Not Supermom.

Mother's Day came and went on the weekend. It didn't make many ripples over here, and it usually doesn't, always coming on the heels of my birthday. The kids are already spent. Didn't we just celebrate you? their eyes seem to ask. They did, and they do.

I've been mulling over motherhood a bit more than normal, mostly because I'm parenting on my own at the moment (halfway done!) and I find myself thrust up against my own existence as a mother, without even a break to catch my breath. And now, with a ten year difference between my oldest and youngest, I find myself doing these very different types of mothering- helping the moody preteen and the infant. Using my mind for all it's worth in one instance, and my body in its infinite mothering capacities in the other.

Motherhood can make me feel so absolutely alone, because whenever it comes right down to it, I am the only mother to my kids. My friends and family love my kids but only I am the mother. I look around for someone to join in the mothering, but I'm here, in the spotlight circle by myself. It's me. This me who still sometimes locks the doors at night and feels a gasp of surprise. Where's the grown up? I'm alone in this house with these kids? People are letting me do this?

The most alone I feel is when people look in from the outside and call me things like "Supermom." I know when people do this, they are giving me a compliment, sometimes right from the heart. They are expressing awe at what I do with many kids. I receive it from them as kindness. But it makes me feel more alone, because I am not Supermom at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about one kind of Super. I know about superheroes and how you sometimes need to put your Wonder Woman cuffs on to go shopping for Christmas or birthday presents because shopping is very scary. You need your superhero persona to override regular you and throw a great birthday party, because throwing great birthday parties has nothing to do with your natural personality, nothing to do with what you would do if you had a moment alone.

But Supermom sounds like Superman, and mothering, in its truest definition, has nothing to do with Superman.

Since I have been a mother, I have grown smaller and softer, as well as larger. I am more open than I feel comfortable with.

I craft moments or meals and they aren't always received with the same tenderness I offer them in. I am stung, shrug it off. This doesn't feel super.

My lap is an intersection during rush hour traffic: people climbing in and out, laying their heads on my knees. My ear is the opening for all kinds of complaints, from "I'm bored" to "He punched me" to "No one understands me at all." This doesn't feel super.

I feel bereaved of the child that was just two weeks or an hour ago, even as I open my heart up to the child that is now. I feel old and too vulnerable. I want to creep back to safety, but to leave, to take my heart and presence would be the worst move of all. So I live in this discomfort. This doesn't feel super.

To be a mother, you need to exert all of your strength and willpower. Being a mother is certainly mighty, but Superman does everything he does with ease. Bullets don't hurt him. I don't resemble Superman at the end of a long day, when I am as limp as a tired plant in an unwatered garden, when I lie down on my bed with sweat on my upper lip, curl up under the fan and fall asleep without meaning to. I don't do this with ease.

The bullets pierce me. I hurt when my children hurt, even when my consequences given for their wrong actions are the things doing the hurting. I make choices that don't always feel right. I answer eight thousand requests a day, often with the wrong answer. Help Kai with his math? Or sit with Solo making something? I can't do everything, something always has to give. It is often me. This does not feel super.

Superman gets his super self from one place to the next with super speed. I am as slow and stunned as a turtle.

Oh, I think mothers are strong and brave and incredible. If I can step back from all the small mistakes I make, I can even say that I think I am strong and brave. (And incredible, ahhh awkward!) I think you, the mothers who are reading this, are strong and brave and incredible.

But I also think you are soft, and in need of protection and love from the community around you. You need people in your village to look out for you, and though they can never be you, never be the mother to your children, they can support you and tell you that you are important.

(I think I've said this before, but it's the greatest gift of living in Asia- this importance of the family. It's very simply accepted, that mothers are important and that they need help.)

You are not Supermom- your giving goes deeper than the giving of someone with unlimited strength and energy, because you are so limited, so small, so human, yet you continue to give. You are less like Superman and a little more like Jesus, giving and giving. Laid out and vulnerable, choosing to give parts of yourself to people that can very easily hurt you.

And still, I know and see that when people call me Supermom it is a part of the support that I need. They are acknowledging what I do, and though I want to protest that no! I am not an alien without needs! I smile and shrug and thank them. And accept the loneliness that comes from being, for my kids, the only and very non-super mother to be found.

Adventures in eating.

(Photo by Kai)

I've discovered by experience that Isaac is really, really sad if I eat chillies.
This is tricky in Thailand. If we're out eating at a market stall type of place and I ask for food that's not spicy, people think, "Sure, of course she wants it a little less spicy," and give me only one chili. So then I ask for no chillies at all, and somehow, there are still chillies in my food. I think it's reflexive... the hand reaches out for the chillies right after the fish sauce. The hand is putting the chillies in the pan! There's no calling the hand back!!

My new plan is to only order food that never has chillies included, ever, not ever.  Food like fried rice or pad thai or stir fried kale. It means that a lot of my favorite foods are dead to me (dead to me!) at least for the time being, but it will cut out days like the horrible one this week, when Isaac couldn't stop crying and I walked the floor with him for hours.

This is what my kids are like: They had no help from me, I couldn't do many of the things we were supposed to do, they got themselves ready for bed and waited for me patiently, they dealt with my grumpiness and tiredness from walking a screaming baby, and at the end of the day they all said, "Poor Isaac," as they stroked his face and cooed to him. They don't get annoyed with him, or jealous, or frustrated because his crying is loud. "Poor Isaac," they say. "Poor, poor Isaac."

Since that bad day we haven't had any more, which is wonderful because when Isaac isn't gassy he is an angel. He is a happy, jolly boy who is growing like crazy. He smiles and drools and wriggles. To keep him ungassy, I have dropped milk, eggs, almonds, and chillies from my diet. I also haven't been drinking coffee, ever since he was born, although in the last three days I've had a cup of tea in the afternoon.

I notice immediately if I've eaten something that is bothering him. So it is mind boggling when I go to health or parenting sites and they say that it makes no difference to babies if you eat certain things while breastfeeding. ("It does!" I shout at the computer screen. "It does!") Even here, chili capital of the universe, when I told my landlady one day that Isaac's tummy was hurting, she asked if I ate chillies. And frowned at me. "Yes," I said, and begged her forgiveness.

The only problem is that I am so very forgetful these days, and I feel that I need to tattoo my diet restrictions on my hands. A while back I was at a friend's house and we were eating spicy Mama noodles. I looked at the noodles and thought, why is there something lurking at the back of my brain, telling me I shouldn't be eating these? That's silly, I love spicy food. Huh. And then I ate them, and Isaac had a hard day the next day. Doh!

This is the way my brain is with me lately. Yesterday it was almost scary, as I read through my to do list and found something that didn't make sense to me AT ALL. Right in there with things that did make sense was a line that said,

Send book to Mom.

But I have no book to send to my mom-- not even a dream of a book to send to my mom.  And I couldn't figure out why it said, in my own writing, send book to Mom. What book did my subconscious brain think I have? This morning, a whole day later, it clicked. She said she would do some proofreading for me. There is no physical book to be put in the mail, Rae! You're talking about a book file! Doh!

Why is my brain standing back and withholding information from me? I can only assume that it's mad at me because I have too many things going on, as well as nursing brain. I turn thirty-three on Friday and this is too young for dementia.

On the day that Isaac was screaming I had promised the kids I would make them mango sticky rice, so, tenderhearted mother that I am, when I couldn't get him to sleep in the evening, I put him in the baby carrier and made the sticky rice with him riding around on my front, burrowing his head into my chest.

There was a box of coconut milk in the fridge-- a brand that I never felt comfortable with, as it was called "Scented Candle Coconut Milk." I believe the box appeared in the fridge at the same time I was on my retreat with Leaf. Which is to say that I didn't buy it. I didn't trust it. Really lost in translation, thought I, briskly stirring ingredients together. That name makes it seem as though the coconut milk will taste like scented candle. They need to hire a new marketing expert. But, there it was, and what better way to use it than making this coconut rice.

Oh, but Thailand never stops surprising me, because I was wrong and the marketing people were right. I tasted the sticky rice and it tasted exactly, I mean, exactly, like a candle. Because dessert that tastes like candles is a thing in Thailand. Because this is an alternate universe where people like to eat things that taste like candles. I mean, really. The coconut milk is placed over a smoking candle to infuse it with the delicate taste of smelly floral wax.

It makes total sense. Who wouldn't want that?

You know, especially after a long day of walking a sad baby, when one is lovingly trying to make a treat for one's children, one would certainly like to make it taste like the bottom of a candle holder. Of course.

I can smell the rain.

It was a very busy day. I wrote before the sun was up.

Then Kai and Kenya (Kid A and YaYa)  finished work on Kenya's stopmotion movie. They worked on one with friends who came over yesterday. A school project- they did it from beginning to end, but when we watched it, we saw things that needed to be fixed. The camera moved too much- there was too much extra room visible. So Kenya got back to work right away and made another movie. She shot it all herself and I showed her how to adjust photo levels. Kai did some sound engineering this morning.

I'm very proud of them.

We showed it to Chinua from far away.

Then lunch and Thai class, some swimming, dinner. I didn't get to my email today. (I'm sorry.)

I read to everyone and lastly we had a big wind and rain storm with thunder and lightning. In the dark I climbed on top of a chair that was stacked on a table to reach our last chicken, who was swaying wildly in a high branch of our tree. He sleeps up there normally, but tonight we made him cozy in his own chicken hotel room. Spoiled chicken.

It was very hot this morning and now it is cool with lightning in the distance. All my people chickens are accounted for and in their beds, snoring softly

and I
am
going
to
bed.

What I'm loving right now.

* Railroad tracks. I will always love them.

* Cool mornings. Today my alarm went off at 5:30 because the coolest, quietest hours take place even before the sun lofts itself over the mountains. When I stop to listen, there are actually roosters all over the city, I can hear a chorus of them in the distance, some of them close enough to pick out individually. There are the plentiful Common Mynahs, grunting and clicking and singing, and there are people pulling their food carts out to the street.

But this falls into the background of morning sounds--none of this noise applies to me, I don't have to address any of it, so I will soak in my own silence.

* Old friends. Carrien came to Pai and stayed for a couple of nights. She arrived with her kids just a few hours after Chinua left and the two of us did our best to harness the delightful chaos that ensued. Nine kids in a not-so-big house. There was a lot of laughing and shrieking and bonding.

I'm pretty sure that Carrien is a superhero. She's just made an international move pregnant while her husband back ties things up in the U.S. She's been here a month now, and is handling everything with stamina and grace. Even the bus trip to Pai with all her kids, including a two-year-old. I've been doing this sort of thing so long that it's second nature to me (and to the kids), but everyone doesn't live their lives on buses and it can be so challenging at first. She's amazing, and very, very kind.

* Solo standing at the window in my room, saying, "Those are beautiful clouds, those are beautiful clouds..."

* Miriam's help. She is so kind and helpful. And when a German woman cleans your kitchen, your kitchen knows it.

* My landlady. Now she has gone and installed an air conditioning unit in my bedroom, because she is worried about Isaac being too hot. (She took it from another house, where she said they weren't using it.) We won't use it all the time, partly because I don't like the huge jump between air conditioned temperature and outside temperature, and partly because this house has too many gaps between the boards for it to be economical to cool. But I have felt badly about putting Isaac to sleep in my room, which feels like an oven in the afternoons. When I wake him up he's a puddle of sweat. It will be so nice to cool it down for him.

* A new thought. I started reading the book The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers, and I read recently about the importance of believing in our value as mothers. I've been mulling it over and carrying it around in my heart. Sometimes I feel as though my life and job as a mother is limited to breaking up fights and dealing with attitudes. It's been getting me down lately, despite how wildly I love my kids.

Thinking about my value as a mother has me contemplating how much they love me. They need me and love me and that makes everything I do important. I try to imagine how I look through their eyes, and I look necessary and lovely and lovable. And tall. So when I'm doing laundry or washing dishes, I think about this, about the necessary work of motherhood and about how I can do it with joy and contentment. Seeing myself through my kids' eyes is changing the way I feel about what I do. I'm their mom. They need me, and it's important to remember that, especially with the bigger kids who aren't as reliant on me in physical ways anymore.

It's Day 3 of the Chinua absence and I'm telling you, people in villages do not miss a beat. I was walking to the store last night and an older man at the end of my street asked me where my husband went. Since the people on my street are so kind, I told him. I think they will be the sort of people who will look out for me while Chinua is gone.

And with that, I'm off to start the day. The sun is about thumb height above the mountains. I think I'll get some lettuce out of the garden before it gets too hot, so we can have salad tonight.

Comings and goings.

The heat is getting away with me. It carries me off with it sometime in the late morning and doesn't let my brain go until around 3:00 am, when I turn over in my sleep and sigh into the cool air from the window. It's been over 40 degrees for a long time. I like to cheer the clouds on when I see them peeking into the edges of the valley.

"Come on guys! You can do it!" A little rain would be lovely.

Until then, we flee to the pool in the late afternoons, when we can no longer function, when play fighting among the kids turns to real fighting.

I am back home from my retreat, back among my family. When Chinua and the kids found me in Chiang Mai, they pulled up and spilled out of the car, all of them tall and radiant. I unloaded Isaac's stroller out of the back of the song taew and turned to hug them all.

But I wasn't alone.

Miriam is here! The Goa season is over and she has come to be with us for a couple of months in Thailand. I surprised her at the train station in Bangkok and we took the most delayed train ever up to Chiang Mai together.

"The train is so quiet," she said. It's been fun to see what she notices, what things are so different from India.

Today marks more new beginnings. Isaac is three months old today. Three months! Only recently he has been eying things with frustrated fervor, determined to get them into his hands and then into his mouth. He wants to join the world, now. He's decided it's a good place for him, he'll swim on in with all the others.

But also, my Superstar husband is going away today. He'll be away for five weeks, and I feel a little as I might feel if I knew the sun would be hidden for five weeks. Or if I could only drink Tang for five weeks, no clear water.

Last night we stretched out together and talked, looking at each other and away. Five weeks is a long time, we agreed. His reason for going away is very important... he wouldn't do it right now if it wasn't.

I have all sorts of thoughts and hopes for how to make it through the next five weeks without him, but in the end I know that I really don't know. The larger our family becomes, the older everyone becomes, the less and less I feel I know. I know we have a whole lot of love, and that we will go day by day. I know that I will make many mistakes but that we are all well versed in forgiveness and in hugs. And I know that mother does not mean perfect, that a good day doesn't have to be a flawless day, and that my family loves and needs me.

Have a sweet journey, my beloved. We'll be here, waiting for you.

Retreat

My friend Leaf and I went on an art retreat last year in Kerala, India and it was beautiful. Over the last few months we've talked about whether something like it would be possible this year and happily we decided yes.

I traveled down to South Thailand by bus.

Leaf flew from India. In her home city she waited for a train, but it still hadn't come after five and a half hours and she only had a six hour window. So she jumped on an express train and barreled across the country, hiding out from the conductor's eyes, jumping in a taxi and racing across Kolkata to reach her flight in time. (On her way to the airport in Kolkata, she witnessed a car crashing into a bus and lighting on fire.)

She literally fought her way to us.

.

We knew this trip might not take the shape of an art retreat completely, since we have a little friend with us. (Leaf says he is just our kind of guy.) But it is a rest, a time to grow our friendship, to believe in each other and this crazy inter-country friendship we have.

And I have to say that he is the perfect age for this, just between sensitive newborn and active land, when nothing is safe. Of course you can travel with older babies, but it isn't exactly restful.

We came to Koh Samet, a little island not far from Bangkok. We've watched people posing in the surf, lying on their stomachs like mermaids while their friends or husbands take pictures. I've considered posing like this myself, I'm sure Chinua would like a mermaid picture of me as a souvenir.

There are many many tourists here in our little cove, and truth be told, I'm not sure that I would recommend this island. The coves are small and when it's crowded there's not much of a way to get away from the crowds.

But it has been beautiful for us. It's all we need-- some space to sit and talk, some food to eat and a little room for dreaming and writing or singing. There's nothing like writing in the morning while Leaf is singing.

I take Isaac for walks in the early mornings, since he is a six-o'clock kind of baby. The sun is already hot, since we are on the eastern side of the island. The sand is very white and the jungle comes right down to the beach. There are no coconut trees. It's very different from Goa, with turquoise water.

I find that I am sad. Sadness runs underneath everything like a stream these days. And I'm dealing with more anxiety than I like. The postpartum time is no joke, for me. So I worried a little about coming here with Leaf, not sure if I'd be pleasant to be around.

I'm messy now, and as we talk and talk, my eyes often fill with tears.

But Leaf doesn't mind. We talk about sad things and then we're laughing again and deep down I'm anxious but I know it will pass. How can I express how thankful I am for my friend.

She has had her own sorrows and there are times when her eyes fill with tears too.

But in no time at all, we are laughing again. Laughing and cooing over the little friend.

She's up, she's down...

I've been everything from ecstatic hovercraft to broken down Honda this week. One of my ecstatic hovercraft moments was in seeing the absolutely kind and generous comments many of you left on the last post.  Thank you. I love the warmth I felt in the commentbox.

(Some of your comments were moderated at first, which can be frustrating because you can't actually tell what's going through. Hopefully we'll work out the kinks.)

We had to go to the immigration office this week in Chiang Mai, and I'll spare you the long drawn out details, except to tell you that I got there at 7:00 am and we finally got done at 5:30 pm. There were many hot hours of sitting and waiting with grumpy kids who kept telling us that the immigration office was boring, as if we didn't know that.

Here's how Solo feels about the immigration office.

The first picture is from nine months ago and the second from the other day. In his first photo he's just not so impressed, but in the second photo, well. He's downright hostile. The photographer took one look at him, handed me the camera, and said, "You take the picture." So I did.

In the middle of the day we were able to drive over to Carrien's house and visit for a while, and then she graciously watched our kids for us while we went back to immigration and sat around some more. Then we missed our bus back to Pai and ended up all crashing in different spots in her house (which is actually her brother and sister in law's house) and she was gracious and loving and kept handing me food while I was nursing. The way she does.

We were exhausted when we got home yesterday and at first had a little panic party when we couldn't find one of our two remaining chickens. But I listened very closely and I heard her cheeping away. We found her across the street, at our neighbor's house in his bicycle basket with a board on it. (?) Not sure what all that was about, but finding the chicken stopped YaYa's tears.

Isaac was crying really hard and I was having a hard time getting him to stop. Our landlady had stopped by with some apples for us and she thought he was hot, so we took his shirt off and she wiped him down with a cold cloth. I personally thought he had gas, but there was no doubt that it was hot out. (108 degrees!) so I let her wipe him down, him screaming all the while.

I think she went home worrying about it, because this morning Khun Thanom, her husband, came over with a length of flexible pipe and told me he was making air conditioning for us.

I looked at the pipe, trying to understand. He strung the pipe from the trees and put nozzles that make mist into it. I love how he makes things happen so quickly. Now the pipe mists the area around our house and it really does help. If I'm in the kitchen and I get a little breeze with some cool mist in it, I feel different. I feel mistier, cooler, more mysterious, more European.

But speaking of water, tomorrow is Song Kran! Thailand's New Year and epic water festival. The kids have been counting down the months and days until Song Kran for the last eleven months. Oh, how children love a country wide water fight.

I'll close with this shot of Isaac, not screaming.

Just being very, very adorable.

I'm loving the conversation, so tell me- do you have any memories of being doused with water?

Giving my blog a bit of love

You're probably noticing that it looks different around here, with the lovely YaYa up there (photo courtesy of Chinua). I made the switch from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 6, and spruced things up a tiny bit. I rearranged the furniture.

It was time. And also, there are a couple new features that I'm really excited about.

One is the threaded commenting on this system. I'm looking forward to being able to respond to your comments more easily and also to see conversations develop in the comments. (The commentbox, as Eleanor would say.) You can click reply on any comment to respond to what anyone has to say. Please hang out, you are all so beautiful, you need to get to know each other. (Some of you know each other already.)

The second thing is that it is now possible to subscribe to this blog by email, if you like. Over there in the right sidebar is a link that you can click on to subscribe to Journey Mama by email as well as my newsletters (you can choose either or both) that I will be using to communicate about books or promotions. Please sign up! I won't be flooding your inboxes or anything.

To kick off this rearranging of the furniture, I'm inviting you to comment here, even those of you who normally don't. I'm warmly inviting you, imagine me with some Thai iced tea in my hand, (or some hot tea, if it's cold where you are.)

To make it easier to respond, here's a question: What's one new habit you have started or would like to start?

Mine is daily Pilates. I started today and I'm hoping to get a 30 day streak. (Must keep people from trying to push my belly in in public.) I remembered today that Pilates makes me feel like I've just had a full body massage, and that I love it. And that it only takes 15 minutes.

Night is a gentle friend.

It's 10:30 at night and I'm just getting around to making the yogurt. It'll take a while for it to cool, so despite my best efforts, it's going to be a late night. Again. But I couldn't help myself, I thought about yogurt and about boys who always want snacks and how I told them I'd make a new batch today and I had to get that milk cooking.

The good news is, I'm writing a blog post. The other good news is, I don't seem to be afraid of nighttime anymore.

For years now, as soon as the sun has gone down, the world has shifted into an unfriendly place for me. My thoughts scatter and retreat into corners, I only want to go to sleep. I've explained it away as the fact that I'm a morning person (which is true) but that doesn't quite justify the fear. There have been deeper anxieties beneath it all, thoughts of days that end when you haven't made the grade yet, when you feel deeply unsatisfied with yourself.

A while ago, I started to ask myself, "What would it take for me to feel like I've done a good job, at the end of the day? Or even to get the phrase, 'done a good job' right out of my head? What would it take for me to simply enjoy night, the deepening indigo of the sky, the night frogs and geckos, the quiet of the house?"

I can't say that I know when it happened. Was it when I stood on the street at midnight at the beginning of the New Year, watching thousands of lanterns forming rivers of light in the sky? Was it when Isaac came to me after nights of walking? Did I sweat it out? Did God set me free?

Maybe it started with that question... What would it take? It seems that with all bad thinking we need to get to the root, and I've been thinking about the story that I always seem to tell myself: that life is a list of things to get done and done well. In truth, there is so much more to life than that. There is so much more to God than that.

There's nothing that messes with to do lists and self-expectation like a baby in your arms who doesn't want to be put down. You have to slowly reel your mind back in, focus on his face rather than dinner waiting in the distance, unweeded garden beds, the laundry that needs to be strung on the line, the chapter you were smack in the middle of reading to the kids, clutter everywhere. You pull yourself back to the baby and slowly he comes into focus and you realize how relative time is, again. Days fly like leaves do when the wind is strong and they rain into your kitchen. Moments are slow and sluggish, then speed up again when dinner should be ready by now and the kids are arguing because they're hungry.

My lists will stretch on ahead of me all of my life. But life is not about finishing, life is about continuing. Continuing in love and patience for helping the pettiest of heartbreaking arguments between small kids. Continuing with the daily things that grow mind-numbing in their repetition. Continuing to notice each other and breathe the same air in peace. And continuing to be thankful at the end of the day, to meditate on all the good things, even all the mediocre ones because continuing often is mediocre.

A long string of mediocre moments extends like a dream into the past, and this is what life was and is. Every video I have of the kids is precious, only because it was picked out. In the moment I'm sure I was just as antsy and bored and ready to get things done. But we pick out these moments and we remember them and write them down and photograph them and record them. We make songs out of them and draw all over them and somehow the mediocre is the real life, far beyond getting the laundry on the line. It's almost laughable, when you think about it that way. Oh my overflowing shelves need to be organized, but YaYa is learning to play the ukelele, and Isaac is gurgling and talking more and more, and the morning breeze is like heaven.

The yogurt is probably cool enough for me to stir the starter in now, so I'm going to go and do that. And then I'll shower, and go to bed, and breathe in all the rest the night has to offer before I fall asleep.

Still true.

Happy Easter, lovelies.

Today I thought I'd pull from the archives and repost what I wrote about two years ago at this time.

*

How was your Easter?

Ours was... quiet. And glad. And sweet.

We got up and made pancakes with the couple who lives here in the house with us. We talked about the Resurrection with the kids. There was chocolate involved. And the tiniest of hunts, out in the garden.

We went on a walk, up to a nearby hillside where we could see much of the lake. It was hazy. Everything was soft and lovely. One boat sat in a still circle of blue.

I thought a lot about a meditation I guided in January. It was of Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus. We dove in. It was an imagination meditation, so I encouraged the people in the circle to use all their senses, to find the scrubby bushes beside, to stand in the dust she was standing in. To feel her despair. He may have been the first person ever to see value in her, to love her. She was left unloved, without him. She had been out of her mind, before. A used-up, broken woman who talked to herself in the streets. You know the type, you've seen them. He healed her. She traveled with his followers. She stayed with Him to the end.

And she went to the tomb to prepare the body, but then her heart went crazy! He was gone. This was the absolute end of her. She only wanted to care for the broken, empty body. And it was gone.

There was a lot of running. Running to find the men, the disciples, running back to the tomb. (Cool air of the morning, sun rising in the hills.) The men saw that she was right, ran off again.

And from Mary, weeping. Despair. Anguish and the worst kind of loneliness.

I want to truly find that moment, capture it, live it, when he identified her and she knew him. After she mistook him for the gardener, all he said was her name, "Mary." And she knew him.

"Rabboni!"

Anguish to beauty. She would never be unloved again.

Although I'm sure she always had to remind herself of that. And that is what I am doing this morning in meditation. The garden, the cool of the morning. The dust under her feet, the rocks sticking out of the earth. The earth under her knees, her despair, and then Him. His face. His radiance.

In my life on this earth I have been asked so many times, why I follow Jesus. Merely stating that I do is enough reason for people to tell me why I shouldn't. They tell me of the travesties that have been done by Christians, they tell me of historical inaccuracy, of relativism, of how mistaken I am. I have loads (heaps!) of thoughts about all these things. I can talk, I can discuss, and I do.

But there is only one real reason that I follow Jesus. It is because of him. Because of his radiance, his gentle beauty, the sweetness of His WHOLE Being. My Guru, my Master. "Rabboni!" Mary said. This moment is overlooked sometimes, but is one of the most important of his whole life on earth. No other god, no other teacher compares.

Because in his most triumphant moment, finally justified as the One who could destroy death, the first thing he did was comfort a girl, a broken ex-prostitute who nobody cared about. It was the first thing he did.

I had no idea what I was going to write about this morning. But there it is.

You get used to being told what to do.

The day after I gave birth to Isaac, I got a surprise visit in the hospital. Just minutes before, I had finally taken a shower and cleaned up. I had new, clean hospital clothes on. I was all fresh, and just then the door opened--  it was my landlord and landlady, from three hours away, in Pai.

"Hello!" I said. Surprised would be an understatement. I was shocked out of my socks. I had been meaning to call them to let them know why we were taking so long in getting back (remember, we were in Chiang Mai for two weeks) but kept putting it off. In my mind, we were still in a tenant/landlord relationship, so it wasn't really necessary, because we had paid the rent ahead of time and nothing was wrong with the house.

What I learned was that our relationship had moved on, into something more like family. Khun Ampa, my landlady, was so worried about me (and couldn't reach me by phone since she'd lost my phone number) that she told Khun Thanom that they needed to drive to Chiang Mai to find me. I had told them the hospital I was giving birth at, and just minutes before they had gone to the nurses station and asked for me. Which is why they were now coming into the room.

Chinua, my parents, and the kids hadn't come yet that day, so I sat with Ampa and Thanom and we chatted. We exhausted every topic we could think of in our limited Thai and English combination, and we sat. It was a true Asian visit, which is not short, and neither should it be, considering their long drive from Pai!

At one point Ampa decided that she really wanted to buy me some milk, so she left with Thanom and a while later they came back with about sixteen milk boxes (like juice boxes, but with UHT milk) and some Thai sweets. (This was not the last time Thai women bought me milk. I ended up with many, many boxes of milk. I have to believe it is a Thai thing, to feed a nursing woman milk. Unfortunately, I'm not drinking milk, since all my kids have had a sensitivity to me drinking dairy when they are breastfeeding. My older kids have had a lot of milk boxes, all except Solo, who turns his nose up at UHT milk.)

Eventually the nurses wanted to move me up to the recovery floor and Thanom and Ampa packed my stuff together and walked to the elevator with me so we could go to the fourteenth floor. They chatted with the nurses about me and I followed along as much as I could, the only non-fluent Thai speaker in the room. While I was changing Isaac's diaper, he peed and it sprayed over his head and onto Ampa and Thanom, which set off hilarity among my landlords and the nurses. When Chinua and the others showed up a little later, Thanom and Ampa and I were all still sitting and watching Isaac. All in all, they stayed and soaked in our newborn with us for about four hours.

*

Just a couple hours earlier, the head of the nursery had come to meet me. She told me everyone in the nursery loved my baby and he was so cute. At the moment I was trying to get him to wake up a bit-- he had fallen asleep while he was nursing-- but she wanted to clean his cord, so she took him. He turned his head to the side and rooted a bit (as they do) and she told me, "Mama, your baby is hungry! Let me see his latch." And she watched him latch on. (Remember, this is my fifth baby, something that makes me feel that I don't need help with nursing, but sure.) "His latch is okay," she said, being a bit too dismissive of his superpowers for my taste. "Could be better, you want his mouth wider." She unlatched him, because obviously I needed that. "Let me see how your milk is coming." And she reached in and gave me a squeeze and whizzz!! Milk and colustrum shot almost to the end of the bed!

She apparently had her own superpowers.

*

The morning after we reached Pai, just a few days after Isaac was born, a few neighbors came around to have a look at the baby. Ampa was there, and she and the neighbors chatted about me. I can catch bits and pieces, but I don't know all the words. They talk quickly-- I can tell that they are comparing Thai mothers to foreign mothers, but some things elude me.

One of the neighbors was holding the baby and at one point Ampa surprised me by reaching over and pushing hard on my stomach, like she was trying to push it in. I was mildly embarrassed.

"It's just because he's so new," I said. "It will go back in a month or so."

But then she did it a few more times over the next weeks, and I found out, with some research, that Southeast Asian women bind their bellies for the first forty days after birth. It helps support the uterus, causes the contractions needed to fully get it back to shape, and holds the stomach muscles in after they've been so stretched. I didn't get the memo. It's too bad, because Ampa is fairly distraught about the state of my belly. She and other women still eye my tummy whenever they're around. I know they wish they could get their hands on a piece of cloth and just wrap me up.

Dear Leafy,

Yesterday, as I was sitting outside eating a mango after lunch, you walked over to me.

“Mama,” you said. “This might sound weird, but I think I have sensors on my tongue. I can tell whether or not a bite of food that I’m taking is going to make me full, right as I put it in my mouth.”

And you waited for my response. So of course I said, “That’s cool, Leafy.”

It is cool. You’re cool. I mean, seriously, mind-stoppingly incredible. 

This is not a birthday letter because you turned seven on January 20^th, exactly a week before Isaac was born and now you’re WAY older than seven. Obviously. At the time I wasn’t at all sure whether I would be in labor on your birthday or not. But we had a party and there were all these other kids there and when you opened your present (a Clone Trooper mask) you screamed with joy. For once, we didn’t shush you.

What will you do with all your lungpower, son? Your ability to project across the country of Thailand merely with the sound of your voice?  And what will you do with your brilliant mind? Your mind is in love with play. You play with words, with ideas, with pictures. In your mind, definitions are made to be bent and flipped inside out, every problem has some way to be worked around, in large, creative, sweeping circles.

As I write this letter to you, you are walking in large circles around the room, not seeing anything in front of you, deep in your mind, in the action that happens in your imagination. You can do this for hours, and I think you’ve done it since you could walk. Sometimes we have to tell you to please watch your feet, because you’ve been drawn away so far that you don’t notice if you are stepping on things or even people.

And then sometimes you get drawn swiftly back to the here and now, as when you hear Isaac crying and you run from wherever you are to find him. You love him so intensely, his cry seems to affect you just as physically as it does me. I knew you would love him, you've always loved babies and you sit for hours with small friends of our, talking baby talk and listening to the baby words they tell you in turn. But I wasn't prepared for how much you would love him, how you would sob in the hospital when you realized that you had to go back to the house and Isaac would be staying with me in the hospital. How you always come and find us in our room, first thing, and lay your head beside his as he nurses.

We cut the rest of your hair off the other night. This time there was no crying, you were excited and happy to see how different you look. I could barely contain myself, you emerged looking just like your daddy when he was a little kid, and it was so endearing, so, so endearing. I loved the way you looked with dreadlocks, and with your dreadlock mohawk, and now that you have short hair I can see every gesture you make in a different way, how you tilt your head to the side when you're thinking, or imagining, as you so often are.

You bring me flowers and you dream up things to give me, and long to make things for people you know. You often tell me you're going to build me a house one day.  I've stopped expecting this affection to go away because I know that this is who you are, with a deep core of tenderness and a love of giving to others.

So far this year with you, your year of being seven, is challenging, as you are stubborn or whiny sometimes in a way I'm not used to with you. And this year is above all,  beautiful. Like you.

Love,

Mama

Please pray for my friends.

I'm throwing this out there for all my praying readers.

I've written about my dear friend Christy more than a few times.

Here, I wrote this:

I remember that it was something that my friend Christy always did while we traveled. She would talk about overcoming evil with good while she sat cross-legged on her bed in our guesthouse room, making small beautiful things for people that she met. She took verses from the Bible and wrote them on pretty paper with butterflies or flowers, the size to fit in someone's palm. And so we wove our way across India, fighting to break open the sense of defeat that often followed us, Christy's butterflies sown in every town we visited. "Overcome evil with good."

This is my beautiful friend, our beautiful friend. And her husband Ian, who is Chinua's dearest friend, is in the hospital fighting leukemia right now. He's had a bone marrow transplant and an unexpected reaction is happening in his liver. It's not comfortable, it's dangerous and scary and rare, and the treatment is a medication which is dangerous and scary and rare.

The other day Eva reminded me of the time I flew off a cliff with three of my kids in the van with me. The lesson I learned that day is that even in the most dangerous times, we are truly in God's hands. We all came out of that with barely a scratch and Oh, Ian, I know you can come out of this, despite tubes and hospitals and unexpected liver problems and dangerous times.

So this is my prayer for Ian and Christy, people who have such great kindness that you almost can't believe it. I pray that God the Almighty would surround them with singing, would bring peace in the storm, would calm the war within Ian's body, would show his love to be palpable, pulsing, and almost more than they can bear.

Please pray for my friends. And tell your praying friends. And we can build a wall of prayer around them to support them as they walk through this together.

We really do follow a path, leaping from stone to stone.

I often reflect on the ways that certain times of my life have so well prepared me for other times, and I've been thinking about it today again, feeling thankful. A part of my brain registers this would be difficult if you weren't already used to it, when I'm going about very normal, but strange, business in this global life.

For example, before we lived in India, we lived in a community on land in Northern California. The first three years of writing at Journey Mama were capturing life in that place in the forest.

(Sidenote: I'll be publishing a compilation of the best of these writings very soon. I was inspired to do so by several people who told me that they read through all of the archives here, and I thought, All that clicking! I should really collect these thousands of words in an easier format. The title of the book is Trees Tall as Mountains, and I hope to show you the cover soon.)

At the Land we had frequent power outages and sometimes we had no water, or we had to be careful of our water (spring-fed) because something funky was in it.

Later, dealing with daily power outs and lack of water in India, I was glad that I had been well trained in the art of being inconvenienced.

In Goa, I often felt like I lived in a fishbowl, because our house was in the middle of a busy fishing village, with people in every direction. I'm glad for all those moments of being stared at, now that we live in this old (gorgeous) house. We live on a oft-traveled street in a two story house. The only stairs to go up or down are on the very front of the outside of the house. There are no indoor stairs. Not only that, but the kitchen is outside, and I have to cross the little courtyard/driveway to get to it. It doesn't have walls, only bamboo which goes about three quarters of the way up on one side, and it is also right on the street.

I can't get from one part of the house to another without seeing people. I walk downstairs and make eye contact, regularly, with passing strangers. I walk to the kitchen and have a conversation with a tourist from Bangkok who wants to know about my kids. I was charmed the other day when a village woman who had seen me once, pregnant, passing on the street, made a beeline to Isaac and I, wanting to know about the birth. (In Thailand, one of the first questions people ask is how you did it. C-section? Or naturally? I think it is an old/new thing. The older generation of women all had babies naturally, but the C-section rate is 90% or something now, so older women especially like to know.)

One man in the neighborhood (He's maybe in his late fifties, and I think he is from Germany, though I haven't asked him) has engaged me in conversation a few times about how much rent we pay for this house. He talks about it loudly, on the street. This makes me very uncomfortable as talk about money= arghh embarrassing, and my neighbors are listening. Sometimes he whistles to get my attention and smiles kindly as he walks by, if I'm cooking in the kitchen.

I was in 7-11 the other day (do you know about Thailand and the ubiquitous 7-11?) and he was in there too, and he smiled at me as I passed him to get my milk. I was just thinking, man, that guy is getting annoying, when he left the store. I was standing in line, waiting to pay, when he popped his head back in the store to talk to me. He had apparently been weighing himself on the one baht scale outside the store. (It plays a little song when you're finished, so everyone around can see that you've been weighing yourself.) "I lost 10 kilos!" he called into the store. "In six months!" And he lifted his fists like someone who's been handed an olympic medal.

I laughed, and then I didn't find him annoying anymore, because quirky oversharing about weight in a public place?= awesome. He went radically up in quirk points. I think we're BFF's now.

Yes, so many things, so many frustrating, wonderful things, have prepared me so well for this public, friendly life I'm now living. I'm glad for all those times in India that I felt like I was living in a fishbowl. They helped prepare me for a time when my kitchen wouldn't have walls and my lower floor would be entirely made of windows.

Dear Isaac,

  

Oh baby. Six weeks old today. How can it be?

(This is who I've turned into. Asking how how how about something as normal and constant as weeks passing as they always do. This is what you've done to me, you and all the other children, and I imagine that by the time you read this, that's all I'll say anymore. "Good morning Mom," you'll say, and I'll yelp. "Ouch!" I'll say. "You grew overnight! Stop!")

I remember holding you when you were only days old and thinking, "I don't want this part to ever, ever, ever end." But it has, in a way! You are so much older, so much wiser than you were. You are six weeks old! You have six weeks worth of world knowledge, a vast empire of knowledge. For you.

I am reminded that there are levels of cuteness in babies that continue to be unveiled, like when one of your brothers updates an app and finds fifteen new levels on his favorite game. Levels that he never knew existed. Isaac, you wake up in the morning and you've unwrapped a whole new part of who you are, and I see it for the first time and I am knocked down, son, I am knocked down.

That something new looks out from your eyes and I love discovering you.

We live in Thailand and you love it here. You love the women who come and coo at you, because they do it just right, all high pitched, and you laugh and coo in response, smiting them. You love to look at our dark window frames and our curtains. You are strong and big and everyone comments on how amazing you are.

Your first three weeks you spent mostly between my arms and your grandma's arms, and I think it was a beautiful landing for you, to be with the women who love you so much, to be cooed at and marveled over. Now you are spending more time with your Dad and siblings and you sit quietly with them, talking to them, telling them things, trying to figure all of us out.

You get really sad if I don't get you to sleep quickly enough, but other than that, you are the most self-possessed little man. You believe in our ability to listen, so if we talk to you when you are fussing, you turn your crying into a kind of talking, telling us in sad tones all about the problems you have.

Your brothers and sisters love you. I knew that YaYa would be so happy to have a baby, but I'm awed by Kid A and his love for you, how he comes to find you throughout the day, how he still prays to thank God for you, how he puts his arms around both of us whenever he can. He is so soft with you, and you look back at him, wanting to know who he is.

I think in the years ahead, you'll be someone he can count on. Because we all do it, we turn from the small grievances of the day to look into your eyes and we find sweetness and simplicity there.

You are a wonder. And oh, how I love you.

Love, Mama

(Last photo is courtesy of Chinua.)

You can't have everything.

Today I got the carrot seedlings in the ground, but I attempted a watercolor of Kid A and it went horribly awry.
I cleaned off the school shelf, but I didn't put the books back in the book box.
I smiled and talked with Isaac, but I didn't hang the laundry on the line.
I edited my novel a bit, but I can't figure out what to do with another project I'm working on.

I'm full of dreams, self doubt, hope, and fear. I feel trust and worry. I look forward to tomorrow, and I can barely handle today.

Isaac's birth story: wild animals everywhere

This got really long! I promise it's mostly interesting.

Sometimes, when you've had a hard birth with your fourth child, a birth that lasted thirty-nine hours and took everything that you could imagine from you, what you are really hoping for is an even longer labor with your fifth child. Forty-eight hours with a scary hemorrhage and you have everything you've ever dreamed of!

I haven't written about the birth because I don't really want to revisit it, I want to get as far away from it as I can, and if you know me and my feelings about birth, that should shock you. But it's true! And that's precisely why I need to write about it. There is no better way to retrieve something and squeeze every redemptive moment out of it than to put it on the page. So here I go. A warning, I will talk about the bleeding at the end of this story, so if you are sensitive to that, just stop reading right after Isaac is born.

The days leading up to Isaac's birth are oddly surreal, in retrospect. We were staying with friends in Chiang Mai, our sole job, it seemed, to wait. We played with kids, celebrated Leafy's birthday, welcomed my parents and because of our quick exit from Pai, I wore the same three things day after day after day. 

We went to the Chiang Mai Night Safari and fed tapirs and birds, twice. We played Zooloretto, once while I was in labor, I think. It seemed we were surrounded by animals, by zoo animals, by the children, pretending to be animals, by birds and snakes (I took a picture of one I saw on a walk through the neighborhood and Chinua yelped when he saw the picture- "Rae! That's a banded krait!" It's a dangerous one.) and elephants in real life and in the drawings YaYa worked on every day. It was an animal birth. (It's a tradition with us- naming our births.)

So why did my labor take 48 hours? I'm pretty sure it was because of my uterus, which is delicate, with a severe case of performance anxiety. Do you remember that Looney Tunes episode where the frog never sings when people are watching it? As long as the one guy is there, he sings and tap dances, "Hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime girl..." but he becomes mute as a clam if anyone else is around.

My uterus is just like that frog.

I gave birth in a private hospital in Chiang Mai, and the nurses were absolutely lovely. When we first came in, one walked over to me and measured my contractions by holding her hand ever so lightly on my belly and counting by watching the clock.

"Chinua!" I said. "Look at this! It's so human! No machines!"

I was at four centimeters and contractions were every five minutes. My doctor came and checked me out and pretty soon I'd advanced to five centimeters! "This baby will be born before midnight!" she said.

I can't tell you how wonderful I felt, sitting on the birth ball under the hot water of the shower, breathing through contractions throughout that night. It was so blissful. I meditated and in my meditation I was in a field, flowers opening all around me, with every contraction. Jesus was with me and I hung around in that blissed out field feeling like the happiest girl in the world, so happy with my body and my baby and my wonderful uterus.

At around 3:00 in the morning, I decided to lie down and try to get some sleep. Didn't want to exhaust myself, no need for that! When I woke up at around 5:00, my contractions had slowed so much that they were almost gone. My mood took a swift turn for the worse. NOOOOOOOOO!!!! is something like what I thought. In my labor with Solo, I had to walk and walk to keep the contractions coming. They would stop if I lay down, and the result was exhausting.

This is not what I wanted.

The doctor came in and said that I was still at five centimeters (!) and she thought my water had broken. So leaving and coming back another day wasn't an option, we needed to get the labor going. She suggested pitocin. I've never had pitocin before, because my water has never broken before the very end of labor, and after some discussion with my husband, I decided to go for it. With an IV. Which is my worst nightmare-- I'm IV and needle phobic and though I can handle it when I'm sick, I don't want to muss up a perfectly good labor with having yucky things stuck in me.

When the nurse came and put the IV in, I got very nauseous and had to breathe through it. Chinua had gone out to find some food, so I was by myself and in tears and I thought, Girl, you have got to get it together. Now. I looked at the IV pole that was now stuck to me like a parasite. The IV pole looked back at me. All in the mind, I thought. I'll name him.

When Chinua came back in, I introduced him to Baxter. Baxter was a tree who had been transformed into an ugly IV pole by something evil, I wasn't sure what- I didn't flesh it out that far, and he had been sent to help me. I could now sit on the birth ball next to Baxter, and imagine myself back in that field, with Baxter the nurturing tree. When I went to the bathroom I had to get him over the weird bump on the floor in the doorway. "Come on, Baxter," I said, urging him. "It's fine in here." I became very tender with him. Bless his heart.

The thing with the nurses? Where they would count contractions by placing their hands ever so lightly on my belly? That got old pretty quickly, and the froggishness of my uterus showed itself, because when a nurse politely held her hand on my belly, a contraction wouldn't come. We stood together awkwardly, like two acquaintances who are waiting for a late mutual friend who is the only reason they're together at all. I smiled, slightly embarrassed, apologetic. "I just had one," I would say, smiling and smiling, just making excuses for my frightened uterus. The nurses would turn up the pitocin and leave.

Eight hours later, the pitocin drip was up so high that it was making me go out of my mind with pain. I was lying on the bed crying, and when the doctor checked me, I was. still. at. five. centimeters. This was now more than twenty-four hours into my labor. My doctor frowned into the distance, thinking hard.

"I don't know why..." she said, gently. Then she told the nurses to take me off the pitocin. "It's stressing her out," she told Chinua. "It's not working."

I said goodbye to Baxter, who had turned out to be a bit of a jerk anyways, and fell apart and had to pull myself back together again. By this time I'd had two hours of sleep in about 30 hours or so and that starts to get hard. We called a woman who lives in Chiang Mai and does labor support, like a beautiful, tall angel. She drove over and came bustling into the room, all energy, with pomegranate juice, and told me to start climbing stairs. I told her I didn't want to climb stairs. But she insisted, and we rigged up a two stair step stool which I climbed up and down again and again. The purpose of this was to shift the baby's head so the position would help my cervix open. I rallied myself again, got myself under control, (Girl, you have got to get it together. Now.) and climbed up and down. All night long. I walked, showered, prayed, and climbed, while Chinua got some sleep.

By that time, I had made my home in the words,

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him to has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for Yahweh shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:28-31

I clung to those words. His understanding is unsearchable. From then on, the progress went like this: about one centimeter every four hours or so. You know, nice and easy. There was talk of c-section mostly from me, and every time we talked ourselves out of it because Isaac was doing fine and we were making progress. Chinua was amazing in this. He encouraged me in all the right ways. If only I could last until the baby was ready to come. Chinua and I started calling to our baby. "We love you... come out..." 

Finally, finally midway through the next morning, when I was about hallucinating with exhaustion, I came really close to being able to push, and the doctor told me, "your water never broke!" Ha ha ha. Ahhhh, so funny. This was after three shots of antibiotics, since it had been over twenty-four hours since we thought it broke. She broke it for me, and labor got quite intense then, enough for me to start shouting for the opiates (the only pain med option).

"I don't care if I can't stand up," I told Chinua very sincerely. "I can't do this anymore."

Fortunately, the doctor told me I needed to push. I hadn't felt the urge that we were waiting for, and this was the first time in all my births that I hadn't felt the urge. I tried pushing, and it was very hard without that strong urge. "I cannnnn't," I said. But they told me they could see his hair, so I rallied again (Girl, NOW!) and pushed with all my heart until Isaac came into the room at 2:37 in the afternoon and broke our hearts for love. He was covered in vernix and was another Leafy look-alike, and he didn't cry until the nurses rubbed him like they were curry-combing a horse. I told them to stop it and give him to me, and I held him and he nursed and those first two hours are the very best thing I have ever experienced, with each of my children it is so magical. I was on a high, exhaustion forgotten, ready to fly over mountains with my beautiful baby.

(This is not what Isaac looked like during those first two hours. He was still naked and I was naked and we were all cuddled up and I wouldn't let anyone take him for a while, not to bathe him or help me get dressed or anything.)

Chinua told me over and over that I was more amazing than he could believe. I really needed to hear it! So tired and oh, just so tired.

Baxter was returned to me, a drip of pitocin because this was my fifth baby and sometimes it takes a little help to get that uterus contracting enough to close up shop and go back to being a little-used organ that chills out all the time. I had gushed quite a lot of blood and they didn't want me to bleed too much, but they asserted that I didn't need it anymore, pretty much right away, and they took Baxter away again.

Chinua came back with my parents and the kids, and we all adored Isaac together. My favorite thing was when Solo and Leafy were standing next to me, looking down at their brother for the first time, and Solo said to Leafy, his voice full of excitement, "He moved his nose!" like Isaac was a kitten or a goldfish they were watching. I was moved up to the fourteenth floor and introduced to my new room with all its comforts. Everyone left to go home, and Isaac and I got ready to spend the night together.

The only problem was that I was gushing blood. The first couple of times, when it happened when I got up to go to the bathroom, the fourteenth floor nurses told me it was normal and I was like, hmmmm, but I said okay. But then I was rubbing my belly to massage my uterus, and it was soft and squishy, not hard, like a grapefruit, like they say it should be. Danger! And I still gushed blood any time I shifted position. I was so tired, and tempted to simply go to sleep and hope it would get better, but I remembered that with Kid A, it hadn't gotten better, not at all. So I called the nurse, and again she said it was normal, but then she massaged it herself and oh the blood. So then there were six or so nurses all speaking Thai and I couldn't understand and the blood wouldn't stop coming and I started shaking really hard and I borrowed a phone to call Chinua. He said he'd come right away. The labor nurses came up from labor and delivery and one of them massaged very, very hard, while the other one reached back up the birth canal and pulled out handfuls of clots. They kept putting the clots into a large plastic bag, and the bag got more and more full. Still, no one would explain whether I would be okay and I was shaking and crying. Finally I got my doctor on the phone and when she understood how scared I was, she said, "No no, you have to calm down, you're going to be fine, they have it under control." Baxter came back and stayed for a good long time.

They returned me to the labor room for observation, because the nurses on the fourteenth floor weren't exactly trained for that kind of work, and I hung out there for a while, telling the two nurses who had massaged and pulled out clots for half an hour how thankful I was and what good nurses they were. I asked them to please return my baby to me. They did and I cuddled up close to him and kissed his beautiful head and was so, so thankful to be okay. Chinua came and stroked my hair and it was all well. All finished and all well.

(All of these photos are courtesy of Chinua and his iPod touch.)

My parents in Thailand.

My mom left on Monday. She flew first to Seoul, where she had a twelve hour layover, yuck. If Leafy had his way, she wouldn't have gone at all.

"I hope you miss your plane," he told her very seriously.

It was a beautiful visit, so crazy and full of emotion and outside of the ordinary of our lives, both for them and for us.

My dad could only stay for a week because of work, which he could barely get away from. After two and a half years, a week seemed much too short.

But we squeezed as much quality time into a week as possible. We went back to the Chiang Mai Night Safari- this was while I was still pregnant. And of course we went back to feed the birds. The first time we went to feed the birds, with the kids, they were very satisfied. They'd been eating sunflower seeds all. day. long. They were all, more sunflower seeds? NO thanks. And eventually they warmed up to us and started licking our cheeks and playing with our dreadlocks. But when we took my parents, they hadn't had any visitors, it seemed, and they were wild ravenous feral birds. They attacked us. It was way more Alfred Hitchcock than we were comfortable with.

So we continued on and looked at more animals.

I went into labor after walking with my parents through a wood-carving village, the very sort of place I remember spending time with them in many times, over my life. Antique shops, thrift shops, artsy places. They love it. And we can all look and look without having to spend.

Then Chinua and I left them with our kids for forty-eight hours while I had a fun little jaunt in labor land. In the end I scored an absolutely lovely baby, so I don't hold a grudge over missing forty-eight hours of my dad's week. 

Can I say how impressed I am with my parents? They came to stay with us in a house that isn't ours and just fit right in, cooking in a kitchen they weren't familiar with, in a country they weren't familiar with, taking care of four children. My dad took the motorbike out, for the first time, to get groceries in a busy city.

My mom then spent another three weeks with us in Pai. It started with a wild taxi ride from Chiang Mai, in which we didn't have enough space, and you know there are 762 curves or something like that. We were mostly at home, since I was obviously in rest and recover mode, but I managed to take her for a couple drives.

And we sent a lantern off, as a prayer of thanks for Isaac. It was the biggest and best we've sent so far. I so love this picture.

My mom sat on our porch, which is beautiful though I never seem to find time to sit there, and she held Isaac whenever she could, and she talked nicely to him and cooed at him. She even got some coos back. The boy has smiled occasionally since he was two weeks old, and I'm so glad she got to see his first smiles.

In the afternoon she made us a cup of rooibos and we sat on the porch for a while longer. If it was too hot, we sat inside, under the fan. We talked and looked at Isaac.

These were peaceful days, full of grace for each other. Mom fit into our lives here so easily, it almost seemed as if she couldn't go. But she had to, though we are already talking about when she can come back.

*

I wrote a post at the Shekina Blog, part of a short series on Beautiful Community.

And in all the Isaac-related bliss and chaos, I forgot to mention a thank you to the Canadian Weblog Awards. I placed third in the expat category, with Finding Me in France in first place and Planting Dandelions in second place. Lovely company, I'm honored!

The other baby around here.

We have another baby. She's a chicken with impeccable roots that go all the way back to the very dawn of chickendom, and her name is Bear Grylls.

But everyone calls her Beary.

She earned her name because she was dropped in the wilderness of our backyard by her jungle chicken mother, yet she survived. The whole story is a little more complicated.

We've been thinking of raising a few chickens for eggs, so we asked our landlord, Khun Thanom, whether he knew of a place where we could get some chicks. He was very enthusiastic about the idea and told us that he had chickens! He could give us some!

"They're jungle chickens," he said. "They fly, and they sit in the trees."

We know about jungle chickens, because Chinua has been telling us for a while that chickens are originally from this part of the world. You see the original ones all the time- they have blue skin and look like they could beat your fluffy chicken in a boxing match. They look like Rambo chickens.

So Khun Thanom brought over one of his Rambo hens and six babies late one evening. Chinua wasn't at home because he had run out to get something, but he and YaYa had already run out to buy a large chicken basket, earlier that day. A chicken basket is what people use to keep chickens in here, as well as in India, and it is a large upside down basket. Technically it's a chicken upside down basket. So Khun Thanom set up the basket and put weights on the top. All was well and everyone settled down for the night.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of the excited voices of my children, who were running down to see the chicks. I could hear every word they said, including the bit of panic that crept into their voices when they realized that the chicks were escaping through the holes in the basket, and the more developed panic in their voices as the Rambo hen lifted the whole basket, weights and all, gathered her chicks, and ran off.

That's when my two-weeks postpartum self popped out of bed and turned a bit of a chicken scuffle into a melee.

"Chinua!" I shouted. "The chicken is running away! The kids don't know what to DO. THESE CHICKENS WERE YOUR IDEA! You have to look for them and I had a new baby and new baby new baby and panic!"

He may have given me a fairly exasperated look, but he shook the sleep off of him and started on the search through the neighborhood. What followed was a lot of searching for chicks and chicken, as the Rambo hen flew onto the nearby government building roofs and into trees, clucking all the while, calling her chicks. Chinua and the kids managed to catch four of the chicks and attempted to make a little trap for the hen with the basket, hoping she would come to catch her chicks and they could pull the basket back over her. What she did, because she's apparently a Rambo hen with a brain of genius, was sneak back in, collect her chicks, and scuttle into the distance with them. Now they roam Pai happily. I hope.

All except Bear Grylls. She got lost in some trees, my mom heard her calling, and YaYa found her and brought her back.

She hangs out with us and reads, and listens to music, and sits in the brooder Chinua and the kids made for her, and she runs around in the garden, and eats the ant larvae that Chinua buys for her. (The ant larvae that we buy for her is not ant larvae for chickens to eat. It is ant larvae for people to eat. Because people do that, they eat ant larvae.)

In other small town/urban homesteading news, I have dirt! I have been obsessing about dirt for months and months and months, drooling through the windows of the bus as we pass everyone in the world who has dirt except for me, because I only had sandy gravel. But Khun Thanom brought me some good soil from his land not too far from her, and now I can plant things, and I can watch them grow.

The funny thing is that the kids seem to mix the two babies up, calling Beary "Isaac," and Isaac "Beary." But of the two babies, Isaac is certainly the quieter.

Turning again.

I'm writing this post on a hot Saturday afternoon, with the knowledge sitting behind every word that at any minute my baby could wake up and need me to stop writing and come to him. These are a few snuck moments at the end of his nap, on a day when I said "I will write a post this morning" as soon as I got out of bed. But here it is 2:30 and I'm just getting around to it.

Time is funny, and all of life is some kind of cycle. The biggest, most langorous of course is the life cycle, the one that Isaac is just now embarking on. A slow, slow turning. We barely feel the spin, it's as ponderous as the earth on its axis.

Then there are other, smaller but still large cycles. The year and the seasons. Here in Thailand, we don't have seasons like I grew up with. In Canada the seasons are the type that justify snowflakes on Christmas decorations, and it was only when I came to Asia that I realized that so much of the world looks at a snowflake as a pretty decoration, but perhaps has never had their nostrils freeze over because of the cold, or that intense ache of thawing fingers, crying and running them under the tap. (Was it only me who cried over that? I was a rather dramatic kid.)

Still, we have seasons in Northern Thailand. We have the cold season, which never reaches freezing, and the hot season, which is also called fire season because the fields are filled with the flames of farmers using their traditional field preparation, and the forests are burned to allow the hunters to find animals to hunt. And then we have the rainy season. A cycle of three, turning on itself again and again. It repeats so consistently that people are nervous when rain comes in the cool season. "The world is changing," one taxi driver told me, in the middle of an unseasonal storm.

In Newborn Land, I have to again get used to the shortest kind of cycles. Isaac and I do the same things again and again all day and night long, in short, rapid sessions without a lot of space between. He wakes up, I nurse him, he uses his pot (we do EC, or diaper free), we talk to each other, I give my mom some Isaac time, and it's time for him to sleep again. Sometimes he spits up, or we introduce a new concept, like bathtime. But this is the way it turns for us, again and again and again.

With my first child, I was very impatient with these short cycles. I was used to full afternoons of painting, to sitting and mulling over my coffee like an old man on a red padded seat in a diner. I squirmed against the coils of my new life even while I tried to understand it. Of course, by the time I had YaYa, I knew that this cycle of eating and sleeping gradually loosens into a long, curly tendril and I would get hours that had more space in them again. I began to enjoy the short cycles, the way my baby and I met up, as if for a date, again and again. "Well, hello there," I say. "There you are, beautiful. I've missed you, while you were asleep."

We meet and it's passionate and needy and I feed my child, I have fed my children and I have kissed every inch of their faces, if only for a short while. 

These cycles are not like a life cycle, or the slow turning of the earth. It's more like the wheel of a bicycle spinning through a tree-lined neighborhood, the sun glinting off its spokes. We ride quickly and the wind on our faces is like the gentlest touch, it's full of the scent of flowers.