Category — The Stuff of Life

I believe that Solo is trying to tell us that he would like us all to have a really fun week.

With another move across the world looming, deadlines pressing in, and many, many meals to cook, I would like to take his advice.

I’m writing fun down on my to-do list.

My parents are staying with us this week. Some much beloved grandparent time. We’ve been knocking knees under our little table, sitting up talking, eating and exploring Santa Cruz.

Today I was babysitting four girls (a trade with their mom, who was one of the incredibly generous moms who watched my kids while I was at Squaw Valley) and we packed up a lunch and headed to the beach. I spread twenty-six pieces of bread on the kitchen counter, slathered them with mayonnaise and threw some sliced things on them, folded them up and carefully stuffed them in an empty bread bag. We headed down to the beach with the eight kids.

Today Leafy was the whiny one. (There’s always at least one whiny walker.) It’s hardly ever him, so he must not be feeling well. Usually I have to keep him from running on ahead.

It was beautiful to be eating on the beach, crunching a little sand on a spread-out sheet in the stinging wind and sun. Two flocks of pelicans flew overhead. Solo amused himself by yelling and shouting about his own discoveries.  Yelling seems to make him feel important. The other two-year-old planted carrots in the sand and silently clambered over driftwood, hissing to herself. The eight-year-olds ate one and a half sandwiches; the two-year-olds pulled theirs apart and got them sandy.

Apparently we have a lot of buried treasure all around us. The kids diligently pulled it from beneath the surface: one vertebra of a small animal, sea glass, bits of shells. They hoarded their treasure in their shoes while they ran around barefoot. My mom and dad sat beside a cold firepit on a log that has been living in the sea for a while, and my dad stopped Solo from throwing ashes in the air after he tossed a fistful of it skyward and it all blew back in his face.

*

I work at quieting myself everyday. In the car the other day, Chinua was a little amped and talking to the pedestrians while he drove (though they couldn’t hear him). He was singing a little ditty that went something like: “Mini Coop Coop Cooper Coop Coop Mini Coop Coop Cooper.” (Those may not be the exact lyrics.)

I burst out of my melancholy suddenly with, “What do we want? What is the meaning of all of this?”

He said, “Rae! You really need to lighten up!”

I was silent for a few minutes. “Do you want me to be singing the Mini Coop Coop Cooper song?” I finally asked.

*

Sand and sky and sun. Like Jesus pointing out the flowers in the fields. No matter where I am in the world, I will be home.

*

Two years ago today, we were marveling over our new healthy boy. Exhausted after a forty hour labor, I was so glad to have him in my arms.

Solo’s first name means “His Peace,” and his middle name (Adebayo) means “Joy has entered the house.”

Joy and edible sweetness. And plenty of noise.

Happy birthday Solo, our monsoon baby. You are a promise that made our family exactly right.

It was just all so weird.

That’s what we kept thinking, anyways.

Two days ago we went to San Francisco. We were getting ready to see our friend Amy, the famous Amy who taught me how to knit (the first time: ring the soldier’s neck and throw him off the cliff, or something equally violent) and taught me how to make fudge the old-fashioned way, and taught dozens of people at the land about good coffee in a mason jar, and fudge, and fresh cranberry sauce, and how to tell if a turkey is done (shake the turkey’s hand) and in the middle of all that: living life.

I have many Amy-isms in my head that I pull out and sort from time to time. Like buttons.

Anyways.  We decided, while we were waiting for Amy to finish up with what she was doing, to get amazing Blue Bottle Coffee and sit in the park nearby, the Octavia Park. (I found this photo of the incredible sculpture that has recently been erected there.)

We walked into the park and ran into another friend.  Our friend Remy, whom we met in India, was sitting on a park bench, and called Chinua’s name as we strolled along. Crazy!

So there we are. In the sun, drinking Blue Bottle coffee, watching the kids climb on the great set of monkey bars, talking with an old friend.  Amy decided to just head on over to the park.

And blam and kerpow, a kerfuffle and I’m not sure what’s happening, but three kids are running toward me crying- which one’s hurt? It turns out to be Kid A.

Bitten in the face by a dog.

When I told my mom this later, she asked, “So was it a pit bull?” and I laughed, because the long emergency room stint was over, and said “No mom, it was a dachshund.”And she laughed too.

So what happened was a man was pulling a wagon with three little dogs in it, and kids were walking over to pet the dogs, and my kids asked first and then went over too.  And the owner was making conversation with them, and Kid A pet one of the dogs, and then leaned into the wagon and the dog freaked out and bit him in the face. He put a hole through his upper lip.

Oh my word. The dog owner got mad and yelled at us while we were trying to comfort our son, saying, “He put his face in the wagon!” and “What do you want me to do, I’m not a doctor!”  Meanwhile there was a fair amount of blood and Kid A was freaking out and Leafy was nearly hyperventilating in empathy.  People were trying to help us. Remy was helping with the kids and then suddenly Amy was there, and we decided to go to the hospital.  The dog owner had taken Chinua’s dismissive, “It’s alright,” when he was trying to get the man to stop reacting in anger so that he could comfort his son as, “it’s fine to just walk away from this.”

Amy decided to pursue the dog owner.  Chinua got the van so that we could drive to the nearby hospital.

At the hospital I worked at calming Leafy down while Kid A was in the room with Chinua.  Amy had called the police because the man wouldn’t give her his information, and they headed over to take a statement.  I’m not sure what we’ll do with it, but at least it’s all recorded now.  The man’s story had changed from, “He put his face in the wagon!” to “He pulled the dog’s tail!” Something that Kid A assures us he did not do.

Oh, it was all a bit of a nightmare.  And also a blessing, since it was not so bad.  One stitch and some super glue, and Kid A’s lip, which is extremely disfigured while we wait for the swelling to go down, will be okay in a few days.

He needed to be wrapped in a big white sheet and held down by one of the larger male nurses, to get the novocaine shot. And then he was surprised by how it really didn’t hurt that much.  He told us afterward that he thought the whole needle had to go in. Which would be scary, I’ll admit. Poor Kid A. His face is so swollen.

I was amazed by how good it was to have friends there, even unexpectedly, when we needed them. Popping up all over the place, wonderful, wonderful people.

Do you remember when I said that I thought the book was pretty much finished?

Ha ha.  Hahahahahaha.  Ha. Sigh.

Well!  Enough about the three year long bout of self-torture otherwise known as writing a novel!  (I’m entering another revision, and that’s all I’ll say about that.)

*

Winter is following us.  This week has been cold and rainy, and we are cozy in the house with a fire going. Sometimes I have to give my head a shake.  It’s late May! Anyways. Whatever.  Let’s look at a photo of last week.

That feels better.

Solo has decided that he loves the hammock.  Our friends have a hammock bolted into their house, beside a large window that overlooks the valley. Mostly, though not today, you can see trees and grassy dales and fluffy clouds over the hills. It’s beautiful.  Solo has no appreciation for the view, though.  He prefers to sit in the hammock like a little hedgehog.  Yesterday I forgot he was in there, until about half an hour later he made his presence known. He likes to lie back and suck his thumb, rubbing his ear.

Lately, if he feels self conscious at all, he gently places one finger inside his right nostril and just sort of rests it there. I’m trying to discourage this.  However, I’m encouraging hammock time.  It’s like tribal playpen time. Helpful while Kid A and YaYa and I are working on school.

Have you seen my camera?  I seem to have misplaced it.  And I would like to have it back.

Almost unanimously fitted!

(By the way, I’m not planning to buy any sheets or anything; upon being reintroduced to fitted sheets, I got all philosophical and needed to know what you thought, that’s all.)

I was surprised, to be honest.  I thought it would be a little more balanced, that more people would be on the side of flat.

I think I like fitted sheets here, where there is more cupboard space and you can ball them up if you want to, or do that fancy corner tuck thing if you want to. But in India, where I have one tiny shelf for all our sheets, I like them flat.  They have to be really big though, so there is enough to tuck under the mattress, and they stay put.  But I usually end up shaking them off and retucking them every day anyways, because of the sand. (It sticks!  Even if I get it off of me, it’s on my feet again from the floor!  There is sand everywhere. EVERYWHERE!)

I am reminded everyday that India is just so different from here. Things that work here don’t work the same way there. And vice versa.  It is part of the beauty of letting go, to just let things be different, without so much regret.

Today I finally got the registration tags for my van, and when I took it to put fuel in it, I had a mind blank!  Where was the latch that released the fuel door thingy?

I couldn’t find it anywhere.  The gas attendant had a go. He couldn’t find it.  Then this guy got off his motorcycle and looked all around the van interior.  And another guy. And one guy shouted instructions from the side. And I pulled out the manual. Finally the motorcycle guy said, “I’m just going to walk away from this situation,” but it was okay, because a few minutes later I found it. Whew.

(I wrote this on Friday.)

Today I’ve been ignored, sneered at, ogled, patronized, put in my place, and confounded. I’ve also been smiled at, spoken nicely to, helped, and complimented. I may have thrown a small fit at the foreign registration office when I was FINALLY driven over my limit at one too many obstacles in my path. This is after I returned to the xerox shop three times, drove back and forth between different departments in different cities seven times, and filled out two forms in triplicate. At one point, I may have had tears in my eyes, muttering under my breath, “This is it, they’ve beat me.”

There are certain rules you have to relearn, in India. I know this, and I’m skilled at it.  It won’t do to get angry at people crowding a counter in an office, for instance, because the concept of a queue (or a line) is not prevalent. So don’t yell and get angry!  You’re wasting your breath!  Or take staring, for example. Staring is a perfectly acceptable social recreation. There’s no point beseeching the heavens over it (although you can ask a group of rowdy men to leave you alone, or threaten them with your shoe, like my friend does to particularly naughty ones) because people watch each other here. They will stare at you, a car accident, a cat in a tree, children on the playground, or a foreigner tying his shoe. (There is a whole other meaning to rubbernecking here, as I saw the other day again when I witnessed dozens of men parking their scooters to peer at a car that had driven off the road.)

One rule that I find hard to unlearn, in the area of bureaucracy, is that a well-ordered list of requirements, including needs in the future will be given to you, when you apply for something. For instance, in my world you are told that to get the exit permit that you need for your son, you will have to visit the Secretariat with copies of your passport and visa, a copy of his birth certificate, and a printout of your plane ticket.  Then you will need to wait four days and return to start the application here, after paying the visa fees at the Secretariat. Make sure you bring three passport photos with you.

Sounds reasonable, right?

This is the way it really goes.  These are the rules I’m wasting my breath, trying to change.

I show up at the Foreign Registration Office. “I need an exit permit for my son.  He was born in India.”

FRO: “Go to the Home Office, in the town directly north over the bridge.”

I go to find the Home Office (Secretariat) and drive around for a while before finding it.  The man there ignores me for a while, then finally demands to know what I want.  I tell him. He is a low-talker, hard to understand. He tells me to hand write a request for an exit permit and give it to him with copies of my passport and visa and Solo’s passport. Oh Good, I say, I already have those.

I hand write the request. I bring it back to him with the copies.  He looks through.  “Where is the copy of the birth certificate?” he asks.   I look blank. “You didn’t ask me for one,” I say.

“You need a copy of the birth certificate,” he says.

I leave the compound, drive out to the little town, and make a copy.  I bring it back. He looks at it. (There is a whole lot of ignoring and feet shifting and sighing going on in these interactions, but I’m not including all of it.) “Where is your airline ticket?” he asks.

“You’ve got to be joking,” I say. Okay, I don’t say it.

“You didn’t ask me for one.”

“You need a copy of your airline ticket.”  These rules are beginning to feel very arbitrary to me, and they just might be, because I know that this man can make anything happen that he wants to happen. I leave the compound again, drive out to find an internet café, find my airline tickets, print them out, and bring them back.  The man looks through everything again.

“Come on 27th and pick up a disk at the FRO,” he says. “Then come and pay your fees here and you can pick the permit up at the FRO.” This means driving back and forth between the two towns again.

“All right,” I say, doing some mental math while I walk away. I return to the desk. “The 27th is a Saturday,” I say.  Are you open on Saturday?”

“The 27th is a Saturday?” he asks, surprised.  He changes the date on my documents to the 26th. “Come on 26th,” he says.

When I arrive at the FRO on the 26th, they don’t have my paperwork.  “You will have to go back to that town to the north to ask them about it,” they say.

“And then I can take my permit today?” I ask.

“No!” they say. “The Home Department always makes it sound like that, but now you start the application process here, once you get the paperwork and pay your fees.  You will have to fill out the applications and make copies and give us three passport photos. Then we will submit your application.”

“But I don’t have any passport photos.  And this is for my son, who is an hour and a half away, at my home.”

They shrug. This is when I throw the fit.  I’m not ashamed of getting angry.  It’s a normal part of doing work in India. Sometimes you have to get angry. But I do think I sounded pathetic.  “You should give people a list of everything they will need, so they can come prepared!  I have come back and forth so many times! Now what should I do? Drive all the way home this afternoon to get passport photos?”

“First get the paperwork,” they advise.

So anyways, my fit earned me a compromise.  I drove back and forth four more times, filled out the application in triplicate, xeroxed many documents, and paid my fees. I earned the right to bring the passport photos when I arrived to pick up the documents, on Monday.  Despite the fact that I hadn’t planned to come back into the Capital the day before we leave (!) I almost kissed the man’s hand.

* In other news.  If you want a Leafy fix, you can get one at Fly Fishes Fly. We’re churning out the videos around here.

My daughter turns six today!  She is such a delightful person, such a confident and winning and loving girl. I’m amazed that I get to be in her life. She told Kid A that he can have the first turn with any toys she gets. That’s the kind of girl she is. (And that’s how much she loves her big brother.)

Solo has almost never worn shoes, while he’s been growing up.  If we are out together, it is at the beach, and otherwise I am carrying him.  As a result, he is obsessed with shoes.  He feels like the coolest thing in the world when he’s wearing them.  Oh the simple pleasures of life.

I am wading my way through all the packing and bureaucracy (I am simultaneously embroiled in trying to get my van back on the road, despite the obstacles.  The DMV may also be a run around, but at least they tell me what I need to do, from start to finish.) We leave in two and a half days!  Egads!  And I have another trip to the Capital and a birthday party as well!  Packing right now for me involves putting everything into plastic bags or tubs or metal trunks to keep it from molding during the monsoon. I have my work cut out.

I’ve been making a video to show you, and it’s been taking a long time because I’m not very good at making videos.

Chinua pulled out the camera one day and chased the kids with it, and in the simple footage of about ten minutes, he captured some of what our home is like here, so I thought I’d put it to music and put it up.

I have just a few more things to do, and I’ve run out of steam tonight, so I’ll put it up tomorrow.  It’s an uneventful, sweet kind of video.

Video making. Packing. Today I pulled out the warm clothes that I’ll pack just in case it’s still on the chilly side in Canada. Right now it is very hot here, hot and humid, so I don’t even like to touch warm things.  Don’t even like to look at them.  You want to show me your sweater?  NO THANKS.  Unless you can take a picture of yourself wearing it in the snow, because that balances things.  I can handle that.

On the Google tonight I’ve traveled from Pomo Baskets to Mary Ward. I’m exhausted.

The book was nearly finished, it turns out.  I’m currently diving into a second revision, (sort of, that doesn’t count all the times I rewrote it while I was writing my “first” draft) while attempting to finish the homeschool year and pack up the house.  We are leaving in two weeks. We’re going to Thailand!  I’m so excited!

I keep trying to get Leafy excited about it, but he insists that he wants to go to Leafy-land. He gets the word Thailand confused with the word Kailand (obviously!)  Kailand was invented by Kid A when we first started traveling, as a sort of ideal country. (And yes I realize that was a name giveaway, but there’s no other way to tell the story and I’m trusting it’s all right!)  All the kids have one. In YaYa’s, everything is made of chocolate. Also in Kid A’s, but his has the added twist of a convenient way to dispose of dead bodies.

“In my country, you just eat someone after they die!” he told me.

“Yuck!” I said.

“What?” he said. “All of you is chocolate, there, even your insides!”

“Still,” I said. “Yuck.”

…

I’m very seriously considering the self-publishing route. We’ll see. If I do publish my book myself, I’ll be doing a little book reading and signing and meeting tour this summer.  Which sounds like fun. Like a lot of fun.

It is dark everywhere and the crickets are singing and there are strains of music coming from every direction. Solo has a new way of smiling which makes him even cuter. I waded through three chapters today, and now I think I can go to bed.

I’m feeling much, much better.  I had some kind of brief, violent flu.  I’ve been taking it easy. Sort of. I’m not very good at taking it easy.

Today I’m going to Mapusa!  So I can run errands in the hot sun!  I will buy some plants and some fabric, drop off my trash, and peer at the steel shops.  I don’t really need any steel right now, but I wish I did!

Anyways, thanks for all your well-wishes.  The real problem right now is that our internet is sick. Again. So I’m at the internet place down the street.  I hope it gets well soon.

I’m working on a food post.  Hope to have it ready for you and have the web connection to send it over the invisible wires.

The air here has been unbelievable lately. So clean, and the sky is so blue, and it hurts, it’s so beautiful.

Oh, I’m sick. Yucky yucky yuck yuck. Chinua and I have been taking turns at running to the toilet all day. Which is more than you needed to know.

But to your left I have put nine of my photographs in a shop at Red Bubble.  They are, of course, of beautiful things I see and feel like putting on the wall somewhere, somewhere they can remind me that life is full of small, unimportant, lovely things. Maybe you want one for your wall?

Love,

me.