Butterflies for Lunch

I was trying to insert sparkly clips in my hair, using my left hand, and a wave of nervousness washed over me. For what? School starts tomorrow! I can't believe it could affect me so, but here it is, Max going to 2nd grade and Yeni on her first year of preescolar. The Kung Fu Panda and Sponge Bob backpacks are straining under the weight of too many notebooks. The Taz and Flintstones lunch boxes hold yogurt and pasta and carrots.

Yesterday we had the good fortune to meet Nina and Miguel, Inoa and Caio, and Max was thrilled to hear Inoa would be in his class. A friend! He says he's ready for school, hardly nervous.

And me, a little bit of a wreck. Because what I can't prepare for is that moment when they see their new teachers. Please let the teachers be kind!

Good times

A couple of great days amid a rather sleep-deprived summer. Yesterday, I got the stitches out of my head. It took two seconds and cost two bucks. Max and I walked to the children's library where he stacked up 20 books in Spanish and read through them all. I felt a little useless, my favorite feeling to have around children. Autonomy!

Max got a chemistry set and Steve was very funny, getting very controlling about it. So I took over and everyone was happier. Max loves holding test tubes over candle flames, watching the substances bubble. Then we played a round of the Mad Magazine game. We'd lost the dice, so we had to hold out fingers on the count of three, add it up, and make our moves. Yeni decided to use her potty, singing "yayayayay" after each visit.

We hit Dr. Manuelita's office for a little pendulum-swinging to determine Yeni's bedtime rebellion. The diagnosis was that something frightened her. We got some natural remedy and Yeni went to bed in 5 minutes. Coincidence?

Today was more experiments, more potty, and a visit to pay the water bill. Mexico's largely a cash economy, so you don't send checks to pay bills. You go to the office and pay. So we braved downtown traffic and double-parked in front of the water bill office to pay our $2.60 bill. And it was right next to a great sock store, so Max y Yeni loaded up on cartoony sox, 12 for $6 on sale.

Still typing with one hand, but getting around better. August is slow for writing jobs so I've decided it's a good month for a writer to break her arm.

Friday: Ocotlan with Leslie, my old Worldview partner-in-crime!

One-handed Typing

You know, I've always hated that rule about no running in the house. I always said that if you can't run around and yell in the house, what are you doing?

So there I was playing tag (in flip flops) with Max, yes, in the house, and I slid and fell from the house down a step into our tile courtyard. I'm so not the type to break a bone--hate skiing, not into steep places--but here I am, typing with one hand. Fracture on the elbow. And, for good measure, some stitches in my head and a big black eye.

Still, I wonder: can't we jog in the house?

Guelaguetza Popular

Hombro a hombro
Codo a codo
La APPO, La APPO, La APPO somos todo

Oaxaca celebrates indigenous dance every year with Guelaguetza, a folkloric dance event in an outdoor amphitheater. The event has packed the town with tourists who fill the sidewalks and the Alcala tourist corridor.

But I didn't see the tourists in the zocalo last night. Instead, it was Mexicanos out to celebrate the Guelaguetza Popular, a "People's Guelaguetza" intended to both celebrate Oaxaca's diverse regions and also to get the message out that these people of Oaxaca are oppressed by its government.

The Calenda processional went on for blocks, and the zocalo was the most packed I had ever seen it. Everyone was shouting political chants for APPO, the controversial coalition of unions that held high-profile strikes and protests in 2006. Loosely known as "the teachers", APPO also has groups representing farmers, students, and indigenous groups. Other sites would provide more detailed information, while mine here will be more experiential.

And my experience was: powerful. Here was a deeply political gathering, fueled by injustice after injustice (including some political prisoners who still have not been released by a government who has been on Amnesty International's shit list since the uprising), but the mood was also festive and vivid.

There was a contingent of people in elaborate devil masks, with levers for opening and shutting their eyes. There was a group of black-clad punky boys pogo-ing as they circumnavigated the zocalo. There were women in elaborate feather headdresses and men clad in white with ponchos holding ceramic jugs. Giant puppets were held aloft on people's shoulders, and one group of men took turns being a "bull", dodging through the crowd while carrying an elaborate wooden frame will a bull's skin stretched across it. There were old women and well-dressed young men, teenagers and small children, all chanting for their rights.

It proved to me something I had suspected. Since I arrived, I had heard from one bourgeois source after another that APPO is corrupt, that the people don't support APPO, that the APPO often ships people in from other regions and pays them to strike. Last night proved them wrong. This was no staged assembly, the people were clearly Oaxaqueno, though many not from the city, and their hearts were on the line. They raised fists and shouted with passion. As a person raised on protests, I know a remarkable demonstration when I see one. Here is was, the revolutionary spirit, expressed through dancing in the streets. Muy mexicano.

La APPO vive
La lucha sigue

La APPO vive, vive
La lucha sigue, sigue

Viva La APPO!

No Sleep 'Til...

Brooklyn? I'm not sure. Just no sleep. The kids have stopped sleeping. Or they take turns sleeping in little bits, harassing us in between. Max has phobias and Genevieve just prefers to yell and play all...night...long. How can she function? She slept 10pm to 4am the other night, getting up twice during that stretch to scream and mess around.

How can we function?

Tomorrow, it's to the pediatrician and the flores de bach lady to see if something is wrong and if something can be done.

Somehow, we are muddling along through this hysteria. Steve and I spot each other for naps during the day (the kids don't typically nap), because Maxito and Yeni are on school break until August 18th. August 18th can't come fast enough.

On the bright side, our dear friends Do and Erik came with their son Lake and we had dinner together last night. They spoke of living together in a dark room for 2 weeks as a kind of meditation or ritual practice. Do spoke of her home (Italy) and how different it is from Erik's home (Norway). And now they are moving to Berlin, because it's full of artists and cheap rent. They say on Sundays, the bars open and serve brunch outside and everybody comes for a huge community meal along the avenues.

Off to usher the children off to pretend sleep. Wish me luck.

Vacay!

We just returned from a whirlwind East Coast vacay. It began with Cape Cod, to see the in-laws. I've never been much of a Cape Cod kind of person, even though I desperately love beaches. I've gotten spoiled, I think, by the Mexican beach model of palapas for shade and grilled mariscos lunches while watching the kids play in the sand. But we hit Sandy Neck and Peter's Pond and managed to find our groove with the Atlantic side of the world.

Then we popped up to Maine to a place called Squirrel Island which was a very different experience. It's a summer colony, meaning, I guess, that the weather is a little too desperately cold for unheated beach cottages once October hits. Steve's sister Mary invited us to stay in their 5-bedroom cottage rental. I'd never been to a place like this. No cars or bicycles are allowed and there are no restaurants or shops. You bring everything over by ferry and, basically, only the residents (or renters) are there. This is a pretty cool setup when traveling with two young children. They loved running all over the grassy fields and through the forest of fairy houses (built from shells, sea glass, rocks, and strange little objects). The sea glass beach brought out the obsessive collector in me. Maxito and I spent a couple hours poring over the glittering jewels, which are also known as Mermaids' Tears. Other beaches have rocks for climbing, tide pools, or some decent wading. The library is in a gorgeous building with window seats. There are strange little art books and even some multicultural children's books. The house where we stayed had a wrap-around porch and a big hammock and I noticed (as did Mary) that, as time went on, outdoor life became the default and indoors was where you went to fetch something before returning outside. This was a great experience.

We managed to sneak into Boston to the Fogg Art Museum and Indian food (hooray!). We also hit New Hampshire (new territory for me) and then, my favorite, Chicago! What a blast buzzing around the inner city after all the languid beach days. The Art Institute is incredible, and borders Millenium Park, home to a sprayground that is now Yeni and Max's fave spot in the city.

Now I'm back in Oaxaca which, after all these far-flung places, is home, more than ever. But I'm also left with a longing, I must admit, to still be looking at the sea glass in the sun, with nothing more pressing than a date to make s'mores at the fireplace that evening.

Take a sad song, and make it better

Today is my sister Jenny's birthday. I recently read a letter from her. She was at the steps of Sacre Coeur, listening to Beatles songs and singing along. She said it was so beautiful, she and her friends had to jump up and down. They had so much fun that they missed their train and spent the night in Clara's flat in Paris!

Today, I'll look for something beautiful, and I'll sing a Beatles song to Maxito and Yeni.

xoxo

Fast Forward

The house is ready! It is the blue one:

Sometimes it seems like too much happens at once, and life goes by faster than I can write about it. This distresses me, because it means I'm losing the details. But things will settle soon, because we are about to move to our house!

It's finally finished. And buying it was honestly not that difficult, in terms of bureaucracy. I thought we'd taken on a bit too much by working with a realtor who only speaks Spanish, but I quickly learned the key vocabulary words for things like "down payment" and "house title". Our realtor, Luz, marched us into Scotia bank and opened an account for us, a feat I'd heard was near impossible for expatriates on tourist visas.

We are now learning about buying furniture and trying to get water service and waiting for deliveries that arrive when they arrive. But the house! Here is the inner courtyard:

Here is the hallway, someday to be filled with art, when we learn how to hang things on concrete: Here is the yellow living room, empty save for a piece of furniture we bought off the street. Our Oaxaqueno friends warned us not to buy the furniture that's carted around on dollies in neighborhoods all over the city. The wood is young and not dry, and thus shrinks and changes. But the furniture itself is lovely and quirky and the kind of piece that would cost so much in the United States. And we bought it a block from the house, in the middle of the street!

Someday, the rooftop garden-to-be:

I think I can even handle haggling the moving price with the guys that drive the "Transportes de Carga Ligera" trucks all over town.

Workers of the World Unite

I like May Day and the month of May a lot. It starts with Worker's Day or Mayday, depending upon if you prefer the revolutionary or the pagan route. Both versions appeal to me.

One of the big bits of news in my star chart group last year (sweet memories of Portland) was that my north node is in Taurus, which makes sense. I seek stability and security, especially since my south node is in Scorpio, an indication, as my wonderful astrologer Emily pointed out, "That, in past lives, you were burning down villages and walking away." I can see that tendency in my more recent past, that leaving in a hurry. Fear must not be my ruler. Though, who knows, it could have been the revolutionary in me doing the burning.

But what I really want to write about is baby Jenny who is heady with her power. Today I sang out the cheerful suggestion, "Let's have a family picnic!" (Those who are familiar with my teacher persona know I can have this Julie-Andrews-as-Mary-Poppins tone).

Genevieve responded by upending the trash can and sending garbage down the stairs. Then, she spit on the floor. So what does that make her, the pagan or the revolutionary?

Buckets of Water

I can't believe I left the cliffhanger just sitting there like that. We're almost all healthy now, and the party seems like so long ago. Over 30 people showed up--all of the no-shows were expatriates, and all of the early birds who stayed the longest were the Oaxaquenos--and my lasting memory of the event was watching one of our guests hauling a bucket of water up to the toilet so she could flush it. Ah, well. Steve's enmoladas went over well, or everyone was polite about it, who knows which?

The Monday after the party, the strangest thing happened. I was picking up Maxito and Geni at school, and talking to another expatriate mom. She said, "My sister's in town" and I looked over and saw the sister, and jealousy washed over me. It has stayed with me now for almost two weeks. The sister was holding her niece like she was her own child and I knew that's what Jenny would do with Max and Geni. It makes me grind my teeth when I imagine it.

I've been distracted, too, because I got a writing assignment to write about all various and sundry topics that were favorite obsessions of the "Have You Seen the Dog Lately?" of old. It's been good to be immersed in projects about Mexican wrestling, ex-voto painting, fringe theater, movie musicals, and artist trading cards. It's clear I've been typecast as their "alternative culture" writer, because they only pick up my more eccentric pitches.

Jenny, I love you!

Cliffhanger

Is that what you want? A cliffhanger? All right.

On Tuesday, Steve informed me that he wanted to invite people over for comida on Friday. I panicked, due to social anxiety issues. Having always had party trouble in the United States, I surely didn't want to attempt anything here, at least not until I had the guise of Max's birthday party to hide behind. So Steve went on to invite upwards of 40 people and started making enchiladas in various mole sauces like mad.

As our freezer filled, Genevieve starting acting up. She screamed from 2 to 4am a couple nights in a row, all while our "bomba", water pump, commenced grinding and hissing in the backyard.

Genevieve was sick, so we dashed her off to the homeopath yesterday. And now I'm sick, though I suspect it's hay fever. And Steve's sick.

In the mean time, I was desperately calling our landlord to get someone to shut off the water pump. The horrible grinding was bothering the neighbors, too. And then, last night, it burned its fuse, taking the electricity with it.

Our electricity is back, but the bomba is broken, meaning we have no water. No showers, and, more critically, no flushing toilets, and our 40 guests arrive in 2 hours. We are now hauling buckets from Miscelanea Evis, the store next to us (gracias to the kind, ever resourceful Julita) to fill our toilets. We will spend our afternoon dinner party filling toilet tanks.

Will the guests consider us "crazy gringos" and never speak with us again? Will the bomba repair guy show up mid-party like he promised and add to the fun? Will I be able to feign the energy to get through a party I didn't want in the first place, now that I'm down a couple nights of sleep? Will Genevieve decide the party is the perfect setting to do her new Display My Big Tummy show? Or her oldie-but-a-goodie Dig For BoogerNuggets show?

If you never hear the answers to these questions, you will know that this party destroyed me.

Bloggy!

Hilair wrote to me that it's easy keeping up with me, because I'm so bloggy. That made me happy. I have been blogging more because I recently picked up an old travel journal and read through it, and was stunned with all I had forgotten.

I hope blogging can help me hold onto some of the details that time tries to erase. But perhaps it's not enough like a travel journal, not filled with the same little strange details and sketches in the margins. It's very tiring to think that I might have to keep a handwritten journal as well.

Even though I purposely keep this blog theme-free and try to stay as stream-of-consciousness as possible, don't I still sense that I'm writing for an audience? Can anybody really share their private ruminations with the online world?

But I guess nothing matters other than some words get written. These days I'm thinking about solar panels, Genevieve's boingy curls, growing a vegetable garden, how I miss the beach, Japoneses (delicious coated peanuts spiked with a tiny bit of spice), and, of course, money.

Another bit of blog happiness: Pickel of "My Two Boys" has hosted my blog on the Carnival of Family Life: http://adopttwoboys.blogspot.com/2008/04/april-2008-carnival-of-family-life.html

Mi "Casa"

Yes, here it is. Lovely Carrie McNinch sent us a photograph she took of our house. It takes a lot of imagination to think this will be done in a month. I promise glossy beautiful photos soon!

The house is cool, plain, and modern, so basically a blank slate. We will of course cram our tons of artwork and altars in there, but what next? Not owning anything means I have to buy (cheap) things quickly, and it would be nice if they had some sort of style, I guess.

So I looked at online decorating sites. This was just a terrible thing. Never in my life have I owned matching items. It seems silly to coordinate your bedspread with your drapes! I've always benefitted from the hand-me-down, junk pile, random acquisition, gift method of decorating, so this is new territory.

Then I vaguely remembered a doctor's waiting room in Portland. I had read an issue of Domino magazine there, and I recalled it as less matchy-matchy. Perhaps I'd get some ideas. This house was interesting. No fancy curtains or chic little tables, and lots of brightness and patterns. But still, it seemed too clean and planned. What was I looking for?

I stumbled around and found a blog called decor8. She's very gung ho about a style she promotes as Boho Modern. This is an improvement--lots of crap stacked on things, paintings up against the wall. It is a little more realistic. And the emphasis is on mixing things up, not putting it all together. Some of her commenters, however, did not find it so charming, and called it Crack House Chic. Is this what we've come to? I guess you could go for the cleaned-up version, called neo-Shabby Chic (look how much I'm learning!), but that looks expensive and uncomfortable to me.

As time wears on, I see what I'm a sucker for. The words "flea market", "swap meet", and, the biggie, "junk". But some of this flea market decorating seems to take beautiful old things and attempt to make it into generic new things. I'm not trying to make my crummy old stuff look like Pottery Barn. So not an improvement, in my book.

So, I'll keep searching. Some possibilities: cottage style? beach house style? rustic? eclectic (shudder...but it's probably what I'd be labeled)? retro? Or I'll give up and just let the crap fill up all the corners and make up a name for it. Broken Toy Bohemian. Pile of Papers Nouveau. Mouse Cage on Television Totem. Socks.

Karma Chameleon

I just finished watching Ray Reyes of Menudo fame covering Boy George's "Karma Chameleon", and I have to say, go man! What a supreme cutie.

And those lyrics hit home: "Every day is like survival..." I've been up nights obsessing over house/money, money/house and then stopping myself because who cares?

Today set my teeth on edge. I called Bank of America to initiate the international wire transfer. I knew about the $35 fee, but it was too good to be true that it would end there. They quoted me an exchange rate that had me paying them another $1500 commission. Just to get my money. I banned Steve from even discussing this dismal development, because it compelled me to eat an entire tube of Chokis, the delicious chocolate chocolate chip cookies we scored last weekend.

I do love Chokis.

I am a split personality on this money thing. I am quite possibly the most careful, nitpicky person in the world about finances and spending. But the other side of me says that, at some point, you have to let go, or else you're making money your ruler. My dad the commie has always said that his childhood dream was to be like Scrooge McDuck in the old cartoons, sitting amongst stacks of gold coins. I sympathize.

Then I received a fortuitous email this afternoon. I just landed an excellent six-month writing contract. And the editor picked up every one of my 12 pitches (I had been worried I'd gone a little pitch-happy, but thankfully no). So maybe the Karma Chameleon smiles at me now, saying that what Bank of America steals from me I can compensate for. Still...that bloody bank!

Scary but True

We bought a house. I've done this now three times, this buying/selling a house, but this time it's in Mexico and what in the world do I know about buying a house in Mexico?

It's extremely excruciating to try to understand real estate, legal, business vocabulary. Sometimes they use a word over and over again, and I have no idea, and then I ask a factual question about the thing they had just gone on about for many paragraphs.

I have to ask it again: What do I know about buying a house in Mexico? Right now, a few things. There is no multiple listing service. You find an agent, they sell only the houses they represent. There is no way to see the properties from driving around. Everything is behind giant concrete walls and gates. There are very few websites dedicated to real estate in Oaxaca. I have found the few that are, and the prices seem directed toward gringos. The newspaper has very few ads, mostly just listings by agents. Most people sell their houses themselves and sometimes would rather hang on for years than bargain the littlest bit.

But, still, we bought a house. It's new and very urban, packed between a couple other houses and no yard, though there is an inner courtyard, a real favorite house feature of mine. And so we're developing the roof into a rooftop garden. The builder is putting in stairs from the terrace and bars around the roof's periphery to stop wayward kids. I've sketched out a little palapa-type hut with a tin roof supported by posts upon which we can hang a hammock, and a spot for yoga. I've plotted, with my pen, container gardens, hopefully some vegetables. I've planned an outdoor shrine, and an area for bamboo to grow and give us privacy. Steve, in an astonishing turn at conventionality, has insisted upon an umbrella table.

Did I mention that this house is still being built? And that we don't know how we are going to get our ever-weakening dollars transferred over here without paying a ginormous fee? And that I met with the notary today, which is Mexico's version of a real estate lawywer, a supposed disinterested, objective party, and still don't understand the documents she drew up? Add to this that we own nothing, absolutely nothing, having sold off all our assets up north, so we will actually need to buy a house of stuff, the kind of stuff I haven't thought about since college, like mirrors and frames and silverware. Suddenly, I must acquire things, and kind of rapidly.

We're going to live on Calle Sauces, in the Reforma district, across from Tortilleria Elvis. But I know what you're really wondering--will we still have the free guest space? Yes! There is a separate guest quarters, with full bath, on the back patio. Someday, when the dust settles and I am able to sleep again, I will paint the guest room a beautiful blue, perhaps to trick our visitors into believeing that we live near the coast.

Don't Cry for Me, Genevieve

My dear Genevieve Rosa has been going to school at Colegio Teizcali for about a month. She's in maternal, the room with the toddlers and post-toddlers, whatever they are called. Pre-preschoolers?

She cries big fat tears at drop off and pick up, yet spends her days dancing and singing. The teachers, Liliana and Olgita, are so loving toward her, but rather strict with me, always kicking me out of the classroom.

And then there's the classroom. It was jarring at first, its relative emptiness. There are no tables with manipulatives or playdough or anything, really. There are art supplies, a bookshelf with about 10 books, about 20 broken-down toys, and that's it.

I was surprised because this is a private school and part of our tuition bill is for school supplies. It seemed kind of stark. But then I talked to some moms, including some expatriate moms. One of them, Liz, told me something very significant: "We're used to so much stuff. They don't really need it."

She was right. I watched Genevieve and the others. They dance together and hold hands. They get sponges and wipe down the courtyard. They walk around the classroom babbling, and follow the teachers to visit other classes and watch the older kids at work. The children are content. They don't seem to miss the toys and actually play with each other. Perhaps this is the kind of experience that makes Mexicans a more communal culture than the United States. A world away from the cult of the individual.

And the most joyful sign of Genevieve's adjustment to school is that, when we come to collect her, she is covered in paint and food and sparkles.

Home in Oaxaca

The true beauty of having a near-constant influx of houseguests is that they make you appreciate different aspects of your home and your city.

Peri dolled up our courtyard for Steve's birthday. She picked some bugambilia growing at the side of the road, added cake, saint candles, teacups, and a skull, and transformed our patio.

Likewise, our current guests have us visiting remote villages, hitting town for guitar shopping, reserving the Monte Alban ruins at nighttime for an equinox party, taking in indigenous dance at an ethnobotanical garden, dining on biodiverse local corn creations at Itanoni, checking out indigenous herbal steam baths (called temazcal) with a neighborhood healer, and sampling mole at the chocolate factories. It's a far cry from our more daily life existence of cooking, cleaning, working, and homework, and it reminds me of why we moved to Oaxaca. All the possibilities.

Everyone Loves a Carnival

My entries have been published in two blog carnivals. My "Paper Flowers" write-up is in the Carnival of the Cities and my "Market Day" piece is in Mom's Blogging Carnival. Hooray!

White Knuckles in Oaxaca

I like to obsess about money. Before we moved here, I made all sorts of charts and plans about how we could manage to get by in Oaxaca, on less income, but less expenses as well. Part of the equation involved us living off our interest without touching our principal.

Well, thank goodness that wasn't the entire equation. The U.S. economy is in the toilet, and our interest--which was supposed to generate us about $1800 per month on which to live--has dwindled to $1100 per month, and probably heading down fast.

The Fed meets Tuesday, and I can only imagine what might happen after that. The crumbling economy is a scary thing to ponder.

But this experience is teaching me to be more like Steve. He's had his own businesses for his whole adult life, and has learned to count on the ebb and flow of freelance dollars. I never understood it before, how you could depend on the unfathomable and unpredictable (it sounded like chaos theory), but now I see that what seemed like the most predictable thing--savings with interest--is far less steady than getting an influx of creative gigs. So, I got two more freelance writing gigs this week. I never saw this coming, becoming a freelance writer and, more significantly, depending upon being a freelance writer. It's a little like riding a roller coaster, fun and scary at the same time.

I must say that suddenly it also seems imperative that we buy a house here, to get rid of some of our increasingly worthless dollars and have a fixed asset. When will this craziness end? Or, when will I stop caring so much about it?

Market Day

In Oaxaca, every day is market day, you just have to go to the right neighborhood. Mercado de Abastos hops on Friday and Saturday, the same days for El Pochote. In my hick neighborhood of San Felipe del Agua, there's a small mercado in front of the church on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And, unfortunately, every day is a potential Gigante day. It is the bane of my existence that we find ourselves shopping at a big boring supermarket at least once a week, rather than going to the cheaper and better little markets. How else to score diapers, milk, yogurt smoothies, school clothes, whatnot in one fell swoop? I keep promising myself that, once the kids are older, we will shift to the market model.

This morning, I sensed the potential of Gigante approaching. So I begged Steve to walk with me to the neighborhood fruit and veggie guy before we headed home. I knew I couldn't walk all the heavy purchases up the side of the mountain without him.

He's on Calle Jacarandas, right after our favorite pizza place, Mambo Italiano. He sings all day and calls all the women, "Mi Reina", My Queen. Whenever I ask him what a particular exotic item might be, he tells me, "marijuana". It's funny for everyone in the shop every single time.

This morning, I was determined to get us enough produce to quell the Gigante demon. We tore the place up, scoring eight pears, 25 long-stemmed strawberries, a pineapple that smelled like sugar, five tiny beautiful zuchinnis, two onions, a bunch of bananas, two mangos, some unidentifiable wild-looking greens (perhaps...marijuana? I didn't dare ask.), lots of tomatoes, a chico zapote (untranslatable, as far as I know), a grapefruit the size of a small planet, and a bright bunch of squash flowers, perfect for soup. When the guy said 80 pesos (about $7.50) for the lot of it, I felt like singing with him. Then I got home and realized we're out of diapers...and toothpaste...and sunscreen. The spectre returns.

Gifted, Shmifted

I've always disliked the notion of labeling children as gifted. As a teacher, I find children excel in their individual areas, and that the ones that people like to call "gifted" just happen to excel in a certain approved of area.

That said, I am pleased to announce that Max is gifted. His area of genius is in his propensity for telling jokes. On the way home from school, he caught sight of a couple of big dummo SUVS wrangling at the intersection. He said, in a perfect Bronx Bugs Bunny accent, "Where'd those guys get their licenses--clown school?"

Well, I just couldn't have been prouder. And it was hardly diminished by the fact that Max later disclosed to me that he was merely quoting Shaggy from a "Scooby Doo" episode. After all, it's all in the timing.

Sorrows of the King

One of my favorite moments at the Pompidou Art Center in Paris is catching sight of Matisse's collage of paper cutouts.

Jenny and I learned a good museum trick from our Aunt Judy. Go at the moment of the museum's opening and race up the stairs to the top gallery, working your way backward chronologically. This way, you get some time alone with the sorrowful king.

I must reveal that Jenny was terrible in museums. She was compelled to rush from one room to the next, always wondering what was to come. And continually consulting the guidebook for relevant quips about what we were viewing. I'd implore her to just look at the art, and she said she'd be able to relax after racing through the whole collection. Then, she could return to her favorites. She was this way with books, too, often reading the ending first, so that the suspense wouldn't override her enjoyment of the earlier part of the story.

When we saw a beautiful Miro at the MOMA in New York, she lamented to me that, as soon as she left the museum, she'd begin to forget the painting. Was she doomed to return to her favorite paintings for a lifetime, to fight the forgetting? I told her to focus on one detail, sketch it in her mind, and that could hold the impact of the painting for her. It worked. And me? I've completely forgotten the painting. Perhaps some red? A fish shape? Come to think of it, we might have been at the Met.

The Persuasive Art of Rainstorms

is that they convince you that they cleanse you
of your past, the pains inflicted or received.
If I were to invite a rainstorm to a hand of cards
I'd find it difficult to bluff.
They know too much, and they take too much.

I prefer streetlights.

xoxo

To Jenny, My Sister

Jenny Makofsky

Tommorrow it's four years, and I've been taking lots of long walks so that I can have the opportunity to talk to you. I tell you how I miss you, I thank you for visiting me in my dreams (just this week there was one, and I can't remember it a bit, just that we were laughing and talking and it was easy. There were no questions about what had happened or how you had managed to find your way back into my life, everything was so free.)

February is my weakest month, where I really get to self-pitying, and I know you'd not want me going down that road. But maybe you'd let me do it a little anyway? Like what really burns me up is that it was only a month before you died that I was walking in the East Oakland hills and thinking about you and Steve and Max and I caught my breath because I realized how lucky I was. And I quickly crossed all my fingers to protect us from the Evil Eye or whatever it might be that is vengeful when you are joyful and everything's too perfect.

But there are things to be glad for. You went to Barcelona, Jenny, and stood on the roof of some Gaudi architecture. You drew a Beatniks comic strip. You wrote a one-woman show and knocked out the audience at the Climate Theater in San Francisco (not to mention 21 Grand in Oakland and The Works in San Jose). You helped raise little Max and make him a lover of stories. You sang "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" at Grandpa Abe's funeral, when I couldn't even speak. You drank tea with Steve on the afternoon you died, and laughed with delight over the gay marriages in San Francisco. You wore gorgeous glittery hair clips and big black boots. So many people loved you and were lucky to know you.

When Grandpa died, you told me that the responsibility was on us to carry on his political work and recreate his energy for social justice. And then you left, too. What happens to all your stories and everything you helped to make so poetic and glowing?

I just wrote in your guestbook about tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to Hierve el Agua, the petrified waterfalls outside of Oaxaca, where you ate too many tamales 10 years ago. I still have the picture of you and Steve and I that Abby took. We're laid flat along a crevice in the rocks where, deep underneath, water was flowing. That's how I try to think of you, somewhere beyond the surface of this shallow world, moving, changing, maybe singing, and if my mind could just make that leap in understanding the potential of the physical universe, I'd be there, too.

Bringing Down the Evil Louis Vuitton Empire

My story, "My Life is a Charade", about Jenny and I getting accidentally caught up in a Louis Vuitton handbag reselling ring in Paris, won story of the month at Expat Women! You can see the site and my story here.

The Great Wide Open

I think "The Great Wide Open" is actually a song by Tom Petty but, these days, it's the soundtrack of my life. With Genevieve at school (sort of) in the mornings and no teaching hours, I decided to make a go of finding and applying for some freelance writing gigs.

Well, in the past week, I've secured two new ongoing jobs as well as a great assignment from an old faithful source. So it happens that, all of a sudden, I enter a new phase of my life. I should say "I back into a new phase of my life" because, since Jenny died, everything feels kind of accidental, like I'm responding to things rather than initiating things.

It's coming up on the four-year anniversary of the accident. My dad's visiting from Beijing, which is nice because he has a way of bringing Jenny back to me, the way he's a fuzzy-visioned, argumentative genius. His multiple backpacks are just jammed full of stuff and there are papers everywhere--it's so like living with Jenny.

Last week, we went to see "Across the Universe" and Dad and I sat in the theater singing Beatles songs. I thought, this is the kind of thing I'd only have done with Jenny but here I am, sitting in the dark singing even though she's been away from me for four years. Who knows? Maybe she was sitting behind us, throwing popcorn at us to get us to quiet down, though more likely she would have been singing along.

First Day

Today, we dropped off Genevieve at school for the first time. She's 2 years, 5 months, and she just seemed very sick of her parents, so we thought we'd give this a try. Though the staff of our neighborhood park's playroom wanted her to attend their daycare, Max was incensed and insisted she attend the daycare at his school, Colegio Teizcali.

This morning as we straggled around retrieving backpacks and diapers, Max was micro-managing: "Did you pack Jenny's little yogurt cup?" "Did you put in enough diapers?" "She needs water, you know." It was actually pleasant having a third parent around, nagging me.

We walked the kids to school and then--I couldn't believe it--they said to just leave Genevieve, not to stay. It seemed crazy. All the daycares I've known in the U.S. have you stay the first day and even half of the second day. Sometimes there seems to be more parents than children in the classroom! But they said that Jenny seemed okay and that she would adjust better without us. I thought I misunderstood the Spanish, so I checked again. And again. And again. Until they just laughed at us.

So we left, and then the tears came. Mine.

Never Can Say Goodbye

I'm feeling sad tonight, because it was my last night of work teaching at the Cambridge Academy. It was so difficult to say goodbye to my students, who I'd grown attached to. There were so many little in jokes, like how my teen class wondered whatever happened to Hugo, the boy who asked to go to the bathroom and never came back. We always told each other to check for Hugo when we went to the bathroom. Three of my teen students brought me a giant ceramic candle holder with glitter and statuary, just the most classic teacher gift ever. Some things transcend cultural boundaries, and this candle holder is the last in a long line of jokey mugs, off-brand stuffed animals, and battered jewelry. My adult students all gave me kisses on the cheek and told me how I had helped them.

And to think this all came down due to a measly three hours a week! Because I taught only 16 hours instead of 19 hours, the powers-that-be decided not to pay for my work visa. Ah, you know how it is--you take on emergency shifts, you substitute for friends who need to go out of town, but, when it comes down to it, the administration worms out of paying whenever it can.

It's a shame because I know I was an effective teacher. On the other hand, the school doesn't need effective teachers, just teachers, so I was quite expendable.

So I've found other work now. Online work that may or may not pan out, but I am open to the next adventure. Just a little sad at the same time.

Dr. Manuelita and the Crystal Pendulum

I've never seen anyone write about how many colds you can catch when you move to a new country, confronting some new types of germs. It's ironic, because the winter is so gorgeously beautiful here, with highs in the 70s and 80s, and our whole family's had one thing or another passing around since Day of the Dead. It doesn't help that poor baby Genevieve seems to be going through her cycle of colds, just like Max did at her age. It's so challenging to be sick in a foreign county. We can't find our favorite remedies; we have no family around to help us; we can't always understand what doctors recommend.

As much as we hated to do it, we had Jenny on antibiotics in October and then in January. Of course, they didn't help her at all. And then my dear friend Gabby told me about Dr. Manuelita.

She's in one of the most simple yet beautiful little courtyard buildings I've ever seen, on Calle Humboldt, near Llano Park. A little signboard outside signals that it's a homeopathic pharmacy.

But what gives Dr. Manuelita the honor of this Harry Potter-sounding blog post title? Her crystal pendant which she swings like a pendulum, North-South then East-West, over a piece of paper with the patient's name written on it.

As she rotates the crystal she describes the patient's trouble. In Jenny's case, her whole bronchial system was suffering and she needed something to strengthen her immune system. Jenny was delighted with the news, or perhaps the pendulum, and decided to sing and dance for the doctor.

Then, Dr. Manuelita and her assistant labored for an extraordinary long amount of time to type up tiny labels that said "JENNY" and apply them to seven tiny bottles of pills and a dispenser of drops. Jenny was to take four from bottle one, wait an hour, then four from bottle two, and so on, until she ran through all the medicine.

That night, she didn't wake up shrieking at midnight and require watching The Teletubbies to chill her out. And, in the morning, Steve was allowed to walk away from her without causing her to cry. She was happy, playful, energetic--just like the old Jenny.

Next October, as winter approaches, the whole family's going in for the crystal pendulum treatment.

Max and the Baby Jesus

Well, here we are, atheists adrift in Christian-landia, for it is Three Kings Day, the day of the Epiphany. I should begin, though, by saying that this year was my first experience of this holiday traditions, and I loved it.

All over Mexico, people are baking and sharing the Rosca de Reyes, which is a round, sweet bread with candied fruits, sort of like fruitcake. There are little plastic baby Jesus dolls inside the cake, representing the need for the baby Jesus to be hidden to be protected.

Each guest slices into the cake and examines his or her piece to see if the baby Jesus is inside. Well, there we were at our neighbor's store and, wouldn't you know it, Max scored the baby Jesus. He paraded through the street holding the tiny, eerily white baby over his head. Receiving it means good luck for the year!

Receiving the baby also means that Max is the money behind a party he must organize on February 2nd. The Feast of the Candelaria requires Max hosting a tamale party and putting up the funds to purchase tamales for everyone who was present at the cake-slicing.

By afternoon today, the zocalo was jumping with Three Kings chaos. Blocks in four directions were closed and filled with market stalls. I saw many many wonderful things, such as wrestler dolls in a wrestling ring; Pink Panther patches; three tostadas for a dollar; light-up roller skates; and Powerpuff Girl socks (purchased!).

There were calenda processions in the zocalo and, to Max's delight, cascarones-smashing. Max loves buying these eggs filled with confetti and then cracking them on our heads. I have to admit, the day felt...lucky.

First joke of 2008

Overheard:

"I accidentally put on my underpants with a sock in them, so it looks like I had a big poop."

Books to look forward to...

Now that Maxito reads in Spanish, I am trying to read to him in English every night, from books that are beyond his picture books. So we began with "Pippi Longstocking" which, with the cultural stereotyping edited out by me, was enjoyable.

Next up was "Alice in Wonderland" and tonight we finish "Through the Looking Glass" (a little tedious, though I have always liked "The Walrus and the Carpenter". The chapters run long and there are too many parenthentical asides. I wonder if I should be critiquing parentheticals when I am within one?).

Then he will choose our next book, probably "Mary Poppins" (which, if I recall, will also require some editing) or "The House at Pooh Corner". I keep trying to sell my personal favorite, "Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth" by the almighty E.L. Konigsburg (who can forget "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler"?), but so far Max is not persuaded. Other possibilities: "The Wizard of Oz", one of Jenny's folklore collections, or "Sideways Stories from Wayside School". Or, the Bible...ha!

POSTSCRIPT:
Well, here it is two days later, and I thought I should update this post to share Max's choice. "Garfield Takes the Cake". Not exactly what I was aiming for.

A New Year in Mexico

You know it's New Year's Eve, or New Year's Day, or Christmas, or Dia de Independencia, or the week before them, or the week after them, when you hear bomb-level fireworks going off around here up until 2am and starting again around 5:30am. And so it is New Year's Eve, and Max demanded that we all wear yellow underpants because his Boing! Boing! magazine said that would bring money in the year to come.

Another tradition around here is to eat 12 grapes as the clock strikes 12 and to make 12 wishes for the New Year. So we all ate raisins around 7pm. I imagine that, if our wishes come to fruition, they may be dried out renditions of the original wishes because of the raisin substitution. So, instead of world peace, perhaps we'd get a treaty signed or something. And my wish/resolution to write every day might be watered down to writing grocery lists or emails. Not that I'm complaining. I'd love the raisin version of my wishes to come true.

How to get to Yagul

Yagul is a rather remote, less-visited archaeological site that is on the road to Mitla, which is a more major site. To get to Yagul, you take a MITLA bus from the second-class bus station, by the Mercado de Abastos. You ask the driver to let you off at Yagul, and then you climb up the mountain to the ruins, about 1.3 miles.

That's one way to get to Yagul, and how I did it 10 years ago. Another way is to wait forever for the bus and decide to rent a car and drive there, which is what Steve and Max did today, to my chagrin, because the car rental negated the money we were earning for getting the photographs.

But Steve tells me Yagul is as dramatically beautiful and eerie as ever. There is a labyrinth in the center, and the mammoth cliffsides around, all seeming to have faces and skulls carved into their recesses.

How do you bring back the dead?

I've been reflecting on the philosophy that, during Day of the Dead, the veil between this world and the afterlife is lifted, and the dead visit altars dedicated to them. I've always made altars for loved ones, especially for Jenny. I try to follow some of the traditions, incorporating flowers, candles, foods, water, pictures, and mementos. And I add my own elements, like alebrijes, paintings, favorite books, masks, vinyl tablecloths, Max's drawings, tissue-paper roses, and medallions from bread of the dead.

But it's an atheist's altar, beautiful and, in some ways, meaningless. It's a hedge, too, just in case I'm wrong about my belief that there is no afterlife. I know, though, that, if she could, Jenny would only visit something that I deeply believed in, so I've explored some options.

I rented a DVD from Netflix on how to communicate with the dead. They recommended writing a question and meditating on the the dead person and, somehow, the answer will appear. I went to Ecstactic Dance and tried the same thing--posing a question to Jenny at the beginning of class and hoping for some kind of inspiration in her voice, her persona during the class.

Recently, though, I rediscovered the best way to bring Jenny back. We were on a long drive and I started to sing to pass the time. The songs were all Jenny, all her silly fantastic Ethel Merman operatic ballyhoo and pathos and hilarity. It was her "Scrappy Doo" song, sung to the tune of "Desperado". And the themes to "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". Old-timey stuff like "Red River Valley", "You are My Sunshine", and "Clementine". Jenny had a way of belting out a story song--"Killing Me Softly" "I Will Survive" even, sort of, "Like a Prayer". She always sang loudly, which made up for our shared trait of lack of staying on key.

So, I'll lift the veil and bring back a little of Jenny tonight. Here are the lyrics to her "Scrappy Doo" song. You must sing it loudly, to the tune of "Desperado":

Scrappy Doo, when will you stop chasing crim'nals?
And start singing hymnals,
Just like you used to do?
Scrappy Doo, you've got that pu-u-ppy power
to catch crim'nals by the hour...
But have you forgotten Saint Jude?
Scrappy Doo, you have left me in a lu-urch
So get your dog ass back to chu-urch
What do I have to do?
Scrappy Doo, when will you stop chasing crim'nals?
And start singing hy-y-y-ymnals...
Just like you used to do?
Scrappy...don't.

Los Arquitos

My new favorite neighborhood in Oaxaca is Los Arquitos, or The Archways. It is a colonia located beneath and behind the city's old aqueduct. All sorts of secrets hide beyond the archways, like the Friday and Saturday El Pochote organic market. Steve and I scored a couple lovely plates of fresh vegetarian enchiladas in mole sauce, for about four dollars.

There is also a free film series which, someday, I will attend.

Steve and I wound through several of the alleys in an attempt to find a house for sale. No such luck, but we did meet some friendly neighbors who admired Jenny's wild hair.

Looking for the Light

When things go wrong around here, it exhausts me. It's not just the language that gets in the way, but figuring out how things are done.

Last Sunday, turning on the coffee maker caused all the power in the house to go off. And stay off. We called our landlord's assistant and they immediately sent a maintenance man (on a moto) to check it out. On a Sunday afternoon. So I was feeling very fortunate for how things work in Mexico, with people available immediately on a Sunday afternoon.

The problem was, Juan Carlos couldn't fix it. He tried and tried, scaling the side of our house and teetering along the roof by the wires. He plugged and unplugged things. He removed fuses and changed them. He took apart the refrigerator. He called around and decided we needed a new...something...it looked like a cable in a box. He asked if I could get one and I said I probably couldn't because, well, how could I? And what would I do with it if I got one, anyway?

So we tipped him and he returned the next day with the thing. But still it didn't work. We had half our lights and no refrigerator.

Four days later, all our food went bad and stinky and I felt a little desperate. In the darkness of the late afternoon, we accidentally locked ourselves out of our own bathroom and had no key. Max was doing homework outdoors, trying to catch the last rays of sun.

The mommies at Max's school, who I cherish and who love to advise and chide me (thank goodness), told me I would have to visit The Commission. Oh god, I didn't like the sound of that. It's the Electric Company, but Mexican government style, surrounded by guys with big guns.

Instead I called my landlord's staff again. They said to be patient. I went next door to the little store I love that is attached to our house. I shared my troubles with Julita, the proprietress, who said, "For the rent you're paying, you should get better service."

She gossiped about my difficulties to a neighbor, who took it upon herself to come over and instruct me in how to call The Commission. Which I did. The repairman came within an hour of the call. He backed his immense truck and crane into our driveway, trotted up to the wires, and had all our power on in five minutes. And just like the difficulty of having no electricity had loomed so large in my life for five days, having it fixed seemed nothing short of a miracle. Even though, all told, I had involved twelve people in my problem. Gossip--that's my kind of Google.

Dead Head

It's Dead season around here, and I'm lucky to have a 6-year-old son who can show me the ropes for some of the more key traditions. First: chocolate. Oaxaca is known for its chocolate factories, and they hit full hum around Muertos. The chocolate is other-wordly--perhaps that's why it's put on altars. At the factory, you can see the cinnamon, chile powders, nuts and such that they add to the various flavors. I also love to see the mole sauces, many made with unsweetened chocolate and ground pumpkin seeds.

We had a feast at Max's school. It was very challenging to stop myself from eating a mountain of tamales, pumpkin in cinnamon sauce, arroz con leche, homemade chocolates, and fresh tortillas in mole. All of this at an elementary school party; it really puts my old days of hot cheetos and Hawaiian punch to shame.

There was a calaveras poem contest where the children had to write about their dead selves. Although it sounds macabre, the children find this practice very entertaining. Max: Habia un calavera Maxito, quien fue bien chiquito. Tuvo un gatito que tambien fue calavercito.

Oaxaca is trying very hard to woo tourists back and had many extra frills for Muertos this time around. The zocalo was the stage for a series of altars, each representing different regions. And there was a giant sand tapete, essentially a brilliant painting done in sand, flowers, seeds, and glitter, depicting Frida Kahlo, in the grand Municipal Palace.

We made visits to a couple of cemetaries and set up an altar for Jenny. I made sure it has popcorn and Mayordomo chocolate. Max added an orange and marbles. The cemetaries were filled with families and flowers, orange and maroon, flickering candles, copal incense, little framed pictures of saints, and children drinking soda and running around the gravestones.

Riding the bus home last night, I thought about how I have happened upon one of the world's most beautiful places, at one of my favorite times. It's such good fortune that I sometimes feel as if I am rising out of my body, like I can't quite touch the ground. Jenny called it "living life like you're in a movie", and she was right.

Just because you wear a sexy bikini doesn't mean you don't have gas

Genevieve had a fever, so we took our first foray into the Mexican health system. That's right, a visit to Farmacia Similares, also known in these parts as "Dr. Simi", a chain of pharmacies with doctors on staff who will do instant consulations.

It was Sunday afternoon when we circumnavigated the giant inflatable doctor and arrived at the closed door of the pharmacy. "Why did I think it would be open?" I asked Steve, and then decided to ask at the drug counter if there were any doctors on staff. The women told me to knock at the door and wait.

A few minutes later, Dr. Simi (really Mario) popped his head out and invited us in. He interviewed me extensively--using far too many irregular verbs and indirect objects--about Genevieve's symptoms and then went into rapid-fire explanation about what he was going to do if I could only, unblame him please, wait five minutes, unblame him, while he ran over to the store.

While we cooled our heels, I inspected the room and found an interesting framed certificate on the wall. "Steve, our doctor is licensed to kill cockroaches, fleas, flies, and mosquitos." Alas, it wasn't so--the room had recently been fumigated and received a certificate of approval.

But Steve was otherwise absorbed with the Dr. Simi advertisement hanging from the ceiling. It was a cardboard mobile of a sexy bikini lady sitting next to an inflatable Dr. Simi. In the corner was a small box of medicine for indigestion. "This," decided Steve, "was the low point of her career."

Dr. Simi came back with batteries for the ear inspection tool and spent a long time peering into screaming Jenny's ears, checking her pulse, listening to her breathe (and scream), taking her temperature, all the while asking about her sleeping, eating, drinking.

In the end, he wrote two pages about Jenny's little cold and reviewed the information with me. He jotted down his home number in case Jenny got sick during the night and I wanted him to pop by. He warned me, though, that his mom might answer the phone, but that she would be sure to give him any messages.

Then we paid him the 25 pesos ($2.50) for the visit. We love you, Dr. Simi!

Walking with the Bulls

I'm not the Ernest Hemingway type (though Jenny always cited a favorite Hemingway passage about his lamenting eating hot french fries too soon and burning the roof of his mouth, but being unable to wait for them to cool down). And the whole "Running of the Bulls" tradition in Pamplona is unappealing to me.

But, yesterday, as I was taking a shortcut to get to Maxito's school, I found myself on a dirt alleyway facing a couple of bulls. It was somewhat astonishing to see them on the open road, rather than behind a fence or in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bulls! They are massive and extremely muscular--I certainly entertained the idea of running away.

Then I saw the man walking alongside them. He fell into step next to me and began a conversation. So it was that I wound up walking with the bulls to get to Max's school. They pulled at roadside vegetation as they walked, dragging down branches, even uprooting small plants. Sometimes they wandered into the middle of the cobblestone road and, once, they kicked up a little dust trying to chase a red VW van that chugged by.

As my party and I approached Colegio Teizcali, the man pointed to a pasture, filled with detritus and bramble and barbed wire. He told me he and the bulls were heading through the pasture and, if I wanted to, I could join them. He assured me that it was a short cut. I looked at gnarly tangles of roving weeds tied around bits of trash and thought of how Hemingway and company were so macho and bold on those winding thoroughfares of Pamplona. But I'm no Heminway. I took the long way.

The Teachings of Don Juan

Now here is something I remember from living in Mexico before. You become desperate for casual reading material. So it has come to pass that Steve and I are both reading old paperback copies of Carlos Castaneda books about...transcendence? Vision?

I'm halfway through mine, in a chapter about water rats, but my mind keeps wandering. Ah, but maybe Don Juan wants it to wander because it is in that sideways movement of thought that you encounter the great epiphany!

I'm excited to report that I've just unearthed a couple of Vanity Fair magazines, and one of them is from 2006--pretty recent! In the meantime, Steve has shared one of Don Juan's teachings from A Separate Reality in which our protagonist expresses fear of eating street food in case he gets sick. Don Juan responds, "Once you decided to come to Mexico, you should have put all your petty fears away."

Agua Fresca

When our big move to Oaxaca got put off due to my diagnosis, I felt my strength flowing away from me, like water. It was if I had lost the power to decide what to do with my own life. We were put in the position of waiting and wishing but never knowing what was going to happen.

So I began visualizing agua fresca to transcend the confusion. I saw myself walking down the cobblestone streets of Oaxaca, going through the stucco arches of La Michoacana, approaching the counter, and looking into the silver tubs of "fruit water" to choose my flavor. That's what I used to do 10 years ago, and that's what I planned to do again, as soon as I could get back. It was a kind of promise to myself.

Yesterday, we were on our way to Benito Juarez market because I had somehow misplaced all my shoes and my flip flops were wearing dangerously thin. Shoes in Mexico are quite a conundrum for me because I wear Size 11, just freakishly big for Mexico. We were almost at the market entrance when Steve said, "Let's stop for agua fresca."

There it was--La Michoacana, home of the vision that had carried me through a lot of self-doubt. And they had agua de jamaica, one of my favorite flavors. It seemed as if they had just been waiting for me all along.

From Oaxaca

I titled this entry "From Oaxaca" because that's where I'm writing it from, and because it's now where I'm from. I can't believe the moments leading up to our coming here:

1. A mastectomy with a little added surprise--removal of all my lymph nodes because the sentinel node had two borderline miscroscopic foci of cancer. Madonna really said it best: "Borderline, feels like I'm going to lose my mind" because I keep almost having invasive cancer and almost having complications, but no test really commits. But they "round up" on my diagnosis and go for more aggressive treatment.

2. Coming down off the Vicodan a couple weeks later, I picked a fight with Steve at a new vegan restaurant called Nutshell. What a shame to D.T. at a cute cafe with wall-sized paintings of Bigfoot painted by...Bigfoot. We're trying to be vegan-ish now because milk products are some vile stuff according to my favorite book on cancer, The China Study, given to me by Andrea, one of my wonderful Portland friends.

3. We got our asses kicked at the Mexican consulate in Portland and couldn't get our FM3 documents to live in Mexico. So, like many who have preceded us, we will attempt to get the papers in Oaxaca instead.

4. Our car did not sell until 10 hours before our flight out of the country.

But now we're here. In less than a week, we've enrolled Maxito at Colegio Teizcali for first grade, stood in the long line at Provedora on Independencia with his list of school supplies, met my future employer, made some new friends, met some old friends, visited the Zocalo, stalked the location of our apartment from 10 years ago, went to our old favorite veggie restaurant El Manantial, and, most importantly, found a favorite produce stall and staked out a lady selling fresh tortillas, both near Max's school.

I'm already feeling the pull of daily life redefined. We rush around, do typical over-planning, worry over trivialities, but it's all in Spanish and it's all in Mexico.

Our adventures to come: Steve finishes covering all 7 of Max's required notebooks (of different sizes, with different interior papers) with the required yellow laminated paper; I locate some agua fresca de tuna fruit; Genevieve turns 1 and spends the day wrestling and high-fiving; Max runs up some pyramids at Monte Alban.

My deep gratitude goes out to all who showered me with love and support during this dramatic month. You brought me here, to Oaxaca!

Another Test before Oaxaca

What I want to know is who started that metaphor of fighting cancer? It's in my body, and I don't want to fight my body.

I want to take the cancer cells to tea and talk to them about the situation. Could you just sit there, in the ducts, not doing anything? I won't burn you and you won't go forth and multiply.

Megan said that, when she worked at Hospice, a patient told her he visualized a gnome in his body, stacking the cancer cells in his arms and carrying them out of his body.

She said maybe I could imagine a Swiffer sweeping the cells away. Yeah, I do love Swiffer. But have you ever noticed that those microfiber pads don't really clean? Try Swiffering the floor, changing the cloth, and then Swiffering again. The second cloth comes up dirty.

And breast tissue can't be dirty. That's what I've learned in the past whip-fast week and a half, when I had one foot out the door to go to Mexico and found myself at Kaiser for a routine appointment.

My aunt had said that I was supposed to get a mammogram when I turned 40. I had an extra hour between my appointment at Kaiser and when the prescriptions were going to be called in, so I wandered over to the mammogram dept. to make an appointment. I didn't think they'd get me in before August 4th, my date of Oaxaca departure, but I thought I'd try.

"Your lucky," the receptionist said. "We've just had a cancellation. Come back in 15 minutes and come on in."

I did and they did it and the next day they called me and since then I'm on a whirlwind tour of stage zero microcalcifications which cover my mammogram film like a starry sky. It could fool you into thinking it was beautiful.

Tomorrow is my surgery. But that's not what I want to write about. I want to thank that woman, wherever she is, who cancelled her appointment for her mammogram. You may have saved my life, and you have certainly saved me much trouble and sorrow. I'm sending you my gratitude and also my wish that you never have a starry sky inside you.

We sold the house, and nearly everything in it. We are reducing our lives to checkable luggage, USPS M-bags for books, and 10 boxes to ship to Oaxaca.

Sometimes I wonder if Steve and I are just too similar, egging each other on to greater and greater adventures, with no one to check us. It's not the worst thing, I guess.

Today was our 10th yard sale, tomorrow our 11th. Then, we cart stuff away and sell the car that carted it.

I have a lot I could worry about, like how I still haven't received my renewed passport, so we can't finish our residency applications at the Mexican consulate. And how Genevieve, having finally begun walking at 21 months, has now been targeted for speech therapy (but does say uh-oh, wow, look, dat, mama, dada, mimi, bubba, woof, hello, uh uh, no, and vroom to distraction). And how my Oaxacan teaching job I was semi-offered is seeming more and more semi rather than offered.

But I turn 40 tomorrow, which means I transcend much of these piddling concerns because I'm tougher and more free! I have glittery lavender toenails, am writing a movie, and ate Peruvian tapas for dinner. There is no need to stay up wondering about the highest interest rates on savings accounts and finding a charming rental in San Felipe del Agua...

Send in the Clowns

There are milestones in life and, while Maxito graduating kindergarten was lovely and unbelievable (and came complete with the cute performances and the cake riot), his graduation, last week, from Clown Camp was monumental. You can see him getting his groove on in these photos.

It is increasingly clear how much of Steve I can see in Max. It was Steve who, while shaking his thing at a Dirty Dozen Brass Band concert, inspired one of the musicians to shout, "That boy's got a rhythm all his own!" Right on.

A Blur of Birthdays

Jenny's birthday is tomorrow, and I'm trying to remember 34 years of celebrations past.

She called May her "birthday month" and wanted to go out to dinner as much as possible. In recent years, it was Spettro or Dona Tomas or Cha Cha Cha or TiCouz or Cafe de la Paz.

When we were little, we celebrated with pinatas, treasure hunts, peanut hunts, and cakes with those ballerinas-in-tutus candle holders. We'd play Spanking Machine, Hot Potato, and Strut, Miss Lizzy.

There was the dark year when, in a fit of jealousy, I scratched her "Free to Be You and Me" record that she got for her birthday, reducing "The Helping Song" to "Some kinda help, some kinda help, some kinda help..." I spent years trying to find the replacement LP, which she finally scored at a Friends of the Library sale.

For her sweet 16, I rented out the multipurpose room at our condo complex in Santa Rosa, The Land that Time Forgot, and threw her a surprise party. Ants attacked the cake. Mr. Crutchfield, the grouchy manager, got very anal over Jenny's lovely friends wreaking havoc with the swimming pool rules (had we learned nothing from his response to the shampoo in the jacuzzi incident?).

Nana would cook Jenny a homemade lemon meringue pie, which I found grody.

There were at least a couple of quick Mexico trips as birthday presents. During one, she parasailed over Mazatlan while mamacita drowned her worries in a Coco Loco. We typically enjoyed a birthday repast at El Shrimp Bucket.

We always managed a spring/summer house party in Oakland, usually with the cocktail of the moment (a while back it was Mojitos) and tiki decorations. Steve's artist buddy Jeff Roysden would stay late and wax rhapsodic over current obsessions ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or painting rocks), and then we'd send him home with the leftover booze.

One of my favorites might have been the most recent. We hiked to the waterfalls and swam under them. We sat on the sunny rocks and ate white peaches, which was my way of admitting I was wrong in our argument about there no longer being any good peaches in the world.

Jenny loved a party and lots of public attention. She was the type to wear a crown (actually, when she was little, a tiara and a faux fur stole) on her birthday, to broadcast the uniqueness of the day to as many people as possible. Whenever I meet a May 27th Gemini--and I've known a few--I know she is going to be a very punk rock individual. Feliz cumpleanos to my righteous, ass-kicking sister! Nobody is as brave as you were. I know that if you were here right now, we'd be laughing about something.

D.E.P. Jose Fernando Pedraza

Anti-immigrant sentiment is so deeply ugly, and the incident reported in the following press release makes me feel such shame for this country.

PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMay 6, 2007
CONTACTS:Suzanne Foster: 310-486-8499Jose Calderon: 909-952-1640Veronica Federovsky: 818-515-0782.
Day Laborer Leader Killed During a Minutemen Protest in Rancho Cucamonga
WHAT: Press ConferenceWHERE: Corner of Arrow Highway and Grove Avenue, Rancho Cucamonga, CADATE: Monday, May 7, 2007TIME: 11 a.m.
On Saturday, May 5, 2007, José Fernando Pedraza, a day laborer, was struck and killed by a vehicle on the corner of Arrow Highway and Grove Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga, California. At around 12:30 p.m., two vehicles collided in the intersection, causing one to veer into the day laborer corner. Several workers were hit; two sustained minor injuries. José Fernando Pedraza was airlifted to a nearby hospital but died from his injuries. Though day laborers are typically not looking for work at that time of day, Pedraza and workers were present yesterday because the Minutemen and members of Save Our State, anti-immigrant, vigilante groups, were staging a protest against them.
José Fernando Pedraza, 57, leaves behind many friends and loved ones. He was the father of five children and the grandfather of seven. In the last five years, José Fernando was a leader at the day laborer corner, mentoring young day laborers. He fought tirelessly for the creation of a day laborer center. He attended several meetings of the Rancho Cucamonga city council to advocate for a day labor center and joined in numerous marches in the region to support the legalization of immigrant workers. The day laborers have lost a brother, a friend and a leader.
We are all deeply saddened over this tragedy. Day laborers and community members will come together on Monday to express their outrage and frustration that they continue to be targeted by groups such as the Minutemen and Save Our State. As one of Fernando’s fellow day laborers and friends, Carlos Mendez, stated, ” This would never have happened if we did not have to be there to respond to the Minutemen.” He continued, “This would never have happened if the City had provided us with a safe space to stand and look for work. It should not take a death to push the City to provide us with a day laborer center.”
The accident in Rancho Cucamonga is an example of the precarious reality for day laborers across the country. Vigilante groups, whose members shout insults at workers and use intimidation tactics to discourage employers from hiring them, routinely target day laborer corners and centers. Of high concern to the workers and their organizations in Rancho Cucamonga is the fact that the frequent protests by the vigilante groups cause a chaotic environment, potentially distracting drivers and leading to accidents such as Saturday’s deadly incident.
The strongly anti-immigrant nature of Save Our State and the Minutemen protests create aclimate of violence and hostility that encourage hate crimes against day laborers and migrants in general. Last week, a newly opened day laborer center in Gaithersburg MD, was targeted by arsonists and in the fall of 2006, day laborers at a center in Laguna Beach, California were injured when two individuals drove a car through the center’s property attempting to run down workers. Day laborers and their organizations also fear an increase in violence in the aftermath of the repressive tactics that the Los Angeles Police Department used during the May Day march and rally at McArthur Park. Groups also fear an escalation of violence, hate crimes and hate incidents as federal legislators engage in the immigration debate in Washington DC in mid-May.
Day laborers and their advocates call for an end to the hostilities against day laborers in Rancho Cucamonga and throughout the country. We demand that Minutemen and Save Our State members end their demonstrations against innocent workers whose only crime is to look for an honest day of work. If at all, day laborers are the victims of injustice, they don’t cause any harm to anyone in the community. Day laborers and their organizations demand a detailed investigation of the incident. We also demand that the City of Rancho Cucamonga establishes a day laborer center for workers and employers to meet and carry out their negotiations in peace and harmony with the community.
To the vigilante groups, day laborers and their organizations send a message of peace and reconciliation. We don’t hate you but we don’t fear you either. End hatred and hostilities now.
As part of the healing process, day laborers, their organizations and allies will join together in an ecumenical service on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 11 am to mourn José Fernando Pedraza’s tragic, untimely and unnecessary death. Press is welcome at this service.
A Bank Account is being established for donations for the family of José Pedraza. The account number will be announced tomorrow during the press conference.
José Pedraza Vive!

Full of herself

My baby Genevieve is a wild thing. She loves to steal underwear, pull it over her head, and crawl around with her vision blocked. She growls at me if I take the underwear away. Then she tries to scale Max's slide to his loft bed, with his Sponge Bob underpants in her teeth. She loves getting away with things.

Which is why I feel for her, still not walking. She's nearly 21 months old and demands my pinky for support as she dashes around. If I withdraw my finger from her grasp, she collapses to the floor and flails around, grasping for it.

For a long time, it didn't bother me. I've never believed in rushing children and I know they have their unique gifts and qualities. But there was a girl today, a month younger, running all around, climbing on benches, scooting off and I felt almost ashamed that Genevieve was so incapacitated comparitively.

I know she wants it. No, that's not right. It's as if she thinks she is walking, dragging me around with her. She's so content. She loves clapping, jumping on Max's head, rolling on the lawn with her daddy, blowing kisses. She loves herself. I'm trying to let that suffice, for now.

Fired by My Therapist

It was about a month-and-a-half ago. I was galavanting around Queens seeing "Not What Not to Wear" in the Bad Ass Shorts Festival. But, back in Portland, another drama was unfolding. My Grief Group had a mild confrontation with my therapist regarding time management issues. And the discussion turned emotional. Eventually, my therapist said that the group could do just fine without her, and that we should meet without her.

I came back into town with messages from the group members. I emailed my therapist, but she didn't respond. I never heard from her again. It made me wonder--who does that? I mean, what if someone had trust issues, or was deeply depressed, or suicidal? I also wondered if maybe she had done this before, with other clients.

I think I was disappointed because the three year anniversary of Jenny's death had just passed, and she thought it was fine to just scoot away. But I have realized it actually is fine. I have continued to see the women in the Grief Group, and we are now in a kind of hybrid Soul Collage/Grief/Star Chart group. And I took some of my sadness about three years without Jenny to Ecstactic Dance, and have had some questions answered while whirling around and peering out the windows. I'm finding there are multiple ways of exorcising the demons (or, perhaps, exercising them!)...

I'm it...

I got tagged by Dishy Duds, and here's what I now must do:

1. Someone tags you.
2. You post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog.
3. You tag people you’d like to know more about.

Here's the five things:
1. I have deep phone phobia.
2. I am an Ecstatic fanatic! I have been doing the Ecstactic Dance thing (though I stop short of writhing on the floor or going nudie).
3. I am a big eater, and I haunt Extra MSG.
4. I obsess about money.
5. My favorite scene in any movie is when people walk into an unfurnished room, and it's crystalline shining empty gorgeous. I always think that's the life I want.

I tag:
Steve
Clara
Ben

Ya me voy

To the left is Max's work of art, a cartoony version of a Mexican altar. He walked down Alberta Street trying to sell it during the Last Thursday Art Walk. He had takers, but I refused to let it go.

It looks like we're in fast-forward getting ready to move to Mexico. Over the past few months, I have found incredible resources for preparing to move the family to Oaxaca, and I thought I'd share some of them for anyone else trying the same thing:

Getting ready for the move:
Rolly Brook gives all the details on applying for visas, moving your junk, and bringing all the right documents. He also kindly responds to emails.

For working and daily life questions:
I haunt the Mexico boards at Dave's ESL Cafe. They meander on about all sorts of delights, such as where to score olive oil, how to flake out of a teaching contract, and where to find the best airline deals.

For grumpy but ultimately helpful advice:
The retirees at MexConnect have kicked my ass more than once but at least I can outrun some of them...The discussion boards are meticulously detailed and address issues as diverse as medical insurance, monthly bills, favorite books about Mexico, and nailing the best exchange rate. The secret to all these discussion boards is the behind-the-scenes information you glean after posting a public message. Everyone starts PM-ing you with inside pointers, especially if they pity how poorly you're being treated on the forum. I've had to take my old advice I used to give my students and "rise above" a number of times.

For rose-colored-glasses swooning:
Well, I always find fiction can communicate more of the feeling of a place than guidebooks can and one of the better Mexico expatriate novels I've read is Harriet Doerr's Consider This, Senora.

Bad Cop

Last Wednesday, a 2:10pm, I was driving north from Burnisde toward Lloyd Center when I saw a cop car blocking the left lane. As I passed on the right, I saw the cop pushing a young guy against the street. He had the guy in cuffs, he had backup, he had the guy face down, yet he continued to pull on the guy's elbow in a way that looked like he was dislocating it.

I was driving by, and I felt helpless. I unrolled my window and stopped for as long as I could, to bear witness. When the cop adjusted his grip, I could see the white fingerprint marks left behind on the guy's skin, and still he was pushing, pushing his damn elbow.

There's a million stories out there, I know, about who might have been wrong, who might have been right, but the story in my head had me wondering who I could call to intervene. Certainly not the cops. And I fantasized about a bad cop service, a person with a van that would rush to the scene and know all the right things to say and do, rather than just roll down the window and, later, blog about it.

New York!

My play "Not What Not to Wear" is premiering in New York right now! All right, it's not Broadway. It's not even off-Broadway.

BUT--what if a theater bigwig just happens to be driving through Queens and her car breaks down and she straggles into the Creek and the Cave Mexican restaurant, only to find that the basement holds a stage and that stage is home to Ratutu Collaborative's Bad Ass Shorts Festival, starring my one-act comedy? It could happen.

And I got reviewed in the Queens Chronicle, baby!

So I'm headed to The Great White Way (where I will then get through the midtown tunnel, take a couple of buses, and walk a few blocks to my show).

It's better to die on your feet

...than live on your knees.

Three years, Hennannabellamaria, so unbelievable. I've been singing your lullabies to them, and telling stories (but I'm still trying to accept the duck).

We'll see you at the ocean today--blue jeweled fish, JAWS t-shirts in Atlantic City, paying tribute to the mothalode, funneled into the sand in Melaque, body surfing in Puerto Escondido, foot headaches at Doran Beach, and, the week before you left, the playa at Barcelona at night. A life of oceans is not a bad thing.

xoxoxoxo

Gaudi Plaza

When Jenny was in Barcelona, she fell in love with Gaudi's architecture. Also, a street of pastry shops and the flea markets. I've just been reading her emails to me from that time, and thought I'd post her last one to me:

Barcelona comes alive on Saturdays, and when it does, it comes alive as a Fellini movie! I mean big festivals with 12 foot tall puppets being maneuvered by human dancers inside, and musicians and jugglers and acrobats and markets. I think this is more than just the fact that it´s Saturday and Sunday, it is also the festival of the patron saint, and Ben and I keep accidentally coming upon another big weird thing, like a huge fire'breathing dragon machine fighting a ram in the middle of the busiest street in town.

I take back everything I said about no good shopping or cafes. There are so many cafes and I have found the cutest areas for shopping. Some of the shops are high'concept. In the student area, there are shops like The Air Shop, which seems to sell only inflatable pillows with things inside. Also an esoteric lamp shop, with beautiful handmade lamps made to look like flowers. i didn´t dare go in. In the medieval quarter are thousands of bakeries, gelaterias, adorable little stores, such as one selling puppets and carnival masks, oh it goes on and on. This morning, we went from bakery to bakery sampling pastry. you must come here. We must come here. It is nonstop fun in Barcelona.

Today we went to the picasso museum, watched festival fun, walked around the medieval quarter, and visited a couple of markets (a great antiquarian one, and one still to come, by the beach). Right now Ben is eating paella and I am back at the first internet cafe, since I had trouble getting my e'mails at the free one.

Miros! So many! So good! Tonight, we eat gelato for dinner as planned, and then tomorrow we leave. We should arrive at the airport at 9:10, and then customs. We will see you there, I guess! Can´t wait to tell you about it. I am glad Max remembers me. Last night, I thought of pink day and smiled.
xoJen

She Speaks Some More!

At 14 months it was: Mama, Dada, Bubba (brother), here, he-llo, that (dat), and maybe just maybe book and cat.

Then it was the occasional bath and, maybe, "up dada". A month later we had "na na no no" and "Mimi" and "woof". Maybe "dere" for "there". She also repeatedly said "yook" while pointing at something interesting.

Now she's almost 17 months, and the "woof" has turned into a very German "voof". I think she said "dog" today. And she does a panicky sounding roar for a lion. She pounds her chest for a gorilla sound. She also says "vroooom" while playing with cars.

I found Max's baby book and, by this age, he was saying all sorts of intriguing things, such as uh-oh, buddha, and sock.

My mind is in Mexico

We're planning to move to Mexico! We have mucho details to work out (what to do with our art collection?), but it's falling into place. The only frustration in this process is that all the expatriate guides I encounter focus on retirees, or on teaching English in Mexico. Does anyone have any good resources on moving children to Mexico?

Counting our Pesos

That's how Jenny, Steve, and I spent our evenings in Zihuatanejo, back in 1997, as we were beach-hopping from Puerto Vallarta to Puerto Escondido. After ice cream happy hour (two for one until 7pm!), wandering around, and breaking a sweat over air hockey, we'd wind our way back to the non-air-conditioned rooms and start stacking pesos. Jenny always, always, always seemed to find a secret stash of bills that bumped up her daily allotment. She'd say, "Now I can get that mask" or "We gotta go back so I can try on that shirt" or "I'm going to order camarones tomorrow". She fully loved every momentito, every detail of our journey.

I returned to Zihua a couple weeks ago, for seven nights, under dramatically different circumstances. I'd lost my Jenny I'd known for so long, but gained a new Jenny who will hopefully learn to love Mexico just as much. We stayed in air conditioned rooms and my budget was far more than 80 pesos a day. But still, every night, after I walked growly baby a few laps around the crib and plopped her in, after I guided Max through brushing his teeth with bottled water, I'd count my pesos. With each one, I felt my heart beat for Jenny, and break just a little bit. She'd want me going back to Zihua, I know, but she'd want to be there with me.

So I made her a secret promise about Mexico, one I'll post someday soon. I'm working hard on a project that is monumental, and that would be important to Jenny. As Jen always sang during Hercules in Espanol, "Amor, amor, no importa la distancia..."