Category — Mama Stuff

“Mama,” she calls from the next room where she is busily combing her My Little Pony’s hair. “What does a comb do, anyway?”

I laugh to myself as I pour my coffee. “It takes the knots out,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, and her voice sounds disappointed.  “I thought it made your hair longer.”

*

She is five years old and doesn’t know what a comb is for.  It’s all you can expect, really, from a little girl who has had dreadlocks since she was two. I combed and braided her hair until I had an operation to remove a tumor in my neck. Coming home from the hospital I couldn’t face the snarl that her hair had become during my recovery, and thus began the beautiful dreadlocks of the YaYa sister.

I didn’t teach her about the use of a comb because I figured it was obvious.  It wasn’t obvious, as it turns out.

We don’t make a big deal about dreadlocks, in our house.  Most of our family has them.  But we don’t have to make a big deal about YaYa’s dreadlocks, because practically everyone else does.

*

We are walking down the hill into Baghsu, and YaYa suddenly says, “I want you to be the beautiful one, the most beautiful one in the world!  I don’t want to be beautiful.”

I attempt to digest this. “Why?” I ask.

“Because then no one would talk to me and tell me I’m beautiful. Even when they don’t say anything, I can tell that they are talking to each other about me.”

The extraordinary thing about this conversation is that YaYa is so completely outside of herself most of the time that I had no idea she even noticed the people pointing at her, talking about her.  I knew she dodged many of the reaching fingers aimed at her hair, and declined an answer when people oohed and aahed over her. But she spends most of her time drawing, or running, or climbing, or falling down, or coaxing snails along to places that are safe from our snail-smashing neighbor, or making snakes out of plasticine and curling them up in their nice soft beds. (“Look, Mama!” she said, the other day. “This one is a teenager snake and it’s bigger than it’s Mama!”) She also loves to crack eggs, peel garlic, and make her bed.  She is the originator of most of the pretend games that are played around here, and if she uses the word beautiful, it’s usually to describe a dress or a butterfly.

“Oh YaYa,” I said.  “You shouldn’t wish to be different than you are.  The most important things are being kind and polite, anyways.” I was being sage.  And I know there are many other important things, but I was mainly talking about when she’s out in the world, where people point and stare.

“I know, Mama,” she said.  Not really exasperated, but ten steps ahead of me.  “But I can be those things and not be beautiful. I just wish you were the one.”

Thinking about it, as we walked along, hand in hand, I realized that she wasn’t really talking about beauty.  Those are just the words people have used when they’ve pointed her out. And believe me, there are many, many beautiful little girls in the villages of India.  As much as I think YaYa’s a stunner, I know that she’s a rose in a rose garden.

She was talking about attention, about being different.  She would like to shift it to me, someone bigger and stronger in her life.

This is one thing I can’t do for her, though.  I can’t shift attention from her to me.  She will always be different, no matter where we live.  And it’s good for her to be among the people of India, so kind to children.  She is not teased for being different.  But she will have to learn how to bear attention, to take on its weight and then smile and shrug it off.

It was a small moment, this little conversation of ours, and the monkeys on the road soon drove it out of our heads, but it showed me that she is paying attention, and that she notices.  I can’t take the strain of being noticed away from my daughter, but she is always welcome to turn and meet my eyes when it is becoming a bit much. We can make a quick exit, the two of us, and go and rescue some snails.

I’m pretty exhausted right now, due to a gassy-baby Sunday.  The child barely slept all day.  But he’s doing better at night–actually, really great at night, so I’ll catch up, I think.

This is a tiring time of life for me.  And very, very blessed.  Do things always come in extremes?  I wonder this at night, when I think of all the people who tell me to treasure these moments, but then I forget to treasure them because I’m busy hunting for my keys because my brain left with my free time.

Jaya has been gone all weekend, which is good because I need to get back into the swing of things.  We move in a week, and she won’t be coming with us.  I don’t regret a single moment of having Jaya work for us.  We’ve learned so much and I’ve already become SO much more confident about living here, but I’m excited about having a kitchen that is my own.  My chapattis have been getting better and better, too.

I’m torn about moving.  It will be wonderful, I know, but I don’t like change.  I believe this is due to my lack of imagination.  I can’t fathom how things will turn out.  We’ll just have to see.

Once again, after having a baby, I’m filling up with creative juices.  All these ideas, all these thoughts.  They come to me in dreams, I mull over issues and see wonderful things that I would like to write about, or photograph, or paint.  My book always calls to me– it almost hurts.  I really want to do more visual art again.  I feel far from it.  All the creativity… but NO TIME.  No time.

I make lists.  These are my goals for the month. They are modest goals, but I don’t get them done.  Sigh.  Big sigh.  I will not wish this dear, maddening, sweet time in my life away.  Not one minute in delicious baby time, not one long complicated story from a six-year-old boy.  I won’t will it to pass.  I will take the advice of those older and wiser than myself, and not rush it.

You can’t spend all of your life frustrated, you know?  Better to sink into it.  I love them, I love them.  They are slowly making me into the person who I really want to be.

The book will get written some day.  Maybe this will be the month that I make my modest goals.  And maybe the pigs we feed with our scraps, down the hill from us, maybe they’ll sprout wings also.

It could happen.

My mom called the other day, wanting to know what on earth I was blathering about in my last post, when I said that I would be in this house for a long time, while in the very next breath I was talking about househunting.

I’m confusing, I know. That’s what comes of writing while sleep-deprived and slightly delirious. You’ll notice that I was rambling about lice, too. Ha ha. Who has lice? Not us!

Well, we do. Or we did. Hopefully. But enough about that.

What I meant about being in the house for a long time was that I’m in a sense in confinement. There is a custom that a woman doesn’t leave the house for four weeks or more after birth, here in India, in China, and in who knows how many other countries. As soon as I moved here, I understood. Because if I leave, the baby comes with me, and really, Little Solo needs to be home, where it’s safe and clean and (fairly, well okay, not all that) quiet.

So I’ll be here for a few more weeks, and even after that, I don’t think we’ll be doing huge marketing trips in Solo’s newborn stage of life. There simply aren’t family rooms at the mall where we can sit and nurse. There isn’t even a mall. I tend to be a girl who likes to be out and about, at least a little. I like the conquest of the market, the breeze rushing by me when I’m on the scooter. My creativity is fueled by motion, usually driving, sometimes walking.

That said, I’m looking forward to these next few months or weeks. It is a far cry from Kid A’s infanthood, otherwise known as the time I stood in bank queues with him in the sling at eight days old, feeling like my uterus was about to fall out.

Now we’re more likely to be doing this:

Little Solo is all shiny from the coconut oil of his first massage. I have to say that one of my favorite things about the birthing center here is their postnatal care. During the first week, one of the midwives has come to the house every day; to help take care of the cord, (good in this climate- it took longer to fall off, and I would probably have worried over it without them) just to talk, and to demonstrate the massage and bath. Of course I have massaged my babies before, but it is still nice to have a refresher.

So, yes, we’ll be massaging and bathing and feeding and doing laundry and checking out the insect life and reading and doing math pages and workbook stuff and drawing and writing stories and Solo and I will be home together while the others run around doing their run around things. I will sink into “home”.

By the way, Chinua uploaded his incredible photos from the day of Solo’s birth to Flickr here.

Thanks to all the lurkers who gifted me with their comments. I’m working on responding, because I so appreciated your words.

(“Lurkers” sounds so derogatory, doesn’t it? Maybe we should do something about that. Like we could call those who don’t comment “Internet pixies” or “Hoverers” or “Hummingbirds” or something pretty. Just so you know, I love lurkers. Because there just isn’t always something to say. And if you have nothing to say, then better to be a hummingbird.)

Anyways, for the last couple of months, on any given day you may have looked into the bedroom that my kids share and seen this:

Because it is so very rare that we have enough sun or even dry weather to dry our clothes outside.  So it would end up that we let them dry in the kids’ room, under the fastest fan, for approximately 48 hours, after which they still weren’t dry and they smelled like the dog’s tonsils.  I’m not kidding.  (The other day the recorded humidity here was 98%)

We were coping.  Then the rains started in earnest again, and it started taking 72 hours to dry the clothes, and at one point all the clothes in the house were in the washer waiting to be dried or on the line, waiting to dry.  Waiting and waiting.  And Leafy was underwearless not because I chose it, but because there was not a single pair of dry undies.

I have a bed-wetter.  I have a potty-trainer.  And I have an older kid who still, at times, simply CANNOT TEAR HIMSELF AWAY FROM WHATEVER HE IS DOING ON TIME TO MAKE IT TO THE TOILET.  You know what I mean, if you have boys.

And the idea of adding a bunch of baby diapers and clothing to the mix, adding nursing wear and the overall generosity of fluids that accompanies Newborn Land into our drying kerfuffle simply overwhelmed me.

I’ll add here that we will be attempting to be infant potty training.  But even here in India, the babies use diapers.  There are some fairy tale books about women who know instinctively, every single time their baby needs to pee or poo, but really, it’s just rather messy.  It’s just that you are committing yourself to the mess with the idea in mind that if you pay attention and run to the potty a lot, you can teach your kid to use it early on.  I’ll write more about that later.

There is no way around a lot of newborn laundry.  We looked at dryers, and they were all very expensive. For us.  (I was actually shocked to see a dryer in India at all.  I had never seen one before.)

So, I was talking to my mom about this stuff, and she happened to be sitting next to my grandfather.  They were all sitting and perhaps looking at the ocean at my parents’ new house in Victoria, B.C., the one that I can’t wait to visit.  And I got on the phone with my dad and then part way through he said, “Hey here’s some news.  Grandpa’s going to buy you a dryer.”

And my dear wonderful Grandpa did it.  He sent the money.  Which is why we have this:

The first time Chinua pulled sheets out of it that were dry, he wept.  And then Renee began to dance.

I never did follow up much on my food troubles. The advice my dear friendly commenters gave me encouraged me, partly because I realized that figuring out what to make for dinner is not some magic potion that I don’t know the ingredients to. It’s just one part planning, one part your family’s taste, one part grocery shopping with a brain and a list, and one part being willing to try new things.

I come up with a bunch of meals that I’m going to make in a week or so, and write them into my planner (my dear, beautiful Moleskine planner that I bought myself for Christmas because I am a book-o-phile, and who am I kidding, I am such a nerd!) and then over the week I cross them out and move them around about twenty-million times because something came up or we ate at someone’s house or we were in a rush and I needed to come up with something a bit easier for that evening. You all know that structure enables you to be flexible. But I should probably start writing my menus in pencil.

Anyways. This past week and a half was crazy because we had a lot of guests over around the time of the funeral, and I helped to cook a bit for the family, and we were so busy that I didn’t really follow much of a plan. And then a friend came over the other night, and I still hadn’t shopped, so I decided to make “Clean out the Fridge” soup. Also known as “Rainbow Stew” because it’s similar to what you might be served at a Rainbow Gathering. And then I took pictures of the process. Really I think this post is an excuse to take photos of vegetables, because I think they are so lovely.

Of course, I started with the minimum requirement for a pot of soup. An onion and a few cloves of garlic.

There appears to be no photo of the garlic. Rest assured, I wouldn’t skip it. We love garlic around here.

Then, I looked in my fridge. I found some carrots that were pretty much begging to be eaten. They look a little rough.

But they chopped up nicely.

Next up. Some limp celery. Not limp enough to be tied into knots, but limp enough that it needed to be cooked! Pronto!

Alright. Carrots. Celery. What else can we find? Here’s a lovely zucchini. Also needing a good chopping.

Oh, leeks. Leeks are one of the amazing foods of the earth. However, if you are a wandering tribe in the desert, and God happens to be feeding you with food from the sky that you simply have to gather off the ground every day, don’t complain about not having any leeks. It’s just plain ungrateful.

But, if not, use leeks at any good opportunity!

Partly because they are so pretty. Tasting good is almost a bonus.

The next vegetable that I found in my fridge would probably win a plant beauty contest, if there was such a thing. I didn’t get a photo of the cross section of a purple cabbage, but go ahead and slice one open. So. Lovely.

At this point, this is what my pot of vegetables looked like.

Nice, but missing something. A color? Some red. Thankfully I found half of a red pepper in a little baggie in my fridge. I don’t call this clean out your fridge soup for nothing.

See? Now it’s stunning.

At this point, I found a couple of sad potatoes. I chopped them up and added them to a big ol’ pot of water, salted it, and set it to boil.

Here is a secret that I first learned from an Israeli chef friend of mine, and then had reinforced by the book, “The Enchanted Broccoli Forest,” a book totally worth buying. Sauté everything! I sauté almost everything I put into soup, including the spices, which brings the flavor out until you are crying from the deliciousness.

First I sautéed the onions and garlic, until they looked like this. (I cooked this on medium high with a dash of olive oil.)

See how they’re kind of soft and happy looking? When they got to this point, I added the rest of the veggies. This is the point when I burn the onions and garlic, if I haven’t cut everything ahead of time. It’s a good technique for me. CUT EVERYTHING AHEAD OF TIME. Don’t chop and fry, chop and fry, you will regret it.

I cooked these veggies until they were soft and happy looking also, and then I started to add handfuls of spices. Well, maybe not handfuls. But I added salt. Lots of salt. And pepper, lots of pepper. And cumin, really, I probably did add a handful of cumin. I also added a generous snowfall of basil, and a little bit of thyme. I stirred this all around, and added the whole pan to the boiling water with the potatoes in it.

Which I then neglected to photograph.

My soup at this point was very colorful, but it needed some stick to it. Some bulk. Some ruumpf. So I went to the cupboard and found some red lentils. This is what my jar of lentils looked like after I added a bunch to the soup. I’d guess that I added a cup and a half, maybe? I wasn’t really measuring, just shaking. Rainbow Stew is not a precise art.

Red lentils are not red, they are orange. And when they cook, they turn yellow. So, hey. Liars. They sure are delicious, though. And hard to find. You can find them at natural food stores and at Indian food stores pretty easily, though.

I also added some pasta. I really wanted alphabet letters, but I haven’t been able to find any recently, so I used small shell pasta.

And I realized, jeez, I had added too much water to the pot. It was going to need some flavor help, so I added a can of veggie broth (with no msg). I don’t usually add canned broth to my soup, but like I said– whoops. And the soup at this point was ready to be turned down to medium and simmered for a while.

I added more salt before serving it. At the point when I had the right amount of salt, all of the flavors in the soup jumped out at me and danced on my tongue. And I knew it was ready to be served.

This is the point when my wise-cracking friend Joy started in. “What,” she said, “your mom doesn’t take photos of her soup bowl?” I think she was implying that I’m some kind of strange mother. But then, the father of my children juggles fire for fun, so… whatever.

Don’t judge me because there is writing on my table. My son is not only a flusher, he is a writer. It’s like all of the foibles of toddlerhood that my other two missed are rolled up in this one, which he makes up for with a ridiculously sunny and hilarious personality. The table needs to be painted anyways.

The soup was awesome. We ate it and ate it. And then I ate it for lunch the next day. Three bowls. Also I cleaned out my fridge! (Did I mention that already?)

Rae and YaYa, originally uploaded by journeymama.

Tonight we drove out as far as we could (okay, not as far as we could) to see the eclipse. It was wonderful, except for the occasional whine from a child who was JUST SO COLD. I would love to see these children in an actual winter climate. Although they would probably contrarily be ecstatic.

Anyways, even Leafy said, “The moon is so boodiful!” And we saw Saturn. And I showed Kid A and YaYa Orion, which has always been my favorite constellation, ever since it was my connection to Chinua, when we were thousands of miles away from each other, long before we were married. I would sit on the beach in San Diego and listen to the waves and when I saw Orion, I would breathe a prayer for my friend, the man who would one day become my husband.

There is a reason that I reposted this old picture. And it’s not because I’m really admiring that knit head band thingy (where IS that thing? I really LIKE it) but because I have never been more proud of YaYa than I was today.

Because today she wore a sock on her hand all day.

She has sucked those two fingers ever since she was about four months old. We have numerous pictures of YaYa as a baby, YaYa as a toddler, YaYa as a three-year-old, sucking her fingers. She does it ALL. THE. TIME. Not just for bed, not just for consolation. ALL THE TIME.

But I have this funny list of things I need to do before we go to India. Things like, Find storage, Find a good shipping company, Train next bookkeeper, Buy sleeping bags, Buy kid back packs, Buy stroller. And then these odd things like Help YaYa stop sucking her fingers, Potty train Leafy.

And you can guess which one we are working on today.

I really didn’t know how it would make me feel. I didn’t realize that my rush-in-and-protect instincts would swarm all over me and smother me and almost make me say “Never mind! Just joking! You can just keep those fingers in your mouth until your boss complains!”

I didn’t say it.

It is time, and my brave, strong girl met the time to quit head on. Her teeth are visibly shifting. And I completely do not want her touching things on trains and buses in India and then putting her fingers in her mouth. Nope.

I also didn’t know that I would almost burst with pride. That I would see her thousand little reflexive moves toward her mouth, and then the stifling of the reflex, and then the hand that didn’t have a place to be and so tentatively lay in her lap, and her mouth moving self-consciously around itself, that I would see all these things and my heart would melt, for her strength.

I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed as much determination in overcoming something so deeply ingrained, in any of my kids before. This is no small thing. She doesn’t remember ever not having this habit. It’s all she’s known. When at rest, left fingers go into your mouth. When you are hugging your mom, when you are reading a book, when you are watching a movie, when you are walking through a crowd…

This is her mountain. I love to be here to see her climb it. (Even though I am a nervous twitchy wreck.)

Okay, I’ll stop being so cryptic.

You’re all very smart.  Even without being able to see my eyes.  And I’m all ???? too.

But there were so many points along the way that I probably should have figured it out.

Like when the women at the airport in Burkina Faso said to me, “You are pregnant?” and when I shook my head and acted a little offended they craned their necks to see my belly better and discussed it amongst themselves, obviously not believing.  I mean, I know I need to work on my belly a little, but jeez.

Or then, crying when I was to the head guy of the project I’m working on.

Crying when I was talking to my employer on the phone.

Crying when I bumped our van tire into the curb.

Crying in Burkina Faso when I felt like I was lost on a long road of translation errors.

Or the fact that my belly just kept expanding.  Or meeting another old friend who happens to be a nurse at my friend’s party and becoming offended because he asked me if this was baby number four.

Turns out everyone’s smarter than me.

I’m ecstatic.  It’s not exactly what I would have picked, but I’m not in charge.  And yes, we were being careful.  I think it’s all a myth, actually, the whole protection thing.

But now that I’m pregnant, (I’m pregnant!) I can be so so so excited about another little roly poly to curl up on my belly.

And as for India, I found this place online.  Doesn’t that look like a dream place to have a baby?  It will sure beat upstairs from the bail bondsman.

We haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but as you can see, none of our firm decisions tend to stay that way.

You were sick yesterday, and snuggled ferociously in that hot-headed way that you have when you are feverish. 

Before I realized you weren’t feeling well, I told you that your pacifier, or Ny-ny, as you have named it, was for bedtime, and I put it away.  While I was folding clothes and not paying attention, you took matters into your own hands, dragging a chair into your bedroom, climbing onto it so you could reach the dresser, and grabbing all of the pacifiers out of the container that I keep them in.  When I next looked up, you were sitting at the kids’ table with a pacifier in your mouth and two in your little hands, just in case. 

You barely let me out of your sight, yesterday, sick baby that you were, you chose to hang onto my legs, or simply follow me around, and so we sat together a lot, you facing me on my lap, laying your head on my chest.  If my attention was directed at anything other than you, you simply put your fingers on my face and turned my head back towards you.  If I could replicate the feeling of your hot little hands on my cheeks, gentle but determined, or the sight of your very serious brown eyes above that little pacified mouth, oh Leafy, I would. I would just carry those memories around in my pockets to pull out when I was feeling sad.  Nothing makes my heart happier.

We sat and tried to catch specks of dust, and it made you laugh, again and again, as lousy as you felt.  The glittering air kept evading us, and you yelled, “Sparkles! Sparkles!”  over and over.  Your games last forever. 

It’s amazing to me, this talking that you do.  The other day we were sitting around over dinner and you turned to me and said, “I love you, Mom-mee.”  And I thought, “It speaks in full sentences?” 

You are some kind of guy.  And I am one happy Mama, even when we are glued together all day, on a sick day, on a day that you need me a little more than most.  Especially then.

Sometimes when you go to your brother’s wedding, there are festivities beforehand that allow you to see people whom you haven’t seen for years, since you are a Canadian who lives in California. (Which is equal in ill judgement in a general Canadian mindset to maybe littering or breaking young trees for no reason.  It’s not that California is bad, it’s just that the U. S. of A. is where Canadians go to sell out, like Jim Carrey and Michael J. Fox.)

Sometimes you are talking to one of your best friends from high school, and sadly you have lost touch, although he is still friends with your family.  It is so good to catch up, and he is telling you about his new apprentice work.  You are fascinated, listening intently, but your daughter runs up to you and wants your attention, which she communicates by plucking at your lip and then moving your mouth as if you are talking while she fiercely tries to tell you something.  As if you listen with your mouth, and if it is not moving, you are not really listening, and you hope that this will not be a habit of hers, moving her mouth while other people talk like people do to you sometimes, making you extremely nervous and unsure of where to look, because their moving mouths distract you and make you stumble over your words.

But anyways.

She moves your bottom lip up and down as she states in her high squeaky voice, “It wasn’t because I had to pee that I had a sore tummy, it was because I had to POOP!”  You nod and say, “Er- okay, YaYa.”  And she can’t stop there and she says, “And I POOPED and my tummy doesn’t HURT ANYMORE!”  “Oh,” you say, and then you look at your old friend, who doesn’t have children.

He nods and says, “Sometimes you have to poop because your belly hurts.”  Then he turns to you.

“Is that one of the cool things about being a parent?” he asks.  “Focusing on the simple things?  Like poop?”

You think for a minute and then say, “Is it ever.”

Last night we returned from our trip to the City and we are back in the Forest.  I love my shade.  And my peas are doing very well. The broccoli?  Not so much.  Oh well, I am learning.

We stayed with some dear friends for a bit, which was amazing.  The kids had a blast, and we drank coffee and talked for hours.  And we caught glimpses of other friends who break my heart with their dearness. (I sound like my Grandma.)  Too short, too short.  I mean, I literally caught a glimpse of my friend Curtis as he ran from work to sleep to school.

We slept on a church floor while we were in San Francisco. It was interesting to see what a wimp I’ve become.  Ten years ago, I slept directly on the floor quite often.  I even slept sitting up in vans, slept on the grass in the open at rest stops, slept on chairs pulled together and in backyards and sometimes I didn’t sleep at all.

Now my sleep is very precious to me.  For obvious reasons.

We had a great time, it was fun and we met a lot of people. But I was interested to observe how exhausting it was to take care of the kids under these circumstances.  Traveling from place to place, figuring out what to feed them, (and ourselves) keeping everyone busy and entertained.  And the question came to me, what is a home?

I mean, at home we do the same things.  We eat, we sleep, we play.  But at home it feels safe and relaxing, while when we were away it felt a little tiring.  I wanted to go home, at the end of it, looked forward to being in my own place.  What was I looking forward to?

I ask because we are moving to India.  And things are moving very quickly now.  We may be moving away from our home here within the next couple of months, and we’ll be traveling for a little while before we settle into our new home in India, wherever that may be.  It is vastly, amazingly exciting.  We have been longing for this for years, since we last left India, right before we were married, and now it is coming to pass.

But what makes a home?  I know that my longing for home springs from something eternal.  I know that it is about more than four walls and a front door.  I know that I am very simple in my needs.  Give me enough space and some beauty and I’m fine.  And enough space here, in this house, is about 850 square feet.  But I need more than space, it is something more central than that.  It is like a web of security, and I’m beginning to realize that I have been placed here to weave this web for my children.  Even as we move around.

Some things that come to mind are routine; a rhythm that pulses through every day faithfully. Not easy when you’re traveling, but necessary.  Familiar objects, maybe; a certain tapestry or picture that moves with you from a wall in your home country to a wall in a hot country across the world.  I know that at this stage in the growth of my children we are their home.

Do you have any ideas about making a home wherever you are?  I would love to hear them.