A year in my life

A year ago, I had sent my son off to Europe and missed him terribly.

I think it was the Starbucks app of the week that was a picture a day app. I downloaded it, because;
1) it was free
2) I was thinking about documenting how much I missed my son

So, I took the selfie... and time flowed and I stuck to it and yesterday I got a notice that I had taken 365 photos.

One year, one insane year.

A son sent abroad at a very young age and being diagnosed with cancer. Not really sure which was hardest at the inception.

I missed my son terribly and was so happy when I reunited with him.

And hearing you have cancer sucks, sucks, sucks... and somehow it infiltrates everything.

But I missed my son and that was the hardest thing ever, and yes.. in a way, it was harder than being told one has cancer.

But the cancer things has its own craziness, craziness that makes everything outside the norm seem so much scarier.

So here is that one year of selfies, and as I sit here trying to figure out what all to tell my oncologist when I call him tomorrow, I think I look so much happier now than I did when I missed my son so much!

Day 14 - 40 days of Writing - Colour

A family friend keeps crossing my mind these days.

Her name was Ilza Hahlo. She was born in Vienna in or around 1908. She grew up to be a textile designer and designed costumes and sets for the opera there. She came from, what I assume to be, an affluent family. She had access to resources many did not. As a young girl she and her sisters had some warts on their hands treated by radium, by the infamous Madame Curie herself, I was told.

Of course, it must have been so exciting to be treated by someone who was revolutionizing the world. There was no way of knowing, I am sure, what the after effects of such a procedure might be.

Ilza eventually moved to New York and tried her hand at textile design stateside. She really did make beautiful textiles.

One of Ilza's textile designs

Somehow she ended up in Arizona, which was our luck. She was a beautiful woman when I met her. We also knew that she had cancer when she came into the family friendship fold. It is assumed that her cancer was the result from the radium exposure she had as a young girl.

I recall one time, as she and my grandmother visited each other one bright Arizona afternoon, hearing Ilza tell my grandmother that as her illness got worse, her colours got brighter as if she was trying to bring all the goodness in light in and shut the darkness and pain out,

This has been running through my mind a lot these past 13 days. There is a darkness that descends and while the pain I currently feel is the result of the last biopsy procedure, there is something else there. It has hints of so many things, despair, anger, fright... to name but a few.

Managing those emotions on a daily basis is very new to me, I have been made aware of just how happy I was/will be. What an unspeakable privilege this happiness is. It weathered through me through a serious chronic illness (valley fever that symptomatically lasted one over year) and the darkness of being on bed rest for a great amount of my pregnancy.

What is so different now. I think it may be that my own mortality is coming to rear it head in front of me. Suddenly beautiful things mean so much more;  the goofy faces my son makes as his face matures from little boy to what it is now, the bright colors sweeping across the sky of a morning sunrise.

Subtle changes in myself too. The other day I ran across a nail polish set my mother had given me with wild and bright colors as I tend to prefer for my pedicures. I pulled the light teal color bottle out from the set and painted just one finger nail with its bright pastel hue.  I can't stand to have my nails painted, but some how this one in bright green, seems to be less of a bother. I smile when it catches my eye as my hands wave about as I talk during the day.

I also chose to wear a pair of red pumps, though I am not wearing a stitch of red clothing. I am wearing blacks and browns, but on my feet are these bright red shoes. They invoke my grandmother, as if I am asking her to guide me as I walk this new path.

So colour has taken on new meaning, bright patches of it to cross my path, much like a brightly plumed parrot stands out as one walks through the mass of greens that are everywhere under Amazonian jungle canopy.

It is always an overwhelming experience

My parents are the kind of people that have never turned away a chance at adventure... though perhaps in some way it finds them and they are really not given a true choice.

My semi-estranged father (and I say semi-estranged because I just have not figured him out yet and he is like a stranger to me) had arranged another bullfight for himself and his bullfight friends.

This is how I grew up, from when I was born until about 1979. Bullfights. Or something bullfight related. Every. damn. weekend. Especially so when we had the bullfight stock bull ranch.

At some point in those years, my mother stopped going to them and I can't imagine my dad taking kids with him... but I can't recall not going having that exposure (maybe it was when we would go to the ranch?).

So, it is hard to get past something that is so in your face, to me bullfighting just was.. I mean, didn't your dad love it too? Really, I just thought it was something all dad's liked. Though it was in that way that it was not a surprise that other dad's didn't, but I just figured they had a different all consuming passion.

So, we flash forward to my father getting back into it around 2000, I was just married and had actually not been aware that my half-sibling hadn't grown up the same way. My dad must have been miserable (though he was living in England). but somehow he starts up, and then gets divorced, moves in Spain and ends up in Northern California. Northern California has a huge Portuguese community and many of them have ranches where they raise bulls for their festivals (allowed per the California constitution) and so he starts and to me, it is like he never even stopped. As a matter of fact when he was talking and let us know that he had not bull-fought from 1980 to 2000, I was a little shocked.

In 1998, my dad gave me money for my birthday with the direct instruction to buy an abono for the Bullfight Festival in Ecuador. I did, with the caveat of buying better seats when his favorite bullfighter was there. That was in pre-blog era and I should write about that some day I suppose.

Anyway, I got to see him around 2006 when Squink was just over a year old and we go to a part to practice using the cape.

Then we get to late in 2008 when Squink is about 3, and I see him back in a ring again.

And then, in 2012, I get in to a ring.

So, now we are at 2014 and my (full) brother and I take our kids to see dad fight and to take them to a "professional" fight.

The fact is, this is never easy on me.  I have had to find a way to wrap my head around it. I have rituals that I have developed from my youth (I always look at the bulls eyes as it dies).

It is so hard to write about all the crazy emotions that are involved in an experience like this. I don't even know where to start when I bring those in to teh equation.

I suppose I should start by just telling folks who have the gumption to read something on this theme what it is that happened. Though I imagine it might become a multi-part series... which is a positive as it keeps me pretending to "write good".

Friday night - Schatzy and I get home from work, load up the car and in his ever so awesome self he begins the long haul road trip drive to San Diego where we are meeting my dad, my uncle, and my brother and his kids (who are also doing the commute from Phoenix). Most of the planning gets done on our drive out there, what time we need to get together, what time we want to leave, how to check in, that kind of stuff.

Saturday means a 11:00 am departure to head towards Tecate, Mexico.

I have yet to upload the shots from my camera, but here are some from my phone.

Here is where we ended up on Saturday.

A slow and beautiful viewing of the world by car, plane and foot

I suppose it was a vacation, my last two weeks traipsing off to Austria to collect my Squink and bring him home and thus bringing back a sense of peace of having him in my close proximity.

It was an adventure, from my departure,  to my week with my in-laws (sans their son), the flight back to the EEUU (that is USA, for Spanish speakers) to a week with my mother in a state located in Americas heartland.

Living without your young child for more than one month is a strangely shocking thing, there is the idea that free time will occur, but the truth is, no such luck... if anything there were more demands for my time often coupled with phrases like "... since your son' isn't here..."

But, being busy was good, because the truth is that I missed my Squink sooooo much! And the freedom to trot off with friends who are not kid friendly or a wine with friends kind of thing was just not satisfying enough to make up for not having his insight into my daily life.



He came back speaking beautiful German, and considering that I last spoke the language at about his age, I feel like he has been able to bring back some of those skills for me... though I still have to make some pretty amazingly creative sentences to try to communicate with him... I am a bit pleased that speaking with him has brought back some of it, a good thing considering I have not spoken German in about 35 years.


I am also so very fortunate that I trust my mother-in-law enough to trust her with my son for such an extended period of time, though I try not to feel bad that she misses him so much not that he has returned home.

“In the first place, you can't see anything from a car.” ~ ed abbey (my personal edit: you can, if you must)

As I was heading back, en route to visit my mother on a long trans-Atlantic flight I thought about my upcoming week with my mother... I glanced at the clouds outside and way below the window of the plane, smiling at Squink's comment that we were flying way above the cloud line... I had noticed that as a very young girl, mentioning that we were visiting my grandparents in Heaven. My mother realized I had noticed this cloud thing and that I had made some connection... what is interesting, though, is that I actually thought Arizona was Heaven... and considering that I visited in Summer... I must have had a broad understanding that Heaven did not necessarily mean reasonable temperatures... and that the living were capable of visiting. I must have been a curiously interesting child.

Anyway, with inner peace restored by the mere physical presence of Squink back in my life, I smiled at that. Squink is rather religious so I wondered if he would have thought the same thing had we traveled as much as I did as a kid.

And there was something so perfect about going to see my mother on the trek back home, there was a ritual aspect to it on some levels; giving him the gift of time with both of his adoring grandmothers.

As such, I took pictures of the journey that Squink and I made, and will have to get those on here for the gentle tale of our pilgrimage home.

"As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow." ~ A. C. Benson

800 dead children in Ireland

Is something I touch upon HERE.

These are kids from a different "Home".
Source: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/The-Home-babies-in-the-news-A-timeline-of-neglect-in-plain-sight.html

Exploring vulnerability

Everyone, I think, would agree that there is something about being vulnerable that sucks.

I write about it here.

In terms of why I am cross referencing both blogs, the answer is that I am still looking at both platforms, not sure what to do. I think they both have advantages and disadvantages in a manner such that that I do not feel in-any-way-compelled to use one over the other... I sorta wish I could use both in one.

What are your thoughts?


Anyone?



Anyone?



Anyone?

Dear Squink

My dear beautiful little boy -

I miss you! I can't even put in to words how much I miss you.

After you left, I couldn't clean your room because it smelled so much like you. Your sheets had sand all over them, and that made me miss you even more.

However, Nana came to visit and I could not let her stay in your room, so I removed and washed your sheets, and finally put your dirty clothes in the laundry. Your room doesn't smell as much like you as it did.

When Nana was here, we went and picked out a ton of new things for your room! You have a new desk and chair, new bed side tables and lamps. We bought you some art about Leonardo DaVinci and you have some new rugs and things in your bathroom.

I am picking out new paint for it too, and you will have such a wonderful space when you come back! I can't wait to show it to you, but I want for you to be surprised... so I will just show you this little bit, which you sorta already saw:

I am so excited about finally getting rid of that wallpaper!

So, I hope you are excited about coming back home! I worry that you won't want to, that you will love living in Austria so much that it will be better than living with us here in the United States.  I wonder if you miss anything here at all. What do you miss, kiddo? What are you excited about coming back to? Do you miss certain foods?

And then to follow up on that, what do you love about Austria? What are you going to miss from there when you come back?

Sweetness, I love you!

Love,

Mama

Embracing My Wild God - 40/40

I am a theistic agnostic.

The Green Man of Winchester Cathedral.

This is not your typical agnostic... this kind of agnostic acknowledges that there is something... we just add that we are too mortal to understand what that might exactly be.

I do have a certain envy for my friends who claim and demonstrate a devotion to "God" (in terms of a global belief in a higher power). And I have the same envy for my friends who shared their path and practice (yet do not proselytize their path, they are just as bad as fundies to me) to atheism.

One atheist friend said "I just let go, and it felt good".

A devoutly Christian friend said "I just gave it to God, and it felt good".

I envy that kind of certainty.

However, I am also an anthropologist and for as much as religion is maligned in our modern western culture... I feel compelled to defend it, staunchly. Pretty much all of them. Yes, there are things that might be horrid and awful too, but that isn't something that is limited to religion... being awful is a human disease, not a religious one.

So, please take a moment to consider what it is like to be an anthropologist who claims to believe that there is something more, and unexplainable. Not an easy feat.

What are things that I think the idea of the divine might be?

• Quantum mechanics
• Animism
• A Divine Spirit

I don't really know, and that doesn't bother me

As my mother says, "Don't quibble about matters of faith, no need to worry about the things that can't be defined (it is, after all, a matter of faith)".


Source for this post

I never knew what she had witnessed (while she was alive) - 35/40

I met a woman once.

She was Antonio's great-grandmother.

This woman was from a caste that we call the peninsulares.

A Peninsulares family

She was a lovely lady, who could carry a conversation with anyone and she and I had one delightful exchange.  She asked about my fathers bullfighting and my mothers travels and seemed so delighted to have met me. I left thinking I had met a woman with a gentle life and a gentle family.

What I did not know then, and did not know for over twenty-five years is that when she was a young girl in her early teens, she was forced into exile during the Mexican revolution. That idea enough is a hard thing to image, but what I find so much more heart wrenching is that she witnessed her whole family being murdered; strung up by their feet until their temples exploded. Her parents, and brothers.  She had to cross the border in Arizona... and somehow ended up in Phoenix where I would have the pleasure of meeting her forty years later.

When I was told this story about her, my heart hurt. I began to think back on all the dictatorships, riots, rebellions, the fear of the Shining Path, the Colombian Civil war. All these warlike experiences that I had managed to live through I realized that when you are an expatriate there is a huge possibility of this very thing happening. Being an outsider is never easy.

An empty nest - 1/40

Currently, in the United States it is common to send your children away in certain populations... ones that come to mind are the really wealthy and the really disenfranchised (e.g. - parents in prison). I would assume that the wealthy send their kids off to boarding schools and the disenfranchised lost their kids to the courts or to other family members during their incarceration.

Registering in the village with the Mayor

So, I find myself now with an empty nest... I have moved my 9 year old to Europe to live with his grandparents and it is honestly something I struggle with. 

The weeks that led to his departure were emotionally agonizing, though that may be because of other incidentals in my life... but being with him was my priority and I kept to that pretty well (though in all honestly, not much changed because I take him everywhere with me). 

The day he left was emotionally intense, and I was saved by the need to arrange a visit to a mechanic and some official activities like withdrawing him from his school here and fighting off some form of cold.

I spent the day sleeping in his bed (around dropping off and picking up my car), his scent still lingering on his pillow... breaking in to tears that my dear Squink was not around. It was tough, and I still feel a certain pressure in my heart when I think of that first day.

Facetime with me, while Shatzy was still with him

It gets easier, and there is the new freedom to be relished, but the transition has been tough. He is 9, and a very independent 9. I have talked to him, and his words proclaiming he misses me seemed to be intoned with the thought that that is what is expected of him to say. He told me I had interrupted his game and was forced to call back later. I suppose that this is all wonderful and I am most certainly happy that he seems to be settling in so well there but the part of me that aches for him... honestly wishes he missed me a little... and then I have to think how horrid that I wish that kind of despair on him just to feel like I am  missed and loved.

YUCK

Makes me feel horrid. I try to focus on the fact that his adjusting so well is a testament to my parenting, but I honestly believe that this kid was born with an independent streak... he picked when he was born, just as he has picked most of what has happened to him since.

His biggest lament when he left, one he held guardedly close was that he felt friendless. Though when pushed, he would admit to having some close ones, it was as if he wanted more. It seems that moving from a large class where cliques are present to a small class where cliques are less obvious that his wish has been granted. I hope that this perception stays with him, that he has a lot of friends.

What I know is that I miss him and that I am missing him terribly every day and that I hope he has the most wonderful time on this adventure... and that hopefully, I figure out what my adventure is in this experience.

Dealing with jet-lag when he first arrived

Day 5 - the day trip to Schlaining

We did not get to bed at a decent hour since we returned to the village after the festivities and then managed to sleep late enough that we missed saying our good-byes to Schatz's brother, fiance and nephew. Perhaps, this was the closest I came to getting a good nights sleep.

Oma and Opa suggested, in the late morning once we were up, that we go on a day-trip to the nearby Schlaining castle... hungry for some "sight seeing" we readily agreed, packed up the Rover and headed off. Of course, nothing we had looked at indicated that the castle would be closed... which it was. Thankfully, castles are often equally as interesting on their outsides. Though there is a peace museum inside, so maybe a visit there next trip is called for.

I have to say that where I live is based on the Roman street system, that is, we are on a grid, and you can usually get some idea about where you are going, or coming from. Not the case where we were, though we managed to only get a little turned around.

Anyway, the three of us headed out and managed to actually find the castle without a problem: we parked and looked down into the moat (with a sad lack of dandelions).

Here is the bridge over the moat into the castle.

One thing I noticed is that the castle had two "guardians", much like the church where Squink was baptized.

.

By this time Schatz was taking pictures of the castle and I was looking for a way to explore with the Squink. Squink and I found a trail and I was on the hunt to find a picture that resembled the pictures of me as a little girl in the castles in Spain. The trail was a fairly easy switchback down into the moat. The whole thing looked like it had some purpose, though I have no idea what that may have been.

Here are Squink and I on the trail...

Here is Squink showing his tendency towards adventure, those steps were lousy... they scared me (as those things would scare a mom).

At the bottom were these series of "bridges" that Squink insisted on crossing, repeatedly.

Here I am explaining pond life to Squink.

Here is a shot of the castle that Schatz took, I like it because it has an odd perspective and looks like it could be a mini castle growiing among some weeds.

Here is a picture like the ones I have of me when I was younger, framed by a doorway or window... sadly I could not get him to look at me for anything.. but I like the picture anyway.

On our way home we stopped at a McDonald because Squink had seen the playground and kept asking to go to see it. Inside we found that Austrians are so serious about their coffee that they have a McCafe inside. It offers up a nice selection of pastries and freshly made coffee (as in to order)... and which are served on real plates, with real flatware... while the McDonalds does it the usual way. I should add that I had the royal (which was a choice I sadly made which was influenced by Pulp Fiction and Schatz had a shrimp burger (which a nephew later told us was heavily laced with antibiotics).