and coughing.  My children were terrified and I could not reassure them because whenever I opened my mouth to speak I'd immediately start another fit.  My husband stood in the doorway and felt terribly sorry for me and very afraid and did not come any closer.

I was not comforted by his presence and he made no attempt to comfort me.  He wanted to know what 'pertussis' was called in French so he could better understand what was wrong with me.  I told him I felt terrible that I had doubted our girl when she couldn't stop coughing.  I cried on the floor next to the toilet because I'd asked my girl to stop coughing so much and I knew in this moment that she couldn't have.  He looked up the word 'pertussis' on Wikipedia and changed the language to French to find 'coqueluche.'  He read and cross-checked references.  He understood, he said.  He gave me details and statistics.  He told me it was what he thought it was.  He said, "poor Honeybee" as I coughed and coughed on the floor.  I held up my hands and asked him to pull me up so I could get in the bed and he walked me there and went to his office.  I called the doctor in the morning and was given a morning appointment.

Without a nasal swab or a blood test, it is not easy to determine pertussis in an adult.  I didn't whoop.  But I did have a consistent dry cough, no mucus or phlegm in the lungs like bronchitis.  That was ruled out.  I had no fever and no ear infection.  My throat was raw but there was very little drip.  When the doctor listened to my chest and my lungs she didn't hear much.  I told her I'd been exposed to whooping cough and that I suspected that my daughter had had it because she'd had all the symptoms before her friend developed the disease.  Whooping cough.  WHOOPING cough.  She listened for the whoop. 

"You don't have the telltale sound at the end of your cough," she'd said.  "I know you've had some exposure."

"Yes, I know. Look, I don't want to have whooping cough.  I spent last night on the floor in the bathroom coughing so hard I had to throw up.  I can't sleep from coughing."

"What did you throw up?"

"It's not a gastro issue.  I threw up because my cough was so hysterical."

"It doesn't seem like bronchitis."

"It's not.  I've had bronchitis.  This is not it."

"I can give you a cough suppressant with codeine and let's see if we can get you some sleep and if it doesn't do better for you then please call and I'll get you the antibiotic.   I'm just not sure of your exposure time and if it's bronchitis you'll definitely get some comfort and some rest."

"I've taken two different cough suppressants that have done nothing but I know that codeine will knock me out.  Let's see." 

And I coughed for hours until I finally passed out around 2:30 in the morning.  I called her the next morning and left a message with a receptionist that I wanted to be treated for pertussis, needed the correct antibiotic, and asked that she consider a blood test so that I could be sure that I would not infect anyone else.  She gave me the prescription and accepted that I could have pertussis but since my children had been recently vaccinated, she did not think there was reason enough to have me tested.  I'd be treated and if need be would revisit with her when the antibiotic course had run if I didn't feel better.  I sensed her dismissal but didn't push.  I knew that no one wanted to summon the CDC on their watch.

I hate being sick.  Sickness is being in my bed upstairs listening to the sounds my family one flight below and wondering if they've already forgotten me.  It is a profoundly lonely feeling of being left behind.  It is the last person out the door forgetting to shout goodbye and then hearing the silence of the house and my imagining what everyone is doing at school.  It is Love American Style before having to drift off, afraid to fall asleep alone in the house but too exhausted to watch any more programs.  It is needing to prove that I feel badly, that my body needs healing, that I need this rest, this sleep, this healing.  It is saying that I am broken, that I am hurt, and that I need fixing.  It is asking for help and feeling like a burden.  It is needing and it is terrifying.

My course of antibiotics is finished and though I continue to have wicked coughing spells, there are fewer than when it started.  My body is tired and my throat and rib cage are sore.  I have held myself up during this week so that I can be a support to my children who are dealing with transitions in their lives--the start of school, a fractured elbow for the little one, encroaching puberty for the eldest, but I have also claimed my space when it is needed.  There were many afternoons in the bed when the previous night's coughing jags kept me up wandering the house.  There were cuddles and forehead kisses so that possibly contagious mommy would not infect anyone else.  

Once when I was a teenager my mother and father both fell ill within days of one another.  Scar tissue from an earlier surgery in his intestines had caused some kind of blockage and dropped my father to the ground.  I remember visiting with him in the hospital and finding him so small.  I cannot remember if I am confusing this visit with another time, but I recall that he had a tube that passed through his nose and down his throat and that he and everyone who saw me watching it assured me that it caused him no pain.  He'd been sedated, so he was very drowsy and kind of sweetly childlike, like I'd never seen him before.  His voice was a whisper as though he were telling me the secret about how human he was while also hypnotizing me to forget.

My mother suffered from an ulcer and had been driven to the hospital by a neighbor.  I don't think we'd been able to see her so immediately and there were some warnings about not overreacting or agitating her more than she'd been.  She was also very small and so quiet.  I knew they had to let me in to see them but that they were not prepared for me to see them like that.  I was their child.  Sickness was weakness.  It was a threat to our shared mythology.  It was startlingly human and smelled like body, sweat and tears, mucus and saliva.  It drained from your nose to your stomach.  It was a dry mouth filled with cotton.  It was coughing fits and jags that shattered the silence and the pristine walls of our modern life.  It was dry hands, days unwashed, sweaty foreheads, and unkempt hair.  It was untidy and it was wild and it was needy and it was human.

When I close my eyes each night and try to relax into my pillow, I cough.  I am bolted upright, heaving and seizing from fits of coughs that empty my lungs of all the air until I gasp.  Then I try again to lie back.  Next to me, my husband snores himself to sleep having drawn the invisible line around me where the heaving, sighing, coughing, sweaty, teary sickness cannot touch him.  The girls are asleep in their beds.  Sickness is lying in the bed listening to the sounds of my family wondering if they know how hard it has been to carry this physical burden alone.  It is being physically tired and emotionally spent but pulling out one last trick for my children because I am the parent who will do that.  It is the profoundly lonely feeling of being important in how you are able to hold up the world for everyone else and watching them let you drop it when you just can't anymore.  It is lying in bed next to someone snoring while you cough so much you are afraid you might die and they don't move.  It is shame and fear and loneliness, and as a healer friend once said to me, it is a change of consciousness.

Pertussis or something like it is leaving my body though the cough may linger for months.  I'll probably get the booster when I am well so that I don't meet its symptoms again.  It has been a big deal, a big whoop, and extremely revelatory.  When I am sick, I need to be loved and cared for, to have my wounds salved, my soul rested.  It cannot be that at my most vulnerable I should be denied this kindness.  I have, myself, done this.  I have punished myself for being the most human being, for succumbing to nature's traps and pitfalls, pranks and sinister jokes.  Instead of kissing my own knees and suturing my own torn heart, I have punished myself before another would be able.  I have allowed a circle to be drawn around me to keep me out.  It has been incredibly hard being this sick and loving with all my breath when I could not breathe but I have learned again.  

My ribs no longer ache and my jags come mostly in the morning, last gasps of this crazy disease.  I'd rather it be me than the girls, rather I'd endure this pain that allow them preventable suffering.  That curlicued gasp at the end is when I realized that I haven't been well cared for.  That will change.





(c) Copyright 2017.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Offline

It wasn't when people in my feed started explaining what Trayvon Martin did wrong (yeah, Trayvon).  It wasn't when a former babysitter typed, "Hey, black people" I suppose to get my attention and the attention of my black people friends as she explained our experience to us.  It wasn't when one after another, black men, women, and children were shot and killed by police or sketchy white neighbors or strangers and were shown no justice, but I saw only posts about home renos and favorite cupcakes.  It wasn't Colin Kaepernick and all he inspired on one knee getting character slandered and pummeled.  It wasn't the endless reaction and outrage to every post begging the larger community to recognize that Black Lives Matter did not take anything away from them but that All Lives Matter spit in the faces of folks they called "friends." It wasn't that.

It wasn't when Brock Turner got away with a rape that everyone knew he'd committed or my revisited trauma when listening to the comments made about "the kinds of girls and women who are sexually assaulted" and the acknowledgment that a black girl or woman in such a predicament may as well keep that shit to herself since no one even gives a fuck about the white girl behind the dumpster.  It wasn't one more post about the "gay agenda" and how proud some families feel about "kicking that no good kid out on his ass" because he was somehow born this way but-not-in-my-house-dammit.

It wasn't even watching the unfathomable rise of a straight up racist, misogynist, rotten to the core blowhard in the run up to a presidential election, or seeing friends with friends who support this horse's ass telling me there was nothing they could do about their friend's or family member's opinion and  go on about their lives.  The build up of racism, misogyny, rape culture, misogynoir, misguided, uneducated and under-educated thoughts and theories that were breaking my spirit.  As one childhood friend or acquaintance after another showed themselves to be completely ignorant and unable to use any amount of reason, compassion, or empathy to the plight of peoples other than those that occupied their tiny American, suburban lives, I became discouraged, heartbroken, and wrecked.

I was keeping up with and reading too many articles that painted a bleak picture of our immediate future and I was internalizing the anguish of our collective souls. I was seeing my friends in pain, confusion, despair.  Every single day.  I'd always come here to find connection I didn't have off line and now on line was threatening my sense of peace, already tenuous, and sending me to the panicked dystopian hell where everyone who looked like me, loved like me, and felt like me would be on the run.  Not even the hedgehogs and kitties and other cute things could save me.

When we got to Barbados my offline life was so unbearable that the retreat into the internets saved my life.  I didn't want to admit that I was startlingly unhappy, suffering from postpartum depression, and realizing I actually knew very little about how to love and be loved and wasn't going to get it from my husband or distant family.  My husband who'd seemed like a charm in New York was distant, unavailable, and overwhelmed in Barbados.  He left me to the care and handling of the home and the children and retreated deeper into his own pathos.  I did not know how to ask for care and comfort in all the ways it might have taken to get it, but I did know how to surround myself in a virtual world with people who would empathize with me, would root for me, pray for me, and wait for me to arrive every day to share.  I needed that love and fought like hell for it no matter its imperfection and its empty promise.   

Life off line is messy and beautiful, hysterical, passionate, and tormented.  There are hours, days, weeks of high energy, high impact, live on stage business that exhaust, rip apart, and tear at the seams of everything.  Whether I am dealing with my daily grind, my midlife struggles, or empathically feeling the torment of human existence, off line I often find myself gasping for air and trying to catch my breath as I see compassion and empathy exit the building.  I've tried to share that on line--my hurts, my hopes, my fears, my anger even, but it often feels too tempered.  I don't fight.  I choose my words carefully.  I listen and acquiesce.  I am imploring, conveying, hoping, and posting about things I love.  My children, fashion, decor, music, art, and all people and especially black people because I love us in our struggles, in our hopes, in our relentless pursuit in the face of unending trauma.  I swear I hope I am convincing, showing, revealing who I am, who we are in every mundane, daily moment, but I don't know. I don't know anymore if I am succeeding in either space.

My life on line is beautiful, I'm not fronting.  We are a photogenic family who take lots of photos of the major and minor adventures in our lives.  There is witty banter and dry, in-the-know wit and humor.  I have always been good with a comeback and can put together good images.  In the face of the funk I can plant flowers and hope.  I love a cute animal doing an insanely cute thing and am extremely passionate about the people, places, and things that I love.  I am a well edited and curated catalog of incidents, moments, and images.  But it is all edited.   An artist edits her work, her writing, her paintings, her collection, her life to tell a more cohesive story.  An unedited showing would be all over the place, full of contradictions, promises and lies and love and fear and darkness and light.  

I hopped off line because I wanted to be in a private space to mourn and I didn't know what to say.  I was hardly able to speak in real life and didn't want to flinch and wince and lie or rant and scream and plead in the place I'd come to seek like minds of the ether, people I know, I've met, and still have to meet.  I ducked out when I wondered what more I had to give or contribute. When I thought I'd nothing else to share or say and that, as I have since I was a young girl begging my parents to see me, shouted myself to hoarseness to no avail.  I bowed out and eventually watched from the sidelines.  I am lonely sometimes.  So lonely.  I am scared and hurt and frustrated that we are not seeing or hearing each other.  That people who have not lived outside of a world of privilege are still leading the conversation about whether or not our lives are even relevant, let alone how to heal all that separates and divides us.  On line or off, I had to admit that I am still watching so much happen on the outside, feeling all of it, and screaming, screaming, screaming my head off in the most polite way.  And I am not sure who can even hear me or gives a damn.



(c) Copyright 2016.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Winter birthday wishes

January 2nd usually marked the return to normalcy or a soft landing like the movie stuntmen made onto that huge pillow at the end of the holiday circus.  Rather the celebration of the Christ child and  the baby new year than me.  While I didn't want to be forgotten completely, I was happy to get back to life as we knew it with a tiny secret tucked behind my ear, kissed there by the aliens who, in the dead of night, have always given me promises of a good future, not just resolutions but truths to which I was completely committed.  I still believe in the probability of great achievement even in the face of total chaos and seemingly impossible obstacles.  Though I have never been good at the holidays, what with all the celebrating and wide opened hearts on display, the arrival of the girls brought a chance for me to live them with different eyes, a more gracious heart, and a sense of wonder and hope.

Every year since I can remember, the arrival of the "winter holidays" has brought a little bit of tension, a little bit of the blues, and an eerie calm like the dead quiet of the first inches of a massive Nor'easter falling heavily on whichever sleeping town or block I was living.  It feels somewhere between a whisper and the ringing in the air after a scream.  I can hear my breathing.  Sometimes I can see my breath.  Always I am aware that I am alive even if I can't move from the cold or the fear, and am fully aware of my surroundings even if I want to run.  Always I feel awkwardly alone even when surrounded by crowds of family and friends.  Alone but not quite lonely.  Here, but not quite here.  I can't be lonely with the two people standing on my neck, whispering in my ear, chatterbugging to my face.  Maybe that's why they came to me.  To connect me to place, pry open my wintered heart.

2013 was hardly different from previous years--family ups and downs, community involvement, extracurriculars, doctors' visits, health checks and scares and reassurances, travel, work, parenting, craziness.  I don't think I have counted my "best or worst" years since I was a child when the best or the worst was defined by gifts I received or didn't, skills I acquired or didn't, loves found or lost.  Now, every year starts off full of promise, more than 1/2 full with the days firmly on one side, ahead of me.  Every year I know that I will peel back the onion to find some other truth about myself, my soul's journey, my desire, and my fulfillment.  I make no promises other than to try to remain open to whatever comes, to avoid (or try not to bring it all the way to insane clown posse meltdown) the panicked shut down when the world delivers what I expected but for which I had somehow been poorly prepared.  At the beginning of every year I have promised myself, "This is the year for me.  This is the year I will find the path, stay on it, actualize."  I say this every year.  I believe it every time.  I don't write the directions, don't set the map in stone and quickly wander from the path...or perhaps discover the one worn in the ground, not paved.

I followed the breadcrumbs back to a language I'd almost forgotten I spoke.  Many speak it more eloquently, some with grace and agility, others flexibility, but when I speak to them too, they understand.  In 2013 I returned to dance. When I was a girl who hated her voice and was sure no one cared what I might have to say, there was dance.  When I needed to free myself from the torment of the bad years and celebrate the joys of the good, there was dance.  When I had a secret to keep, something that I needed to protect, I could dance around it, seal it in.  And then I stopped, quit moving altogether, froze, and then allowed myself to believe that another form of exercise, maybe the machines at the gym, maybe an abs class, could suffice.  They couldn't.  Not yoga, even with all the breath and meditating and connection to the divine, warmed my soul.  It was dance that first connected me to my own life force.  Reclaiming it was so helpful to everything in my life. 

When I was a little girl, my mother asked for the same things for her birthday, Christmas, and Mother's Day.  Peace and quiet and for everyone to get along.  We thought that was the craziest request on earth.  "That's all she wanted?" I'd wonder.  What a waste of a rub of the lamp.  You can have anything three little cherubs and a workaholic husband can offer!  I get it now.  As I reanimate the creative back into my life, each day becomes mine to do with it what I will.  I can ease myself out of the tepid pool of suburban monotony and feel passion burning me up again.  I want that more than I want anything else.

I have, and have admitted, struggling with the daily expectations of raising children and running a household.  I want to do them both well.  Hell, I want to do everything well, but I believe that I bring more to everything in my life with the creative spirit and energy weaving throughout.  At the start of every year, I remind myself of this.  Somewhere along the way the priorities shift and I find myself making excuses, putting off making art, writing, dancing, and allow the minutiae of parenting and being married to be more important.  I'm going to do better this year.  At least I am going to try.

My husband was gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and my birthday.  He has been for nearly every one of these holidays since we've been together.  I have stopped allowing myself to suffer this and surely cannot let his absence during these days define the entire year.  Or me.  Or my life.  I don't want to be defined by absence or by a "lack of."  But when he returns and asks what I want for all the holidays I missed, it's not a necklace, a scarf, socks, or new boots that I am after.  It is some of that quiet, some of that peace, some of the space where I can create or believe myself able again.  It is solitude and my own communion with the end of the year and the start of my new one.


My birthday starts up the music, begins the lightly playing song that guides me through the year.  It is wintry and quiet and moody and grey and cloudy followed by bursts of sun in a cerulean blue sky, cold as hell frozen over, that thaws into a promising spring.  I've bundled up into it and survived the shortest day of the year and the longest parade of holiday celebrations.  And on this day, I danced and wrote and drew a little sketch.  Running head first, out the window, to the stunt man's pillow down below.  To the new year.  Mine.



(c) Copyright 2014.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Gone for the holidays

I haven't allowed my husband to see me cry in that ugly, snot-dripping, hyperventilating way since we left Barbados, where that sight was a common occurrence.  As in most relationships I have had throughout my life, I am cautious and read the other person's reactions before I go on willy-nilly just expressing the hell out of myself.  That's part of my raisin'.  I know that my real feelings, the true strength of them, can blow the roof off the house and that, generally speaking, "nobody got time fuh dat."  When I am all love and light, when I cannot give enough of myself, when I pour in and cannot see the space between myself and another person (most often my children, sometimes my husband), it is so good to be around me.  I am mistaken for easy-going and good-natured and happy go lucky to those who have only experienced me this way.  Oh, how I wish that I were.

When my husband told me last night that he would be leaving to work during the Thanksgiving holiday not on Wednesday as expected, but today, Monday, immediately, I just went silent.  I wasn't even holding it in.  I was stunned.  I just slipped back behind myself, behind the knot in my heart, in my stomach, the knot that ran the cord of all my chakras from my coccyx to the crown of my head, and I disintegrated.  I could not look him in the eye.  Did not say a word to him.  Suddenly, I was very, very busy.  There was laundry to be done, knapsacks to be packed, lists to make and double check.  I got to yelling at the girls to clean their playroom and mumbled on about how they would all be sorry if Mommy was not able to take care of everything like she does.  But I did not cry.

I didn't cry because I always tell myself, as I have even written here many times, that so many others have it worse--soldiers' families, police officers, essential emergency personnel.  They do not get to spend holidays together.  They find ways to endure.  But our situation is not like theirs.  Because we, WE, we? chose this.  Because he is a private chef, my husband makes much more money working the holidays than he does during his regular schedule.  This is because I know, we know, everyone knows that taking a man away from his family during this time is a huge sacrifice and that he must be well compensated.  For years I have accepted, even preached, the value of this package on our family's financial situation, have asked friends and neighbors to help me give the girls the best Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's possible, have sat up, without tears, putting toys together, writing notes from Santa, eating the cookies and carrots, then gone quietly to bed next to the girls hoping I've pulled it off again.

Without tears because if I let myself feel what I am really missing, I may never stop crying.  I have spent the better part of our relationship longing for him, wanting him closer, wanting him to be with me.  Long before there were children, the game of cat and mouse was being played.  I chase and he runs or at least hides. He might hide behind work or his culture, his language or his accent.  Before we were 'we' he hid behind his bad marriage, a miserable divorce, financial and professional fears, it doesn't matter.  He is hiding.  He does not want to be seen all the way and certainly does not want to see me for much the same reason as I cannot cry in front of him.  And so I hide too.  Hide behind the busy work, the busy-ness of being a mother and a wife, of hosting holidays without him, don't dare tell him I'd rather have him than the income, too afraid he will say "but we need it" which will make me second guess how important I am, we are, anyone is to anyone.  And that is not the way I think.  It cannot be.

When you have chased for love your entire life and it sits down in front of you to catch its breath and then runs off again, it is so easy to take up that game.  I am playing again.  It is so familiar.  My experience of love in my youth is the reason I try so hard to show my children how to give it and receive it.  I don't want them on the prowl for anything that looks like it, seems like it, but just isn't.  I don't want them to suffer more than they have to for love and a peaceful heart.  When they cry for their father, express how much they miss him, need him, want him, I support them but have not shown them how it hurts to be apart.  I don't want to blow their minds.  I don't want to blow my own.  But if they never see how to love from us, if they learn only to hide, to camouflage, keep stony-faced when they are full to bursting, they will be doomed.  They will disengage from their families, disconnect, and forget to tell the people they love just how much so and forget to beg them to stay.

Today was a bad day because Didier left this morning, a busy Monday morning that required too much attention to too much else, so I kissed him quickly and said goodbye.  It is the first of too many goodbye kisses that signify he is gone for the holidays.  We have done this for years and it never gets easier, but it looks the same every time.  A fairly innocuous kiss goodbye and then days or weeks of separation where we pretend that being apart like this is normal.  We ask how the other is doing without really wanting the answer, without really answering.  The ugly, twisted face came hours later after school drop off and three stops at three different grocery stores.  What I don't know, what I wonder, what I hope, is that somewhere he is making the ugly-crying face for me.  That sometimes he is the cat and I am the mouse and that somewhere in the middle we can meet, hold on, and stop this vicious cycle.


(c) Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Cicadas love

 

A while back I posted on Facebook or somewhere that I really loved nature and my claim was disputed, almost immediately, by a friend who wanted to remind me of my absolute fear of the monkeys in Barbados and nervousness wandering in the woods.  These two points were well taken but they do not prove that I do not indeed love nature.  I do.  Though loving nature, in my case, may not mean camping out in a tent at every chance I get or licking toads or picking up critters and loving them down.  One is able to love something and look upon that something nervously.  Ask my husband.

We are in the midst of a natural phenomenon here in Northern New Jersey, one that is incredibly profound and exciting and terrifying.  The rise of the cicadas after their 17 year slumber has brought a buzz throughout our community.  Really.  The sound echoes everywhere.  My husband, the chef, likens it to working in the kitchen all evening and having the hum of the hood droning on in the background.  It doesn't really bother him.  He doesn't realize it's on until it is finally turned off and then there is a sound to the silence.  Only then does he recognize that the hood was enveloping him in sound. 

I won't lie, those beady, red-eyed, stain-glass winged chirpies give me the willies.  And don't let one land on me or near me or by me or around me, but I am still utterly fascinated.  This afternoon, on my hubby's day off, we trekked through the reservation in our town and did a bit of hiking through clouds of cicadas.  As we got deeper into the woods, the sound was all enveloping; each individual song rising in unison like the breath, Ohm, in a meditative state.  We walked in silence, almost unable to speak or hear one another above the rising chant.  We did not see cicadas with every step, were not wading through a sea of carcasses, nor did we swat at swarms of cicadas moving in a black cloud formation like I saw in multiple videos on the internet.  We did have to duck down as a few seemed determined to attach to us or fly through the space we were occupying.  Didier's red shirt seemed to be a draw.  I was sure to stand not quite next to him.  I still love it, nature I mean, but I didn't need all that nature all over me too! 

The cicadas came out of the ground when it got to a comfortable sixty-two degrees in the soil.  The dime-sized holes pocked the ground where they'd made their climb.  The short life span allowed for just one life goal and that was to mate.  From the looks of it, there needed to be billions of them if the species was going to survive.  So many of these ding-dang things were crushed, floating in puddles, getting snacked on by birds and squirrels and probably somebody else out there.  The ones that did make it at least out of the ground and out of harm's way were meeting wing to wing and then making the Chinese finger torture love.  They would connect and one would be moving forward and the other backwards, like the bug world Fred and Ginger.  Truly, the connection when made, which we witnessed many times over, is just stunning.  As a metaphor for love, the overlain wings, rhythmic, unified walk, determination, will, these partnerships are amazing. 

Walking in the woods with my husband of nearly five years, trying to keep up our connection when the demands of raising children and working and living and expanding and contracting threaten to kick our asses, we rooted for the cicadas to thrive and survive.  We got angry, frustrated, and annoyed with the ones that landed in the water and then kept trying to walk through the water.  We rescued the ones that were nearly on the edge and felt sad for the ones that had just been trampled underfoot, run down by bikers and joggers carelessly moving on the path.  We watched them.  We studied them.  We felt thankful for the chance to be here.  Be here NOW while this incredible phenomenon took place in real time and we were able to live it.

Lily is terrified out of her mind at the sight and sound of the cicadas.  After a boy in her grade threw one at her, I figured she'd never come around to seeing the magic.  When I told her she'd see them next when she was twenty-three or twenty-four years old, she considered it.  She said she does feel like it's special.  Just not for her.  I get it.  There are people who love to be out in it, sleeping in the dark, in a tent, in places they've never been or even in their backyards.  Who might revel in the sight of monkeys coming to their door or lizards scurrying across the floor of their home.  There are those who offer nuts to the squirrels and let enormous cockroaches crawl on their hands.  I confess.  I am not one of those.  I am afraid, cautious, anxious, hopeful; it's the way I approach everything I love. 
I love that the cicadas came out and that I got to be here to see them. 

When they go, it'll be like the hood has been turned off in the kitchen.  There will still be buzzing and then there will be silence.  We will just then realize that the hum is no longer with us and that it stirred and amplified us and then let us go.  When I say I love nature this is what I mean.  I am genuinely shocked, awed, and humbled and though I may be scared or freaked out of my wits, I welcome the chance to love.



(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Find 100 Ways

FIND ONE HUNDRED WAYS, James Ingram

 

Songwriters: Benjamin Wright, Anthony Tyrone Coleman, Kathleen Wakefield

 

Produced by Quincy Jones

Compliment what she does
Send her roses just because
If it's violins she loves
Let them play
Dedicate her favourite song
And hold her closer all night long
Love her today
Find one hundred ways
Don't forget, there could be
An old lover in her memory
If you need her so much more
Why don't you say?
Maybe she has it in her mind
That she's just wasting her time
Ask her to stay
Find one hundred ways
Being cool won't help you keep a love warm
You'll just blow your only chance
Take the time to open up your heart
That's the secret of romance
Sacrifice if you care Buy her some moonlight to wear
If it's one more star she wants
Go all the way
In your arms tonight, she'll reflect
That she owes you the sweetest of debts
If she wants to pay
Find one hundred ways
Love her today
Find one hundred ways

 

I spent the night out again with some wonderful friends.  It is always a relief when I find friends with whom I can talk, be free, and relax and whose children are equaled loved and adored by my own kiddles.  Talking about how each couple first met and fell in love, I found myself silent.  Silent because my husband was out of town on business and I hoped to have him share the story with me rather than reminiscing alone, recounting and recalling by myself.  We all laughed and then waxed nostalgically about life lived in the metropolis--Manhattan, Brooklyn, city versus life out in the burbs. 

Looking around the table, each of us creative, talented, sharp, tired parents, in various stages of "in love" with our partners (something that anyone, but certainly any parent, will tell you is often in flux), I thought of how the heck I'd gotten here.  Here in the place where I was talking about my life BC (before children) longingly, lovingly, relishing the memory of possibilities that city-dwelling afforded me.  I was becoming heated, angry, hurt, completely forgetting how lonely, exhausting, tiny my life was BC.  I was quietly simmering because Didier was away working, cooking for a wealthy family while they vacationed and that I was home, home alone with the people taking care of their every need, want, whim, scheduled activity, supervised or unsupervised, housework, homework, work.  I was tired.

When I am alone for long periods of time, I often forget that I am not "in it alone," that it is not me against the world, that I have not been abandoned by my husband, left to raise my children alone in a cruel, darkening world.  This is my stuff.  This is me.  I cannot and do not dare claim that this is the stuff of all mothers, but it is my bag.  As I go through the routine, the day to day handling of the lives of three people, meeting basic needs and occasionally offering some spiritual guidance and emotional support, I feel alienated, isolated, stripped.  It isn't that I don't feel like my children appreciate me because I know that they do in their way.  It surely isn't that I would change my life.  Being a mother is probably one of the most profoundly defining and yes, rewarding experiences of my life.  I just think that the woman I was before the children came, before the responsibilities of caring for and guiding two souls through the universe, two people through the world, would have never believed the heightened level of anxiety, joy, panic, possibilities that motherhood would bring.  When I am alone with the girls, I get into gear, click into mommy mode, and run like a well-oiled, efficient machine with moments of humanity and kindness, but mostly strict routine so that everyone can get to bed by 8 o'clock and Mommy can have a glass of wine in peace.

And then my husband returns as he left.  In a huff, in a hurry, tired, in need of care, tenderness, compassion.  And I offer it.  From Mommy it is given, as it is always given.  But I am not a machine and days, weeks in the pattern, in service, without a shower (or at least a meaningful one), comfort, or stillness can make a lady crazy.  I remember my mother listening to this song on the radio when I was a girl.  I thought it was pretty (if not a little schmaltzy) and was moved by the tenderness of a man, advising another how to care for a woman, to attend to her.  I couldn't imagine, truly, that any man, except for in the movies or on Fantasy Island or the Love Boat, would even give a damn.  I have been humming this song all week as I count down the days to Didier's return.  He will come back and life will continue on as if he'd never left.  I will release the control on the conveyor belt, set it to a different speed but keep it working, and continue loving the people, caring for them, guiding them, tending to them, but there will be no 100 ways.  Not from my husband.  Maybe from the girls. 

While I assume that song was meant to be a love song to win over a woman unsure and insecure, it serves better the wife and mother.  The woman, already committed,  toiling away for her family--husband/wife/partner and kids--who recalls being that unsure woman and is now the unsung hero.  I am feeling sentimental these days, nostalgic for my younger, attractive, wittier self.  I wish I recognized more of her in the mirror behind my greasy-haired, head-banded, yoga pants rocking, make-up-less self.  I really hope my husband does too.


(c) Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Brother Man

I am almost six years older than my brother which was just enough distance to see him as a cute and cuddly threat when he was born and a strange, little brainiac as he grew into a viciously smart kid and I into a miserable, brooding teenager.  I was always so curious about him, intrigued and fascinated.  He was a boy and did boy things and was sensitive, inquisitive, and obviously bright.  It was understood that he was bright.  He "got" things easily, skipped second grade, had a memory for all kinds of information, facts, dates, concepts, and loved exploring them, sometimes talking, talking, talking about them out loud in order to process them.  His role in the family was son and heir and "the smart one."  Nevermind that he was also a talented musician, it seemed a "shame" for him to go in the direction of the arts when he was clearly gifted with this brain for "something more."

I can only imagine how being my little brother must have traumatized the poor soul.  I was all arts and smarts--dance, visual arts, music, then acting later in life-- though the smarts did not reveal itself until years later when intelligence was no longer measured in test taking ability, memorization, and advanced algebra and trigonometry.  I foolishly committed the rules to memory and existed only to serve them.  Until I became that tortured teen, I ignored my own thoughts and cries and pleas for expression and did what I was told.  My bro watched in the shadows of the Speak N-Spell, adding numbers on the calculator to turn it upside down and make funny words, spinning the globe and pouring through maps and Encyclopedia Britannica volumes while I went from people pleaser to sad, angry worm.  My sister, two years younger than I am, buffered him from my angst and anxiety, teaching him about hip hop and teenage partying, relationships, and navigating the grey landscape that was our childhood home. 

And then I was gone.  As I watched from the dorm rooms I inhabited in Boston, my brother became a very cool, super hip, politically passionate dude.  I wanted to know him but was long gone and fast disconnecting from the mothership.  We'd move in and out of the circle, a little do-see-do, but never quite got to know each other or find ourselves completely comfy in each others' presence.  I blamed myself for this.  My brooding, emotional, artistic self saw ribbons of energy pushing and pulling and twisting around each other and I could never get my bearings.  I recalled bad times where he'd existed only on the periphery, moments that did not sit with the same thud for him as they did for me.  I was melancholy, mourning, dark and he was still searching, reaching, seeking.  Though we were both artistic, creative, thinkers, though we were both inquisitive, longing,questing, I couldn't see in his success, his hopefulness, how it was that we'd come out of the same house, that he remembered too.

As soon as I saw the trotting horses in the park, I collected myself and got my bearings.  I looked down and saw that I was pushing Virginie in our Peg Perego stroller that has survived international travel, beach dunes, and took comfort in seeing my hands gripping the carriage handles.  I searched for Lily, looking for her red jacket through the trees and other colored parkas in the park and saw that she was close. Close to me and to the trotting horses.  I didn't have to say anything because before I could figure out just what I would shout out about now, my brother rounded up the girls (his and mine) and got them well out of "harm's" way.  I looked over at my sister-in-law and said, "He has it too, huh?  The Penn panic.  The horses aren't bothering you at all, are they?"  They weren't.  At all.  Nor were they bothering my husband.

A smile came to my face and I took comfort in this commonality.  My brother is all those wonderful things and he was freaked by the possibility of the "charging," yes, now charging (in my mind) horses.  He was prepared for danger, ready.  He believed in love and life, had found the most incredible place with his gorgeous wife and girls, successful career, nice home, spoils of a well-lived, well-guided life, and still flashed panicked eyes at obstacles on the road.  As I watched him, looked at his face, I saw my baby brother, the little one, and I wanted to reassure him, even though I was pretty on guard myself.  Even though, when we were younger, I had no tools to guide or protect or reassure.

Even if this guy wasn't my brother, I would think he was pretty awesome.  In the second act, I get to know him for whom he probably always was, but I had no idea, and for the person he continues to develop into.  The man, the dad, the husband, and the friend.  The artist, the lawyer, the thinker.  I can only hope that he recognizes that the broody, moody, emotional girl he witnessed has transformed into a still emotional, spiritual, hopeful, still a bit fearful, caring, creative woman with partially exorcised demons and a map with room for more experiences and destinations.  We've been through some of the same places and I now hope we can show each other something new.




(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Upstairs, Downstairs

I love watching Downton Abbey.  The relationships and politics of the upper class and their servants are not only intriguing but offer a peek into the world of folks who depend on others for things that I consider basic adult responsibilities and those that serve their needs upstairs but are dependent on these people for their livelihood.  I love seeing how "the other half," as they were once affectionately called, lives though now they are clearly the 1 %, no halfsies about it.  This interests me more than most because my husband works as a private chef with many prominent New York families.  He is discreet, private, and unassuming so this is no exposé on how the other half lives.  No stories about spoiled kids, eccentric parties, or secret societies where some kind of sacrifice is made to the gods that got them all this loot, power, and privilege.  He would never divulge information, secrets, tales.  That is not his style.  This is a confession really, of how it feels to miss him when he is gone, knowing that we depend on the whims of his clients, by choice mind you, and that in between those spaces, we have carved out a lovely existence, a life I love and treasure, but that sometimes leaves me alone for longer than I'd like, exhausted, scared, silent.

My husband took on this gig for our family.  Restaurant offers began to come in when we returned from our two year stint in Barbados and for a time we considered them as well as other opportunities in the hotel industry.  Our stint in Barbados, that job, that company he worked for nearly did us in and we thought long and hard about returning to a lifestyle like that.  We are older parents with small children and neither of us wants to recreate the experiences we had as children with hard-working but distant fathers who missed out on our childhoods and couldn't find a way back to us.  So we decided on freelance work at least until the youngest is in kindergarten when we can both get back to work and pursue passions.  It's a choice, a privilege, I know, to be able to do this when so many others work and are willing to any way they can or must, but we made it together.  His reputation, his skill, his talent helped him find employment quickly both as a full time private chef and as a chef for hire for private parties and events. 

When he's working full-time, he gets up like everyone else, has a cup of coffee, packs his things and is off on the morning train.  I am home with the girls, getting them ready for school and then getting them to school before I have a few hours to steal for myself before I have to pick up the littlest.  It's enough time to do some errands, exercise, and/or write but not enough to put in a real day's work outside the home.  My hubby, on the other hand, will not be home any time before 10:30 pm.  Once he's out on a full time gig, there is no coming home early for a game, dance recital, dinner date, anything (except for the one time I was taken by ambulance to the hospital convinced I was having a heart attack, which was actually a panic attack.  OK, so it was an attack, but it was really my nerves and psyche, not my ticker.)  I have gone to conferences, had the stomach flu, severe fever and flu, neighborhood parties on my own with kiddles in tow, missing him, but knowing that this is best for us.  I have had the car jumped when the battery died in frigid weather, shoveled the driveway while the kids played inside, and had less than one hour to myself in weeks (due to the winter break when he was out of town for eighteen days), but still slog on.  Because his current job is freelance, meaning he is not a full-time staff member, there are days that he can and does choose not to go in. 

The private parties are more fun because he often works with another talented chef, a good friend, and they can speak French, talk politics and tell jokes while they work.  If he works alone, he is able to design the menu with the client and generally has more freedom to create and express startlingly good dishes.  These jobs bring in more money because they are one-offs and special so there is a flat fee and the coverage of food and other expenses.  Sometimes he is able to prep at our house, then drive into the city with the goods.  It makes the house smell amazing and I get to be with him though he is quite focused and doesn't say much.  I love watching him even if he is so lost in his own world that he doesn't see my admiring eyes.  His attention to detail, his professionalism, his truly unique talent are such wonderful assets to have, and he has never let himself down nor his clients nor us.

When Didier ran his own restaurants, he answered to his team, worked in tandem with them, but ultimately was the head of the kitchen.  Sure, there were customers,some of whom he knew quite well and welcomed a conversation, after shift drink, but nothing as intimate as being in someone's home, their kitchen, standing very near to them while you work and they discuss the day's business with each other in front of you.  In a household, no matter how good you are, you are beholden to the whims and fancies of the head of that household.  There are many families with whom he has fit in comfortably, seamlessly, able to prepare meals that are creative, delicious, and in their taste and preference.  With others, their confusion or lack of preference made it difficult to prepare and though he offered complete, thoughtful, well-considered menus he never felt certain that he'd give them what they wanted.  There is little more stressful for a chef than wondering if people like his food!

To many, the travel, the access seems intoxicating.  But though he does not live in the residence or take his meals down below, he is by no means a member of the family.  And while it seems that traveling via private jet to warm locales and living in the Hamptons for the summer (this time family in tow) are incredible perks, he often does not get to enjoy them fully because he is working.  I absolutely loved staying in the Hamptons this summer and was incredibly grateful for the provision made by his employer, even sent a hand sewn thank you card with a picture of the girls wading in the water at the edge of the bay.  The house was just lovely and peaceful and offered respite from our suburban lives but we saw Didier so little.  We might have run into him at the market after a visit to the playground or the beach, and were happy to be able to park at his employers' in order to swim at one glorious beach with a hefty parking price tag in order to see him on the drive in and out, but it could not be said that he was vacationing there with us.  His joyful moments were stolen in between shifts.

He has cooked for many well-known folks, but often does not see them unless they deign to come in to the kitchen.  Which some do, he has told me.  Often to offer thanks or delight in a particular dish, sometimes just to be a part of it, to have their coffee and talk to a new ear.  Some are gracious and remember his name and treat him and others with respect, and some less so.  This past weekend, he went away with a family to Florida for an extended weekend which then turned into an additional week.  He was asked if this was alright which prompted a call to me straight away.  I appreciated both but felt there was no way on earth that I would summon that man home even if I were desperate for him.  I never considered saying anything but yes.So there he is, still away and I am home for another week nursing this severe cold I've had since the flu and bronchitis left me.

I love him for the sacrifice, for the humility, for the commitment to us and our dream.  I also accept the role that's been made for me as keeper of everything, the guiding star of all that we are and all that we do.  For now.  We are two artists and have chosen a life a little different than expected and with that comes, quite obviously, the unexpected.  This man can cook his ass off and it has given us this place away from the restaurant scene, corporate hotel life, the politics, the game, and brought us to another level of the onion.  We've been allowed a stolen pleasure now and again.  But as "we" work in service, we are rooted firmly downstairs, able to see the 1% up close and personal, undoubtedly sure that we are not even close.  The commitment to our family, the emotional time, energy, and grace we are able to put in is worth more than ever languishing at the window dreaming of nothing because we seemingly have it all.  Because we are getting close to having it.  All.



(c)  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

The Piece of Paper

"We're all married, right?  All of us.  You, Papa, me, and Lily, right?  Because we are a family."  3 1/2 year old Virginie


Four years ago today, my Honeypot and I ventured out in the pouring rain to City Hall in downtown Manhattan to make it official before the State of New York.  We'd left our two and 1/2 year old with a sitter and met a small handful of friends and family who would be there to support us and bear witness.  We'd applied for the marriage license with an eclectic mix of New Yorkers just a week earlier.  Though we'd been warned and were well-prepared for crazy, DMV-style lines, the program at the Justice of the Peace was efficient if curt, and we were there for less than an hour and a 1/2.  By the time we were finished, I was ravenous and had to pee.  That was pretty much par for the course in those days.  I was five and a 1/2 months pregnant.

I don't want to say that we were pressured to marry.  Anyone who knew us back then could have told you that no fire burned hotter or brighter than we.  I just didn't see the point.  I'd seen successful, unsuccessful, sham, true love, high school sweetheart, known-each-other-three-month marriages and thought, "good for them."  I just didn't think that the piece of paper was necessary to define who we were and what we were to each other.  He'd been married previously and had had a pretty contentious divorce, one that I had suffered through with him, and frankly, we already had a child together that for us was the true symbol of our connection.  We were committed, were in it to win it, and wanted to build our family, our union, our team without being told how it was meant to be done.  No matter the piece of paper, I knew that my partner, the one I had chosen for life would never abandon me or my children.  I had faith in the person that he showed himself to be and he had the same faith in me.  I considered us a modern, honest, intellectual, artistic couple who could take it or leave it.  The paper, I mean.

My parents had come for a visit in the early weeks of my pregnancy with Virginie and I was violently ill.  Didier and I were proceeding with caution as I'd already suffered two miscarriages.  I knew the sickness was a good sign, as they say, but we were not quite sure we were ready to disclose our condition.  The problem was I couldn't hide it either.  When you are one who almost never turns down a glass of wine, the refusal of one definitely raises a flag.  If you find yourself suddenly running for the bathroom every few minutes and cannot chew anything without getting that dizzy, nauseous feeling, you begin to look suspect.  I was nervous and jittery withholding a secret that made us giddy so in an ill-considered act of sharing, I told them the news.  There was silence and then there was head shaking.  There were averted eyes and sighs.  Didier and I looked at each other across the room and wondered if perhaps they had not heard me correctly.  So I said it again.  "We are pregnant.  It's just the early stages but we are coming to the end of the first trimester so I am nearly sure."  Nothing.

A handful of miserably depressing phone calls later and the "you're an unmarried hussy-not a celebrity-what would the neighbors think-you will never be forgiven-find a faith" dialogue convinced me that my perspective was surely not the most popular out there.  Our relationship had outlasted a sibling's marriage.  We'd been together for years and had a child already.  We were in love.  It seemed a bit ridiculous to us to spend our money on a ceremony to appease my family when we were actually preparing for a new arrival.  Sharing our plan was really a courtesy.  We'd made no decision on when or where or how or why we should "make it official."

And then came the offer for a position in Barbados.  Upon review of the culture of this tiny Caribbean island, we started to see the writing on the wall.  We could live together, common-law, in New York, forever.  Our kids could have a different last name from their father, and we could hang with our diverse group of friends, our community and feel safe, fit in, avoid definitions from outside.  But in Barbados we didn't want to make waves.  We didn't know anyone and didn't want to draw attention to ourselves by rolling in there to live, a French chef and his African-American girlfriend and their children.  We choked and felt that the easiest way to make this transition smoothly was to get married.  We'd go there as an easily recognizable family, without demanding an understanding of our own definition of ourselves.  Witnessing a couple we spent a good amount of time with, a Canadian couple together longer than we, having to explain again and again that they were a couple, a family but common law partners, proved to us that we'd dodged one.

I love being married to Didier, love what we have become, love the evolution of us from lovers to parents to the team.  Each night, as I put the girls to bed, the littlest one asks, "Papa is married to all of us, right?  We are all married together, right?"  And I tell her, every night, that we are.  That without her and her big sister there would be no "married," that we saved being married for them.  For them, making the commitment, putting it down on paper, rather than in a song, in a painting, in a poem, in a dance, in the way we live was worth it. 

Being married, signing the love on that paper has meant that everyone understands that we have rights and privileges that were we just "together" we'd have to fight for.  We'd have red tape to cut through.  Folks to have to argue with so that we could see each other in the hospital, have access to accounts and funds and private information.  In Barbados, being married served us well, especially during exhausting visits to the Immigration Department where having and showing our marriage license seemed to at least begin the process, was a key to the door with 1000 locks.  My unmarried friends suffered endlessly the questions, the downright concern that they did not have that paper and did not share a common name.  With all else I was dealing with there, that just might have put me over the edge.

I am married.  And to a wonderful man.  When it so moved us, we went downtown and just did it.  But what of our friends and family who don't have the option to do this?  Who might embrace it in a way that we didn't?  Who love each other as we do?  Who have every right to cut through the red tape, see their names on important documents, embrace and love their children as we do?  Perhaps they want to wing it and commit in a ceremony less formal and maybe they just want the option to have that piece of paper, to be legitimized, to be included, counted, considered.  Some of my gay and lesbian friends won the geographical lottery living in States where their marriage is legal, so they too could run downtown as we did and just do it.  Let's see us all catch up.  If I need the piece of paper to make people happy, then I wish that everyone can be so happy.  Just sayin'.

Happy Anniversary to my love.  I remember the first date with the same jelly-legged swoon.  The first kiss as the seal to our connection.  The first fight as proof of our freedom to be ourselves and continue to love one another.  The years in Barbados as a big freakin' test.  And the piece of paper as a dare to do it all forever.


(c)  Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

The Way Back

I've been reconstructing so much in my life of late.  We've been back in the States for a little over one year, have settled into an idyllic little town on the edge of glorious NYC.  I feel its presence, NYC that is, though I rarely make the trip in.  I tried to do some writing there for a few days but got distracted by all the life.  I figured I'd do much better writing in my local library where just my thoughts that needed processing could distract me.  And I am distracted.  While working like a maniac to give my girls the sense of family unity that I longed for, I've got years of sticky stuff clogging the pipes.  It has shown up in migraine headaches, panic and anxiety attacks, and near nervous breakdowns, though all of these seem to be on the wane. 

After what I will call euphemistically an eye-opening Thanksgiving visit with family, I returned home with a realization that I had to, needed to reconnect with and forgive my husband for what I felt was abandonment, disconnection, miscommunication during our years in Barbados.  No matter the difficult times, he always came back.  He never attacked me physically, verbally, or emotionally.  In fact, he never tried to hurt me ever.  He never left or turned his back even when I was foaming at the mouth.  He never fought, just looked at me with those soft, puppy dog eyes and probably wondered where the hell the beautiful, loving, fun, cool, sexpot of a girlfriend and wife had gone off to.  Wedded bliss and parenthood can alter a person.  Wrestling demons and cellular emotional poison can destroy one. 

As I walked through the gate at the airport on our return, two car seats, a stroller, an enormous 27-lb carry-on bag, two girls' jackets, and two girls in tow, I felt the weight lift.  I marched the girls through the terminal to baggage claim to get to their father.  Before we'd even made it, I saw his black coat and shy smile creeping around the corner.  He'd come as far as he could to meet us, was right at the edge.  We all ran to him, embraced, and relaxed into home.  We'd made our way back.  To see the girls and me hugging and kissing all over the man like we'd been gone five months instead of five days showed just how desperate we were to affirm our unit, our gang, our team, our family.  In my arrested development, I often found it difficult to "choose" between my two families--the one into which I was born and the one I'd made myself. 

I have often wondered if other people have this dilemma.  We answer a different call when we make our own families, play a different role.  In my family now, I am awesome.  I am beautiful.  I am funny.  I am smart, and silly, and talented, and a good cook. (Seriously.  I mean, I'm no chef, but the girls love my food and I have learned so much from my husband whether I wanted to or not!)  I keep a clean house, a fun house where everyone has a favorite place but no place is off limits.  I cannot help but get new things to make our home comfy and cozy and delight in the squeals and winks of my people when they see something new that makes them feel special.  We delight in each other even when we can't stand each other because the latter lasts only as long as whatever conflict has formed is resolved.  It doesn't linger until the poison fills up our veins.

Being a homemaker, whether one works outside the home or not, (I currently do not.) does not have to be mutually exclusive from being the same wicked hot, fun sexpot one was before getting married and making people.  This, I am working on.  In Barbados, it was easy to be cute with all the half- dressed, sun-dressed, no bra, sweatiness, hair in a disheveled ponytail, swimsuit as underwear hot, hot, blazing hotness going on.  But back on the East Coast, it became so easy to fall into sweatpants, loose fitting jeans, trainers, and formless t-shirts, even ones with cool band names, that I felt like I looked like a co-ed on a stay-in Friday night eating ramen noodles.  While I may not rock a heel every day, my high top, high heeled sneakers are doing the trick and a little mascara and lipstick when I am one bad item shy of a needed Oprah make over keeps me presentable and looking like I give a damn.

We are working on allowing ourselves breaks from the kiddles and as they get older this is much easier.  Though still slim on babysitter pickings, an afternoon at the movies or walking in the reservation, a cuddle and make out on the couch on his day off, or a movie and a glass of wine, no computers, no texting, no phone calls once the people are asleep has brought us back to each others' hearts.  I don't know if I ever left his.  He is slow burning, patient, watchful to my hysterical, freak out, nervous, at least in loving each other.  He is in it for the long haul.  He wants me, loves us.  And this realization on the way back from where-I'm-just-not-quite-sure gave new clarity and definition to what is MY family.

I woke up one day and discovered that I am one of the adults in this family!  Ha!  Not sure how this happened, but I chose to take it seriously, to commit, to handle it and I realized that it's actually quite fun (when it doesn't suck).  The changes to my perspective and in turn, to my outlook on our future and our success as a family have surprised me and given me tremendous hope.  Being in a family can be hard, but it doesn't have to be.  I surely do not want it to be in mine.



(c)  Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Things I love, I am thankful

I am thankful for Lily's shy smile, Virginie's eyelashes, watching Lily dance when she thinks I cannot see her, Virginie's inquisitive mind, both girls' constant conversation, Didier's eyes darting from one place to the next while he thinks.  I love to watch my husband walking to the train from our window, his bouncy gait as enthusiastic and energetic as the little boy I imagine him to have been.  I am thankful that each day, whether we drive each other mad or not, Didier and I have something more to discover about one another and thus far, still think that's pretty freakin' cool.  That we adore and admire and support our children with the same intensity and joy.  I love the curiosity, the drive, the charisma, and character of my children.   I love that my people trust me when they look in my eyes and know that I'll always have their backs even if just moments before, I was yelling. I love that we come back to center after every argument, every tussle, every misunderstanding and love it out. We are a family and as it is the first bond, the first experience of community and strength, I want to give that to them hard, drill it in so they never forget and wander off or get lost.

I am thankful for the families that came together to produce me.  Two incredibly strong, motivated, devoted, exceptional families that valued honesty, truth, love, wisdom, service, community, and compassion over the superficial and shallow.  Two families whose matriarchs and patriarchs were willing to endure and suffer setbacks and slights so that their families, their progeny could go forward and soar.  I am so grateful for this blessing and so often let myself forget the strength and guidance given to me by all these people, all these folks, both when they were with me and in spirit.  I am thankful for my connection to the spirit, to the universe, to God without which I would surely have given up.  I am thankful that even when things are difficult, exhausting, terrifying, I want to live and live long.  I accept the responsibility of my lineage and feel blessed that it is mine.  I am thankful that I get to pass this on to my children.

I am thankful for my education, for all that I have learned in school and in life, even when the lessons were damned hard and I thought they might kill me.  I am blessed that the value of a good, proper education was given to me by my parents, their parents, and their parents' parents.  I know that being able to learn, to think for myself, to consider has provided me with many incredible opportunities and allowed me to see the world through eager, inquisitive eyes.  I am so happy to be able to share these wonders with the girls.  I am happy that close-mindedness, shallow thinking, hate, and disdain have not been allowed to take root in my heart or my mind. 

I am thankful that as I age it is still hard to tell just exactly how old I am (for others) and that my body continues to serve me well and that I am in good health.  I pray that I am able to be with the girls and my husband for a long time, a long, healthy life.  I am blessed that the early signs of middle age are creeping slowly and not coming quickly (though I'd love to spend a tiny bit more time in the gym working it all out.)  I have my mother to thank for that, at least her incredible genes, because she looks about fifteen to twenty years younger than she is and has stayed as youthful in spirit (or maybe it's the early onset of the "whatevs.")

My friends and family who have supported me, cared for me, loved me, given to me when I didn't dare ask but certainly needed it have my thanks and gratitude forever.  These gems have shaped my life, changed me and challenged me, begged me to get my lessons when I was violently opposed, blinded by my ego, hurt feelings, and fear.  There are hardly words to describe how that invisible safety net of souls feels when it lifts me up and stands me back on my feet.  Through the trials and tribulations of a life lived seeking the truth, these people are invaluable.  Accepting their guidance and spirit has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.  I am truly thankful.

The Thanksgiving brawls, physical, psychological, and emotional that must certainly attack more than just me, often try to steal my heart and turn it to coal, may try to threaten my sense of gratitude, may try to break my heart and render me thankless.  But even that won't do.  My life is blessed.  My heart is still open.  And I am thankful, thankful, thankful that I am able to continue to love.

Happy Thanksgiving.



(c)  Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.