They say that until you love yourself, and properly, you’ll never be able to really love someone else. You’ll never know true love in all of its flashing and frequent and formidable forms.
But what’s the point of loving yourself first and foremost when it’s so much more interesting and compelling to love someone else? To spend the love you bank in your heart and soul on others? And who cares if you utterly deplete yourself in the process? Does it really matter if you have nothing else left to give?
Maybe it’s true about me, that I’ve never been able to embrace self-love, a decades-long dry spell that’s felt right as rain. Even now, now that my son has been with me for 17 months, it is something I cannot quite gather and grasp, even though I might hold a bunch of dying daisies as tightly in my fist as I hold him to me now. Flowers that should fall freely from my hand to seed the earth; flowers that might be pressed to hold their color and form between the pages of my old Black Beauty, or lie spread among lines of favorite poems. Flowers that blow along the wind, still alive in the journey they are taking, in a love they knew all to well.
Tonight, getting Tiger ready for his bath, I sat on the edge of the tub undressing him and wept buckets, heatedly and quickly. I didn’t want to cry with such shamelessness in front of him, yet it felt both safe and unsafe. Where did this come from, all of this lack? Why the fear of not being able for love as it comes (as it does every day)? Not feeling it, not feeling yourself. Not pushing the flood of love, the flowerbeds, the simple verses and complicated rhymes out of me, into the sun.
What do I know of love from within, for within? How it holds us and lets us go? How we let it go.
Moments before I’d shown Tiger a picture of one of the great friends of my life who died while I was in Kazakhstan readying to bring him home from the orphanage. I showed my son the picture and said, Who’s that? And then I couldn’t even tell him her name because the tears came on, heavy as harm, closing my throat and heating my skin.
Isn’t heat the temperature of love, in all if its guises, and isn’t it its color as well, the hothouse of flowers?
Tiger’s face. His cracker of a smile softens into something slightly afraid and very knowing. His eyes take on that darkening color of the sea as they do when he is serious about what’s right in front of him. He sweeps the back of his hand down my cheek. He looks up at me with small flowers of tears beginning in the curl of his lashes. He wants to know why I don’t quite reach in for the love he feels for the world, his family and himself.
This I can tell you about my son. He is kind. He is tender hearted above all things, tender as the night in all of it glories and sorrows and starlight. Tiger has a heart the size of the savannahs just south of here outside of Nairobi. A heart like a spinning wheel. Just and true and sweet and full, moving always towards you, for you, alongside you.
He stood in front of me tonight and took my face in his small workman’s hands and I don’t know how he knew, but he pulled me to him so that our necks crooked like commas. I held him fast, tighter and tighter, and I let go, but not of him. I let him love me back. The love I have for him, how cannot it not come back for me, a thief who haunts and dreams his own accords, but has every intention of not letting me be? My son’s fingers are strong and his mind is set. He will push love in and pull it out just as one might a daisy chain, as if he knows I am made for this. Potted tulips, penguin topiaries, hot orange bougainvillea that climbs and climbs.
For those few minutes on a Tuesday evening in February, I let the cleansing of a little boy’s love through all of my locked and aching doors. Mama, he said. No one’s ever so NOT let go of me.
He is 28 months old.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
20 PERSONS, PLACES & PRODUCTS I LOVE/LOATHE ABOUT KENY
Part 1 of 5
Goodbye, Gourmet: Kenya is not for the kitchen-hearted. Okay, I did find Skippy Super Chunky Peanut Butter in KPS (Karen Provision Store, the A-1 market for ex-pats) this week, leagues beyond the usual offering of American-style PB riddled with sugar. But if you’re hankering for Maldon salt, black beans, graham crackers, ancho chilies, Oreos, real dark chocolate and chocolate chips, Ben & Jerry’s, frozen spinach, non-stick cooking spray, Fritos, salt-cured-and-dried capers and flaky coconut for cookies, you are lost in translation. Furthermore, you can forget real maple syrup from Vermont, unless you want to pay $12 for a small, perfume-sized bottle of the good stuff. Some of these goodies are basic fodder for any gourmand, chef, or mad housewife cooking up trouble; some of it’s all-American junk food. But the rest you’re not sure how to live without. I’m currently suffering from Crystal Light relapse.
John Moeller: A one-time big-game hunter (and one of East Africa’s finest), John is now a conservation-minded safari guide who prefers to troll the Maasai Mara and other wildlife venues on foot. Not to fret if you’re trekking along behind him – he carries a very large gun, one that could fell an elephant at not too great a distance. Of course, John has had more than his share of close encounters of the animal kind, nearly being gored to death a few years ago by a Cape buffalo, probably the most dangerous creature on the continent. As you can imagine, the stories he tells over a proper snifter of Glenfiddich – that chui (leopard), this idiot, that bull (elephant) -- rival any you’ve ever heard. And suddenly, you have a glimpse of what it means to be a dreamer who dares.
I first met Mr. Moeller (all cock and balls, as he would say) on my very first safari in 1999, and we’ve remained friends through several adventures in several Kenyan conservation parks. Just recently while staying at Serian, he spotted a lion nesting under brush as thick as any Indonesian jungle (talk about tracking and spotting). Our hearts were beating fast as a hamster’s as we slid up in the Land Rover within feet of the male cat. Suddenly, John realized that our sighting had just pulled a Topi antelope into the bush with him and was growling over the intrusion. We left the lion to his lunch, but soon came upon a single-tusked elephant who was tearing down acacia trees for his lunch. (I thought a guy with only one tusk might be a bit cali, i.e., hot under the collar, but John could tell the elephant was mellowing out by the “relaxed look in his eyes”.)
A lion-hearted man who has a leonine head of silvery blond hair and a leonine look about him from head to toe. Simply put, you couldn’t put your life in better hands. Need I say more?
Oh, I almost forgot. He’s got one of the greatest laughs on the planet.
Mosquito Netting: Sometimes in Kenya, all you can do is pray.
Not infrequently when I sleep, often a muddled sleep, I dream of Ralph Fiennes as Count Almasy, the Hungarian mapmaker, in THE ENGLISH PATIENT. And my heart goes out to him for I too suffer from nightmares of being swaddled and smothered in gauze.
Go ahead, give it a try. Wrap your bed in the ceremonial cloth of mosquito netting and you will find, usually on nights hot as a volcano, you are trapped like a tuna in this shield that is meant to keep the mosquitoes OUT. (In my experience, it keeps more of them IN.) There you are, in the middle of the night, sweating, disgruntled, harried by “no-see-ems” and their infernal buzzing. There you are bursting at the seams to make it to the loo on time, and you are literally reduced to clawing your way out of the teepee-shaped cone of white, innocent-looking layers. Ol Doinyo Lengai (mountain of God in Maasai), please spare me the English patient routine.
Jay-C’s Garage: He is a man of mighty o’ temper with a garage bursting to the seams with business. Of Indian persuasion, Jay-C’s nose is beaked, his face narrow and his eyes, brown as peat and flashing with daggers. This morning, Joseph and I went to discuss a highly-inflated and misguided estimate that he’d given to us the previous day on the phone.
Mr. Jay-C was having none of it; he flared like a Fourth of July rocket slapped by a Molotov cocktail. “You and him, you come in here and say I’ve made a mistake? That I’m not doing on that car of yours what he [Joseph] ordered? You believe him? Get out of here and take your car with you!!” I’ve never seen such a fiery, hilarious display of anger since watching Disney cartoon “baddies” on Saturday mornings when I was a child.
I remained steady as a plank. Mr. Jay-C stormed out of his office, then spun around in the middle of his booming enterprise (go figure), tore up the estimate and threw it in my face. “Just for that, for all this trouble you’ve made, I’m giving you the gaskets and washers for free!” I went to shake his hand, he guffawed and started yelling at the mechanic working on my Land Rover. Joseph shook; I shook with laughter.
The next (second) installment of 20 PERSONS, PLACES & PRODUCTS I LOVE/LOATHE ABOUT KENYA includes Bedtime, Skies for Days, Freddy Face (& Atticus), and Gal Pals.
Goodbye, Gourmet: Kenya is not for the kitchen-hearted. Okay, I did find Skippy Super Chunky Peanut Butter in KPS (Karen Provision Store, the A-1 market for ex-pats) this week, leagues beyond the usual offering of American-style PB riddled with sugar. But if you’re hankering for Maldon salt, black beans, graham crackers, ancho chilies, Oreos, real dark chocolate and chocolate chips, Ben & Jerry’s, frozen spinach, non-stick cooking spray, Fritos, salt-cured-and-dried capers and flaky coconut for cookies, you are lost in translation. Furthermore, you can forget real maple syrup from Vermont, unless you want to pay $12 for a small, perfume-sized bottle of the good stuff. Some of these goodies are basic fodder for any gourmand, chef, or mad housewife cooking up trouble; some of it’s all-American junk food. But the rest you’re not sure how to live without. I’m currently suffering from Crystal Light relapse.
John Moeller: A one-time big-game hunter (and one of East Africa’s finest), John is now a conservation-minded safari guide who prefers to troll the Maasai Mara and other wildlife venues on foot. Not to fret if you’re trekking along behind him – he carries a very large gun, one that could fell an elephant at not too great a distance. Of course, John has had more than his share of close encounters of the animal kind, nearly being gored to death a few years ago by a Cape buffalo, probably the most dangerous creature on the continent. As you can imagine, the stories he tells over a proper snifter of Glenfiddich – that chui (leopard), this idiot, that bull (elephant) -- rival any you’ve ever heard. And suddenly, you have a glimpse of what it means to be a dreamer who dares.
I first met Mr. Moeller (all cock and balls, as he would say) on my very first safari in 1999, and we’ve remained friends through several adventures in several Kenyan conservation parks. Just recently while staying at Serian, he spotted a lion nesting under brush as thick as any Indonesian jungle (talk about tracking and spotting). Our hearts were beating fast as a hamster’s as we slid up in the Land Rover within feet of the male cat. Suddenly, John realized that our sighting had just pulled a Topi antelope into the bush with him and was growling over the intrusion. We left the lion to his lunch, but soon came upon a single-tusked elephant who was tearing down acacia trees for his lunch. (I thought a guy with only one tusk might be a bit cali, i.e., hot under the collar, but John could tell the elephant was mellowing out by the “relaxed look in his eyes”.)
A lion-hearted man who has a leonine head of silvery blond hair and a leonine look about him from head to toe. Simply put, you couldn’t put your life in better hands. Need I say more?
Oh, I almost forgot. He’s got one of the greatest laughs on the planet.
Mosquito Netting: Sometimes in Kenya, all you can do is pray.
Not infrequently when I sleep, often a muddled sleep, I dream of Ralph Fiennes as Count Almasy, the Hungarian mapmaker, in THE ENGLISH PATIENT. And my heart goes out to him for I too suffer from nightmares of being swaddled and smothered in gauze.
Go ahead, give it a try. Wrap your bed in the ceremonial cloth of mosquito netting and you will find, usually on nights hot as a volcano, you are trapped like a tuna in this shield that is meant to keep the mosquitoes OUT. (In my experience, it keeps more of them IN.) There you are, in the middle of the night, sweating, disgruntled, harried by “no-see-ems” and their infernal buzzing. There you are bursting at the seams to make it to the loo on time, and you are literally reduced to clawing your way out of the teepee-shaped cone of white, innocent-looking layers. Ol Doinyo Lengai (mountain of God in Maasai), please spare me the English patient routine.
Jay-C’s Garage: He is a man of mighty o’ temper with a garage bursting to the seams with business. Of Indian persuasion, Jay-C’s nose is beaked, his face narrow and his eyes, brown as peat and flashing with daggers. This morning, Joseph and I went to discuss a highly-inflated and misguided estimate that he’d given to us the previous day on the phone.
Mr. Jay-C was having none of it; he flared like a Fourth of July rocket slapped by a Molotov cocktail. “You and him, you come in here and say I’ve made a mistake? That I’m not doing on that car of yours what he [Joseph] ordered? You believe him? Get out of here and take your car with you!!” I’ve never seen such a fiery, hilarious display of anger since watching Disney cartoon “baddies” on Saturday mornings when I was a child.
I remained steady as a plank. Mr. Jay-C stormed out of his office, then spun around in the middle of his booming enterprise (go figure), tore up the estimate and threw it in my face. “Just for that, for all this trouble you’ve made, I’m giving you the gaskets and washers for free!” I went to shake his hand, he guffawed and started yelling at the mechanic working on my Land Rover. Joseph shook; I shook with laughter.
The next (second) installment of 20 PERSONS, PLACES & PRODUCTS I LOVE/LOATHE ABOUT KENYA includes Bedtime, Skies for Days, Freddy Face (& Atticus), and Gal Pals.
Monday, January 4, 2010
GLADYS' BACONS & CHICKEN PASTA BAKE
[In the past three weeks or so, I’ve started incorporating recipes into the blog, mostly because they represent good eatin’, but also because I love to cook much in the same way that a mad, mad, mad scientist must dicker with test tubes and Bunsen burners. Herewith one of our favorite new dishes from Gladys’ simple yet formidable repertoire. Note that one of her endearing quirks is to always pluralize bacon.]
• Dice and sauté two boneless chicken breasts in a little bit of oil until nicely brown. Add large pinches of salt and mixed herbs, a little bit of soy and 1-1/2 chicken stock cubes (for more tasty, says Gladys). Heat on medium for 5-10 minutes; you want to make sure that the chicken is pretty cooked through and that the flavors have all had time to grab onto one another.
• In a separate pan, fry up four slices of collar or back bacons (you want the stuff that is ham-like, not streaky).
• Saute (fresh pan) two chopped cloves of garlic and a medium-sized yellow onion.
• Pour a can of crushed tomatoes into a saucepan and heat for several minutes until a bit reduced.
• Boil up your macaroni or any other pasta your kids will like.
• You’ve now got every pan and every burner in the house going. Fine Einstein.
• Drain pasta, place in large mixing bowl. Add in your chicken, bacons, garlic and onions, and tomato sauce. Also add 1 cup of sourcream.
• Place pasta bake in a casserole dish, top with cheese of choice (about 1 cup) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until cheese is thoroughly melted.
You will love this and your family will thank you for it.
• Dice and sauté two boneless chicken breasts in a little bit of oil until nicely brown. Add large pinches of salt and mixed herbs, a little bit of soy and 1-1/2 chicken stock cubes (for more tasty, says Gladys). Heat on medium for 5-10 minutes; you want to make sure that the chicken is pretty cooked through and that the flavors have all had time to grab onto one another.
• In a separate pan, fry up four slices of collar or back bacons (you want the stuff that is ham-like, not streaky).
• Saute (fresh pan) two chopped cloves of garlic and a medium-sized yellow onion.
• Pour a can of crushed tomatoes into a saucepan and heat for several minutes until a bit reduced.
• Boil up your macaroni or any other pasta your kids will like.
• You’ve now got every pan and every burner in the house going. Fine Einstein.
• Drain pasta, place in large mixing bowl. Add in your chicken, bacons, garlic and onions, and tomato sauce. Also add 1 cup of sourcream.
• Place pasta bake in a casserole dish, top with cheese of choice (about 1 cup) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until cheese is thoroughly melted.
You will love this and your family will thank you for it.
POACHED EGGS & OTHER PEOPLE
I poached Gladys. My fabulous, full-time, fun-loving nanny who has made my life and that of my son’s simply magnificent. The spice to our cookies, the filet in our tagine, the cheese to our cheese ball. She has brought many gifts to our family of two, countless ones. And I’ve never been so happy to have committed a mortal sin, lapsed Catholic that I am.
Gladys was poached. I poached her from neighbors whom I only recently met. And in this neck of the woods when you supposedly steal staff from a household, you might as well have gone out into the Maasai Mara, the famous savannah of the Serengeti that lies north of the Kenya/Tanzania border, hunting elephant for ivory and zebra for pelts and rhino for horns (an aphrodisiac).
At the time, I didn’t really understand that I was thieving; it felt more like the shoplifting you do in junior high school, a little lipstick here, some mascara there. Nothing TOO bad. But when another neighbor offered a full-time job to a local driver, a very deserving chap, he got into a scuffle of sorts with the current part-time employer and desisted, saying, “I don’t want to be accused of stealing people!”
[I am not unaware that this kind of looting smacks of colonialism and ownership of persons, but that’s not why I was out poaching.]
Before arriving in Kenya from Dublin, I heard through the grapevine that Gladys was looking for a job. She came hugely, highly recommended: “She’s gorgeous,” pronounced my Finnish friend, “I’d trust her with my children’s lives.” Another galpal who’s lived her for a decade concurred, and actually put me in touch with Gladys directly. “But you can’t breathe a word of this, not to anyone. I haven’t even told my husband. It’s just not done. And these people used to be friends, but I had to help her.”
Finally I meet THEM. At a small Christmas Eve party down the road. The wife has beautiful long blond hair with a lean, weathered, attractive look, a horsey kind of gal in matchstick jeans who raises donkeys and llamas. The husband: a good-looking charmer with shaggy dark brown hair and eyes that shine. Both possess a warm manner and seem to fit easily into this ex-pat crowd that has so welcomed me (welcomed me (and Tiger) more and more thoughtfully than anywhere else I’ve ever lived). In fact, this couple is extremely popular and well thought of.
Their six-year-old son tugs at the mother’s hand. “Mama, mama,” he exclaims, “Gladys is here!” “Gladys? What is Gladys doing here?” “Because I poached her and she’s with us now!” I mutter. The mother doesn’t hear me; she is busy shaking off her son and pretending she hasn’t heard him either.
On the way home that night, Gladys and I are laughing about the idiocy of their not even acknowledging her. Dead giveaway. But I realize it must still hurt. “She invited me to come round for coffee, to drop in anytime. Ha!” I tell Gladys with my hand on her shoulder; we are navigating mud puddles the size of Lake Baringo while Tiger sloshes through them. “She did!” Gladys barks. “I’m having nothing to do with those people.” And she laughs again. “This has been a blessing,” Gladys adds. “Hmm, I’m not so sure. Maybe a curse?” I mumble delightedly, delighted that she is delighted with us. We laugh again; Tiger splashes. Except for my family, the night is still and silent and so there for us, a sheath of navy blue.
Who wouldn’t want to leave when, after several years, you’ve making just above half the going rate (which, at $200/month, is a total steal)? When the husband-and-wife team of tossing the ball of blame between one another never gives you a raise or a bonus? When they haven’t paid your dues for several years running (a Department of Labor edict that guarantees a staff person at least two weeks of their annual salary/annum)? When you still have to ask permission to use the microwave because you still have to bring your own lunch? When, having raised their daughter since birth and their son since he was two (five years!), they don’t even acknowledge you at the same holiday party, their eyes glazing past, their hearts as hard as cooling bricks?
My friend Dick Galleher makes the perfect poached eggs. “Here’s How To Poach an Egg,” by R. Galleher: Put pan of water on stove -- crack egg into cup or glass (your choice). When water is boiling, slip egg into water. Watch it. When cooked, but before yolk is hard, take off stove -- move to buttered piece of toast in a slotted spoon -- so you don't have any excess water. Enjoy!
In light of poaching in general, I think it is all about how you treat the egg. How lucky to have taken Gladys in hand without hesitation, gently spooning her from the hot waters and fuss of steam, then placing her atop of our favorite crispy toast, right in the kitchen of our souls. “Gladleth,” says Tiger morning, noon and night, which sounds vaguely like Gladless. Gladmore is more like it.
Gladys was poached. I poached her from neighbors whom I only recently met. And in this neck of the woods when you supposedly steal staff from a household, you might as well have gone out into the Maasai Mara, the famous savannah of the Serengeti that lies north of the Kenya/Tanzania border, hunting elephant for ivory and zebra for pelts and rhino for horns (an aphrodisiac).
At the time, I didn’t really understand that I was thieving; it felt more like the shoplifting you do in junior high school, a little lipstick here, some mascara there. Nothing TOO bad. But when another neighbor offered a full-time job to a local driver, a very deserving chap, he got into a scuffle of sorts with the current part-time employer and desisted, saying, “I don’t want to be accused of stealing people!”
[I am not unaware that this kind of looting smacks of colonialism and ownership of persons, but that’s not why I was out poaching.]
Before arriving in Kenya from Dublin, I heard through the grapevine that Gladys was looking for a job. She came hugely, highly recommended: “She’s gorgeous,” pronounced my Finnish friend, “I’d trust her with my children’s lives.” Another galpal who’s lived her for a decade concurred, and actually put me in touch with Gladys directly. “But you can’t breathe a word of this, not to anyone. I haven’t even told my husband. It’s just not done. And these people used to be friends, but I had to help her.”
Finally I meet THEM. At a small Christmas Eve party down the road. The wife has beautiful long blond hair with a lean, weathered, attractive look, a horsey kind of gal in matchstick jeans who raises donkeys and llamas. The husband: a good-looking charmer with shaggy dark brown hair and eyes that shine. Both possess a warm manner and seem to fit easily into this ex-pat crowd that has so welcomed me (welcomed me (and Tiger) more and more thoughtfully than anywhere else I’ve ever lived). In fact, this couple is extremely popular and well thought of.
Their six-year-old son tugs at the mother’s hand. “Mama, mama,” he exclaims, “Gladys is here!” “Gladys? What is Gladys doing here?” “Because I poached her and she’s with us now!” I mutter. The mother doesn’t hear me; she is busy shaking off her son and pretending she hasn’t heard him either.
On the way home that night, Gladys and I are laughing about the idiocy of their not even acknowledging her. Dead giveaway. But I realize it must still hurt. “She invited me to come round for coffee, to drop in anytime. Ha!” I tell Gladys with my hand on her shoulder; we are navigating mud puddles the size of Lake Baringo while Tiger sloshes through them. “She did!” Gladys barks. “I’m having nothing to do with those people.” And she laughs again. “This has been a blessing,” Gladys adds. “Hmm, I’m not so sure. Maybe a curse?” I mumble delightedly, delighted that she is delighted with us. We laugh again; Tiger splashes. Except for my family, the night is still and silent and so there for us, a sheath of navy blue.
Who wouldn’t want to leave when, after several years, you’ve making just above half the going rate (which, at $200/month, is a total steal)? When the husband-and-wife team of tossing the ball of blame between one another never gives you a raise or a bonus? When they haven’t paid your dues for several years running (a Department of Labor edict that guarantees a staff person at least two weeks of their annual salary/annum)? When you still have to ask permission to use the microwave because you still have to bring your own lunch? When, having raised their daughter since birth and their son since he was two (five years!), they don’t even acknowledge you at the same holiday party, their eyes glazing past, their hearts as hard as cooling bricks?
My friend Dick Galleher makes the perfect poached eggs. “Here’s How To Poach an Egg,” by R. Galleher: Put pan of water on stove -- crack egg into cup or glass (your choice). When water is boiling, slip egg into water. Watch it. When cooked, but before yolk is hard, take off stove -- move to buttered piece of toast in a slotted spoon -- so you don't have any excess water. Enjoy!
In light of poaching in general, I think it is all about how you treat the egg. How lucky to have taken Gladys in hand without hesitation, gently spooning her from the hot waters and fuss of steam, then placing her atop of our favorite crispy toast, right in the kitchen of our souls. “Gladleth,” says Tiger morning, noon and night, which sounds vaguely like Gladless. Gladmore is more like it.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED
[This posting started as one thing and seems to have ended up another. I was trying to capture the homicidal feelings that affect most mothers in terms of their children, often driving them to what one of my best friends calls Mother Rage. “It’s frightening what buttons the kiddy monsters can push at times,” she says. “Never in my life have I experienced rage like I did when the children were young.” The not-so-surprising thing about this dark side of mothering: few people will admit these kinds of feelings to themselves, let alone to others. Too dark? Yes, we can come close to betraying our own with a slap or spank or worse, but an animal instinct, what they call the reptile brain steps in, I believe, so that we turn ultimately to protecting them, even from ourselves.
Even though I’ve had my own close calls, hair’s breadth really, I can think of nothing worse than harming or losing my son. Yet in light of having a child, what’s really eluded me here is how much we depend on language to define, reveal, contain and explain ourselves; how sometimes it comes through, harbors us and gives us sanctuary from ourselves. And how at other times, it utterly fails us.
There are no words for certain things. Loss is inexplicable and perhaps should remain so. A hear an a half ago, my darling friend Lizzie died of breast cancer and the language, it just won’t come. There’s no one else in the world I equate so with treasure. (Now there’s a word.) Perhaps it would soothe me to talk about her and that cannonball-sized hole through my chest. Perhaps not. The heart knows what the heart knows; it speaks a different tongue, whether we are honored or horrifed by it. And does reliving things by speaking them out loud really console us in the end? The dead, the young before their time, are still gone; we can only speak longingly to them in our dreams and hope they hear us.]
*****
Last night, I was nestled in bed, trapped by mosquito netting and combing my favorite cookbooks (both SILVER PALATEs, NIGELLA EXPRESS, LA DOLCE VITA) for Christmas recipes. I felt like some sort of culinary mothership about to make an auspicious landing. Whether it would be hard or soft, I wasn’t certain. The mosquitoes hummed and hawed.
All afternoon long, some sort of word had been niggling at the underside of my forehead, a word I wasn’t sure existed (and there are those). Something unsavory, quicksilver, not right. And then it came to me and I was duly horrified by its release. Infanticide.
You see, off and on for several weeks now, my son has been nearly unrecognizable to me. A solemn, wary nine-month-old when I met him in Kazakhstan, upon his release at 11 months from the orphanage he burst into being, an unfathomably joyous gift, completely beribboned. I put my hand out, he cupped his cheek in it. We went outside, he squealed and jumped into the arms of the nearest neighbor. I woke up in the morning, he shrieked with delight. We had dinner, he gobbled every bite. I took him to school, he couldn’t wait to get in the door. We went everywhere together, his arms flung out in welcome, his smile never fading.
For months and months, for nearly a year, I was astonished by my good fortune. No one else could believe it either; Tiger was the most engaging child they’d ever met. And then he turned two.
Believe everything you hear. Hell hath no fury like a toddler scorned. Forked tongue, blistering eyes, wailing walls. Stubborn as a Soviet bloc, furious as bees without a hive, scheming as an underworld spy, black as a bat cave. Who’s going to blame a mom if she snaps a little? Or even a lot.
You read about it nearly every day. Mothers -- good mothers, calm mothers, church-going mothers -- who lose it all in one fell swoop while their children are in the bathtub, near the oven, in their hair, out at play, in the back seat. They pick up the nearest thing, an every day sort of thing, and do the unthinkable, the unspeakable. Spending the last of themselves as if they’d never had a beginning.
Of course, there are words or ideas that don’t deserve to exist, schemings and surrenderings and such; the above is one of them. But there are also events and experiences that refuse to be named, one of the things I both love and loathe about language. It is imprecise, slippery, changing just as you have it within your grasp. Our mother tongue, such as it is, is never meant to be held, close or for long. It slips from us in moments of horror and triumph, at the best of times and in times we cannot bear.
Not long ago and because of Tiger, I thought about the nameless, the happenings we cannot put our finger on, and one of them came to me, once again unbidden. What do you call yourself when you lose a child? Certainly, there is a calling for every other kind of loss, isn’t there? Widower, divorcee, motherless, orphan. But once you have been a parent and your son or daughter dies, what and who are you then? Childless? Minus one? Or by far the cruelest, child free?
Tiger tears at the world. He slams inside of his high chair, demonic and desperate, riding it like a rocking horse, rattling the kitchen’s bones. He slaps at Sandy, the Ridgeback from next door, yelling “Stop it!”; she continues to lick his hands, no matter what. He screams and rails and stamps his feet and bangs his fists. He throws his supper plate, full of food, like a Frisbee across the porch and laughs wickedly and wisely. He hurls himself against my embrace, banging his head on mine. And it hurts like hell.
Later, as I change Tiger into his pajamas, my son goes, “Owie,” and rubs his crown. “Do you want me to kiss it?” Yeth, he says and I do and I ask him if it’s better. Yeth, he says again. “My head hurts too. Can I have a kiss?” He lights up, yet serious as all get out, and kisses my forehead. Better, I say, that feels better. “Again!” he shouts, diving into me, giggling, willing to give everything he’s got. To the world. To me.
And there you are, suddenly found, maybe even found out. You are knocked sideways and upright and, best of all, together.
And I know what I have been afraid to know, whether it is in a word or a paragraph or pages. That this thing, this thing called love, this motherhood about which I have felt so clueless and will probably often continue to be, it is so not for the faint of heart. But oh, how fierce a heart can become. If only I let it.
Even though I’ve had my own close calls, hair’s breadth really, I can think of nothing worse than harming or losing my son. Yet in light of having a child, what’s really eluded me here is how much we depend on language to define, reveal, contain and explain ourselves; how sometimes it comes through, harbors us and gives us sanctuary from ourselves. And how at other times, it utterly fails us.
There are no words for certain things. Loss is inexplicable and perhaps should remain so. A hear an a half ago, my darling friend Lizzie died of breast cancer and the language, it just won’t come. There’s no one else in the world I equate so with treasure. (Now there’s a word.) Perhaps it would soothe me to talk about her and that cannonball-sized hole through my chest. Perhaps not. The heart knows what the heart knows; it speaks a different tongue, whether we are honored or horrifed by it. And does reliving things by speaking them out loud really console us in the end? The dead, the young before their time, are still gone; we can only speak longingly to them in our dreams and hope they hear us.]
*****
Last night, I was nestled in bed, trapped by mosquito netting and combing my favorite cookbooks (both SILVER PALATEs, NIGELLA EXPRESS, LA DOLCE VITA) for Christmas recipes. I felt like some sort of culinary mothership about to make an auspicious landing. Whether it would be hard or soft, I wasn’t certain. The mosquitoes hummed and hawed.
All afternoon long, some sort of word had been niggling at the underside of my forehead, a word I wasn’t sure existed (and there are those). Something unsavory, quicksilver, not right. And then it came to me and I was duly horrified by its release. Infanticide.
You see, off and on for several weeks now, my son has been nearly unrecognizable to me. A solemn, wary nine-month-old when I met him in Kazakhstan, upon his release at 11 months from the orphanage he burst into being, an unfathomably joyous gift, completely beribboned. I put my hand out, he cupped his cheek in it. We went outside, he squealed and jumped into the arms of the nearest neighbor. I woke up in the morning, he shrieked with delight. We had dinner, he gobbled every bite. I took him to school, he couldn’t wait to get in the door. We went everywhere together, his arms flung out in welcome, his smile never fading.
For months and months, for nearly a year, I was astonished by my good fortune. No one else could believe it either; Tiger was the most engaging child they’d ever met. And then he turned two.
Believe everything you hear. Hell hath no fury like a toddler scorned. Forked tongue, blistering eyes, wailing walls. Stubborn as a Soviet bloc, furious as bees without a hive, scheming as an underworld spy, black as a bat cave. Who’s going to blame a mom if she snaps a little? Or even a lot.
You read about it nearly every day. Mothers -- good mothers, calm mothers, church-going mothers -- who lose it all in one fell swoop while their children are in the bathtub, near the oven, in their hair, out at play, in the back seat. They pick up the nearest thing, an every day sort of thing, and do the unthinkable, the unspeakable. Spending the last of themselves as if they’d never had a beginning.
Of course, there are words or ideas that don’t deserve to exist, schemings and surrenderings and such; the above is one of them. But there are also events and experiences that refuse to be named, one of the things I both love and loathe about language. It is imprecise, slippery, changing just as you have it within your grasp. Our mother tongue, such as it is, is never meant to be held, close or for long. It slips from us in moments of horror and triumph, at the best of times and in times we cannot bear.
Not long ago and because of Tiger, I thought about the nameless, the happenings we cannot put our finger on, and one of them came to me, once again unbidden. What do you call yourself when you lose a child? Certainly, there is a calling for every other kind of loss, isn’t there? Widower, divorcee, motherless, orphan. But once you have been a parent and your son or daughter dies, what and who are you then? Childless? Minus one? Or by far the cruelest, child free?
Tiger tears at the world. He slams inside of his high chair, demonic and desperate, riding it like a rocking horse, rattling the kitchen’s bones. He slaps at Sandy, the Ridgeback from next door, yelling “Stop it!”; she continues to lick his hands, no matter what. He screams and rails and stamps his feet and bangs his fists. He throws his supper plate, full of food, like a Frisbee across the porch and laughs wickedly and wisely. He hurls himself against my embrace, banging his head on mine. And it hurts like hell.
Later, as I change Tiger into his pajamas, my son goes, “Owie,” and rubs his crown. “Do you want me to kiss it?” Yeth, he says and I do and I ask him if it’s better. Yeth, he says again. “My head hurts too. Can I have a kiss?” He lights up, yet serious as all get out, and kisses my forehead. Better, I say, that feels better. “Again!” he shouts, diving into me, giggling, willing to give everything he’s got. To the world. To me.
And there you are, suddenly found, maybe even found out. You are knocked sideways and upright and, best of all, together.
And I know what I have been afraid to know, whether it is in a word or a paragraph or pages. That this thing, this thing called love, this motherhood about which I have felt so clueless and will probably often continue to be, it is so not for the faint of heart. But oh, how fierce a heart can become. If only I let it.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
MONKEYNASTIX
At Stepping Stones, my son Tiger’s pre-school, there’s a special class called Monkeynastix. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d let him participate to get a gander at what this African version of gymnastics was all about. And it’s pretty much what you would expect. The kids sit on little pea-pod pads in a semi-circle around the instructor, doing yoga-like stretches and curls; jiggy-jiggy jumping up and down to music with singing mixed in; hoop hopping; tumbling; and committing, in general, very varied monkey business. (My son’s two-and-half year old girlfriend, Zoe, has mastered the somersault like no little girl I’ve ever seen.)
Yesterday, I was walking home from Mwitu, a compound not far from my cottage where several high-powered politicos live after collecting a recipe for spicy tofu salad (see recipe below, absolutely delicious) from my friend Anja. As I went through the gate, Danda, a very talented glass artist and the head of the artists’ colony Kuonatrust, drove up and motioned me over to come to her house for chai and a chat.
Even though Karen is quite developed in areas (interspersed with horse farms and cattle-raising ventures), the animal life can be stupendous. When Elizabeth, my erstwhile sister/mother here, first moved to the ex-pat community eleven years ago, she could see giraffe from her back garden set against the Ngong Hills, their beautiful heads bobbing on long necks as if giving everyone the royal wave.
Now Danda has a monkey in the house. He’s a Sykes, a forest monkey also known as the White-Throated Guenon. A beautiful, stormy gray, these apes sport a gorgeous white ruffled collar that runs down the chest, completing itself in a mask around the nose and ears; the effect makes their cheeks appear puffed, much like Santa’s. The allure is further enhanced by soft, brown, questioning eyes.
As for Danda’s monkey, he’s taken to making himself at home whenever the back door to the kitchen is open. His purpose: To open all of the drawers and cupboards in search of bananas. Last week, he found the hidey hole where the housemaid had placed his precious treasure and was very pleased with himself, munching away on the kitchen counter as if he’d been invited for lunch.
The housemaid took extreme measures in hiding the bananas in a new safety hatch. Mr. Monkey helped himself to the kitchen yesterday as he’d been doing for a week, but despite a thorough search it was suddenly clear to him that “we have no more bananas”. When Danda went into the kitchen to make a sandwich, she found the Sykes sitting in the sink looking extremely puzzled and put out.
I, too, have monkeys making their presence felt at my place (lest I forget I’m in Africa, for Pete’s sake). Although they supposedly sleep at night, there can be no other explanation for the galloping across my metal rooftop. I often hear these ladies and gents after I’ve gone to bed, thundering away, jiggling with window handles, driving the next-door neighbors dogs into a frenzy, Ridgebacks and Shephards and mixed-breed terriers that bay like bloodhounds. Oftentimes, I listen and wait, and within minutes am rewarded with monkeynastix which, while they keep me awake, are also a comfort in this country that will not be tamed.
Anja's Spicy Tofu Salad
450 grams fresh tofu curd
3 T plain flour, sifted
2 T sesame seeds
1 T chili powder
1 T white pepper
2 T onion powder (you can substitute garlic powder and/or garlic salt)
1 egg beaten with 3 T milk
500 ml vegetable oil for frying
3 heads of gem lettuce, shredded
Chopped fresh coriander and chives, optional garnish
Slice the curds into wedges about 2 cm or 3/4 in thick. Mix flour, sesame, chili, pepper and onion powder. Dip curd in flour, then in egg mixture, then in flour a second time. Heat oil to about 180 degrees C/350 degrees F. Fry two mins on each side and drain on paper towels. Place on bed of lettuce and serve with the following dressing.
Ginger Sesame Dressing
1 T pickled ginger (or fresh if you can't find pickled)
4 T rice wine vinegar
4 T dark soy
2 t chili sauce
4 T sesame oil
6 T sunflower oil
Whisk together all ingredients. Can be stored up to one week in the fridge.
Yesterday, I was walking home from Mwitu, a compound not far from my cottage where several high-powered politicos live after collecting a recipe for spicy tofu salad (see recipe below, absolutely delicious) from my friend Anja. As I went through the gate, Danda, a very talented glass artist and the head of the artists’ colony Kuonatrust, drove up and motioned me over to come to her house for chai and a chat.
Even though Karen is quite developed in areas (interspersed with horse farms and cattle-raising ventures), the animal life can be stupendous. When Elizabeth, my erstwhile sister/mother here, first moved to the ex-pat community eleven years ago, she could see giraffe from her back garden set against the Ngong Hills, their beautiful heads bobbing on long necks as if giving everyone the royal wave.
Now Danda has a monkey in the house. He’s a Sykes, a forest monkey also known as the White-Throated Guenon. A beautiful, stormy gray, these apes sport a gorgeous white ruffled collar that runs down the chest, completing itself in a mask around the nose and ears; the effect makes their cheeks appear puffed, much like Santa’s. The allure is further enhanced by soft, brown, questioning eyes.
As for Danda’s monkey, he’s taken to making himself at home whenever the back door to the kitchen is open. His purpose: To open all of the drawers and cupboards in search of bananas. Last week, he found the hidey hole where the housemaid had placed his precious treasure and was very pleased with himself, munching away on the kitchen counter as if he’d been invited for lunch.
The housemaid took extreme measures in hiding the bananas in a new safety hatch. Mr. Monkey helped himself to the kitchen yesterday as he’d been doing for a week, but despite a thorough search it was suddenly clear to him that “we have no more bananas”. When Danda went into the kitchen to make a sandwich, she found the Sykes sitting in the sink looking extremely puzzled and put out.
I, too, have monkeys making their presence felt at my place (lest I forget I’m in Africa, for Pete’s sake). Although they supposedly sleep at night, there can be no other explanation for the galloping across my metal rooftop. I often hear these ladies and gents after I’ve gone to bed, thundering away, jiggling with window handles, driving the next-door neighbors dogs into a frenzy, Ridgebacks and Shephards and mixed-breed terriers that bay like bloodhounds. Oftentimes, I listen and wait, and within minutes am rewarded with monkeynastix which, while they keep me awake, are also a comfort in this country that will not be tamed.
Anja's Spicy Tofu Salad
450 grams fresh tofu curd
3 T plain flour, sifted
2 T sesame seeds
1 T chili powder
1 T white pepper
2 T onion powder (you can substitute garlic powder and/or garlic salt)
1 egg beaten with 3 T milk
500 ml vegetable oil for frying
3 heads of gem lettuce, shredded
Chopped fresh coriander and chives, optional garnish
Slice the curds into wedges about 2 cm or 3/4 in thick. Mix flour, sesame, chili, pepper and onion powder. Dip curd in flour, then in egg mixture, then in flour a second time. Heat oil to about 180 degrees C/350 degrees F. Fry two mins on each side and drain on paper towels. Place on bed of lettuce and serve with the following dressing.
Ginger Sesame Dressing
1 T pickled ginger (or fresh if you can't find pickled)
4 T rice wine vinegar
4 T dark soy
2 t chili sauce
4 T sesame oil
6 T sunflower oil
Whisk together all ingredients. Can be stored up to one week in the fridge.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
MR. BOY & FATHER CHRISTMAS
Gladys, my aya (nanny), has taken to calling my son Mr. Boy. It seems a perfectly proper nickname for Tiger who, in the throes of the terrible twos, often vascillates between being a petulant Russian prince (his birth parents were from Russia) and what the Irish call a typically playful and popular boy-o. (I almost get a kick out Tiger’s tantrums, SO hard not to laugh, they are SO cartoonish in execution – the stamping of the feet, the flailing of the limbs, the darkening of his sea-green eyes to a stormy, steel gray, the coming of tears as plump as grapes. His histrionics are oft accompanied by “Mine!”, “This one!”, “My car!” and the universal “NO!”.)
Most of the time, my son is something to be around. He wants to collect every dudu or insect on the porch. He climbs all over Sandy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback who lives next door (well, now she lives mostly with us) as if she were a jungle gym. He chases the big yellow ball around the backyard, possessed with possessing it. He drapes himself over Gladys as she teaches him words in Swahili. He wants the keys to the Land Rover so he can just sit there and drive into two-year-old territory. He climbs fences, about to swing a leg over but not quite yet. He hides from the pikis, the mini-motorbikes that my neighbors’ teenagers roar around the compound in. He likes popsicles in every flavor, and peanut butter on baby bananas. He follows John all over the garden, carrying a rake with a purpose and passion I long to feel consistently myself. He hangs over the edge of the water tank where two giant goldfish live and points them out to me. He eats Cheerios and “gogurt” (yogurt) with relish every morning. He sneaks back to the staff quarters to hang with Ben and Phillip and Naomi and Elizabeth, putting wash buckets on his head and stomping to some secret music. He colors on my grocery lists, usually with my pens. And at the end of the day, when you come home or resurface from your own silly world, he runs to you with a smile that spells happiness in every alphabet you can dream of.
Today, Mr. Boy had a big surprise. Santa was not only coming to town but, because one of his reindeer had a cold, he arrived at Stepping Stones by a most exciting one-horse sleigh: a helicopter. “Plane!” Tiger shouted. Still, he followed the other boys and girls hesitantly toward welcoming Father Christmas, and I wondered a bit if he would always be one to hold back, or if this was just a moment of curiosity mixed with caution.
It seemed he was determined not to be part of the crowd, my independent-minded, self-sufficient child who rarely clings to me, having made his own way for 11 months in a Kazakhstan orphanage. Instead, once inside the chopper and in the front seat no less, he will not come out. He will not follow Santa to the conference hut like everyone else. He will not come out of the neon orange plastic car that’s ready to be driven into two-year-old territory. He will not sit with the others on Masaai blankets while presents are being handed out. He will not.
But he will watch and listen and laugh. He will hold his package up to me and crawl into my lap and ask me “What dat?” about all the decorations on the silvery wrapping paper, Santas and snowmen and red-nosed reindeer and polar bears. He will turn my face to him so that I pay attention. He will suck his thumb and put his head against my chest and sigh. He will open his books with a glee bordering on the startling. He will turn to me, his almond-shaped eyes that Irish sea-green again, with a smile that spells happiness in every alphabet you can dream of.
Mr. Boy, he will.
Most of the time, my son is something to be around. He wants to collect every dudu or insect on the porch. He climbs all over Sandy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback who lives next door (well, now she lives mostly with us) as if she were a jungle gym. He chases the big yellow ball around the backyard, possessed with possessing it. He drapes himself over Gladys as she teaches him words in Swahili. He wants the keys to the Land Rover so he can just sit there and drive into two-year-old territory. He climbs fences, about to swing a leg over but not quite yet. He hides from the pikis, the mini-motorbikes that my neighbors’ teenagers roar around the compound in. He likes popsicles in every flavor, and peanut butter on baby bananas. He follows John all over the garden, carrying a rake with a purpose and passion I long to feel consistently myself. He hangs over the edge of the water tank where two giant goldfish live and points them out to me. He eats Cheerios and “gogurt” (yogurt) with relish every morning. He sneaks back to the staff quarters to hang with Ben and Phillip and Naomi and Elizabeth, putting wash buckets on his head and stomping to some secret music. He colors on my grocery lists, usually with my pens. And at the end of the day, when you come home or resurface from your own silly world, he runs to you with a smile that spells happiness in every alphabet you can dream of.
Today, Mr. Boy had a big surprise. Santa was not only coming to town but, because one of his reindeer had a cold, he arrived at Stepping Stones by a most exciting one-horse sleigh: a helicopter. “Plane!” Tiger shouted. Still, he followed the other boys and girls hesitantly toward welcoming Father Christmas, and I wondered a bit if he would always be one to hold back, or if this was just a moment of curiosity mixed with caution.
It seemed he was determined not to be part of the crowd, my independent-minded, self-sufficient child who rarely clings to me, having made his own way for 11 months in a Kazakhstan orphanage. Instead, once inside the chopper and in the front seat no less, he will not come out. He will not follow Santa to the conference hut like everyone else. He will not come out of the neon orange plastic car that’s ready to be driven into two-year-old territory. He will not sit with the others on Masaai blankets while presents are being handed out. He will not.
But he will watch and listen and laugh. He will hold his package up to me and crawl into my lap and ask me “What dat?” about all the decorations on the silvery wrapping paper, Santas and snowmen and red-nosed reindeer and polar bears. He will turn my face to him so that I pay attention. He will suck his thumb and put his head against my chest and sigh. He will open his books with a glee bordering on the startling. He will turn to me, his almond-shaped eyes that Irish sea-green again, with a smile that spells happiness in every alphabet you can dream of.
Mr. Boy, he will.
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