Life/Love/Embrace/Deny

We always hear that it’s the little things that count~ the small moments in life.
Small moments have become monumental eternities for me in the past 6 months.
While having babies, changing jobs, moving, moving abroad, and marriage are all mutually agreed upon MONUMENTAL life transitions. These are the things that lives are defined by, years are measured by, and that can cause a panic attack in the unfortunately predisposed.
I thrive off of them. (Like any good ADD American with an adrenaline addiction.)
Like a little sailboat on the waves, the larger events are like rolling waters, that are so big, you hardly notice them, but are soothed by their presence, they remind you that you are sailing, and every once in a while, you might lose your stomach, which is a highlight. The smaller moments however, can be the choppy waves that jar your spine and make you want to get off the boat but you can’t because there is no land in site, so you just puke. Other times, I imagine you got your sailors legs on and it doesn’t matter what kind of weather you are having, but you are connected to the rhythm of the sea, and perfectly content with your sailor life. Except, perhaps for your red leathery skin.
For me, the small moments have always punctuated or defined the larger experience by crystallizing a colorful electric synapse of a memory that the mind gravitates to in reflection. As a teenager, I lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. The transition was no big thing. What was huge was walking the streets alone and enjoying the different smell of traffic, the glitter of broken glass bottles lining the walls, the aromas of street vendors selling elotes smothered with mayonnaise, cheese, lime and chili, and savoring a fresh tortilla with a pinch of salt. These are the colorful moments that I recognized, that made me feel at peace, no matter how lonely I really was, and are the electric memories that I go back to. Living in Sonoma Country offered a million ‘precious moments’ (after finally getting out of college and getting my head out of my butt.) My parked car on a spring day beneath a plum tree carpeted white with blossoms was perfection. College parties? Graduation ceremonies? No thank you. But waking up at 5 in the morning to put on a wetsuit, still cold from the day before, and go out into the violent violet waters of the Pacific was heaven. Moving to Africa for two years was the most natural of transitions. The big moments were walking the red dirt paths through the green mountains covered with bananas and hillsides covered with rice paddy. The view was loveliest when pink African clouds rested on the tallest peaks, but it wasn’t the same without my dog. It was better yet with the little boys who would hold my hand and tell me endless stories I half understood.
It was the best with Augustino.
The little moments, I began to feel, where not as deeply impressive when experienced alone, as they were when shared.
I became jealous, I mean achingly impressed, with the mama’s who had their babies strapped to the back at all times. And when I carried the babies, I felt beautiful. I joke that in Africa, the woman are complimented, “You look pretty with that baby!” as if a small child is the most couture of accessories. My sister Megan, the height of fashion sense, says it’s the rage of Hollywood for women to be strolling Rodeo Drive with their multi-cultural adopted babies in a designer sling, a la Angelie Jolie I suppose. Considering the costs of international adoption, and the fad of international humanitarianism, I can see how a foreign born child is taking the place of a little dog as the ultimate accessory.
Out in the village, I suppose the fashions started growing on me the same way the ridiculous hip hop and gaudy fabrics eventually did, (which I feared would happen no matter how much I tried to keep it in perspective.) Puffy sleeves and muumuus are gorgeous on African woman. They are not appropriate for me. In my roundabout way, what I am trying to say is that, although I laugh at myself, I was less sold on the idea of having a baby and starting a family because of a warped sense of style, than a sense that all beautiful things are shared.
Eventually, when the two years were up, I would be making a decision about what I am going to do next. I wanted to be close to my family, I wanted to get a Masters in International Agriculture in Germany, I wanted to train as an Ayurvedic practitioner in India, I wanted to sail the Carribean and spend time salsa dancing and surfing on the islands, I wanted to become a Nurse Practitioner in Puerto Rico, I wanted to work in Public Health in Mozambique and learn Portuguese. I wanted a family. All of my whimsical life dreams are as varied and half ripened as a produce department in an American supermarket. (It can be argued that a benefit of my veritable marketplace of dreams is that with so many, at any given time I am living one dream or another.)
So is my (ADD!) problem that I didn’t know what to do, or wanted to do several things? I had become enthusiastic for certain career paths, which inherently means to the sacrifice of others. Again, the point is, NONE of them had any meaning if I had to do it all alone.
I now have a little boy I carry with me everywhere, who scoots around in my belly and is a perfectly behaved angel. I also have a man in Africa, who envelopes me with a wonderful smelling, soft handed embrace and never wants to let me go. Or would if he could.
What really challenges me is not even the usual self-doubt about the past and future (if only I had done…!!!, etc.) but the millions of moments that pass by, unshared. To many moments that I want to experience enveloped in the soft hand of the man who loves me. It leaves me feeling that these are monumental precious moments that are passing me by unshared, and thus, life and love are being wasted. That is what makes me want to wail with the desperation of the bereaved. And I wonder, if I try to be content without relying on that space being filled, am I denying the pain that is the beauty of love? And if allow myself to feel it fully, am I ignoring the beauty in the reality that surrounds me, and thus denying life?