That summer, she made costumes for Shakespeare in the Park. In the fall she continued to teach and also started graduate school at Columbia. The following summer, she and my dad got married. Five years after that, they moved to Nyack and had me. My brother arrived two years later.

It wasn’t easy for her, of course, when my dad left. But after a while she pulled herself together and did things she might never have done had they remained married. In Montana one summer, under the wing (ha) of a Native American named Brooke Medicine Eagle, she went on a vision quest. She taught at the Audobon Camp in Maine. She lived for a time on the Clearwater, the Hudson River Sloop. She published a short story.

Whenever there were breakthroughs in science, she’d get the newest college textbooks and teach herself whatever there was to learn. Dinosaurs, global warming, mitochondria, and neurotransmitters. For example. She was an enormously popular teacher and at least once a month I pass along to her Facebook messages that I can only describe as fan mail.

In 2001 she and her boyfriend of seven years got married, retired, sold the house I grew up in, moved onto a 45’ Herschoff Mobjack and sailed to the Caribbean. The lived on their boat and sailed from island to island until 2004. They were in Grenada when my mom got word that her father had passed away. She went to Indiana for the funeral, and several weeks later, while she was still in the States, her husband was very badly injured in an accidental fall. He needed orthopedic surgery, and medical care that was simply unavailable in the Caribbean, so she flew back to Grenada so she could be with him while they medievaced him to Florida. He was at one of the best hospitals in the country, and I was so certain he’d be fine, I didn’t talk to him on the telephone before his surgery. On the operating table he suffered a massive stroke. He never woke up.

It was, simply, the scariest thing that had ever happened to me. Not only John’s death, but what it did to my mother. I was so worried about her I couldn’t breathe, or cry, or imagine how we would ever again be whole.

She stayed with me in New York for a while, but by January she was itching to get back to Grenada. It had become home. And so she went. I followed her a few months later. I was supposed to stay for six weeks, but when my time was up I didn’t want to leave. So I stayed. For four years. By the first anniversary of John’s death, we had found a house, brought my grandmother to live with us, and I had met a guy and found a job. I was also pregnant. With Bean. Who is, by the way, named after the grandfather he never got to meet.

I still think about John a lot, and I know my mother does too. I do not think that I will ever, as long as I live, stop missing him. Nor will I forget what it was like to witness my mother become a widow. To watch her face crumple up with a sorrow I could not ever hope to soothe. But I am at peace with the knowledge that we survived the hardest part. We weathered the storm. And we are stronger for it.

Today is Mom’s birthday. She’s 63. She’s just as beautiful as she was at 24. She doesn’t have any wrinkles, and her white hair doesn’t really say “old”. It says “hippie snow princess”. She still bakes and sews and has an almost supernatural touch with our garden. She loves dark chocolate-covered chili peppers. She devours the books I recommend and then wants to talk about them for hours. She is quiet and shy and soft-spoken. She is nothing like me and she is also everything like me. And she is the best Grandma a Bean could ever have.

I love you, Mom. Happy Birthday.Similar Posts:

• missing vera
• a late night rambling
• on winter light and other random revelations
• choosing a college major: or how to fly by the seat of your pants
• whilst helping bean get dressed

And I didn’t.

But the photo is useful in spite of its limitations, because it helps me remember.

(Click here for a much larger version of the image.)Similar Posts:

• a sense of place: spice market
• grenada island pages
• journals from grenada
• haile selassie
• more “graffiti”

I'm a sucker for book memes.

Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes) was published in 1992 and my mom got it right away, which means I was 15 when I first read it. Which explains a lot about me and my particular brand of weird. I’m won’t even attempt here to distill the book into something neat and pithy. “Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype”? That’s a topic better suited for a PhD thesis than a blog post.

I offer the following excerpt for your consideration:

“She comes to us through sound as well; through music which vibrates the sternum, excites the heart; it comes through the drum, the whistle, the call, and the cry. It comes through the written and the spoken word; sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story, is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instant, what substance we are really made from, and where is our try home.

These transient “tastes of the wild” come during the mystique of inspiration ” ah, there it is; oh, now it has gone. The longing for her comes when one happens across someone who has secured this wildish relationship. The longing comes when one realizes one has given scant time to the mystic cookfire or to the dreamtime, too little time to one”s creative life, one”s life work, or one”s true loves.

Yet it is these fleeting tastes which come both through beauty as well as loss, that cause us to become so bereft, so agitated, so longing that we eventually must pursue the wildish nature. Then we leap into the forest or into the desert or into the snow and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance. And when we pick up her trail, it is typical of women to ride hard to catch up, to clear off the desk, clear off the relationship, clear out one”s mind, turn to a new page, insist on a break, break the rules, stop the world, for we are not going on without her any longer.

Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are reestablished; they are no longer marks for the predation of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive.

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact of that relationship glows through them. The wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.

So the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.“Similar Posts:

• humbled
• on winter light and other random revelations
• resolutions, briefly
• on the equinox
• “love is my religion”

Similar Posts:

• haile selassie
• missing vera
• grenville coast
• grenada island pages
• 9/11 webcomic

So he forgot about his tantrum and allowed me to pick him up. As I was helping him get his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, I spoke softly against his cheek,

Guess what Mommy’s doing tomorrow? Mommy’s going to school. (I’m taking classes so I can be an ESL teacher.)

Oh, he said, looking a little sad. He anchored his gaze to the floor.

Bean, what’s wrong?

Is your school very very far away, Mommy?

And I’m flabbergasted. The poor child is worried that I might go somewhere and leave him behind. I assured him that I won’t do that, and he seems soothed, but my heart is a little heavy tonight. He doesn’t understand why Grenada has to be thousands of miles from here, and dammit, sometimes I don’t either.Similar Posts:

• in which i tell a story in pictures
• the little man
• does this sound like karma or what?
• tag-teamed
• choices that bind

(“Liming” is Caribbean slang for “hanging out”.)

A friend was teasing me. I don’t remember what about, precisely, but it was probably the fact that I always had a book with me. Always. Even whilst drinking.

Generally I’m a fan of people who make fun of me in a good-natured way. Provided they can take back some of what they dish. So, with a grin on my face and a smile in my voice, I said to my friend:

“Screw you and the horse you rode in on.”

He’d never heard this expression before, and found it wildly entertaining. So much so that the following evening he greeted me with a loud and jovial,

“Hey, Maria! Fuck you and your horse!”

Bulls-eye.Similar Posts:

• the last jar
• speech patterns
• does this sound like karma or what?
• “love is my religion”
• a fever dream

This quotation is an excerpt from The Field: Howard Zinn (1922-2010): In Lieu of Flowers, Organize. Click through and read the whole thing. There’s also video of Zinn being interviewed by Bill Moyers.

Howard Zinn and Bill Moyers in the same room is the kind of event that changes tides.Similar Posts:

• howard zinn
• the new york post: barely fit to wrap fish
• note to self
• buju banton
• subtitled produce

This is one of my header images. The gentleman in the middle is Emperor Haile Selassie and to his right is Marcus Garvey. “Haile Selassie” is not the name he was given at birth, but rather a name that he adopted when he assumed the throne of Ethiopia. It means “Power of the Trinity”. His complete title was “”His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and Elect of God”. (And here I thought “Maria Alisa Santiago” had a lot of syllables.)

Haile Selassie is fascinating. So is Rastafari Movement, the religious ideology in which he’s a holy figure. Contrary to popular misconception, being a Rasta is not all about smoking ganja and listening to Bob Marley. It is also not merely a “culture”, and not exactly a religion either. It is an ideological movement. I don’t know enough about it to describe it in detail (yet), but the more I read the more I am struck by the realization that in many ways – dietary restrictions and emphasis on Messianism, for example – it resembles Orthodox Judaism.

You’ll never catch a Rasta uttering the word “Rastafarianism”. Isms are for Babylon.

(Photograph taken in Woburn, Grenada. Click here for larger image.)Similar Posts:

• more “graffiti”
• buju banton
• “love is my religion”
• a sense of place: spice market
• two things

Similar Posts:

None Found

Now. The cover is one thing. Actually reading it is something else entirely. I legit cringed at the thought. But my curiosity overwhelmed my trepidation and I opened it to a random page, where I discovered this:

“The man has a hat
The man has a cat
The cat sat on the mat
The cat sat on the hat
The cat is fat, and now the hat is flat
So the man doesn’t have anything to wear.”

Poetry has never been my thing.Similar Posts:

• journals from grenada
• the sunwheel project
• speech patterns
• more on accents
• “the lady is reading”

I’ve had that image stuck in my head for days, and I didn’t know why, and then it hits me. That it’s a perfect metaphor for my life right now. That over the last few weeks I’ve been cleaning and deleting and streamlining and culling and generally flailing about in a attempt to get my existence into a size and shape that I can manage. Because sometimes I think about all the things I want to do, all the things I have to do, all the things I dream about, all the places I want to go and the people I want to love and the stories I want to tell and the children I want to mother. And for a moment I can almost see all that wanting of mine, and it’s just like King motherflocking Kong, except with slightly better table manners. So I rub my eyes and the vision recedes and I take a deep, shaky breath and whisper aloud,

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. Similar Posts:

• missing vera
• on the nobel peace prize
• attention whore manifesto
• santa hat and t-rex
• the power of non-violence

Another notebook excerpt. I wrote a story about this one, but it still needs some serious trimming/editing. I’ll post it when/if I manage to edit it down to fewer than 1000 words.

The super-short version is: Back in 2005 when I first got to Grenada, I was a total mess. Like so traumatized by the events of the previous year that I was 1) super-skinny, 2) showering in my bathing suit and 3) totally unable to have a normal conversation with any guy who tried to flirt with me. So I always always ALWAYS had a book with me, no matter where I went. I’d keep a finger between the pages, marking my place so that with a moment’s notice I could stick my nose in the book, thereby allowing me to avoid talking to people without being blatantly rude.

It got to the point where I’d giggle about it. Someone would pass me and ask, Is the lady alright? And I’d reply, The lady is fine. The lady is reading.

Then one day I legit laughed out loud about how silly I was being. And that’s when I realized: I was going to be OK.Similar Posts:

• swine flu & grenadians studying in mexico
• choices that bind
• a sort of poem
• in which i dip my toes in the water
• lemme tell you about love, people

It’s an overwhelming amount of material if you consider the whole mountain at once, but one piece at a time? Not so much.

The other week I posted this photo:

With this caption:
Definitely my grandfather.
Probably France.
Probably 1945.
Maybe Normandy.
Maybe.
Family history is hard.

A couple of hours later I posted this update: I love the internet. Many thanks to everyone who pointed out that that photo of my grandfather was taken in front of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium. The first person to tell me this was a lovely French gentleman who lives in Paris, who emailed me this morning just a few minutes after my post. At first I thought he couldn’t be right because I’ve been to Brussels and seen the Mannekin Pis and thought I would have recognized it. But then I remembered that 1) the statue had been moved while I was there so it wasn’t behind that fence, 2) my grandfather was never stationed in Belgium but he did spend one of his military leaves in Brussels.

And then I remembered a conversation we had more than ten years ago. I had just returned from my semester in Paris. We were talking about the traveling I’d done and I mentioned that a friend and I had gone to Brussels and spent an entire day wandering around the city looking for the Manneken Pis and that when we found it I couldn’t believe how small it was. He started chuckling his trademark chuckle at that; told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.

But Grandpa. You’ve never been to Belgium.
Oh, yes I have.
When?
During the war.
Really? But I thought you were stationed in France.
I was, I was. I went to Brussels on leave. For a holiday. Vacation.

By this point he’s moved past his trademark Santiago chuckle and is really laughing. And what you need to know about my grandfather for the purposes of this anecdote is that his laugh had a Puerto Rican accent. Ach. I miss him.

He went on to explain that just like me, he and a friend had wandered the city for hours looking for the fabled Manneken Pis. And that just like me, when he finally saw it he couldn’t believe it was really just a rather small statue of a little boy, peeing. I asked him what he did when he saw it. He explained,

I laughed. I took a picture. And then I went and got another drink.

Similar Posts:

• a sense of place
• speech patterns
• jfk
• grenada island pages
• thanksgiving

Her: Hey, María? Do you speak Spanish?

Me: My grandfather was Puerto Rican.

Her: So you speak Spanish.

Me: Well. My mom’s from South Bend, Indiana. So it’s not like we spoke it at home.

Her: So you don’t speak Spanish.

Me: No, I learned it in school. I’ve done translation work. I know accent rules and everything.

Her: So you DO speak Spanish.

Me: Honey? That depends entirely on what you’re going to ask me to do.Similar Posts:

• whilst helping bean get dressed
• my grandfather, the veteran
• on accents
• choosing a college major: or how to fly by the seat of your pants
• navel ahead, avert your gaze

When my brother was in college he had a talk radio news-but-mostly-fly-the-seat-of-his-pants-political-commentary show. Because it was college radio he basically got to do whatever he wanted.

One of the great moments of his show was the time he got to interview Howard Zinn. I was all, ZOMG WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? His answer was a terse “very intimidating”.

My dogeared copy of A People’s History of the United States is a prize possession. I read it in high school as part of an American history independent study and it forever colored the way I see the world. Zinn is half the reason I got a degree in history and all the reason I don’t take any “news” or history books at face value.

To me, the core of Zinn’s message is this: Responsible citizenship is an active rather than passive endeavor, “accepted” history is not sacrosanct, and we should all, as loudly as possible, share our own stories. As more voices are heard and recorded, the closer we get to a complete and accurate picture. And that’s precisely why I’m sweating blood writing about my grandparents. Because I feel a deep obligation to contribute to that picture, in whatever small, personal way I can.

It’s for all that that I honor Professor Zinn, may he rest in peace.Similar Posts:

• “in lieu of flowers, organize”
• “jessie’s girl”
• my grandfather, the veteran
• swine flu, plague, cats, rats & urban legends
• attention whore manifesto

Similar Posts:

• carenage fire station
• the world’s best chocolate. let me show you it.
• repat? is that a thing?
• serious thoughts on a sunday
• haile selassie

I, the 6-year-old voice of reason was like, Um, Sandy? But you don’t even know him. He lives in California. And I think I heard on the radio that he’s married.

And she was all, Yes, I do! So what!?! And shut up you did not and no he isn’t!

I was so grossed out by this… I think it’s half the reason I’ve never been much for celebrity crushes. (The other half of the reason is River Phoenix and his untimely demise.)

Fast forward 25 years. I’m back in Nyack because my brother’s girlfriend’s brother’s band – “The Hearts-On”, say it out loud – they’re playing in a local bar, and I pinky swear promised I’d be in the audience. And who do you think is there? In the front row? Spending the entire show frantically tapping her foot and desperately trying to make eye contact with the bass player?

Oh, YEAH. Sandy.

At first I was saddened to see she was still the same kind of crazy. But then I realized that she’d redirected her energies to someone she had actually seen in the flesh. So, good for you, Sandy. Rock on.

Also? LOVE THIS TUNE.

[See post to listen to audio]

I’m not crazy about the acoustic version but it’s not bad either.

[See post to listen to audio]

(Even though, forgive me Rick, I’m pretty sure Jessie with an “i”is a girl’s name, yes? What is that all about?)Similar Posts:

• howard zinn
• choices that bind
• king of the sandlot (chapter one)
• a sense of place: the beach
• farewell, but not goodbye « Blah Bloh Blog

Which is why I was so thrilled when my friend Afrobella mentioned she was writing about him. She was born in Trinidad, but has lived in the U.S. for a long time, and she’s got a brilliant touch for dealing thoughtfully yet honestly yet non-offensively with tough subjects. I was certain she’d post an amazing blog, and I was not disappointed.

She wrote:

Because Buju is such a dominant artist, many who don’t know more about Jamaican music have then gone on to make vast assumptions about reggae and dancehall artists, assuming that they all feel that same hatred in their hearts. And they don’t. I interviewed Tanya Stephens some years ago, and she spoke out against the homophobia in her musical genre: “I find it to be — I know this will not be received with any warm embrace — but I find it to be a little bit double standard and hypocritical, especially when I hear Rastafarians professing or helping to spread unacceptance of any group of people. I am very disappointed. I remember as a young child, Bob Marley songs couldn’t be played in my house, because he was a dutty Rasta. Rastafarians used to be shunned for their beliefs. It is very upsetting to me to see that these same people have gained acceptance and are among the most popular, and they are now rejecting somebody else. It is just so amusing. I have a very sick sense of humor, and it carries me through stuff like this, and I laugh at all of it. It’s ridiculous the things we do to each other.”

And now, after all of Buju Banton’s pre-existing controversy, comes these cocaine charges. Having read the official affidavit, I don’t understand how fans can still rant that this was somehow a set up. It’s difficult and disappointing to even picture Buju — our Buju — slicing into a brick of cocaine with a knife and tasting such a product with a expert’s ability, and it being all caught on video. It sounds like the plot for an awful movie, or an episode of Miami Vice. Not Buju who sang about Sensimilia Persecution. But that’s what he is described as doing in the affidavit. And still people are tweeting, Facebook wall posting, and YouTube commenting –that this must somehow be a diabolical plot by those that hate Buju for his beliefs. In my opinion, that’s the kind of willful ignorance that makes an appropriate response difficult. But still I’ve seen many people I know and used to respect, repeat that kind of foolishness — “set up dem a set up Buju.” [Emphasis mine.]

No matter what we believe (or want to believe), Buju is now linked to big time American drug charges and he’s facing a lengthy prison sentence — unless his rising star lawyer is able to help him out of this bind. In the meantime, all fans of Buju Banton can do is speculate, rage against these accusations, wonder what’s really going on. And wish that things were different.

Click here to read Afrobella’s complete post.

Also of interest are articles from Miamiherald.com (Buju Banton faces drug conspiracy charges), BBC NEWS (Buju Banton denies US drug charge) and Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buju_Banton).

My favorite tidbit from the Wikipedia article is that “Buju” means “breadfruit” is a nickname given to chubby kids. TMYK.Similar Posts:

• attention whore manifesto
• subtitled produce
• maria being maria
• swine flu, plague, cats, rats & urban legends
• the new york post: barely fit to wrap fish

The first to weigh in was adsinfinitum, who wrote:

Another point of interest for me is how people are so determined to assign you an accent. How they feel the need to place you by saying “Oh, you sound like this, therefore you come from there. I know you now.” I’m South African, and the SA accent is a most curious thing – no rounded British vowels, no Stateside drawl, no flattened Ozzie twang as a marker. Its defining characteristic is its total lack of a defining characteristic. And yet, people persist in saying, “Oh, are you from England? From Australia?” – even once, “From Russia?” I wonder whether we divide people into nationalities by hearing them because it makes us feel more secure – whether once we decide where someone’s come from, we believe we know where they’re going.

Then catty1 shared:

I’m Bahamian and one of my cousins is Jamaican.  I spent a fair amount of my childhood thinking that she spoke French because I often couldn’t understand a damn thing she was saying.  And I was super impressed with how well my mom understood French!  Even now, 30 years later, she’ll say something and my brain will just blank … and by all accounts she’s “lost” her accent.  HA!

I was tickled by both of these posts. Partly because I think they reinforce my assertion that it’s all about perspective. But I also appreciate the insight that naming someone’s accent is often – consciously or unconsciously – about stuffing a person into a category. It reminds me of that question, the one that’s all too familiar to any American of mixed racial background: “What are you?” And I laughed out loud when catty1’s story about thinking Jamaican English was French, because I happen to speak French, and when I first arrived in Grenada, I couldn’t get over how much Grenadian English reminded me of French. It’s something about the rhythm, musical cadences and the rising of the voice at the end of sentences. The Grenadian lexicon is also peppered with French words, the remnants, I imagine, of Grenada’s time as part of France’s colonial empire.Similar Posts:

• on accents
• insomnia (to squeak! perchance to scream.)
• attention whore manifesto
• on winter light and other random revelations
• choosing a college major: or how to fly by the seat of your pants

I can understand how, for example, a person from England might bristle at the suggestion that he or she sounds just like a person from Ireland or Scotland. And vice versa. But I’m from New York, which sounds – to my ear – nothing like Boston, or Maine, or California, or Louisiana or Texas. And you don’t hear me insisting that there’s no such thing as an American accent, now do you?

Accents are relative. If I’m in Europe or the Caribbean, I have an American accent. But such a statement no longer applies when I’m in the United States. Then my accent is New York. Unless I’m in New York with other New Yorkers and then I don’t have an accent.

I don’t have an accent. Until YOU think I do, and then I do.

Savvy?

In Grenada I got mistaken over and over and over again for English. And sometimes Canadian. But almost always English.

Which is holy wow hilarious if you’ve ever heard me speak. My voice is 111% New York suburbanese.

One day Bean’s father and I were watching Pirates of the Caribbean and I asked him if he really, honestly seriously thought I sounded like Kiera Knightly.

“Oh yes, babes,” he said. “Allyuh does sound exactly de same to me.”

The other side of that coin is that when I first moved to the Caribbean a Grenadian’s speech was, to my ear, indistinguishable from that of a Jamaican, a Bajan, a Trini or even a Bahamian.

Two years later there was no way I’d mistake someone from any other island for a Grenadian, and I was actually offended when an American employee of Air Jamaica expected me to agree with him when he declared that all West Indians have a Jamaican accent.

I wanted to tell him that if he was expecting me to share in his white-people-know-everything moment he’d chosen unwisely. But he still had my passport in his hand so I just smiled and said nothing.Similar Posts:

• more on accents
• speech patterns
• “love is my religion”
• my grandfather, the veteran
• cuba’s magic lightbulbs

That tile was never quite right, though. Unfinished.

Another thing that was left unfinished was one of the house’s two and a half bathrooms. Certainly it was nobody’s intention to leave it that way for thirteen years, but that’s what happened. My parents were too busy with baby me, and then less than three years later there was my brother too. Then when I was seven my dad moved out and it was a long time before my mom managed to do much of anything that wasn’t vital to our survival in the hunter/gatherer sense of the word.

By the time my brother and I were both in middle school and words like Aquanet and benzoyl peroxide and Gillette had entered our lexicon, we had grown weary of all sharing the one bathtub and shower. My mother, I imagine, was wearier still of listening to the two of us get on like two cats of Kilkenny, so she had the tile installed and, for a time, peace broke out. But that was later.

That unfinished bathroom was one of those things that seemed totally normal within the context of our household. None of my friends had anything analogous, but I didn’t notice. The toilet and the double sinks and the shower all worked, and there were cabinets and even a mirror, but no tile or wallpaper or plates covering the electrical outlets. There were old dusty boxes full of bottle green tile. The shower curtain rod had no curtain but it did have a wire hanger, and the wire hanger had herbs and flowers from our garden fastened to it with wooden clothespins, hung there to dry. I would go in there and search the contents of the cabinets that I already knew by heart, search them as if I’d find something new.

The summer I was ten I hatched a chicken. In an incubator. He was fuzzy and yellow and I imagined that he loved me. He slept in a cardboard box that I kept on the floor next to the head of my bed. He got bigger and stronger and some mornings I’d wake up to find him asleep on the pillow, right next to me. Then ihe got bigger and stronger still and when he could fly out of the box with ease, my chicken got his own room. My chicken moved into the unfinished bathroom.

I wanted to keep it forever, of course. I was ten and I was a girl and I had literally helped the bird out of its shell. It’s too messy, my mother told me. It needs to be outside, she said. To me it was obvious that my chicken should just live in the backyard. Problem solved. Why not? Because, my mother explained, there are zoning laws and this is a residential area. This is the suburbs and we are not allowed to have farm animals.

Zoning laws? Adults. Adults and their ridiculous constructs.

Christmas Day we drove upstate to my grandparents’ house. On the way, we dropped my chicken off with some farmer. In the car I smoothed his feathers and tucked him under my arm and felt his warmth and silently willed my mother to get lost and give up getting rid of my chicken. And then when we got there I put him down on the ground, and watched him inspect the hens. He walked off, oblivious to me. It was cold and we were already late for dinner, so we left. It was cold and I could see my breath and hear the crunch crunch of the frozen ground beneath my feet.

I missed my chicken, but not as much as I thought I would, and I’m sure he missed me even less.Similar Posts:

• happy birthday, mom
• vera’s passing
• leaving grenada: who, what, where, when & why
• cuba’s magic lightbulbs
• the job of a good citizen is to keep her mouth open

So I’ve started mining my journals from my time on the island. It’s an intense experience because although I’ve been treating blank pages like confessors since I was seven, this is the first time I’ve actually reread any of my scribblings. There are six notebooks. Here I’m describing the time I went to get my visitor’s visa renewed and instead of stamping my passport the immigration officer threatened to deport me. Bean was born less than two days later, mere hours after I got that situation resolved.

The phrase “angry waddle” is currently a bottomless fount of mirth for me. But that’s not the real reason I’m sharing this with you. I’m sharing this with you because I’ll be needing witnesses keep me honest. Witnesses to what? Witnesses to the commitment I’ve made to myself.

Click on the photo for a larger, more legible image.

Similar Posts:

• on winter light and other random revelations
• warmer days
• choices that bind
• hey. you.
• missing vera

I swear, every time I think he’s gotten as gorgeous as one human being can possibly get, he goes and kicks the bar higher. And yeah, I’m his mother so clearly I’m biased, but I also know empirical beauty when I see it.

Bean and I had a fantastic time taking these. My dad got him a digital camera for Christmas, so he’s all sorts of interested in, for example, the fact that he needs to keep still or else the photo might come out blurry. And since he’s in his “why?” phase, it’s a relief to have him asking questions that have simple, concrete answers. Questions that lack simple, concrete answers include, but are not limited to:

“Mommy, why is your bottom so big?”

“Mommy, why don’t I have a baby sister?”

“Mommy, why don’t your scrambled eggs look like Grandma’s scrambled eggs?”

“Mommy, why can’t I have some of your diet Coke?”

Then there’s my personal favorite, and evidence of my foresight fail: “Mommy, why can’t I sit on the kitchen table today when you let me yesterday?”

(Because grownups are fickle, honey.) Similar Posts:

• choices that bind
• a christmas eve story
• tag-teamed
• back in the states: top ten
• turning three

Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Power of Non-violence)
Similar Posts:

• note to self
• attention whore manifesto
• haile selassie
• more on the nobel peace prize
• serious thoughts on a sunday

I freaked.

Jack! What do you think you’re doing!

Fixing the plugs, Mommy.

WHAT? You don’t fix plugs! You don’t TOUCH plugs! You know that’s dangerous! I’ve told you about electricity! You never ever ever touch those cords! Don’t you know how badly they could hurt you?

I won’t get hurt, Mommy.

WHAT? You will so! And do you know what will happen to Mommy if you get hurt?

You’ll be sad.

YES! And do you know how long I’ll be sad?

For a very long time.

NO! Not for a very long time. FOREVER! MOMMY WILL BE SAD FOREVER!

Don’t worry, Mommy. If I die, I’ll just come back.

JACK! PEOPLE DO NOT COME BACK AFTER THEY DIE. WHO TOLD YOU THAT?

You did. Right before you died, you said you’d come back and you did. You came back.

At this point in the conversation, he’s still totally calm and I’m getting hysterical. Which is bad mommy protocol. I know this. So I close my eyes and breathe deeply and rub my temples and try to figure out what in the holy hell he’s talking about. I died and came back and WHA’ WHA’ WHA’ WHAT?

And then I remember. A conversation I had with him when he was not even two years old. I was going to New York without him, leaving him in Grenada with his grandmother. Right before I left I told him that I was going away but I’d come back, and that I wanted him to remember that no matter what, Mommy will always always always come back.

So I explained. That that’s not what Mommy meant. That Mommy wasn’t dead, Mommy was just in New York. I don’t know how well he understood me, though, so I’ll have to revisit this until I’m sure that he gets that death is permanent.

Oy.

The universe and Bean. They tag-team me.Similar Posts:

• choices that bind
• in which i tell a story in pictures
• leaving grenada: who, what, where, when & why
• does this sound like karma or what?
• happy birthday, mom

Although I have no way of knowing for certain, in my heart I believe that bringing my grandmother to Grenada prolonged her life by a year or two.

For a long while we took her to the beach regularly. She’d sit at the edge of the ocean, rubbing the sand on her legs. My mom or I would carry her out deeper, where she’d get to feel literally buoyant.

“Now, don’t you drop me,” she’d say.

“I’ll only drop you if you want me to, old lady,” I’d say, and she’d laugh and laugh.

I took this photograph on Bean’s second birthday. We had a little party at Grand Anse beach. You see how my mother has her arm around Grandma? That’s because she was no longer strong enough to sit up by herself. It was one of the very last times we took her to the beach. The trip down the stairs and into the taxi had become simply too much for her.

I love this photograph because my son is naked, as he almost always was in Grenada, unless I forced him to put on clothes, which I rarely bothered to do. Nudity notwithstanding, he’s also guarding them, unwilling to move too far away from his two grandmothers, lest they need his assistance. (He was quite the skilled foot-lifter.)

I love this photograph because my mom is wearing that hideously gorgeous bathing suit she had custom made for her in Trinidad. She’s sixty years old here, but chilling on the beach with the insouciance of a teenager, unconcerned with what passersby may or may not think of her pale, ample thighs.

I love this photograph because Grandma is wearing her straw hat. Her “church hat”, she called it, because it made her feel “fancy”. She’s well past eighty, and smiling like a beauty queen as she digs her toes into the sand.

Minutes later, a storm came up and Bean’s father ran out, picked her up like a baby and carried her to her reclining chair under the flamboyant tree. I folded and arranged towels behind her back, getting her comfortable. As we sat and watched the rain she turned to me.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I’m Maria, Grandma. Your oldest daughter’s oldest daughter.” I am unfazed by this question, because I’ve heard it many times before.

“Is that baby yours?”

“Yes. His name is Jack. He’s your great-grandson.”

“Oh. He looks like a good baby. I had eight of them you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

“We’re not in Indiana, are we?”

“No, Grandma. We’re most certainly not in Indiana.”

Then she said she was thirsty, so I got her juice out of the cooler and held the straw in her mouth while she drank, propping her up with my other arm so she wouldn’t choke. And like that, the two of us sat there, under a flamboyant tree, watching the rain.

(A Sense of Place)Similar Posts:

• vera’s eulogy
• vera’s passing
• happy birthday, mom
• leaving grenada: who, what, where, when & why
• a christmas eve story

Not caring to start a big hullabaloo, I just unfollowed the guy. But he noticed, and publicly asked me if the unfollow had been a mistake, so I decided to refollow him temporarily so I could tell him why. I sent him a link to the tweet that I found particularly offensive (scary) and asked him if he cared to offer an explanation.

His response was to get really angry, ask if I’m the “Twitter police” or perhaps a “middle school librarian”, exclaim that he’s just JOKING and that if I can’t take a joke won’t I PLEASE just GO AWAY. He then unfollowed me and heckled me for a bit in his public timeline.

My “favorite” part was when he pointed out that I had recently made a joke about Elvis, and Elvis has a DAUGHTER who might be OFFENDED, as if saying that I’m going celebrate Elvis’ birthday by passing out on the toilet is in ANY WAY comparable to talking about stomping a woman’s face into the pavement until she dies.

Jerk.

The point of the story I stand up to bullies. I have done it before and I will do it again, with relish, because there is nothing more pathetic than people who prey on those they perceive as weak and/or unprotected, AND, as with all forms of violent hate speech, keeping silent is tacit approval.

Oh, AND? If Lisa-Marie Presley calls, please tell her I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.Similar Posts:

• whilst helping bean get dressed
• my grandfather, the veteran
• choices that bind
• maria being maria
• speech patterns

Now. Regardless of your feelings about Cuba, and/or whatever diplomatic issues the United States has had with Castro, historically… You should know that in the Caribbean, Cuba and Castro are generally seen as (for lack of a better word) saviors. Castro, apparently, has some brilliant PR.

For example. The devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina got a huge amount of coverage in Grenada. It was a news trifecta for them. It was about the United States. It was about racism. And it was about suffering due to a hurricane.

Shortly after the hurricane Castro made a speech in which he offered to send 100 of Cuba’s very finest doctors to Louisiana to help with rescue efforts. The complete text of this speech was (translated and) published in one of Grenada’s two weekly newspapers. (There were no dailies.)

Many people, including Bean’s father, demanded that I explain why the United States had not responded to this gracious and generous offer. Why we were – and I quote – “ignoring the best-trained doctors in the world”. My only answer to this, because I was trying to be noncontroversial, and also because I’m not about to try to change anyone’s mind on this particular issue, was simple.

We don’t need them, I said, and left it at that.

Several months later, the lightbulb thing happened. Emissaries allegedly from the Cuban government arrived at our house. They were on foot. They were young, they were pleasant and one of them spoke English quite well. I offered them ice water, which they accepted gratefully. Then they asked us to tell them how many light fixtures we had in the house. We obliged. They left and went on to our neighbor’s house. They did this throughout the entire neighborhood, and, as far as I know, all over Grenada. (That’s what they told us. But I don’t recall ever hearing anyone mention it.)

A couple of weeks passed and they returned. They had lightbulbs for us. These lightbulbs, they declared, would last for seven years. All we had to do to get the lightbulbs, free of charge, was give them the bulbs we were currently using. This was, they explained, a gift from the people of Cuba to the people of Grenada. And so we obliged. We accepted their magic Cuban lightbulbs and gave them ours.

The magic Cuban lightbulbs lasted four months.Similar Posts:

• on accents
• leaving grenada: who, what, where, when & why
• happy birthday, mom
• “love is my religion”
• howard zinn

When I’m speaking and he wants to be speaking he just yells over me.

He did this this morning at the breakfast table. I’ve told him before that this is rude and he should not be rude to his mommy, blah blah blah. But today I decided to ask him “why”.

“Because, Mommy, you are loud and you talk too much.” (This may or may not be true.)

“Well, Bean. That may be the case but if you didn’t want a loud mommy you shouldn’t have chosen a loud mommy.”

“What?”

“Remember before you were born? And God said, OK Bean, it’s time to choose a mommy? And you pointed at me and said THAT ONE! Do you remember that?”

“Yes. I remember that. I pointed at you.” He demonstrates by pointing at me. And I shrug off the fact that he’s just said he remembers a conversation with God, because it’s besides the point and I’m on a roll here.

“Well, you knew I talked a lot. And you chose me anyway. And your choice was binding.”

“What does binding mean?”

“It means you’re stuck with me.”

“Oh. Are you stuck with me too?”

“Yes, baby. I’m stuck with you too.”

“Well, then that’s OK.”

(Indeed.)Similar Posts:

• tag-teamed
• the little man
• in which i tell a story in pictures
• “the lady is reading”
• the last jar

I brush it with the very tips of my fingers, but then it senses my approach and spirals off into the darkness, out of reach, out of reach.

I plot and I scheme. How can I conquer it? How can I foil momentum’s plans to elude me?

Momentum’s plans. Ha. And ha again. As if momentum were plotting against me. As if momentum were invested in my failure. In my inertia. In my cowardice.

There’s no enemy here. Only white space. Clean pages. Unwritten words. Words are patient. They wait, just past the tips of my fingers.

Just.

Beyond.

Reach.

And so? And so I stretch. I raise my arms over my head, arch my back, flex my neck, curving. Feline. I stretch, and. And I extend.

Extend. My. Reach.

Momentum.Similar Posts:

• a christmas eve story
• whilst helping bean get dressed
• “the lady is reading”
• resolutions, briefly
• swine flu & grenadians studying in mexico