Husband and Heavens

My idea of heaven:
(taken from an email to my sister)
Lemme tell you a little about my mother's day:
I went to Anthropologie.
Wow.
There were long sundresses, fabulous belts and orange and yellow and green all over the dressing room.
Anthropologie dressing rooms, AHHHH!
The only other shopping spree I had there was when I got the jean skirt. Which is, like, a family heirloom as far as I am concerned. I swore up and down after that day that Anthro pipes happy chemicals into the dressing rooms, because I had never had such a positive body image/fun experience in a dressing room before. Well, of course, add to that the golden light that makes even my skin glow, the skinny mirrors, and the fabulous gay fashionista serving us endless mimosas and the whole experience made me reevaluate my favorite places to be in the world:

An Anthropologie dressing room with a check in my pocket.

Heaven.

It was a good day. I love everything about being a mommy. We celebrated with my mom, then my brother, Marshall and sister in law, Jenny came up for dinner.


Husbands.

Such an awful, dirty word. Really, I did used to think that. I tried to avoid using the word in grammer school. Husband. It just sounded perverse, like saying penis. I only dreamt of getting married once, so I guess that would be my 'dream wedding.' It was somewhere in a white, institutional basement. Like an evangelical church without much financial support, shamed to the basement of some community center for sunday service. It had a yucky feeling inside. Nothing poetic, romantic or beautiful. I remember that at my 'dream wedding' I felt sick. People had come to see us but I didn't know who they were, and we were late, I had forgotten something, probably my dress.

Anyway, I didn't much fall for the idea of weddings or husbands till I had one. And the funny thing is, the wedding was a lot like the dream: an un-architectualy inspired strip mall library, that turned us down for being fifteen minutes late the night before, so I tied up my beauty salon hair and tied the knot in pants with Tino the next morning. I am so glad I did.
Then we got ice cream.
It was the best ever.

Tino is a fabulous husband. He just made me dinner of ugali and beans, which we ate at 10pm, which was so nostalgic it made me want to farm rice the next morning.

Home is where

I am here because my family is here. If it weren't for them, I would be in a very different situation, somewhere, somehow. I can't imagine what it would be like to be without their umbrella, no matter how far I have gone to try it out. I may want to live on a cobblestoned, lamp-lit street somewhere with a boulangerie downstairs from my flat and a park across the street. Or to live in a warm town by the sea, where people surf in the day and salsa dance at night. There are a million versions of an exotic lifestyle that I can imagine, and I can curse myself for not setting it up to have the enviable career.
But if I had anything else, would there be a perfect little boy in my lap, breastfeeding in his fuzzy white sleeper, a husband who is cleaning up our dinner that I made, and we ate with wine while watching Sex in the City, the show we watched in our village, when the battery of my computer was charged and we lay together under the mosquito net, dark and buzzing all around? Would there be a community garden with chickens and eggs for us to harvest? Friends to go swing dancing with on thursdays? Mom cuddled up with her cat downstairs.
For four weeks, I once had the luck to go to Cuba. My luck to travel, my luck to see this country. Where did this luck come from and what did I do to deserve it. Cuba is picture perfect, gorgeous, and would be proud to be from such a country. The people I met, for the most part, admitted that they wanted to get out. By economics and geography and economy, they are trapped on the little island. It doesn't matter how great a place is, it is prison if you are trapped.
But we don't all get to chose our place of birth, and even having many opportunities that I have had, we may not be able to chose where to live.
I live in paradise in the concrete jungle. It feels good to be home.

Sometimes I have to remind mys

Daddy

Still processing to get Tino's status adjusted. If we had simply tied the not while I still had residence in Tanzania (which has become harder to get in the past year) he would already have a green card and driver's license. As it is, we have to spend $1,000 to change his status now, and it will take up to a year. That and he has to answer some very revealing questions about himself and his intentions in the states, such as the following.
Have you ever or do you intend to:
Knowingly commit any crime of moral turpitude?
Engage in drug trafficking?
Prostitution?
Polygamy? (just say no, Tino.)
Espionage? (some kind of reverse psycology?)
Genocide?

Did you, during the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945 associate with Nazis?

These are rather personal questions I think, and I am offended that the government meddle into our marital intentions this way.

Anyway, there may be some challenges (and some regrets I try not to focus on) but we are so extremely lucky to be together, that every single thing that Tino does for us is gigantic. He is champion of changing diapers, and soothes Elias daily with a bath. But he is mostly occupied with teaching Elias his first word: Daddy.

What mountain??

When hiking up a steep mountain, it helps endurance to look just a few paces ahead rather than straight up to the top. Of course, looking around and taking in the view is the whole point, but that is not always possible.
So this past week I have been trying to be conscious about meeting deadlines, but taking baby steps and staying in the moment.
So I took the baby steps while Elias had huge leaps in development.
I have so much fun being around him. This week he began to reach out and hold and even shake a toy, and he loves to hold long conversations. It is absolutely delightful to reach this stage in development, when he still coos and cries and twitches like a newborn, but he responds to us with smiles and conversation, and sleeps through the night like an adult (still). I love to dream of him as he will be as he grows, and at the same time feel like there should be someway for me to bypass nature and not let him grow old. Elias is seven weeks, and for those of us with years on us, thats a flash in the pan, but at the same time, its a lifetime.
I often feel like we communicate perfectly and that we are both ageless.
Then I suddenly realize how in love I am and I want to preserve the moment forever, and thats when I go into a tailspin and cannot fathom that this little guy, and this moment, may change. He is serene about it so I try to be too.
Going back to work was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Tino and i have a great schedule: he goes to ESL in 8-12, comes home and we have lunch, I go to work in the evening, and come home at 6.30 and he goes off to class again.
Amazingly, I had the foresight to leave him with emergency contact numbers. It must be the new mom side of me. So I explained to him the bit about 911.
Later in the day, I called home. So, I asked, do you remember the emergency number?
Yes, uh, 119?
Well, it just sounded funny considering how ingrained into us it is.

The first week back at work was fun to see old clients, hear how much I was missed, and slide right back into the old gossip. Already I was beginning to line up some private massages.
I also started running this week, not a lot, not far, but it feels good, with some yoga. It feels good to be healing and to be finding a healthy schedule with Elias.
Tuesday I found out I had the highest test score again.
Wednesday I was able to work all day, cook dinner and get Elias's feedings all perfectly timed that he didn't need a bottle.
On Thursday, Tino and I sped out after work to Pasadena and went swing dancing with Elias in tow. It was great fun for me.
However, if anyone has ever seen The Jerk, my African husband is Navin when it comes to rhythm. But I will be patient and hope that his desire to be there, and to dance like the studs on Dancing with the Stars, is enough to make a sexy dancer out of...such a mover.
On Friday, we went to take a family shot with ourselves and two other couples who we are trying to do the Zero Emission Lawn Care business with. Our plan was to print out a brochure that could be passed around at Saturday's local Folk Music Festival.
When we went downtown to see if we could get tickets for the night show (of Jackson Browne, Ben Harper, and Taj Mahal) we ran into a friend who offered us what I was hoping for: two volunteers had just backed out, and we were needed to sit at the Food Not Lawns table, talking about our new community organization, while promoting our new business. So we were in.
Saturday, I gave a massage to a woman who was also a Spanish major in College, who also lived in Puebla, Mexico, and who wants to start a Spanish lit. book club this summer. From there we went to the show, where we saw a bunch of new friends, I was interviewed about our business for the local cable channel, and we danced it up, Elias loved the music and all the attention.
So my week was good. But always at the cost of:
studying biology or french, so I log off to do that now,
feeling however that the mountain is more of a path, with a rainbow at the end.