The Olympics Aren't Perfect, but They're Perfect Right Now

Since Friday night, my family has sat together watching the 2016 Summer Olympic games. Not all at once, we rotate in and out of the TV room, one likes volleyball, another checks in on swim, my husband is there for most of it.

Starting with the Opening Ceremony, filling the screen with faces and dress from around the world, hearing beautiful accents and reading names of countries we hadn't heard of, some newly formed, we've been present for these games. On screen, we saw brown faces, white faces, black faces, every color of humanity, and we were together as family, at home and there. We look more alike than we don't. That's something that's become important to remember this ugly election season in America.

We are one family. We don't need to fear different. And how these games remind us of how we are just one corner of a huge world. I don't think the mental respite and relief of the Olympics has ever been more needed.

Our world has a history, one which is made of diversity. To see these nations send in their best, who will compete among the best, is a side by side story of how our nations were built: with each other. I feel each country's pride and I fall in love with the Olympians they've sent. My heart swells with love for the spirit of the Olympic games.

Summer 2016 is not just games in Rio, summer 2016 is when America was thirsting and hungering for the show of unity that the Olympic games do so well in reminding us. This has been a tense election cycle in America, but seeing the tens of thousands of glorious faces coming together, we are undeniably presented with fact: America is but a small part. Humbling, at the very least.


Reality exists, I know, as does this challenging race for US presidency. But for now, we've got 4500 hours of seeing the best, go for their best. And it renews me, every time. Just seeing all the beauty of the world, assembled together. There is no more wondrous poem to creation.

* * *

Donald Trump is More Than Politics

These are the words from my older sister, Leonor Rosas, who has asked me to run her story on my blog. She has given me my family's life story, because "This country is more broken than I have ever witnessed it. We have to say something of the reason why immigrants are here and why we come to America. It is not because we do not want to work or be given things for free. We come because of what America is to us." 

 

***

 

My immediate family came to the United States in shifts. First my aunts came when they joined the convent in the early '50’s, followed by my uncle and I when we came in 1958. My mother, grandmother, my brother and sister came in 1960. My father arrived two years later.

The immigration process was lengthy and costly. We had medical requirements to meet. My parents had to document that they had the skills necessary to not be a burden to this country…. something that we have never been.

 

This is a country to be proud of, a place where a person can advance and contribute, worship in the way you feel most at peace, and raise healthy productive children.

We came here because that was not the case in Colombia, South America. When we left our country, there was a Dictator:

Generalisimo Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. He mounted a successful coup against the incumbent President, Laureano Gómez Castro. Pinilla imposed martial law and established a dictatorship style government in Colombia. I remember a reign of terror. I was 7 years old then and I saw Colombia being under martial law. At six 6PM every night, everyone had to be home. Sirens would wail and my Abuela(grandmother) paced the floor waiting for my mother to come through the door. At 5:30PM, my grandmother would get her rosary and begin praying that the bus from Bogota to Fontibon would not be late so that mama would arrive safely before the sirens.

I would hear my mother and my abuela talking about coming to America where we would not have to fear going out at night or gatherings with our neighbors to talk about the fear of our government.

 

Rojas Pinilla promised peace, unification, a bright future: but he began his own violence. He ordered the army and police against all opposition in Colombia. If you disagreed with him, you were jailed. Many disappeared. By the end of the Rojas regime, over 300,000 Colombians were dead, and Rojas, the self-anointed "peace-bringer" became known as someone else:  "a sadist … one of the most savage and venal and altogether incompetent administrators in the history of the nation." 

 

***

My family sought safety in America. Life was difficult at first for all of us when we arrived here. But the adults found work right away and the children went to school. My grandmother was learning how to shop without speaking English and my father and aunts and uncles went to night school to learn English. We worked, studied, grew. My mother and father had three more children in America.

We went to school, married, became productive citizens. Yes, we became citizens and took our civic responsibilities very seriously. My uncle served in the army and most of us became active in our communities. We loved this country and the freedom to work toward our dream of being part of America and contributing to this country.

It is my love for America that has pushed me to write to you today. I am in anguish over the possibility of Trump becoming President.

Trump has made statements about “rapists, criminals” about Mexicans. Trump's views on women, and plans for Muslims in the U.S are about banning a group based on religion. Some compare Trump to Hitler. I can compare him to a dictatorship.

When I was 12 years old, my Aunt Lilia took me dress shopping. We were walking along Milwaukee's streets and there was a group of young white men marching down the street in a demonstration. The signs they carried stated that the Holocaust never existed.

One second my aunt was holding my hand and the next minute her tiny 95 pounds 5’2’’ body was up against this tall white man in Nazi uniform! She shouted at him:” You don’t know, you were not alive when thousands of people were executed by Hitler, you don’t know how the whole world cried for the victims, you don’t know how we worried that the world would fall to this evil tyrant! We were scared!” I had never seen her speak up for anything before.

Because I was 12, I was mortified. How could she embarrass herself in that way? When she came back to my side and once again took my hand she was in tears. Her small body shook, and she wiped her mouth from the tears. She told me all she had seen as a child. Of what she remembered, of the news she had witnessed. The atrocities she had heard about from the newspapers and radio in Colombia during those terrible times, and she told me how the whole world was in panic that the monster and his criminal ideology would reach North and South America, Europe and Asia. “He wanted the world!” she said. I will never forget her strength as she looked up into the face of a male, two feet taller.

***

For the first time, I am telling this story. It is time now to talk about tyrants who abuse their power and criminalize those go against them and question their authority. Of what can happen when a person who is in power wants to shut down any dissent, any outcry of injustice.

It is time for all of us citizens of the world to come together regardless of party affiliation or preferred

candidate to form a cohesive effort to repel and stop the darkness that Donald Trump brings with him. He will not unify – he is tearing apart. He will not seek equality for anyone unless they are what he agrees they have to be. He will seek to eliminate, destroy, remove, vilify, and pit Americans against each other.

He wants what we have worked to change – his promise to “Make America Great Again” is different for those who remember the America of the 1950s, '60s, and before. America was great for one type of person: if you are who Donald Trump is.

We can come together and work for the reason so many come to America. With the hope of liberty of different points of view, and of justice for those no matter the country they come from.

***

Some people say they will not vote in this election. Some people have not seen what I've seen: when someone comes into the office with the highest power in the land, and has only one mission in mind: to have everyone think like them and with our past years of progress, vanish. We cannot lose the dream of what America is. We are not bad. Immigrants do not come here to take and destroy.

 

 

Donald Trump is not politics.

 

Donald Trump is not one party over another or a differing political point of view.

 

Donald Trump is a candidate who will use America for his own gain. As I have seen dictators do.

 

***

 

Thank you to my sister, Lee, for her words here. Thank you for sharing what you know and I am proud to do what I can, to have others read the story of immigrants in America. 

When Language is a Piece of You

There is no time in my life that when I think of myself, I don't do it without hearing the rise and the fall of the Spanish language. It is not a part that is separate from me, but the seed from which I grew.

The Spanish language runs through me like roots that mark a beginning. The sounds of el, la, ina, and ora, circle around me like the rings of a tree.  My family left their country amid words of Spanish and began their new lives in America, arriving with words of Spanish. They were unable to stay under their country's government, no matter how deep their desire to remain, but they were always able to stay in their language.

I have lived in America my entire life. But with the loss of my father, mother, and grandmother, the first generation to be in this country, I feel the slow pull away between me and my first language. I fear this separation and I know that I am a poor cover of the sound that my family brought with them.

My uneasiness comes from knowing that I am adrift without the original sound of my childhood. To hear Spanish, is to hear home. Spanish centers me, it takes me to who I am and without it, I don't see a road ahead of me. If I leave the Spanish language behind, who I am is gone. It is Spanish that binds me to my family's country. Spanish makes the ocean between here and there, disappear.

It will feel like loss to not have the sound of Spanish around me. It will take from my heart the way my father's death, my mother's, and my abuela's, did.

This year, the reaction to the sound of Spanish in this country has turned darker. It has moved in the direction of double takes, disapproval, unasked questions, spoken out loud assumptions. The clear disgust at not hearing English. Some shout out their demand, English! English!

I can't be without determination. I can't feel defeat. I can't feel despair. I can only commit to not be ashamed of speaking Spanish. I won't be made to feel inferior or judged because of it. It is the language that rings truer for me than English.

If I lose my Spanish, I lose my country.

And that may be the goal of the ugliness that is spreading across our nation.

We can't lie about what we feel in our hearts. Our language is more than what we speak with our tongues. It's what we say from our souls. And I will forever have Spanish at the core, as the heat and the spark, as the bridge across the distance of where I came from.

* * *

Just Two Women in the Kitchen

I stretch my legs out from on top of the red vinyl stool. I'm careful to stay on the right because the seat is split and the foam is coming out from the other side, leaving the plastic to jut up and out, like my Abuelita's black knife. I think of how the edge could slice through a tomato like a blade. My father wants to take this chair and keep it in the garage for his tools but I won't let him. The red sparkles shine through the cover and fill the spaces like tiny galaxies.

It is early afternoon and the sun is streaking in through the kitchen windows. I love to be here in the kitchen more than anything. I am so close to where my Abuela is happiest, I stand inches from her in the small room and I don't know how she stops the urge from stepping away so she has space.

When people's skin gets too close to mine, I feel like I lose the air around me. I have to change how I am and pay attention to how I breathe when someone comes close to me. I don't want them thinking how I am too loud or too fast or that they'll hear my voice shake or say something to me and then I'll have to answer them when they are this close.

Soon, my brothers and sisters will be home from school. My grandmother is getting the rice and chicken started and my baby brother and sister are sleeping. I am waiting to start the most important job, the meal can't begin without my work - that's what my Abuela tells me. I gather the slices of tomatoes and strings of onion that my grandmother has set aside and I toss them into the hot oil in the pan. I jump when the wet from the tomato and onion sizzle and spark as they hit the pan, but I can never say no to the thrill. I go back to my grandmother and her cutting board, I know she will have the garlic smashed and ready for me to carry over in a measured tablespoon. I walk to the stove, my right hand cups under the garlic so nothing tips out. I clank on the inside of the pan to release the garlic in one plop.

Wiping her hands on her apron, my grandmother comes to stand next to me.

“You can go now, mija, the hard part is done.”

“Can I stir?”

“Claro. Si. Of course!" She lifts me up while I hold her weathered wooden spoon, the rim of the edges now burnt brown, and I hear the rasp of my back and forth scraping against the bottom of the pan.

“It's all brown now, Abuelita. The rice can go in.”

"You know just when it is time, little one." I smile and nod, I'm never wrong about the timing of the oil. Setting me down, my grandmother scoops out the rice from the pot next to us where it has been soaking in water overnight. We wait to hear the gurgle of a hard boil and then she stirs everything together, covering rice with water fold after fold. Leaning down, she checks the stove's flame, being sure to lower it to the precise flicker she needs for a simmer.

I set the table with our purple plates, but I wish they were larger. The ones we have aren't big enough to hold the amount of rice I want. Everything is finished and we have time before the rice is ready and we have to leave to get my brother from school.

My Abuela reaches across the stove and pours a cup of espresso, mixing it with warmed milk from the small pot. She divides it into two separate cups and hands one to me. There is an equal amount in both. I blow across the steam the way she has taught me, until it is cool enough to sip. Then I take the first cautious lick. The warmth spreads down my throat and across my shoulders, I feel it slide down filling the entire of my stomach.

We are two women in the kitchen. One is five, the other seventy-five, but we feel no difference. We have earned this time, to blow and sip, while we are across from each other. There is quiet between us, but it is anything but silence.

“Ponque?” she asks, wanting to know if I want cake.

She laughs when she sees my eyes pop open. I love cake and my grandmother knows this, she has hidden a piece for me, away from my five brothers and sisters. “Si, Abuela, Si!” From behind the sliced rolls in the bread cabinet, she has a torte that is wrapped in re-used wax paper. Placing it in my lap, like she's trusting me with a hummingbird, she hands me the square. I open it and see dense baked apple, the white frosting cracks as my teeth break into it.

My grandmother is small, with thick waves of still dark hair. She is awake when I first come down in the morning and she is awake when I go upstairs for the night. She never tires, she never sits. But in these afternoons, while the others are deep in sleep or away at school, she takes time.

Tomorrow's dinner may be pork sausages with quartered cabbage. The day after that a thick oxtail soup. I know the meals will be different, but they will always begin with me doing the most important work. Laying the foundation for everything that is to come when I toss in the tomatoes, the onions, the garlic.

It's the hardest part, my Abuela tells me, and I do it well.

 

* * *

New Homes, Old Hearts

Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, a time set aside in the Jewish calendar for reflection of one's sins in the past year and thoughts to the year ahead. It is a time of fasting, reflection, and repentance.

* * *

“Are you Jewish?” It was the 7th grade and I was walking home with Lisa Seraphim. Our grade school was in the middle of a heavily populated Jewish area of Milwaukee. “Because you act Jewish," she said looking at me. "And you seem Jewish." We were on our way to Lisa's house to work on a social studies project. This wasn't the first time someone from class had asked me this question. I answered her the same way I did all the other times, “I feel Jewish. Maybe.”

It was true.

Lisa's house was one of my favorite places to spend my weekends. Everything in her home and about her family felt instantly familiar, especially her mother. We would help Mrs. Seraphim cook and then we'd clean up the kitchen together. She had a large family, seven children, and we would be in the kitchen for close to an hour after dinner.

As Mrs. Seraphim swept the kitchen floor--corners first, and then gathering the dust into the center of the room, I would get chills at how this was the exact way my grandmother swept the kitchen. But my grandmother wasn't Jewish, she was a Catholic from Spain.

Lisa's mother would start dinner, the first step was to rinse the meat, being sure to remove all the nerves before soaking it in salt water. Just like home, I would shake my head at how alike she was to my grandmother. If I spent the night at Lisa's, we would have eggs for breakfast. Her mother would tell us to throw out any eggs that had blood spots in them. “My grandmother tells me the same thing, Mrs. Seraphim,” I’d answer in astonishment. In a world where I felt so different and alone, Lisa's house was one place where I felt I belonged. 

Mrs. Seraphim would cook with garlic, cumin, olive oil, and tomatoes. Always tomatoes, like my Spanish grandmother’s dishes. The meals at Lisa’s house were identical to the meals at my house; I never had to worry about whether or not I would like what they'd serve.

Lisa had younger brothers, the same as I did, with long, curly hair. They had to wait until the boys were at least three years old before they could cut their hair. My family lived by the same rule with my brother's hair.
 

I wasn't Jewish, but everything about Lisa's house felt like I once lived there. It always baffled me how much Lisa's family and mine had in common. It was years later, while in a World Religions Class in college, that I found bone-chilling possibilities for why I felt that way.

My professor had begun a unit on The Spanish Inquisition, he illustrated on a map how Jews who had escaped from Spain to avoid persecution found a new home and safety in The Canary Islands. I felt hot as I remembered that my mother told me that my grandmother's family first came from The Canary Islands.

I thought of Mrs. Seraphim and my grandmother, how they both rinsed any meat from the butcher. "To free it of any blood," my grandmother would tell me. My grandmother lit candles in a closed off room on Friday nights, my grandmother would not buy fish without scales. All things I had seen Lisa's mother do so many years ago.

As soon as the class let out, I headed straight to the library and spent the night poring over anything written on Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. There was a group of Jews that had gone to live in secret to the Canary Islands--they were known as Crypto-Jews. In one of the books, there was a list of questions, “Fifteenth Century Spain and Crypto-Jewish Customs.”

One by one I raced through the items, ticking off my yes answers to more than half.

Does your family fast during la semana santa? Yes.

Does your family celebrate El Dia Puro? Yes.

Does your family clean the house on Fridays during the day? Yes.

Are biblical names common in your family? Yes. Every other uncle in my family was named Moises. (Moses)

Then, I read something that made my scalp tingle. There was a list of eight family surnames that had left Spain for freedom in The Canary Islands. ONLY eight Crypto-Judaic family surnames from The Canary Islands. I read through it holding my breath. Would my grandmother's family name be there?

My heart pounded when I looked over the names. Fifth from the bottom, was my grandmother's maiden name. Her surname of Franco was one of the eight surnames of Jewish families that had made a new home in The Canary Islands.

Though I can never know for sure, my grandmother had already passed by then (we clipped locks of her curls, and wrapped them in tissue paper). But I made my own silent decision that day. I knew the reason why I was drawn to the Seraphim family. They were my heart. From so many generations ago.

Wishing all of my friends forgiveness, peace, and blessings this Yom Kippur.

* * *

The First of Fourth of Julys

It's the end of our day, but my grandmother is packing sliced sausage, a metal tin of saltines, and bottles of Hamm's beer into a brown box. My mother calls out to my father to remember the bottle opener. We are, the entire houseful of us, readying to take flight. I look outside the kitchen window and see near darkness. Where can we be going, and packing food for it? I chew on my thumbnail.

We have a blanket and sweaters. We sit, little children on adult laps, seven in a car made for five. Driving out of our neighborhood and turning into the streets we only travel on Sunday afternoons. But it's night.

My fingers are in my mouth again and my Abuela brushes them down with a grazing slap.

I ask my father, “A donde vamos, papa?” I have to know where we are going.

 

He blows cigarette smoke from the side of his mouth out of the rolled down driver's window. “Al lago,” he says. To the lake.

In the dark? To swim in the night? I pull the collar of the red and white striped T shirts that my mother bought for the four of us into my mouth and start sucking.

“You need to stay near us,” my mother reaches for my father's cigarette and takes a quick puff. I barely ever see this and every time I do, it feels like something too private for me to witness.

“No running,” she orders. “It will be dark.”

She turns to look at me and my brother. We are the youngest ones. “No running.”

“Si, mama.” I answer for my brother.

We arrive at the lake, the one we go to on Sundays. It is a weeknight, but we are here. I hear voices and lean forward to peek out the window. There are so many cars here that it looks like the used car lot we went to for my father's car.

I leap off my Abuela's lap after my sisters leave the car and my mother catches me. “You're running," she warns. My grandmother finds my hand and gives the food to my older sisters to carry. My father and mother walk in front of us, her arm linked into his. He says something too quiet for me to hear and my mother laughs.

Over the voices, I hear the sound of pops. They are close, but muffled. We move with the crowd, and I bite the edge of my bottom lip because it's getting hard to follow my father in front of us. He is turning and dodging but my grandmother is slow and I don't want to lose him because I am little and we are far from home with my Abuela who doesn't speak English.

I start to run again. My mother turns around and I stop.

“Mama!” I call out, wondering if my voice will be as loud in the night as it is in the day. “Mama! Wait for us!”

"Daughter! M'ija!” She calls back to me, but keeps walking. “You worry all the time.”

I do. I am always scared. I don't understand what we do and I never know where we go.

I feel caught. Between the house that feels safe where we all speak the same language, and being here, outside, where our voices are the only ones in Spanish.

I am between worlds again.

“Why worry, daughter?”

I can't explain.

My father claps when we find an open space of grass, and my Abuela spreads our blanket. The seven of us sit, shoulders and knees against backs. All around, there are people next to people and no place to walk in between. The grass is wet and soaks through. I want to stand but don't dare in the darkness. I see no one else standing off of their blankets and I know right away that we did things wrong again.

The blanket we brought is the wrong kind. From the corner of my eye, I see that the family next to us has food that I know is American. Not our sausage, not the bright red salty kind that my father likes. We always bring the wrong things.

We don't know how to live in America. No one in my family ever worries about how we don't do things right, except for me.

We sit, I don't know what we wait for. The crowd is murmuring, and then there is silence. A sound like a whizzing arrow slices through the air and then a crack of thunder. I scream and my Abuela pulls me into her. "Mi chinita, my little girl," her voice is soothing. I push my head inside her thin summer sweater and I rest there.

There is no time to breathe before the next booms start. The pounding of  sound comes one after the other and I tremble with each one.

I have never heard anything like this except in a storm. How long before the rain makes us wet?

My legs feel the ground rumble, and the wild thunder continues. I throw my hands over my eyes and keep them squeezed shut inside my grandmother's sweater. I breathe in and a smell like the wooden matches my Abuela uses in the kitchen fills the air. I want to be home.

There is a round of continuous pops and I think that surely, this time, the thunder will bring rain. I keep my eyes closed and shiver, anticipating how we'll be wet any minute.

I hold the smooth buttons on my Abuela's sweater between my fingers. Twirling each one back and forth, I count to ten. It will make the time waiting for things to end go faster if I count each one. There is a moment of silence that stretches into minutes, and then, the thunder is gone. I open my eyes and look up. I see my father standing. 

“The fireworks were better in Colombia,” he says with his hands on his hips. His voice sounds thin after the booms of the night. "They were more exciting." I wonder how they could have something over there, that is from here.

  

My father turns and bends down over my mother. She lifts her face up to him and he offers her his two hands. She takes them both. They are happy.

 

* * *
 

*My father had only three Fourth of Julys in this country. He died three years after coming to America.

__________________________________

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It Lies Below The Land of the Remembered

For as long as I can remember, my mother has talked about her fear of being dead.

Not of dying, she looked forward to that. To seeing her mother again, her husband who had passed away when he was 39 years old, of being with her four gone before her brothers.

I must not be forgotten. If I am forgotten, my body is alone. I cannot bear to watch and know, that my body is alone.

I would sit on the edge of the bed, and listen to my mother's phrases of worry. She never asked any of us if we would visit her grave, she assumed she would be buried, and then forgotten. So sure was she of being left entombed and unattended, that her fears kept her roaming through the house at 3 a.m., consumed with the vision of a stark, physical afterlife.

I would hear the floor creak as she paced in the dining room. I would hear her in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, then half an hour later, another glass. Her mouth made dry by the anxiety of the future. Sundays were the worst, after church when the priest would talk of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It was then, that I think she first came to think of cremation.

She was Catholic in the strongest definition of the word, she had grown up being told Catholics could not be cremated. But I remember the day that I was driving to my house, with her in the passenger seat beside me.

The priest say, I can be cremated. It is not a sin.

Oh? I didn't know it was a sin. Was it a sin?

We were told to only be buried. But, now he say yes, and I will do it.

She burrowed through her ever-present purse and found what she was looking for. A small business card with information, numbers, check amounts, and contact procedures. All of this, on thin white card stock of two by three inches.

This is what I want.

To be cremated.

The priest say, I can do it.

When my mother did pass away, she was cremated. I kept her card in my coat pocket during her burial, patting it every few minutes, making sure it was there, in case any family member questioned her request.

+++

There is a scene in the movie, The Book of Life, that jumps, sudden and swift, out of nowhere. It is in undeniable contrast to the rest of the film, and is of The Land of the Forgotten.

When I saw this scene for the first time, I gasped. I sat between my two children and said to them, “THIS is why my mother was so afraid of being buried! The Land of the Forgotten! Do you hear what they're saying about the Land of the Forgotten!?”

On screen, we see black against grey against another grey hue, barren and stripped, no color in sight, nor vibrancy of life. No visitors. And more haunting than the lack of others, is how quickly one can arrive in the Land of the Forgotten.

"One only has to be forgotten."

My mother's body was turned into ash, this is the insurance she needed to be sure that her bones were kept out of the Land of the Forgotten. But for me? Her fear has become my vigilance.

I say her name every day, I keep a candle in front of her framed picture. With my sentinels at the gate, she will never feel or hear the empty gusts that blow across the Land of the Forgotten.

 

Solution versus Resolution

During this time of year, I can't help but think that I should make resolutions. Something that inches me toward who I want to be. I know I need a list, I know I should assess my life, and then, there are the goals we are to have. The GOALS Oprah tells us we need so that we spend January feeling like we have to improve every part of our lives. "What? No goals? How will you ever get somewhere?"

It hit me the other night while I tried to sleep, thinking of how my life is flying by and I want to yank the reins and switch the path to a less careening course. In moments that are clear, I say it, I don't need to resolve anything. I've spent what feels like my entire life trying to re-do myself. I'm weary of it all except for the one that fuels me: the want for things to be different for me and my family. But the *resolutions* part like I'm in bad shape about things? Nope. I'm not having it. What I'm going to do is look for solutions.

A solution that will help me fill in the parts of my life that have been neglectfully left to chance. I sorrowfully confess, that this part, is about that which is worth gold to me: my children, my family. I take advantage of their gentle nature and slap together the mothering and spousing aspects of my day in the ugliest knee-jerk style. Time is running through my hands, and my children need to know what they mean to me and why. I want them to know about the me that loves them.

* * *

They know so little about me.

My children know me as their mother, yes, I have been with them more than any other person they know. And though they have seen me daily for thousands of days, I remain two dimensional to them.

I'm the one who hasn't fleshed myself out to them. In between breakfasts and lunches packed, laundry pulled out of the dryer to be folded, and barely below speed limit runs to activities, life and face time has been done in snatches. And though we always meant to, or I meant to, one day catch up – the number of opportunities to soak each other in is on the short side of the hourglass now.

A resolution can't cover a solution. My solution is to help them see me, through different eyes than those that once looked up from a time when I was so much taller then they were. I won't just speak to them in words, but through something with power, the kind that moves faster than words can. Music, the music I grew up hearing.

* * *

I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. My mother and grandmother played the records they brought with them to America from Colombia every weekend during the day and into the night. I colored and cut out paper dolls while Lucho Gatica or Lupita Palomera played in the middle of it all.

This music of guitars that danced one pluck at a time, with one voice jumping on the back of the notes, always made me feel at peace. Time stood still on the days when these records played. When I would be away at school, or at a friend’s house, I always felt as if I were tip-toeing around someone else’s culture. But when I got back to my house, and opened the front door to this music playing,  I was home.

I want my children to hear and feel this same tethering, to know what it was like for me when these sounds filled my house. I want them to hear some of this music, to start. And later, more of this music. I want to bring this part of me into their lives.

I played a CD in the car of Lucho Gatica, a singer I grew up listening to. The reaction of my children, well – I worried that they might politely hurry it through, "How much longer do we have to listen, mom?"

But the one song I played, they liked it. Not for long, they told me, "Nice. But one is plenty," but when it was done, they liked it.

My middle boy said, "I can see you being little, and dancing to it, mom.” They say it makes them feel good, and when I hear this, my imagination runs wild and I want to shout out the car window and beep my horn, crying, “DNA! It's the DNA of mine that they carry!”

They are part of this music. They always have been in it, the thread of songs that my grandmother played for my mother that my mother then played for us, that I now play for my children.

I don't want to resolve to strengthen the chain of my family's heritage. I want to solve, softly, my fear of losing who my children are while they're from America.

I want my children to understand my want, when I ask, “Do you feel this music? Do you know what I hope for, when you hear this?”

I want them to hear the guitar strumming melodies, the lone voice, and find themselves as I did, home.

 

Oomancy: Food for the New Year

If you were to walk into my childhood home on New Year’s Day, you would see six children tip-toeing around a dining room table, careful to not bump and disturb the tall, clear glasses that had been set on it the night before. They were filled to the rim with still tap water. "You can't move them even a bit!," we would caution each other, "If you do then none of it counts!"

Inside each glass, floating like a plump newborn, would be a globulous raw egg. The water would grow bubbly as it sat over the hours, the strings of congealed egg white taking shape, reaching for the top with their thin strands of arms. I remember thinking how much those gelatinous peaks of egg white looked exactly like the sea monkey habitat ads from the back of my brother’s comic books.

It was the New Year, and my Colombian immigrant family was doing what we do on New Year's Day: egg divination. Oomancy. An egg symbolizes a beginning, and my grandmother, my abuela, would seek to predict our future for the coming year by the power of raw eggs in water. My grandmother lived with us and had been her small Colombian town’s esteemed medicine woman: a bruja buena, good witch. She was in charge of making her town’s monthly coca water (just what you think it is) as well as possessing the knowledge of fortune telling, in this case, via egg whites.

The first thing at midnight on New Year's Eve, my family would fill eight ounce glasses with water. We would then take take a still in its shell raw egg, rub it over our body, hand it to my grandmother who in one sweep of a movement, would crack the egg into our glass. This egg in water ensemble sat undisturbed through New Year's Eve and into the night. Most important of anything, was that the egg remain unshaken, motionless, in the tepid water. Nothing could influence or jeopardize the egg as it wove and dodged, the thick egg white separating from the yolk, stretching to the point of almost breaking as it searched for the meaning in the year to come.

We would awake the morning in the new year, and run to find our abuela. We surrounded her as she took each of our glasses, which we had left sitting on top of square pieces of paper with our names printed by our own hand. One by one, she'd hold our glasses up to the day's light, shifting the angle this way and that. Humming and murmuring, sometimes silent, she assessed the predictions for the new year. The egg white swirls pointing the way to good, or bad, news.

Your swirls could tell you who your future husband would be. If your egg had red spots, someone had put the evil eye on you. The egg white swirls could point to the next  possessor of the oomancy powers. If there was to be a long trip in your future, the peaks of the egg white would form a mountain, making sure you were the first to know and pack accordingly.

* * *

What child could keep something this amazing a secret? If you had a grandmother who was able to interpret egg white strands, you would tell everyone in school, wouldn't you? And so, we did. My five siblings and I came back from Christmas break one school year, with stories to tell, chest bursting proud ones, of my abuela, the good witch with the egg divining powers. And since she did this every year, they were all invited to our house for New Year's! "Bring your own eggs!" we reminded them.

That New Year’s Eve, people did come. They came dressed like Mad Magazine’s Spy versus Spy, incognito in black coats, black head scarves, and black movie star sunglasses; sneakily knocking at the back door, whispering if now was a good time for an egg reading.

None who came seeking were turned away.

They hungrily took in what their egg peaks revealed. Miss Quill, who was my second grade teacher and single, in particular nodded eagerly when my grandmother pointed out that her egg whites were forming a bell shape. Miss Quill, rapt with her lashes just inches from her glass, begged my grandmother, "But Senora Pinzon, please, what does it mean??" In her broken English, my abuela answered back, "... a wedding, una boda, perhaps for you, maybe soon..." My grandmother had to shake her head no as Miss Quill pulled a plastic bag of eggs out of her spy coat pocket, begging for a continuation of the reading.

By everyone's smiles and general cheeriness, my siblings and I knew that our visitors had no idea  what was about to go down next. Your egg divination session didn’t simply end with an individualized reading of your egg white swirls.

No Sir.

After your egg white fortune telling was complete, my grandmother handed you back your glass with the raw egg congealed and wobbling at the bottom. Toast! “Salud!” she would motion with a nod of her head for you to clink your glass with hers, and then 1-2-3 you were to tilt your head back along with her and let that good fortune slide right down the back of your throat, like it was the world's biggest slug. We could stand and peek from behind the kitchen door watching 15 pained gringo egg glottal slammings in a row and it never got old.

***

Years later, my brothers and I went to see the movie Rocky when it first came out. I remember the three of us gasping out loud as we watched Sylvester Stallone take an egg, and in the same precise one-handed manner as my grandmother, he cracked it on the edge of his water glass and plopped the yolk in. Then he sat and studied his glass as the strands of egg white floated upward. The popcorn fell out of our mouths as we turned to each other in disbelief, asking, “Rocky’s Colombian?!"

Who knew.

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The Cilantro Way

In the kitchen of my childhood, in the middle of our round wooden table, sat an ever present rinsed-out glass herring jar. My abuela had repurposed it to hold her home-made Colombian spicy sauce, called Aji. On sunny mornings, the day's rays glinted off the jar's ruby red cap and sent rainbows shooting out from the raised fish outlines etched on its sides.

Sunday afternoons would find my abuela pulling out her wooden cutting board and with a heavy thud, she'd set it in the middle of the table. Her board had been worn to a caramel brown in the center, and on it, she would begin slicing white onions, flattening garlic bulbs with the edge of a butter knife, dicing tomatoes, chopping cilantro, seeding Aji peppers, and filling our house with the sweet ripe smell of onion and garlic. When the ingredients were ready, my grandmother would take her wooden spoon made smooth with years of use, and mix everything together in a glass bowl for the week's Aji.

My abuelita's Aji wasn't blazingly hot, as the Aji peppers would lead you to believe, but instead it was a condiment that skimmed across your taste buds turning what seemed lifeless before you, rice, soup, potatoes, chicken, alive with a more profound level of experience. All you needed to do was unscrew the jar's squeaky metal rim, reach in with your tablespoon and bring it back up generously filled with the Aji, and spoon atop your food. With a snap of a finger, your meal was abracadabra'd into something that made you smile through a mouth watering explosion of delight.

The Aji peppers never made the original taste of the food disappear. The opposite happened. Your  chicken, your beef, became more -- from something routine to in-the-moment sparkling.

My grandmother is gone now, but the lesson I learned from her then, of how a few embellishments can catapult the ordinary into the stratosphere, has stayed with me. 

 

With some small effort, the surprise addition of the new and novel, an already delicious existence can become spectacular. Like a walk on a misting day without an umbrella, a spontaneous weekend away, or throwing down a blanket unannounced in the living room and spreading out a picnic dinner.

Just a small dusting of lip-tingling unexpectedness and life goes from mundane to thrilling.

 

Just like Aji spooned over a 5 o'clock dinner.

 

Abuelita's Aji

 

1 cup coarsely chopped cilantro leaves

2 seeded, chopped Aji peppers

1 sweet onion cut in strips

2 coarsely chopped plum tomatoes

Juice of three limes

3/4 cup water

1 crushed garlic bulb 

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Mix together in a glass bowl. Let sit at room temperature for a few hours, then keep refrigerated in a repurposed glass jar. (it must be a repurposed jar)

 

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Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee 2014 Videos Are Here!

It's just like the holidays. When the Listen To Your Mother Show videos go live, my internet goes wild. Everyone, cast and producers, are sharing. This year, LTYM had 32 shows in 32 cities. Our videos are ready for viewing on our channel, Listen To Your MotherYoutube Channel.

I had the joy of sharing a story again this year in our Milwaukee show. Giving you a feel of life, when your grandmother considers modern medicine, a far cry from anything to be taken seriously.

My piece, "The Medical College of Abuela."

Colombian Gold

photo credit: Nino.Modugnohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mozzarellahead/3615483975/">Nino.Modugno

> via photopinhttp://photopin.com">photopin> cchttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc>

Growing up raised by my Colombian grandmother, not only did I learn to speak Spanish but I learned the idioms that come along with being a native speaker. The expression "loses a bit in translation" becomes glaringly apparent when a native speaker tries to explain a colloquialism to a book-taught speaker of Spanish.

The literal translation of these quaint sayings is golden. As wonderful as trying to explain "pull someone’s leg" to a non-native speaker of the English language. There are hundreds of expressions that I heard while growing up, and when I sat down to write them, it was hard to stop.

So much Colombian gold, but the ones I’ve culled here are the best.

Colombianisms, for when you find yourself, sitting next to a Colombian:

--Me gusto mi chocolate espeso — "I like my chocolate thick," said about a *lively* to-the-limit style about anything. Chocolate is expensive and thick chocolate is pure luxury. Apply the thick chocolate premise to my shopping style, making the words here mean “I like my shoes expensive.” But I'm sure these words would work just as well while watching Pitbull.

--Con mucho gusto — Said after every introduction, or interaction. It means With much pleasure! Think how much nicer our world would be if every time we had anything to do with anybody, we always ended it with “With much pleasure!” This is especially nice, because one says it, whether you mean it or not. Even through gritted teeth.

--Y quien pidio el pollo? — Literally, “and who ordered the chicken?” A delicious thing to say after someone gets in trouble from their own doing. You go out with that less than desirable character, and your heart is broken, so you run home crying to your mother who has been waiting her entire life to say, “and who ordered the chicken?”

--Sentir fiero — You say this when you are on fire! to do something. Meaning: “I feel the fire to do this!” The Spanish are so gusto grabbing. As for me, I'm hoping to someday sentir fiero! to clean this house.

--Con hambre, no hay pan duro — I say this to my kids when they are less than pleased with my mid-week refrigerator dump dinners. It means, “With hunger, there is no bread too hard.” Hard bread aka my zuchini squash summer salad.

--Ni amarrado! — A handy little phrase. Meaning: “not even if I was hog tied!” Two words, and how it packs a wallop when that mean old thing from a few blocks away invites you to her Pampered Chef party.

--Que mas pues! — After a morning of people rushing into parking spots while you're in the midst of heading for them yourself, followed by a two hour put on hold phone call to your insurance company that eats up your afternoon, you suddenly remember that you need to take flowers to your school's open house that night, so you rush to the grocery story with 10 minutes left and someone with just a touch quicker than you reflexes grabs that last carnation bunch that you needed. You look up and shout to the universe, “and what else? What else?!” Dramatic? Yes, these are Colombianisms.

--Duerme mas que gato con anemia — Oh, how I love this one. Literally, “she sleeps more than a cat with anemia.” My mother used to say this about my brother's girlfriend. If my mother were alive today, she'd still be saying it.

--Mas duro que mordisco de loco — “That was harder than a bite from a crazy man.” Pull this charmer out at the next PTA meeting.

--Entonces? — This is, oh... Only The Best Way To Answer a Phone Ev-Er. The words actually mean “And so…?” So lovely, cuts to the chase, efficient and practical.

There you have it, my Top Ten Colombianisms. Use them in the best way I know how: with a good, loud fake phone call while you wait outside at school pick up time. Give the gaggling hens around you something to cluck about. And doesn't that one over there look worse than a cat with anemia?

*Blog Bonus: pronunciation guide below:

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Dream Shaman

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As a little girl, one of the very first things I had to do when I woke up was to find my grandmother and tell her my dreams from the night.

Within her mind, my Abuela held the Field Guide to Dream Interpretation. She had it all up here.

My Abuela knew it all; the meaning behind the color of the dress you wore in your dream, or whether your hair was loose or pulled tight. You’d present the facts, she’d pose a few key questions back, and there you’d have it: what your subconscious was trying to tell you.

I’m lucky enough to still remember some of her interpretations and now it’s my children who come to the breakfast table and in between spoonfuls of Frosted Flakes, tell me about the mouse in their dream that tried to come in through the wall behind their bed.

I always begin with the first line of action: Information-Gathering.

Scene:   Breakfast table, children all around

Me: How'd you guys sleep last night? Any good dreams?

17 year old: Yeah. Good one. Mouse. Trying to get me.

Me: OMG. Was it a white mouse or a grey mouse? Or … BLACK?? This is important!

17 year old: ::slurp glorp:: ummmmmm …. black. no, wait. Grey.

Me: Never kid about the color!! Especially black!! Are you sure it was grey??? Are you SURE?

17 year old: ::guzzle swallow:: yup. Grey.

Me: For sure it was a mouse? Not a rat?

17 year old: ::gulp chew:: a mouse. For sure. Mouse.

Me: Was it scratching at the wall or did it come through the wall?

17 year old: ::crunch munch:: I could only hear him. But he was trying to get through. Definitely trying to get through.

Me: Oh my gosh. Trying to get through?? But he didn’t, right?

17 year old: ::smack lick:: nope. Never got through. But I could hear him.

Me: Were you scared? Do you remember feeling scared?

17 year old: ::pouring more juice:: oh. yeah. Scared for sure. My heart was pounding. I tried to call for you because I was so scared, I mouthed MOOOOOM! but nothing came out, I had no voice.

Me: You had no voice?? And you tried to call me? Oh my dear lord. This is worse than what I thought it would be!

17 year old: ::wiping mouth to go:: yeah. I remember feeling, I only wanted you, mom. Well, gotta go to school now.

Me: No. No. NO. Wait. Don’t you get it? YOU tried to call ME. It wasn’t about the mouse at all it was about you feeling you can’t reach me. That I don’t help you, that I’m not around. Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. Let’s do something this weekend, okay? Just me and you. A movie? You want some new jeans? Let’s go have lunch, and then go to Best Buy. You want that new Call of Duty game, right?

17 year old: ::gets up to go:: Sounds good, mom. I love you. This Saturday, me and you. Gotta go now or I’ll be late. Can’t wait for this weekend.

My 17 year old kisses me good-bye and leaves. I smile, grateful that he remembers enough from his subconscious to share it with me.

I see him leave the kitchen but what I don’t get to see is him, passing his 15-year-old brother in the hallway. On the way out, he whispers to him, “Sorry. I was kinda foggy this morning so I pulled the silent *screaming for her* in my dream one today. I know you called that one last night, but you’ll have to use something else. How about the one where you look for her in every room of the house, but she’s not there?”

The brothers nod and highfive. The 15-year-old brother then walks into the kitchen, he says, "Oh. MOM. I was hoping you'd be here, I had an awful dream last night...  it was the one where I looked all over the house for you, but couldn't find you... it was AWFUL... all I remember feeling is I just couldn't find you..."

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Fifty Shades of the Latino Accent

As a woman from a long line of people with accents — accents to you, not to me — I have always been at a loss as to why American women’s knees turn to jelly at the sound of a Spanish accent. My sisters are with me on this, too.

Men are just men, right? In my case, the men in my Colombian family are brown skinned, long sooty eye lashed, dark haired, and come with the ability, apparently, to make women from the USA tremble just by saying their name aloud. Cynthia trills out of their Colombian male mouths as Eseentya, Judith is breathed out Hoodeet, Anna becomes the hypnotizing Ahna.

You poor things don’t stand a chance, do you?

While growing up, our home in Wisconsin served as a stagecoach stop to my 500 family members in Colombia that needed a place to stay while they applied for citizenship in this country. My childhood memories are of a Prima/Cousin named Paulina, an uncle, Tio Hernando, an aunt, Tia Lilia, and a Primo/Cousin Julio Cesar, along with other assorted 2nd and 3rd degreed relatives who stayed with us.

Now, of all the above relateds mentioned here, it was my Primo, my Cousin Julio Cesar who has given me the clearest peek into how a Spanish accent knocks an American woman flat off her feet.

Julio Cesar was every bit the personification of his name. He came from South America to stay with us while establishing residency in the US. A single man, he was ready to participate in the swinging life of America. He knew no one in this country, so my older sister and I became his friends. He must have been about in his early 30′s, my sister in her mid 20′s, and I was old enough to go along on nights out to check out the dating escene.

One year there was a Valentine’s Day Singles Dance at a local community college. Julio Cesar got wind of it in his evening English as a Second Language classes, and insists we go. We go with him. To us on that night, he is just a guy, our cousin, who knows only the barest of English. Despite his lack of English, he has what all Latino men have going for them: well dressed, and confident. He knows he's to the nines, especially in America where Kmart T shirts and backwards worn baseball caps rule. Julio Cesar is ready for to meet dah loff.

We entered the auditorium where the the Valentine’s Day dance was being held, only an $8.00 admission was charged, which he gentlemanly picked up, and we walked in, full swing. The three of us, all looking sharp, make our first move over to the bar. There is a young, young young blonde co-ed next to us. She orders a Coca-cola, and Julio Cesar hears this, pays for it, not saying a word. Up to this point, she looks at him like the farmhand Eb on Green Acres, but, within seconds of hearing him say ees my plezoor to buy for joo, soh beeeyooteefool, right before our eyes we see her mindfully transform Julio from Eb to Andy Garcia.

There is an actual visual change that falls over her face, and her pupils dilate, her mouth hangs open, and she strikes a pose, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She is so struckdown turned on that her blacked irises now look like something from a Japanese anime. Her cheeks flush so fast I’m afraid she’ll burst into flames.

     Do you see her looking at him like he’s the last man on earth? my sister whispers to me.

     Yeah, what he lacked in looks he sure made up for with that accent, I respond back.

     Drooldrool, says the young blonde thing at the bar.

   The blonde is looking at him, our Eb Dawson cousin, like he’s the last Popsicle left in the freezer.    

      He starts a conversation with her, with near zero English, Joo are so beeyooteefool tonight.. like dees always?, he asks her.

       Drooldrool is all he gets back.

      Dees iss a skoool forr onlee dee beeyoooteefools, no?, he prods further.

      Drooldrool says blondie.

And then he turns to us, saying, "I weel not need a rrrrrride home wich joo tooonight."

A few months later, at Julio Cesar’s Barbizon English Today! class, the instructors try to tame his accent, suggesting he temper down the short letter "i" sound from his current double ee pronounciation to a simple "ih."

He came home from his lesson, miffed, Dey want mee too echange dee wayee Iee say dee I’s. Why would I want too looos dees accent? I can ask for aneeteeng and get eet.

I will never understand the lure of the Spanish accent to American women, but ask me about Gerard Butler and what I hear when he turns to the camera in Ugly Truth and invites the twins to "finish up with it then so I can wrestle you in jello." Bloody hell. that, THAT, I get.

That brogue of an accent, makes a woman's knees to jello, dunnit?

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Don't Want To Disappoint the Hispanic Seekers

With thanks to Jenni Chiu, for the inspiration.

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At the end of the day, my kids and I like to see what google searches bring people over to this blog. The searches are always a surprise and we try to figure out what post brings "Fat bottomed mom" and "Hoarder's house" seekers to the yard.

This week, I've had a couple of "What do Spanish people look like?"" and "Are Latinas too short for ponchos?"

I don't want anyone disappointed by what they find when they land here on this blog, so the call to help these people seeking answers to their searing questions that are important enough for them to turn to google at 1 a.m. is loud and clear.

I will help you.

You want to know what Spanish people look like?

Easy.

They look like this:



Blonde and blue-eyed, like my son.

or like this:

  Dark haired and green-eyed, like my other son.

 Sometimes, Spanish people look like this:

Dark haired, brown-eyed, olive skinned.

You can also find Spanish people with tan colored skin, and hazel eyes.

 Like this son.

If you want to know what Spanish people look like, sometimes they're beautifully copper, like my cherished nephew, Tomas.

This is what we look like in a group.

 
So, dear "What do Spanish people look like," I sincerely hope your search here has helped you to see that Spanish people can be light, dark, in between, straight haired, curly haired, blue eyed, brown eyed.

My apologies, also, for this long winded post, when I really could have just quenched your google thirst for information regarding Spanish people with one sentence, "The women are the most beautiful in the world and the men are like Greek gods."

Now, as for "Are Latina women too short to wear ponchos?," this is a serious matter. Please google search "Are short white women too short to wear ponchos?," this should lead you to "Carnivorous Blanket: how to avoid."

Happy searching!

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Care.com is a great site, featuring resources for health care, parenting tips, and more. Check out their fun feature today, where I and eight other bloggers, let you in on the Halloween costumes we survived as children.

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Secretly, My Life Was Better Than Easter Baskets

Hard to not be envious, as a child, of the kids who had Easter baskets taller than they were, stuffed with 24 inch high chocolate bunnies (bet they were hollow), miniature chocolate bunny eggs wrapped in pretty yellow and purple foil (impossible to peel, anyhow), and plastic eggs rattling with coins inside (pennies, I'm sure).

Hard.

Unless you had something better during this time of year, like I did.

We Colombians do a lot of things to the moon and back, and Easter -- well, come find out why I say "No thanks, you can have your shredded plastic green grass."

I'm always proud to be featured at TikiTikiBlog, I'd love to see you there today for "La Via Dolorosa."

*thank you.

Breaking News: Titanic Sinks and Social Media Interferes With Real Life

photo credit: Heritage Vancouver via photopin cc

We were all sitting at the family dermatologist's office (yeah, group rate, what of it?) waiting for our names to be called. I was flipping through magazines older than the hills telling me a ship called the Titanic sank, when I saw an article in a magazine from 2009. The blistering title and byline was "Social Media--It's Taking You Away From Your Real Life."

The paragraphs go on to tell me all that I could be doing by logging off. Strengthening real life relationships (like online ones aren't real?), developing a hobby (got one, it's twitter), exercising (bawk! that chicken sound, you know?), and re-organizing my life (what's wrong with sitting on laundry?).

Right, all these things I could be doing. Could. That's the kicker there, the author assumes I'd be doing things if I weren't online. Oh, my sides, my sides from the laughter. Yeah no not so much.

Here's my list of "All I Could Be Doing If I Weren't Online":

--Staring at my fingernails, willing my lazy butt go get out of the house and get a manicure.

--Poking around snack cabinet deciding on what to have for second breakfast.

--Walking around the house with two pairs of socks on to stretch out my new winter boots.

--Letting Bethenny Now! exercise DVD play in background while I finish up sweetnsalty chips kids left out last night.

--Walk downstairs to basement with intention to cull toys dvds books. Walk back upstairs after three minutes.

--Be at local yoga class where teacher there always waits until I'm relaxed with my eyes closed to sneak up on me and make me jump ten feet into the air by whispering "namaste" into my ear.

--Or I could be at Zumba, where instructor tries again to talk me into leading Zumba Silver.

--Pull blankets off beds to let sheets "breathe" as Martha Stewart Living advises. Consider that my gold bar of housekeeping for the day.

--Decide to have lunch with kids at school, show up with McDonald's bags only to have them grab bag out of my hands and say, "Thanks mom you can go home now. No, really, you can go home now."

--Look down at jeans with permanent knee mounds, take myself to Old Navy for new pair. All are too long and too tight. Refuse to try double digit numbered ones. Drive to Hefner's Cup O'Custard, sit in parking lot, licking wounds metaphorically through death by chocolate triple scoop in cup. Consider death by chocolate literal invitation.

--Drive to afternoon matinee. Suffer through "Playing for Keeps" about hypersexed soccer moms wanting to do aging soccer star Gerard Butler at every which way while he coaches their little ones on for a team win! Try and guess which mom is the one who gets behind the scenes reffing. I win.

--Rummage through husband's sock and underwear drawer. Hoping to find something linking him to exciting past Bourne identity life, find only saved tags from boxers in case new ones don't fit.


Oh, the undeniable Jezebel that Social Media is. We need no more proof than this list right here. 

Peace out. 

You Don't Have To BlackFriday It, Did You Know That?

Due to financial instabilities of the economy within the world of this household, we are not going to be a part of the Black Friday money-saving madness today. People spend to save, but it's still spending.

Black Friday makes people lose their minds. McDonald's opens at 2:30 a.m., stores open at 4 a.m. with "Door Buster" savings where they only stock five or six of that bustin' item advertised to get you to show up and bust their doors down. They have no fear of you turning around and leaving when you find out the $89 flat screen TV you wanted is sold out; "well, as long as I'm here, I'll buy something else."

I'm sleeping in the day after Thanksgiving. I'll get up and walk around in my well worn mismatched pajamas, sipping on my newly habited Decaf, and make cinnamon rolls for my children. I know what I'll be missing, HUGE deals, 40 percent off and more! sales.

I'll especially miss out on things like this:

-Getting my face pepper sprayed when going for the last coveted door buster Xbox.

-Being trampled while already lined-up customers duck underneath a lifting store gate.

-Getting carried away in a sea of humanity over $2 waffle irons.

-Climbing across and into vats of sweet potatoes to get to a video game.

-And if you smugly think this wouldn't happen to you because you never go to the likes of Walmart or Best Buy, here's a scene of a hipster crowd at Urban Outfitters, showing the theft detector devices that were stomped down in an insane gates-opening dash.

There's a lot to miss.

This holiday, let's re-think the old habit of imitating what the mainstream does. Consider rejecting the spirit of greed and consumerism: not just because of the b.s listed above, but so that your family watches and learns from you. Do it for them. Let them see that the holidays are about sharing all we've been blessed with, with those that are struggling.

A holiday season without any thought for those without, or at a loss, is an impoverished holiday. 

Think about this: 1 in 4 children in America goes to bed hungry because of unemployment, neediness, the mental and physical health of their caretakers. You know how hard it is to fall asleep hungry? These children do, every night.

If you venture out today, let it be to a grocery store. Take your kids with you and let them fill a whole shopping cart with food for others. See those big food donation barrels placed at almost every grocery store door starting this week? Fill them. The best items to donate are baby cereal, dry cereals, delicious flavored instant oatmeals that only need water to prepare, packs of tuna, instant add water only pancake mix, canned soup or ravioli or beefy mac, jars of peanut butter, the mac & cheese that comes with the prepared sauce and doesn't need butter or milk.(see the pattern? Get the Add Water Only--we take much for granted, including that ALL households have milk, eggs, butter ... they don't.)

Go crazy that way. Lose your mind and buy every single box of ready-made Kraft there is and climb over each other to get them in the Food for Families food barrels.

Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to see on the news tonight? People knocking each other over to fill those donation receptacles? Maybe someday, we'll get it right.

Peace Out.

xo

Dream Shaman

Did you know that Colombians are master practicioners in dream analysis?

By the age of five, I could tell you the difference between having a white mouse versus a black mouse being present in your night time story line. ::shiver::

My kids know this--they also know better than to come downstairs in the morning with no reports from their subconscious. And I know if they're making something up.

Today on the hilarious website, FunnynotSlutty,  my post, The Dream Whisperer: What those dreams of screams with no voice are telling you. (please tell me you're not doing the silent scream thingy in your dreams)

FunnynotSlutty: The Funniest Woman on The Planet.

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**This month, FnS is running their 2012 Best On Planet contest--brought to you by The Louise Log. You can nominate Funniest Commenter. (I love this category: funniest commenter) I know just the person. CLICK OVER, and nominate your fave reader.