20 Seconds

Dear Friends,

Having a great time, the weather is beautiful and the water is crystal clear.

Can't wait to see you all soon, Love, Mamacita

Upon writing my umpteenth blah blah postcard on our backpacking trip around Europe my friend Laurie, who was peering over my shoulder, told me this, "you know nobody will ever know what your trip was like if you keep giving them the bullshit overview. Nobody cares about the weather, it's what you talk about when you have nothing else to say and... how will they know that our version of "having a great time"entails sharing a bottle of Bordeaux from said wine region with a group of hotties amongst the rattling luggage on a bullet train headed for Barcelona, all the while passing back and forth baguettes stuffed with french fries and gooey Brie. When you write your next postcard just give them a 20 second vignette of one good time."

20 seconds on Lopez Island:

Dear Friends,

Four mamas went camping on Lopez island, just the mamas and their sons. No papas to put up the tent and chop the wood for the fire. No papas to haul the water and chase away the raccoons. And no papas to take pictures of the four little boys who decided to strip down on the beach and go skinny dipping, shaking their Gerber baby bums and giggling at each other as they took turns peeing in the water, the living version of Brussel's statue of Manneken Pis. And L who got a kick out of hovering his bum over the water's rim just enough so it would freeze. "Funny," he'd say and do it all over again. All that splashing and laughing and chasing while the fully clad parents and their fully clad children watched in horror from the shoreline.

"Daddy they're naughty," one boy told us. Oh yes, we are so, so, so naughty. Our bumper sticker now reads: "My kid watched your kid take piss in the Puget Sound." All my love, Mamacita

Triathlon: The Dress Rehearsal

This past Saturday, a few of us, who are training for the Danskin Triathlon, got together for a practice run through. I figure since i've got the biking thing down now (uh, ok do you remember the last time i posted about biking? yup, that was the last time i rode my bike) that i better start nailing down what i'll be wearing and the logistics of transitioning between each event. Sweet Jenn here is my twist on the meme you tagged me for. I'm giving it this very sophisticated and original title: "The 8 random things I discovered about Training for a Triathlon..."

1. Get decent gear. My sneakers have two big eyed holes in them. My jog bra is from the 80's and i'm not so sure about wearing the Docta's "saggy in all the wrong places" biker shorts. At least it's good to know that some women can make a swim cap look sexy and that ain't me my friends.

2. A 1/2 mile of swimming is a long ass time in the open water when you're gagging on boat wakes, dodging dead fish and kicking away from strangling kelp beds. I felt like that kid in the back seat asking our pacer every five minutes, "are we there yet?"

3. Changing from your swimsuit to biking outfit with only a wrap around towel on a public beach is no easy task. We decided that it best we go commando more because it meant less awkward struggling with underwear then the shame of panty lines in those sexy, biker shorts.

4. Wearing a a wet jogging bra underneath a grey t-shirt could make you look like you've been lactating? Then again, one member of our team was nursing her baby girl in between the swimming and biking. She is officially my hero because when the G was four months old, i was in no shape or form to be riding a bike, let me just say two words Preparation H.

5. Bike chain grease is the new black.

6. 90 minutes of swimming, biking and running is not so bad when you do it with a crowd of hilarious women like my teammates. But the fact that we managed to chit chat through most of our work-out tells you two things: 1) we probably weren't exerting ourselves too hard and 2) we probably won't be making any records on game day.

7. Working out for this long gives you the perfect excuse to order and devour a 2 lb burrito and all the greasy trimmings. It takes me back to my pregnant days when i'd hiss, "hey man back off i'm eating for two now!"

8. Coming up with a team name is a great way to make the time pass. I think "The MILF Shakes" could be a serious contendor. What do you think?

Stingers Cocked and Ready

When the Docta was nine years old he watched a National Geographic episode about Killer Bees that had him shaking in his sheets all night long. Go ahead have a good giggle at the sight of this boy of a boy, with scraped up knees and wild, river hair, sweating in his bed convinced that a band of bees from Africa had already GPS'ed his ass and were on their way, stingers cocked and ready.

Nightmares do come true my friends.

Last night on his bike ride home, the Docta caught a big fat one in his mouth and the merciless SOB stung him hard.

I found him at home, frantic, pointing to his tongue that was blowing up like a balloon with every beating second.

"I got thtung. Call the nursth," he garbled as though he were sucking on a Kielbasa.

Who do I call? shit shit. I scanned the fridge for a clue and then suddenly realized that we are all dialed up for any child emergency, a plethora of CPR diagrams and phone numbers for every pediatric care giver in Seattle are plastered everywhere but clearly the Docta and I must think we are invincible. We DO NOT HAVE a regular doctor. The only doctor we could have called at this hour was my OBGYN and I'm sure she is not particularly well versed on adult bee stings.

So we had to Google the closest hospital.

I handed the Docta some ice-cubes while I began talking to the nurse. I'm thinking she's going to tell me it's no big deal and just wait for the swelling to go down. But what is it with these nurse lines? It's like all of sudden she starts amping me up on adrenaline with questions and commands like,

"Go now to the ER. I will call ahead for you. You have to go now. No you can't go to the Children's Hospital. How many miles away are you? Do you have oral Benadryl? YOU DON'T? His throat could close and he could stop breathing. Get in the car."

Thanks, thanks for the calm voice of reason to soothe my fears 'cause now I'm gonna drive like a crazy crack addict to the nearest ER, running lights and hopping over curbs and I'm gonna be looking at the Docta at every stop light wondering if the next time he coughs he'll start grabbing for his throat and turn blue.

"Are you o.k.? Are you o.k.?"

"yesthh would you thstop asthking me that?"

The funny thing is that after all that panic and NASCAR driving, I ended up just leaving him at the ER. The Docta convinced me, that since it was the one night my parents had agreed to watch the G man so we could go to my friend's birthday bash, I should not miss out on some good German beer and home-made grub.

"Are you sure?"

"Yesthhh. I'm fine."

After a couple of hours of ER excitement, a shot of steroids and some antihistamines, the Docta arrived to the party just in time to raise his glass in a toast to the birthday girl.

It took 'em 25 years but those damn Bees finally found him!

The Docta's tongue on 'roids

past curfew

My senior year, on nights past curfew, i'd tip toe through the dark house, holding my breath all the way, moving like a criminal over moaning floor boards and squeaky steps, all this to find that my mama had been nesting in my bed all the while curled up tight.

"Hola chiquita" she'd say in a sleepy stupor pulling me into her arms, rocking me like a slow dance in the moonlight.

"Como te fue?" she'd ask in a yawn, half listening.

"Good. I''m glad you had fun mi'ja."

Then she'd breath me in one last time, say her goodnights and stumble back down the hall to her own bed.

She never interrogated me at this hour, never made me walk the line.

She just needed to know that i had returned home safe once again so she could go back to dreaming so she could go back to the peace of deep sleep when you know all of your children are present and accounted for, wrapped tight inside the wombs of their beds.

I am my mother now in these moments waiting for Facil to return, the tossing and turning, the clock watching. The anticipation that he will walk back through that door at any moment and restore balance once again....that we will all turn over in our sheets and sleep the heavy sleep.

Thank you for your thoughts, I will let you know when I hear from him.

Geographical Brothers and Sisters

The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time. please try your call again later.

The drone of this mechanical voice over and over when i so desperately want to hear Facil's quiet and familiar "hello." pick up the phone. pick up the phone. Every few days I wake up in a sweat with his eyes looking down at me in the black of my room, adrenaline racing, fueled with the wicked whys and what ifs. Why I haven't heard from him since December when he promised he was going to buy his ticket and visit? Why has his mailbox been full for weeks now? and then that dark question, the one i don't want to know the answer to...Is he traveling down that lonely road that took his sister in Sudan?

I don't really know how i first met Facil i just know he was everywhere and though i knew very little of him or of his country Eritrea I became his geographical sister almost instantly.

"Mooneeca my sister," he would always call me from behind a pair of eyes that i later learned witnessed some of the most gruesome unspeakables of war. A refugee forced to flee the battlefields of his country in the middle of the night, traveling by ship in a broom closet and then in the cab of an eighteen wheeler all the way to Utah, taking nothing but a few pictures in his wallet and leaving only caskets behind...

....of his mother the political activist, truth seeker, who one day disappeared

....of his father gunned down before his very own eyes

...of his baby brother who in pictures radiates the kind of innocence you want to bottle up and dab on your wrists

....of his wife whose death he kept secret for months guarding this lost love like an injured bird

.....of his dear sister who later killed herself in Sudan after the events of 9/11 made it impossible for her to reunite with her brother in the states.

"I have left 70,000 caskets behind," he once told me.

All that pain and you'd think this man could not get out of bed, would have trouble smiling, would have forgotten how to love....

But every day he wakes with the roosters, working a fourteen hour shift tiling floors, walls, ceilings with his bare hands doing what he learned from his father, the gift he took from his homeland.

In his kitchen all of us nestle in to sample the thick, red sauce he has made for us,
"Try this and tell me what you think?"
We nod our heads in approval, hugging him as he beams from ear to ear that we are all there crowding together in the kitchen like family.

I miss him. I can't get him out of my head for when i turn on the news or when i open the newspaper I see his face everywhere those haunting eyes... the eyes of Iraq, Dar fur.

Little Monkies wrote a very moving post about war about the insanity, the vicious cycle that it is and i'd add that it goes on in nations like Eritrea, places that most of us can't even pronounce or place on a map, that produce thousands of witnesses like Facil who can never look at the world with the same pair of eyes again. And i wish i could say i had a solution to stopping it. i wish. i wish. i know we all share this same hope. i know my friendship with Facil in one small way is the grief shouldering that Ally speaks about here...but its not enough, a band-aid if anything.

i can't sit here and wring my hands and i'm going crazy waiting for Facil to pick up the phone so i'm sending in my application to be a volunteer for the International Rescue Committee, an amazing non-profit that helps support displaced refugees who flee to this country. This year 2 million Iraqis will need this kind of support...and there are other ways to lend a hand to the Facils who come here who need their American hosts to help them get back on their feet... check them out.

Facil dear brother when you are ready to pick up the phone i'm here on the other end of the line waiting.

Make it: with berries

i like to tinker, reinvent, make stuff as i said here and i know my crafty ways are really, really appreciated. In fact my bro, the cheeky little bugger, in his recent thank-you card just couldn't say enough about it,

"i love the web cam you sent me for my birthday but really sis i am sorta disappointed you didn't make something with your own bare hands this year. i'm really longing for one of your fine dust collectables, a piece of structurally sound pottery, a mixed compilation of heavy estrogen or some of that everlasting, homemade soap you do so fine."

Oh don't you worry little lad, i've been busy whittling you and the fam a canoe out of the beachwood the G and I have been collecting for the past two summers and just haven't had time to find the right size box to send it in.

Aside from building water crafts from scratch, i also like to tinker with recipes. i get an ingredient in my head and the gerbil wheel in my brain starts a spinning. Right now its berries 'cause in our backyard they are bloomin', kickin', and squealin', those raspberry stalks heavy after birthing some of the brightest and most succulent babes this season. Yup, even better than last summer's crop and we remember those little guys fondly since we spent many days sprinkling them over our breakfast cereal while chanting Bruce Degen's ever popular Jamberry.

one berry two berry pick me a blueberry. Three berry four berry pick me a strawberry. raspberry jazzberry razzamatazzberry berryband merryband jamming in Berryland.

I'd love to say that i've baked a dozen raspberry pies by now but truth be told my pies end up looking like the rippled valley of my stomach when I'm sucking it in and probably taste like one too. Too bad 'cause i've been itchin' to dust up my hands with flour and make me some of Bossy's strawberry rhubarb pie or stain my fingers purple with OTJ's blackberry dumplings recipe.

Keep it simple stupid, you might say, perhaps a slow stewing jam is in order. And then a nice neighborly surprise appeared on my porch, some of Ally's own homemade goodness, strawberry heaven, heaped in one of those jars that brought me back to my peach canning days with my grandma. Lets just say I've decided that its best we savor hers for the moment because I'd like there to be enough time in between so that when I make my version the Docta will forget the lip smacking tang that just sings in Ally's spread.

In the end I've decided to experiment with making my first bottle of raspberry wine. I was inspired by a recipe I found while thumbing through my new favorite magazine called Craft. The author calls his concoction, "One Week Wine" because he made and drank many versions of it while biking through Greece, how romantic huh. Check out his bare bones recipe here.

As we speak my little worker bee is out in the garden now picking or should i say eating the 1/2 gallon of fruit that this recipe requires. The good news is that if raspberries aren't your thang, according to the author, any berry will do. So get going and in a week's time we can all raise our glasses in a virutal toast to summer. clink. clink. In Seattle nothing's finer and worth that long, rainy wait. Now excuse me while I get back to whittling that canoe I've promised, don't wanna give anyone the impresson that us teachers just lay around all summer or anything....