Vale la pena / Worth It

Posted on February 25, 2019 by sceneafaire under Mexico 2019, Uncategorized

It is—it’s worth it, the loss and the gain experience renders. Um, quite the deficient sentence that is, subjectivity inferred, as worth careens inside each of us, regenerating meaning day to day, moment to moment, every second even. What I mean is these experiences are meaningful enough to us that we keep investing time and money and energy to make these trips happen. These doings, these goings, are components of our family ethos. I could do without the ants though, you know? Just this second, I felt a tender dread swell under my eyes, recalling my human brokenness and assenting to the inquest of shame, if only for a moment. See, I cannot actually attain my hopes for myself, for my children, for my marriage, for my friendships, for my God—not without great and perpetual loss. I’m not talking goals: hope. A bit dreary for someone sitting in the blinding sun, dodging winter floods, yes? No, it’s just the sun and the ocean and the why of being here allow me to sit with these emotions for shorter and longer moments and to then stand up again and make my kid a tortilla roll, pour myself a glass of mezcal even, squeezing in half a lime—salt, if I want.

Releasing hours-old baby sea turtles had me spinning thoughts about living every moment while dying every second. Most days it seems I live by hours, dying faster than I can count heartbeats or brush off sand from Sylvan’s face. I’m glad we did it and I’m glad the seagulls were there and I’m glad we watched as some of the little ones were snatched from the sand or out of the water, carried off in beaks made to do such things. I’m sad human impact on this world is what it is yesterday, today, and I weep for tomorrow because it seems insurmountable, this gross tourbillon of ours. At the same time, in the same town, one man breaks open the soft dented shell of a turtle egg, a fast bite, while another man plants one mangrove tree at a time, hoping the crocodiles and snakes will allow him this work. Both are intentional, both cultural, and only one is worth it. These things rise with such clarity, having to do with the hearts and compulsions of others. And then there’s me and my insides, demanding tenderness and grace and new mercies every turn of my head, every harsh tone aimed at my children, every iniquity. Más para mí, I continue in my callowness—until I get where I’ve gotten more than many times, and I tell the truth about myself, to myself, to a seamless God, and to those holding pieces of my spirit. I beg mercy for me just as much as for those baby sea turtles and, yeah, those seagulls too.

Days here are like this: Around 2:30 a.m. about 15 roosters start crowing (or something somewhat similar), 27 dogs begin yelping and barking, and every dang bird sings their own song. So by 6:00, when Sylvan wakes all the way up and starts asking for some food item we can’t possible find here, I’m up too. I suppose I haven’t mentioned the change in our, um, schedule. Well, about a week back Raines decided he was done with his Spanish class through the surf school. It was less of a previously discussed decision and more of a run-out-of-the-school-and-down-the-sidewalk sort of decision. Surfing was all he needed, he said, and he already knew everything his teacher was telling him, so I was going to buy him a surf board—period. Oh. Okay. Obviously I did all these things immediately to appease the eight-year-old psyche who wants Nutella-only tortilla rolls on the regular. And somebody please remind me when we get back that I owe him an iPhone or one thousand dollars—it might slip my damn mind, tired and all. Anyway (I’m not dissociating, just refocusing), the third day after he made his escape, he decided to talk with his teacher, and though I haven’t a clue what was said, they both came out smiling and she kissed me on the cheek while saying something about how precious children are. Oy…uh, and just when I wanted to put him in a box and then put that box in another box, and so on. After asking around for two more days, I finally found Marta, and we love her! She listens and cares and smiles always and wears beautiful dresses her mother makes her out of African fabrics and lives in a third-floor open-air apartment I’m sure I’ve seen in a dream somewhere and actually knows how to teach. If I get there five minutes early, Raines asks for his five minutes. Then after Spanish with Marta, I scoop him up and drive him to meet his surf instructor, David Rutherford, who is pretty much perfect for Raines. And as I’ve never heard David say “Brah” before, I’m not going to blame him for having to listen to that shit all afternoon, every time he addresses his four-year-old selkie-child brother. Eventually I’ll get some surfing photos up. Apparently he’s really doing well. And now, how to say “You’reamazingsitdownbehumble,” and only with my eyes?

So what if you can’t actually see their faces. Obviously, they’re surfers.

At this point in my glass of wine, the crocodiles (we’re going back!) will need to wait for the next post. I feel many strange and wonderful things when approaching marine biology, even just from the shore or the captivity of a boat. I know I could sit and stare at an alligator or crocodile doing pretty close to nothing for hours, and like it. I know this because I’ve done it, and even without any specific data collecting going on. It’s weird and it’s marvelous to love in holy fear. More soon.

Michael Tain & Raines hanging out at Oasis
His game, his rules. Wanna guess who always wins?

least-fav helmet of my life
ours for a few

fireman? Arborist? Surfer?
sunscreening craze

Marta!
Post-surfing Raines
Funeral for a crab

Sylvan’s first surfing lesson

Sylvan said he will go surfing again when he’s eight

Gallo de Mar Hostel, La Punta, Puerto Escondido

Also back at home…our favorite Triceratops was feeling depressed.

precious plastic things

Home & Jeep!
me, most days

Meanwhile, back home in Tennessee: Eeeeek!

FaceTiming Dad from the beach

This beach is 60% metal (La Ventanilla, Mazunte)

Our guide, Elián, took this photo for me so the crocodile would eat him first and then have to go five feet farther to eat me.

San Agustinillo

El río

Riding off into the sunset with some very annoyed horses.

Así lo empezamos / And So We Begin

Posted on February 13, 2019 by sceneafaire under Mexico 2019, Uncategorized

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.

Little man had anger covering up all his tears. Saying goodbye to the Papa we love is hard.

There will never be another Tío Roddy. Saying goodbye through sound-proof glass at BNA.

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.

Batman hat stolen for the moment. He took it back and I had to get a bright green hat that is only very…functional.

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.

Just before he jumped into the darkness! Bioluminescence is pretty rad, btw. Mainly my kid though.

My camera flash reveals nothing extra horrible in the waters. Also, bioluminescence does not show up on photos, I guess.

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:

climbing on the wall right next to the mats.

Please come sit and drink a bowl of coffee with me.

Playa Carrizalillo. 1 million steps down (ask Raines) and it’s worth it.

Mickey Mouse is better than a photo of breast cancer? Not really.

The taekwondo class that Raines is never going to, ever again.

Confirmed, not a Komodo dragon. Iguanas are cool too.

Sylvan made his own Zen Zone at Explora.

Holding onto me as we watch the sun set over Zicatela.

Moments before he peed on my lap in the boat.

And then a wave came up and soaked me, my book, and all our stuff.

A quieter, slower morning. This hanging plant had me missing Banning.

almost post-sunset at Carrizalillo. I nearly missed it because I kinda got knocked down by a wave or a shark.

Taciturn on Cuba

Posted on July 27, 2017 by sceneafaire under Cuba 2017, Uncategorized

I am quieted by the complexity of where we were and what is found and unfound there. There are far too many postures one could take to look at and even feel about the history and the present of this country. Cuba cannot simply be called inexplicable, and I cannot choose one of the thousands upon millions of explanations to tether to my experience. I cannot versus will not because I still stick to a riverbed of my psyche that disallows me my own opinion until I can start with one complete and informed sentence. This is not always or even generally the case with me, as I speak out my opinions with fervor and like to push until I discern resistance. But here, in this place, and even now back home, I am disinclined to remark too much on anything more than our day-to-day happenings. Like I told Ajit, I’ve hardly spent any time there (four trips in a year might sound like whoa, but it’s not enough to start opining on a country’s state of mind) and it is so complex to even attempt to explain well. In some few and other insufficient words, I won’t be providing a distilled statement of what I think Cuba is today because it would be bullshit to do so. So I’ll say this: Cuba is, in fact (heh), a daedel and revolutionary process itself, today and forever. If you want more clarification, go figure that shit out for yourself (or call me and ask me to pour you a drink of my only bottle of Guayabita del Pinar—and then we can keep talking).

So onto our weeks in Cuba

That second week I was still using honey instead of sugar. I was also disenchanted with the three (¡!) deodorants I brought. My sister Abigail was talking about coming to visit us and I was hoping she would. I felt alone, struggling to just be, and we’ll move on from here to keep this less existential for the moment. Raines and I started reading La travesía del viajero del alba [Voyage of the Dawn TreaderI] and apart from Sylvan’s incessant whining about needing to lay on top of me in order to fall asleep, it’s been excellent. This week, specifically on 6.8.17, I want to heal the parts of me that react so harshly to Aaron (see how introspective things already are). I want a renewal for us, and I know we don’t get this without work. Oh, and after a week of no milk, Santiago saw his friend who has a cow and got us a big pomo of leche de vaca. No butter yet, but when I see it I’m gonna buy a bunch and freeze enough for a month. One evening this week, I sat in Rubi’s smoke-lit second floor dining room and talked about finding butter for more than twenty minutes. And it wasn’t just me; they had their own plans and ways about what to do with mantequilla when they found it. Meanwhile, the boys were outside with the mosquitoes, looking for the giant crabs that live in her yard.

Thursday, 6.8.17, is also when Isabel lied to me and my heart felt grey and leaden. I gave her money the week before to go buy some basics for the house and enough food for the week, and she brought back a lot but not everything from this list. Later that day we walked to the bodega and as she paid for 25 boxes of chagrin-inducing matches, she told me she was spending the last CUC of the money I had given her. I knew, or at least felt that I knew, the rough cost of what I had asked for, and I had given her more than twice the amount needed to buy everything. So I acknowledge a twitch on one side of my face and then walk with her back to the house. It wasn’t until the following day that I asked her to tell me the cost of market goods, so I would know for when I went next time, I told her. She inflated the prices of a few items, and even then we hadn’t even made it to the halfway mark of the amount I had given her. She knew it, and she now knew that I knew it. But still she said nothing. I felt sad. My children’s exquisite fits helped me here, in the sense that I was able to tell Isabel that the boys were acting out so terribly that she wouldn’t need to come anymore after that week but that I would pay her for the following week, as we had agreed.

Shall we talk for just one second about the internet situation? Unless I wanna go splice into a government line, I’ve gotta go to Guanabo for internet. Guanabo has an (juuuust one) ETECSA (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A.) office and one public park with WiFi. It sounded liberating to me at first—at the very fucking beginning. Here’s an excerpt from when I went to the ETECSA office, waited in line for 30 minutes, and then sat down at one of their three working computers (this is for the entire city and neighboring towns, by the way.): “So my internet session just got disconnected and now my five-hour card is getting denied. It’s feeling rather impossible to get anything done here. Why am I so frustrated when somewhere in my mind I knew this could happen? Tranquila. So I’ll do one or two more things then leave it for tomorrow, or some other day. Ahhh. I have to at least pay one bill. I could just go to the park, I guess, but then it would probably start pouring as soon as I take out my laptop.” I didn’t feel quite as safe in Cuba as I had during my previous trips. Delia and Santiago seemed pretty wonderful, but some other individuals were opening themselves up a bit more and I didn’t find it all lovely. I remember the first time Delia talked to me about people, and Cubans in particular: She said she really doesn’t care so much about five pesos here or 1CUC (1CUC=$1) there, but really it’s the deceit she hates. Me too. Me too. Me too, Delia.

Let’s talk about my kids’ behavior but let’s not really dwell on it. It is terrible and exhausting and Redemptive and beautiful in moments such as Raines’ limeade stand and Sylvan’s bucket baths. It’s a lot to expect them to eat the same food every day, mayonnaise and weird-looking meat and rice and beans foreverrrr (think Sandlot here). I can feel Raines’ little heart opening to me a tiny bit. Adjusting to a baby elven leprechaun brother has been trying for him.

That second week I was feeling grateful for wipes and how I have access to as many of them as I want at home. And tupperware. I started wondering how long it would take me to relax and accept the way things are in Boca Ciega and the way things aren’t in Boca Ciega. Before and whenever we ran out of cow’s milk, I made powdered milk. Oh, and here’s something, if I asked about, for example, flour, I’d probably get a variety of answers, mainly No hay, no hay [there isn’t any] but if I went to four or five stores I’d probably find some…well, maybe. In my experience, this doesn’t reach as far to apply to butter and cow’s milk. So yeah, every Cuban I ask might tell me I can’t find super glue anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I won’t find super glue if I go looking. Also, tape just unsticks here. Give it up for the tropics.

The day we went to the aquarium to see the dolphins was this incredible disaster that left me like the damp towel we use to wipe off the air conditioner unit in the camper. Yep, just like that. We took the bus to the Microdiez stop, where we then took another bus with Ulises and Isabel (this was before the discussion of no más, gracias) to Havana, to take a taxi to the national aquarium (almost two hours all in all), where we then walked in to learn that the dolphin exhibit was closed until…no one could tell us when. So we walked around and looked at fish and one very cute octopus and so many cats, and then we went to a glorious house of gelato! Ulises wanted us to take a fancy taxi for 40CUC and I was like no, so we got the same fuckin taxi for 15 to take us to the zoo ten minutes away, to salvage…something from this day.

On June 11 I realized how especially down I was feeling. By 9:00 a.m., I’d wanted a cup of coffee for more than two hours but it seemed like so much effort for me to make it and so much effort for me to sit and drink it. Plus, turning the stove on would take at least three dinky matches and would make the house even hotter. See, my spirit was feeling stale and fatigued, to the point that I was no longer fixing my facial expressions to talk about food in an encouraging way for the boys. I didn’t want to eat beans and rice anymore either, and maybe never again. More than anything else, though, I was writhing around in my brattiness because we were where we were, and it was on purpose. I couldn’t figure out how to renew my spirit in order to focus on the resplendent moments of our days, and they were happening all the time around me. I whined at God, believing that he couldn’t possibly ignore that tone and would help me, but lethargy stuck with me, perhaps because I could attach rationale to it. Delia lent us her DVD player so now we can watch 1CUC DVDs that we buy on the street here. My Little Pony for days. So why couldn’t I even smile about that? I’m sharing this piece of my experience with you because it was a jolting element of the trip for me. When planning to head back to Cuba, I knew that I needed help with the boys during the days, for me and for them; I needed space and time to take care of practical matters such as basic work stuff and to begin work on myself; And I was hoping, expecting, planning, determined even, to read and write and further develop my own internal syndicate of even more existential ideas. I never sat myself down, however, to address these expectations and the possibility that they would turn out incompatible with reality. And how, after so many trips, did I let that part slip? Perhaps this is yet one more indication that the current amalgam of life we’ve got going is untenable. So I struggled. And as I began to inhabit this state of drudgery, Raines Wilder was making a beautiful friendship with Delia, collecting cans and bottles for recycling (La prima materia) and apprenticing with her in artisanal shell art. Sylvan couldn’t be found happier than he was on the shoreline or in a bucket of water at the front steps of the house. While my children were drinking orange soda and being offered cups of sugar (uh huh, yes) on the regular, with snacks of cookies always, they were doing just fine. Herein lies the undertone of my codependence: I get energy by supporting others, and I wasn’t able to do this there, not the way I wanted to anyway. One day, perspective is gonna grow me right up. But anyway, it was at this point that I decided we should make a change and go check out the supposedly dreamy Varadero. I knew it would be full of tourists, but I was willing to take a chance on a tiny change for a few days. So our friend Oslián picked us up in his purple taxi and drove us the two hours over on the map. Next post I’ll talk about one of our favorite days of the entire trip, because dolphins really are magical.

Some words from the only time I sat alone on the couch at night

I made it out of the room, the one with air conditioning and sleeping children—out here to the couch, in front of the fan. This house is clean. Concrete and ceramic, and clean. And before I finish this sentence, the two ice cubes I dropped in my glass of rum will be gone. And I like rum (and whiskey) neat, but here it’s, um, otra historia. If I didn’t go a bit crazy not having anything to do, I’d say how could you do much more than sit and talk, drink, smoke the occasional cigarette (like I like to do)? So I’m back in Cuba, and this time with my two ruffian, food-resistant children. Well, I guess they’re eating plenty of bread and rice and cheerios (¡!), so there’s that, I suppose. Today, Delia offered Sylvan a plate of food and, without even looking at it, he retorted “I don’t like it!” I mean, I can barely stomach mayonnaise on bread (yes, juuuust mayo on bread), but I try to figure out a way to be grateful but not so grateful that I get to eat it twice. I truly do love and hate slowing down our days. Four to six hours a day on the beach is preferable for the boys, and I’m fine with it until I use my hands to trace the insides of my skull, the etched pathways and bumpy parts, and then quickly resituate my gaze on two children in the water. And yes, the plan was to have Ulises’ mom Isabel help me with the kids so I could go find internet and work to some degree. But see, Raines has closed himself off to trusting anyone he hasn’t known for, he says, at least a year. We had quite the ordeal yesterday, when he declared that Isabel is the worst person in the world. We’ve even talked about how Isabel won’t be coming to the house anymore, so he can lower his level of resistance to other humans. Challenges of traveling with young children (Also, I miss my husband, damnit.). Tonight’s the first night I haven’t fallen asleep next to one of them, and I’m grateful for these moments on this purple couch.

We got here May 31 and now it’s June 13. I’m thinking about Aaron. Really, he does so much. This past week I’ve considered how grounded in him I feel. You’re welcome to relax if you think this is going to get sacrilegious because it won’t (or reconsider your faith, perhaps, if it seems so to you), but I’ve spent so much time resisting (and not always without reason) living in peace with our relationship. And it’s fear, even though I choose life with him every day. How fucking fragile the planks beneath me have felt for years, and yet I determine to continue stepping. This is not all strength or all fear, nor is it just a blinding love that pushes me on; I am indeed capable of so many emotions simultaneously, and all in the same millisecond even. So I’m working on identifying the whys behind this and, well really just coming up with even more questions about where those originated in the first place. It’ll never stop, and I’m good with that. I have a lot to say about our trip thus far, but I just finished my rum and we’re getting up early to go to the national aquarium tomorrow, so I’m gonna go climb into Sylvan’s mosquito net castle and find a corner of the sheet.

Silky’s Caracol. He made it all the way through our trip, and decided to keep on living in Cuba.

A fisherman’s gift to Raines Wilder. Living with a throw line is no fucking joke (the hook is always somewhere).

not my spirit animal

Isabel y Ulises.

Alamar, from their balcony. This is a tiny clip. There are streets after streets after streets of stacked buildings, all the way up to the rocky edge and water.

Escultor de Alamar / Sculptor of Alamar

Barracuda heads. Alamar, Cuba, 6.10.17

La costa de Alamar, 6.10.17 Ulises said he spent his childhood jumping off this dock

¡Agua de Limón! R’s limeade stand. One guy came back three days in a row, but R was always closed unless he wasn’t.

Big bags of fish and big bags of crabs. All night long they fished, until Santiago went and picked them up. Frozen fish for the future.

This is Sylvan’s glamorous castle

One room in Boca Ciega, Cuba

Hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks

I was trying not to cry and Sylvan was squinting from the sun. Guanabo, Cuba, 6.11.17

This was the same day that his kite got stuck in a power line. He ran back to me crying and I hugged him but told him that was why I said we needed to wait until we got to the beach to fly it. A hug bereft of comfort. A while later, a man called Raines over to him and gave him his kite. He had untangled it, cut, and then retied it for Raines. When we thanked him, he told us he didn’t like to see children sad.

Delia with a bucket of Sylvan. 6.12.17

Piscinita

Atelier, Vedado, Cuba, 6.13.17

Jorge is a kind man and I was so grateful to hug his neck this day. Atelier, 6.13.17

All the way from Guatemala. It was the coldest one, she said, and who wants to drink warm Cristal or Bucanero?

The aquarium of the sea lion and the kitties

Besides the gelato that day, this was my favorite part

Gelato in Miramar

Sylvie y el cocodrilo

recuperating from our day like this:

Delia’s shell art apprentice

For Colleen

Lobster dinner by Delia

On our way to a bad plan

Glo sticks on the beach!

Raines’ first shell art. Papá e hijo

“moving in” to Delia’s work space

Hermanos

FaceTime with Annelle, important topics discussed

Cafetera

In Oslián’s taxi on our way to Varadero

dreaming of galletas

We went to the beach in Varadero only to decide that it was just like the one in Boca Ciega, and then we stayed at the pool after that

Glorious, especially to gleefully drink pool water

Tooth 2, lost in Varadero, Cuba 6.19.17

Showing Tío Roddy his new look

Flowers from Raines

I do not actually like paddle boats. I really do not like them on the sea.

Sylvan told me he wanted to stay and be Captain for longer. So he stayed for longer.

He should practice, since he’s saving up money for his own surf board (since we live by the ocean and not in the woods…)

Not two minutes later he had a big red slash across his cheek. These cats are all related to 1870

Balanced, wouldn’t you say?

very serious catamaran-er

On our way to Cayo Blanco on a giant catamaran

Cayo Blanco and a 3CUC ice-cream cone

Walking until they made me turn around

Cayo Blanco, 6.21.17

He Left Us in Cuba

Posted on July 14, 2017 by sceneafaire under Uncategorized

I was smoking a cigarette on those ceramic front steps. It was June 7 and Aaron had left the day before. One week into this thing and my lungs still hadn’t relaxed to let that salt-soused air in the way I wanted them to. That’s what the cigarettes were for, okay?

This was the plan I had made and he had agreed to: This year it would be me and the boys in Boca Ciega, Cuba, for all of June and some of July, with Aaron holding the rest of our world down. Raines would work with me on reading and writing in Spanish (primary medium: Las Crónicas de Narnia), Sylvan would leave his guileless and delightful Spanglish behind to welcome a flood of fluency, and I would ask myself questions that would cultivate a foundational consonance. These were components of my expectations for this trip, but I told myself they were tiny clips of what our days would entail. Ulises’ mother Isabel would help me with the boys, providing the requisite time and space for the three of us. It would be challenging in identifiable ways, I esteemed, as if to extinguish any further critical thought or planning. Oh, how haughty I can be. Determining through hours and afternoons and weeks wasn’t something I was doing anymore, I mean, even my daily vocabulary had shifted to prove it. External to internal coercion still doesn’t work for me, by the way, even when I feel the light on my face and can prove some beneficial something about whatever I’m doing. This is some tricky bullshit, but scrutinize away if it sets your spirit at peace.

So back to paradise island. Those 30 steps from the house to the beach land in the little pile of premium, superfine successes of the trip. I felt grateful every day for our little white house and its proximity to magic waters. Um, except for that week the boys boycotted the beach and demanded only cookies and shows and NO MORE BEACH. But we’re not there yet. The week we had with Aaron let us figure out how to light the stove and make Cuban coffee (I’m now on a sugar crash I’m hoping will trail off in a few weeks), scout out our ice cream spot in Guanabo, introduce ourselves to Playa Boca Ciega, and have a superhero birthday party for Aaron (42 year olds need piñatas too). You wondering where my romantic encomiums about Cuba are? They are still leveling at the base of my skull, waiting to complete just one communicable sentence before transuding down my spine and into my nervous system.

This first post is too short but my laptop is about to die and I think my heart rate just spiked because I haven’t actually processed much of the wonders and dangers of this trip yet. Also, you might be thinking What a bratty post. She just spent her summer in Cuba with her kids! This is super true, and I have 5 weeks of our days in Cuba to strain, so if you need to ex out of this page, it’s really okay. Until I get back to you, here’s a short clip from my mind the morning after Aaron left:

AM mind-emptying scraps (reeeeeeeeeeally dramatic and without explanation, so enjoy!)

“I’m smoking a cigarette on the front steps of our house here in Boca Ciega. I miss Aaron. He left yesterday and I miss him. The night before he left we had a beautiful time between us and I remembered just a little bit what it is to let him love me and to love him…I guess I remember love–the tenderness, the intimacy….I felt so NOT brave when Aaron left and I feel that a little less today but it’s still there–that fragile feeling. Ulises and his lifeguard friend just walked up from speargun fishing. No fish today. It just feels like too much. My eyes tear up in little waves. So I have no idea how to make this work and I don’t feel at peace and I miss Aaron and Sylvan misses Annelle and Raines lost a tooth (!) and his toenail got smashed under a rocking chair and it came off entirely. But it’s pretty much scabbed and already healing. So Isabel is Ulises’ mother. Delia is so wonderful. She owns the house and her husband Santiago and she live in the back house. They’re 67 (D) and 78 (S). So funny too. ”

The lovely patio at our Airbnb in Vedado, La Habana

After too many hours of travel

Rain watchers

Child on tile

Esposo and 1 out of 2

My cocotaxi driver got out to hang with his friend for a minute. Red light.

Sylvan picked this flower for Annelle.

First hello

Those are entire trees buried there. I told Sylvan he could keep trying to dig them out.

Montado a caballo

La Casita

Evening out the front door

Sun moving down the sky

Getting ready for snorkeling/diving

Papa climbed a coconut tree and brought us something to drink

I kept trying to make any design in my coffee other than Che’s face but it’s impossible…can’t you see it? He’s EVERYWHERE. Heh

Batman vs. Spiderman, I guess

First of 2 teeth he lost in Cuba!

Off to Havana to send Papa home

Sending Papa off in a taxi for the airport

Not a favorite part of the trip

El contento en lo nublado: Post III of more than III

Posted on February 1, 2017 by sceneafaire under Uncategorized

Gray, windy, warm Boca Ciega, Cuba.

The first of two times Ruby got overly emotional was when she talked about Fidel’s death. He was a good president, she said. They mourned his death this way: no music, no celebrations. The skin under her eyes darkened red and she took out a napkin to wipe underneath her glasses. Raúl is of a different mind than Fidel. He has the face of Fidel but he’s going to change things. So I went downstairs and slept until morning.

I wake up when I want to and have a cafecito with perfect eggs, and then a café con leche because. I walked to the store to buy butter, rum, yogurt, water, and cigarettes. I never got the butter, I guess, now that I think about it. And then I grabbed my book and made my way to the green moss landing on the windy beach. Let’s stop making this so informational and move to the postmodern anthropologist dip of my temperament…I’ll lay out some of my emotional reactions. Well, maybe just one for right here: contentment. I felt content filtering in and out of their second-floor conversations, intent on under-imposing myself. On the beach I was content. I smoked cigarettes while reading my Ferrante novel and trying harder and harder to connect my flighty thoughts to proportionate emotions. I mediated this contentment to such an extent that day that when Cusita answered the phone with a cigarette in her other hand and I heard my sister’s distant voice, I smiled a real smile. Kathryn had called to find me because she had spoken with one of our other sisters, who had told her that I flew away the day before. So she went to Aaron, who explained that he knew he probably wouldn’t hear from me until I landed back in Miami, and no, he didn’t really know where exactly I was but my taxista friend Arturo was picking me up and had found a place for me to stay. Imagine at least six feet of peace-sapped snow pile atop my astute, loving, critically thinking sister. Um. So yes, I explained to her where I was, description-wise (Boca Ciega, just outside of Havana, four-story house, Ruby, ask along the way, etc.) and told her that—obviously—I had left some kind of a trail. I mean, if Aaron had really needed to get a hold of me, he would’ve thought, shit, I guess I’ll have to call Banning and Canción and see where they think she ended up, and wait, maybe I actually have Arturo’s contact info (yes, you do, Aaron) so I’ll just e-mail him and see. And then, to Kathryn, “How exactly did you go about finding me?” Oh, she contacted Canción. Muah! Still smiling.

I’m gonna break in here to unriddle the why of my circuitous experience way last year in December, 2016. We’ve all come so far since then, I’m sure we can agree. Closer to God, perhaps, and/or finding ourselves in ever-increasing proximity to a Cheeto-dust bathed hell—Thank you, Nina Donovan. I’m gonna chase it as far as I’ve gotten without losing my breath to shame—necessary and unnecessary prolix will be involved, for those of you who need to set your expectations. It would be OKAY if I had just been tired, so I went to Cuba; It would be JUST FINE if took my Christmas week to lie on the beach in a green one-piece, reading a 400-page novel ’cause I wanted to; It would be UNDERSTANDABLE—and fucking copacetic—if I had taken a break from dreamy camper life in order to sleep alone, nobody tocando mis pechos, no dead squirrels in my boots. In fact (my facts, heh…) I’m coursing through the flux, trying to differentiate secret parts of me before the bad ones fuse to, well, me—Not all of of the secret files, of course, but mainly just the least inconvenient ones. What did I even just say in that sentence? Nice fucking disclaimer, I suppose.

So I’ll just say I recognize a resolve in me about being more tired than I was 10~ years ago and I stay the avoirdupois (inescapable use of this word here) of not having gone further in my own internal investigation—not in an academic way exactly (because, ya know, kids are just not made of the same stuff as that Cultural Anthropology, 3rd Edition textbook. This is not to say that I didn’t immediately begin to develop skills for keeping children alive (success so far, by the way). I am tired because I slingshot from inclinations toward independence to longing for interdependence to caretaking for others’ emotions. So more like a triangle slingshot…um, yes. I know and I know and I know that there is more to me. So before this gets way too me-centric (I know, blog = ….anyway). And so I need to find the vigor to begin where I am. And by the way, it’s probably gonna be like me having to turn in a ten-page paper on Derrida in three days time—and I haven’t been in academia since 2008. Also, don’t compare me to my sister Annie, who is crazy-loca and started law school while her husband is in med school, she has a toddler (Love you, Mack!), and lives in the middle of America. Oh yeah, and wouldn’t you decide to have another baby (Your favorite tía loves you, Noble!) to make that second year of law school more exciting?! I could survive the Derrida paper, I posit, but only because I would download Ajit’s brain into my own and recast the brilliance into my own little words to turn in. And no, I can’t do a recap of all the shit I just spit out. Because I don’t fully understand what this fucking haze that I’m trying to get off the whites of my eyes is—not yet. But that first day in Cuba was contentment.

So more posts to come on Christmas in Cuba, I guess, because I’ve only made it through Thursday. Fotos while you wait:

What evening looks like

evening view from the 4th floor of the house

Dry white whine for the Saint

Rubiceida, Cusita, Idarme

Back to Cuba, Part II…of III

Posted on January 25, 2017 by sceneafaire under Uncategorized

I’m sitting back down in front of this screen again because Aaron took the boys back to the camper and gave me my own evening—showing me love in many ways these days. He’s probably driving up our muddy driveway in the Tacoma right now, managing (like we just keep on doing) to not fall down, down, down into the ravine. Some days that’s the highest level of success I can manage, or so I tell myself when I get to the top—excellent job, try again tomorrow. At least…at least, right? And now back to December, when I ran away to Cuba with healthy antidependent inspiration. I gotta find new ways to describe what desperation looks like when it swamps this filter of a spirit of mine. And maybe that’s what it’s been this season: a deluge of mud and moss and roots and shale, amassing in my lungs and at the back of my skull where my head meets those first few cervical vertebrae. But let’s not forget the life-wrenching (I mean this) love that comes with human (and kittums and pup) connection. It still dissheveles me when I relinquish power, lifting my nails out of the imprints they’ve dug into my palms. So, if you’re wondering, I was in no way deserting my family the week of Christmas. But I did fly to Miami and then fly to Havana, Cuba. Because I decided to, with the help of Aaron, and Mom, who literally packed my bag while Sylvan was lying on my chest in a fever—Thank you, I love you, I mean this. The boys were more than fine on Christmas, covered in love and so much excitement at Mom and G-Pa’s. So yeah, there’s no apology. But concern away, if you must!

Back in Havana, I got to meet Arturo’s mother for the first time, drank my first baby cup of café that week, and released myself to be right where I was. Then he drove me to Boca Ciega, 30-ish minutes outside of Havana, and La Puma made it there just fine, even if it was raining hard down on the glass in front of our faces. We turned around and pulled off onto dark, empty streets. Asking along the way, referencing the house description with the name Rubiceida attached, we got there: a four-story house, 20-seconds from the waves, the beach, the edge of Cuba.

I met Idarme first, one of Ruby’s daughters. She showed me the bottom-floor apartment and I calmed Arturo and affirmed him in his scouting skills. He said See? I take care of you! And then he went and filled their book out with his info. Ruby had agreed to this because he told her I needed to be alone and I speak Spanish and I was his friend, after all, so she really could trust me. That night Idarme gave me the menu for the restaurant from which I could order food when I got hungry. Just let them know what I wanted and they’d call it in for me. I asked about rum and they said I should wait until the morning to walk down and buy a bottle. I started reading my book that night and I never did order from that menu. Shit, I’ll need to add another post, because there’s more—because my time was more than lovely. So much more. See, I wanna go sit with Banning for a few minutes before I drive home in the Fit and walk up our beautiful mud pile.

Fotos para ti

Cafecito Cubano

Primera noche, Boca Ciega

Cocina del apartamento

Salita

Bañito

No way i could ever reproduce this image

Idarme

Casa de Rubiceida, Boca Ciega

Cocina de mi apto.

solita en soledad

BNA>MIA, M+B+C

Posted on July 10, 2016 by sceneafaire under 30 en Cuba, Uncategorized

Sylvan nursed for the last time the evening of June 24, 2016. And then he nursed between midnight and three the next morning. Sometime before 4:00 a.m. I got up, took a sweet look at my sleeping sons, kissed Aaron, and left in an Uber for the airport—scooping up one Banning Bouldin along the way. I had warned her previously about our 6:00 a.m. flight and said she’d be so mad at me but it was the only way really. It must not have registered with her at the time—that cush life, heading up a nonprofit contemporary dance company (http://www.newdialect.org) must really be distracting—because the day before the flight, when she asked me again and I told her, there was this fantastic outburst about the fact that that wasn’t even part of the day. I knew she’d forgive me (I had told her previously about that too), and at this point she has. You have, Banning, you have. So we wandered through the airport, flew in an airplane, did some things about leaving our bags at the hotel, and went and ate sandwiches at Mister Block Cafe (http://misterblockcafe.com) at 10:30 a.m. Oh, and cappuccinos. And then we began.

We moved through this day in a warm skepticism. Or at least that sensation started smoothing over edges and questions of how exactly we were where we were and were going to be where we were going. I mean, dreamy seems like a word I should avoid (my hair and all) but that’s how it felt for the first bit of the trip. We made it back to our hotel on South Beach (http://thefreehand.com/miami/) and sat around their super-fancy yet chill courtyard (equally emphasized), waiting on Canción to walk out of those art-deco doors. She made it. She flew from Detroit, away from her Miela and from Chad, and she came because I asked and she wanted to. Banning and Canción met for the first time and inside my head I said things of hope and fearless prayers.

We were waiting a bit to check into our room, so we put our swimsuits on in a tiny hallway bathroom and walked 1.5 blocks to the ocean (¡!). Canción has this video of me running into the water for the first time and even though it looks like I fell into the waves, I didn’t; I dived—maybe not perfectly timed but definitely on purpose. ahem. We stayed in this suite with a long couch, four bunks, and an avocado tree outside the door. There was so much more to this place but I’m going to stop being detailed on that front and start keeping secrets. So go there (The Freehand Miami) and tell Anne Posschelle that I sent you. I guess I’d like to communicate that each of us (Canción, Banning, me) emanated a particular energy during this trip. More specifically (since this really could be said about, well, anyone), each of our spirits made a low, continuous hum during our days together, with each hum diverging from its everyday: Banning fell, as she does so well, all the way down and up to a place of openheartedness; Canción tenderly sustained the counterpoise of her time away; and I, well, I breathed in a peace that turned to joy that I then exhaled with a cathexis for each moment, each interaction. What a fucking privilege.

Eesh, this isn’t even our entire first day and we haven’t even gotten to Havana yet, but I gotta head home and tap into the trail end of Buenas Noches time at the camper. I’ll continue this ASAP. So until then, Buenas Noches from JJ’s in Nashville. Nostalgia is filling up my stomach so I gotta get out of here.

AM Miami

Canción and Banning meet in Miami

Canción de Rut

Joy begins

Sometime the ocean makes us feel…

Covered in salt

The Freehand Miami

2 Coladas drinking wine

Thank you, Anne, for making our stay at The Freehand so lovely! (and thanks Marcelle and Nathale, for sharing your cousin ;-)

Thank you, Anne, for making our stay at The Freehand so lovely! (and thanks Marcelle and Nathalie, for sharing your cousin 😉

The Freehand courtyard

Little Havana, Ball & Chain

Before we ate tacos, ceviche, pastelitos, tajadas, ellote y más

Before we ate 10-12 tacos, ceviche, pastelitos, tajadas, elote y más

Ball & Chain

Café Cubanos, and just before I learned to understand Cuban Spanish

How Sylvan felt about no más pecho. Cannot handle very well at all (me, I mean)

Nicaragua 2016, AM to PM

Posted on February 26, 2016 by sceneafaire under Uncategorized

If you wanna read about our trip from start to finish (um, sort of), go up to the Nicaragua option in the Menu. ¡Salud!

¿Dónde están los tiburones?

Posted on February 24, 2016 by sceneafaire under Nicaragua 2016, Uncategorized

***critical addition***

One day on the island, Aaron saved a horse’s life. We were on the scooter, just he and I, heading North or South down the road when I saw a foal tangled up in a line. I asked A to please stop so we could help it. There were multiple horses tied to a metal fence alongside the road, just out there eating that free grass and breathing exhaust. Foals are usually left untethered next to their mothers, since they stay close. This guy (whoever owned these horses) tied them to the fence using some sort of telephone wire and ropes. One of the foals had gotten the black wire wrapped around her neck and legs. Nobody I asked knew who the owner was and they all kinda looked at me like, “Oh, that poor soft-hearted chela thinks she’s gonna save that horse.” And I wanted to. But see, I had Chaco flip-flops on so I made the wise decision to send Aaron in my place. Besides, animals know he’s a good one and he’s got compassion like Jesus has, even though he’ll tell you that nothing happens after you die–no reincarnating into brooms or going to heaven or floating off to light; just the end of whatever life you made happen. So we get off the scooter and walk over to the horses. Aaron tries multiple times to untangle the wires, but the horse kept jerking back and pulling the wire even more tightly around its neck. I was being incredibly helpful over on the sidewalk, making concerned sighs and shifting my weight. Meanwhile, the mama horse doesn’t seem concerned at all and maintains a strong nonreactive demeanor. Before Aaron could unwrap the wire from around its neck, the horse jumped up and one of its hooves landed right on top of Aaron’s foot. The fact that he was also wearing Chacos hadn’t seemed to register for me until just then. And his poor pinky toe was bleeding and got kinda poofy. He reminded me later that he’s actually not the biggest fan of horses, as in they’re way stronger than us and sometimes scary. I will say, I was really grateful that Aaron was able to untangle the line and free the foal to live another day alongside a Nicaraguan roadside. I do wish I had been a more effective part of the project though. Good thing my boyfriend is a badass at basically, well, anything. Even in sandals.

***end of addition***

The Corn Islands (one Big, one Little) are just under 50 miles off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. So still Nicaraguan, but with an English/Spanish creole and Miskito spoken, plátanos maduros (por fin), and that clear blue Caribbean water. If I were to stay there for more than a week, I’d need to learn to listen without so much intent and to use the absolute minimum amount of energy necessary… and then take that down three clicks. I’d do just one thing a day, and whenever that doesn’t work out, I just won’t. But I’d definitely find those hammerheads. Pretty sure that if I ever tried to dive, though, I would use all that oxygen up in ten seconds and self-sabotage my way through it…only to attract all the sharks and deadly jellyfish, since they can sense fear, ya know, not just blood. Eeesh. So maybe staring down from inside the boat. But what about the shipwrecks? I’d have to figure that out. Maybe if I did enough yoga and made sure that Sylvan made it to two and that Raines Wilder really was okay on his own with that machete, and that Aaron would keep up the love for what we’ve started for our life.

The night Aaron and I set the kids free and went to another hotel down the island a bit, we met a guy whose mother had passed away just two days beforehand. He took a cigarette and shared our bottle of rum, and then he told us that no, he didn’t go to the funeral; he’d lost his mom and that was everything to him. Money’s not the problem, he said, when I asked what he did for work. “Nothing’s the problem.” Except his mother had just gone. Except that (I added this in my head, but he never said it, apart from the way his head and shoulders hung). Oh, and Aaron and I were able to stay in that dreamy spot, looking out over choppy, white waves at the Southernmost tip of the island, because of Kylie. Kylie loves sweetly and sincerely, and my boys know it. She had offered to give us a night away and handle the tigrillos until morning. Kevin kept Brave in their room, and when people asked, Aaron and I just told them that we left our kids back at the hotel with their machete–they’re resourceful and we’re working on increasing their independence. Not entirely a lie, but.

Aaron and Raines had a great day bumping down nonroad roads, finding baby pyramids and beached boats along their way. I probably should’ve warned them that the pyramid they were looking for wasn’t exactly like the ones we saw in Mexico, ahem. The monument on the island marks one of the eight points connecting the globe. The Soul of the World, they call it. Anyway, it’s about the journey, right, baby? And who wouldn’t wanna ride around a tiny Caribbean island with Raines Wilder + machete?

Before I round down this trip, I should touch lightly on emotions. As much as I tried to say no, no, no to them after Haylie died, they have proven resilient through these years and I’m now working on a more professional discourse about it all. Okay, so the weeks before Aaron got to Nicaragua, I was feeling intensely isolated and vulnerable in my downheartedness. Every day and every night I worked to unclasp my hands, which were subserviently clinging to my fear. My determination ran out of energy before midday usually, and then I would work on focusing on the little joyful happenings, such as Sylvan’s smile and Raines’ forward kindness. I was really concerned that the backwash from the throes of my dispiritedness was making its way under my bedroom door and out to Kylie, Kevin, and Brave.

I couldn’t compartmentalize this shit. And while I generally mind confrontation 100 times less than passive aggression, explaining some of my internal blech to Kylie and Kevin made every single one of my crimson-red vulnerability flags fly up and whip me on my cheek. I care for their family, and was sure that I could make good things happen on this trip–for all six of us. And we did; we really had so many wonderful, golden (Kylie 😉 ) moments, days, evenings, moto rides. And all thanks to rum…jk jk, mainly. But in a big way, I felt so trashed emotionally by the end of the first week that I couldn’t even figure out how to pray (except about tarantulas. I could do that super well). I excelled as a defeatist during the second week. I mean, somebody should really give me a fucking giant gold star for those days. Ugh. Those guys may have a difficult time remembering why we decided to romp around Nicaragua for four weeks in a group of three adults and three baby leprechauns. I’m frustrated that I wasn’t able to lift my head above my own standards and handle things better. I am evermore grateful for the grace and mercy of God, which I somehow ignore until I need it like blood in my veins and skin on my bones. Please guard the hearts of my children from being charred or even scratched by the fruit of my weakness, I pray. Please protect the hearts of others who find themselves around me and could be negatively affected by this shifting grey cloud above my head. I do not cry in hopelessness, but in anger, which means I still have much to do. I know this is not my forever, and it may not even be my tomorrow. So I’ll drink a cup of coffee, make of list of good from my day, and maybe smoke a cigarette every once in a while. And draw near to Him, near to the one who knows well my broken places and will never hold my failures over my heart. Well, yes, these things were difficult, so we prayed and took a shot of moonshine. And then Aaron got to me, and I could feel my hands release their guarded tension and my body stood up with more ease. Oh, and Raines and Sylvan started eating food again, so add that to the pro list.

Um, okay, I’ll jump to our last night in Nicaragua. We flew back to Managua from Big Corn Island, where we stayed at Casa Lucía. Claudia and his mother run a bed and breakfast (found them on Airbnb, fyi) and instead of ending up in sketchlandia as I had thought probable, we enjoyed clean rooms, incredible kindness, breakfast, and peace. The kids all seemed so comfortable there and Kevin felt so good that he got a tattoo. I really wish he had gone with something more like Nicaragua Forever or the national bird or something, but he decided on something more premeditated. So. It’s good though, seriously.

Well, we got back to Casa Lucía just before 6:00 p.m., and I checked with our driver about taking me to Granada that night. It was my last chance, before leaving the following morning to head back to the States. Michael Peters (hmm…) said yeah, he could take me at 7:00. See, Granada is about an hour from Managua, and I had already yawned like five times before 3:00 that day. But we did it. We got to Granada just after 8:00 and we started walking the colonial blocks around the main square, looking for a painting on a wall in a restaurant. “We’re looking for a painting of William Walker’s death,” I would say, and then I said it probably twenty-five more times in various bars and restaurants just off the square. Most people really tried to help, but had no idea where it was. One man, sitting in his rocking chair in his hotel told me, “You will find no paintings of him here. And you are incorrect to say that he was assassinated; he was executed in a just act of war.” Ajusticiamiento. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Maybe you’ve never heard of William Walker. So you probably don’t know that he went down to Nicaragua in the mid-1800s and named himself President of Nicaragua. Uh…well, then he burned Granada down–twice. Eventually he was executed by a firing squad, at least, but it’s kind of a bummer that they killed him in Honduras instead of Nicaragua. Oh, and he’s from Nashville. Go try to find him in your history books and see what happens. Dead, white filibuster from Nashville, TN. He might say he was only trying to keep slavery alive, so if you wanna join in the celebrations of his defeat and death, Nicaragua welcomes you. And KB, we found the plaque but couldn’t find that painting. I wrote your letter while seated at the bar that supposedly used to be part of Walker’s house–more specifically, the jail he kept prisoners in. If you make it there and find that letter, I left you enough Córdobas for a couple beers. Worth a trip, right?

And then we woke up at 5:00 a.m., went to the airport, flew away home to Nashville, TN. Mom and Tío Roddy surprised us at the airport, which was the best, and we all went to eat dinner at Coco’s–even G-Pa! Raines freaked out and melted down while trying to communicate that he wanted to sleep with both of his big knives.

Dale pues y hasta la próxima vez

Enter a caption

BNA-HOME

Finding Ourselves on Ometepe

Posted on February 22, 2016 by sceneafaire under Nicaragua 2016, Uncategorized

We never did throw up. That ferry ride from San Jorge to Ometepe Island had Kylie and I in a terribly trippy state, no matter how fixed our eyes stayed on the horizon. Small, sketch ferry on the way there and then we decided on the big ferry for the trip back, which had telenovelas and took the waves like she knew how. I still felt weird and kinda bummed that I wouldn’t make the best sailor, or even be allowed to try. But we got there, nobody fell off the plank with a baby or a backpack, so we could go find a taxi to drive us where we thought we wanted to go. $25 they all said, and then we were all walking to pick out the coolest ride. $17 won us a ride in a white microbus, and even though my leg kinda got shut in the door it worked and we made it to the beginning of the twenty-minute hike up to where we would sleep for the next two nights. This is all more than an hour and a half after we got off that boat.

I wanna be clear about one thing before I say something else: Ometepe is awesome. The spot where we ended up for our last few nights brought us great peace and settled us down nicely. Casa Istiám, if you ever head that way. Our room had big flowers painted on the walls and then this perfect view to the beach. Brave, Sylvan, and Raines would probably point out that the glass case full of snacks, wine, and sunscreen was the main reason you would wanna stay there. So anyway, we get to the island and get dropped off at the bottom of this haven for people who really like the idea of self-care and all that goes with taking care of your own, well, self, and then yoga and then tiny pathways that go up and up and then wind because getting lost is a necessary part of finding yourself, right? I mean, sans niños and the fucking ridiculous amounts of stuff we brought, I could see myself enjoying 1/2 a day up there just to see the views, walk the paths, and observe reactions when you ask for help with something. But that night when Kevin and I took our last trip up the hill to carry all the stuff we need so much (i.e. Raines Wilder’s piñata that he never wants to destroy) back down to then load it all on a scooter and then on top of Robin on a scooter (he got $10 to help us move), well, that night was a night of good decision making. I hope all my run-on sentences are your favorite…I wouldn’t be able to handle editing this, so I don’t.

So adiós, hippy mountain. Now we get to chill (um, fyi this doesn’t at all mean what it used to for me) on the best beach of the island and watch the boys turn into water tigers in las aguas dulces of Lake Nicaragua. Quick, cool moments include but are in no way limited to: Brave finding the moto helmet of his dreams, which he now gets to take home with him thanks to loving parents; Finding our own (for the morning) rocky cove, where the boys collected rocks and stared at the volcano until vultures started getting closer and closer and closer; Smoking hash with Lorenzo, an Italian guy at El Zopilote who takes care of himself and is maybe happy or maybe just up there enjoying his back tattoo; Meeting Lucas, a kind 30-year-old German who told me that Raines and Sylvan reminded him of him and his brother; ¡MOTOS! Babies strapped to our backs on motos and long rides around the island; El Ojo de Agua: these natural pools were incredibly beautiful and refreshing. I only did the Tarzan swing once and my swimsuit top hung on alright.

We ran into Craig on Ometepe (He was at La Mariposa, too, and was staying at Casa Istiám) and he told us to go to the best restaurant he’d ever been to: Café Campestre. So we went. It was super-mega-ultra delicioso. They make their own pasta, coffee (with a roaster and in the traditional way, in a clay pot over a wood fire), and pretty much everything is sourced from the island. If you wanna cup of their coffee that’s harvested from the volcano and roasted over a fire, come see me in our camper soon.

One morning Kevin hung back on the beach with Brave and Sylvan while Kylie, Raines, and I went horseback riding down the beach. Ron Plata, Tequila, and Flor de Caña–our horses. Ron Plata and Flor de Caña realized that they had two chelas on their backs and did their best to run us into the water, the beach banks, and each other. Meanwhile, Raines is asking the guide to go faster and faster. So we get all the way down the beach, buy chocolate cake, a smoothie, and juice, and then say we’re ready to head back. Ron Plata and Flor de Caña, pointed home, decide to run. So Kylie and I made it back down the beach in the fastest horseback ride of my life. We had reins, of course, but I quickly realized they were just there for a small psychological effect; we couldn’t have stopped those horses, and they were well aware of that. We got back and waited about 15 minutes for Raines to make it back. He did get a chance to run when the boy who was leading him down the beach hopped on the back of the horse and took them for a ride. While I was waiting for my boy to make it back, the owner of the horses explained to me that he has many women, and in fact, that’s how it is there: men have many women and many children. How do the women like this setup, I asked. They like it, yes, they like it, he said with a little smile. Interesting…I’d like to ask them. Before we said goodbye to our horses, Sylvie and Brave got to take a little ride and were very proud.

Now to our last bit on Ometepe. One day Raines had had enough of my mothering and began to communicate his disdain for my bossiness. He packed a bag, put his leaf hat on, and told me through tears that he was going to live somewhere where no one would tell him what to do. You and Papa can visit me there, he said. Yes, yes, we will, I told him, but it sounds like such a hard life and I really would miss him. That’s when Sylvan started packing his green plastic bag and following Raines around his circling path through the room. “Come on, Sylvan, we may never see Mama again.” Tears and tears and his little red undies–oh, my heart. So I hugged him and tried to explain my annoying decisions to him. He still loves me, he said. Mainly, I think they were just missing their Papa way. too. much. And I really had been super bossy lately.

All in all, good stop at Ometepe. It’s really too bad we haven’t figured out how to help Kevin out of his mustache situation yet. One day left, so there may be hope left for Tennessee. One complication is that, even if we get it off his face, he’s gonna have a mustache-shaped tan line there. Oh-la-la.

I’ve mentioned this somewhere, but we really should’ve been drinking moonshine and praying together every day. It would’ve fixed most of the hard things, I believe. Learning, always learning on these trips. My spirit’s been like the sunburned skin in the middle of my back: it’s felt fine, and then stung for days, and is now peeling off in flakes to start the process over. The Lord draws near to the weary. I have let this simmer inside my chest with a glass of rum in my hand more than once this trip.