Sunday, January 24, 2010
New Year, New me
I'm supposed to be working but there is no work to be done. So, I've gotta find other ways to make 12 hours go faster. I have a window and it's a beautiful day.
Why is it so easy to be fallible? Most of us are struggling to be a better version of our selves and it is exactly that, a struggle. I think I just have what Lee refers to as, post-alcohol depression. A few too many glasses of wine, some conversational indiscretion and I'm reevaluating my entire exsistence. I'm too old to deal with the I security that a hangover brings. It was fun drinking that wine last nite, but today I'm paying the price. The sad part is that I really want a big, greasy hamburger but I know if I actually eat one my self esteem will plummet even lower than it its present state. I should pray or something but I think even God is probably disgusted with me right now.
Well I'd better get back to work.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
A Year in Review
It's hard to believe that I started doing this almost 3 years ago; writing. Since we start a new decade in 2 days, now seems as likely time as ever to recap this past year. I don't have any huge insights or words of wisdom. Most days are all about survival-surviving one moment to the next with my sanity and sense of humor intact. Some days I do a better job than others. As I was texting Lee this am to tell him about my morning with the kids he texted back and told me that, in writing, it was all very funny-the eruption of the rice crispies volcano all over the table at the hotel bfast buffet, the wet sheets, the bathtub drain soddered shut at my 9 year old's hands, the arguements over who gets to open the hotel room key with the plastic card and the dead battery in the car because some kid forgot to turn out his light (and more importantly-I forgot to check). And, as I explained to him, I suppose that is precisely why I write. Because on some level I know if you take these situations and isolate them and look at them objectively, even I can find the humor in them. The alternative-loosing your shit with your kids (which I do aplenty regardless of my attempts to the contrary)-is much more damaging. But, as I told my middle child the other day (right before he ran out into traffic and nearly got squished by a car because he 'got confused'-just as squirrels and dogs do as suggested by his dad) when he was crying that I was never nice and I was always mean: he can save his money to go to an expensive therapist one day and tell him or her how awful I was. Then that therapist can tell middle child to get over it and realize I did the best job I could with what I had. Unfortunately I think the moment was lost on him when he became fractionally close to becoming road kill.
I wish I could be all 'leave it to beaver' but is near impossible for me. Last nite I had a dream about this other mom that I know who, in real life gives the appearance of perfection. In my dream another mother quickly dispelled the myth and explained that said mom is a true hot mess. I quess I had this dream because I screamed at my kids about something and then I had to work it out in my guilty subconscience. I could feel better about myself because the 'perfect' mom was the true stark raving lunatic who repressed all of her rage.
Still, despite my daily frustrations I still have moments when I love my kids unconditionally (mainly when they are asleep or at school). About a week ago my heart almost cracked in two when my daughter, who is my youngest, overhearing her older brother asking about my breast cancer realized that it could return. I was getting dressed in my closet and my oldest son, surveying my surgically reconstructed breasts commented on how lucky I was and how many good things I had gotten from the experience. As she was walking by in her towel she overheard him say that he hoped my cancer never returned. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye and said "it can come back? You can get breast cancer again?" This is not a conversation you want to have with your 6 year old daughter and I'm fairly certain if I googled 'discussing your own mortality with your kids' that whatever might pop up wouldn't actually be that helpful. So there I sat, half naked on the floor of my closet trying to reassure my kindergardener but without sugar coating anything. I don't know if I said the right things to her but I knew that conversation would eventually take place. God in heaven knows that I'd love to tell them that I'm completely cured and the cancer is never going to come back, but I honestly think that lying to them would be worse. Just to be clear about things my oldest asked me for a refresher course this afternoon. I guess this explains why he needs so much reassurance and mom time.
Well, I don't know if this was really a review but it was cathartic for me nonetheless. So, I'll you in 2010 and hopefully I'll be a little more patient and still cancer free (God, I hope you are listening).
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
I wish I could be all 'leave it to beaver' but is near impossible for me. Last nite I had a dream about this other mom that I know who, in real life gives the appearance of perfection. In my dream another mother quickly dispelled the myth and explained that said mom is a true hot mess. I quess I had this dream because I screamed at my kids about something and then I had to work it out in my guilty subconscience. I could feel better about myself because the 'perfect' mom was the true stark raving lunatic who repressed all of her rage.
Still, despite my daily frustrations I still have moments when I love my kids unconditionally (mainly when they are asleep or at school). About a week ago my heart almost cracked in two when my daughter, who is my youngest, overhearing her older brother asking about my breast cancer realized that it could return. I was getting dressed in my closet and my oldest son, surveying my surgically reconstructed breasts commented on how lucky I was and how many good things I had gotten from the experience. As she was walking by in her towel she overheard him say that he hoped my cancer never returned. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye and said "it can come back? You can get breast cancer again?" This is not a conversation you want to have with your 6 year old daughter and I'm fairly certain if I googled 'discussing your own mortality with your kids' that whatever might pop up wouldn't actually be that helpful. So there I sat, half naked on the floor of my closet trying to reassure my kindergardener but without sugar coating anything. I don't know if I said the right things to her but I knew that conversation would eventually take place. God in heaven knows that I'd love to tell them that I'm completely cured and the cancer is never going to come back, but I honestly think that lying to them would be worse. Just to be clear about things my oldest asked me for a refresher course this afternoon. I guess this explains why he needs so much reassurance and mom time.
Well, I don't know if this was really a review but it was cathartic for me nonetheless. So, I'll you in 2010 and hopefully I'll be a little more patient and still cancer free (God, I hope you are listening).
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Scouting Gone Bad
The dog just walked by with a pair of dirty underwear in her mouth. She kind of glanced over at me from the corner of her eye to see if I was going to do anything about it and then walked into another room very sheepishly. As a dog, she can't control her urges, but there was shame in her eyes. Her proclivities, though unsettling, are not limited to intimate apparel. Her palate extends to shoes, socks, stuffed animals or anything else that she might feel inclined to destroy.
I just returned from a weekend away from home. It was a lovely chance to reconnect with two of my dear college friends. While no one was looking, we became middle-aged. But, sitting around with them we might as well have been back in our freshman dorm. I wonder if it will be the same when we are sixty? I hope and pray that my daughter has the benefit of strong female relationships. Not having any sisters, my female friends are incredibly important to me and they have helped shape me. I want her to experience the satisfaction of having best friends in her life time. Girls that she can giggle with when she is both 6 and 36 years old. There is nothing more reassuring than sitting around in your pajamas with your girlfriends and laughing at nonsense. It's a sense of security that you are loved and accepted, regardless of how you look or feel.
I tried to impose the strong girl relationship on my daughter through a cookie-selling organization that I'll refer to as 'the female adventurers'. If felt wrong from the outset and I should have known better, never having been a member of any sanctioned girl-club. First of all, my daughter could care less if she was to be a pansy or a lemon-square or whatever the groups may be. Secondly, it was just too hard. A gathering of girls should not be as difficult as this organization makes it. If we forget about the colossal lack of planning that went into the registration rally, which was a bunch of grown women panicking about whether or not their daughters were going to get into the right pansy group, and we talk about the commitment that is required of the mothers you might as well jump directly into the briar patch. That is precisely what I did-lock, stock and barrel. I drank the kool-aid and worried that my daughter might not get picked to go to the ball if I didn't sign up and sign up all the way. So, I sat through the first meeting and the second and the third. I made excel spreadsheets and I e-mailed other mothers about meeting times and philosophies. I read the introductory manual. Still none of it seemed right. The mountain of required paperwork seemed more prohibitive than filing your my own taxes. I was ready to take my blood oath...until some crazy, bee-atch mama went off on me b/c, according to her, I was slacking (not pulling my weight, being lazy, making excuses....fill in the blank). The weirdest part about it was that I didn't even know this woman. I had talked to her on two or three prior occasions and all of the sudden she feels compelled to critique my intentions and offer advice on how and when I should obtain childcare so as to not miss any opportunity to be involved. Believe me, I was not mistaking helpful for critical. She was downright nasty to me. And this organization is supposed to be about fostering great female relationships.
Because she accosted me in the middle of the school cafeteria I decided that I couldn't back down. I felt like a movie character-Norma Rae comes to mind. I wasn't going to let this mean lady talk to me in such a derogatory manner, so I told her to stop. I think she was shocked to have someone stand up to her and shocked that neither intimidation nor manipulation, which seemed to be her ace cards, were working for her.
So, it's been almost 2 weeks since my little 'female adventurers' drama and I am finally starting to realize that both my daughter and I are going to be okay without them. Maybe sometime in the future we'll try again, but next time it is going to be because she is begging me to do it. Otherwise I don't need to impose my insecurities of wanting to be included in a group onto her. So, thank you Deb and Sand. Thank you for being my friends for 20+ years and for helping me to realize that, like her mama, she is gonna be just fine.
I just returned from a weekend away from home. It was a lovely chance to reconnect with two of my dear college friends. While no one was looking, we became middle-aged. But, sitting around with them we might as well have been back in our freshman dorm. I wonder if it will be the same when we are sixty? I hope and pray that my daughter has the benefit of strong female relationships. Not having any sisters, my female friends are incredibly important to me and they have helped shape me. I want her to experience the satisfaction of having best friends in her life time. Girls that she can giggle with when she is both 6 and 36 years old. There is nothing more reassuring than sitting around in your pajamas with your girlfriends and laughing at nonsense. It's a sense of security that you are loved and accepted, regardless of how you look or feel.
I tried to impose the strong girl relationship on my daughter through a cookie-selling organization that I'll refer to as 'the female adventurers'. If felt wrong from the outset and I should have known better, never having been a member of any sanctioned girl-club. First of all, my daughter could care less if she was to be a pansy or a lemon-square or whatever the groups may be. Secondly, it was just too hard. A gathering of girls should not be as difficult as this organization makes it. If we forget about the colossal lack of planning that went into the registration rally, which was a bunch of grown women panicking about whether or not their daughters were going to get into the right pansy group, and we talk about the commitment that is required of the mothers you might as well jump directly into the briar patch. That is precisely what I did-lock, stock and barrel. I drank the kool-aid and worried that my daughter might not get picked to go to the ball if I didn't sign up and sign up all the way. So, I sat through the first meeting and the second and the third. I made excel spreadsheets and I e-mailed other mothers about meeting times and philosophies. I read the introductory manual. Still none of it seemed right. The mountain of required paperwork seemed more prohibitive than filing your my own taxes. I was ready to take my blood oath...until some crazy, bee-atch mama went off on me b/c, according to her, I was slacking (not pulling my weight, being lazy, making excuses....fill in the blank). The weirdest part about it was that I didn't even know this woman. I had talked to her on two or three prior occasions and all of the sudden she feels compelled to critique my intentions and offer advice on how and when I should obtain childcare so as to not miss any opportunity to be involved. Believe me, I was not mistaking helpful for critical. She was downright nasty to me. And this organization is supposed to be about fostering great female relationships.
Because she accosted me in the middle of the school cafeteria I decided that I couldn't back down. I felt like a movie character-Norma Rae comes to mind. I wasn't going to let this mean lady talk to me in such a derogatory manner, so I told her to stop. I think she was shocked to have someone stand up to her and shocked that neither intimidation nor manipulation, which seemed to be her ace cards, were working for her.
So, it's been almost 2 weeks since my little 'female adventurers' drama and I am finally starting to realize that both my daughter and I are going to be okay without them. Maybe sometime in the future we'll try again, but next time it is going to be because she is begging me to do it. Otherwise I don't need to impose my insecurities of wanting to be included in a group onto her. So, thank you Deb and Sand. Thank you for being my friends for 20+ years and for helping me to realize that, like her mama, she is gonna be just fine.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Pink is The Word...Have You Heard?
I have been given the task of writing a brief history of my own personal story. I love assignments. There is enough school girl still left in me that I thrive on pleasing the person who is doling out responsibilities. In my own personal report card on life I want to make sure that I get a check plus on 'completes all tasks in a timely manner.' This is just as important as getting the good grade on the completed assignment itself. I want to be in the National Honor Society of life. Everynite I have my own little induction ceremony in my head with bowed heads and dimmed lights and lit candles. Is someone tapping me on the shoulder? Am I doing my best? This is a question I continually ask myself. Where does that come from?
My sense is that my overall life GPA is probably enough to meet the requirement of induction, but when you breakdown the point system, the numbers are all over the map. Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was a fairly self-reflective individual. Since the diagnosis, it (the self-reflection) actually means something to me. When you are going along in life with the tacit expectation that your life span is going to fit neatly into the actuarial tables you figure you have some wiggle room. There is plenty of time to work on aspects of your life that, for now, you have swept under the rug. After the diagnosis of a life threatening illness, you have to recalculate your time line. Of course you have the absolute expectation that after all the godforsaken medical interventions you have had that you are one of the 80% plus who will never experience a recurrance of their cancer, but, just in case...You are going to play the odds game and try to outwit fate.
When I was diagnosed with stage 2a breast cancer two and half years ago the trajectory of my life acutely changed. Whatever sense of control that I once thought I possessed had disappeard into the ethers. My 3 children (at the time, 3, 5 and 6 years old, respectively) and my husband now faced the very real prospect of life without a mother/wife. I was terrified not only for myself (at the time a 38 year old woman with no family history of breast cancer who decided to get screening mammography at an early age based on a passing suggestion by my gynecologist), but moreso for my family. I'll be honest, regarding my husband, he is amazing and we have a great ride together and I love him dearly. But, I figured if I died (which every woman who is ever diagnosed with any life threatening illness immediately thinks), he'd just be able to go out and get himself a younger, cuter, blonder, more petite version of myself. It's not like he'd be cheating on me because I'd be dead. But, my kids...that's a whole different ballgame. How can a child be left motherless, especially at such a young age. Sure it happens to...'people'. But according to my plan, I wasn't one of those 'people'. This scenario was not in my play book.
As my husband and I settled into the diagnosis and we realized the course of action set before us we were faced with the very real challenge of how to explain this to our children. What we quicky determined is that there is no one way to do this and it wasn't going to be just one conversation but an ongoing discussion. We enlisted the help of websites, doctors, books, match book covers...Just about anything we could find. To some extent, the young age of my children was beneficial for both them and for me. They were too young to understand fully the implications of my diagnosis so this limited some of their long term worries. They were impacted more on the basis of my inability to mother them in the way that they had become accustomed. When I was sick from chemotherapy, they had to be quieter or go on play dates with friends. They had to adjust to a bald mom (of whom they have long since forgotten). They couldn't be held when I was recovering from one of my many surgeries. I'm sure that this made them feel scared and insecure. We talked about it and talked about it and talked about it some more. Everyone went to therapy. Everyone went to some more therapy. In the midst of my treatment, my kids switched elementary schools (and, by the grace of God, my family was embraced at their new school). I was the new bald mom. The kids didn't really care, but they had to explain to their friends why their mom had no hair and always wore a bandana on her head. My middle son told his new friends that I had cancer; skin cancer (he was 5 and after all, the mastectomy had affected my skin). When taking my 3 year old daughter to get a haircut she was asked how short she wanted it and she responed, "Let's just shave it!" With both a bald mother and father (my husband kept his head shaved in solidarity), that seemed to be the norm in our family.
Thirty one months later (since the day of my diagnosis) we have weathered the storm. Knock on wood, I'm good (though I do think I'm dying every time a get a sniffle or a hang nail. Just ask my husband and my massage therapist-Yes, once you have cancer or a chronic illness you enlist the help of every alternative therapy practitioner that has ever been listed in the yellow pages-chiropractic medicine, accupuncture, Reiki, cupping...). But, we still experience residual effects from the storm. Two of my kids require a lot of verbal and physical reassurance. Not so much about my illness. It manifests itself in other ways (am I going to be late for to pick them up from school? am I always nearby in the house? if I step outside to take out the garbage, I have to announce it, etc...) and I have to remind myself not to get impatient with them. Just like me, they are still processing the course of events that have transpired thus far in their very young lives. The other child has responded differently. This one is impish and pushes the envelope on just about every situation and we have to walk the very fine line of tolerance and accountability. This too requires patience and discernment on a whole different level.
All of this is very basic parenting stuff, but confounded by our situation. We are not unique in having had 'circumstances' befall us; everyone has a backdrop on which their lives are created. As I mentioned earlier, having had breast cancer while raising young children has been beneficial. Not only for the reasons previously mentioned, but it has been the gift of clarity. It is much easier to sort out what matters and what doesn't matter (though I still get caught up in the nonsense of life just like everyone else). That is a true gift and one for which I am continually grateful.
So, everyday I wake up and thank God for the gift of life with all the good and the bad. I thank Him for the things that really matter, my husband, my children, my friends and the relationships I have with each of them. I thank Him for the color pink which, in my mind, has come to represent hope and gratitude. Since my diagnosis, almost unconsciously, I usually have something on my person that is pink. I'm not a tremendously girly, girl but this color is a visual reminder to me of all that I hold dear. I have had the good fortune of being in a city with so many available resources. One of them, introduced to me by a dear friend who has since continued her journey beyond this life, has been The Pink Ribbons Project. Through this non profit organization that provides avenues of art therapy for those whose lives have been affected by breast cancer, I have been able to assist in the creation of a program called Pink Alive Kids. This program will help those families with children, very young to teen, navigate the complexities of having breast cancer and raising children. And it will be a resource and an outlet for children who have no 'kids of breast cancer moms/dads' cohort to call their own. They will see that their are other kids who share in their insecurities and they will be offered healthy and safe ways to express the gamut of their emotions. So, in the month of October, despite the overtones of black and orange and all that is ghoolish and scary, I challenge you to Think Pink, if for no other reason it reminds you to have hope and to be grateful!
My sense is that my overall life GPA is probably enough to meet the requirement of induction, but when you breakdown the point system, the numbers are all over the map. Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was a fairly self-reflective individual. Since the diagnosis, it (the self-reflection) actually means something to me. When you are going along in life with the tacit expectation that your life span is going to fit neatly into the actuarial tables you figure you have some wiggle room. There is plenty of time to work on aspects of your life that, for now, you have swept under the rug. After the diagnosis of a life threatening illness, you have to recalculate your time line. Of course you have the absolute expectation that after all the godforsaken medical interventions you have had that you are one of the 80% plus who will never experience a recurrance of their cancer, but, just in case...You are going to play the odds game and try to outwit fate.
When I was diagnosed with stage 2a breast cancer two and half years ago the trajectory of my life acutely changed. Whatever sense of control that I once thought I possessed had disappeard into the ethers. My 3 children (at the time, 3, 5 and 6 years old, respectively) and my husband now faced the very real prospect of life without a mother/wife. I was terrified not only for myself (at the time a 38 year old woman with no family history of breast cancer who decided to get screening mammography at an early age based on a passing suggestion by my gynecologist), but moreso for my family. I'll be honest, regarding my husband, he is amazing and we have a great ride together and I love him dearly. But, I figured if I died (which every woman who is ever diagnosed with any life threatening illness immediately thinks), he'd just be able to go out and get himself a younger, cuter, blonder, more petite version of myself. It's not like he'd be cheating on me because I'd be dead. But, my kids...that's a whole different ballgame. How can a child be left motherless, especially at such a young age. Sure it happens to...'people'. But according to my plan, I wasn't one of those 'people'. This scenario was not in my play book.
As my husband and I settled into the diagnosis and we realized the course of action set before us we were faced with the very real challenge of how to explain this to our children. What we quicky determined is that there is no one way to do this and it wasn't going to be just one conversation but an ongoing discussion. We enlisted the help of websites, doctors, books, match book covers...Just about anything we could find. To some extent, the young age of my children was beneficial for both them and for me. They were too young to understand fully the implications of my diagnosis so this limited some of their long term worries. They were impacted more on the basis of my inability to mother them in the way that they had become accustomed. When I was sick from chemotherapy, they had to be quieter or go on play dates with friends. They had to adjust to a bald mom (of whom they have long since forgotten). They couldn't be held when I was recovering from one of my many surgeries. I'm sure that this made them feel scared and insecure. We talked about it and talked about it and talked about it some more. Everyone went to therapy. Everyone went to some more therapy. In the midst of my treatment, my kids switched elementary schools (and, by the grace of God, my family was embraced at their new school). I was the new bald mom. The kids didn't really care, but they had to explain to their friends why their mom had no hair and always wore a bandana on her head. My middle son told his new friends that I had cancer; skin cancer (he was 5 and after all, the mastectomy had affected my skin). When taking my 3 year old daughter to get a haircut she was asked how short she wanted it and she responed, "Let's just shave it!" With both a bald mother and father (my husband kept his head shaved in solidarity), that seemed to be the norm in our family.
Thirty one months later (since the day of my diagnosis) we have weathered the storm. Knock on wood, I'm good (though I do think I'm dying every time a get a sniffle or a hang nail. Just ask my husband and my massage therapist-Yes, once you have cancer or a chronic illness you enlist the help of every alternative therapy practitioner that has ever been listed in the yellow pages-chiropractic medicine, accupuncture, Reiki, cupping...). But, we still experience residual effects from the storm. Two of my kids require a lot of verbal and physical reassurance. Not so much about my illness. It manifests itself in other ways (am I going to be late for to pick them up from school? am I always nearby in the house? if I step outside to take out the garbage, I have to announce it, etc...) and I have to remind myself not to get impatient with them. Just like me, they are still processing the course of events that have transpired thus far in their very young lives. The other child has responded differently. This one is impish and pushes the envelope on just about every situation and we have to walk the very fine line of tolerance and accountability. This too requires patience and discernment on a whole different level.
All of this is very basic parenting stuff, but confounded by our situation. We are not unique in having had 'circumstances' befall us; everyone has a backdrop on which their lives are created. As I mentioned earlier, having had breast cancer while raising young children has been beneficial. Not only for the reasons previously mentioned, but it has been the gift of clarity. It is much easier to sort out what matters and what doesn't matter (though I still get caught up in the nonsense of life just like everyone else). That is a true gift and one for which I am continually grateful.
So, everyday I wake up and thank God for the gift of life with all the good and the bad. I thank Him for the things that really matter, my husband, my children, my friends and the relationships I have with each of them. I thank Him for the color pink which, in my mind, has come to represent hope and gratitude. Since my diagnosis, almost unconsciously, I usually have something on my person that is pink. I'm not a tremendously girly, girl but this color is a visual reminder to me of all that I hold dear. I have had the good fortune of being in a city with so many available resources. One of them, introduced to me by a dear friend who has since continued her journey beyond this life, has been The Pink Ribbons Project. Through this non profit organization that provides avenues of art therapy for those whose lives have been affected by breast cancer, I have been able to assist in the creation of a program called Pink Alive Kids. This program will help those families with children, very young to teen, navigate the complexities of having breast cancer and raising children. And it will be a resource and an outlet for children who have no 'kids of breast cancer moms/dads' cohort to call their own. They will see that their are other kids who share in their insecurities and they will be offered healthy and safe ways to express the gamut of their emotions. So, in the month of October, despite the overtones of black and orange and all that is ghoolish and scary, I challenge you to Think Pink, if for no other reason it reminds you to have hope and to be grateful!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
"Cha-cha-changes, ": Confessions of a Crazy Woman
My baby, the youngest of the 3, is starting kindergarten tomorrow. There is a small part of me that is ready to start a congo line down the middle of my street in celebration of this milestone and the freedom that it symbolizes. However, my current emotional state is far from jubilant. It's more of a combination of extreme melancholy and profound neurosis. The past 9 years, those in which I have been a mother, have passed by at an alarmingly rapid rate. In between the phone calls and the e-mails and the errands I always thought I'd have the luxury of time; there would always be more time to sit on the floor and play babies or match box cars or board games. The mind-numbing mornings spent sitting on the sofa clutching my coffee mug wishing away Dora the Explorer & The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, sadly, are forever gone. Just like that an era is over. It's not as though I get to throw in the towel now that all of them are in elementary school ('See ya kids! You are on your own now! Mommy is going to go toss back some martinis and go take tennis lessons!'). But, I wonder if I have been a good steward of my time? Have I spent these past 9 years wisely? In 9 more years, my oldest will be getting ready to go to college. I only have 9 more years to teach him the stuff he's supposed to know before he leaves home. I know I've squandered some of my time as a mother. God knows it's almost impossible to extract every ounce of purposeful, teachable moments out of your time spent with your kids. There is a lot of static or times when the screen is just blank.
I think I'm my own worst critic. If I had to fill out an evaluation of myself per kid on my performance thus far, I'd probably be circling a whole lot of 6 and 7's (you know, on one of those Likert scales from 1-10 with 10 as the highest). There would be some 2's and 3's (oral hygiene, enforcement of proper language). But I'd have written in a bunch of comments about how I could improve my patience or have been more attentive or spent more time with each kid individually.
Everyone tells you it goes by so quickly, raising your kids. Whenever someone tells me that, a veteran parent-the kind with teenagers or college kids (as opposed to an active duty parent like me-the kind with the little shits still pissing you off more often than not)-I usually smile and nod in polite agreement and then think , "Shut the f_ck up! You aren't scraping blueberries off the hardwood floors or refereeing petty arguements!" But, you know what, those people, the veterans, they are absolutely right. They wouldn't volunteer to do your shift for you, but they are sitting there filling out their own evaluation forms and wishing they could go back and do some things better.
So tomorrow morning will come and it will go but I hope in 3 months, when I am kvetching over 3 different sport team practices and homework and special projects, that I remember how I feel right now. I hope that I am reminded of what a priviledge it is to be given the responsibility of parenthood. I hope that I will remember that I am accountable for my actions as a mother; accountable to my Creator, to my kids and to society. I hope that I savour even the most trivial and aggravating parts of the job, because in the blink of an eye, it will all be over.
(all of this said and I haven't even commented on how freaked out I am about what I am going to do with my time. Now that the noble job of parenting will be largely taken over by the public schools between the hours of 8 am-3 pm). That is where the neurosis factors in-talk about identity crisis. I think this is what they mean by a mid life crisis. Neurotic doesn't even begin to explain how insecure I am feeling right now.
I think I'm my own worst critic. If I had to fill out an evaluation of myself per kid on my performance thus far, I'd probably be circling a whole lot of 6 and 7's (you know, on one of those Likert scales from 1-10 with 10 as the highest). There would be some 2's and 3's (oral hygiene, enforcement of proper language). But I'd have written in a bunch of comments about how I could improve my patience or have been more attentive or spent more time with each kid individually.
Everyone tells you it goes by so quickly, raising your kids. Whenever someone tells me that, a veteran parent-the kind with teenagers or college kids (as opposed to an active duty parent like me-the kind with the little shits still pissing you off more often than not)-I usually smile and nod in polite agreement and then think , "Shut the f_ck up! You aren't scraping blueberries off the hardwood floors or refereeing petty arguements!" But, you know what, those people, the veterans, they are absolutely right. They wouldn't volunteer to do your shift for you, but they are sitting there filling out their own evaluation forms and wishing they could go back and do some things better.
So tomorrow morning will come and it will go but I hope in 3 months, when I am kvetching over 3 different sport team practices and homework and special projects, that I remember how I feel right now. I hope that I am reminded of what a priviledge it is to be given the responsibility of parenthood. I hope that I will remember that I am accountable for my actions as a mother; accountable to my Creator, to my kids and to society. I hope that I savour even the most trivial and aggravating parts of the job, because in the blink of an eye, it will all be over.
(all of this said and I haven't even commented on how freaked out I am about what I am going to do with my time. Now that the noble job of parenting will be largely taken over by the public schools between the hours of 8 am-3 pm). That is where the neurosis factors in-talk about identity crisis. I think this is what they mean by a mid life crisis. Neurotic doesn't even begin to explain how insecure I am feeling right now.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
BMI and Other Stuff
I really want a chocolate chip cookie, but I am not going to eat one. Considering the posterior aspect of my body could qualify for it's own zip code, I'm going to do my best to show some self-restraint. But it ain't easy. I want all the people in the world who have fat genes to raise their hands in the air like the just don't care and say, "Woo-hoo"!
Maintaining a BMI greater than 25 takes a considerable amount of effort. While at work today I learned some new factual information. The term 'morbid obesity' is no longer en vogue. The more politically correct classifications of obesity 1, 2 and 3 have been adopted. The higher the number, the bigger you are. For example a BMI greater than or equal to 40 is obesity 30. It seems to me that those numbers correspond quite nicely to the sizing system at Chico's, the clothing store for generous sized women.
I played with my kids tonite and for that I feel like I should earn a gold star. I was god-awful tired after working all day and all I really wanted to do was watch crappy tv and send them to bed. But summertime rules prevailed and they knew that I would never be able to get them into bed before 10pm. So we sat at the kitchen table and played several rounds of Uno. Not so suprisingly, I had a lot of fun with them. Aside from the fact that I am shamefully competitive, even with my own children, we all had a good time. Every once in a while I'll catch a glimpse of my kids and I'll remember that they aren't going to always sit with me to play card games. When that happens, when I realize that they aren't always going to be little and adorable I try to breathe in the moment and capture it for what it's worth. The dirty fingernails, the goldfish crumbs, the hysterical giggles (potty jokes), the endless questions, the improperly played games-before I know it these days will be a precious memory. So for now, I let the things that dont' reallly matter wait while I enjoy my 3 gifts.
Maintaining a BMI greater than 25 takes a considerable amount of effort. While at work today I learned some new factual information. The term 'morbid obesity' is no longer en vogue. The more politically correct classifications of obesity 1, 2 and 3 have been adopted. The higher the number, the bigger you are. For example a BMI greater than or equal to 40 is obesity 30. It seems to me that those numbers correspond quite nicely to the sizing system at Chico's, the clothing store for generous sized women.
I played with my kids tonite and for that I feel like I should earn a gold star. I was god-awful tired after working all day and all I really wanted to do was watch crappy tv and send them to bed. But summertime rules prevailed and they knew that I would never be able to get them into bed before 10pm. So we sat at the kitchen table and played several rounds of Uno. Not so suprisingly, I had a lot of fun with them. Aside from the fact that I am shamefully competitive, even with my own children, we all had a good time. Every once in a while I'll catch a glimpse of my kids and I'll remember that they aren't going to always sit with me to play card games. When that happens, when I realize that they aren't always going to be little and adorable I try to breathe in the moment and capture it for what it's worth. The dirty fingernails, the goldfish crumbs, the hysterical giggles (potty jokes), the endless questions, the improperly played games-before I know it these days will be a precious memory. So for now, I let the things that dont' reallly matter wait while I enjoy my 3 gifts.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Dominican Republic
It's been awhile since I've had the luxury of sitting in front of my keyboard and monitor to spew my inconsequential garbage. Sometimes I think I've lost my ability to find humor in everyday situations, but it's more that I don't have the time to write it down.
We just returned from a month long vacation. Instead of going thru all the glorious details of the entire 30 days, I'll recount the highlights from the last one-third of our trip which was spent in the Dominican Republic. In planning this venture, I must admit that I had some reservations about taking my 3 kids to a third world country. Cholera, dysentary, yellow fever, malaria, dengue fever, lack of proper car seat/restraints, machete accidents-these words flashed across my mind like the NYSE symbols flash across the botton of screen on CNBC. My brother spent 3 years in the DR as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 2000's and it was while he was there that he met his wife; my current sister-in-law. Actually, Bill did all of the planning for this trip. I simply provided him with my credit card information so I could continue to accrue debt. Bill tried to get me to come visit him when he was living in the DR, but I was either pregnant or nursing a baby the entire 3 years he was there so the timing was never quite right. This trip, the one that just occured, was to be a big family trip; his family, my family and our mom. I'd been promising him for the past decade that I was gonna go to this country that he loves, so now was the time.
We arrived in Puerto Plata on July 19th. At this point we're almost 3 weeks deep into our vacation and, proudly might I boast, not a one of us amongst the 5 wanted to kill anyone else. We'd just spent 9 days in Western Pennsylvania at Lee's mom's compound and it was heavenly and serene and peaceful. Bucolic days spent fishing and hiking and swimming and paddle-boating and bb-gun shooting and fresh garden vegetable eating. Lovely. Hard to imagine anything more divine.
The first 4 days in the DR were fairly uneventful. Bill had booked rooms at the RIU Mambo, an all-inclusive resort on the Atlantic coast. I had never been to an all-inclusive resort, but they are akin to a cruise in the 'buffet meals and in your face constant entertainment' aspect, only on land. Any time you turned around someone named Rocky or Mama Mia was trying to get you to take Merengue lessons or do aerobics in the pool and there was practically 24 hour access to the Dominican version of pizza and burgers. No one was questioning your decision to have a pina colada at 9:30 am. As a matter of fact, if you looked around there were about 500 Germans in poorly fitting bikinis (men and women) there to join you. So, we swam and ate and drank and had a merry ole time watching nightly shows on the beach or on the stage (fyi...if you are disappointed about the King of Pop's show cancellation due to an untimely demise, the RIU resort in Puerto Plata has a guy that does a spot on impersonation-moonwalk and all-for an entire hour show. You would have thought it was Michael himself.) During these 4 days we had a couple of outings; a near-death experience on the "Teleferico" and a trip to the "27 Charcos" (27 waterfalls-or more literally-27 pools of water below the falls). With the former fore we took a ski-lift like gondola to the top of a mountain to give us a grand view of the island's beaches. The fact that there were ominous cloud formations providing near zero visability should have been our first clue to abort the mission, but perpetually the optomists, we tarried onward. Once we reached the top of the mountain, the skies opened and the flood waters commenced. We spend about an hour and a half inside tourist shops seeking shelter from the rain all the while trying convince the shopkeepers that we didn't need any of their wares. Realizing the rain was not going to stop, we made our way back to the gondola to take us back down the mountain. Operations had been suspended due to high wind velocity and thunder and lightning. After waiting in the lobby for a reasonable delay they decided to let a car full of fools go back down the mountain. We almost lost one whole branch off the family tree that day. About a third of the way down, the gondola started swinging with the wind and seemed to jump off the cables. This happened several times as the 10 of us and 35 + of our our closest Dominican brothers and sisters chuckled lightly all the while hoping we weren't about to plummet to our death. As we finally reach the bottom of the mountain with the gondola station in full view about 200 yards away, suspended about 100 feet above the parking lot, the gondola looses power and we must wait for the back up generator to kick in. We finally made it and I have a great series of photos that I have labeled, "The Faces of Fear".
The 27 Charcos were incredibly cool. The Rio Damajagua spills down the mountain creating 27 waterfalls with giant pools of water beneath them. After hiking about 3 miles to get to the base of the falls, we ascended the falls with our 2 Dominican guides, Lioney and Yunior. The smaller of the 2, Lioney, looked like the equivalent of Zac Efron size wise. At least Yunior appeared to be able to bench press more than his own body weight. But these 2 guys hoisted us up the falls (we only did the botton 7 due to time constraints and b/c my mom was stuck at the bottom with the 2 littlest kids who couldn't go up) with the agility of gazelles. Those 2 could shimmy up a rock faster than any mountain goat this side of the equator. Once we got to the top of the falls we got to slide, swim and jump all the way down. I felt like I was in one of those old Mountain Dew commercials where they have all those young, cool, good-looking kids jumping of rocks.
The badness starts about day 4 of our trip. Somewhere in the buffet line, despite the hand sanitizer offered by women lurking around in maid uniforms as you enter the dining room (or as you enter and exit the bathrooms), some fecal-oral contaminant crossed paths with our family. My middle son was the first to fall almost simultaneous with his grandmother. You name it and it was likely coming out of an orifice. We did the parental thing and comforted him and gave him appropriate hydration and as he improved we waited for the next victim to fall.
Back to my brother, the one who introduced us to the island of Hispaniola and the country of the Dominican Republic. As one might imagine, his time in the Peace Corps was not spent at all-inclusive resorts. He was actually commissioned to help a small mountain community referred to as "El Campo" develop an aquaduct system for farming. This is where he really wanted us to visit. I thought of a million and one reasons in my head as to why this was not a good idea. But, I didn't want to seem like a prissy little girl who was too scared to take her 3 white kids to the mosquito infested mountain jungles of the DR while driving on a narrow gravel road to get there. My mother has been to the campo before. Her initial suggestion was that we stay in the campo for a week. Wisely, my brother decided to curb her enthusiasm down to 2 nights and 2 days. When doing the planning, I had suggested to my brother that we go the campo initially, before the beaches and other sight-seeing. However his reasoning for going in the middle of our trip was justifiable. He wanted to on the weekend when more people would be in from the fields and it would allow more time for visiting. I was hesitant to agree to two nights, but I didn't want to disappoint my brother and Lee and I felt like it was not complete negligence in the parenting department.
As we leave the highway and begin to travel up the mountain on the small and winding road I am not anticipating that one of us might fall victim to the intestinal ailment that had afflicted my son. The drive up is beautiful. Everything is lush and green and much like one might imagine the Garden of Eden to have been. My son is 85% recovered at this point and when we reach our destination, he hops out of the car ready to explore. After introductions are made, Lee leads the kids down a mountain path to a creek and I remain up at the home of our hosts to play dominoes. As we are playing I realize that something is not quite right. I don't really feel nauseous, but I just don't feel right. My sister-in-law had been helping with meal preparation. The campo is very different from the resort. There are no buffet lines. The kitchen is in a small wooden building separate but adjacent to the main house. A wood burning stove is used to cook the food and there is a sink, but the water that is used in the sink is pumped in from water collected in barrels. It is for cleaning but it isn't drinkable. The house is constructed of cement and there are cement floors and a tin roof and interior walls with rooms partitioned off with thin ply wood. During the day, the sunlight lights up the house, at nite electricity is available, but it is minimal and it is provided by a solar panel and used sparingly. There is no plasma screen TV with a satellite connecting you to over 300 channels and a DVD player. It is a modest 4 room home with 3 rooms used has bedrooms and one room used as a combined dining-sitting room. It is sparse, but neat and it has all the essentials that a shelter should provide. It is someplace to lay your head at night and it will keep you warm and dry. My kids had been primed for this experience, but it is hard to sell something when you've never seen it before. They, nor we, really had no concept of what the campo was going to be. As soon as we arrive and my daughter sees the primitive accomodations to which she has been subjected she is appalled and eager to leave. She sees no reason in extending our visit any longer nor does she see any point in the educational/cultural/humanitarian component of our visit. In preparation for our trip we decided to bring gifts for the kids who lived in the campo. I decided that one way my kids could contribute to this effort was to forego the plastic toy in their kids meal for the kids in the campo. My kids have been 'suffering' the loss of their kid's meal toys for about 6 months and my daughter has been the number one proponent and the most generous, happily handing over her goods to me. Now that we are there to deliver she is happy to just drop the goods and go. I can see that her future humanitarian efforts will end at the US border.
My sister-in-law preparred a typical Dominican meal for the campo; fried salami and boiled green bananas. I can eat anything. ANYTHING. But, I took one look at this stuff I was supposed to be cutting up for my kids and I knew it wasn't going to happen. I called my mom to the rescue and our hosts kindly showed me to their room where I commenced to rest supine upon their bed for the remainder of my time at the campo. Supine, that is, when I wasn't up running to the latrine (as in outside the main house, in a separate walled off structure, Little House on the Prarie style, outhouse) to have things coming out top and bottom side of my body. All night, in the dark, without air conditioning or indoor plumbing this happened. Only to be worsened if I even so much as thought about a sip of water. At one point as I was making my way down the path to the latrine, I felt so dizzy that I thought I was going to pass out so I lay down on the path. It mattered not to me that I was laying in my own vomit with my shorts half way down my legs. At that point I just wanted to die. I moaned form my brother, the last person I saw before I walked down the path, and he, along with my husband, scooped me up and propped me up on a rock. But not before he pulled up my pants for me. Of all the mortifying things a man has to do in his life, perhaps the most is to see his older sister's flabby half-moon showing and to have to eclipse it for her.
As if the night couldn't get any worse, lying there underneath the mosquito net hoping you can wait at least one more hour to get up to go to the latrine again, I can hear it-wretching and it is not me. It's my husband and he sounds 10x worse than me. Everytime he vomits I think certainly this time he has ruptured his esophagus. Lee is not a friend of this latrine and refuses to use it. Instead he spends the night in the rental van getting up and sh_tting down the side of the mountain every time he needs to go. By morning, I am spent but I am starting feel somewhat human again. But, by this point the commander-in-chief has made up his mind. We are going back down the mountain and going to a hotel so at least if we have to vomit we can do it in air-conditioning into a toilet that we can flush and watch cable tv in the interrum. When he says we have to leave I get a bit mopey and try to think of reasons as to why we should stay. First and foremost, I don't want to disappoint my brother or the generous hospitality of our hosts (who had to put up with our wretching al night long). Lee is adamant though and so we say our goodbyes and head down the mountain which is a good thing because I'm not as well as I think I am and spend the next 24 hours in bed with a fever, but not before I drive us down the mountain and rapidly over a few speedbumps just to make Lee groan a little louder as punishment for making us leave.
One thing I forgot to mention. In the midst of establishing the campo as our very own vomitorium, we had a little mama drama in the mountain jungle. Our host family serves as the mayor and first lady of the community and the are often called upon to help resolve other family's disputes, regardless of the time of day or nite. As I lay there I hear the shouts of domestic violence in Spanish. Apparently the town drunk, who is in his 30's and still lives with his parents decides that he wants to try to kill them by beating them with a chair. All sorts of shouting and yelling and negotiating is happening in Spanish. Finally someone comes and yells outside the windor of my host family and they jet out bed and solve the dispute (by telling the 50+ yr old parents that they are to beat their son for acting the way he is).
Now that we are back and mostly well and all of this is a joke, the thing that I can say about our trip is that it was very humbling. Upon witnessing the generosity of the people in the campo and elsewhere, I can't help but be impressed by the lack of complaint and the gratitude that is displayed by many of the Dominican people and many who are willing to share so much even though it may seem so little by our standards. I just want to remember (and I want my kids to remenber) that most of the world lives with so much less than what we have. Not only do we need to be cognizant of that disparity but we need to live our lives with respect towards it reminding us to do our part not only in word, but by our actions.
We just returned from a month long vacation. Instead of going thru all the glorious details of the entire 30 days, I'll recount the highlights from the last one-third of our trip which was spent in the Dominican Republic. In planning this venture, I must admit that I had some reservations about taking my 3 kids to a third world country. Cholera, dysentary, yellow fever, malaria, dengue fever, lack of proper car seat/restraints, machete accidents-these words flashed across my mind like the NYSE symbols flash across the botton of screen on CNBC. My brother spent 3 years in the DR as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 2000's and it was while he was there that he met his wife; my current sister-in-law. Actually, Bill did all of the planning for this trip. I simply provided him with my credit card information so I could continue to accrue debt. Bill tried to get me to come visit him when he was living in the DR, but I was either pregnant or nursing a baby the entire 3 years he was there so the timing was never quite right. This trip, the one that just occured, was to be a big family trip; his family, my family and our mom. I'd been promising him for the past decade that I was gonna go to this country that he loves, so now was the time.
We arrived in Puerto Plata on July 19th. At this point we're almost 3 weeks deep into our vacation and, proudly might I boast, not a one of us amongst the 5 wanted to kill anyone else. We'd just spent 9 days in Western Pennsylvania at Lee's mom's compound and it was heavenly and serene and peaceful. Bucolic days spent fishing and hiking and swimming and paddle-boating and bb-gun shooting and fresh garden vegetable eating. Lovely. Hard to imagine anything more divine.
The first 4 days in the DR were fairly uneventful. Bill had booked rooms at the RIU Mambo, an all-inclusive resort on the Atlantic coast. I had never been to an all-inclusive resort, but they are akin to a cruise in the 'buffet meals and in your face constant entertainment' aspect, only on land. Any time you turned around someone named Rocky or Mama Mia was trying to get you to take Merengue lessons or do aerobics in the pool and there was practically 24 hour access to the Dominican version of pizza and burgers. No one was questioning your decision to have a pina colada at 9:30 am. As a matter of fact, if you looked around there were about 500 Germans in poorly fitting bikinis (men and women) there to join you. So, we swam and ate and drank and had a merry ole time watching nightly shows on the beach or on the stage (fyi...if you are disappointed about the King of Pop's show cancellation due to an untimely demise, the RIU resort in Puerto Plata has a guy that does a spot on impersonation-moonwalk and all-for an entire hour show. You would have thought it was Michael himself.) During these 4 days we had a couple of outings; a near-death experience on the "Teleferico" and a trip to the "27 Charcos" (27 waterfalls-or more literally-27 pools of water below the falls). With the former fore we took a ski-lift like gondola to the top of a mountain to give us a grand view of the island's beaches. The fact that there were ominous cloud formations providing near zero visability should have been our first clue to abort the mission, but perpetually the optomists, we tarried onward. Once we reached the top of the mountain, the skies opened and the flood waters commenced. We spend about an hour and a half inside tourist shops seeking shelter from the rain all the while trying convince the shopkeepers that we didn't need any of their wares. Realizing the rain was not going to stop, we made our way back to the gondola to take us back down the mountain. Operations had been suspended due to high wind velocity and thunder and lightning. After waiting in the lobby for a reasonable delay they decided to let a car full of fools go back down the mountain. We almost lost one whole branch off the family tree that day. About a third of the way down, the gondola started swinging with the wind and seemed to jump off the cables. This happened several times as the 10 of us and 35 + of our our closest Dominican brothers and sisters chuckled lightly all the while hoping we weren't about to plummet to our death. As we finally reach the bottom of the mountain with the gondola station in full view about 200 yards away, suspended about 100 feet above the parking lot, the gondola looses power and we must wait for the back up generator to kick in. We finally made it and I have a great series of photos that I have labeled, "The Faces of Fear".
The 27 Charcos were incredibly cool. The Rio Damajagua spills down the mountain creating 27 waterfalls with giant pools of water beneath them. After hiking about 3 miles to get to the base of the falls, we ascended the falls with our 2 Dominican guides, Lioney and Yunior. The smaller of the 2, Lioney, looked like the equivalent of Zac Efron size wise. At least Yunior appeared to be able to bench press more than his own body weight. But these 2 guys hoisted us up the falls (we only did the botton 7 due to time constraints and b/c my mom was stuck at the bottom with the 2 littlest kids who couldn't go up) with the agility of gazelles. Those 2 could shimmy up a rock faster than any mountain goat this side of the equator. Once we got to the top of the falls we got to slide, swim and jump all the way down. I felt like I was in one of those old Mountain Dew commercials where they have all those young, cool, good-looking kids jumping of rocks.
The badness starts about day 4 of our trip. Somewhere in the buffet line, despite the hand sanitizer offered by women lurking around in maid uniforms as you enter the dining room (or as you enter and exit the bathrooms), some fecal-oral contaminant crossed paths with our family. My middle son was the first to fall almost simultaneous with his grandmother. You name it and it was likely coming out of an orifice. We did the parental thing and comforted him and gave him appropriate hydration and as he improved we waited for the next victim to fall.
Back to my brother, the one who introduced us to the island of Hispaniola and the country of the Dominican Republic. As one might imagine, his time in the Peace Corps was not spent at all-inclusive resorts. He was actually commissioned to help a small mountain community referred to as "El Campo" develop an aquaduct system for farming. This is where he really wanted us to visit. I thought of a million and one reasons in my head as to why this was not a good idea. But, I didn't want to seem like a prissy little girl who was too scared to take her 3 white kids to the mosquito infested mountain jungles of the DR while driving on a narrow gravel road to get there. My mother has been to the campo before. Her initial suggestion was that we stay in the campo for a week. Wisely, my brother decided to curb her enthusiasm down to 2 nights and 2 days. When doing the planning, I had suggested to my brother that we go the campo initially, before the beaches and other sight-seeing. However his reasoning for going in the middle of our trip was justifiable. He wanted to on the weekend when more people would be in from the fields and it would allow more time for visiting. I was hesitant to agree to two nights, but I didn't want to disappoint my brother and Lee and I felt like it was not complete negligence in the parenting department.
As we leave the highway and begin to travel up the mountain on the small and winding road I am not anticipating that one of us might fall victim to the intestinal ailment that had afflicted my son. The drive up is beautiful. Everything is lush and green and much like one might imagine the Garden of Eden to have been. My son is 85% recovered at this point and when we reach our destination, he hops out of the car ready to explore. After introductions are made, Lee leads the kids down a mountain path to a creek and I remain up at the home of our hosts to play dominoes. As we are playing I realize that something is not quite right. I don't really feel nauseous, but I just don't feel right. My sister-in-law had been helping with meal preparation. The campo is very different from the resort. There are no buffet lines. The kitchen is in a small wooden building separate but adjacent to the main house. A wood burning stove is used to cook the food and there is a sink, but the water that is used in the sink is pumped in from water collected in barrels. It is for cleaning but it isn't drinkable. The house is constructed of cement and there are cement floors and a tin roof and interior walls with rooms partitioned off with thin ply wood. During the day, the sunlight lights up the house, at nite electricity is available, but it is minimal and it is provided by a solar panel and used sparingly. There is no plasma screen TV with a satellite connecting you to over 300 channels and a DVD player. It is a modest 4 room home with 3 rooms used has bedrooms and one room used as a combined dining-sitting room. It is sparse, but neat and it has all the essentials that a shelter should provide. It is someplace to lay your head at night and it will keep you warm and dry. My kids had been primed for this experience, but it is hard to sell something when you've never seen it before. They, nor we, really had no concept of what the campo was going to be. As soon as we arrive and my daughter sees the primitive accomodations to which she has been subjected she is appalled and eager to leave. She sees no reason in extending our visit any longer nor does she see any point in the educational/cultural/humanitarian component of our visit. In preparation for our trip we decided to bring gifts for the kids who lived in the campo. I decided that one way my kids could contribute to this effort was to forego the plastic toy in their kids meal for the kids in the campo. My kids have been 'suffering' the loss of their kid's meal toys for about 6 months and my daughter has been the number one proponent and the most generous, happily handing over her goods to me. Now that we are there to deliver she is happy to just drop the goods and go. I can see that her future humanitarian efforts will end at the US border.
My sister-in-law preparred a typical Dominican meal for the campo; fried salami and boiled green bananas. I can eat anything. ANYTHING. But, I took one look at this stuff I was supposed to be cutting up for my kids and I knew it wasn't going to happen. I called my mom to the rescue and our hosts kindly showed me to their room where I commenced to rest supine upon their bed for the remainder of my time at the campo. Supine, that is, when I wasn't up running to the latrine (as in outside the main house, in a separate walled off structure, Little House on the Prarie style, outhouse) to have things coming out top and bottom side of my body. All night, in the dark, without air conditioning or indoor plumbing this happened. Only to be worsened if I even so much as thought about a sip of water. At one point as I was making my way down the path to the latrine, I felt so dizzy that I thought I was going to pass out so I lay down on the path. It mattered not to me that I was laying in my own vomit with my shorts half way down my legs. At that point I just wanted to die. I moaned form my brother, the last person I saw before I walked down the path, and he, along with my husband, scooped me up and propped me up on a rock. But not before he pulled up my pants for me. Of all the mortifying things a man has to do in his life, perhaps the most is to see his older sister's flabby half-moon showing and to have to eclipse it for her.
As if the night couldn't get any worse, lying there underneath the mosquito net hoping you can wait at least one more hour to get up to go to the latrine again, I can hear it-wretching and it is not me. It's my husband and he sounds 10x worse than me. Everytime he vomits I think certainly this time he has ruptured his esophagus. Lee is not a friend of this latrine and refuses to use it. Instead he spends the night in the rental van getting up and sh_tting down the side of the mountain every time he needs to go. By morning, I am spent but I am starting feel somewhat human again. But, by this point the commander-in-chief has made up his mind. We are going back down the mountain and going to a hotel so at least if we have to vomit we can do it in air-conditioning into a toilet that we can flush and watch cable tv in the interrum. When he says we have to leave I get a bit mopey and try to think of reasons as to why we should stay. First and foremost, I don't want to disappoint my brother or the generous hospitality of our hosts (who had to put up with our wretching al night long). Lee is adamant though and so we say our goodbyes and head down the mountain which is a good thing because I'm not as well as I think I am and spend the next 24 hours in bed with a fever, but not before I drive us down the mountain and rapidly over a few speedbumps just to make Lee groan a little louder as punishment for making us leave.
One thing I forgot to mention. In the midst of establishing the campo as our very own vomitorium, we had a little mama drama in the mountain jungle. Our host family serves as the mayor and first lady of the community and the are often called upon to help resolve other family's disputes, regardless of the time of day or nite. As I lay there I hear the shouts of domestic violence in Spanish. Apparently the town drunk, who is in his 30's and still lives with his parents decides that he wants to try to kill them by beating them with a chair. All sorts of shouting and yelling and negotiating is happening in Spanish. Finally someone comes and yells outside the windor of my host family and they jet out bed and solve the dispute (by telling the 50+ yr old parents that they are to beat their son for acting the way he is).
Now that we are back and mostly well and all of this is a joke, the thing that I can say about our trip is that it was very humbling. Upon witnessing the generosity of the people in the campo and elsewhere, I can't help but be impressed by the lack of complaint and the gratitude that is displayed by many of the Dominican people and many who are willing to share so much even though it may seem so little by our standards. I just want to remember (and I want my kids to remenber) that most of the world lives with so much less than what we have. Not only do we need to be cognizant of that disparity but we need to live our lives with respect towards it reminding us to do our part not only in word, but by our actions.
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