Coco wanted to make a To Do List for the morning. So, I wrote out the words she didn’t know, and she proceeded to hide in a corner and make her To Do List.

As I worked on the computer, she didn’t make a sound. I could hear pen and pencil rubbing against the tile behind her piece of paper as she worked on the floor. We were both content because when my daughter is occupied, I can dabble at something for awhile.

About ten minutes went by, and she stood next to me and leaned her head against my shoulder. My time was up. When I didn’t pay immediate attention to her, she began to wobble the underside of my upper arm.

What’s that mami? she said.

It’s my flop.

What’s flop?

It’s the fleshy soft underarm of my limb. Even though I’ve lost 45 pounds from the pregnancy (plus a little more), amd no matter how much exercise I do, the flop will not go away. My mother has flop, I have flop, and so too shall you have flop.

She showed me the To Do List. Turns out it was for me. There was a picture of a comb, toothbrush, plate with food, a diaper, and her brother in his high chair tossing food on the floor.

This is what you have to do in the morning mami.

She began wiggling my flop. I warned her: stay away from the flop. It’s just one thing I don’t want to be reminded of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At two in the morning, I’d wrestled with the mosquito net for the last time and decided to sit up in the rocking chair with my son. He was having trouble breathing. Neither of us was sleeping very well.

I’m always quite amazed at how quiet it is at the beach. Considering the odd bunch of characters that clamor to the ocean: surfers, beer drinkers, backpackers, families, teenagers, drug addicts, reggae bands, margarita lovers, babies, and Evangelicals – to mention a few - the nights are usually serene. Even the dogs don’t bark much. The sun and surf tires everyone out.

I rocked in the chair waiting for Addison to be “out cold” before I toyed with replacing him in the bed. The night air was crisp and cool, a delight to feel after a warm day.

I have this funny habit of looking for signs all day. Not placards like the ones of the sign of the road, but odd, quirky little things that might be signs from somewhere: perhaps another planet, perhaps my late dog or father, perhaps Fred Flinstone. These little signs lighten my day and give me the feeling I’m not so alone in the long events of the day.

Across the floor, a light blinked. It walked across the floor. A lonely little firefly had been locked inside for the night. His little light would not attract a mate tonight. He walked across the floor and stopped in front of my chair. Then, he turned right.

His light blinked on as I took Addison back to bed.

 

Depression is a tricky thing. I’ve never suffered from the form of depression that requires medication. But, once and awhile, I get the blues, and they swing deep. I’d venture to say that almost every mother has.

I didn’t take to mothering too well, though I believe I do well at it. Career and mothering go at it non-stop in my head. Can I sneak away to work? Can I sneak away?

I would say one of the draw backs of is: How do I generate an income? Even if I did go back to work, full-time and earned the top in my field, I’d only make about $1000 a month. I made more than that when I signed my first contract at 23 years old. It’s a sad financial fact. Now I could work for the betting industry, but the hours are usually quite late, and then there’s the cost of care. Public schools are an option, but lack a lot. Most here pay for private education.

I know I could do anything if I had to. I’ve done it: cleaned toilets, washed dishes, ironed tablecloths, mixed cement, hauled rocks, waited tables, painted houses – all in the name of earning money. But when I had children, I was knocked out of the money making arena. I remember when my mother received her first social security check: She was docked ten years because she stayed-at-home with “us kids” for ten years. Eating chocolates and watching soap operas I suppose.

is a poor country, though one of the most stable economically and politically in all of Latin America, its still a developing country. Maybe one day I’ll look at staying home and developing a home-based career as a blessing. But I’m still wallowing in blue, and it’s hard to change the color of my spots. I often feel powerless.

I don’t want to be penalized for raising children like my mother was. Maybe I’ll live long enough to see a lobby as big as the oil company for mothers; pensions for mothers; and recognition that goes deeper than a bouquet of roses on mother’s day.

 

As I lay on the bed, careful not to move so I wouldn’t disrupt the eight needles sticking in my chest and legs, my acupuncturist played his flute for the crowd in the waiting room. It had been awhile since I’d been pricked, but with my immune system a wreck and cysts growing on the back of my neck, I decided I better get re-adjusted.

The doctor’s flute playing has improved. The first time he played for me, I was visiting him for an intestinal virus that knocked me down and bowled me over. A few years before, I’d had the same virus and suffered for a week until a conventional doctor found a drug that would work. I wasn’t going through that again, and since I had discovered acupuncture through a problem with my daughter’s teeth, I figured why not?

True, it costs some time and then there is the approximately $20.00 a visit and then there’s the flute playing, but it seems a rational, logical, and simple option to dabble with. And if it works: BRAVO! Problem solved. And if not: the doctors are always ready and willing to dispense the proper drug. So, in my book, why not give it a go.

I’d rather ramble down the road less traveled for a trip of pain relief rather than run right down the highway to the big beast of conventional medicine. - I’m not crazy, I don’ want it to go away. In fact - thank goodness it’s there! My son wouldn’t be alive without it. But I like to save their wisdom for the few and far between.

Last week, I got several massages in my home to help alliviate a pinched nerve in my neck. The woman came right to my home. The cost: $10.00 for each visit. This woman was so considerate and concerned about my neck that alone may have dissipated some of the tension. About half way through the massage, she leaned over and whispered in my ear:

Do you want me to put a chair on your back?

I looked around our cluttered guest room and wondered which chair she wanted to put on my back and how exactly a chair would help in solving my pinched nerve problem.

I repeated the word chair:

A silla? (pronouned seee ya)

She bent over and whispered again:

Arcilla (pronounced ar seee ya)

I thought for awhile….where did I know that word from? Oh yes, I know! It means clay -
she wanted to put a clay wrap on my back. Of course, I said. Clay.

The kink in my neck is gone; my daughter’s teeth are coming along beautifully; even that intestinal virus went away (the next day, and I’m not kidding!); and the little cysts in my neck will most likely dissolve with just a few more melodies on the flute.

Just when I thought I had it made, my daughter threw up.

We’d gotten a movie early: she picked the only two in the video store guaranteed not to scare her. Connie the Cow and Bob the Builder. We had French Toast for dinner. I’d even made it with my homemade bread. The baby’s cold showed little signs of existing. He was "jammied up" and ready to go to sleep.

My computer was on, and I was going to sneak in a few taps at the keyboard (you know, a little "me" time) while Connie the Cow finished up and my son wound down with string of beads he twirled on the floor.

What was I thinking?

Mommy my stomach hurts! Coco cried.

Her and I are butting heads a bit lately because she orders me around. I really do understand her predicament: she’s short and only six, so it’s hard to get at things a lot of the times. But the tone lately…the tone. She’s forgotten that "special word." She also "cries wolf" when nothing is really needed except a attention.

I lost it when she was laying on the couch and yelled at me to: Shut the door! that I’d opened to the balcony. I looked back and saw not a six year in need, but an over sized couch potato sipping beers and eating potato chips who’d lost the remote while opening a bag of M&M’s.

Needless to say, I lost it a bit.

She spent a little time in her room; I went to my closet so I could get "jammied up." After I put down a list of demands (hoping I’d remember them because if she crossed the line, I’d have to enforce them). I turned back on Connie the Cow, and we continued on with some sort of an evening.

When she started screaming her tummy hurt, I closed the
bathroom door on her because I couldn’t bear another syllable
formed in the shape of a whine.

My throat hurts! she screamed.

Bed time, I said.

As I was helping her with her pajamas, up the vomit came. Loads of it. I saw all my hard work: the homemade bread; fresh squeezed juice; yogurt with applesauce on her skirt, bedspread and the floor - why bother?

I’m always quite amazed at how much a child’s stomach can actually hold.
We decided maybe two large cookies before supper was a bad idea. But this is the dilemma I often face: When do I say no to the cookies, and when do I say yes? The whining or the vomit?

Decisions, decisions.