Multitasking While Breastfeeding

As the mother of a newborn, I  spend roughly sixteen hours a day on the couch.  Just sitting there.  Hands held hostage, because I´m holding someone whose life depends on my ability to hold him to my chest for those sixteen hours a day.

In some ways, this is the toughest part of having a baby.  While the boob and the baby may be working, the rest of me is idle.

Sure, there are ways to work around this.  For instance, I am starting to be an expert at one-handed internet surfing.  For the second and third week of Little Boy´s life, I locked myself in my room, reading my way through the War of the Roses (thank you, Philippa Gregory).

But once I polished off The White Princess for the second time, I was all read out.  And while I love the kid, there´s only so long I can stare at him in wonder.  Mostly, I just found myself thinking about all the other things I could have been doing, things I could have been doing if my hands were free.

As I kept ruminating on all those things that needed to be done, I was reminded of Philippians 4:6.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." 

Instead of worrying about those things that I couldn´t do anything about, I could pray about those things.

That, in turn, reminded me to pray for my baby, for my older children, and for the rest of my family.

With so much time almost literally on my hands, I have been reminded to pray for all kinds of people and situations I would have otherwise overlooked during my regularly-scheduled busy life.

Maybe that is the hardest thing about having a new baby--that abrupt halt of all the activities and routines that dominated our days up to the moment of the baby´s birth.  Then--BAM--life comes to a halt.  We´re forced to slow down dramatically.  We´re stuck on the couch for sixteen hours a day, feeding this new little person.

Stepping back and reflecting, it´s a huge job.  It´s an awesome responsibility--both the small person whose survival is dependant on my holding him steady, keeping me hostage on the couch, and the fact that I can simultaneously lift up numerous people, situations, needs, joys, and hurts and interceed on behalf of those directly to the God who has control over it all.

Up until recently, I haven´t been much of a "pray-er".  I like doing better.

But maybe prayer is just another form of doing.  Even though it doesn´t feel like I´m doing anything, I have faith that it is doing someone, somewhere, some good.  After all, that´s what faith is all about--the belief that prayers do work, even when there is no physical evidence to support that belief.

The Worst Word

Yesterday, Clara came up to me and declared, "my doll says a bad word."

Confident that we never acquired a doll with a potty mouth, I assured her that she must have misunderstood.  But Clara was convinced that the doll was providing a bad example.

"Want to know what she says?"

Curious what terrible word this piece of plastic was teaching my child, I agreed.  Clara drew close, whispering in my ear, in an attempt to expose as few people as possible to this doll´s poor manners.

"Stupid face."

Initially, I couldn´t believe that any toy company would sell a doll that would say "stupid face".  However, on listening to the culprit, I had to admit that Clara was right.

Oh, that made-in-China quality control!

However, the doll´s potty mouth was more offensive to Clara´s ears than mine on at least two levels:

1)  Within the four-to-eight-year-old age range, isn´t "stupid face" just about the biggest slam there is?  One might as well go all out and call someone "poopy face".

2)  Not only is my daughter six, but she´s a Mexican six-year-old.  Among Mexicans--of any age--"stupid" is the ultimate forbidden word.  There are swear words, and then there is stupid.

Now, even in English, it is pretty harsh to call another person stupid.  However, in other contexts, we throw the word around all the time.

The airplane is late?  Stupid plane.

The refrigerator doesn´t work?  Stupid refrigerator.

Any of those phrases are absolutely unacceptable in Spanish (at least, Mexican Spanish).  Therefore, under no circumstances should the S-word be applied to a person.

Or else Clara´s doll might call one a "stupid face", too.

Four Ounces of Sanity

I´m not a fan of extremists.  Or extremes, one way or another.

However, I have a newborn.  He doesn´t share my distain for extremism.

Because, let me tell you, this kid would be happy to hang on the boob ALL DAY.  And, for those who know newborns, you know that when I say all day, I mean all night, too.  It´s all the same around here, lately.

Now, there are plenty out there who get a little militant about breastfeeding.  Plenty of moms swear up and down that a bottle will NEVER touch their baby´s lips.  They happily feed their children around the clock, a lactating frenzy.  They eat with maximum production in mind.  They´ll even pump between latch-ons, stocking away "liquid gold".

If you are one of those moms, I congratulate you.  To be honest, I´d like to be you.

But I´m not.

I do believe in breastfeeding.  Having breastfed my other children, I know that pulling out the boob is much easier than heating a bottle.

And it´s free.  Can´t say enough about that.  

But during these first two weeks, breastfeeding can be really, really hard.

After all, when a mom is beginning to breastfeed, she is also:

• recovering from giving birth.  Depending on one´s experience, there may have been a bit of trauma involved.  So while the mother is dealing with the pain of recovering from her C-section, an episiotomy, or simply pushing another person´s head out of her body, she is simultaneously subjecting her sensitive nipples to being mangled every couple of hours.  

• really, really, really, really, really tired.  

• Hormonally out-of-whack, which often means that one´s emotions are all over the place.  

So if you are like me, and your child has been on the boob for five hours straight, and you´re about to throw him across the room BECAUSE he´s been on the boob for five hours, I´ve got a secret.  

It´s OK to give him a bottle.  

It´s even OK to give him a bottle of formula.  It´s not necessary to pump it out.  

Because, let´s face it--if the kid has been sucking for five hours, the tatas probably have not had a chance to replenish themselves and he probably isn´t getting much of anything anyway.  

My first child was born a little small, so the doctor suggested supplementing with formula.  Let me tell you, she sucked down bottle after bottle in the hospital.  While I did successfully breastfeed her, every bottle I gave her in those first few weeks felt like a symbol of my failure.   

My second baby didn´t touch a bottle at the hospital.  I was determined that he was going to be the perfect, breastfed-only baby. Then we brought him home.  He screamed for the first 24 hours.  I finally caved in and called the pharmacy so they could deliver some formula to our house.  I gave him the bottle and he finally fell asleep.  

Blessed relief!  

Yes, breastmilk is best for our babies.  I try to give mine as much as I possibly can.

But when he sucks away for hours at a time, I am done.  Those four ounces of magic might just be why I make it through those first six weeks on the upside of sane.*

Of course, if one does want to continue to breastfeed, take it easy--one or two bottles a day, max.  (Unless you kid is crazy, of course.)  Just keep in mind that if nothing comes out of the boobies for 24-48 hours, the magic will end.  The girls won´t work until baby has a sibling.

But if the baby has 4 ounces once or twice a day, no harm, no foul.

After a few weeks (or months, in my daughter´s case) both of my older children were exclusively breastfed.  In a few weeks, this baby will be, too.  But I´ll let him decide.

Watching me feed one of my babies the fake stuff, my mom told me in her saddest, most wistful voice, "I wish someone had told me I could haven given you a bottle now and then."

I´m passing on the secret.  Ain´t no shame.

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*This is in NO WAY a condemnation of those who´ve suffered post-partum depression.  That´s a whole different ball of wax.  There´s no shame in that, either, but do what you have to do to get through it.  And that´s the bitch about depression--it makes one not want to do anything to get through it.  Huge red flag right there.  Don´t blow it off.  

A Healthy Dose of Reality

I´ve lived here long enough that not much takes me by surprise anymore.

And then I´m flipping through my daughter´s homework and smacked up alongside the head with "Gee--we aren´t in Indiana anymore!"

Check out the illustration for a first grade test on life cycles:

Just in case you aren´t seeing what I saw, double-click on the picture.  Check out the top left corner.  

Yep, that´s a dead chicken.  

And not just a cartoon of a dead chicken--nope, that´s a photograph of a real, dead chicken.  (I just about wrote, "a real, live, dead chicken."  But that´s the point.  He is most certainly NOT alive.)  If I look close enough, I think I can see flies buzzing around it.  

Now, I´m not one to shy away from the realities of life.  Ever since Clara has been old enough to ask questions, she´s been well aware of where our food comes from.  A few years back, she was also fixated on the idea of death, or at least the realization that everything does come to an end, sooner or later.  

My sweet, little, six-year-old, whose head is filled with rainbows and puppies and glitter-filled hearts gets to stare at the grizzly remains of a chicken for her school work.  

Welcome to Mexico.  We don´t shy away from reality here.  

Death is part of the life cycle.  And well--this is what it looks like.  

However, being a sheltered midwesterner whose culture is generally in denial of the reality of death, the thoroughness of the diagram took my breath away a bit.   

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Civil Baptism?

Roughly 10 years ago, this commercial was pretty popular.  In a nutshell, it makes fun of the Mexican habit of putting lime on everything.


               


Toward the end of the commercial, where they´re squeezing lime on everything, even things that aren´t food, I thought to myself, "hmmm . . . so when Mexican babies have their birth certificates filed, do they get a little lime squeezed on their heads, as a kind of civil baptism?"

Can´t you just see it?  Mom and Dad and baby, all gathered in the Registro Civil, ink from fingerprinting still wet on their fingerprints, and as the official is about to hand the birth certificate over to the proud parents, the government offical takes a half of lime, squeezes a few drops onto the infant´s head, saying, "I now pronounce you officially Mexican!"

I love it.

As we just registered baby boy, I was really tempted to do just that.

But the comparison between filing a birth certificate and Catholic baptism is even more striking recently--because it is now necessary to bring witnesses to sign the birth certificate.

When we registered our oldest daughter, the people who worked at the Registro Civil served as the witnesses on her birth certificate, and (I´m guessing) on the majority of other kids´ certificates, too.  Or, if they Registry employees weren´t able to be witnesses, the Registry is right in front of a bus stop, so we could have just offered to pay someone their bus fare if they´d be willing to come in and sign their name on our kid´s birth certificate.

No longer.  We are now required to bring our own witnesses--no more picking random strangers off the street.

Thank goodness it worked out for us the way it did!  After all, we moved to Saltillo just two months before Clara was born--we simply didn´t have two people we knew who could serve as witnesses.  This time around, though, it was a whole other story.  First of all, Mario´s cousin lives with us.  Witness #1--check!  And Mario´s mom is visiting, to help take care of the baby.  Witness #2--check!

However, the day that Mario took off of work to file the baby´s birth certificate, both of our older kids were sick.  Since we couldn´t leave them at home alone, I was frantically on the phone, calling neighbors to see if they´d be willing to pay the Civil Registry a visit with us, taking Mario´s mom´s place as a witness.

Now that we´ve lived here for seven years, I had a number of people to call.  And at the last minute, one of my lovely neighbor friends was able to join us in a pinch.

As I told her and Paty (Mario´s cousin) as we were heading home with the birth certificate in our hands, "you guys are like Baby´s civil godmothers!"

And it´s true.  These women are, and will be, two of the more influential people in his life who will teach him, through example, how to be Mexican.  After all, as much as I enjoy and respect this country, I´m not Mexican and am therefore ill-equipped to teach him how to be Mexican.  I do my best, but--let´s face it--he needs a Paty and a Myra in his life.

His Mexican madrinas.  

Why Do I Do This?

What is it that attracts me to this blogging thing?

When I moved to Mexico for the first time, I thought it would be great to write a letter home every week.  But how much cooler would it be for everyone I knew to be able to read that letter?  Because, let´s face it, when I wrote letters to friends and family, inspiration would seize me within one week.  So I´d wind up writing three or four copies of roughly the same letter to three or four different people.  Had I only know that, through the magic of the internet, is was possible to maximize my time and write one letter for all my loved ones to read!  However, this was back in 2003 and the blogosphere was in its infancy.  Not being tech-savvy, I was clueless this medium existed.  So, during my first two years in Mexico, I was mostly out-of-touch with people, except for the occasional email.

When we moved to Saltillo, I was seven months pregnant with my daughter.  I explored the town well for the first month or two, and then more or less hibernated for the next few months, being the on-demand milk machine and sleeping whenever possible.  "Sleep when the baby sleeps."  Right.  No one told my daughter that most babies take a nap or two every day.

On the very first day she finally took a nap (at the ripe old age of 4 1/2 months--Mother´s Day, no less), I started this blog.  At the time, my only plans for this blog were to keep my friends and family in touch with how my daughter was growing.  But then I started writing about Mexico.  Most of my friends won´t have the chance to visit me here.  They´re curious, and have their preconceived notions about what Mexico is like.  Much like my preconceived notions, some are true, some are false, and most are some nuanced version that´s neither true nor false.  This blog became my way to explain what I like about Mexico.

What I like about Mexico can´t be summed up in two sentences, those sound bites that we like to take away from stories of others´ travels.  What I like about Mexico is a conglomeration of lots of little things, most too subtle to even remember, unless I find myself sitting down in front of a computer screen, trying to explain what it is that draws me here.

It´s the uncovered bulb that lights every corner store at night, bravely pouring its light and warmth into the darkness.

It´s the native poinsettias, colorfully proclaiming a joyful holiday, instead of the cold, white snow that I grew up with.

It´s the pork meat, slowly rotating on a spit, exposed to the air and elements and fire, dripping with fat--delicious and decadent and dirty all at the same time.

It´s the exposed, aged, wooden beams in the ceiling, and the foot-thick stone window frames in colonial buildings, silently supporting and witnessing centuries of history.

It´s hanging my clothes to dry on a line in my patio, knowing that they´ll be dry in a half hour, with that clean-clothes-crunch, and smelling of the sun and fresh air.

After doing this for awhile, I realize that this blog is mainly just for me, to define my thoughts and experience and is a somewhat concrete way to make sense of life--a therapy of sorts, a practice of which could benefit anyone, wherever they live.

But like any therapy, a certain amount of sharing must take place.  And let me be honest, this sharing is what makes my husband a bit skittish about this whole blog business.  Growing up in a big city, Mr. Mexico City is well-versed in the dangers of letting strangers know your personal information.  And he´s spent enough time with Ms. Small Town me to realize that I can show some pretty amazing displays of midwestern American naivety in that regard.

But, at the same time, what´s the point of doing anything unless it´s personal?

This blog started off as a vent for my loneliness.  Then it became a means of meeting the first, real, human friend I had here in Saltillo.  Then I found a community of bloggers, and we all discovered that we´re not just a handful of nutters packing up and leaving the US for life in Mexico--there are LOTS of us!  Finally, this has provided me with a means of meeting people who are preparing to move to Saltillo, and reassure them that yes, you can do this, too.

It´s funny, the places where small decisions can take us.  I just thought blogging would be a good creative outlet for me.  I had no idea I´d get something nearly tangible--like real friendships--out of it.

This makes me pause when I make a small change in my life.  Will this change wind up taking on a life of its own?

But I guess that´s that´s the good thing about some changes.  I´ll try to embrace them more often.  

Name Yourself, Kid.

So, we´re letting the baby pick out his middle name.

How does he get to choose, you ask?  It´s fairly easy, thanks to the calendar of saints´ feast days.

Now, for those who aren´t Catholic, one might not be familiar with these beauties.  But every day of the year is commemorated to whichever officially cannonized saint died that day. So most days, there are a number of names to choose from.

This may sound kind of weird and off-the-deep-end, but it used to be a traditional way of naming children in Mexico, even as recently as the 1940s and ´50s.  I´m not making this up, as I have a number of friends and neighbors in their sixties and seventies and LOTS of these fine people have about 11 brothers and sisters.  Let´s face it, when you´re faced with naming more than five children, I´m willing to bet that it gets tricky to find (and agree) on decent names.

So let´s just rely on the Saints´ Day Calendar.

While completely unintentional, my other two children were born on their saints´ day, even though we picked out their names well in advance.  For instance, we picked out Joey´s name before we got married--five years before he was born.  And then he up and decided to be born on the day we chose for his middle name.

So now when he tells me he doesn´t like his middle name, I can retort back that he choose it, not me.
And that´s true.  Mostly.

Part of what convinced us to name Clara Clara was that our book of 10,000 baby names listed her due date (and birthday) as a Santa Clara Day.  However, now that I´ve been investigating on the internet, I can´t find a single Santa Clara for January 28th.  The closest I can find is an obscure St. Cannera--a hard-headed Irish broad whose story I think is a hoot (and reminds me of Clara, even though she´s not willing to admit it yet).

But a Santa Clara on January 28th?  If anyone knows anything about her, please let me know!

Since coincidence has worked so well for us in the past, and we can´t agree on a decent middle name for this guy, we´ll let
fate take over and Little Boy can pick his own name.  I was hoping he would have been born this past Saturday, so his middle name could be Antonio.

Apparently, he wasn´t so interested in that one.

My luck, he´ll decide that he´s comfortable until November 1st, and then decide to be born on All Saints´ Day.

Then we would be forced to be creative and make a decision.   Aargh.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

It all started with a guitar.

For quite some time, I had been wanting to play music again.  Or to sing.  Basically, I just missed music.  We still don´t have space for a piano (and I´m not sure it´s in the budget, either).  But I´d often fondly remember some of my favorite evenings when I worked at camp in the fall of 2006.  Often when the 5 of us on staff would finish the day, we´d gather in our living room, bust out the guitars, and sing.

So peaceful.

So simple.

And one of my favorite memories ever.

While I couldn´t completely recreate that, as I´m unlikely to be in the same room with those Fantastic Five again, I thought about it good and hard for a year and decided learning to play the guitar and to sing would bring me a bit of what I was looking for.

And it did.  While I still wouldn´t go so far as to call myself a "guitar player," I do enjoy playing what I can and singing along with myself.

But that little change started an avalanche of change within the last year.  A few months after getting the guitar, a puppy followed us home from school.  He still lives in our garage.  I knew when we took him in that dog-raising was a long-term project.  Sometimes I´m still floored by the responsibility I took on, thanks to a spur-of-the-moment weakness brought on by big, brown eyes.

Then a few months after taking on the dog, I decided to start another blog.  Because one isn´t enough, apparently.  While that´s been rewarding, and I believe is starting to accomplish some of the goals I had for it, it´s one more thing that I jumped into that is taking on a life of its own.

Then I got involved with the PTA at my kids´ school.  After serving lunch every day for two months, it turned out that I bit off more than I could chew with that one, and scaled back my involvement a bit.  We´ll see how carried away they try to get me to be this year.

Then I signed up the oldest child for her first after-school activity--ballet. With rehearsals three days a week, that one also became a bigger commitment than I had originally intended.  However, Clara still loves it, and from what I can tell they do in class, I know it´s good for her.  So we´ll sign up again this year.  But, let me tell you, I am dragging my feet a bit on that one.

Then in the spring, I found a facebook announcement for open auditions for a choir to accompany the Coahuila Symphony Orchestra.  The moment I saw that sign, I knew I wanted to do it.  I knew my chances were slim (while I sing OK, I haven´t had any vocal training, and I NEVER sing by myself in front of people).  But I really wanted to do it.

So I tried.  About 70 people showed up to the audition.  They said that they were only looking for about 30 people to be in the choir. Listening to the audition, I thought that there was no way I´d get in.  However, the audition was a great experience in itself, so I was happy to have tried.

Lo and behold, a few weeks later, I got an email that told me I actually DID make it.  Woah.  And they jumped right off the bat with plans for a zarzuela (a Spanish opera) and then a Queen tribute concert a month after the zarzuela.  Initially, the rehearsals were twice a week, but as the date got closer for both shows, they often turned into nightly rehearsals.  Yes, I once again chewed off more than I planned on, but I´m loving it so much (and my family is being fantastic about supporting me with this) that the choir and I will just keep slugging on together.

If that wasn´t enough, we walked in with open eyes to the biggest game-changer in this year of changes.  We decided to have a third child, who will be born in October.  Even though he was planned, and we had actually been waiting on him for awhile, I was still in a bit of denial throughout much of this pregnancy.  Throughout the spring and summer, I was making bigger and bigger plans.  Now that Little Guy is making is existence known pretty constantly (at least to myself), I´m finally making the changes that we need to get through this next season.  Or at least, mentally restructuring myself to get ready for this.

A lot of the changes we had this year, we will be sticking with.  Some will have to be scaled back (like 2 days of ballet a week, instead of 3 . . . and that´s after giving it up entirely during November and December).  The dog went from 3 walks a day to 2.  I´m hoping that the bulging belly will give me a polite means of declining the more arduous positions within the PTA.  And I´ll take a whole week or two off of choir after he´s born.

But he is the third kid, so I should be good to return after a week or two.  ;)

Oh, changes.  They make life more interesting.  And, even beyond New Little Buddy, I know there are more on the horizon!

Yikes.

This Year´s Reverse Culture Shockers

I spend about a month in the US every year.  Every year, I´m struck by something that makes me step back, reeling from reverse culture shock.  This year, I´ve got a bit of a list going, of things in the US that just strike me as odd.

Not necessarily bad or good, just odd.

Because these things just don´t happen in Mexico.

#1:  Freebies

The other day, I went to the grocery store.  After paying at the self-checkout (another oddity in itself), this cupon popped out with my receipt.

Really--the grocery store is just giving me $5 for shopping there?

I could get used to this.

Then a few days later, I bought a pair of jeans.  In the bag, the saleslady threw in a "gift bag".  After opening it up, I found over $100 of cupons, two diapers, and all kinds of other offers.  Sure, it is good advertising, but . . . really?

OK, I´ll take it!


#2  Obscene Amounts of Mail

Every day, piles and piles of mail arrive at my parents´ house.  Sometimes it´s useful information.  Sometimes they are legitimate bills.  Sometimes they are requested catalogues.  But often, they´re just ads addressed to "the resident".

In contrast, we get mail in Mexico maybe 8 times a year.  Literally half the time, it´s because my mom sent someone a birthday card.  


#3  Sour Candy

Growing up in Mexico, my kids know they need to approach candy carefully, in case they´ve stumbled upon a piece of candy covered in chile powder.  In fact, they´re starting to acquire a taste for spicy candy.

While we don´t have to worry about spicy candy when wandering candy aisles in the US, we´ve discovered a new flavor to watch out for--SOUR!

It´s everywhere!  And a certain kid I know really, really doesn´t like it.


#4  Restaurant Bills

OK, I have seen this one on a number of cultural comparison lists.  But it´s so unsettling that it deserves these multiple mentiones.

The majority of the time, when I go to a restaurant in the US, the waitress brings our food, and then plops the bill down right on the table with it--as if the bill is a side dish.

Wait--did I want dessert?

Apparently not, as they just want me to eat and get out.

As frustrating as it can be to flag down waiters when asking for the bill in Mexico, I do like the feeling that I am welcome to stay for as long as I please.

And not rushing us through to get the next family to line up at the hog trough.


#5  Talking to Strangers

This isn´t such a comparion with Mexico (because in this respect, Mexico is somewhat similar to the US).   However, my husband and I spent two weeks in Sweden this spring.  It was beautiful, and I loved noting Swedish innovations that would be really useful on this side of the world.  (Biogas, recycling, seperate bike/walking paths, etc.)

But, upon our arrival at the airport in Houston, I stood in line in the bathroom.  Three different people talked to me.  I came out of that bathroom and told Mario, "I´ve talked to more people in that bathroom in the last 10 minutes than I did in two weeks in Sweden!"

So, stay friendly, America!  (Or, Texas, as it may be more pronounced there.)  ;)

What Do You Know?

I´m one of those people who just looks at someone with pinkeye and--BAM--I´ve got it myself.

I was 23 the first time I had it, and thanks to my insurance, wasn´t able to get to the doctor in well over 24 hours.  When the doctor finally saw me, she took at step back and said, "Wow--we should take your picture!  You´re the poster child for pinkeye."

So last Thursday when Clara woke up and her eyes were just about glued together, I knew we were in for a long weekend.

However, I had a new trick up my sleeve.

See, the last time I went to the doctor with pinkeye, he asked me, "what have you already tried to get rid of it?"  I was baffled.  What had I already tried?  Dude--you´re supposed to give me the medicine to get rid of it.  He did.  It disappeared.

But then I got pinkeye again while visiting my mother-in-law.  Instead of immediately waltzing off to a clinic, she suggested concentrated chamomile tea.  My husband has always cleaned the kids´ eyes out with this whenever they had anything remotely suspicious.  So I gave it a whirl.

48 hours later, the pinkeye was gone.  Huh.

We tried it again this past weekend.  No more pinkeye!


What do you know?  Fewer antibiotics for this lady in the future,   that´s for sure!

When It All Began . . . And Why I´m Still Here

After the fun of Christmas, January is often a let-down for a lot of us.

I could easily succumb to the post-holiday-blues, too.  But, for me, January is a time to reflect on so many life-changing "firsts".

• the first time I stepped foot in Mexico:  January 7, 1999
• the first time I came with a one-way ticket:  January 3, 2003
• the first time I became a mom:  January 28, 2007

But that "first" that I want to focus on today is the first time I met my husband--January 21, 1999.

I came to Mexico for a study-abroad semester.  On considering the study-abroad semester, I honestly wasn´t over-the-top excited about it.  While I´ve always been a fan of travel in general, I thought that four months away from my friends would really cramp my style .  Unfortunately for me, I had decided to get myself a minor in Spanish, and I also thought that it would be a bit lame to claim to know a language but have no practical experience speaking it.  So, to Mexico I went.

I was one of six women from my university that went to Puebla to study during the spring semester of 1999.  Our second day in Mexico, our first full day in Puebla, I was in one of the university´s cafeterias with my five fellow adventurers.  It was dinnertime, more or less.  I tried to find out what the hot dishes were that the cafeteria servers were dishing out.  I couldn´t understand them and was irritated as all get out that I couldn´t understand them and couldn´t find anything to eat that was vaguely familiar.  Out of frustration, I got a cup of yogurt from a self-serve refrigerator, despite that I was much hungrier than a mere cup of yogurt would satisfy.

Little did I know, a guy with a very long, curly ponytail was mesmerized by the shapeliness of my nose.  Did you know I have an exceptionally good-looking nose?  Neither did I.  You know it´s love-at-first-sight when you´re attracted to someone´s nose.

The next day, I joined my fellow international students in a walking tour of the town surrounding the university.  I thought it was a shockingly long walk (and by US standards, I´ve always been a pretty undaunted walker).  But they took us to the market, and there I fell in love with the flower selection. And their unbelievable prices.  Little did I know, our walk mirrored Mr. Curly Ponytail´s daily walk to school.  Mr. Curly Ponytail noticed me again.  He was friends with the tour guide and plied him for answers as to who I was.

Since the tour guide didn´t notice that my nose was anything out of the ordinary, he didn´t have any information to give Mario.

At the end of the month, I was sitting in the library, churning out my first round of end-of-the-month assignments.  In one class I had to write a short paper about the Toltecs.  In the middle of reading a college-level text to re-digest into my elementary-level Spanish, Mr. Curly Ponytail worked up his courage and plopped down on the coffee table in front of my couch.

Oh, please--he´s the most confident person I´ve ever met.  I bet it took him all of 3 seconds to work up that courage.  But that´s not the way he tells it.

Very quickly, he said something to me in Spanish.

I didn´t catch it.  So I asked him to repeat it.

He switched to English.  Grrr . . .

People were always doing that there.  How´s a person supposed to learn Spanish at a university where students have to pass the TOFEL in order to graduate?  Everyone spoke English better than I spoke Spanish.

As he tried to keep talking, I slowly got over my irritation.  Eventually, I agreed to meet him for lunch.  And then I went out with him on a Saturday.  And every Wednesday for the half-price movies (with his friend and girlfriend . . . because Jakob had a car.  Thanks, Jakob!).  The longer the semester went on, the more weekends I spent with him, and then, before we knew it, the semester was over.

And I went home.

Thanks to the magic of email.  We kept in contact.  However, Mario being Mario, we were only in contact maybe once a week.  Or every two weeks.  He did not have a phone, so phone calls just did not happen.

The following Spring Break, I convinced my roommate and two other friends to come with me to Mexico.  Roommate and I spent a week in Puebla and then our other friends joined us for a week in Acapulco.  Thank goodness roommate came with me, because Mario was an uncharming bum that first week.  But then he decided to join us in Acapulco, and became charming again.

So we continued our long distance relationship.

Then he decided to visit me in Indiana for a long weekend that fall.  I was student teaching in East Chicago, so while I was at school, I put him on the commuter train and told him to have fun in Chicago.  He did.  Chicago is now one of his favorite cities.  Unfortunately for him, he planned his trip on my university´s Parents´ Weekend.  He about peed his pants when he found out that he had to meet my parents.  Poor guy.  ;)

It was a great weekend, and we continued our emails.  Except he was working full-time while finishing his undergrad thesis and often wouldn´t write for weeks at a time.  That didn´t leave me much to go on.

As my graduation was looming, my plan had been (since I met Mario) to go back to Mexico and teach at the American School there.  Then, that Spring, I decided that wasn´t actually what I wanted to do.  It seemed to me that we weren´t going in the same direction.  So maybe it was time to pull the plug.

So I did.

Except that even though we broke up, we still kept writing--probably more than we did the few months before we broke up.  When he asked if he could visit me that summer, I agreed.

It was a good visit.  It was either another long weekend or maybe a week, at the most.  At the end of it, we decided that we be "in a relationship" again.  Except that we were still awfully long distance.

That fall, we were rather uncommunicative again.  I began to wonder if we did have anything in common.  I questioned whether he had a sense of humor.  Because when you spend 90% of your relationship with a person over email, it´s easy to forget a lot.  Or embellish other parts.  And really question what is real.

I was able to take Spring Break again that year.  I met his family, and it was good for me to meet people who thought even more highly about him than I did at the time.  In the context of his family, he really made a lot more sense.  And he definitely had a sense of humor.  Then we spent the rest of the week in Puerto Escondido with a German friend of his.  Great week.

Except for the car ride back from Puerto Escondido.  Between Oaxaca and the coast is the windiest, curviest, most speed-bump-ridden road in North America (and if there is another road that´s worse, I don´t want to know).  Between Mario enjoying driving fast through curves and then slowing down for the speed bumps, I threw up three times in about as many hours.  If I go to Puerto Escondido again, it will be by airplane.

Too bad, though, because it was beautiful.

We were able to talk a lot that week and figure things out.  I found out that a number of the areas where I thought we were incompatible, we actually were on the same page.  He´s an odd mix of contradictions, that Mario.  But maybe I am, too.

A few months later, he came to visit me in June.  It was another long weekend, but a good one.  At the time, my plans were up in the air for the following year, as I was at the end of a year-long, full-time volunteer program.  I was beginning to start to make plans to look for a job in the midwest, when my roommate stopped me.

He sat me down and said, "Jill--what you´ve got with Mario--that´s what the rest of us are looking for.  Maybe you should go to Mexico and find out where that´s going."

On reflection, I decided that was pretty good advice.  I was also very excited about working with a children´s home I had found out about through the internet.  However, my application got lost in some paper shuffle, so I put that on the back burner and applied to the American School of Puebla.  A week before I was going to go to Puebla, I found out that I was, indeed, invited to live and work at the children´s home.  So I taught 5th grade for a semester, spending 6 months in the same city as Mario.  Then I packed up and moved 2 hours away in favor of 700 orphans that I had never met.

I guess I liked the long distance relationship.

After two years at the children´s home and seeing each other roughly 3 weekends out of every month, Mario finally asked me to marry him.

Then he left to go to grad school in Sweden.  Not being able to get a job there, I went back to the midwest.

His program was only supposed to take a year.  He finished his courses in Sweden and moved back to Mexico, having a number of promising interviews lined up.  But that was the summer of 2006, and Lopez Obrador decided to contest the presidential election that summer.  Fearing a country in unrest, many companies decided not to hire new people that summer, not knowing what the immediate economic future would hold.

Therefore, we still couldn´t make concrete wedding plans.

Eventually he got a job.  I had already quit mine and had series of temp jobs (which was waaay more enjoyable than the "real" job I had the year before).  Thanks to those temp jobs, I was able to take off for the entire month of February and August 2007 to visit Mario, set up our apartment, and get used to the idea of living in Mexico again.

Then we got married in November 2007, and here we are.

Often people are shocked at the fact that we had a long distance relationship for 9 years.  In some ways I liked it.  It taught me patience.  Given all those years we spent in a relationship through email, it taught us how to listen to the other person´s response, question if we understood that response correctly, and how not to get our knickers in a knot if something wrote something that made us mad.  Because given the nature of email, language barriers, cultural differences, and personality differences, it was quite likely that whatever might have been written that gave offense, was the result of one of those barriers and not an intentional slight.  Or if a slight was intentional, it gave us a slow, unheated means of working through those differences.  It gave us lots of time for reflection and breathing space.  Sometimes we need some more of that breathing space now that we live together and our conflicts are played out in the span of minutes, instead of days and weeks.  

Then again, as another friend in an international, long-distance relationship put it, "either we were going to get married really, really quickly [after meeting] or we´d take a really, really long time.  That couple did it really, really quickly.

We took our time.  Given our ages, where we were in life, and our personalities, that just made the most sense.

Not that that was planned out.

Life just happens and we did, too.  With quite a bit of intentionality thrown in there.

    

24 Hours in San Antonio

We had a long weekend in mid-December.  We like to get out of town for long weekends.  However, if I haven´t mentioned it before, my only real complaint with Saltillo is the lack of accessible destinations for a weekend away.  Of all people, Mario came up with that weekend´s plan of going to San Antonio, TX.  We had never been and I´ve wanted to go ever since we moved here.

However, Mario didn´t realize that San Antonio is three hours north of the border.  We are three hours south of the border.  And one can never tell exactly how many hours one might have to wait in line at the border on a given weekend in mid-December.  One three-day-weekend, 6 hours each way, no driving in the dark in Mexico--it made for a quick trip!

But it was well worth it.

What does a family with small children do for 24 hours in San Antonio?

Get a hotel very close to the Riverwalk.  I asked people who had been there, what exactly we should see.  Every answer?  The Riverwalk.  Mario also wanted to see the Alamo.  Fortunately, the Alamo was right between our hotel and the Riverwalk.  Perfect.


We arrived in the evening on Friday.  We knew we wanted to take a Riverwalk boat tour.  The hotel had all kinds of helpful magazines and pamphlets, so within a half hour, we bought our tickets and were standing in a short line to board the Miss Laura (Bush), piloted by Captain AJ.  Oh, yeah . . .

I have a feeling that the Riverwalk is pretty at any time of year, but they light luminarias along all the sidewalks and bridges during December.  Those lights, combined with the Christmas trees and other Chrismas lights glittering on the river, made for a particularly lovely ride.


Furthermore, the weekend we were there (December 12, 13, 14), the Riverwalk was hosting an arts fair.  Hundreds of artists and crafters--spanning the gamut from oh-la-la to string bracelets--set up booths along the Riverwalk.  It made walking tricky in parts, but I love me a good art fair, anywhere.

Living in Mexico, we had no need for Tex-Mex food (which seems to be a must in San Antonio).  We came ready for real Texas barbecue.  It did not disappoint.  Word to the wise--there are oodles of excellent restaurants lining the Riverwalk.  I´m sure they´re all lovely.  But if you dine just off the Riverwalk, both your wallet and your belly will stay full.

On Saturday morning, we wandered through the Alamo.  In the 1930s, the Alamo was entrusted to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.  Thanks to these lovely ladies, this piece of history is preserved and is open to the public, free of charge.  It is a simple little museum, but well put-together.  I was glad I had read up on my Texas history last year.  (I highly recommend True Women by Janice Woods Windle, although the Yellow Rose of Texas series by Gilbert Morris is also entertaining.  Yes, I still learn history through historical fiction.  I´m not ashamed.  And I bet I can beat most people in historical Jeopardy.  So there.)

The kids were not as excited about the Alamo as Mario and I were.  There were carriage rides parked off the sidewalk by one of the exits and Joey happily spent nearly an hour watching the horses.  Then he discovered the the koi swimming in the canal.  Clara was just not amused.  Can´t win ´em all.

So we finished off our tour of San Antonio by heading to LaVillita.  It´s a tiny neighborhood which is now composed of art galleries.  Having somewhat grumpy children by that time, we didn´t venture into any of the galleries.  But the neighborhood was charming, reminding me of my time in New Mexico.  Plus, they had a Coffee Expo in La Villita´s square.  Coffee shops from all over San Antonio were boasting their wares.  It smelled amazing.  But I was not willing to stand in the long lines, so we just smelled the loveliness.



Cutting through the Riverwalk once more, we ended our 24 hours in San Antonio with lunch at Shilo´s deli, celebrating central Texas´s German heritage.  You thought the German immigrants mainly congregated in the midwest?  No, my friends--Texas was a big draw for Germans in the nineteenth century.   Shilo´s deli has a fantastic sausage selection to prove it.  They even offered imported German beer.  No small feat in the land of Shiner.  And don´t get me started on their interior decorating--they opened shop in their present location in about 1920, and I don´t think they´ve changed a thing.  Floor tiles, ceiling moulding, high-backed booths--I could have just sat and stared.  But their food was excellent.  And so were their prices.  If you need a meal in San Antonio, please go to Shilo´s.

Unless you´re a vegetarian.

San Antonio, we will be back!  24 hours were just not enough.

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Where is Shilo´s?

424 East Commerce St.  Not far from the Rivercenter Mall and Menger Hotel.