Anna's Adventures in Wonderland

new blog

2011-10-24T15:04:00.003-04:00

So for everyone who's been following this blog, I am changing addresses. After five years at good ole blogspot, I've gone all the way and I now have my own website, www.anenahansen.com. You can follow my blog there from now on. Cheers!

settled

2011-10-13T12:07:00.000-04:00

The jacaranda are in bloom again. Each southern-hemisphere spring, when they begin to drip purple blossoms across the pavement, I marvel—another year of life in Kenya. This month marks three years here and two with Austin. The former officially makes me “almost Kenyan.” The latter makes me….almost married? Together, they spell almost settled. Not so long ago, this would have seemed a dismal fate. But that was Anena’s life BC—Before Coaching.

Last year my friend Amanda surmised that, having lived my 30s in my 20s (settling down, getting married, caring for my extended family, oh and being incredibly conservative), my life here in Kenya was all about living my 20s in my 30s. It seemed an accurate assessment, as I partied and explored and basically dodged commitment however possible, throwing myself into my career, exploring another culture, every day a fascination—this is just the life I’ve always wanted, a high waiting for me at every bend, no danger of my ultimate fear of living life small. Last week, as Amanda and I chatted while I held her newborn son, the topic came up again. Her toddler, Nico, is staying with me while she and new baby Miles settle into a routine. Last weekend Austin’s kids came out as usual, and instead of spending my Saturday night partying, I hung out at home with my boyfriend, four teenagers, and a two-year-old. It was just what I wanted. The verdict is in: I am living my 30s in my 30s at last.

Not to put too rhapsodic a point on it, coaching has shifted my life at the very foundations. It prompted my supposedly temporary move back to Mlolongo, where I have fallen in love with leading a daily family life with my children; it instigated a subtle interior shift, cycling from the go-go-go external life to this slower, quieter, sweeter life. My utterly-flexible job has adapted well to spending just a couple days a week in Nairobi, and the rest of the time I’m home, waking ecstatic in the mornings to take tea at my sunny desk, bent over my laptop, thrilled at the prospect of another long day working at home. When I get tired—as I often do, lately; I think it’s part of the drawing-inward—I take my laptop back to bed. When I periodically venture back into Nairobi, the noise and chaos shocks me, and after a couple days of it I can hardly wait to be home. In this sense I suppose it could be argued that I am living my 60s in my 30s, but I don’t care, because I’m happy—and while I’ve been happy pretty much ever since coming to Kenya, now I am also stable, and that is another whole world.

What I never knew, because I never slowed down long enough to find out, was how deeply satisfied I could be by this life. It’s not exciting. It doesn’t have fixes. When my crap comes up, I am compelled to deal with it. But stability is its own reward. Here in this quiet life, I take time to pray. I meditate. I’ve taken control of my diet, finally going gluten-free like I’ve been swearing for ages to do, and caffeine-free, and sugar-free too, hell I’m pretty much free of everything toxic with which I’ve been seeking immediate-gratification comfort fixes for so long. I hardly ever drink—by far the most shocking fact of all. And yes, I miss it…but not much. I don’t miss the partying. Living settled and centered is a whole different way of being, and I like it. Who’da thunk.

My coach John says that all the wonderful things coming into my life right now are a result of my living “yes.” My work is thriving, with new opportunities currently opening up in Sudan and South Sudan, and my novel is with its final round of critique readers. But the biggest place I see “yes” changing my life is with Austin. Ever since I finally stopped hedging my bets and gave him a big committed yes, our relationship has been amazing. HE is amazing, this gem of a man, possessor of a thousand treasures I almost overlooked. This morning in the shower he pumice-stoned my feet, for crying out loud—bending over to hold my leg like he was shoeing a horse, completely focused on his self-appointed task of smoothing my feet (he even attacked the brown patch on the back of my left ankle; I had to explain that those are freckles and they aren’t going anywhere). He constantly displays his love for me in simple, meaningful ways, and I can’t get over being in such a healthy, mutually-nurturing relationship. I feel like a 14-year old with her first boyfriend—I catch myself silencing mid-sentence to watch him walk toward me, dreads down, stride relaxed, and I grin like an idiot because I am thrilled all over again that this extraordinary man is my partner. I am grateful every day that he was patient enough to give me time to realize he was what I wanted.

Yesterday, during this week’s two-day venture back into the world, I was at my favorite Nairobi café, working on an article I’m writing for a US conservation magazine about Wangari Maathai, the famous Kenyan conservationist who died two weeks ago. Suddenly I had one of my moments when it’s like I’m looking objectively at my own life—I saw myself, peaceful and content, writing an article for a magazine in the US, living on the other side of the world. Joy swept over me as I realized I am living my dreams. I am doing exactly what I always wanted to do. How many people get to say that?

Today I’m back home, exhausted from a couple busy days of meetings and research and writing, ready to recharge and so, so grateful for this quiet space. I’m about to get in bed and watch a documentary about Wangari Maathai for research—how great is it to make money lying in bed watching movies?

Not such a dismal fate after all, this quiet life. The past couple years of living my 20s have been fun. But I’m so ready to move on. To move forward, committed to my partner, invested in my children, challenged by my work, and dedicated to my wellness. I was a little panicked when I sensed myself shifting into an inward cycle, but I’m relaxing into it now, enjoying my forays out into the big bad business world and then scuttling home to focus on my inner life—a healthy, happy, harmonious, balanced way of being. If this is what it means to live my 30s, I have no complaints.

Austin and me on a recent trip to western Kenya, visiting his rural boyhood home.

Getting some baby therapy with Amanda's newborn Miles.

At Family Pool Day: Mama and Baba sedately read the newspaper.....

while the kids take Nico in the pool...

and Salome discovers karma's a bitch when Wambui and Beautiful gang up to push her in.

And a little more baby therapy for Tata Anena! Miles naps contentedly while I write....and we're both happy.

sense of place

2011-08-09T13:09:00.011-04:00

(written Saturday 6 August)

Today I found a photo of the house on the hill. Taken the autumn after she died, the morning glories she and I had planted still climbing the bricks, the purple ribbon she’d hung still dangling on the front door, the white Christmas lights she’d strung still glistening in the bay window. For so long we tried to keep her there. She was the warmth that characterized our home and the anchor that sent me confidently out of it, free to spend my 20s exploring because I always knew she was there creating that safe space to return to. She grounded me. I’m 34 now, I live on another continent, she’s been gone five years—but I have never stopped aching for the home she created, and I don’t think I ever will.

Instead I am now creating that security for others. Bizarre. My relocation to Mlolongo has buoyed my daughters, who are ecstatic to have Mama in the home again, and during the school holidays Austin’s kids are staying here as well—our big blended family, and a new batch of volunteers, packing my little house to the eaves. I fantasize sometimes—okay, often—about having my own home again. Quiet. Empty. Serene. No one yelling; no TV blaring; no cell phones ringing; no one knocking on my door. But I know the truth: I’d be lonely as hell. My friend Francesco visited last weekend, and Sunday night as we presided over dinner, cooking and baking for a crowd of kids and volunteers who chatted and laughed and played and were so happy, I saw my life through his eyes, and it was warm and vibrant and full of love. And I can’t take that for granted. (Though I still can’t help fantasizing about a quiet house, either.)

This life of motherhood keeps catching me by surprise. I guess because I still don’t think of myself as a real mom. I have these kids, sure, but they’re old enough to mostly take care of themselves; I just fill in the blanks. And then come moments like right now, writing on the floor beside Beautiful’s bed, where I’m keeping watch as she shakes with fever and chills, rubbing her back as she pukes in a bucket. These mom moments. There are very few people for whom I would willingly empty a puke bucket—but when it’s my kid, hell, close association with vomit is just part of the package. Which is when I’m caught by surprise. Because that’s something a real mother would say.

I spent the day with the family at a kids’ festival in the national park. Austin was coaching a tournament, so Amanda and I went together, I with five charges, she with four, and I spread out a blanket from my mom-bag, and she doled out wet wipes from hers, and we sat and chatted while our collective children sang and danced and ate junk food and had a grand old time. By my standards it was a pretty crap festival—the organization and management was dismal, and it was a three-kilometer hike from the entrance to the festival site—really? for a children’s event? who the hell thought that was a good idea??—but our kids found the day delightful. So, despite traffic jams, and massive lines, and grown adults pushing to get in like impatient children, and the tedious hike, and expensive food, and the baking heat, and the dust, and incoherent programming, and let’s not forget the hour-long, thousands-strong, every-man-for-himself “queue” (a.k.a. zoo of mayhem) to catch a shuttle out at the end (since no one wanted to do that godawful hike again)—despite all this, my kids came home happy, declaring it to have been a fabulous day. And somehow, I look back with satisfaction as well. Because, miraculously, when your kids are happy with their day, you sort of end up feeling happy too. Even when you’re not a real mom.

Though I crept one step closer today. It happened in the zoo-of-mayhem at the festival close, as I was keeping tabs on my particular contingent of fuzzy black heads (parenting black kids is terribly challenging in a crowd), and it came from nowhere: a girl behind me called for her mother, and I answered. The child stared at me in befuddlement. I stared back. Realizing I had just crossed another pivotal boundary, that point-of-no-return in a woman’s life when someone else’s kid says “mom!” and you answer. Because you are so accustomed to answering to that word.

I have to laugh. The closest I’ve come to being pregnant is an occasional day-late period that always had me thanking Jesus when it finally arrived. I got divorced, I started a career; I have my fingers in various development-work pies. I party on weekends. I hide in my room and ignore my children when I am overwhelmed. I snap at them when I’m crabby. I’m fond of devoting Sunday afternoons to a bottle of wine and my manuscript. And I swear a lot. Why am I answering when a girl calls “mom”? I’m pretty much the anti-mother!

But cripes, I pack a mean mom-bag. I protect my children. I provide for them. I kiss them good night. I yell at them. I spend time with them. I instruct them. And I love them. Starting to understand what everyone says: that you can’t comprehend it until you experience it, what love compels you to do for your child. What motherhood means. Even pretend-motherhood. Even mine.

When we got home tonight, Beautiful, coming down with her flu, collapsed into bed, while the four non-ill children and I took over the kitchen. In half an hour we whipped up pasta, sukuma wiki, beans-and-veggies, and bread dough. And during that half hour, I was so happy. Just being with my kids, doing something as simple as cooking together. Eventually I went in the living room, where Austin had arrived after winning his tournament, and I curled myself on his lap and sighed, “we have the most wonderful children. We are so lucky.” My co-parent, this gentle man who demonstrates in wordless and powerful ways his love for me, smiled and nodded, squeezing me tight. Austin and I have grown closer these past months, as I have devoted myself more consciously to the work of our partnership—prompted primarily by the deepening of my commitment to my kids, which compels me to keep my relationship with their father strong. I am discovering more and more the capacity to make choices for the benefit of my family, even at cost to myself; and accepting more my responsibility to do so, if I am to be worthy of the word “mother” as it was modeled to me.

The commitment required to maintain a family is a constant challenge for me. But I remember how it felt, going home to my mom. She devoted her life to our family. And it meant everything. I think of this as the kids giggle over a darts game, as we cook together, as I watch them dancing at a festival, as I wash out a puke bucket. My mother was the foundation of our home, the source of our security—and now I am the foundation of mine. Worth the effort, even if I often have to choose it, consciously, all over again—to stay instead of walk, to open instead of close, to love instead of judge, to give instead of withhold. Being a mother is HARD. But I freaking love my children, and their father. I love facilitating security in the lives of kids who have had anything but. And I am proud as hell to carry on the Janice Hansen legacy of creating a safe and welcoming home from that love. Somehow, pressing my palm to a feverish forehead, or receiving the goodnight embrace of a happy, secure child, or even sitting patiently through a horrific dubbed-over Mexican soap opera that holds my children entranced, I am part of something bigger than myself, something that makes my 34-year-old, biological-child-less, transplanted-American self complete.

It never stops catching me by surprise.

Grace

2011-07-20T09:55:00.002-04:00

Last night, in my dream, my mother. It was how I usually dream of her—she had been dead, but she wasn’t anymore. Instead, healthy and well, living in a big, beautiful house, happy. As always I was so relieved: thank god, the dead part is over, you’re back. You’re back.

I woke and cried. Wherever she is, heaven, spirit world, ether, I suppose she is shaking her head that I even care so much; with long-term perspective, it doesn’t really matter. Just a little separation. But long-term perspective is not one of my strong points.

Instead I spin myself around inside tornadoes of immediacy, how I feel now, what compels me in this moment. At times a slave to my own feelings, except that my personal coach debunks this: “oh my god I’m a victim,” he laments, “I’m a victim of myself, I can’t do anything about it!” And I acknowledge the idiocy of my excuses, the self-serving deception—justification for doing whatever I want in any particular moment. The befuddling tendency of humans to do the things we know hurt us most, because in that moment the drama, even perhaps the pain, nourishes some deep wounded place. This is what I am learning to heal.

Recently, for a month or so, I was settled. In June I moved back out to Mlolongo—a big adjustment, but a good one; with downtown destinations once again an hour-plus matatu trek instead of a quick jaunt in a taxi, I reprioritized, cut out the activities that are time-wasters, refocused. I spent more time with Austin and our kids. I spent less time (and money) going out. It felt good. Peaceful. I felt wise and Yoda-ish in my serenity, as if I had artfully aligned my life, had shucked the artificial skin of fixes and thrills, had settled into the mature, dignified, stable 34-year-old mother and career woman I periodically assume I should be.

And then, this past week, the rebound. All weekend in party outfits, giggling, dancing, staying up half the night, groggily staggering around the following morning. One hit after another, of attention, of crowd energy, of that drama-loving place that thinks now I’m something, just because I look great in this dress, just because I’m part of the party, just because.

And both sides are real. This is what confuses me most. The settled-ness, the partying—both reflect authentic sides of me. One is more socially appropriate; at 34 I “should” be a settled mother and breadwinner….right? The other is more fun, the thrill-seeking girl that languished inside a socially (and religiously) appropriate persona for 25 years and still hasn’t gotten her fill. The latter could certainly be perceived as self-destructive, at least from the former’s point of view. But the former always reaches a point of unbearable suppression and bursts out desperately, gratefully, as the latter.

This is where some long-term perspective would serve me well. When I’m 90 and I look back, what will I be glad of, what will I shrug away? I have very few regrets in my life; the bad decisions are the best teachers, and I’m gracious with what’s past. But I don’t want to run headlong into stupidity and self-destruction, either. At 90, which of these long-ago experiences will I approve and which revile?

When I was 20, attending a deeply conservative Bible school, I was painfully in love with a British boy named John. Our mutual affection was illicit—dating was not allowed, lest attention be distracted from pursuit of God. One winter night, during a church convention that had packed the campus with visitors and thrown off the usual routines, John and I crept down the driveway; we didn’t plan it, it just happened, two people compelled by the yearning and angst of young love. I stood under the moon in the bitter cold, my Bible and songbook clutched to my chest, and he bent to rest his forehead on the books, exhausted. I dragged bare fingers through his fine blond hair.

We didn’t mean to go so far. My hand on his head, two young, impetuous people, of course we couldn’t control ourselves; of course he straightened and captured me in his embrace, books and all. For perhaps five minutes we stood with arms around each other in the bitter cold. Then pushed away. I ran back to my room, stricken. I had hugged him. Willful. Prolonged. A blatant violation of the rules—we were not to date, and certainly not to touch! The shame was crushing. I fell to my knees on my pale green carpet, penitent, but it was late, and I was tired—too tired to repent as deeply and self-chastisingly as I ought. Yet how could I tumble comfortably into my bed when I had committed such a disgraceful act? I opened the door of my tiny closet and climbed inside, crouching uncomfortably atop my shoes. I slept that way, an act of penitence. My misery and discomfort an appropriate recompense for the awfulness of my disobedient ways.

That was how I judged myself in the old days.

The people with whom I partied this weekend were Ismailis. A liberal Muslim sect, and I was fascinated to hear their stories—they’re like Muslims with grace. They don’t have to do this, do that. For which reason, of course, most Muslims revile them. But I was riveted. Remembering how it felt to have that community, to be part of a body of believers who share the most intimate longings of your soul—yet without the judgment and self-loathing, the unending litany of thou-shalt-nots that formed the inner soundtrack of my first 25 years. You failed. You sinned. You’re not good enough. Go sleep on your shoes to show God you know how much you suck.

I try to nurture myself now with tremendous grace. My church taught grace, but it was only words to me until I left; finally, away from the rules and the judgments, I discovered what it was to be forgiven—by God and myself. I catch myself on a Saturday night in a short pink dress and tall heels, 2 a.m. at a club in Nairobi, the sidewalk outdoors crowded with the wretched poor, the people I came here to help, to love, while I’m on the dance floor tossing back a tequila shot and pretending not to relish the men checking out my legs, still wondering inside am I good enough yet—I’m gracious with this. Wrapping up the deep wounded part of myself in arms of love and acceptance that don’t judge, that never say thou shalt not or you’re not enough. And then opening my heart to the long-term perspective, to letting go of the old sad stories that aren’t serving me anymore and moving ahead into new ways of being. So much better than sleeping on a pile of shoes.

So maybe my long-term perspective isn’t perfect yet. Maybe my inner 90 year old hasn’t shared all her secrets. Maybe I will always carry an ache for the community I lost, and maybe I will always swing back and forth between settledness and thrills. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe each step is leading me farther than I realize, and I can give myself credit for how far I’ve come.

62

2011-06-16T15:58:00.003-04:00

I have to stop and do the math. Born in 1949—we filled it in on a hundred medical forms: that means 62 today, in another universe, if she had lived. A vibrant spark, a complex and inspiring soul. Her being my mother was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. She was the source of my creativity, my compassion, my open-mindedness, my enthusiasm. I remember her as marvelous.

Will my daughters? My younger was diagnosed last week with TB, an early detection this time—she says her school is full of coughing girls. (In my New Hampshire girlhood, we brought chicken pox home from school. In Africa it’s tuberculosis. Geez.) I still felt guilty, as if it reflects on me somehow, for both my daughters to have been in the path of somebody’s infected droplets this year—lax mothering, not to sense the moment someone coughed on them. (Austin, insistent: “you are a good mother.” Steadying as hell.)

The girls proposed a visit to the witch doctor in Tanzania, to address the TB and other ills. I received the suggestion with a straight face; even agreed to discuss it with Baba. Whatever my other failings as a parent, I am able to discuss witch doctors with my African teenagers without sarcasm or disdain—nobody understands better than I the desperation of hope. But I don’t ever want to hear anyone complain that supervising a field trip for a class of first-graders is tough. (Ha. Give me witch doctors any day.)

These past months I am inhabiting motherhood in a deeper way, internalizing it, drawing my daughters beneath my skin. Not long ago I read an admonition from a woman who was a powerful spiritual leader to me after my mother’s death: she urged parents to consider whether their children feel that they are loved. It stopped me short. I tell my girls I love them, but do they feel it? Do they know it? I was ready; to take it up a notch, own that my love has to be bigger than words and gestures, more than providing for them, than making an appearance when it suits me—love is showing up for them, especially when it doesn’t suit me a bit. It requires a greater sacrifice than just the practical investment. It means being here in the home, listening to them, encouraging them into their potential, even discussing witch doctors. It means putting someone else’s needs first—not a hobby of mine, post-divorce. Yet scrabbling into this new way of being has brought a richness I would not trade, new connection with them, new fulfillment. One more level of understanding the challenge and reward of parenting; one more way of marveling that these girls are in my life.

What do you mean you have daughters!, people exclaim, and I explain it, as best I can, but two teenage orphans I met when I was new in Kenya will never come close enough. I say, if I’d known what I was getting into I would never have done it. I say, thank god I didn’t know. Or I’d have missed this. Two almost-grown girls laughing Mama, smiling love you too—once too beaten down to speak, now un-silence-able. I am every time amazed at their trust, their love. Motherhood isn’t something I looked for so much as stumbled into by accident. I would never have known to wish for this. How grateful am I that I got it.

This week, all five children, mine and Austin’s, for Family Pool Day; four girls and one boy, hopelessly precious, the small children begging me into the chill pool with them, the older Eliza quietly unattainable, and my daughters laughing, sipping beers, Beauty resplendent in bright purple, Salome in bright blue, these girls that are becoming women, these girls that silence me with wonder: they’re mine, somehow, though I still don’t know exactly how it happened. The technicalities, sure; Beauty and I relayed the tale of how she came into my life, and this is one of the joys of adoption, because how many parents get to sit around with their kids sharing the story of how they all met? I love the choice of adopting teenagers, girls old enough to have an opinion on the matter, a commitment on both sides. They’re the best accident that ever happened to me.

Lately I address them with her nickname for my sister, little bear, one more unconscious way I emulate her, one more way I knit her in absentia into my experience of mothering. I open my mouth and Janice Hansen’s words come out: If you want to talk to me, come where I am. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I pull them close, possessive hand on that stiff black hair, on that silky brown skin—and they know, god I hope they know, that they are loved.

I always knew. Finally, I hope, I am learning to mother like my mother.

It’s the birthday present she would have most loved to receive.

chosen

2011-06-09T11:01:00.009-04:00

My children call him Baba. It’s taken this long—over two years of parenting these two teenage girls—for Mama finally to be their default for me, but Austin was Baba almost from the beginning. How cautiously we have carved ourselves into the shape of a family, almost as if we expect a challenge to our claim. But I maintain that family can be chosen. Till death do us part. So I hand him the phone: “Austin, our daughter is calling,” and it takes him a moment—he doesn’t need to complicate things with titles; he simply loves the people in his life—but to me, these words matter. Our daughters. That they are my chosen children, and he my chosen co-parent. I called him a few weeks ago, after missing Salome’s birthday party when I spent hours stuck in a traffic jam, and she was going back to school so we wouldn’t be able to reschedule, and I felt so guilty: “Austin,” I lamented, “please tell me I’m not a bad mother,” and he exclaimed, “ah, you are a good mother! You are a good mother!” I who have never given birth discovering how much more you can love a man, not only for being a father to your children, but for partnering you in being their mother as well—who knew this was so sexy?

In a thousand ways, he requires that I reconsider my beliefs around love. He looks nothing like what I thought love would—I had no idea it could be a man slicing tomatoes into his palm, preparing dinner as I type beside him: “do you want me to help?” I ask, and he urges me, “you work, just work,” because it’s enough for him that I’m here, feet propped on his coffee table, a Nigerian soap opera playing in the background, the two of us inhabiting a space together. Is this what love is? I’m passionate about writing and creativity and spirituality and wellness, and he’s passionate about football, football, football, and football. But we are honest with each other, respectful, and deeply supportive. We cherish one another, and we show it.

Yesterday morning he stirred when I answered a phone call; we had disentangled in our sleep and he pulled me close without waking, a wanting-ness I always imagined must exist, an enough-ness simply for being together. In the shower he washed me wordlessly, diligently, as if it was a task he’d been assigned, as if I was his child. At the kitchen sink I finally cried, as I was washing dishes and he was dispensing the last of the tea, because I was trying to give the last cupful to him and he poured it for me instead, and suddenly I was in tears, astonished by the extent of his kindness. Cherish looks different than I thought, as well. Plenty of men have tried to be my boyfriend. Only Austin has loved me as I am.

A few weeks ago I told him how much I love him. He smiled the gentle Austin smile. “You always accept me,” he replied. As if this was the missing piece.

Love is a puzzle to me. To enjoy Austin without needing him—is this what love is? It was always powerful, painful; a craving, a fix; a tool, a defense mechanism, a comfort, a weapon, you owe me this because you’re my, a series of checks and balances, obligation, security. But it’s different with us, simple, white fingers in brown as we ride the bus, as he laughs into the phone to a friend, wacha!, and I look out the window at the sunny Kenyan day and feel the sufficiency of us. You always accept me. I wonder at times if I’ve ever really been in love. If my tendency to label as love what is really addiction means this is a dead end, that I don’t fall in love, that I won’t—that this is as close to the old supposed in-love-ness as I’ll get. But then, if all the intense yearnings weren’t love, if the need was just that, then maybe this is love, to be content, to trust, to relax. To be truthful and vulnerable. To know the way he likes his eggs and how much sugar he puts in his tea. To realize the word, bibi, that he often says when we are in bed; I always thought it was his way of saying “baby,” but it’s not, it’s a word for wife—yes bibi I love you, and this is why I was in tears at the kitchen sink yesterday morning, because it can be this way, safe and restful, it doesn’t have to be shot through with anxiety and not-good-enough-ness and a terrible fear of my own unworthiness to be loved. He pours the last of the tea into my mug and I realize that every single gesture he enacts toward me is love. There’s enough, with him. The overarching quest of my life. There’s enough.

Yesterday I called him Baba myself, the dread habit of parenting—too much use of “Baba” in the third person when I discuss things with the girls, and next thing I know, I’m second-personing my partner with our children’s title for him. Beauty and Salome speak often of our marriage now, inserting it into conversations, teasing us, urging. Austin and I don’t discuss it, but I like when our daughters do. It feels like family. The chosen kind.

Community

2011-05-25T10:39:00.000-04:00

(written Sunday 22nd)

I keep learning and learning about Kenya. And the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. I vacillate, still—at times enchanted by this place, at times dismayed. A week or two back I had one of my moments, rare, of wishing I could pack it all in and just get on a plane to the US already. No more struggling to build my life, to find my way; just go home and be….complacent. If I didn’t know I’d drown in my own lethargy within two weeks, I might be tempted.

But life in the US never held this purpose. Never this sense of vitality, of constant exploration and discovery. This is the drug I cannot live without. In the US I spent years wandering through my own life; in Kenya I can’t keep up, can’t possibly fit in everything I want to do—I could work full time, volunteer full time, and socialize full time, if only such a thing were possible. And still I’m restless at moments—Kenya begins to feel small, and I send my CV to companies that would require me to travel, around Africa, around the world. At other times, I’m so grateful for my community here, I can’t bear the thought of being anywhere else.

Several weeks ago I had drinks with a friend of mine, a highly-respected Kenyan businessman, to whom I had the gall to gripe about Kenyans’ lack of philanthropy: why is it, I fussed, that we westerners trundle in here and bust our asses running charitable programs of all sorts, while comparably well-off Kenyans seem intent merely on scrabbling to the top of the heap without regard for those around them. My friend, ever patient with my American perspectives, ever firm, explained to me a very basic principle: no, Kenyans aren’t philanthropic as a rule, but this doesn’t mean they’re not helping each other. They simply help each other differently. The most typical version of this is personal financial assistance—any Kenyan who’s made it to a comfortable middle-income job is likely supporting numerous siblings, cousins, and their offspring, paying school fees for multitudinous nieces and nephews, paying Granny’s hospital bills, paying Cousin Frank’s rent. They’re less likely to spread their resources like scattershot on programs for strangers; they take care of their own—which is why having a community matters so much here. Being part of a community entitles you to ask for help. I told him about the housegirl across the compound who’d come knocking on my door, asking me for money, and he shook his head: she should have asked inside her own community; she has a job, her employer is part of her community, she shouldn’t bring her needs to me. When a stranger does—when a woman chases me halfway down my long driveway, begging me to pay her kids’ school fees—it probably means she has no one in her community to whom she can go for help, no relative who scored a decent job. She entreats the unknown white woman for money not simply because she assumes I’m rich, but also because she is aware of my cultural context for helping strangers.

So much to learn. I’ve barely begun.

I’ve become very aware of my own need for community here—not to support me financially, but emotionally: because I’m single; because I moved to another continent; because the community that was my strongest, safest source of identity and acceptance was lost to me when I left my church years ago, leaving a hole nothing will ever quite fill. They were the people who’d known me since I was born. But my opportunity now is to find people who know and love me as I have become, in my entirety. My only U.S. experience of this was my women’s writer’s group, dynamic, warm women who accepted me powerfully. In Kenya, I am spoiled with genuine friends who know me as I am; I am spoiled with acceptance. From the Am Cham, to my social circle, even to my gym. Yet at the same time, I stand out everywhere I go; my otherness will never go away. I could learn a million things about EveryKenyan culture, understand it from the inside out, but I’d never be part of it. A Kenyan can immigrate to the U.S., become a citizen, and say, “I’m an American,” and everyone will nod their head. An American, especially a white one, can never, ever become a Kenyan. I’m not convinced this is particularly unfair. But it makes living here damn uncomfortable at times. My community can only stretch so far—and then there’s the vast un-community that will always consider me an outsider, never allow me a place.

People ask me, how long will you stay in Kenya. Or, will you marry a Kenyan. Sometimes I answer, “kill me if I decide to settle here.” But this country has become home. I love the Kenyan friends, from my gentle boyfriend in the slums to my powerful businessman friend in Nairobi’s social elite, who create a space for me to learn about this culture from the inside out, to accommodate a different way of being. I love the way living outside the US stretches me constantly from my comfort zone, demands that I open my mind, that I accommodate other points of view, that I grow. It exhausts me, pisses me off; sometimes I steep myself in American self-importance and refuse to accommodate other points of view after all. But I can’t help being changed. The vitality intoxicates me, demands that I stick it out. Requires that I keep learning, in order to live as comfortably as possible here. Life here isn’t perfect. But it beats the pants off what I left behind.

oceanic adventures

2011-05-09T08:01:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, a success I’ve desired for a long time: I finally took my family on a coast vacation. Me, Austin, my 2 kids, his 3 kids, accompanied by several volunteers, shlepping down on the godawful overnight bus, packing into two cottages on the beach. Typically my oceanside getaways are about writing, but this was a different dynamic, being there as a mom (for instance, the panic of having two beautiful teenage daughters in bathing suits, surrounded by skanky and reprehensible beach boys. Eek). I think I enjoyed it more as a dad. I identify most with being the nurturer, but I love being the provider. Watching my daughters fling up their arms as they rode camels down the beach, listening to the chatter as the kids came inside dripping and exuberant for lunch, I thought, I gave them this, and it made me feel like a success.

We had three days of paradise. Even the daily rain was lovely, bucketing down each morning as we gathered on the patio, my sleepy family relaxing, chatting, drinking tea, the toothless produce vendor coming on his bicycle to deliver our fresh fruits and vegetables for the day. The kids would be in the ocean even before the rain had given way to another clear-skied day. I laid down the ground rules the first morning: no swimming alone; stay in sight of the verandah; no drowning!! Austin nodded sternly, his fatherly duty to back up my motherly commands, and into the sea they scampered. We played family beach cricket and the kids took camel rides. We bought fresh fish from the fishermen and cooked it in the cottage. The grownups drank, and the teenagers, I suspect, tippled sneakily on the side. Our final day we rode on a glass-bottom boat out to the sand bar to play at low tide. The children were on cloud nine the entire time, and I loved it, seeing them so happy, sharing with Austin the sweetness of being happy because your children are. The only low point was when I was stupid enough to leave my only pair of shoes on the beach, forgetting that the beach boys feel entitled to help themselves to anything not nailed down, but I won’t start a rant against thievery in Kenya now. Our final day, one of the beach boys got falling-down-drunk on our liquor, and after he’d stumbled home and left his shoes behind, I perversely wore them back to Nairobi. This was wrong, especially in front of my children, so I’m going to have to take them back next time I go and restore them to their thieving, obnoxious owner. Sigh.

Austin was the most relaxed I can remember seeing him (which is saying something; he’s a very, very relaxed man). Yet he was vigilant as well, even more attentive than I when the children were in the water, and if such a thing be possible I actually admire him more than ever, for being such a caring man, for being so good to our collective children. Never have I felt more like a family. My daughters have begun making veiled remarks about marriage, and I laugh them off, but I think about it—his availability, laughing on the patio with our children; his affection, pulling me to him in the water as the kids play; his solid-as-a-rock-ness, always accepting, always kind—of course I imagine marrying him. I love our relationship, and I LOVE that he is a father, such a father, to my girls. But marrying him is not what would make us a family. We are a family because we’ve chosen to be. For now, at least, this is enough for me—I hope it’s enough for them as well.

My coast getaways are typically about bobbing alone in the green sea pondering my wealth, then writing by the sea, fueled by a succession of cold beers. This was a different sort of wealth to ponder. I’m paying attention to the times I balk at mothering, when I withdraw; I’m trying to do better by my kids. Especially in the wake of Benson’s departure from our household. This was his choice, but I still lament it, still feel I could have done something differently to make it worth it to him to keep the rules and stay. The girls call me Mama and I say my daughters but there’s so much more to it underneath, guilt, obligation, the self-cherishing notion of “I’m doing a good thing,” the tenuousness of love. Beautiful and Salome make my life so rich, yet I often hold back. I am trying to understand this. I am trying to change.

I pay attention to this wealth specifically. Of two amazing girls who trust me. Of a good man who loves me. This is not about what I am giving anyone else, much as that delights me; this is about what I am being given—and whether I will accept it or not.

Bex teaching Hank and the kids Spoons on the patio.

Kamau, Eliza and Wambui being introduced to the wonderful world of camels.

My girls loving me...

...and loving camel-riding. One of my favorite shots.

Enjoying our kids' happiness.

Relaxing between swimming sessions. Yes, my teenagers are, very proudly, sampling my and Austin's beer.

Glass-bottom boat day...a highlight. Here we're anchored on the sandbar at low tide. The kids are relaxing, and the adults, crew included, are getting systematically drunk.

Hank is literally pouring wine into the captain's mouth--the crew, not surprisingly, loved us. We'll discuss safety on the high seas another time.

This sort of thing went on for hours.

Relaxing on the patio.

Dragging everyone from the water for lunch in a beach bar.

Enjoying my babies.

today's newsletter

2011-04-21T12:10:00.005-04:00

Hello all my dear ones,

It’s been ages! Life in Kenya has just kept trucking along….it’s been a journey for me this year; searching for new levels of purpose, for projects here that really matter in addition to work with which I can support myself and my kids. Professionally, I’ve gone the sales route—wanna buy a watch?—as well as expanding my freelance writing, the former exhilarating, the latter essential. (Among other things, I’m being published in the Traveler’s Tales annual anthology The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011…look for it in bookstores in May!) My foster daughter Beautiful, 18, finished high school in December and has enrolled in computer classes in preparation for language training; my youngest, Salome, 17, is in her senior year. Beautiful had advanced TB this winter, which was a scary experience for all of us, but she is now abundantly healthy again and TB-free. So on the work and home fronts, I am happy to report all is well.

Project-wise, I’ve been getting involved in sex workers’ rights this year. Sex work is a big industry in Kenya, and that’s actually why I chose to live in the town I do, Mlolongo, just outside Nairobi—because it’s the weigh station for all the long-distance truckers coming up from Mombasa, the primary port supplying Kenya, Uganda, and much of East Africa, and all those truckers want to get a girl when they’re there. Hence Mlolongo is quite a low-income-prostitution hub. Hence my work with teenage girls. The entire purpose of the football team is to give the girls a positive activity connected with school that will build esteem, etc, and motivate them to finish their high school education, so they’ll have a choice whether to join the sex work industry. I’ve got several amazing new team members now, Kenyan women who are volunteering their time to teach the girls about rape response, self esteem, goal-setting, finances, etc—it’s a great program and I love seeing the girls get this support.

The team has continued to grow this year. In December a company from Europe, QCP, sponsored them to buy uniforms (wooo!) and go to an annual girls’ tournament on the coast (double wooo!). It was a fantastic time—for many of the girls, it was their first time at the ocean. We brought two teams, and one of them, Austin’s girls from Mathare, won the entire tournament—exciting stuff. I’m really proud of the team, and of the girls on it. They are passionate about football. This past year Kenya launched a professional women’s football league, meaning there really is a future in this sport for girls who excel—helping them play football now can help them work their way out of poverty as adults. I love being part of this.

All this to say….I’d love you to be part of it too!! I’m rushing around today preparing for tomorrow’s kickoff of a four-day international girls’ football tournament, and we don’t have enough money. The Mlolongo girls will represent with two teams, the under-12s and the under-16s. We have to pay for a bus to carry them there and back each day, lunch, and medical supplies. All of this will cost around $500 for the entire tournament.

Is there anyone willing to help me make this happen? Additionally, several of the players are really struggling to pay their school fees….if anyone is willing to sponsor one of the girls for $100 a year, it would be a life-changing gift.

This is brief, but hopefully better than nothing. As always, I welcome anyone to visit…I’d love you to meet the girls and be part of the work! And please consider donating something to help these girls keep playing football and working toward a better future. You can make your donation through the PayPal button on my blog.

Thanks so much for the support, and thanks for being part of the work in Kenya with me!

Love to all,
Anna/Anena

Doing warmups at the start of practice.

With Austin and my girls on the Mombasa trip.

The Mlolongo girls in all their splendor!

writing about writing...and strippers.

2011-04-16T05:41:00.003-04:00

If I am to focus on the blessings in my life, this is surely one of the greatest—time upon time to write; all the time I could desire. Years ago, just shy of a decade, Heidi and I moved together to West Virginia, to Be Writers, only to find all that time on our hands was not so easily channeled into the production of masterpieces. In fact, I hated full-time writing. Wretched. I don’t have that kind of attention span. We quickly allowed ourselves to be absorbed by other pursuits; learning to telly ski, becoming baristas at the local bar-café, not smoking pot despite all our friends offering it to us, squandering ourselves on unworthy boys. It’s taken years, but at last we are in the place to apply ourselves with focus and intention to our writing—as she said last week, we spent so much of our 20s talking about being writers, when we could have been writing. Now she has a one year old and a three year old, and her writing time is measured (savored, well-utilized); since Christmas, since intending to finish a book this year, I seem to have all the time in the world. We use it well. Lesson learned, at last.

So I am finishing my novel. My plan for 2011 was to write my memoir, only vaguely begun; one section of 10 roughly completed—a long way to go. Instead, in January, just returned to Kenya, camping on the living room floor in Mlolongo with Hank, who snores like a musk ox, I lay awake and suddenly from nowhere the knowledge came to me that I needed to revisit and complete my novel. My child, my only offspring, its first (and dismal) incarnation conceived during the West Virginia epoch; its other incarnations gradually evolving across Tennessee, North Carolina, New York City; finally, living in West Virginia again, the story as I know it now struggled into birth, kicking off a four-year journey of writing and re-writing, begun on a dingy rust-colored loveseat with my bad dog Bungee sighing against my leg, continued in Cincinnati on my knees at the coffee table in the shabby apartment I shared with my alcoholic drummer boyfriend, transitioned to New Hampshire during the days of my mother’s dying—and oh, the irony, that I was then two and a half years into writing a book about a girl whose mother died—and finally to Connecticut, the long days of Josh’s absences spent catatonic on the living room couch, writing or, just as often, simply sitting, laptop across my legs, mind churning through the muck of grief and loss and recovery. Then, the novel finally complete, my first readers’ remarks received, I left for a three-month backpacking trip from which I never returned, and the book languished, unheeded, for two and a half years more. Till I lay by my favorite musk ox and thought, well I’ll be danged, I’m sitting on a virtually complete novel, why the hell am I going to digress into a memoir? First things first.

So I have spent the last three months in a beautiful love affair, rediscovering my characters, stroking into place the remembered threads of their story, listening, excavating the final incarnation that required two and a half years’ simmering to be ready at last. Revisiting my story now, I know it, know exactly what it needs, exactly who my characters are, exactly what the story wants to tell. Anytime I am not consciously engaged in some other specific task, I am in my book, working with a focus and determination the 25 year old me could not have imagined. It is arduous. It is bliss.

Today I edited out a mildly anti-gay remark made by one admittedly unenlightened character—his saying it was true to form, but I realized I don’t want anything in my book that smacks of that small-mindedness or judgment, and I wrote it out. Hours later, I found myself in the contradictory situation of trying very hard to appear as un-gay as I could: I’m writing a piece for a Kenyan magazine on Nairobi’s strip clubs, and at 9 pm, following two lovely late-evening hours at the gym, I was trying to dress in a way that says, 1) yes I’m a woman alone in a strip club but no I am not interesting or attractive and you shouldn’t waste your time, and 2) but I’m not a lesbian either. The latter being a point I must clarify because in Kenya they have this funny little habit of killing gay people. Not that I’m actually worried about that, but I don’t care to foster any scenarios of being harassed, either (all evidence to the contrary last summer, one drunken wee-hours-of-the-morning at Black Diamond, when I and one of my best friends classily kissed for the entertainment of our similarly shnockered male companions, the one and only girl-on-girl makeout of my life). So I was trying to dress shlumpily in a way that would make me unappealing, but also look tough so no one would mess with me, while still retaining my femininity so no one would drunkenly decide to give me crap for being gay given that I was showing up alone to watch women dance naked. All this after my gay-friendly book edits today. Bizarre.

Anyway, I needn’t have worried. Gay or straight, I’ve never been less noticeable. The men crowding in there had not come to look at a white girl in jeans and a T shirt, scribbling wide-eyed in her notebook over a half-liter of Dasani. As it turned out, I went with friends after all, two girls and a guy, which was good because I would have felt awkward alone. I felt awkward anyway. But the strip clubs are fodder for a post of their own. For now, suffice it to say, they have been an eye-opening experience.

Last weekend, during a stint at the Mlolongo strip club (as alarming as one would expect….yet strangely homey and welcoming, too), I chatted with one of my volunteers, a nice girl who’s been here a few months but with whom I’ve interacted very little. Turned out she’d been reading my blog, loved my stories, loved my writing, wished she could write like that. I laughed to her, well, it’s taken me years to reach this point! If she could have read my West Virginia writing, she’d have been singing a different tune. It’s been a long road, writing and writing through years of well-founded insecurity over my skill level, to this point of knowing who I am and what I have to say, knowing I can say it. Rarely, now, do I fail to express exactly what I feel; my words are my warriors, urged into action with tremendous trust and affection. We are in each other’s service, passionately willing to do each other’s bidding. But it didn’t happen overnight.

At 25 I couldn’t have comprehended this life. Creeping into the house at 2 a.m., pulling off my butch-but-not-TOO-butch jeans and tee, preparing to stumble to bed and yielding instead to the seduction of my big green desk, this middle-of-the-night silence, a story ready to drip from my fingers, pleasure sweeter than sleep. I have a Swahili lesson at 8 in the morning; a visit to the gym at some point during the day; a strip-club crawl at night. And the rest of my day, writing. Time I know now how to manage. I sense that this is a stage; this week I thought I saw the end in sight, lured by the prospect of a short-term job in Europe that then fell through, but it was enough to remind me that a new opportunity could materialize any moment and these long rich days of writing vanish, so I must capitalize on them while I can. Surely the greatest of blessings.

Ironically, one of the girls I went out with tonight is gay. Quite openly, by Kenyan standards, and she reports no harassment whatever. I could have worn the butch outfit after all.

unniversary

2011-04-01T14:47:00.007-04:00

Today would have been my five year wedding anniversary.

I remembered this morning, returning home just after dawn, after he’d dropped me and gone to work, standing in the kitchen in yesterday’s clothes, making tea. April Fool’s Day. Chosen with giggles—we thought we were so clever, so ironic. This is what’s ironic: that we only celebrated two anniversaries, that we were so much more foolish than we could have known. Yet this morning, I was overwhelmed with relief. Imagine if all I’d done with these past two and a half years was a continuation of what I did with the first two and a half? Imagine if all I was now was still married?

It’s not that I didn’t love being married. I did. I loved the security. I loved the belonging. I loved, very much, my husband. But, dare I say it—I love this more.

A couple weeks ago, a wellness newsletter I receive featured an article on feng shui. Specifically feng shui for attracting romance into your life. Make your bedroom couple-friendly, the article said: a big, comfy bed; room to move freely on both sides; beautiful sheets and accessories; matching nightstands. Remove any photos of you by yourself. Instead of living in your room like a single person, live in it like someone who’s half of a couple, to attract couplehood to you.

Well, god knows I invest a good amount of time and energy in pursuing couplehood, so I gave it some thought. I looked around my room. A narrow mattress with room for only one, in the corner, on the floor. Multiple photos of myself solo—in Qatar, in Turkey, consciously invoking the energy of times I was most powerful, which were all times I was very alone. The only piece of furniture in my room is my desk, big, imposing. My bedroom and, if feng shui be true, my romantic life are aligned around its solid wooden bulk: all must give way to the priority of writing, of pursuing the creativity I love, of living the life that most deeply fulfills me. I thought about it. It’s true: my writing matters much more to me than any relationship ever has. I suppose it’s no coincidence that everything in my bedroom is uninviting to a lover, that I am subconsciously sending men—and myself—the message that my autonomy and creativity matter to me most of all.

If they didn’t, Josh would have brought me a dozen red roses today, and we’d be having dinner in a nice restaurant. Five years down, sixty to go.

Instead, I’m at my desk, listening to Brazilian jazz, in comfy green pajamas, submerged in my writing life, working with focus on two different pieces for submission in the US—one about development work in Kenya, one about my African kids. Coincidentally, all three of my kids have called today. Beautiful, from home, to talk about her cough; Salome, from school, to talk about the exams she’s just completed; then, to my delight, Benson, from the mystery home where he is now staying with mystery friends—to ask for money. I got tears in my eyes when I saw his number. In my family, my mom was the nurturer, and my dad laid down the law; I don’t like playing the dad role, I don’t like being tough on Ben. I just want him to get his act together, start making good choices, and come home to be my son. I told him this. And I told him I wasn't giving him any money. Then I hung up and felt sad, and anxious for him, and I missed my kid.

But despite the bumps in the road, my path stretches before me today like the yellow brick road. Day after day, in the gym, my body grows firmer, urged along by Mr-T-esque personal trainers snarling “faster! come on!” as I discover, with no small amazement, that I am capable of marvelous strength. Day after day, at my desk, my writing expands, a kaleidoscope of productivity, as I show up at the page with new determination and focus: I am a writer, and therefore, I will write. Life coaching is incredible; as my coach-cousin applauds me, I am a woman on fire, intoxicated with my own awakened potential, unstoppably devoted to the new pursuit of my own best life. You look relaxed, my friends say. You look happy. And I fling up my hands, rapturous, unsure where to start, how to describe the wonder of my life right now, the discovery, the delight.

No, five years of marriage, even to as good and dear a man as Joshua, could never have given me this sense of satisfaction, this thrill.

When I was married, I was Josh’s wife. That, by my own doing, was pretty much the extent of me. Now that I’m not married, I’m a writer, a mother, an explorer; I exercise, I meditate, I query magazines; I wake in the night to a sturdy black body stretched beside mine, the streetlight through the window reflecting the broad curve of a massive bicep, my leg weighted down beneath the bulk of a thick thigh. I say I love you to teenagers, and they say, with feeling, love you too. I dive in fearlessly to new experiences; I am a passionate participant in my life. It’s not Josh’s fault that I wasn't before. Those hows and whys don’t matter now. What matters is this, my do-over. Imagine if I’d settled for the status quo? Imagine if I’d denied myself the opportunity to embrace this challenging, ecstatic life?

I don’t really put much credence in feng shui. But I know this. We choose the lives that serve us most, based on what we most deeply want and believe about ourselves—we attract to ourselves the realities we perceive inside. And despite the ways I royally screw up sometimes; despite my growing fear that my chosen son regards me as little more than a meal ticket; despite my guilt that I cannot give Austin the wholeheartedness he so abundantly deserves; despite the challenge of showing up for my children and their many-splendored needs; despite how slowly I am dismantling my negative beliefs of my worthiness and my ability to succeed—despite these things and others that are nagging me today, I freaking love my life. More, I believe, than I have ever loved it before. I lament the betrayal of a good man who loved me well (all day I’ve been humming forgive me, for I never meant to hurt you—I’ve always believed in love, and I only wish that was enough. Cheesy. But true). But I cannot lament that April Fool’s Day is only my unniversary. And whatever I can do to attract more of this, more satisfaction, more joy—I’m in.

parenting pitfalls

2011-03-28T13:53:00.002-04:00

(written Friday 25 March)

So often I find myself at a loss here. Am I doing the right thing, or what to do at all. I’ve just kicked out one of my foster kids—not a permanent thing; I gave him a month to get his act together, and if he does, we’ll talk, and if he doesn’t, well. He’s recently been expelled from his second school, after only three days. On the surface, it’s a no-brainer—really? three days? Go get your act together! There are so many orphan kids who would chew off their own arm to be recipients of the Santa Claus act I’m playing with him, who would be the stars of their school—school here matters so much. I told him, “it’s time for you to show me you’re serious about your future,” and it is; but underneath, I am torn—I feel like I’m un-loving him. Like I’m telling him he’s not valuable to me because he hasn’t performed up to my standards. But what is he learning when I give him more and more chances, when I never create a point of accountability for his decisions? Even Santa gives coal to bad little boys. But I wonder if Santa agonizes, if Santa wonders what he’s doing wrong, if he thinks I love you enough to make you suffer if it will help you find your way as he fills the stocking with coal, if he wants to grab that recalcitrant kid by the collar and yell don’t you get it? I care about you, you little prick!

In another life, yesterday would have been my parents’ 37^th wedding anniversary. Tomorrow would have been my niece’s sixth birthday. Next week would have been my five-year wedding anniversary. The expected milestones of my family life, which crumbled, and instead I have this—three teenagers, a kind and loving co-parent to whom I still cannot fully commit, a life I’m still struggling to maintain around me. I judge myself: maybe my kids would do better if I was around more….maybe they need more attention….maybe they need more love. Maybe they need more rules. Maybe they just need more.

Last night Hank and I sat in the backyard, he with a beer and cigarette, I with a cat in my lap, and we hashed over the Benson situation, what to do, how to do it, the ethics of “tough love.” Till I finally exclaimed, for the hundredth time, “how did I end up parenting teenagers?!” I invited it, of course; I love my children, despite how they frustrate me, despite how I buck against caring for anyone else. I love creating a safe and supportive home for three gentle-spirited castoffs who never expected more from their lives than survival at best. I fret over what to do, how to parent them well, how to confer on them the independence and responsibility in keeping with their older ages—17, 18, and 19—while still creating the feeling of safety and accountability that comes with being part of a family—that comes with having parents.

How do I teach my nearly-adult foster son that he is responsible to the people around him? A question which circles back to me— I am responsible to them—and there I pick up my original lament: how did I end up here? Because I don’t want to be responsible to my family, either, much of the time. It’s hard, especially with people who seem to have come so arbitrarily into my life; can’t I just blow them off when I want? Do my own thing? I can’t. Because we’re committed to each other. I the divorcee still choke on this; I haven’t let commitment stop me before. And perhaps this is where it all begins to make sense. Through my children—whom I “chose” in much the way you choose a partner, a recognition, a yearning, a cognitive decision, a mutually beneficial arrangement—I am beginning to learn the boundaries of committedness, what it gives, what it requires, what I must do in order to maintain it. You can’t divorce your kids. (Though I am giving Benson a separation!)

Tomorrow Paige would have been six. I held myself back even from her, much of her illness—too gun-shy to risk loving her too much in case we lost her also, was what I told myself, but in truth, I just didn’t have a great deal of emotional commitment to give. I was exhausted, still clobbered by my mother’s death; I was obsessively caught up in my new husband, expecting him to fix my sadness. I didn’t have much to give of genuine, selfless love, and Paige was surrounded by others who did. Even when I was most available to her, it was a little self-serving, I think—I loved her because she was my niece, because she was cute and entertaining, because of those big blue eyes, that audacious temperament, the way she called me “Aht Na-na,” because babies are sweet and toddlers are cute and when she was too demanding I could just hand her over to the parents. But I held myself back from the emotional surrender of being responsible to her. What I did, I did because I loved her, and because I could, but never because I must; never, until her final illness, because I was that available from a source of obligation: I will do for you what I can, because I can; because that is what love does.

I loved my niece. With an adoration and an ache. But I didn’t scrimp and save to pay her way through school. I didn’t stand up on full alert whenever a boy her age came sniffing around. I didn’t lie awake wondering how to help her find her way in the world. She didn’t depend on me. She didn’t call me mama. Mama, perhaps, makes all the difference.

Today Hank suggested a possible job for Beautiful in Canada. A good job, a good opportunity. I was seized by panic. But….it’s so far. But she’s so young! But my daughter can’t go to CANADA! I was shocked, realizing the stage that awaits—when my children, so lately mine, will leave, pursuing their own futures. Their contacts with my ever-shifting flow of western volunteers, which I have so consciously cultivated because I want my kids to be broad-minded and world-viewed, will facilitate opportunities for them outside Kenya. It had never occurred to me. But this is what I want—for my kids to go far, to find their wings, to fulfill their potential. Benson may not understand right now that this is what I want for him, but it is. This is what I want as the payback on the energy and effort and expense I am investing in my three castaways: I want to see them go where no Kenyan has gone before, live lives that fulfill and delight them, be ambassadors in the world. Be happy. Even if it means going far away from me. This is another entire layer in the meaning of motherhood, and it petrifies me—I know my kids will do fine without me, but what will I do without my kids? Who will I be without them, without the feeling of purpose and satisfaction I derive from caring for them? Will our relationship, so comparatively new, stand the test of separation? Will they still love me, if their lives take them to distant continents, as mine brought me to this one? Will there still be a place for me in their lives?

And I realize in a new way how much I value them, how much they give me. Beautiful, just finished high school, contemplating options for her future; Benson, the oldest but the one with the least of his schooling completed, still struggling to find his niche; Salome, my figurative firstborn, who comes and goes with the baffling unattainability of Kenyan boarding school, vanishing from my life for weeks at a time. I don’t know if I’ll ever have my own children. Maybe. A child that I raise from infancy, who requires midnight feedings rather than midnight watching the clock worrying they’re not home yet, who requires diaper-changing rather than a trip to the TB clinic or a lecture about condoms, who requires food from my body rather than money to get their school uniform hemmed, money to go visit their cousin, money to buy airtime, money for a soda, money, money eternally.

When that happens, I’ll really have to commit. For now, I am learning, slowly. I am pushed constantly from my comfort zone—showing up for my kids emotionally, learning to discipline, finding new ways of relating to them and showing them unconditional love. All of which I need to do more effectively toward myself as well. And suddenly I understand a little more deeply why I chose this journey.

And I love them a little more intensely for their trust and acceptance in coming along with me for the ride.

Largo

2011-03-18T15:34:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, rain hissing down outside my window, I was writing with iTunes on scan, and it came on: Largo from “Xerxes,” one of the defining melodies of my life. A majestic classical work, it was given words a century ago and published in my church’s hymnal, Warrior Songs for the White Cavalry. “Great and wonderful is Thy name,” and we never sang it seated; much like the Hallelujah Chorus, its opening bars summoned the congregation to our feet. I imagine it’s been sung at least once already this week, back home, during the Feast of Passover which my church celebrates this week every year—for me, a many-layered remembrance: long meetings, loud prayers, “Great and Wonderful,” and, these past five years, the loss of her.

She and I used to play Largo together. I on the piano, with mild aptitude; she on the cello, earnest but anxious. Largo is made for the instrumental pairing, and we used to thunder it out to our best ability, delighted when my fingers did not fail on the soaring climax, all nations shall come and worship Thee, when her bow slid smoothly across the accompanying notes. My brother has her cello now, I think. I haven’t touched a piano in years.

Every year I wonder, how to remember? How to acknowledge? You don’t celebrate a death, but its anniversary cannot go unnoticed, either, and I’m frustrated that after five years I’ve no more ritual for commemorating her than to read a poem—a matter of two tearful minutes, and it’s not enough. It feels important, as if I need to reassure her: we noticed; you mattered; you are always, in startled moments, in sudden aches, in sweet recollections, missed and missed.

Even here. Especially here, in the life she never saw me live. Crabbing yesterday at a security guard who wanted my ID to enter a building I enter all the time. Scratching my head through exhilarating Swahili lessons, cracking the code at last to a language that’s been two years building beneath my skin. Still struggling, at so many moments, to adapt myself to the land I’ve chosen, a baffling, maddening, intoxicating place. A trek this week with Austin up Thika Road to a football event in Githurai: alighting at a busy roundabout clogged with vendors, winding through the market, ducking beneath the dangling ends of ragged canvas sheets drooping above our heads, stepping across rivulets of waste water, the sloppy ground on either side scattered with maize husks picked bare, plastic bags, beer caps, air thick with the stink of shit, then lightened by a breeze between the stands as we pass leaning stacks of black-metal jikos, pastel plastic basins, the mamas chatting among bins of fat mangoes and brilliant peppers. Catching another bus; realizing it’s the wrong one; alighting on a dusty rutted track and hailing a passing boda boda even though Austin is petrified of motorcycles. My face pressed into the driver’s back, Austin reaching around me to clutch his jacket: pole-pole! he exhorts, slowly!, and I giggle as we thunk painfully over each bump, expecting the wheezing motorcycle to give way beneath us any moment. Reaching the school, and it’s the wrong one; backtracking, with more painful thunking; running out of petrol; walking; hopping back on when the driver gets the bike going again and roars hopefully up to us; running out of petrol for good; walking some more. Around us, the brightly-painted storefronts of salons, butcheries, shops, and pubs. Dust settling over us. Catching Austin’s eye and laughing, because I love and like this man, and because he bought me a banana on the bus to make sure my blood sugar wouldn’t drop, and subsequently I am not crabby but content, present in the adventure. When we finally reach the football event, it’s an afterthought; the best spectator sport of the day has already occurred, and I sit on my bag in the dirt to read the newspaper against the side of a tin-walled building while Austin loses himself in the sport that delights him, and it’s a happy day, a sunny day, a good day in Africa.

This is what she never saw.

Five years ago, when she died, I was two weeks shy of eloping with a man she called “the Keeper”—a man with whom I expected to spend the rest of my life, our tidy future with a house in Charlotte and a computer game design business and a minivan. Five years ago, when she died, I was adrift, overwhelmed by the inscrutability of God’s will, crushed by the prospect of a future without her in it. Five years ago, when she died, I had no inkling of the gifts to come, of two and a half sweet and difficult years with a good husband whom I loved, of my metamorphosis, of my flight to Africa and the life of my dreams. I knew, objectively, that I would survive and that life would be good again. I did not know it would look like this. Five years ago this morning the congregation that had shaped my identity gathered in the sanctuary for a relaxed Sabbath morning service, while my family gathered around the bed and watched the pulse in her throat hammer, slow, then stop. What do you do with a death-day? You can’t just let it pass. It was the greatest journey either she or I had ever undertaken, and I want her to know I am still her witness.

So I do this. I walk down the road to a large Catholic school and I go to the cemetery, where Jesus hangs disconsolate on a pedestal in the center, the bones of priests and nuns relaxing to dust beneath the red dirt around him. In college I discovered a short story by Langston Hughes, a writer she loved, in which a stone-statue Jesus climbs off his cross and walks through the town, free of his eternal suffering at last. I walk on, to an empty rugby pitch, and I sit in the grass and read her poem to her, and I cry, and talk to her, and it is sweet to be together. When I leave I give her a shell, a shocking spiral of brownish pearlescence I picked up at the coast last fall, but I leave it at Jesus’ eternally-pierced feet because I figure she’d just as soon share with him anyway, and I don’t mind.

My mother was the person I loved most in the world. Her loss has become one of the defining elements of my selfhood, built onto the foundation of faith lost and found, of potential abandoned and reclaimed, of determination raised as a banner, of hope. I look at the picture of her under my window and say I wish you were still here, and I see, in a new way, that she is—part of Divinity, part of me, part of my present as well as my past.

Great and wonderful. Today does hold something to celebrate—her life, our survival, the thousand tiny gifts of each day.

The hope that we will be together again.

Oasis

2011-03-06T08:25:00.011-05:00

Two years ago last week, I moved into my house in Mlolongo. A great anniversary. Hank, who’s living here again now, was with me then as well, my natal volunteer-friend in Kenya, just turned 19 to my just turned 32; that day we bought two green foam mattresses, a cooking pot and charcoal jiko, two cups, two spoons, and an electric tea kettle that was my splurge. Hank contributed a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese hoarded for the occasion, and we painstakingly lit the jiko and tediously prepared our celebratory meal, eating from the pot. Then we threw our mattresses on the white tile expanse of the living room floor and watched The Princess Bride on my laptop before bedding down side by side—too accustomed to sleeping in a crowded roomful of volunteers to go each to our separate rooms in the great echoing space that was our bare, promising new home.

I don’t even live there now; I visit when I can, checking on my volunteers, checking on my kids. I love “Mzungu Oasis” and what it stands for, the first house of my own that I ever rented, the first step I took toward reestablishing myself as an independent adult after my divorce, but the commute to Nairobi is undoable. Since December, when Cheryl moved home and Christine’s promotion meant her job would pay her rent, I’ve lived in a lovely four-bedroom in Westlands with a pack of Italians and one doll of a British girl. My bedroom looks out over a narrow, brushy ravine bisected by a sluggish brown brook, pale geckos run down my wall at night to catch mosquitoes, and I am serenaded by bullfrogs. I share the space with Filippo, one of the loveliest men of my life; his husband Paolo; the vibrant Miresi; Matteo, an African-Italian journalist who comes and goes; Celeste, the British doll, perhaps the most genuine, unaffected person I’ve ever known; and a steady stream of visitors, friends, and guests who spread across the living room, double up in beds, and keep the house ever active, ever revolving. I absolutely love living here. I absolutely love the people with whom I live.

In the new year I have continued, determinedly, to pursue a better life—less of what stresses me, more of what nurtures me, greater awareness and balance and prioritization of my life, a gentler way of being. I rarely drink. I joined a gym. Celeste is my partner in anti-crime; we cook healthy meals together, we stride up the hill after work to run on the cardio equipment, lift weights, and gossip in the steam room afterward. “You are ready to make a change,” Filippo tells me, as we discuss our lives in the kitchen while he cooks or on the balcony while he smokes, but I’m not just ready for change, I’m knee-deep in it. Re-defining my own meaning of enough, of fulfillment, of success. It feels absolutely fabulous.

Day after day unfolds like a gift, and I’m so present in each experience. Last week I attended a day-long business summit, as usual the lone white female in a roomful of white, black and Indian male CEOs, always the sort of event I enjoy and learn from, feeling honored to attend; but as the discussion droned on concerning the future of the telecoms industry and how to tap Kenya’s talent pool, my attention focused on the clean movements of the young South African boy running the sound system, watching his concerted motion with an appreciative eye, knowing the lean shape of his body under those clothes, the tattoos etched on his neck and arm; the red-yellow-green rasta bracelet that had bumped my wrist the previous morning as he reached across the breakfast table to grasp my hands—we pray before eating—absent-mindedly twisting my mother’s wedding ring on my finger as he murmured an Afrikaans prayer. I had ducked my head, uncharacteristically quiescent, listening to the smooth string of Afrikaans syllable, raspy with plosives I struggle to replicate in the back of my throat. That night we danced with my housemates in an empty club, five of us, trance music, the boy tucking a palm to the small of my back to tug me against him for a kiss, dancing with skilled abandon, a confidence and grace I remembered the next morning as I sat in my suit and heels with Kenya’s business leaders, my eyes following his energetic white frame striding around the room.

From one extreme to the other, later in the week I attended the Annual General Meeting at Salome’s school, a stuffy roomful of Kenyan parents, a few small children goggling at my lone white face, Austin occasionally whispering a translation in my ear. School events here never cease to fascinate and dismay me—they are vibrant, especially Salome’s where most students are Maasai and their parents attend in traditional dress, the mamas wrapped in bright lesos, the men serious in skirt-like shukas, gangly legs sticking from tall socks and shoes, rungas and knives belted at their waists. School events here are also hideously, endlessly dull. I hid in the back, Austin patient beside me, his presence in the mind-numbing-ness token of a devotion to my child perhaps as great as my own—I at least had my laptop and could work the entire time. I had resented the loss of a day, but found myself ultimately glad to have gone, not just for the dusty green hills, and Austin’s fingers linked through mine, and the small naked boy in the courtyard peeing graceful designs in the dirt; but for my child, who had trusted me to attend, and I didn’t tell her how nearly I’d backed out, simply hugged her, examined her science project, gave her the junk food I’d brought, slid my hand over her beloved fuzzy flyaways as she talked. It’s worth the children (and adults) gaping openly at my whiteness, and the tedious Swahili speeches, and the long dusty journey in a packed, rattly matatu, and the hot Friday-afternoon traffic jam on the way home—when my adopted daughter slides trusting arms around my waist and thanks me for coming, and I remember again that I came here to love people, didn’t I.

This weekend finds me relaxing in Naivasha with a business friend. His name is also Filippo; he owns a home here, planted round with tall cacti to deter thieves, and I’ve sat long, lovely hours with my laptop till he comes in at the end of the day to spirit me away on game drives. Yesterday afternoon we drove the old Jeep to the Yacht Club, top off, windscreen bolted to the hood, bouncing over a dusty track raised along the center of what used to be lake when he was a boy here, now a grassy area populated with fractious zebra, docile impala, and a few anxious, darting dik-dik. I stood dubious at the lakeside as Filippo Two scanned the water: “no hippos today,” announced a local, so Filippo ran down the dock and dove in, but I hung back, unsure. Hippos kill more people in Africa each year than any other animal—but Filippo was already breaststroking out into the lake under the golden afternoon sun, and how could I refuse? It was cold, murky, sweet; diving under, I could see no more than a few inches ahead, the water a thick, brilliant emerald green diffusing the sun, beautiful with algae spawned by local flower farms spilling fertilizer into the lake. I splashed and hooted, savoring the thrill, swimming in hippo waters! woo!, till surfacing once I spied Filippo Two making rapidly for shore. “Let’s get into the shallows, this makes me nervous,” he called, and I found myself suddenly motivated to follow at speed, continuing my emerald-hued explorations against the steep, weeded dropoff along the lake shore. We waded out at last, crunching across the weed-rooted lake bottom to wrap in faded kikoys against the afternoon breeze, then drove back to his land on the opposite edge of the lake. It was the golden time of day, sun dropping orange over the water, my favorite; Filippo Two steered the Jeep across the brushy plain to the water’s edge, clicking the key off, submerging us in silence. Only the call of birds—spectacled Egyptian geese, sprinting plovers, precise yellow-billed storks; impossibly large pelicans skimming from the sky and stretching their feet before them to water-ski to a landing; fish eagles tangling raucously over a catch. Around us, no more than vaguely curious at our presence, fat brown-striped zebra, a trio of bemused giraffe, a flock of skittering guineafowl—Filippo aimed an imaginary gun and fired. A few meters away, furry, reindeer-like waterbuck grazed their way placidly through the weedy shallows, turning mouse-eared faces to study us before wandering on; farther from shore, stolid buffalo ambled chest-deep toward unknown pastures. Hundreds of swallows swooped around us in the warm evening breeze. When we finally drove back, a juvenile giraffe ran alongside, kicking his feet in irritation at a few impala who scattered from his reach. I got out to open the gate at the property line.

These are richnesses I savor, tumbling them through my fingers. This is what I wanted, when I came to Africa. My life here is far from straightforward, but it’s my life, moving slowly, steadily toward the future I desire; a present that is better, healthier; a wealthy life, full of good people, beautiful places, meaningful adventures. Over and over I remember that quote: “There is only one success—to live your life in your own way.” I may not yet have achieved every goal I’ve set myself—but I’ve succeeded at this.

Hank with my kids at family pool day. Benson is admiring Beautiful's new dreads.

Celeste and me searching for a giraffe.

With Celeste and our gregarious friend Fatymah at a party.

Austin and me at Salome's school.

My baby girl.

Enjoying an afternoon by Lake Naivasha.

A waterbuck enjoying it too.

Writing in the countryside--my personal heaven.

after an ex-Kingdomite urged me to return to Jesus

2011-02-26T03:20:00.002-05:00

hear my confession:
I have abandoned my vows
a betrayal made with closed lips
hidden not behind speech but in silence
words which should have been born
but perished on the long journey of gestation

my sweetest gift to you, if you would accept it

tucked among the trinkets of my unexpected present
lingers a remnant of my past
a language I have forgotten how to speak
a fear so foreign I can hardly recall
its clench of knife-tipped fingers
an anxiety I was weaned on
a doubt that grew to encompass my faith
I could ask for no more than this
but I asked anyway
begging on my knees for something to hold on to
you have seen what peace has cost me
how could you demand words of me now
how could you accept the infidelity of promises

you should know, for I have told you
you, my once beloved, you should understand:
this belief that wrestled from the womb of hope
to take its first weeping breaths in the world
you were there, you heard its cry
you are my witness
to the withering of our possibilities
conceived in strength
shrunken to these stunted limbs
it is over, they are shrouded
forsaken
immune to your judgment:
your eternal reward

long I served the cause of devotion
now I am simply devoted
you, my once beloved—
you should understand

10 December 2010

the big 3-4

2011-02-07T08:41:00.012-05:00

So 34 is upon me. It was a good birthday week; multiple get-togethers with friends, a birthday massage, and various self-indulgences like too much chocolate cake justified under the great “oh who cares, it’s my birthday!” mantra. I managed to get drunk and stupid on my actual birthday, and in the resultant dismal hangover, diarrhea, fever, and full outbreak of amoebas in my belly, I reached the stunning conclusion that I must always, always pace myself with water when I am drinking—and yes, it took me 34 years, countless drunk episodes in Kenya, and the destruction of far too many brain cells to reach this conclusion. By Saturday I was back on my feet for my birthday party, the first straight-up party I’ve ever had for myself, which was terribly fun, even when all the boys got drunk at the end and tried to get me to do “boat races.” At 34 I am officially too old for boat races, whatever the hell they are. I remained stubbornly sober, and had a great night.

My flatmate Filippo says I appear to be on the edge of a big change in my life. I say I’ve already jumped off. Complete re-prioritization, getting rid of what doesn’t serve me, throwing myself into what does, and a few eensy lifestyle changes like no more beer (I have been a dazzling success in this area! yay me!), better eating, and refusing to take other people’s stress on myself. Even joining a gym—okay, I wasn’t happy about my pre-holiday move to Westlands, land of a thousands expats, let alone to Rhapta Road, so expat/middle-class it doesn’t even have a matatu service, but now that I’m adjusting I am finding many benefits, such as lots of friends living right around the corner, AND a great gym within walking distance….something my lethargic body desperately needs. So I am pouring myself into pursuit of what I love, and nurturing my body and spirit in new ways, and my birthday debauchery was a blip that I will grant myself but from now on I am focused and aware. Ha ha, okay, this is not to say I will never get drunk again. Just that I think I’m shifting from last year’s party phase, into something more purposeful, more self-nurturing, more settled. And 34 is going to be a fabulous, fabulous year.

And now a few pictures from my birthday festivities!

Flowers from Lionel, at my birthday cocktail night.

My flatmate Celeste and me getting drunk and sentimental with Matteo, the flatmate who's moving to Ghana.

Taking my birthday wish very seriously.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Saturday's party quickly degenerated into drinking games.

And posing with carrots.

A carrot-free moment with A-Dawg and Adam, two of my longterm Kenya pals.

Nico is going to grow up thinking the world is one big adult party....and he's always invited. Which is true.

Another earnest birthday wish. I think I got to make 4 different birthday wishes this year. Well, they were all the same, I just wished it 4 times.

Check out my gender-imbalanced party! A bunch of my girlfriends were sick or out of town, and a bunch of the boys brought other boys. No wonder it turned into a drinking party....and me stone sober the entire time. A great night!!

single bed

2011-01-29T08:21:00.002-05:00

This is a bed where I have only slept alone. Narrow mattress on the floor, made for one, just long enough for me to stretch out bare legs, just wide enough to curl on my side. A few nights ago, inadvertently locked out by overzealous roommates, I sought refuge at my neighbor’s, an unavoidably attractive man, who pulled me against him as we settled in the vastness of his bed, a bed intended for more than one. He snored; I slept lightly; woke to his alarm and found I’d pushed him to the edge of the huge bed, compelled even asleep to seek closeness with him, my perpetual yearning to connect. The following night I retired back to the chastity of my oh-so-single mattress, tugging my down comforter around me just the way I like it, with earplugs in and eye mask on and lavender eye pillow draped over top, my Syrian keffiyah in my arms, its red-checked fabric bleached by hot days in the desert sun, long since absent of the campfire smell it carried from my past life. My ideal recipe for sleep, yet I woke in the night, restless without his body relaxed beside mine, skin against my skin, the purr of his snore by my ear. Strange; I love sleeping alone. I never, ever go to bed minding my solitude, never waken wishing anyone but me was stretched beneath my sheets. I never protest the autonomy of my life, the freedom to build around my me-ness. I love being single.

“I don’t see you single,” said a friend last week, a business acquaintance, a man—older, not unlike my neighbor; silver-haired, the same; and decidedly white—in all ways the man I have not considered before and suddenly can’t stop noticing, exuding an air of understanding, of stability: perhaps beside someone like you I could plant my feet strong in the way a wanderer may not. “You’re too passionate, too giving,” he said, the man whom I’d presented to my friends as a business contact joining me for a business drink, the man they instantly discerned was in fact a crush, friends who know what Anena-in-like looks like, Hank hissing “go for the silver fox! go for the silver fox!”, Christine kicking me under the table and giving me the oh my god girlfriend, if you don’t do this man I’M going to look. But the silver fox is married, and despite my own failure in that department, I have cultivated a respect for the marriage establishment: I don’t take anyone else’s vows on myself, but I am happier to hold a man to the standard he’s set himself than to entice him from it and prove only that that he wasn’t worth trust anyway. Trust; what my husband said when I saw him three weeks ago—“it would have been a long, long road to rebuild the trust”— the trust, like an object, an entity, the third being in our bed, enabling the relaxation of our entwined limbs, the surrender of our shared sleep, because we always knew, didn’t we, that the one thing we could count on between each other was Trust.

“Too passionate and giving,” said this unattainable man, who doesn’t see me single, and I laughed, confused, because I am, but god, I’m so taking, also—passion can be one as well as the other, and the love I lavish on my partner is equaled only by the need I twist around him, gagging his silenced mouth, binding his enervated arms. Only three weeks ago Josh told me one, then another, way I had crushed him in our marriage, ways he had tried to express at the time only for me to immediately pummel him, how could you ask anything more of me, as if you haven’t already taken enough, I barely have a marriage as it is. It’s not enough to say it now, though it’s true, that I’m sorry—achingly sorry to have so fundamentally failed a man I so desperately adored, not to mention to have torn apart the fragile foundation of our union with an oblivious enthusiasm because I was so busy pointing the finger at him. The Navy. Your job. Your fault. Not too giving after all.

I have embraced the relief of my alone-ness; no one to hurt me, no one for me to hurt. No one but me to build my life around. Josh and I both had tremendous personal-freedom needs, which should have translated into a content long-distance-marriage scenario but was sabotaged by my inability to separate my emotional needs from his so-called responsibilities as my husband. Now he’s a bachelor with a bed and computer in a friend’s spare room in Connecticut, and I’m a bachelor with a mattress and laptop on the floor in Africa, and my personal-freedom needs breathe not a whit of complaint, while my emotional needs parade me past a succession of men, of crushes, of yearnings, of one-night-stands, of rejections, of flings, of fuck buddies, of mistakes and lessons and delights. Of a moment suspended in time, my un-husband, my thumb on his eyebrow, his cheekbone, his jaw: I remember. Still reeling with it, the recollection of how it felt to have an always, the startling recognition of always lips, the forgotten shape of always hands—and then I am back in Africa and the silver fox, a man too married to be true, says I don’t see you single, says in five years you’re going to be married, and I wake and feel my skin stroked by my neighbor’s hands, an appraising touch I crave and dread as we open our eyes and wrap around each other, man whose lips I’ve never tasted, man whose life I do not know. You didn’t sleep with him? my housemates exclaimed, you didn’t kiss him?, and I didn’t. Because suddenly I’m tired of the parade. The confetti fluttering limply to the ground, the band silencing, the candy skittering unretrieved down the pavement, as soon as he said I don’t see you single and I said but I love single and he said I don’t believe it for an instant. Of course he doesn’t; fifteen years and counting; his worked. But I’m not sure I believe it either anymore, or why would I have joined the parade in the first place, if not for that fundamental yearning for connection—why would I chase my neighbor to the side of the bed, why would I turn from the touch I long for because now I want to be sure there could be love between us first.

I slept alone most of my marriage, too. Cold winter nights when I piled spare blankets on the bed, warm summer nights beneath the ceiling fan, and then suddenly, there would be a man in my bed, only the fourth with whom I’d ever spent a night beneath the sheets, and I would waken in the night to roll against him, laying my face between his shoulderblades, cheek to his saw-bladed submariner tattoo. Until our final night, our marriage bed beached in the middle of his empty bedroom like a ship run aground; and since then, a gradual acceleration, carried from man to man by my own momentum, till I traced his eyebrow one more time, I remember what always felt like, and came back here to run headlong into I don’t see you single. Now my fingers rest briefly on a cheek I’ve never so much as kissed, fingertips skimming into silvered hair, a silence I don’t know how to break with but I’m not even sure how, a fear that I will give myself away and it will break again, and a memory of always, the lid pried unexpectedly from my determined autonomy, releasing me to the pursuit of my own courageous potential: maybe I could sleep in the arms of trust again.

a new year

2011-01-23T08:53:00.002-05:00

I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions, but this year I’m replete with them—I feel ready for change in all sorts of areas. I’ve given up beer; I’m working towards adopting a gluten-free diet. Both of these are meant to support my body after a year of flogging it through greatly increased blood sugar swings that make me suspicious I’m on the cusp of developing a serious ailment if I don’t get proactive—so I have. I’ve revised my schedule, altering my priorities, charting exact amounts of time for my job-job as well as for writing. And I’ve revised my spending habits as well. In 2010 I made considerably more money than in 2009, yet have no more savings to reflect it; I realized there will always be more to spend money on—especially in Africa, land of a thousand needs—but that my priority is to look after my own financial well-being first. It feels powerful to take control of my finances, to stop regarding money as a force I cannot manage. All in all, I’m seeking to reduce stress in my life, to realign myself with what I’m passionate about and to pursue it in ways that foster a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Devoting myself to the discipline of what my cousin John calls “extreme self-care.”

2010 was a tough year. I struggled financially, and cruelly chastised myself for it. I felt adrift in Kenya, only clicking back into place when I began working full-time—and while this gave me a sense of purpose again, my stress level shot through the roof, and the pressure of my job only exacerbated the cycle of judging myself based on my success. I felt lost a lot.

Maybe this is why I’m ready to take the tough steps required to change that cycle. For everyone and especially for an addictive, comfort-loving person like myself, giving up some of my self-soothing mainstays—particularly alcohol and other comfort consumables—is daunting. Yet the way my body felt last year was crappy, and there’s a relief in determining to choose strength and energy over an immediate fix.

So, jet lagged but clear-headed, I’m digging back in for another year in Kenya. Last year my Christmas visit home threw me off for weeks, and I’m very grateful to have settled comfortably and quickly back into a groove this time. Last weekend I went to Mlolongo, where Hank has returned with multiple new volunteers in tow, and where my teenagers greeted me with their same teenagerly selves. Beautiful has noticeably improved, putting weight back on and finding the energy to be pestery again. Thank God….I think. Sunday we all went for family nyama choma at Hotel Connections, the least sketchy establishment in Mlolongo which as of this month features a pool; I swam with Salome, who stood petrified for ten minutes on the edge of the pool contemplating a pencil dive—easily the most elementary version of jumping in—but was unable to follow through, which made me laugh. I couldn’t stop smiling at her and Beautiful, touching them, wrapping my arms around them: they make me crazy, but god, I love my girls.

Later, back home in the kitchen, I was spooning maizebread batter into a pan while Austin chatted with the girls, when Salima at the sink suddenly gave a shriek: beneath her feet, having scooted in through the open kitchen door, was a tiny black kitten which has been trying to adopt us. Salima seized the broom, angrily shooshing it back outside, and Beautiful gleefully exclaimed “Satan marateng’!”—“black devil,” she translated, and I died laughing, at Salima furiously sweeping the kitten from the kitchen, but mostly at Beautiful, who is well enough to be a smartmouth again. I have the same weakness as a parent that I had as Josh’s wife—I’m helplessly delighted by smartasses.

My rekindled memories of being Josh’s wife remain close to the surface. While I was in New Hampshire, I attended the now-annual new year spirit journey at my friend Sara’s house with the women of my writer’s group (who are goddesses); we drew animal totem cards to find our “spirit ally” for the year, and this year I drew Turkey, whose message was “let go and give away the past.” I’ve been thinking about this ever since, through my end-of-visit coffee date with Josh that turned into hours of discussion, sharing, and apology for the ways we both contributed to the demise of our marriage. It was terribly bittersweet, he the open, available man I fell in love with, but so many walls stand between us now. What does letting go mean in this instance? Does it mean letting go of the ways we hurt and failed each other, giving ourselves another chance? Or does it mean letting go of my insistent desire for him and letting the past finally be past?

“You’ve got to move on, Anena,” sniffed a business friend last week, and I looked at him in irritation; haven’t I? Isn't that what two years on the opposite side of the world has been? Haven’t I applied my iron determination to refusing, refusing,to ask Josh for another chance, no matter how many times I have wept for him? Haven’t I determinedly (and, most often, distantly) dated other men? Didn’t I remove my wedding ring before we’d even broached the topic of splitting, didn’t I drop Hawfield from my name like a lit firecracker? Haven’t I #&@ moved on???

It’s immaterial. Whether I have or I haven’t—I’m here. This is my life now, this is the path I chose, and nothing is accomplished by pining for what I left, idealizing it in my mind—despite the ongoing sadness of our severance, the regret that I failed my husband on so many more levels than I’d even known, the realization that we could have made it work, if I’d been willing. I ask myself, to what end? So I could criticize him for gaming too much, and sneer at the Navy, and complain? So I could stifle him and cling to him? Even when I saw him two weeks ago, I felt how powerfully my need to impress him lingers, looking to him to affirm that I’m funny enough, smart enough, good enough. Not enough has changed.

It’s hard to let go. But that’s what I’m doing this year. Letting go of comfortable, soothing habits that are destructive to my body. Letting go of the anxiety of trying to please and impress everyone. Letting go of my desire to control outcomes. Letting go of the good man who loved me, one more clenched finger at a time.

Let go and give away the past. Share my gifts with generosity. Feel the freedom gained.

2011 is my year.

sweetness in the belly

2011-01-09T00:07:00.003-05:00

I gloss over it now, as one shouldn’t do with such important topics. Reconnecting with old friends while I’m home, the question often comes up, “so why did you get divorced?” Not something I can explain in a sentence, or even an entire coffee date—I can dig down through the layers, but always I come to conflicting information, as many reasons to have stayed together as to have split. So I gloss over. “He was a good man, but we were a bad match.” But I’m not sure we were. Or maybe this is historical revisionism, me creating a scenario in my mind where I foolishly left the love of my life and now I have an excuse to pine and moan (hum, much as when I was a Navy wife) instead of being proactive, taking responsibility for my own happiness, and owning the choices I made. Because I did, very definitely, choose to let our marriage go. There’s no glossing over that.

I spend all year steeped in Africa, a life he’s never been part of, and then I come back for two weeks in New England, a life he was wrapped in and around—and the conflict erupts again from the back of my mind, what if, if only, could we have? This visit I’ve been shocked to find I’ve thought of him far more often than of my mother, who was my life here for so many years, whom I would expect to pine for—but she left by death, unchangeable, eternally past; whereas he left by divorce, alive and well only two and a half hours away—and that is so different. The loss of him was willful, and that is very different. In theory, the loss of him could even be undone, and perhaps this is at the heart of my lament, because I lost loved ones against my will and then I gave one up voluntarily, and part of me is still saying, what are you, stupid???

Monday I walked with my family, bundling against the sudden dip from balmy above-freezing temperatures to a bitter well-below-freezing chill, striking down a street near my father’s house in downtown Jaffrey and finding ourselves quickly in forest. We crossed three brooks, playing Pooh Sticks at each. Luke ran and smacked things with sticks and eventually grew bored and began to whine and got a shoulder-ride from my brother. Dad and Donna held hands, and we all laughed a lot, and as I walked, I scanned every home we passed: would I live in that one? This one would be nice if you knocked off that porch. Ooh, I like the garage there, room for all our vehicles. I never did this when I was younger; it’s a habit I developed only after Josh and I were married, after Paige died, when I lost myself in the delicious addiction of househunting as antidote to some of my sadnesses: at least, when we own a home together, I will have a sense of place again, I will be safe. But we backed out of closing at the last minute, and the end of that year I backed out of our marriage, and instead of safety and belonging I have wandering and uncertainty, and yet when I walk the old New England roads all I can think of is which house my husband and I could live in. My husband and I, till I think I’ll go crazy, till I remind myself, I can daydream myself into one of these homes! Why does Josh have to inhabit every vision of my life here? He’s not in my life. So I tried picturing myself buying one of the homes by myself, but that’s not the point, is it—the point is the security, and I only ever felt security when I was with him.

“So why did you get divorced?” I am asked, and I don’t know anymore. It had something to do with unhappiness, and loneliness, and the dreadful collision of conflicting needs, and a sudden desperation that told me I had to leave or die. I pause, I make myself remember, and it comes back, the ways we let each other down, the ways we could not show up for each other, the prudence that seemed to govern our sudden agreement to set each other free. But beneath those layers of severance I uncover an entire lost civilization of love, where he made me throw back my head in laughter, where I got up to make his coffee in the morning, where he stopped the motorcycle at red lights and dropped his hand to stroke my leg, where we were two regular people who loved each other and were doing our best. Beneath all the reasons we split linger all the reasons we were together in the first place.

Here in New England, where our brief marriage lived and died, I close my eyes and remember the soft skin of his cheekbones as I held his face in my hands: most beloved face, most beloved man, and my brain remembers every hurt that drove me out, but my belly remembers every swell of love and delight that raised my hands to the universe to weep thank you for this man. Remembers the scar on the side of his throat and the white mark on his right front tooth and the smell of his breath, and his kiss. It’s the remembering that’s driving me nuts. It’s the remembering that hurts.

So I gloss over it; we chose what we chose, and I know it’s what served me at the time. We have grown and changed in the intervening two years. Life goes on, it is what it is, and who am I to say now that our decision was anything less than best, or at least inevitable? I can’t rewrite the past and would be a fool to try; the ways in which Josh and I let each other down are massive, and they would still be there as much as the ways we loved each other, if the universe were suddenly to shift and a door crack open through which we could walk back into a shared life. Beneath all the reasons we are good together linger all the reasons we split in the first place.

The brain understands; the brain can make sense of A plus B equals C; the brain can compartmentalize, analyze, render judgment: I sentence us to severance. But the belly remembers—the shape of his hands and their touch on my skin, the sweetness of waking beside the man I planned to wake beside for the rest of my life, the power of forgiveness and compromise and understanding that together dig a deep and dear foundation for love, and what it means to share that with a person. The brain says, shut up, Anna, you made this choice a long time ago and there’s no going back; I don’t even live in the US, why am I drooling over houses; don’t you dare wish undone the bravery and authenticity and discovery that have sustained and remade me over the past two years, the life I have built, the woman I have become, the love for myself that drove it all.

And I don’t, I don’t. We could never have become these better, stronger, wiser people without the amputation of each other, the casting-adrift of ourselves to life outside that secure New England house and the Navy job and the 2.4 kids. We needed to grow. We needed.

But—there is his little-boy laugh, his intelligent, questioning mind, his fairness, his frustratingness, his integrity and care. Our passion for each other, our determination to transcend our own selfish selves and love each other better still. The silken texture of his hair, smoothed back from his forehead by my adoring hand.

There is our love.

And the belly remembers.

Longest Night

2011-01-02T10:09:00.012-05:00

(written in bits and pieces, 21 Dec to 2 Jan)

What do I release, as the earth tilts and begins its slow spin back toward the light? I release the slow, suffocating pressure I have put on myself to live up to expectations which may or may not have the slightest connection to my actual happiness. I release the busyness and the rush, the addictive fixes I use to separate myself from the sometimes mundane reality of my life and the responsibilities I have taken on myself. I release the need to do. As I have been consciously attempting for years now, I choose instead to be.

Last Wednesday night Austin joined me in Mlolongo and we had family night, on the couch with my girls watching Christmas movies. During Miracle on 34th Street, when the case against Santa Claus hinges on the words “in God we trust” on the American dollar bill, Beautiful had Salome convinced that the actual American motto was “In God we trust, in Satan we believe,” which made me roar with laughter—these girls never cease to surprise me, Salome, round and healthy, attending with care and concern to her sister-friend one moment, bickering with her the next, and Beautiful, who has gained a kilo at last, still frail but in good spirits: “she is improving,” Austin says, and god, I hope he’s right; I’m anxious for my little girl.

Christmas Eve morning, climbing from my mattress to my green desk, I groggily read my emails and then sat up, alert: a letter from Traveler’s Tales accepting a piece for publication in their 2011 anthology of Best Women’s Travel Writing—a book I used to read and yearn to be worthy of. I leapt from my seat, to the window where I look out at a narrow valley planted on both steep sides with crops, bisected by a thin sluggish stream where peepers sing enchantingly every night, and I flung out my arms and said it aloud: “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.” A Douglas Adams quote sponged from my best Kenya friend Cheryl’s facebook wall, which has been in my mind often these past days, as I face my annual juxtaposition of the old life with the new. Austin helped me usher in the transition that afternoon, joining me for a mom-and-dad Christmas Eve before my flight, strolling up the street for a nyama choma dinner date and finally escorting me to the airport at midnight, clutching me in the taxi, lamenting my upcoming absence, and I being the person to leave instead of the one being left finally understood one more piece of the pressure I put on my husband back in the day when he went to sea and I fell apart and would be so angry at him for not savoring every moment with me when he’d already left in his mind—and now, finally, I understand.

But I’m on my way nonetheless, and astonished with joy. My job, fortuitously, acquainted me recently with Kenya’s country manager of Swiss Air, who hooked me up with a fabulous ticket home, booking me four seats in economy so I could stretch out and sleep last night, and a window seat on the bulkhead today on my flight to New York, god bless that man—so here I am, a layover in Zurich, back in winter, back in the west. Exiting the plane, I gasped at the sudden sweet shock of cold, as familiar to me as a lover, a sensation that silenced me: I remember this, when the air tugs you into in its icy embrace, the gray-white sky creeping down to touch the white-gray earth, a dusting of snow across bare black spindles of trees, new snow filtering through the air like dust particles in a ray of sunlight: winter, unwrapping itself like a gift. After a year of basking in the equatorial kiss of the sun, I am astonished at the delight of slipping back into the arms of snow.

Two years ago, just returned to NYC, I stopped first at Starbucks and cried when I took a sip of a grande soy chai latte, my old standby. This year, it was tasty but not tear-jerking—it’s a forgotten flavor now, belonging to an abandoned life. I slide my tongue instead across older sensations, the sting of snow on bare skin, the glisten of Christmas lights on a whitened lawn, the scent of winter air caught in my brother’s coat and hair when he bursts in from shoveling, the comfort of stomping in from the cold to the warm coziness of a fire blazing on the hearth. I gripe, I fuss, but god, I love New England.

Christmas Day I landed in JFK within half an hour of my sister and after a tearful Hansen-female embrace we headed for the Penn Station shuttle, which, after numerous delays, we finally abandoned for a taxi, ultimately galloping through the station with our bags and catching the final train to New England by 20 seconds. In Providence our brothers met us in disguise: Ben, hunched in a wheelchair wearing dark glasses, and Davey, bent over a book in a waist-length gray wig, both of whom I recognized immediately, shrieking with laughter, so happy to be with my family! The next day was the Brown family Christmas, accompanied by a blizzard that snowed us in overnight—breathtaking, to be outside in the whirling wind that night, playing games in the snow with the cousins, suddenly looking over at the house glowing with squares of yellow light against the night forest—and to think, the day before I’d been complaining of the heat as Austin and I walked in T-shirts to get our Christmas Eve dinner. Modern technology creates very confusing situations for a body.

It both alarms and amazes me to step out of Africa and rediscover myself in the old world. It’s my old life, the old me; a memory of the past, yet I suddenly step back into it for two weeks each year, and I find it terribly discombobulating, like some quantum-physics act of time-bending—how is it possible to go back into a world I left behind long ago? Like a parallel universe, it still exists. It is shockingly sweet to me, to be back, to be with my loved ones; I have terrible pangs for this life—this could still be me. Josh comes to mind over and over, the life I thought I would have with him: a New England home of my own, with a fire blazing on my hearth, not my father’s; my husband, not my brother, stamping in fresh-smelling from the cold; baking Sabbath rolls for my children, not my siblings. But that’s the life that was, and would have been—and this is the life that is. Over and over I remind myself: be present, be present in this. Because this is sweet, too—despite the sad brevity of my time with my family, the life I’m going back to is one I love. That it is far away is part of the tradeoff. Or perhaps this is just how I silence my sadness, lay to rest my status-quo longings with reminders of the pseudo-exotic that I chose instead, but still I grieve what I left behind, a life where I blend in, of walking on the winter beach with my dog, of learning to be fully myself while partnering Josh. Just as with my exodus from Christianity, I made what felt like the only possible choice for my survival, but there are always the what-ifs, always the regret for the safe life I traded in when I answered my soul’s call, and I can’t help thinking, if I had one more chance, I’d do it so much better….

But I don’t.

Instead I have Christmas in Dad and Donna’s house, camping (very comfily) in their spare room like some kid home from college; outings with my siblings, the four of us laughing, goading each other, making excessive amounts of poop jokes, and being our usual slightly codependent selves; New Year’s in Boston with my cousins, and reconnections with old friends, each featuring a hasty explanation of Why I’m Divorced (why am I? sometimes it’s hard to remember, especially when I’m here). I have early-morning online sessions to keep on top of business in Kenya, and late-night jet lag. I have a shopping list of Everything I Can’t Buy in Africa. I have a spirit journey this afternoon with the goddess women of my writer’s group. I have all the chips and salsa my heart could desire.

What do I release, as the earth tilts and the new year begins and I pause for a moment in the icy terrain of my past? Fear, and doubt, and holding back. What do I embrace? The loved ones god has blessed me with, and hope. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.

I comfort myself with these words.

Catching up with Lala on the train to the wintry north.

Ben waiting for us in the train station.

Davey waiting in his wig.

The sibs.

With Davey in a blizzard the night I returned.

With Davey at the beach. I did not know he was there, can you tell?

With Ben at the beach.

Building dams with my nephew.

Mombasa fun

2010-12-20T09:10:00.013-05:00

Oh the busyness….it’s kicking my heinie lately, but only a few days to go, and then there’s jet lag, subzero temperatures, and unhealthy foods to cheer me, hoorah!

A week ago I was in Mombasa; Austin and I carried down 40 + teenage girls from his Mathare team and our Mlolongo team for the annual girls’ football tournament. So proud to have my Mlolongo girls participate this year! His Mathare girls won. It was an amazing time—hot, sticky, relaxed, and sweet. I loved most of all getting all that quality time with Salome and Beautiful.

Saturday there was no afternoon match, so after we’d taken lunch—soda and white bread, may god strike me dead for treating my body this way—and conveyed the girls back to the school we were staying in (rickety metal bunk beds, frightening toilets, and the lose-lose scenario of either being eaten alive by malaria-ridden mosquitoes each night or covering with sheets and lying in a puddle of sweat), Austin and I packed up our family: his two smallest, my two girls, his nephews Benson and newly-arrived Steve who’s visiting him for the holiday—and away we went to the beach. It was the public beach, crowded on the holiday weekend, but I found myself infinitely better this year at identifying my particular nappy black heads among the thousands as I played in the water with the children, perpetually doing the Mom Scan. Young Wambui and Kamau at least can swim; I was almost more worried over the two energetic 18-year-old boys, who can’t. As a shark, I devoured the small children multiple times, a destruction of which they never wearied. Salome and I wrestled and dunked each other. Benson joined water rugby. Austin pulled me against him in the water to bob together while the children played. It was so lovely. At times like these, when work is far from my mind, when there is no task but to be present with my family, to enjoy them—at times like these, my well-being is immense.

The kids stayed in till the sun was dropping low behind the trees, turning the ocean dusky lavender. Kamau ran to me, water beading in long drops on his dark skin, and stood close as I traced wet patterns on his back with my fingertips; finally I leaned forward to lick a drop of salt water from his arm: it is delicious to me, this right of touch with these beautiful children, this beautiful man. Around me a smorgasbord of beloved black bodies and bare black skin, children to be hugged and tickled, strong teen boys to be vaguely patted and soft teen girls to be cuddled and kissed, my partner to slide his arms around me as we stand in the surf watching our children play. I feel so rich with them, and hate that work usually holds the forefront of my mind and prevents my spending this kind of time with the ones I love. Not just work; the expat life too, being in town, rush-rush-rush, meeting people for drinks, working late at my desk, can’t be bothered to make the trek all the way to Mlolongo. I need a better balance. This much I know.

In the ensuing week, balance was completely absent as I rat-raced around with a sales colleague for days, being badgered to produce better numbers—a single boy, much younger than me, one to whom I could not possibly say “you have no idea that this work will never be my passion and I am not going to give it precedence over my children, my writing, or my development work.” Except I did, last week, feeling pressured to do so, and I didn’t care for it one bit.

Now a few more days to finish up appointments, shop for Christmas, have an early celebration with my kids, and then—away to the wintry north. Two weeks of stellar New England winter beauty ought to be just about right.

The girls waiting to watch another match. Note how everyone crowds into the shade--it was HOT.

My best-beloved Kenyans.

My Mlolongo girls.

Foreground: football match. Background: herd of goats. I love Africa.

Quality time with my girls....delicious.

Beautiful Salome.

Beautiful Beautiful.

Beautiful man.

My dear, beautiful family....this photo makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

various delights

2010-12-07T11:38:00.008-05:00

It’s official: just when you think life can’t get any better, it does.

Last week I finally connected with a woman who works with the sex workers’ support network in Kenya and East Africa—the one I so naively daydreamed of masterminding, which has in fact been thriving for years and is considerably better executed than my clueless do-gooder-white-girl attempts could ever have achieved. So, to my delight, I have plugged into their network as the Volunteer Coordinator for next week’s International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, which will be recognized in Nairobi with some impressive hoopla on December 17th. HooRAH. I am so, so excited to finally be part of something concrete, to be contributing. I knew all those nights hanging out with the Simmers girls would lead somewhere tangible. I can’t wait to see where this partnership goes.

Also, today, 20 girls from Mathare and 20 from Mlolongo rode the bus from the slums to the coast for a country-wide girls’ football tournament in Mombasa. Austin takes his Mathare girls every year; this year our Mlolongo team went too, thanks to the very generous sponsorship of two lovely friends of mine. It’s an epic event, for many girls the only time they leave the slums, let alone play and swim at the coast—for a week they are football queens, jet setters, and their thrill is beautiful to behold. I will join on the weekend; betweentimes, I’ll be running around frantically trying to sell more event sponsorships for February, attending a few networking events, earnestly coordinating volunteers for the 17th, writing a magazine piece, spending some quality time with my kids, and maybe with god’s favor hopping to South Sudan for a couple days to participate in a “peaceful referendum” rally and plant some partnerships there. Never have I so intensely understood the desire for “more hours in a day”—other people’s lives always necessitated that, not mine. Busyness, being up to my elbows in pursuits I adore, is a beautiful gift.

And the moments along the way are delicious. Today I got a belated Thanksgiving present from a Kenyan friend who, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, claimed everyone exchanges gifts for American Thanksgiving: a fabulous notebook and four blue pens, and I couldn’t stop smiling—it’s so sweet to be seen. I ate chocolate cake for dinner (guiltily, but with much reveling), and stole 15 minutes to start reading The Reader (guiltily, but with much reveling). I found a blog by a fabulous sex workers’ advocate (www.wakingvixen.com) AND discovered she’s having a networking event in NYC the weekend I’ll be there after Christmas, yippy!! I also experienced a great deal of anxiety over my job (pressure to perform, to live up to other people’s expectations, real or imagined—my Janice-inherited Achilles heel), but managed, slowly, to release it: I’ll do the best I can, but life’s too short to be ruled by my job and especially by how other people want me to perform my job. I love what I do. And I believe god-the-universe will open doors for me to do it, do it well, and support myself well in so doing.

And when all else fails, my new blue pens write beautifully in my new notebook, so thank goodness for simple pleasures.

Yet another trip to the coast this past weekend. I realize I am bordering on hedonism, but the ocean just recharges me so much, and I write so well there, and Francesco’s family owns a house on the beach and he needed to get out of icy northern Italy. So we flew down with Shish for a quick bout of relaxation. We consumed great quantities of pasta, bonded with a small prickly hedgehog, and went with other Italian friends to a dingy casino alarmingly populated by gravelly-voiced, leathery-skinned 60something Italians, where I squandered 13 bucks learning to play blackjack. Or was it roulette? I don’t even know, I just know it felt bad to throw away 13 dollars on such a stupid pastime when I’m asking people to support my football girls, so I won’t do that again. The highlight of the weekend occurred yesterday morning, when Francesco and I walked down to the bay at low-low tide and wandered the tidal flats, spying on skittery tiny crabs with green-and-orange bodies, spooky big crabs dangling from the ceilings of soggy caves, bright red knobby starfish, and one small, marvelous octopus sliding along the edge of the coral at our feet, feeling up sea urchins, its body flicking in an instant from bright translucent green to dark textured brown that flawlessly matched the coral. I filled my hands with shells—resignedly parting with those still housing panicky bright-blue-legged residents—and managed to sunburn, as we strode miles down the broad white beach, finally paddling about awhile in the green water while Francesco, whose attention span is, I believe, even shorter than mine, punctuated his swim with pushups on the beach.

I always, always come back to my wealth when I am at the coast: I must never complain, I must never fret; I am the most fortunate girl in the world. Life’s too short—and abundance too arbitrary—to do anything but appreciate it. I’m feeling less stressed, more grateful—and even looking forward to freezing my heinie off at Christmas when I fly home to visit the fam-damily for a couple weeks.

Cheryl and I drove up into Ngong Hills last weekend with Lionel to watch the sunset. It was WINDY.

And happy beach times!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-28T12:41:00.005-05:00

(written Sat 27 Nov)

The blue morning glories Davey brought me last year have gone native in my yard with my bougainvillea....heaven!

I’ve been reading a book on addiction. A novel, about an alcoholic trying to get cleaned up. To my astonishment, I recognize myself often, the denial-based behaviors of withdrawal (leaving a relationship or job, rather than address my problems) and escape (moving somewhere new to start over, rather than address my problems). I don’t think of myself as an addict per se—that would be too dramatic—but I’m becoming increasingly aware of my addictive behaviors, the fixes I seek out to avoid discomfort, the external sources to which I look for nurture of my inner needs. Behind my supposedly free-spirited pursuit of oh-so-casual relationships is an addictive search for more men who will affirm my good-enough-ness to me—my fix. Addressing Beauty’s illness compels me to show up for her when I would formerly have thought, as I typically think towards myself, why don’t you get over it already? Take care of your own crap. You’re not worth this effort—and it occurs to me that I’m a long way from being the put-together adult I aspire to be. A thousand letters to Josh cycling unwritten through my brain: it wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I’m so sorry.

Salome has come home on holidays, and Beautiful has perked up noticeably with the return of her almost-sister. Wednesday night we went to Mlolongo, Austin and I, for his birthday and to see the girls, and I sat on the living room mattress where poor Benson has slept for nearly a year, cuddling with them, my head on Salome’s lap, my arms around Beautiful, Austin’s cake overcooking in the oven because I was reluctant to leave the closeness of my children. When this mother role is sweet, it’s SO, so sweet. As is the ongoing presence of Austin in my life, the two of us beginning to accumulate traditions, annual comparisons: last year I frosted his birthday cake pink; this year, orange. We have now spent two consecutive birthdays together. I never spent a single one with my husband.

Austin's orange ghetto cake.

Thursday the girls and I had Thanksgiving dinner with Andy, my old boss from the Mara, whom they adore. Salome and Beautiful were the only Kenyans, and Andy, one of the first to name them as my children back when I was still thinking of them primarily as the orphans I was sending to school, spoke to them as he always does of “your mother,” prompting some of the other Americans to ask me the story. I explained in simple detail—Salome and Beautiful knew each other from grade school, best friends growing up in an orphanage together, and right after I came to Kenya they showed up in my life, destitute, so I took them—but I left out the rest, that I had no freaking clue what I was getting myself into, that I’d never have done it if I’d had any idea what it would require of me (thank god for my ignorance), that I’d just started over in Africa and I had no idea how I was going to take care of myself and caring for these orphan girls gave me some delusion that I had something to offer, that I was sorted—it made me feel a little less helpless and adrift. Surely, if I’m caring for these kids, if I’m stable enough to give them a home, I haven’t screwed my life up too badly? Surely?

After dinner, the group went around and said what we were thankful for. I sat with an arm around either of my girls, and when Beautiful whispered to me that she was shy, she didn’t want to say anything, I whispered back exactly what my mother would have: it’s appropriate to show gratitude, I want you to say something. Both my girls, shy but stoic, expressed their thankfulness—for me. And I for them. And I sat realizing we have become more than I gave us credit for, not just a screwup of a 30something American trying to redeem herself and two needy orphan girls leaping shrewdly on the mzungu gravy train, but a mother and her daughters, a family. Till death do us part. Who’da thunk.

Stable or not, I’m a mom. I’m a single woman who’s single perhaps less because I like it and more because I’m addictive and off-base about partnership. What a mess I’ve made of the life society told me I ought to live; I’m divorced, I’m just kicking off my career at 33 years old, I’m pretty sure I’m infertile, I can’t even have a healthy relationship, and I’m a passive-aggressive bitch half the time to the girls who claim me as the closest thing to a mother in their lives. But fuck. I’m surrounded by love nonetheless, and I’m committed to my journey, and Thursday night, my girls cuddling on either side of me, I felt like somehow I’m doing okay.

Yesterday I blew off work again and around noon we ventured into town, strolling Tom Mboya street together, Beauty shopping for a cell phone (I swear, if that girl has an addiction, it’s cell phones; she sells hers and buys a new one every few months), Salome laughing with me at the frightening high heels displayed in the windows (a streetwalker’s dream, which of course is whom they’re marketed to), myself walking with an arm around one or both, loving the familiarity of my fingers between their shoulderblades, loving my children—wanting Beautiful to feel my tangible support, wanting Salome to know she is no less loved for being the girl I see far less, the girl who is not in critical need. Austin met up with us, sparking new vibrance in both of them—god, my girls love that man, and he is so good to them, all the father figure I could wish for. I bought Salome sandals I’d promised her a long time ago, and phone credit for all four of us, and we indulged in a hideously unhealthy lunch, fried chicken, chips, and soda, and I realized how much it means to me that I am able to provide for my family—understanding, in a new way, why Josh loved being the breadwinner in our marriage, because when you can care for the people you love and give them things that delight them, it feels like success.

I feel such gratitude that, despite my impatience at times with the girls, my sarcasm, they still slide arms around my waist and lean heads against my collarbone with the trust and love of a child; despite my periodic distance with Austin, he turns his face into my palm when I touch his cheek, eyes closed, cherishing me with small, silent gestures that say: you’re good enough for me, Anena; despite the ways I let others down—I am loved. I am accepted in spite of my flaws, seen as the woman I’d like to be rather than the woman I often am. I’m not sorted yet, but I do have something to offer. And I’m thankful.

by the sea

2010-11-13T13:51:00.004-05:00

(Written Saturday 6 November)

Best office in the world....

No lens reflects my wealth back to me more gloriously than this green tropical sea. I’m back, my third weekend in five weeks, this time with my roommates—Christine, her boyfriend Octopizzo, his baby Tracey, Cheryl, and Cheryl’s mother, who’s visiting us for two weeks. I invited Austin, but he’s scouting this weekend—he was recently named coach of the new Kenya national women’s team, an honor he’s dreamed of for years and one he has utterly earned. Of the men in my life, he remains my constant and dearest, though I’m sure he can’t understand why that isn’t enough to make him my only. I’m not sure I understand either. More and more I feel myself settling back into singleness: I love spending time with men, but I don’t want a relationship, I just don’t. I want this—green sea, tall palms, my legs on the seawall, my iPod playing my writing-at-the-beach playlist—I want to be mistress of my days. I slept outside last night, dragging my mattress to the porch to lie in the warm breeze off the water, unmoved when the nightly short-rain blew in on me, lying in its warm spray till I slept, waking to the orange sunrise over the water—feeling a participant, as if by osmosis, in each moment: part of the rainstorm, the sunrise, the sea. Nothing could compete with this.

“Free to be me, unencumbered”—this was the mantra my best friend Heidi and I repeated for years. We married within a year of each other; her marriage has turned out to be a nurturer of her dreams, and our formerly synchronized paths have diverged sharply—hers into settled-ness, a happy wife, a determined mother, struggling with but committed to the domesticity she chose/had foisted upon her, and making it work, consciously building a creative lifestyle around her parenting—she is a trailblazer, refusing to sacrifice her writing on the altar of motherhood, learning to own being the mother who needs more than just her children to be complete. Both Heidi and I, in our very different spheres of mothering, have raised a banner to the belief that we can nurture the children of our bodies or of others’ without failing to nurture the creative spirits we first and foremost always have been.

Motherhood is on my mind a lot this weekend—both being the mother, as I check in by phone with Beautiful and Salome, and no longer having my own, as I watch Shish and her mother interact. “Mom, do you want to walk?” Cheryl asked this morning, and her mother exclaimed, “I’d love that!” Just like mine would have—she’d have walked miles beside me, although she’d have hated the beach boys pestering us constantly, “sister, jambo, you want glass-bottom boat? you want seafood? you want keychain?” Slowly I’m growing accustomed to speaking of her in the past tense—“my mother would turn over in her grave!”—though in fact her emaciated body was given to science, cremated, then returned for us to bury the ashes on the hillside outside our home one beautiful Indian summer day. I added a shell from the green water of the Persian Gulf. It was from her that I learned to love the ocean; she would have relished this tropical sea.

She was a liberal locked in a conservative’s body (or so I like to fancy her)—“too smart for the Kingdom,” one of my aunts once said, but she was devoted to the church till the day she died, withered in her bed, tumors protruding in egg-like lumps from her abdomen when I bathed her, weeping, beside the sisters who coached both of us through the journey of her dying—I wasn’t ready to be a mother to my mother, and at the same time I savored it, my hands stroking the bird-wings of her hipbones, marveling at the mother body that had nurtured me and which I, at 28, was nurturing in return—I wanted to make it all better, as a mother does for her child, even we unconventional mothers who need more, other, than just mothering—I wanted to fix her, cure her, keep her for always. As I wanted to do, a year and a half later, for Paige, tiny girl who lay trustingly in my embrace while I sang her the songs I sing now to Nico, to Tracey. Here at the beach, Tracey splashes and squeals in my arms in the warm water, and I close my eyes and feel Paige embracing me in the icy New England ocean, the waves crashing against us as I clutched her to my chest, cherishing the illusion that I could protect her from the battering forces coming her way. This week marks three years since her death. Each step in this journey circles around to remind me of all that went before.

And yet, in this moment, holding Tracey is exactly what I want. And Beautiful and Salome, my two brave, challenging girls; and the experience Heidi and I earnestly share, albeit from very different angles: what it means to commit to caring for a dependent being. As well as the experience I still lament—what it means to be a motherless mother. My moments of feeling like a mother are almost always connected to Mumma—when Beautiful comes home from school, shaking with fever, vomiting—result of the TB—and I sit with her on the back stoop stroking her back while she pukes in a bucket, then wash the bucket out—this is what my mother did for me, and when I do the same things for my child, I feel like this is real, that I’m really becoming this role I’ve somehow ended up playing. Since Beauty became sick I’ve accepted in a new way the responsibility of this role, that taking this child in requires sacrifices of me that I never made before, of my time, my care, my attention. I don’t mind washing out her vomit basin; much harder is listening to her chat when I’m feeling pressured to get work emails sent before the end of business hours. The challenge of putting someone else’s needs in front of mine—the reason, perhaps, these children were brought to me.

Sometimes I wake from dreams of my mother. Always, she has been dead but has come back and it’s so sweet, in my dreams—a second chance, a do-over. What Africa is to me—my chance to make my life what I always wanted it to be, what I let go of and then got back. I have never felt more blessed than tonight, walking across the beach in the dark, under the starry fullness of a moonless sky, to the soft sand where the low tide laps languidly around my ankles, the warm wind wrapping my shoulders like a cloak. This is the life I always wanted, this, this. I often look back, at the life and the people I left behind, but there’s no going back, and I’m grateful for that; I’d have denied myself this, from fear, had I had the option of holding onto what went before. It’s scarier here, but better—not sweeter; just a different kind of sweetness. I’m learning to savor both.

a beautiful journey

2010-10-28T10:41:00.004-04:00

Three days shy of my second Kenyan anniversary, I’m back in Kitengela, the scrubby paths, the irresistible orange stones I scoop from the dirt, the stink of garbage and dung in the ditches, the hot sun baking a fine layer of dust into my skin. The trails I’ve followed for two years now, though today, dust withstanding, I walk them in good clothes—I finally realized Kenyans’ appearance-orientation compelled me to abandon my cargoes and T shirts if I’m to be respected—and it’s nostalgic, being in my natal town for only the third time this year, reviewing my Kenyan journey. Today, much against my will, I’ve been talking TB with the doctors at the clinic. I have also confirmed myself free of HIV (still) and UTIs (at last!). I tested both samples myself. Having friends in clinics is great. I wish it wasn’t about to be as useful as I think it is.

So much has shifted, so much is the same. After the clinic I stopped to see Violet, bone-thin but smiling broadly at my advent. We watched a white Southern pastor on TV giving a scathing sermon on the evils of divorce from a clear color screen—she has a new TV. I look at the bags I’ve set on her coffee table, fresh produce, lentils, tea, mandazzi for the children. These are the life-giving gifts I bring a dying family who spend their few extra shillings on a better TV while their cupboards sit bare. Ah, what’s it to me? Violet is too weak to work, she sits all day alone in her stuff one-room home, why shouldn’t she be able to watch Southern preachers in full color if she enjoys it. I give her more cash on my way out the door. I can’t speak to the challenges of her journey; my choice is to support her right where she is.

“Howahyou,” people call as I walk the dry paths between concrete-block buildings to the center of town, and I smile and wave at them, because I’m not bitch mzungu today, I’m a mzungu who has things in perspective, one who has bigger things to be upset about than an African man lounging in the shade who just wants the white girl to green him back in front of his friends. Beautiful, my 18-year-old, has been sick for months, a wet cough, weight loss, frightening symptoms in Africa. I’ve tested her for everything; I’m testing her again. She’s sitting her KCSE’s this month, the end-of-secondary-school series of exams that exclusively determines whether a Kenyan will qualify for university (and which one), or for a degree program, or for menial work like security (always a massive demand for guards in theft-ridden Kenya!), or for nothing better than jua kali, “hot sun,” the unskilled laborers who sweat each day for enough money to buy their dinners, for the rest of their meager lives. Beauty is smart, a hard worker; she’s been first in her class all year. She should certainly qualify for a scholarship to government university. But she’s been coughing and coughing, and lately her fevers are recurrent, and last night on the couch, with her head in my lap, I felt someone ought to slap me—her eyes are huge in her face, her skin stretched across her cheekbones, and I’ve been trying to get her through her KCSE’s first and figure out her health problems later—and yet—she is ill now, goading her body and mind into performing, and I don’t know what I could have done differently, but guiltily feel I ought to have done something.

Instead, while my child has grown weak and thin, I’ve been in town working-working-working. Last week the Economist hosted its first debate in Kenya, a high-level, exclusive event where I had trouble taking myself seriously: sitting two seats over from the prime minister, sanguine conversational skills I formerly used to chat up newbies at church now deployed to establish business relationships with CEOs and MDs, the only white woman in a roomful of wealthy African businessmen—god, what an INTERESTING life I live!! I’ve been out straight in these weeks leading up to the debate, selling sponsorships, and I loved it, the busyness, the challenge, the education. Living like this, with one foot in Kenya’s professional sector and one in the low-income volunteerism world, never stops being fascinating.

This weekend, 36 hours after the debate, I found myself neither businesswoman nor volunteer but straight-up tourist, relaxing on the white sandy beach, treating myself to a quick coast holiday that turned out to comprise the Italian Club: my painfully handsome friend Francesco, in town from Italy on a business trip, as well as my marvelous friend Filippo and his partner Paolo, and another Italian couple involved in development and conservation. Foregone result of vacationing with Italians, I ate and talked all weekend, gorging myself one meal on lobster, prawns, tilapia straight from the sea and the next on prosciutto, gorgonzola, bruschetta stacked on my plate by enthusiastic afficionados: this one, Anena, try this, and this—two weeks with this group and I’d have outgrown my clothes. We feasted by day at a dingy seaside shack that served up succulent grilled calamari to make you weep, and by night at a posh oceanfront resort that bestowed us with tender parrotfish and sea bass before we finally palmed our glasses of Amarula and rolled ourselves onto the beach beneath the full moon. Betweentimes, Francesco and I walked for miles, a striding tour up and down the coastline punctuated by beverage stops at sundry resorts along the way, cold tonic with lime here, strong cappuccino there. I swam and swam in the warm, messy water, full of seaweed carried in by the currents this time of year and, once, the sudden slimy wriggle of a solefish beneath my foot. Sunday at dawn I crept from the bed Francesco and I had, regrettably, chastely shared and sat by the sea writing till the orange sun over the waves lost out to clouds that suddenly began to spit rain. I ran for the patio, finding Hank awake there, and we breakfasted in whispers on salt-and-vinegar chips and melt-in-your-mouth fresh mangoes while vervet and Colobus monkeys scrambled in the trees above us coveting our meal. Finally I urged Francesco awake and we strode up the beach to a fabulous resort where we sat facing the water, feasting on omelette and papaya and the green ocean, the sea breeze, my bare feet tucked up on my chair, Francesco pouring me more good coffee—I laughed, as I always do, because how else to express this, how rich and delightful my life is? I used the words “my good fortune” over and over all weekend, bobbing alone in the warm sea, gasping with pleasure at a bite of mozzarella and aubergine, listening to the lilt of five Italians discussing the dinner menu in their native tongue, wading in the low tide at midnight under a full moon. I’m so wealthy, in my friendships, in my freedom—I marvel.

Tall, quiet Francesco is a delight, physically stunning, emotionally engaging, humble and interesting and kind. He is trying to heal his fractured marriage. Mine has long been laid to rest. Yet there is a kinship between us, an understanding of the hair-line between success and failure; that two people might view one outcome two different ways; that love does not equate with happiness. Sunday morning, breakfasting with him by the sea, I threw out my hands, to the white sandy beach, the green water where muscular fishermen sorted nets in hand-hewn dugout canoes, the cushy patio where we reclined, the accessibility of this tropical paradise only a short trip from my daily life, the freedom to enjoy it at will—this, THIS, is what I always wanted. All weekend I watched couples stroll the beach, I helplessly desired the darkly handsome man walking miles by my side, but I didn’t want THAT, I didn’t want the security I used to pine for; I wanted only this, the freedom I pined for also—one treasure that I finally achieved at cost of the other. Life’s a tradeoff. At this moment in time, I feel I got a pretty spectacular deal.

And then I came home. And here is my work load, and my responsibilities, and my sick child. Here is my life, two years in the building, and here are the loveliest delights: red poinsettia trees, fuschia bougainvillea, soft purple blossoms of jacarandas scattered across the ground. Here are my volunteers, Hank et al, the kind of people who make this volunteer-hosting business joyful, and here my daughter, my death’s-head, who trustingly tucks herself into my arms and believes me when I reassure her everything will be okay. Here is the daunting reality that she has advanced TB, and the resultant necessity that I shrug off some of my self-absorbed adventuring to show up for my chosen child in ways that seem to require more of me than I have to give. Here is a wakeup call to engage again in others’ lives, no matter how much I have adored sinking indulgently into my own.

Two days ago, in a taxi with Francesco, after talking on the phone to a doctor about Beautiful’s test results, I suddenly burst into anxious tears, whereupon he clutched me to his chiseled chest, covering my head and neck with encouraging Italian kisses—that old, forgotten feeling of male comfort, lynchpin of my marriage, forsaken pleasure of my needy past. Flying from Doha to New York nearly two years ago, anticipating the likely end of my marriage with Josh, I promised myself I’d never again be that girl clinging weakly to a man for comfort—I was Anena now, intrepid, resilient, and I would carry my own burdens. Tucking myself against Francesco to weep was a momentary luxury, quickly released; it’s my job to deal with my feelings, and I did, wiping my eyes, taking deep breaths, preparing to be strong for my girl—processing my feelings and then putting them behind me, so I could go home and create a similar space for Beautiful to process hers. Spooned behind her on the bed, arms around her, feeling her relax into me, I am at last to someone else what the men of yore always were to me—the strong one, the bearer of burdens, comforter, caregiver: I’m here for you, baby; I’ll take care of you; everything is going to be okay.

What an abundant, unexpected place two years has brought me to. What good fortune.