I have three nannies. They all give great care to Addison, but each one is different. One nanny is like a grandma, one is like an aunt, and another is much younger and more like Addison’s big sister. She also accompanies him to school. She takes a lot of pride in what Addison learns. She fiercely defends Addison as one of the most normal, if not more than normal human beings on the planet.

Do kids really know what we are saying? When speech is not mimicked back, it can be harder to find out if a child is comprehending what we adults say. However, Addison can hear a song once and repeat it. Not in words, but in the hand signals and motions. He nods his head to the beat and knows exactly what line is coming up. In his class one day, a teacher was teaching the kids yoga. You know that one where you sit cross-legged, pinch your fingers together and humm? With a prompt from his nanny, Addison was doing yoga. He pinched his pudgy little fingers together, looked up to the sky, and hummed. Is there any chance at all this kid gets it?

The question is one posed by Jill Bolte Taylor - the singing scientist who had a stroke and became her own best experiment. She lost the ability of her left brain. She couldn’t speak or create labels. Life had to be learned from the ground up; the left brain life that is. On the other hand, her right brain was there, being all-encompassing, passionate, present, and flowing with the great life force of the Universe. At least, that’s how she explained it. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, she explains that we need to “step to the right of our left hemisphere.” Bring our presence to each other - not our labels; not our egos.

Addison understands this left brain language. And he is teaching me how to communicate, this time without that part of my brain (which Dr. Bolte Taylor explains is the size of a peanut. A peanut!!) driving me insane with a crazy crop of voices in my head always in charge. Down Syndrome kids, or any child or person with so-called “brain deficiencies,” can easily be tossed aside as not “getting it.” I am afraid this kid gets more than I may ever know.

Amidst even quite times, there’s always something there to remind me of how quickly brightness can turn a little dark. I promised an evening out with the kids. My daughter was giddy with joy. Addison only knew he was going to get in the car - one of his most favorite things in the world. After packing up our gear and managing not to get too wet as we loaded and unloaded our group into the shopping center, we walked around and even had the delight of meeting some good friends.

Coco’s “buy-me-something” mode was subdued, and she was thrilled with a notebook she got to pick out. We walked past bored vendors hanging around outside their store as business was slow. All the female clerks know Addison since he comes to this mall about two or three times a week to play on the dinosaur park play set. He flirted with all the women and blew them kisses. He has a way of driving women wild. Our meal was acceptable and no one spilled much of anything.

We bought a few other things and head for home at the late hour of 6:30 p.m. My garage is skinny and getting in and out takes a lot of traffic management in order to open doors and unload children from the back of a two-seater car. Addison is learning to get out of his car seat and walk over to me so I can lift him out. He stood at the door and played peek-a-boo with the nanny and Coco as they stood in single file down the slender slip of space between the car and the wall. I picked up Addison and pressed my back against the wall to shut the door. I looked down and saw Addison’s foot caught in the door.

Emergency management with children requires the ability to subdue panic and proceed with intelligence, speed, clarity, and calmness. Easy? No. I don’t know why I have this particular talent - it’s not really one I can put on my resume.

Hobbies and talents:

In case of office emergencies - ranging from paper cuts to falls on slippery ceramic to heart attacks - I can attend to the sick and the injured with a the expedience of a paramedic and just the right mix of a mom.

But this I can do. I’ve tended to dying dogs, sprained backs, raging fevers, and major surgeries. For some reason, I just don’t panic. I’m sure the trait comes from my mother. She grew up on a farm where life shows it’s cycles without sparing us our feelings. And she’s lived through a lot with that same matter-of-fact temporment. I knew, without looking, that Addison’s foot was caught in door. When the language caught up to my tongue I yelled:

His foot’s in the door!

Before I finished speaking, I had the door open. Our giddy moment was over as he screamed in pain.

Addison’s legs hang from his body when he’s held. He often goes without shoes. If he had had them on, I’d have never been able to shut the door on it. I carried Addison to a chair, and I held him as he cried that distinct cry of: Man this really hurts! A cry that is much different than: I’m tired. Or, I’m mad. The good thing about Addison’s softer muscle tissue is that his foot bent with the car door like a Cabbage Patch Doll’s would. I could tell the door hadn’t caught that big bone across the top of the foot. He’d be left with a bruise, but no bones were broken.

In just thirty minutes, Addison was laughing and playing with his sister. He downed some coconut water while listening to his favorite High Five song. As the nanny and I marveled at his recovery, he knew we were talking about his feet. He pointed them, in harmony as if to say: Yup. I’m just fine. And with that the darkness turned light again.

Being a parent means I get to be an expert in everything - or at least in the eyes of my children. Coco’s learning a song for a father’s day breakfast. The moment she got off the bus, she starting singing off-key (sadly she’s inherited my genes here) to You’ve Got a Friend. I joined in. She looked up at me because not only did I know the chorus, but I knew other versus, all the versus. For a few moments - before I explained to her that the song was written by one of the most successful female song/writer singers in the last fifty years named Carol King and the album was this huge success - I was in that goddess status of: mommy knows EVERYTHING.

I waited until I got into the house to explain that Tapestry was one of the biggest albums - like ever. I mean, four Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, Song of the Year. Carole King was such a big roll model for me. She did IT back in a time when girls were stuck with imagining what life “could be” like if only we could dress, act, and be more like a man - THEN, we’ll be making some serious money and get all that respect. Carole came out as herself with this one and the world ate it up.

We sang the song a couple of times over. Coco’s already got that kereoke thing down. She tilts her head and does heart-felt hand gestures to the words. We played the song at breakfast a couple of times. Addison clapped, though I spared him the brief history of the great song writer behind the words since he’s only two and would prefer to rip the CD cover to shreds than listen to what I know. I showed Coco the album cover and she said:

She’s got a cat. She’s lucky.

The bus arrived and Coco and I mouthed the words together as she buckled up. Addison blew me kisses as he was plopped into his car seat. The door shut, and I went back inside. The house was quite. I pushed play and listened to the entire album.

Almost every morning, there are three to five dead cockroaches - on their backs - on my first floor. As the kids finish up their breakfast before getting on the school bus, I walk around, broom in hand, in search of carcasses. We’ve all gotten over - to some extent - the icky feeling a cockroach brings on the moment it appears. Addison puts his hands up to his sides, palms wide open, and flutters them with a big OOOHHHhhh expression. Coco will yell out: Cockroach! and in a very matter-of-fact manner, put her shoe on and attempt to kill it. She often misses, and I’m left to follow after the crippled insect and finish the job.

Some things just bring on shivers automatically: cockroaches, humming with your lips together, running nails against a chalkboard, a pee in the middle of the night, or protein drinks. The nannies and I got in the habit of counting them. Four this morning! I got six! Slow night - only two. Sweeping the bodies up is annoying because the legs stick in the straw and when I go to swish them onto the dustpan, several of them are hanging down and I can’t get them off.

Then, someone ALWAYS starts in with a round of La Cucaracha…..

La cucaracha, la cucaracha

Ya no puede caminar

Porque no tiene, porque le falta

una pata para caminar.

Why do they die on their backs? I suppose there is some scientific explanation, but I like to imagine that the ones that make it out to the ceramic tile managed to escape torture within their tribe. Crawling inch by inch with every last ounce of dignity to a place where they can peacefully “cross-over” to the other side. With one last breath, the tip over, ask for forgiveness, and die.

Before moving to Costa Rica, cockroaches were something “other” people had. Not me. Here, everybody’s got them. They do not discriminate. And a fumigation will get rid of a crop under the sink and behind the cupboards for awhile, but they’ll be back. Heck, these blattodeas can live a week without their heads. Talk about a shiver.

I respect this bug’s right to live right along with the mosquito and the flea and the fly. But in my home, I feel like it’s self-defense. The poop can spread disease and can increase the severity of allergies. I suppose I’ll always let out a little scream when one lands on me, but I kill now without remorse. Late one night, I went downstairs to get some water. A cockroach ran across the floor in search of a hiding place. It bumped up against the wall before I could do it in. I wasn’t in the mood to hear that “crunch” from the kill. It ran onto the wall and finally found a place to disappear. I finished the water and turned off the light. I bid goodnight to the insect, knowing this was most likely his last.

As I was packing up school lunches, I read the “communications” book my daughter comes home with every day. It is a green notebook with notes from her teacher about school. It’s quite a good system. If there’s a field trip, or special dress day, or a note I need to send to the teacher, I write in it. I try to glance at it immediately after every school day in case there’s an assignment for me “to do.” I forgot to look Friday, and I paid for it. Sunday night I had to trudge to the market and get a loaf of bread and a jar of jelly for a gift basket for the school’s janitor and lunch lady.

The supermarket was jammed. Why? I thought. Shouldn’t all you people be home on a Sunday night? Especially since it is pouring rain!! It took me ten minutes to find a place to park. I bumped into people up and down the isles, checked out, flipped my sweatshirt hood back up, and walked back to the car.

As the rainy season starts, we get a few good downpours as if mother nature says: Remember me? Do you remember where your umbrella is? When I’m without the kids, I often go without the umbrella and just get a little wet. The flowers here provide a lesson in durability. The delicate ones eventually wash away. A great many like the heliconias have a waxy skin that lets the rain roll off it’s back, much like a duck. Their roots will bind up a clump of dirt so hard, it would take a backhoe to get them out. For a long time, I sought books as one of my greatest teachers. Can’t get enough of them. As Heinrich Mann said:

A house without books is like a room without windows.

They offer insights and vision into the world.

And flowers? This is the world we are. If the world were filled with flowers, maybe we could be as grounded as they are and all that discomfort would just roll off our backs, even on Sunday nights in search of raspberry jelly.

Since moving to Costa Rica, I’ve done what so many other soft hearts have done: rescued dogs. But for me, it didn’t start in Central America. I had this “habit” for years. In the States, I adopted two mutts (while at the same time finding homes for so many others) and lugged them down here in addition to another dog and I cat. Since those have died, it seemed the Universe knew I was ripe to take in a few more. I found Buddha, along with her seven siblings, in sort of a “nest” on a walk one day. Long story short, we found homes for all seven; got most of the females spayed; and took home this one: This really active, high strung, super intelligent one. I think she faked being the shy one in the corner when I would visit the foster home to help pick off flees and bath the wild group of puppies and their mother. When she looked at me with those eyes, I was sunk.

Then a few months later the other one Canella - Cinnamon - hung out in a gutter during the rainy season and wagged her tail as I walked by every day with Coco in the morning. Another long story short, this canine one day decided I wasn’t going to get away (o.k. maybe it had something to do with the turkey baloney I fed her for a few days). Well, she gained enough strength to follow me home with a broken leg. Who could resist a raggedy dog, limping, big brown eyes leading a soulfully wagging tail?

When separation of a family happens, everything must be divided up, including animals. I had to leave the dogs behind. And now with a special needs child, I can’t manage the energy it takes to handle dogs. Just keeping up with the guinea pigs is enough. On the day I left them, I spilled this huge jug of yogurt from my organic food delivery. Buddha and Canela were right there to help me out with the clean up. There are things I miss about the dogs, but I have come to terms with where I am at and let go. I know they are well taken care of, and I even get to see them once and awhile. The best thing they’ve taught me? their complete surrender to this moment. I threw them a biscuit and hoped that I too will be like them: flea free, waggin’ my tail, and totally present. Bark. Bark.

All of a sudden I look at a photo, and I am blown away at how much my kids have grown. Teeth fall out; teeth come in. Freckles sprout; feet outgrow shoes. When I step back, I see miniature grown-ups. Coco limped off to school today because her knee hurt. She twisted it while running. Sounds like something I would say. All grown up. She brings home this homework that’s full of intellectual stuff “we all” have decided is important: solids, vertices, nouns, verbs, spelling, geography…..

Which way is north? I asked her.

That’s easy mom, as she points upwards.

What if east was over here? I ask her, where would north be then? She adjusts her body a bit; thinks, and appropriately points to north.

Would you like to take the compass to school tomorrow? I asked her as we finished up the evening book and talked for a few minutes before turning on the light.

No! Mommy, she said as tears welled up in her eyes and her voice cracked with every syllable. That’s yours, and I don’t want the kids to break it.

Well it might be fun to show everyone how to you learned to use a compass. It wasn’t that expensive, I said. We can always buy a new one if something happens.

She shook her head, bowing in reverence as if I just asked her to reveal her deepest secret.

All right, I said. But it’s there if you’d like to use it.

She opened her brain and said her thank you for all the things she can think of that day.* She worked her way from her family, to things in her room, to her toes, all the way to the Universe. She then closed her brain; locked it with a key; and we said good-night. As I left the room, I spun her globe twice for good luck. If you asked me to reveal one of my deepest secrets, I would tell you something like this: I don’t really care what it is she learns. What I care about is how she contemplates what she is learning, and what she does with the information and how it effects everything in that spinning world. Maybe you could say after all those degrees, and careers, and titles, and all that jazz…I’m growing up with two of the best teachers in town.

*Brain opening is a strange little ritual that evolved out of bubble releasing. It’s possibly too lengthly to completely reveal here, but it gets the child to sleep.

Kids have to put up with all we do to them: paints, art, glue, projects, classes, medicines, rules, and all our goofy baggage. At times I can see Addison just sit and consider it all. After carefully pushing each leaf onto the paper with one finger, he tolerated his mother sticking these cute pink glasses on him. I’m graced he puts up with me.

In Costa Rica, the grocery stores range from those that cater mostly to the Ticos, and there are those that stock their shelves with more imported goods for the ex-pats and the Costa Ricans looking for more goods such as blueberries or garlic stuffed olives or imported chocolate. Every Saturday, I get an organic food delivery to my home from NaturaStyle. The food is fabulous. It’s comes from happy cows eating grass; coconuts swinging in the breeze; vegetables harvested without pesticides. Coco was assigned a project based on a book photographed and written by Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

As National Pubic Radio reported: “The husband-and-wife team wanted to see how globalization, migration and rising affluence are affecting the diets of communities around the globe. Each chapter of their book features a portrait of a family, photographed alongside a week’s worth of groceries. There’s also a detailed list of all the food and the total cost.”

Most of the food we get on Saturday is also in less packaging. The milk comes in a big milk can (the one Coco’s leaning on) like in the old days. I transfer it to glass I’ve recycled. The vegetables don’t come in plastic bags. The vendor crates them in boxes, sets them on my counter and takes the crates back for another use, and another and…It’s a lot of work. On Saturday, I can spend up to four hours cleaning, condensing, and getting all this stuff to fit into my refrigerator for the week. When I’m done, I set the containers to the side and the organic company picks them up next week.

Most of the time, I’d rather have someone else cook for me. When I face yet another load of food, I’d rather go out to eat. But it’s not just budget concerns that keep me thinking about what I eat and HOW it gets to my table. It’s this planet. It’s the planet - you know that thing we walk on - get air from, the water….that planet. I do have to go out and shop once a week to get those other things that doesn’t come on Saturday. But even there, as I’ll write about tomorrow, I can try to reuse, reduza & recycle.

Possibly a paradigm shift will save us from choking on all the plastic and toxic bits and parts we produce. Instead of a disposable society where we have to figure out how to burn, bury, or dump or old stuff, why not make it so it all rots and we eat, breath, and drink it all over again? That could be the ultimate paradise.

In order to get my car back it the garage, I needed to connect my dryer. My good, old car works better during the rainy season if she gets a break from the rain and parks out in the garage. (She’s gets touchy around the wires if soaked.) However, during the dry season we’ve enjoyed the extra space of the garage as “that” extra room every family needs for stuff like: bikes, strollers, coconuts, and Addison’s therapeutic jumping machine; old exercise equipment, and bags of old toys I’ll be donating to someone someday.

I was determined to get the jumping machine, which is tall, large, and ugly, upstairs. In order to get it up the stairs, I had to saw off some of the base. After an hour of sawing, I held up the cut off wood in victory. I disconnected the stanchion from the base, and a nanny and I tried to twist and turn it’s way up to the second floor. After scarping the walls and chipping the stairways, I decided it wouldn’t fit. Back down it went. I gave up the idea of a stylish, modern living room and gave in to a having a stylish, modern living room with that tall, large, ugly jumpy thing in the corner.

In order to get the machine in the corner, I had to move a book case. To move the book case, I had to remove all the books. I pushed the bookcase across the room and swept away about 10 ten cockroach carcasses before putting all those books back. (Would someone please tell me why cockroaches ALWAYS die on their backs??)

I don’t believe the person who installed the washer/dryer hook-ups actually ever did laundry. The water spigots are directly above the 220 outlet. And as all of you know, the dryer comes with a really short cord and washers, short hoses. Since the last muchacho installed hoses that exploded due to cheap plastic and fittings that leaked with every load, I plumbed the machine myself with the help of the other nanny and, of course, duct tape. I finally got help with rewiring the 220 dryer connection (as I am terrified of electricity since getting a shock I can still remember when I was 10).

What was left? The bikes were moved to the patio. And now, the stroller has to be collapsed after every use to fit back in the garage. Coconuts? Tucked neatly in a tina - little tub - on the side of the dryer. The car fits. We can’t fully open the doors, and the hood serves as a place to set the laundry baskets between loads, but we’re in.

A task is never disconnected from another; an action always gets a reaction. A butterfly fluttering it’s wings in St. Louis effects the weather in Alaska. Now me and the kids can get in and out of the car without getting soaked, and the old vehicle just might last another season or two. While I put the last of the books on the shelf, I looked at my little corner of the world. It didn’t look so bad. So, CASAVIVA wouldn’t stop by for a photo shoot. There’s always next year. The dryer buzzed, another load was finished; another day was done.