A Martian in Connecticut

Tanya and I were the only two students in the entire Cluett dorm on a Saturday night in 1990.  Every single other student was away.  Even the internationals with nowhere to go found something to do that open weekend when boarders are allowed to go “home”.  It was us and Ms. E.  We were being disciplined … we were basically grounded.  The details are for another story, but it suffices to say it was due to an inappropriate drunken affair on a previous open weekend.

I parachuted into boarding school my senior year of high school.  I was from Brazil and was living in Morocco before showing up in Cluett Senior Hall at an all girl boarding school in what I considered “the middle of nowhere” Connecticut.  It’s ironic.  I considered Simsbury the middle of nowhere even if to many I was coming from the middle of nowhere.  Compared to the girls around me, many of whom had been friends and roommates for years, I was a three headed Martian.

I was completely unprepared for the experience.  I was rebellious.  And I got into a whole lot of trouble.  Fortunately for me, mail to Morocco where my parents still resided was very slow so by the time the letter stating I was one demerit away from being suspended arrived there and my mom called with the reprimand, it was old news and I had already worked myself out of the situation.  This all just explains the type of 17 year old I was. 

Tanya was in the dorm room next to mine and she was as crazy as I was at the time.  We had gone to her house for an open weekend, lied to her parents, got caught at a bar by a teacher,  and hit and ran with her moms car.  In short, we were in a whole heap of trouble.  The weird thing is that people who know me describe me as the nerdy one, the responsible one or the “good student”.  In my selective memory, I still think of myself like that and many times I was just that.  Other times, such as this one, it was quite a different story.

Figuring out who I was turned out to be complicated.  I did high school in three different countries where the world around my American school spoke different languages.  Fitting into boarding school, the more I think about it, was the hardest of them all.  Maybe my schoolmates did not see me as a three headed Martian.  Maybe the Martian was inside me. 

As I grow older and create my own family with my own values and making my own mistakes, I no longer feel like a Martian.  I feel like someone who can grow and change and mold and be whatever I need to be in order to make my life, and my family work at that moment.  I need to be the brave mother, the sensitive wife, the caring daughter.  I can’t be them all at the same time.  I need to change opinions because I learn, and sometimes my learning curve isn’t all that graceful.  But I know I make an honest attempt to be the best person I can be.  The person the God I believe in, wants me to be.  There are days I fall way short and someone is watching and judges me.  There are days when I totally hit the mark and my pride swells and I judge myself.  All this to say that who I really am is a moving target.

But that Saturday night in Cluett Hall, Tanya and I were sharing a bottle of vodka and talking about robberies and guys and stuff and we decided to take out a Widgi board.  We were going to call on the spirits to clear up all our doubts and teenage angst about the future.

I don’t know if it was my unconscious, my fingers or Tanya’s but that thing moved.  By golly did it move.  And when it did we both screamed and ran around and around the empty dorm screaming our heads out.  I can see it in a movie scene.  Two teenage girls in their pajamas and ponytails, running around an empty dorm with only the hall lights on.  They pass room by room, up and down the stairs, along one side of the building and round to the next.  From the outside, the evil spirit is looking in and following them, waiting for the perfect time to attack.

We ran around screaming for a while and somehow ended up hiding inside Tanya’s closet.  At this point fear and paranoia had completely taken over my already not too sober self.  As I sat uncomfortably on top of Tanya’s shoes it dawned on me.  A spirit would find me in a closet and now I was stuck with no where to run.  So in a faint and trembling voice I whisper to Tanya.

“Hey, the spirit can find us here.  It can see us through the wall”. 

She whispers back “what spirit?”

“The one that is after us?” I answer.

“You are running from a spirit?” she calls out rather loudly.

“Aren’t you?” I answer in a normal tone of voice.

“I am hiding from the robber!” and that is when both of us burst out in a belly laugh.  It was that laughter that comes from inside like a tsunami and takes over, and it is so funny and so powerful that I began to cry and she began to cry so now we are both sitting on her shoes half laughing and half crying thinking we are the best friends in the world.

But we were not. I don’t remember if it was Tanya or my other dorm mate who was expelled before the year was over.  I could check the yearbook but I am not sure where it is.  I do know that some years ago I received a notice from our school that Tanya had passed away.  I don’t know the circumstances, and I didn’t really venture to find out. 

Tanya, as many friendships I have had, come and go and change as I come and go and change.  It doesn’t make these friendships less valuable or real.  It makes them important for the time they lasted.  And for that time, for those months we were together at Cluett, Tanya knew me as well as I knew myself.

That Saturday night in Cluett was unforgettable.  It was fun and though no one else was there to share it with us, it somehow made me feel more part of a place that felt so strange.  Maybe the spirits of alumna past were indeed there, and maybe they summoned not to destroy us as in a cheap horror flick, but to welcome me, the three headed Martian, to the middle of nowhere Connecticut.

My Baby in Boston

I love my husband.  I really do.  We have this way of being with each other where we go back and forth on a subject, usually something one of us does, and how idiotic, inappropriate or genius (not) it was.  This time, it was Joe’s turn to be the genius.

It is one thing to be driving to a white Christmas in Vermont.  It is a whole ‘nother story when I am the one doing the driving with a three month old baby in the back seat sitting next to a perfectly capable husband.

Now, to put in perspective there are a couple of important details here I must let you know.   We are from Miami, so we don’t have snow.  Although I lived in the northeast for about 8 years, I did not drive a car.  And, most importantly, I was not a typical first time mom.  I took neuroticism to whole new level. 

During my pregnancy I did not have coffee, I did not have soda, I ate organic, I slept on my left side, I did prenatal yoga, and spent a fortune on both supplies and books about the supplies I just bought.  And then some more books.  I feel like I got a PhD in my 40 (well, 38) weeks of pregnancy and eventually went into early childhood education because of it.  So once my son Diego was born, my neuroticism became exponentially worse as it was combined with even more hormones and the fact that I was now RESPONSIBLE for someone.  Diego was flesh and blood … not some theoretical child I was reading about.

I realized there was no way of getting out of going to Vermont for Christmas when Diego was 3 months old so I took every precaution I could think of.  We flew to Boston instead of our usual New Jersey so the drive would be shorter.  We got in while it was light, I purchased every winter clothing item that was available and carried most of them by hand (just in case the suitcases and the baby were separated and I did not have enough warm clothes for him).  We checked and double-checked that the car rental company had car seats, which car seats, did they install it, where the installers trained or certified, did they have backward facing seats not just convertible ones.  Newborns need to be facing backwards.  I drove myself and pretty much everyone around me insane.

The plan was that my dear husband Joe would go out of the terminal in Boston, rent the car and drive back to get Diego and I so that Diego would not spend anytime in the cold.  Not only was he a newborn, he was from Miami and MY son. (Note the caps and italics to denote the extra emphasis here).

Not only that but I had seen, and I am not sure why, one episode of “I Should Not Be Alive”.   In this one of course, a family sets out to a Christmas gathering, takes a side road, a blizzard comes (did they not get the warning?), gets stuck in the snow, and no one can find them.  And, get this, the mom’s breast milk FROZE and the baby starved to death.  Awful.  Mom and dad eventually made it out alive.  This was NOT a good idea to see before our trip to Vermont. And it amped my determination that this scenario was not going to happen to my little family.

Prepared?  Definitely.  At least I was.  My dear husband …. well … not so much.

We arrive in daylight.  We get the bags from which we were not separated.  Joe leaves to get the car and I dutifully breastfeed.  And I wait. And wait.  And wait some more.  Joe was supposed to call me when he was coming back so I wait.  It gets cold every time the sliding door opens, so I put a jacket on the baby.  I move seats away from the door.  That gets too hot so I take off the jacket.  I had a lot of time to wait.  And I figure something is wrong but dismiss it.  It begins to get a little darker.  Joe does not answer the phone and so I breastfeed.  Again.

He finally appears, walking.  Not a good sign.  He preempts his next sentence with something like “remember, these things could happen to you too”.  Short story … he forgot his drivers license expired in October, and if you were paying attention we are in Christmas and it December.  He couldn’t rent a car.  Which meant I had to rent the car which meant I had to drive, in the snow, with Diego in the back and that was the equivalent of asking me to enter into a dark cave and touch a bears nose.  I could have killed him.  The mama bear in me shouts out but the clever me stays quiet.  Because a) this is a very “milkable” moment as in, you did THAT so now you need to do THIS without complaining and b) I had to keep my final goal in mind: to get baby safely to Vermont for Christmas. Right now in my neurotic mind, things weren’t looking too good.

We leave the terminal and take the bus to the car rental place.  GASP.  Diego’s face will feel a breath of freezing Boston air AND he will ride in a bus without a car seat (DOUBLE GASP).  Try to imagine how hard I was holding the poor child.  Now exaggerate it a little more and you are close to what I was doing.  Poor kids’ eyes could’ve popped out of their sockets from all that squeezing.  Alas, we arrive at the rental agency and it is still light outside but getting darker.  It gets dark early in winter.  That alone made the urgency of renting a car and getting out of there a priority. 

I, contrary to Joe, do have a valid drivers license … lucky me … and they rent us a car.  While we wait for the paperwork, changing of the reservation, putting in my information, etc… it got hot in there so I took off the 10+ layers the baby had on.  And I breastfeed.  When we receive the car, I bundle him up again with 10+ layers to get to the car only to find that it had indeed a car seat but it was facing forward and my baby was NOT going to be facing forward.  Back to the agency, back to unbundling, and back to waiting another while until someone comes to reinstall it (because, at this point, the only one that installed a baby seat worthy of my child’s tushy was the local fireman as I didn’t trust anyone else to do it).  I check and double-check the installation.  It looks dubious.  Anything concerning my son at this point is dubious.  I am neurotic remember?  But I took a deep breath and prayed that God would spear him some awful fate if I crashed the car, and spared me the associated guilt.

And just in case, because it was a three hour drive or so, I breastfeed so we wouldn’t have to stop on the side of the road and a mass murderer would attack us and hurt my precious child.  We place baby in the now backward facing seat, I tell Joe to sit next to him in the back (because somehow that would provide an extra layer of protection for Diego), and as soon as we are about to pull out we hear a massive explosion coming out of our child.

This was not an ordinary poop.  I fed him so much that his poop was everywhere.  One of those poops (and if you are a parent you know what I am talking about) that reach from the neck to the toes and all you can do is undress baby completely. GASP.  The cold!  My child was going to be exposed as I cleaned the seemingly thousands of folds on his legs to make sure no rash would ensue.

When that ordeal is done it is night.  And dark.  We had arrived in Boston at least 4 hours prior and still had not managed to get out of the parking lot.  I would be driving, Diego probably had caught pneumonia, and my husband was smart enough to dutifully respond “yes dear” because in my mind this was all HIS fault!  Well, actually, in my mind and in reality … this was all his fault.

As soon as we are driving out of the parking lot, after checking and double-checking seatbelts, bottles, seat adjustments, mirrors everything …. before we are out of the gate of the rental car agency … I kid you not (no pun intended) … the check engine light goes on in the car.  We need to get another one, we need to take all the bags out, reinstall the rear facing car seat, and change the paperwork.

I look to the back, I see Joe with his hand on Diego and tell him the good news.  And I laugh, because I realize I could not make this story up even if I wanted to.  Because family history is made of stories like these; and I can see myself as a grandma telling my grandchild “did I ever tell you the story when your grandfather forgot his license was expired?”  I laugh because I love Joe.  Because stuff like this happens and we can both take it in stride. And for the next 4 hours, as I drive like an old lady from Boston to Brattleboro, there is a familiar banter between us.  He teases me because I am indeed driving below the speed limit, I tease him because if he were “all that” he would be the one driving.

Two Minutes on Cristina & Kony 2012

SIDENOTE:  I put "two minutes" because I have spent very little time thinking about this.  I thought that writing how I felt about the whole Kony 2012 thing would help me understand how I FEEL about it.  So this is not a well thought out, articulate opinion piece.  They are just my thoughts, and truthfully, I would rather stick to storytelling ... but I am happy that I am putting another post on my blog!

Two Minutes on Cristina & Kony 2012

I was one of the millions of people who watched the Kony 2012 video on Facebook, cried, and shared it on my profile.  If you have no idea of what I am talking about, you can see the video here.

I was not going to buy the kit, I didn’t quite understand or believe that by a specific date in April Kony will somehow be brought to justice, nor did it activate me into action.  But I related to it at several levels.  The first and most obvious was as a mom of two boys ages 4 and 6.  Having them taken away from me at night and the things they would have to go through is truly heart-wrenching.  That was enough to press click on the share button.

On a second level, as a “gringa” who lived abroad for 22 years and began a nonprofit (more on that later, I guess) I could relate to seeing things that you think “how can this be?” and feeling moved to do something about it.  And finally, I stayed in-country long enough to be highly annoyed by world bank Harvard types (sorry guys) who made funding conditional to their solutions even if local people didn't think they were solving the real problem.   Gross generalization … I know.

I half read the critiques about how the organization that did the video, Invisible Children, was shady on their finances.  Of how the guy who did the video ended up on drugs and half naked on the street.  Of how sharing a video and buying a wrist band does not solve a problem but that there are people who have dedicated years of theirs lives to solving them.  Yes, I get it.  But I felt differently.

My reaction was “so instead of focusing on what the movie is saying, we are focusing on its production”.  We are calling into question those who at least did what they thought was the right thing to do. 

Like I said, I was not moved to action.  In part, because I think I am at a point in my life that my action-capacity is limited and I am a “go big or go home” kind of girl.  But if I am truly honest with myself, I was a little envious.  When I was working in Chile, starting a nonprofit from my savings and working day and night to get funding … I would have loved to have a movie like this.  I would drool over the opportunity of making my cause so well known.  Because whether you believe in my solution to the problem or not, now you know there is a problem.  I cannot be so arrogant as to think there is only one possible solution to fix this and that solution is my own.  So it might make things more difficult for a little bit, the field may get cloudier for a while, my position as “expert” on my issue may be threatened by some young kids in the US who think they can save the world.  But eventually everyone who is serious about the issue will be talking and organizing and with a lot more support because millions of people now know the problem.  In this case who Joseph Kony is.

And I am sorry.  I just can’t see how that is a bad thing.

Here I Am In A Blog

I can't believe I am doing this.  As if I had the time or the energy.  When my new years resolution was to read more of what other people wrote, not to write.  But yet here I am, in a blog and unsure of what to write next.

My parameters are: better late than never - better done than perfect - better "on paper" than in my head.  So here I am in a blog.

I was inspired by my new years resolution of being more "literate".  I began listening to podcasts as I cooked dinner or as I drove to and from my morning triathlon practice.  One of my favorites is The Moth, where storytellers tell a story.  My second favorite is, oddly enough, The Story with Dick Gordon. And finally TedTalks.  So here I am in a blog trying to figure out which story to tell first.

I sit on "my" computer (in quotations because my husband takes it over at times only for me to find his facebook logged in *sigh*) in my bedroom, surrounded by both literature and clutter as I hear the appalling sound of Lego Batman Wii coming from the living room.  Its been years since I even  made a new years resolution and I should have known better.  The idea was to listen to a podcast, or read a page of something, at least once a day, and by the end of January I had already failed.  So the chances of me keeping up with this blog are stacked against me.  But you know what? Stranger things have happened.  I have surprised even myself a thousand times in hundreds of ways so why not? So here I am in a blog and kind of looking forward to discover what comes next.