Nearly two weeks in and this uneven tan on my left shoulder is coming along perfectly. I was thinking I could spend my 8:30s-10:30s at night reading and writing a bit. But, well, most of these nights I close my eyes just moments after my children calm themselves to sleep (Is this really what they do?). I have had the occasional glass of wine in the dark. Perhaps next week Islas en el golfo and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle will subsume themselves as necessities, or even fates.

We are down at the bottom of Mexico, staring out at a Pacific edge, in an investment to slow down to go faster. Sometimes floating through our days on these yearly trips is appropriate, but this one has a few more pounds of structure included—for me, for them, for us. Raines is going to Oasis Spanish & Surf School during the week, where he’s already up on his own out there with the sea turtles (thinking positively, watching from the sand). Sylvan spends his days at Explora, an Agile Learning Center here in Puerto Escondido (kids are people, okay?). The city is a bit more spread out than I expected, so now we have a scooter that will hopefully turn into an Xterra in the next few days. Both boys seem more than alright, except after three miles of walking and/or finding more sand in their shorts always. Thanks to Primo West, we’re on book three of his Geronimo Stilton series (So when I said I haven’t been reading, what I meant was…I’m not the one choosing the book.). I got Sylvan this Batman hat that I keep trying to steal and he keeps taking back. We eat ice cream at least once a day—all this exercise we’re getting, it’s basically required. Yesterday Sylvan accidentally ordered Oreo instead of mint chocolate, so we had to get another one to smooth out the afternoon. Judge us, we lovingly care not.

I would like to mention a few things we’ve survived so far. First, I’d like to delete the Mexico City layover from my memory. I really don’t want to learn anything from it except perhaps that we can’t, in fact, delete terrible airport experiences. And it wasn’t so awful really, we even got donuts. Anyway, our final one-hour flight said “On Time” for three hours after the scheduled departure time, so we ended up dragging ourselves and our stuff into our Puerto Escondido bed around 1:00 a.m. Here! Our place here at Casa Mangos is pretty great, super clean, and quiet—apart from the delightful screeches of my two children. No drama here, until I decide to shower off the grit and sand the boys keep collecting. It has been said I throw my children to the wolves. I didn’t dispute the assertion, but rather the sharp-toned arrow on which it was thrown. This is true and intentional here as well, I suppose, but with the slight twist of crocodiles, sharks, and rocks (ask the surfers at La Punta). It’s Raines, mostly, who’s been doing all the extreme surviving. He’s surfing real waves every day. In the real ocean. Where all those very real creatures live and rule. And when we went to the bioluminescence lagoon, he jumped out of the boat and into the water. All the while, I’m in the boat with a sleeping Sylvan. He peed on my lap while his brother was swimming in pitch-black waters (save the seconds of bioluminescence), where the crocodiles love to hang out. I was fine, really, and figured the giant crocodile who lives there would probably chomp one of the other crazies who jumped in before they got to my skinny little child. Talk about delighting in my children—it’s in the experimental stage at this point, but I think it’s working. Oh, and when we went on the dolphin search and saw hundreds of them, Raines jumped out of the boat in the middle of the fucking ocean and swam around. He asked me to come, too, and I responded with quiet murmurs and then articulated something like, “Um, I’m actually scared and I have you’re brother, so…but you can do it!” See, he was trying to listen to the dolphins under water. So much like Aaron, once motivation is accessed and internalized, energy seems to be hasta el infinito. By the way, Sylvan has also survived a few bites from babies at his school and at least three sidewalk wipeouts. Almost forgot to mention the taekwondo classes the boys took—once. Sylvan said he wanted only karate or jiu jitsu (anything other than taekwondo, it would seem) and Raines said never again. So we’re done with that for now, I believe.

I’ll stop soon, for today, and then I’ll try to stay a leetle more up to date on our travels here. But before I go now, and just as I finish this glass of mezcal, here’s what I’m thinking on and suffering with as of late: micro– and macro-failing as a parent (yes, I made this up, but it’s working for me in this second so I need to leave it for now) and manufacturing an answer from God about all this good shit inside me and why the fuck and for what purpose is it there(¿¡?!). I won’t be getting any answers on the latter until I throw my spirit up on a sandy Puerto Escondido sidewalk and surrender, give up, rendirme, re-remember that managing God is, damnit, unmanageable. And as for the mothering-end of things, starting yesterday my primary focus is to delight in my children and to make this known to them (Also, Tosha and Claire probably can’t take on any more friends because I’m so neeeeedy—but you can ask). And to calm the fuck down—this is also a priority. Also, thanks to Amy I’m now veering away from the Doestoevsky effect of aspiring to be worthy of my suffering. No. No…no. There is meaning in suffering, and the size and effect of suffering is quite relative in regards to the enduring human, and suffering itself is not my god nor my purpose. How about I start anew as often as my spirit appeals, and I can certainly use this to do so: “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self” (Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 38). And may I be grateful for even the smallest of mercies, sometimes showing up as an ice-cream–smeared smirk on my four year old’s face.

Oh, we went to Playa Bacocho the other night and released baby sea turtles to their…lives? deaths? I’ll say some more words about this soon—still processing. I almost started singing “The Circle of Life” but then I realized I was just dissociating to avoid sobbing on the beach in front of Sylvan and Raines. Until I unwrap this, here are some photos: