Parenting with both parents around much of the time is harder than you’d think. I would say it’s harder than I thought it would be, but what did I know, in those blissfully ignorant days before I had a child? Lots of theory was flying around back then. Some of it has been borne out in a way that makes me feel disturbingly self-satisfied. For example, I could never have done this thing surrounded by the exigencies of US culture. The objects, the expectations, the advice. Being in a foreign country where I could barely speak the language and had little idea of what was next, not having a car, not having the view remain consistent have, in fact, suited me. And I was committed to the idea that Adam and I would be in it together—he would be on site, an equal, a colleague. Which meant in practice that neither of us would have a job for awhile. And we worked it out, with help from our incredibly supportive families. The funny thing is, though, in some ways it’s actually much easier when it’s just me. (Or him.) Tallulah and I get in sync, we cooperate. With Adam and I present together, it’s essential that we be in utter harmony. Tallulah sees and seizes upon the most minor fissures in our relationship, in our mundane interactions, things we might be barely aware of, or believe that we’d successfully suppressed. She plays one off the other in a benign or malignant fashion, defending or, lately, peacekeeping, acting out, performing. Those average moments, teasing or cloaking some real grievance in joking terms—all duly noted. And they become the stuff of shame. And reason for punishment. Adam and I live now in such a way that we need to trust the other with our lives. This is the literal truth. But how insidious those small persistent failures become—the deep currents of the psyche, formed by my own parents/early experiences, now played again. It’s this complex, stratified space that I notice myself navigating—again, this is literal—on a daily basis when we’re both together. There’s no other room, no room to go to and shut the door. The space is fluid—I really have no need of metaphors—and the scudding clouds of the others’ moods are close enough to feel the vapor. By now we’ve gotten nearly as good at this as acrobats, but not yet perfect, and perfection is, in fact, required of us.

   

Forty years ago, when the Marines were here, the economy of Culebra was heavily dependent on laboratory rats. The US government had set up a rat factory--this was their way of keeping the locals happy. Then they decided they wanted them unhappy. People were getting in the way of artillery shells, and bombs, and secret posts for listening to the ghostly whistling, the squawks and bleats of our friends and enemies flying, invisible, across the airwaves.
    The factory is by far the largest building in el pueblo. I can only imagine what is inside. That dim decay of abandoned offices, the laboratories where the rats were bred, the sterility necessary to places where life is experimented with.
    We went over. A couple of horses graze on the grounds. Tallulah had spotted them when we went foraging for mangoes one afternoon beside the fire station. The horses were eating green mangoes right off the tree. Their long, rubbery lips reached up, grappling with the crunch. They were also open to eating grass shoved through the chainlink fence. The next day, she insisted we return. She ran happily to the fence looking for horses, but they were nowhere in sight. When I explained, the local firemen said, They're back there. But is it safe? I asked. They looked at each other, shrugged and nodded. One of them pulled open the gate.
    So we wandered into the rat factory. We found the horses. We petted and discussed them. Then we left, because I couldn't get the flattened face of a woman I knew in New Orleans out of my head. She was kicked by a horse and the doctors never could fix her bones. It struck me that I may be unfit for modern life. I can find things to worry over even in the most innocuous, bucolic places. Then again, maybe this time it's to do with the posted warning signs, the industrial shower that accompanies a place where toxic substances collect, the odd metal cages. Maybe something's clinging to this odd intersection of manipulation and things bred to die that the simple practice of ordinary life has yet to overcome.

Rhythm is, indeed, everything. I failed music theory back when I was eight or nine and played the violin indifferently. I never could figure out what they were talking about when they talked about 5/6 time (?), or 4/4 time. The house and the car were filled with music, mostly baroque, mixed with the solemn, annoying voices of NPR reporters. I attended the opera. Why couldn't I get it? I sit listening to the soaring arc of George Lewis's clarinet in “Over the Waves” and I think, surely it's the fact that I was mysteriously unprepared to make an intuitive leap. To feel. Or, perhaps, to feel with intellect. Rhythm is a sort of sign or metaphor. If I had to guess I'd say our lives are lived these days at something like a 2/4 beat, overwhelmed sometimes in the faster, higher rhythms of a new place, some gaping—opportunity, that is, some problem waiting to be transformed into the most astounding future we could never have imagined. Isn't that what's waiting?

Recently, Tallulah drank bleach. Jesus! It was diluted so thoroughly it didn't even have a smell. We have no idea how it got onto a measuring cup on the counter. She threw up all over the floor and then said she felt better. I wasn't at all satisfied. But Adam had gone to Fajardo and taken the dinghy; a storm was passing over, interfering with the internet connection; oh yeah, and Adam had the cellphone. We triangulated by shouting into our respective instruments, “Can you hear me?” and bleating the relevant words like morse code. It was kind of like being in a war a hundred years ago. It turned out Adam was calling Lawrence, who lives on a boat nearby, while I was hailing the anchorage on the radio. Then two men in dinghies were heading straight for our boat, medevac style. We all visited the doctor together. He looked down her throat and said she was fine. Then my platoon and I walked over to the health food store for a quick recon of life-giving fluids. When I thanked them, they said, “Happy to help. We don't have much money, but we have lots of time.” A little day-in-the-life for ya.

I recently read a book called Radical Homemakers. It's all about people who, the author says, “did the math.” They did the math and they decided to opt out of the traditional paradigm of working and spending. They turned their family units into “units of production” rather than “units of consumption.” Make, forage, barter, do with less. Drop out. Relearn. Reintegrate, but with a difference. I'm wondering if the commune movement of the late sixties and seventies ran into such trouble because there was no internet. Apparently Adam and I are not alone. Rather than being consumed with anxiety over the crisis of resources, we can look upon it as a reason to live better. What's so great about massive consumption, anyway? Does it make people happy? We've got rhythm. Now, we just have to swing it.

(Thank you, Wendy, for your inspiring gift.)

photo by Tallulah

Once you get good at something, the stakes are raised. This is what they talk about when they talk about the universe granting your desires. If you think you want something, you'll most likely get it. But as the sages probably say, you have to be ready. Because what the universe obviously wants is not for us to remain happy and comfortable the way we, in our narrow way, define those things, but for the scales to fall from our eyes and the way we we used to think of comfort and happiness to seem kind of pathetic, at best irrelevant.

Tallulah is a cheerful id. I fail to follow her lead at my psychic peril. She befriends stray cats and drunk men. One of the men pours out the dregs of his beer and climbs the tree where, he says, the best quenepas grow, tossing down bunches of this sweet, pale-peach-colored fruit that you pop open and suck on like candy.

Like an archaeologist walking a grid, she stops every yard or so to examine whatever might have fallen or grown there. She wanders into the shop of a man whose name, we learn, is Jorge. He's a drummer and his congas are lined up along the walls. She pounds on them, calling him out of the back room with a deep chord of memory that emanates from the stretched hide of the drumhead. We talk. Every culture sees time differently, he tells me.

My occasional frustration with the process of walking slowly, rapturously, around el pueblo--that must be my notion of time knocking up against a whole other way of seeing the world, which understands the valuable information contained in animal droppings, as a tracker does, which perceives possibility in every seedpod and bloom, in every discarded and broken thing.

For me the most mind-bending thing about having a child is that everything I do has a witness. Nothing too small. Nothing lost.
It's taken me awhile to get used to living on a boat. In fact, though I suggested the idea in the first place, I promptly began to resist it. The basic stuff. Like how to tie knots. Adjust the sails. That sort of thing. I'm not sure why I had such a bad attitude. Actually, I am sure. It had to do with the fact that I'd walked straight out of my world, the familiar, well-loved confines of academia, into Adam's.
We have a nice rowing dinghy here in the Caribbean. And Adam's attempts to teach me how to row—I mean, properly—soon met with snarling and sulking. I never meant to act that way. But I did. And this is the result: In Tallulah's mind, I'm still trying to live down the time a couple of friendly cruisers gave us a tow back to the boat.
OK, that happened more than once.
So even though I looked down on a recent afternoon and realized that my biceps had reached an alarming size; and getting back from shore in 25 knots didn't faze me anymore; and I'd rowed the two of them plus 400 pounds of anchor chain a mile back to the boat in one-foot swells and a stiff breeze, as Tallulah and I would get in the dinghy and I'd take hold of the oars, I kept hearing, “We need somebody to tow us.” Or, “I wish daddy was here.”
After awhile it occurred to me that it was no use getting offended. Wasn't that the voice of my deepest subconscious?
“Daddy always knows what to do in the boat, doesn't he?, I said finally.
“Yeah.”
“He always seems so sure, doesn't he? And you know you're safe.”
“Yeah.”
“But mom is learning,” I said.
What I really learned is that I can't fake anything. I have to believe, to embody, to love it. For I have a witness who sees only the truth. And whatever impression I make now—well, it's going to last the rest of my life.

It seemed like an ordinary, well-intentioned act. Something responsible people would do, good for
everyone. Because even two of us can't do it alone. She hasn't played with other children in months. She can learn Spanish, how many times have I heard that kids this age are like sponges? I did the research and found a preschool approved by adults. But I can see it now, sort of—the way you see a gyrating disco lit by a strobe. There are women in hairnets issuing mysterious commands. The kids are speaking in tongues. And no one to love her, not really.
I finally understand why theater director Richard Schechner defined performance as “twice-behaved behavior.” Tallulah watches and then she acts. And acts out. She plays again on her little stage the dramas she has witnessed and been subject to. No, don't do that, she says to the kitten. Sientate. Eat. You can't go outside. And, later, I know it's hard. But you can do it.
I keep trying to write about the things that work beautifully about the way we live now—the unhurried ride to school in the dinghy, flowers and fruit and lizards, the symphony of language. Rainwater to wash dishes, a refrigerator running on sun. But the best part is that I can say I won't leave my child screaming in the arms of a stranger again, and mean it.

in paradise

Flying Circus in paradise
"coffee" in paradise
first day of preschool in paradise
non-native species in paradise
blue eyes in paradise
toe nails in paradise

We check out the zoo. The mother orangutang has wrapped herself in a sheet and is sitting motionless, looking like a pile of laundry, in a corner of the enclosure. I understand this.

Listening to some kind of weird mariachi by kids, for kids in the Greenville library.

Playgrounds are a new pleasure.

Lush evening in a Greenville, SC, park documented by my brother-in-law Dennis's Lush evening in a Greenville, SC, park documented by my brother-in-law Dennis's iPhone.

I’m lying in bed watching TV with Lulu. I’ve found a channel I consider educational—it shows nothing but Mexican movies from the 1940s through the 1970s. Sure, sometimes the seventies movies are a little violent and have pimps and stuff in them, but those are usually only on late at night.

The flickering television illuminates a room in which the furniture is covered with dust, and pots and pans sit abandoned in boxes. Just outside the door, open bags of concrete and plaster mix, putty knives and paintbrushes have been left lying about haphazardly. There is no glass in the windows, just elaborate wrought iron bars. If I tried to write this scene into a movie script it would seem unlikely. My pitch would fall flat; I’d end up chucking the whole thing and starting from scratch.

Nevertheless here we are, for Adam’s coworker Eduardo has generously offered us his sister’s apartment in Vallarta, two rooms on the first floor of his own house, while we’re waiting for the boat to be painted. Adam leaves for work at 8 am and returns at 8 pm. Lulu and I explore the Vallarta area by bus. We visit the strange zoo—kind of like a petting zoo with huge wild animals. At the entrance, the ticket-seller also sells food to feed them. “Es muy divertido,” he encourages, but I decide that we should observe instead. As it turns out, the boundaries between human and animal are indistinct. The camels’ rubbery clown lips descend to ruffle the baby’s hair. A friendly giraffe head appears from the sky, curious to know if we are offering carrots.

In the afternoons, back at our new place, the family comes home. Again I observe through a permeable barrier, those iron bars that separate our space from theirs. The family is composed of a mother and father and two children—a girl, aged two-and-a-half, and a boy, aged six. A grandmother and grandfather live nearby and provide regular childcare. Over a period of one week, this researcher rarely saw the mother and father together (both parents work full-time). The group coheres, in so far as connections are made among family members, around social rituals such as what might be termed the “homework battle,” taking place for between two and four hours each school night, and the “unsupervised climb,” in which the girl mounts a spiral staircase and plays on the roof until she is noticed and chastised. Upon returning, separately, to the domestic space, the parents respond indifferently to each other, or with overtones of aggression; for example, the husband was heard to greet his wife as “bruja,” meaning witch. Sometimes the couple ignores each other, or offers merely a simple “hola.”

Anyway. By dusk, the researcher is exhausted, overly critical, and ready for some TV. This particular evening, the feature is “El Vampiro Sangriento.” How scary can it be? It must be like seventy years old. Lulu and I settle back on the pillows. The scratchy music appropriate to black and white movies begins. Some things happen, then there’s a conversation going on between a guy and a lady—OK, it’s like he gave her a crucifix, and it keeps disappearing in the night? It must be, he keeps giving her crucifixes, plural. And they’re saying how weird that is. Now they’re in a big banquet hall, and some freaky guy is sitting at the head of the table. The hero sniffs his wine and then moves his eyebrows to tell the heroine not to drink it. It's poisoned? Wait—I missed something—

And then I notice that we're lying under a filmy canopy. The sheets are soft, the pillows voluminous. Lulu is tugging at her neck—somehow she’s gotten into a kind of long, lacy dress buttoned all the way up the back that looks like it’s strangling her. I go to help and notice that I’m wearing a white gown with a plunging neckline. This is kind of cool. Suddenly a short, pointy-headed creature with fangs pops up at the window. “Que estas haciendo?” it shrieks. I look down. No crucifix! “What are you doing?” it demands again, in heavily accented English, just to make sure I understood. “You can speak Spanish,” I say irritably. “I’ll never improve if people talk to me in English.”

“Da? Da?” Lulu asks. “Dad’ll be back later,” I respond. “Right now we just have to deal with this vampire.” “Vampa?” “Yeah, but don’t worry, mom will take care of everything.” I root among the discarded cutlery for a weapon and come up with a charred wooden spoon.” “Go away!” I shout. “It’s none of your business what I’m doing.”

Just then the door opens and Adam comes in. He doesn’t seem to notice that he has on a threadbare tuxedo. “It’s kind of dark in here,” he says. “You guys don’t look too good. What’s going on?” “Uh—well—” “Quien eres? Que estas haciendo?” the vampire interrupts, in that voice like a malevolent rodent, blood dripping from its mouth as if it’s just bitten the head off something. “Jesus—what’s that?” Adam asks, startled. “What the hell happened while I was gone?” I think to myself, a lot of things have happened. We’ve started living in different worlds, one marked Man, the other Woman. And we’re both too exhausted to say anything interesting.

The vampire reappears in another of those open windows, screeching something unintelligible in Spanish. “My god, that vampire really sucks!,” Adam says, turning away. “Is there any food? I’m starving.” I walk to the kitchen, trying to ignore the terrible noise outside, and get the garlic out of the fridge. Maybe soon, we’ll be ourselves again. I don’t want to speak this language.

Pueblo Azúl
A play in one act

Characters:
Jessica, a white woman in her late thirties, dressed in a knee-length skirt and a sleeveless black shirt with a prominent avocado smear on one shoulder. She is never seen without
Lulu, an energetic child of about a year and a half
Adam, a white man, also in his late thirties, wearing a pair of paint-stained shorts and a t-shirt. Currently the family breadwinner.
Rat, a medium-sized rodent
Waiter, a Mexican high school student with carefully styled hair
Mariachi band, enough said

Act I, Scene 1
A one-room apartment above a restaurant in a small Mexican beach town. Outside the door, laundry hangs on a line. The Beatles’ "Imagine," played at top volume, is abruptly turned off, replaced by a blast of cumbia music. Two men can be heard arguing in Spanish. The music gradually fades as light comes up on the room shared by Jessica, Adam, Lulu, and Rat.

Toys are scattered across the floor. Five beds of different sizes have been pushed up against the walls. A plastic table, of the kind used outdoors, with a single plastic chair, sits next to the refrigerator. Rat is poised on its haunches on top of the refrigerator, preparing to eat a ripe avocado with a spoon. Jessica and Lulu lie on one of the beds. Jessica is reading a detective novel aloud as she nurses the baby.

Adam enters. He places his hat and sunglasses on the table and prepares to sit. Notices Rat.

Adam: Wha—this is disgusting! Rat is eating our food!

Rat drops the spoon with a clatter and runs into the rafters.
Jessica looks up.

Jessica: At least it’s not drinking our coffee.

Lulu sits up abruptly. Da!

Jessica: We missed you. Do you want a sandwich? We have cheese.
Adam: Sure.
Jessica: So, is it getting finished?
Adam: No.
Jessica: Any idea when it will be finished?
Adam: Not really.

Act I, Scene 2
A room in another apartment complex in the same small town. The walls are painted an unpleasant yellowish beige. On top of a dresser a pepper grinder, a half-empty bottle of beer, and a roll of toilet paper are visible. A bed takes up much of the room. In one corner a miniature refrigerator with a small microwave bolted to the top emits a loud, variable hum.

Adam sits in a large, food-stained chair, holding a laptop computer, several pillows shoved behind his back. Jessica enters, carrying Lulu.

Jessica: What’s that smell? Do you smell something?
Adam: Yeah. It’s sewage. We are right next to the sewage treatment plant.
Jessica: Yeah. (Sets the baby down)
Lulu: Baila, baila! (dances)
Adam: So, what’d you guys do today?
Jessica: We bought some organic beans at the Mega. I was thinking we could cook in the fridge—you know, like, sprouting stuff! And I found this thing that froths milk without using electricity!
Adam: Uh, sounds good.
Jessica: How was work?
Adam: OK.
Jessica: Are they making progress?
Adam: Not really.
Lulu: Ererehehbop?
Jessica: So—how much longer?
Adam: I have no idea. (Pause, then) Should we go for tacos?
Jessica: Sure. Um. I’m pretty sick of tacos.
Adam: Well, we could get pozole.
Jessica: That’s more corn.
Adam: Yeah.

Act I, Scene 3
A taqueria. Smoke from a grill billows over three plastic tables set in the street. Across the street at the bakery a child aged about two, covered with red spots, is eating a donut.

Lulu: Acos. (Notices bakery) Num!
Jessica: No num. Let’s have meat.
Lulu (smiles): Num!

They sit. Waiter appears.

Adam: Hola, buenas noches. Tres de asada, por favor.
Jessica: Igual. Gracias. (Turns to Adam. Lulu gets down and runs toward the sidewalk. Jessica follows. Several minutes later, they return. Lulu squirms, is put down, runs away again. Jessica prepares to follow)
Adam: (sotto voce) Keep her away from that kid. He has mumps or something.
Jessica: What? (Disappears)

Adam remains at the table. He looks preoccupied.
Several minutes later, Jessica and Lulu reappear.

Lulu: Agua!
Adam: Here’s your agua.
Waiter arrives, sets down plates of tacos. Algo más?
Adam: No, gracias.

They begin to eat in silence. Sound from loudspeakers atop a traveling vegetable truck can be heard in the distance: Señoras de la casa, tenemos jitomates, veinte pesos por kilo, si, solo veinte pesos cada kilo. Aprovecha! (Sound fades away.)

Adam: Watch out. She’s getting salsa everywhere.
Jessica: Could you pass me a napkin?

Suddenly, a mariachi band appears stage left. The guitarist strums the first notes of a song and the singer steps forward. Rat appears stage right, holding a miniature pair of maracas.

(Singing)
Parece un camino laaaargo,
A veces necessitas esperar.
(Repeat)
But as time is passing
Life is passing
A-pro-ve-cha!
Oh, it might seem like a long road,
But you know what, it’s a short life—
Que agarres los cojones!
(Together) Que agarres los cojones!

Adam: I didn’t know mariachis could swear.
Jessica: Maybe they can’t. I just made all this up. Except for the part about the rat. Come on, let’s finish our tacos, buy a family-size Corona, and go watch the moon come up over the breakwater. (They smile at each other.)

Lulu: Go! Go! (Turns and waves at audience)

Exeunt.

THE END

Cruise ships like horizontal skyscrapers, moving, logy, across the bay, leaving behind vertical hotels and timeshares rising emptily over the water, the uneven sawtooth of the mountains behind them, misty, implacable, waiting. They seem conscious of what a brief burst all this is, though they're not forever either.

But I don't have time for such ruminations, bound up these days in the insistence of the present. The urgencies of eating, peeing, running, seeing cats and dogs, imitating their sounds, moving things from place to place, noting the locations of round, rubbery objects, monitoring the relationship between water and child. Sometimes I read aloud whatever I'm reading, skipping over words like "rape" and "cigarette." Time passes.

Some people write blogs that lots and lots of people read, that they even earn money writing because so many people read them and then somehow it works out that they get paid. I don't really understand it. They sell ads, maybe. If I wrote every day, today's entry would be something like: I am eating Nutella out of the jar, without even bothering to put it on anything, which seems gross. The whole thing is gross, Nutella is gross. For some reason it's available in the most understocked, out-of-the-way little grocery stores around this part of Mexico and for all I know the whole country. I'm scraping the curves of the plastic, getting out the last curls of it, feeling like my head has been hooked up to zapping electrodes for several hours. My sinuses seem to be reverberating. I am fully in the present. Past, future--equally inaccessible. This is an occasional side effect of childcare.

Bahía Chamela

Thank you Raymond of s/v "Fool's Gold" for these photos.

Shaking off a brief episode of Cruisebummers, I witnessed Tallulah going about her usual activities: rowing the dinghy, watching pelicans and frigate birds diving off the stern, eating avocados, playing in the sand, swimming, becoming bilingual--poco a poco--and being adored by both parents and scores of Mexicans, who think it is so totally cool that she's one of them. So, for anyone--mom!--who is worried about the dangers of our sailing with a baby, let me say that any dangers are nothing compared to the IQ points she's gaining. Yes, every day is another opportunity for her to fall overboard, but equally is it an opportunity for her to learn not to. Life is chock full of child-centered goodness these days. Whew. I'm exhausted.

first step's a doozy

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul
I lean and loafe at my ease...observing a spear of summer
grass.
You sea! I resign myself to you also....I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;


We must have a turn together....I undress....hurry me out of sight of the land,

Cushion me soft....rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet....

I can repay you. (Whitman, "Song of Myself," 1855)

Not yet banned in Mexico

Chewing on purple plastic rope in a safe, child-friendly spot feels so good.

Crawling practice, followed by screams of frustration.















Captain of the Mothership

Baby loves to hang. Parents take a casual approach to diapering.

Moving back on the boat

I'm too old to do this ever again. But it's weirdly good to be where everything more or less has a place and is usually in it. We now have:

A child. This is what Adam would look like if he were a little baby girl:



Bookshelves. Adam made these out of primavera with ipe accents. Nice.

A natural latex mattress--or what passes for a mattress after the sleeping bags from Wal-Mart in Astoria that we were using after I insisted that we remove the ancient foam that was there before.

"Walls" in our "bedroom." Very lovely work by Adam. Note book-matching on the perrota planks.

A new bathroom!

Diaper free and lovin' it.




Newly varnished spars, plus a freshly painted hull.

A leather sock on one of the anchor's feet.