drugs versus the alternative

about a year after luca was born and after a couple of ear infections treated by antibiotics, i suddenly remembered that i didn't like drug therapy. kind of like an aha moment except feeling more foolish than that, i went to my bookshelf and looked at title upon title focusing on natural therapy, the body's organic response and others. rocki and i made a decision to not give antibiotics to luca unless absolutely necessary. i researched alternative care treatments.

i feel kind of in the same place - like slapping myself on the side of the head. hard. when i got my poison ivy, not a dangerous thing just a profoundly annoying thing, and it continued to spread unabated, i went to the doctor's. she recommended prednisone pills (25g three times a day for five days, two times a day for five days and then one time a day for five days) and steroid cream for the outside of me. "wow, you're really allergic. good thing it hasn't got infected yet." and "you'll see significant changes in 24 hours."

after a week of oatmeal bathing every three hours followed by the slathering of every over the counter product you can think of - and still the stuff crept from torso and out to extremities - a 24 hour cease fire sounded like heaven. so i went to the pharmacist and got my plastic cups of pills and cream.

prednisone is what we gave our dog, elsa, when she had hip problems. it's what we gave her when she had a massive urinary tract infection. i didn't know people took it, too, until my doctor said so.

"oh," she said, "you might get drowsy. if you do, just take benadryl. you'll be taking that anyway for the itching."

ok, taking one pill to counter another pill always bothers me. but still - an end to itching. i took my prednisone and she was right - in about 24 hours, the frontlines stopped and over each day, it disappeared a little bit more.

but then after four days came the "side effects": crawling skin, my bones feel like someone is jackhammering my teeth and skull and it's resonating throughout the skeleton. sticky sudden sweats. water retention with that tight skin crawling feeling that goes along with it. leaden legs. muscle twitches. tired and irritable and sad while at the same time feeling very distant from anyone and anything. heavy chest.

every few days, i google prednisone again. and i slap myself on the head. this stuff is evil - and every doctor on the net seems to say, yeah, it sucks, but there isn't anything else that works for the things it works for. so deal. but by the way, it speeds up aging, gives you brittle bones, puts fat on your torso, thins your skin, gives you high blood pressure, increases your cholesterol and might knock out your adrenal gland.

there are lots of people with lots of chronic things who have no recourse but to take this stuff. unlike my line between itching and itchless, for some it is a line between life and death, between intense chronic pain and side effects.

what i am surprised by is how quickly i nuked myself because the doctor said it was good for me, because i was uncomfortable, because i wanted to feel better. slap bang let the bomb fall and didn't even check to see if diplomacy was possible.

i forgot that, when i have the choice, i prefer to look for alternatives. i forgot because i was uncomfortable and wanted it to stop. and so now i sit and google my way through my regrets. you can't just stop taking this stuff without weaning or baaaaaad things can happen.

next time, please, help me remember. don't take the white pill unless you have no other choice.

i miss my family

tonight, i miss my family. and what's funny is that most of them are gathered around me. my very lovely mother-in-law, iara, arrived today from brazil. she comes yearly to stay for six weeks. she is the only person, pretty much on the surface of the planet, who i can imagine only being value-added as a family guest for that length of time. she personifies joy and refuses its opposite. a lovely thing for the space of a visit - i wouldn't want to live with it in the forever plane, i mean, i am all over the intensity and starkness of life point of view, but this joy and pleasure piece works really well when you're a house guest.

my own bio family, at least part of it, is struggling around the care of my grandmother, her increasing debilitation and the resulting insane mountain of duties falling on my mother and her partner. i live 13 hours by car, about $300 by plane away from this. they have a lot of work. i make phone calls.

my brother, sister-in-law and nephew stayed with us for awhile over the summer - not six weeks, although i'd love to try - before heading back to germany. now we're back in infrequent email and phone chat.

the rest of my partner's near by bio family are currently in africa, brazil and argentina.

i miss my family, in that weird mix of nostalgia and one-eyebrow-raised reality.

i live in this lovely community of individuals with children and adults. we are interdependent in that concrete real everyday way - taking care of each other's children, calling in the middle of the night in crisis, showing up for all of the events, planning them, cooking for each other, missing each other when we haven't talked for more than three days in a row.

i know that even having this - this concrete community that some of my friends and family outside of minneapolis envy - is not typical for an overeducated middleclass white midwestern girl living in a city she didn't grow up in. queerness helps with the creation. so do other things.

but i am sitting here wanting it all. wanting the people that i have in my everyday and the people that i was supposed to have a few generations ago - the biofamily, the neighbors more deeply entwined than some of them are. i miss what so many overeducated middleclass white midwestern girls living in cities they didn't grow up in miss - a mixture of romance, a mixture of roots and a reminder to stop and really notice the glory that i have.

Dastardly prednisone

Sure, the world is going to hell in handbasket and still, what I am obsessed with? The progression of my skin from oozing running rivulets of poison ivy to glowing middle-aged health.

Poison ivy has taught me many things this summer. It has taught me that, aside from past recreational use, I very rarely take drugs. And this means I'm all kind of confounded by the fact that they affect you. Take prednisone - no, really, you take it. It sucks. And people take it for months and months, for years of their lives. I'm on the crummy 15 day plan and I want to grab a colonic detox seconds after my last pill has its 24 hours of working life. Sweats, strange moods, wakefulness in the middle of the night followed by lead leg crashes. Either I'm possessed, entering perimenopause or else, as I believe it must be, it's the prednisone.

Moments like this make me feel the proverbial pie in the face, except stronger. There are and always have been people in my life dealing with some form of chronic pain, disability, long term care need. I get all kinds of points for being an able bodied non-chronic-pain person who remembers that this is not everyone's reality. Too many points, of course, because this shouldn't be rocket science but hey, most folks don't pay attention.

Well, then some little bitty change to my equilabrium comes along - prednisone - and I can't stop talking about it with every person in ear range. Really, in a comparison sense, the effects are minor. But I don't like them, they won't go away, and in my pissy little strong health no pain way, that annoys me.

I sit here in my icky sticky cold sweat and leaden limbs moment and remember - there are people I love and people who I have never met who would call this a good day, who have relationships, children, jobs, and creative passions while managing multiple internal realities that conflict with their external focus. I told a friend this morning, it reminds me of being pregnant. You're sitting there in the room with a group full of people, you believe you are all sitting in the same room - this space where your outside skin connects the air and you are all sharing the same air, but while you sit there, there is this whole other wild universe of flipping baby going on as an underbeat or sometimes overbeat to the other realities.

I suppose that's one of the measuring sticks, isn't it? At any given point in time, how many realities do you have to deal with. I'm privileged (sorry Emptyman, it's that word again), most of the time, even when I'm multitasking, I get to deal with just the one right in front of me.

Haunted by the past

For the past five years, I keep being "found" by people from my past. Friends from high school, someone I knew vaguely when I worked for Yellowstone Park over a summer in 1982, friends from my childhood and even the ex-partner of an ex of mine.

I feel somehow not nostalgic enough. When I open an email from someone who has not been real in my life for some time, I feel slightly assaulted. I don't want to restart old friendships. I am happy with the friendships I have now. I don't mind doing the occassional back-and-forth about old memories, but since I had my daughter, Luca, I am even less interested in that. As much as anything, these emails make me curious.

It also makes me curious when someone tells me they have been looking for me for years, have thought of me for years, have remembered me. I feel defective, like some gene didn't make it on to my DNA strand.

It isn't like I don't google people from my past. I do. The few people I google go into the "unrequited love" category or the close friendships that ended badly. I devour what I can find on the internet, feeling a kind of connection to something that is still painful. I don't write them. I don't have anything to say. I am just curious that they are still out there, this little piece of unfinished history for me.

But the fond memories, the people who did touch me for periods of my life now past? I don't remember them. And when I hear from them, I'm not sure what to do with it. Or I get scared when they tell me how strongly they feel for me, these 10, 20 and 30 years later. I can vaguely remember their faces or why they mattered so much so long ago.

My partner, Raquel keeps friends forever. It is very rare that new people enter her category of close friend. Very rare indeed. And there seems to be a probationary period so that, at the end of a certain period of time, a lof these new friends aren't in her day to day any longer.

Me, I have a history of recycling friends, recycling lives ever five years or so. Things change, interests change and a new crop of people seems to come along with this newness. But what I envy Raquel is that, when I run into one of these people from my past, I feel guilty. I feel that somehow, having lost touch, I have made a dreadful error and we should all still be in community together, tight knit and sharing a merged past and present.

It's not me. I'm too selfish or present-focused. Thank you for the emails. I will answer them but I probably won't do more than that.

oh silly me

Sure, in childhood and adolescence, I had poison ivy every summer. Big old breakouts that my mother fought with calamine lotion until I was a walking sticky pink thing. But it's been years, like 25 years, since my last case of poison ivy. And you know how it is - when it's not happening to you, it doesn't exist. I mean, if you had asked me last year, I would have made up some factoid about how poison ivy was on the wane, the plants dying out, or let you know that poison ivy doesn't exist in Minnesota purely due to my clean unweepy skin for 25 years.

After a week of slow spreading and no change, I went to the doctor's office today. Poison ivy, I am told, is as common as dirt. Every summer lots of cases every day. She unblinkingly gave me heavy duty steroids, sent me home with benadryl and told me it would be fine in 24 hours.

Once again, a Leo finds out that she isn't special. Such a sucky thing, on your birthday no less.

itchy itchy scratchy scratchy

Israel is bombing Lebanon. Hezbollah is bombing Israel. Darfur is struggling against the weight of Somali warlords. We are still bombing Iraq and I actually think there are still a few US citizens who believe that this is in the interest of democracy. And what am I doing? Currently, I am sitting in front of Vikki and Luisa's computer with my shirt up and folded over my breasts, my belly and boobs bared to the living room. What I am obsessed with? Not the things that matter in the big world way, but what matters in my own little selfish skin way. Poison Ivy. Oozing crusty insanely itchy poison ivy from nipples to public bone. Particularly the crap that hoovers beneath my over 40 year old so not at all pert breasts, sweaty skin against sweaty skin and itchy red postules thriving. That's what I'm talking about. Itchy itchy god damned scratchy scratchy.

Back in the saddle again

You ever go through one of those periods where everything is awhirl and aflutter in your head and the rest of your fleshly self but none of it translates to blog land? I always envy my friends who seem to see through the world through bloggable moments. I rarely see the blog in life. Or the life in the blog.

I'm trying to give up drinking. I realized that wine had turned from that lovely cultural hip red jeweled thing into something that got me from waking to sleep. It sucks to realize that I carry as much stress that I do. I have always liked to think of myself as this calm centered little thing. Well, as quantum physics tells us, the amount of time we spend creating narratives to control/deal with reality is directly related to a diminishing in the number of possibliities we can recognize at any given moment.

You had kids... why?

Ok, ages ago, I posted a blog about a night when my daughter, Luca, woke up spouting vomit at 3 in the morning. One of the commentarians - hello Emptyman - wrote something about this being part of why they couldn't understand the whole child thing - puke in the middle of your dreams.

This has stuck in my head. Today, me and my four year old, Luca, went to the Gay Rodeo. For those who don't know, there is a thriving queer rodeo scene where the women do the men's things, the men do the women's things, they have drag on steer events and they put BVDs on a goat. Oh, we are a gentle angry people.

Anyhow, as we were leaving the gay Rodeo, moving slowly towards the car, my four year old daughter threw a tizzy in the parking lot. Sobbing, screaming, hysterical that we were leaving the horses. Beyond reason. And all I could think about were the hundreds of gay men in the stands, shirtless and tight-pec'd or hairy chested or just plain sun burned who came to the Rodeo to spike up their testosterone and get laid in a cowboy hat. There they were, their hands potentially already inching towards another weekend cowboy's rearing steed, when my daughter throwns a hissy fit, screaming red faced that she wants to dance with the gay boys and watch the drag queens ride the bulls.

And I remembered Felicia Park Rogers (where are you now, Felicia?)m who said that there are three things the queer movement has to give to the mainstream: sexual liberation, gender liberation, and family liberation. And I hoped the gay men in the stands remembered her, too.

Pride Redux

Last night, me, my partner Raquel and daughter Luca were doing what we often do on a summer evening: sitting on the front steps and watching the world go by. As we sat there, drawing fairy princesses with sidewalk chalk, a neighbor (hi Leigh) stopped by with a gift for Luca. It was one of those plastic microphones that, through the magic of springs and spacing, turns your normal voice into a tinny projection without the use of electricity. Luca was enthralled. And she got up, walked over to our small square patch of grass - about the size of a stage - turned around to face the street and started to sing. "Look mama and mae," she said, "we can be drag queens."

And so there, on a fairly busy street fronting a public park, we shook and shimeyed and sang old favorites while giving each other dollar bill strands of grass. And we said thank you, and when we were holding a bucket because the money had turned from grass into pieces of sidewalk chalk, we mouthed our lyrics and then held out our buckets saying, "come on baby, fill it up" and "thank you, baby." And the audience rose to their feet.

Reflections of Pride

It doesn't matter how annoyed I get by the constant corporate barrage of product placement or how tired I am of the endless train of churches and campaigning politicians: I adore the Pride festival in June. It gives me the same kind of shiver that walking into a gay bar in an unknown city gives me. There are queer people here, lots of queer people I don't know, people to flirt with, people to talk with, people to just be in the same space among.

The Twin Cities Pride Festival is the fourth largest in the country. Kind of amazing considering we are way down the list on city size, but I guess we just love our queers. I was starting to get a little stale on Pride - see previous paragraph regarding more corporate and less cock-sure - but then I had Luca. Little child might be straight, queer or indifferent, but I want her raised in this. I want this to be normal for her. And it is. Like her buddy, Miguel, Luca cites the calendar by the holidays with Pride falling between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July/Miguel's birthday.

This is the first year where she really got it. Meaning, where Pride was more than following her family around, eating bad food and scooting in a short-term memory way from one stimulus to the next. This year, she made her demands. "Mama and mae," she said, "when we go to Pride every year, it's ok to march in the parade and to see our friend's sing, but really, what I want to do every day all day and not leave, is watch the drag queens." That's right, you couldn't drag Luca away from the drag queens. Big and busty, thin and sultry, old, young, Mama Cass, Judy Garland, Eartha Kitt, Christina Aguilera and Madonna: Luca was enthralled. We stopped by the Stonewall Stage a.k.a Drag Central each day and sat there long enough for my butt to get sore. And Luca watched. And didn't smile if friends came up to say hello. And she craned around the bodies of those rude people in front of us who would get up off the grass to, oh, I don't know, go pee or something. It took her awhile but then she realized that folks were going up there, getting in line, holding dollar bills out to the queens and then getting kisses and hugs. It was open-the-purses time and Luca, usually kind of shy about standing up in front of folks, was down there with her dollar bills and dewy eyes. Twice. It would have been more if we had more single bills. I love that Luca loves drag. I don't care if she is learning her feminine ways from drag queens or if she is learning about the kind of femininity that she is going to hunger for in other people: I love that she loves drag.

Saturday night I went out to dance. I, of course, freaked out when my fabulous and glamorous friends came to pick me up because there I was, in shorts and sloppied on the couch watching a movie with Rocki and our housemate, Kelly. After a cheerleading session, I went out, feeling not as hot as I used to but hotter than I often do these days. You know what's a pain in the ass? When you have been dancing the bump and grind for a whole bunch of hours with women you know, women you don't know, you are feeling so good and so fine and yes, she was packing and it was fun to rub right up there, and then you run into someone who asks first thing, "How's your baby daughter Luca?" and then proceeds to just mama you to death. I want to scream in those moments - I am happy being a mama, I love being a mama, right now I am NOT a mama, thank you very much please.

Next year, I am going dancing every night and I will flounce away should someone start mama-ing me rather than ask me to dance. Happy Pride.

World Cup

I'm lucky that I partnered with a Brazilian. It's not just the fact that visiting family means visiting Rio. It's also all about the World Cup. At World Cup time, it pays to be on the Brazilian edge of things.

Yesterday, after Brazil beat Australia 2-0, I was walking to a nearby market to pick up some groceries. Still with my Brazil t-shirt on, I didn't think much about what it meant until a man stopped me. "Brazil! They won today! Are you from Brazil?" I explained my family connection and he smiled, "I am from Mexico. Brazil makes every Latin American proud to be a Latin American. They are the best." And he kept walking. I got to the market and a woman stopped me, in full chador. "Brazil 2-0, they're going to win the World Cup! Someday Africa will be strong, too, but there are so many Africans who live in Brazil, I vote for Brazil!" I bought my salad greens, cucumber, bread and fruit and headed for home. Outside of a church a few blocks from my house, a Nigerian family in full dress clothing were heading for a van. "Are you from Brazil?" they asked. Again, I explained my family connection to this Nigerian family in front of a Christian church. My lesbian family connection. "Oh, that's good. You are lucky to have family in Brazil." And then one of the men proceeded to break down the morning's game with me, going over every goal two and three times. "Brazilian soccer players are the best. They never stop, the whole game, they keep running. Everyone else stops. They are like dancers."

It's a good time of year to be married to a Brazilian.

Gender again

When we had a daughter, my partner and I both had this small hope that our daughter would grow up butch. You see, my partner, Raquel, is butch. Our housemate, Kelly, is butch. We have many friends who are masculine women, transgendered men, or just plain boyish in some way. Almost all of them share the experience of being forced to be girly-girly as children, hating their dresses, their long hair, the ribbons and the bows. How cool would it be, we thought, to have a girl who grows up some form of masculine! She would be surrounded by role models. There would never be a time when she didn't feel like she could define her own body and how she dressed and decorated that body. How liberating for all of us!

Well, our daughter Luca is not at the girliest end of the spectrum, but you couldn't call her butch or boyish or any of those gendered things. She veers between dresses and skirts and shorts with t-shirts, likes to play in the dirt, and is a scrappy everyday kind of kid who also greatly enjoys being a girl. At 2 she was insistent on getting a mohawk and so had one for two summers in a row. She loves all things Harley Davidson - a gift from both Raquel and Kelly - and thinks jeans are awesome. Again, she is a specific kind of girl who breezes from pink princess to jeans and a headscarf with a Harley shirt.

She's been at a summer camp this past week through the Y. It's been a lovely summer camp full of rock climbing, canoeing, and walks in the woods. It's also full of fierce gender separation: girls eat at one side of the campground, boys eat at the other side. Girls play with girls. Boys play with boys.

It's not that Luca has never experienced this kind of gender strictness. There was some girl-boy separating happening while Luca was in school in Brazil - but the kids all wore gender-neutral uniforms and didn't seem to talk about the whole thing as much as here. Luca - with short hair and often no girl gender markers of pink hair clips or bows - is almost always seen as a boy. Even, sometimes, when she is wearing a skirt. Short hair seems to be the strongest marker when people are reading children. Anyhow, going to summercamp has been a rapid and intense introduction to this whole gender game at a far more serious level.

This morning at breakfast, she told us that a lot of the girls won't play with her because they think she's a boy. And the boys won't play with her because they think she's a girl. "There's one girl, Josephine, she plays with me and she knows I'm a girl. She thinks the other girls are sillly but she won't play with boys either."

Yesterday, Vikki who is the mother of Miguel who is one of Luca's friends and also at the summer camp, reported a conversation she had overheard between the two children. Somehow the subject of boys and girls came up. Miguel told Luca that at camp that day, some of the girls had been laughing at him and teasing him because he was a boy and they didn't want to play with him. 'And you were laughing, too, Luca, and that made me feel sad." Miguel told her. Vikki said it was impressive to listen as they processed this event: "But you're my friend and I know you so I know that you're a good person and that I like you. I think they laugh at the boys they don't know." Luca responded with some version of these words. "But it still makes me feel sad that you were laughing and that boys can't play with girls." said Miguel. What followed, said Vikki, was a general agreement conversation about how silly it was that boys and girls don't play together with Luca acknowledging that what she had done had hurt Miguel's feelings.

Now I was a fairly girly girl growing up. Not as pink as most, but certainly more interested in playing with dolls than with balls, certainly flouncy in my dresses. There is nothing wrong with being girly for anyone. In fact, as I keep telling some of my other lesbian friends with a very girly daughter, what a great opportunity to radicalize femininity. Flouncy pink dresses and a keen eye, dirty knees on top of shiny black shoes, the ability to be direct, empowered, vocal and self aware while dressed up in lace or beads or fairy wings.

It's a maze moving through this gender insanity and I feel like adults owe every child an apology for putting them through this gauntlet. Already these little bodies are drawing lines in the sand to determine who fits in and who doesn't. We are raising Luca to refuse to believe in those lines and to have the strength and assurance to challenge them wherever they appear, even if that means sometimes not fitting in. But this morning, as Luca told her story about the girls not playing with her during these four days of wearing shorts and t-shirts, we also saw that sometimes, it's ok to just plain make it simple. My awesome butch lover who really prefers that dresses and skirts not be the primary clothing and not be things that Luca defines as the badge of being a girl, went against a decision we had already made - the no dresses or skirts at summer camp because flouncy skirts seem silly while you're rock climbing rool. Hey Luca, said Rocki, do you want to wear one of your skorts or skirts today to camp? And then she went upstairs with Luca to choose it. And Luca came downstairs, happy as a clam in one of her more diaphonous numbers. And it was fine. And it means nothing. And it means a lot.

Hungry to look at some skin

I'm in love and it's time I came clean with it. I am absolutely and totally in love with my daughter's body. I mean, really in love, like can't stop touching it and looking at it love. It started in Brazil where we all lived out of clothes more than in them -and it has continued into Minneapolis summer. I notice that I am looking for opportunities for the children to get naked. Wow! Look! You can't see your breath when you blow out, let's take off the jackets and while we're at it, just strip down! What? Hang out in your backyard with your children? Do you have a little plastic pool that we can fill with water that will get all grassy and disgusting and then can the kids clamber in and out, naked and covered in sunscreen?

There is something about that unselfsconscious nakedness, about those muscles and that shiny growing skin, that just does me in. They are stunning. Completely stunning. And I am in awe.

We exchange pictures among friends - all of us sending links to our websites, attached photos, sometimes versions of the same weekend trips. There are often naked pictures in them, our children holding hands and jumping into the lake, into the slimy pool, resting in the grass. I can't help but think of Sally Mann, the photographer whose photographs of her naked children have generated so much controversy. And not only Sally Mann, but the photos siezed by Scotland Yard at the Saatchi Gallery because they were of naked children, the woman I read about a few months ago who was arrested when she tried to develop photos of her naked children. Most of the time I laugh at these stories - come on, people, there is a difference between pedophelia and loving your children. Lighten up.

But when I am smack in the middle of that intensity - watching Luca running and I can't take my eyes off of her and no, I don't want to do my daughter, but there is a kind of hungry lust in watching that beauty, when I am there, I can understand why some people might be afraid. Something primal or old, something that doesn't smell like baby powder or pastel colors comes up when I watch Luca twisting and turning, limbs splayed. I grew that, my little Petrie dish. In my body, that beauty grew. But it's more than that. Something aching about how life in its purest physical sense is supposed to be, without guile or self consciousness but purely with this turning skin drenched thing.

I do get a feeling that feels kind of like hunger, but a hunger that doesn't have a food to feed it. It's not a lost longing kind of hunger, just something deeper under the skin. And it's funny, because while I can watch the beauty of the other children in my life, admiring them, enjoying them, the feeling isn't as intense as when I watch Luca. When Luca dances, naked in the sun and without pretense, in some wierd projected maybe invisible umbilical cord maybe in misguided ego way, it is also about me. And I love it.

Starting massage school

Yeah, it's official. I am going to start training to be a bodyworker in the fall, beginning with a massage therapy course mixed in with craniosacral therapy. I am thrilled, elated, anticipatory...

And scared. It's a funny scared feeling. Lung-tightening. My partner, Raquel, keeps asking me why I'm scared. Most of the time I don't know. But I think it might have something to do with suspending the absolute hold I've let rational thought play in my life.

Meaning, I usually deal with strife by thinking through a problem, understanding a perspective, gaining more information, making lists and graphing out a solution. While I can't imagine giving up information junkiehood, I have been hungry for something else. I want something that combines that rational part of me with those places that feel unexplainable. Oh, shit, this all sounds so cheesy and I hate how absolutely cornball anything related to bodywork and intuition has become. Talk about a gendered conversation - don't mind the girl in the corner, she just wants to touch people and wander around their auras.

But I want it. Intensely. I have started to dream about it, to look for the seams in this world, this way of being, and to watch for where the seams start to get threadbare and open up to something.... cheesy again.

As I sat in my interview this morning, I looked down at my hands and noticed my nails. Kind of raggedy and long. After over ten years of living with a butch top, I've not even had to think about my nails. That was her job. Well, time to make sure they stay short again.

Safety

I've been raped by four different people in my life - two were family, two were not. All of them happened before I turned 24. I've seen members of my family and a friend die, some who were children. Those were not the hardest things to go through. The hardest thing to go through was the years that followed in which nothing could be talked about, grieved over, stated out loud. For reasons far too complex to go into here and which would take me off the point I'm trying to make, there was a web of silence - both perceived and real - that took me years to untangle and move away from. These days, I feel safest with things said out loud. It is true that there is nothing you can say to me that can have much lasting effect. I might get pissed, startled, annoyed, amused, sad or giggly. But those are easy feelings and they pass. It's what you don't say, all of those behind the scenes secrets, that make me nervous.

Leigh, I know that for some folks, safety happens in being in a space where there is an assumption of agreement. That isn't how it works for me. Safety happens for me when people say what they mean, even if I might disagree with it or, sometimes, get pretty angry. I wasn't offended by Emptyman's post (hi Emptyman). I like the give and take the blog produces, even though sometimes I get annoyed. I like that the blog makes me wrestle with difference in a way that my day to day life doesn't always have time for. And there are a whole hell of a lot of people out there who a) have no idea what transgenderism is and b) if they have an idea, they find it freakish and amusing. Like you said, Leigh, it's what you have to deal with all of the time and it sucks and it's ignorant and it's real. That's why I didn't give Emptyman a lesson on transgenderism (hi again, Emptyman), he's smart enough to google his way to knowledge, if he really wants to know. And Leigh, you are an incredibly valuable person in the community I move within. I hope you'll stay in here, slogging away at Emptyman and, yeah sometimes, me, too.

Emptyman, thanks for showing your belly on your last comment. That was kind. And do take some time to look up transgenderism. Fascinating real lives. If you want web references or book ideas, I'd be glad to do it. And sorry about the recent break up. That sucks.

And I do so hope that at one point, I get some whoop ass leveled at me. I have to assume I make mistakes all the time. I appreciate it when someone takes the time to straighten me out, as it were.

Last comment, how come no one said anything about my lesbian sex posting? That was the one I was way more interested in. And nothing. Not a whisper. Is spring not working its magic on anyone out there in the northern hemisphere?

Addendum to Emptyman

I heard from the Vikki-Kristin train that you've been warned that I might lash out after your email comment. Oh dear, I am really a controlled and kind human being. And yes, you do have east coast elitism about the midwest but you're from the east coast. You're a victim here. I take pity on you more than anything else.

No, it's the transexual trans comment. Emptyman, you gotta remember, you have wandered into a community pod that includes some queers having conversations. You speak from ignorance, love, from the narrow lens of straightness or, even narrower, bioboy straightness. It'd behoove you to learn more about transsexualism, transgenderism, and all things related. Pretty fascinating stuff. It might even help you understand that earring you wear.

Coming in starbursts

It's spring and lovely and gorgeous and the hormones are rising. Mine, too, only they don't tend to circulate in a pack the way they used to. Here's what I mean:

I was walking to the local cafe yesterday, feeling all hip and groovy in my black boots, black pants and velour black top. Yeah, all black. I was childless, which always makes me feel far more butter hips as opposed to boobs. I passed a pack of hip young lesbians hanging out on someone's front lawn. You know, cute studlets in a pack just like I used to be. Even without a daughter in tow AND a groovy black velour top, I have longish hair these days, lots of wrinkles and, more importantly, I'm not out at the watering holes. I walked by. They didn't even look up. So depressing.

I was remembering when I first moved to Minneapolis, something like 15 years ago. Newly out, wanting to sniff every dyke in town, with the feeling that "I have discovered every single new feeling, political idea, community moment that exists in my life" as though they were happening on the planet for the very first time. And me and my friends, we were somehow in the center, somehow the creators of this moment.

I worked in the local women's bookstore - appropriately enough, called Amazon Books. The older collective members were all at least 15 years older than me, had come out in the heydays of the 1970s. At one point, while I was talking with a friend of mine in highly arched tones about how sad it was that 70s lesbians weren't allowed to use dildos because they believed that penetration equaled rape, how misguided, how dry and uninteresting their tribadism must have been. This conversation took place after some well-intentioned anti-violence lesbians had come in and thrown red paint over the lesbian porn mags I had started to order for the bookstore. I felt smarter, more primal, feeling like I had discovered sex, that me and mine were doing things that all those old farts were afraid to dream about.

Into this reverie, broke in one of the older women. "You think you invented sex? We were doing things you can only dream about, we were fiercely against monogamy, believed that sex should be something you shared and didn't try and own, we had parties which I can now see were orgies but we saw them as opportunities to break social bullshit about sexual boundaries. You think using a dildo makes you radical? It just makes you reliant on plastic."

Yeah, Barb. I'm sorry. Cuz I had an edge of that feeling when I walked by the group of young women on the lawn. It was embarrassingly completely ego-based and completely projected. Who knew if they noticed me. Who knew if they cared, let alone had any thought at all about me and my sexuality. But watching them, I suddenly wanted that hormone abundance feeling, of being in my 20s with a bunch of other 20 year olds where the air is rich with how much we all want to touch each other. It changes when you get older. That feeling comes in starbursts as opposed to perpetual rain.

And none of us invented sex. And none of us have ever done all that you can do. But it has been - and it is - fun trying.

finally

Oh how it feeds my Leo soul to have so many people ask me why I haven't blogged in awhile. It makes me feel...sniff sniff... wanted.

I've been told I'm supposed to write about culture shock, returning to the US, reflections on Brazil now that we're back here, visions for the future, funny things that people have said, all of that. Considering that we still don't have an internet connection at home and, unlike my esteemed fellow bloggers who all seem to work government jobs where they sit in front of the computer with huge spans of thumb-twiddling time, I come to the internet cafe to WORK and PAY MY BILLS, I am feeling rather wordless.

So, because I'm watching the clock and have only 30 minutes left to finish this proposal for a NONPROFIT AWARD for lots of INNOVATION AND ADVOCACY for working with TRANS YOUTH (I hope that capital letters help this proposal) and I have to walk to pick up our new-old grandma car 98 Ford Contour thank you grandma in Ohio for getting too old to walk and thinking of me and mine and yes, we've sunk $400 in this car today even though it was supposed to be all free and clear of bugs, well, with all of that plus the fact that I promised I would make zucchini risotto tonight and it takes a while to grate a fuckload (here that, Vikki, it is a real measurement) of zucchini, well, I am going to be quick.

Let's see: Came back, no one had a meltdown, stayed with friends for two weeks while the renters moved out of our house, stayed with friends for longer while the housemate found a way to de-ick the frat house smell from the woodwork, couch, paint, dog's eyelashes, and yes I have now learned that the frat house smell is a mixture of stale cigarette smoke, stale beer, stale food, no washing and, stale pot, and oh yes, lots of incense to cover it up which then goes, yep, stale, but it got clean, still had not meltdown, went to Ohio to visit family and got said car from said grandmother who hasn't driven it in two years but it does have 66,000 miles on it and not 60 so it's not REALLY a grandmother car, and then came back, stopped at the Cranberry Expo in rural Wisconsin where we learned everything there is to know about the cranberry (information given upon request), came back, no meltdowns after 14 hours in the car there and back, moved into our house three days ago, are still moving in, getting rid of crap, we got rid of crap before we left but now after six months feel less connected to the crap that was left so now we're getting rid of more crap, hanging out with friends, it is BEAUTIFUL in minneapolis right now and did I still mention, no meltdowns?

Culture shock? At the airport in Chicago before we transferred to Minneapolis, everyone looked so AMERICAN in that tennis shoes, all clothes made out of sweatshirt material and baggy, that kind of look. Maybe it's midwestern but I see those people everywhere and on the record, I have never dressed like that. Tennis shoes for anything other than working out - ish! But I love my friends who do it. Culture shock: the first time I walked into our house and our friend's house, the warm color of the wood everywhere caused eye orgasms. Different from the glass and stone and clean lines of most of what we saw in Brazil. Plus, with a huge termite problems, not a lot of residential wood there. Culture shock: not much. Except for the size of people, the size of food ordered in the restaurant, that kind of thing.

We're all pretty adaptable. We've done this before. It's Luca who has amazed me. She has been seamless in her transition. Completely seamless.

Kisses until we have internet at home.

We're back

Ok, so the majority of my blog readers are people I am lucky enough to now see or at least talk to every day. But still they ask me, where is my blog? Tell us how you're feeling about being back, they say, even though I've just answered that question while sitting across from them, on the kitchen floor, drinking a glass of wine, ignoring the children. I guess everything is just more real in writing.

I feel fine.

Seriously, I feel very good. We aren't home yet - our house if full of renters so we're staying at a friend's house across the park. Most people tell me we must be feeling so lost and strange to not be in our own home, but it's quite the opposite. The vacation still isn't over but this time, we aren't millions of miles away from our people. And it's spring in Minneapolis. Our people are happy.

In one of these blogs, way back when, I wrote that it had taken me six months in Brazil to finally feel comfortable with the fact that I am a mother. There has been this part of me, since before I even got pregnant, that missed the partying, the politicking, the hanging out at all hours and flirting and getting passionately involved in this or that issue, going to conferences, feeling important in the specific way that parentless adults feel important. I still miss it, but finally after six months in Brazil, I don't grieve it. That's how I feel about being back. It is lovely to be in the mist of this sloppy mass of children and adults when the kids are acting like idiots with each other followed by real sweetness, their semi-sibling status rubbing up against them the hard and right ways. I am so happy to be parenting in community, so proud of Luca and how she is handling this newest change, so proud of the way that the other children have just opened up the Luca space in their lives again.

But I'm not back all the way yet. So I'm not changing the heading on this blog. Brazil is still informing our days, even while we're collapsing back into Minneapolis. Maybe I'll be all the way back when Luca's english is all the way back, or when our tans have faded or when we look at each other across the hungriness of our crazy days, and wish again for quiet by the beach.

Flying Today

After six months, we are leaving this afternoon for Minneapolis. I'm going to have to change the heading on this blog - if I even keep writing it to the same extant. My partner, Rocki, always had the most apt way of describing this six month period: the days would go by slowly while the months flew by.

There is this part of me that wants to write some kind of lofty conclusion - it's the ritual junkie within. But I don't have a lot to say. So many reflections are still half-baked, waiting for home where comparisons and conversation will turn them into life narratives that then get told to everyone over and over again, refining and mixing until, years from now, they have the same kind of automatic timing that my childhood has.

Right this second, Luca and her tio Mauricio are playing in the apartment. She is climbing on him, dancing for him, making up songs about leaving in her little sung-therapy way, kissing him, eating apples and pears, and prancing between Portuguese and English. It's funny, that instinctive self that is bringing her English out to air in the sun, getting it ready for proper use when we are back in Minneapolis. Rocki is wandering around the apartment, rearranging things, cleaning things, checking on things, passing the time. I move from Mauricio and Luca to the computer to the bathroom where I can shut the door, sit on the toilet and pluck my pubes. This has been my bikini-line activity since living in Brazil and I must admit, it's turned into an addiction.

Soon we drive to Rocki's mother's apartment in Lagoa where we will eat all of our favorite dishes, some friends will come over, we will be watching the clock and trying to be present at the same time. When it gets close to leaving time, Dona Iara will get abrupt, not wanting to cry in front of us, Rocki will either get crabby or detail-oriented, Luca will get clingy and I will probably cry. Mauricio will probably get quiet.

And then we will be gone, taxi-ing to the airport to begin our twelve hours of travel time before heading back to our other home.

Until the next blog...

Music makes the people dance...

One of the things that Raquel loves best about living in her home, in Rio, is that when we're driving in the car and switch on the radio, it's Brazilian music that greets our ears. So many of those songs she grew up with, those evocative moments that make you melt into nostalgia, drift into the car and she starts singing words to songs I've never heard before.

All of the music you hear on the radio isn't from Brazil. Like most places, there's a mix of American-Canadian-British- Australian top ten hits, past and present. Everytime I've been here, I've noticed how popular 80s club hits are in Brazil. Wham, the Thompson Twins, all of that new wave high hair flourescent makeup stuff hasn't gone out of style. It's curious - I mean, the 80s are making a comeback in the States as those who were adolescent back then start to face middle age. But it's a timing thing and wasn't true five years ago nor will it be true five years from now. But here, the 80s haven't gone out of style.

I finally asked a group of friends about this and they just about knocked me over the head. Hel-lo, Susan, end of military regime, opening of Brazilian culture, move away from third world space to developing world, freedom. According to Marco, Neiva and Elsa, all aged between 32 and 48, the 1980s were a time when the future finally felt possible again, after decades of being stuck and afraid. The 1980s are, for Brazil and particularly for Brazilian leftists (a huge number of mainstream and not so mainstream people) a time of opening and liberation. For me, the 1980s make me think of Reagan and the music makes me want to weep for the 1960s and 70s.

Funny this music thing. With I-Tunes, I've started to download songs that make me do whatever - weep, soar, feel, freak. A friend of mine who was recently visiting from California laughed to realize how much I lean towards angsty white boy music: Nirvana, Kansas, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zeppelin, Emminem, and so on. Maybe it's just because I grew up in angsty white boy world or maybe because there is an angsty white boy hiding deep inside me.

Body language revisited

Luca, my four year old, was prancing across the floor the other day, her hips making like a metronome, when she stopped, literally flounced and swirled around to face me. "Do you know how walks like that?" she asked me. "Tia Neiva. When she walks her butt is always dancing." And she swirled back around and started the metronome. "I think it's pretty," she said, literally throwing me a coquettish look over her shoulder.

With the millions of physical gestures available for consumption, it is fascinating which beats these children pick up. In the lovely perpetual heat of summer, one of Luca's favorite activities is to face the mirror, naked as the day, and dance. If there is no music, she sings. If there is music, she still sometimes sings her own song. Her moves run from nice square physical kinds of motions to these new curvier things, many of them gathered around her pudenda.

I keep trying to think back - have Rocki and I ever shown a particular interest in her ass or general mound of Venus? (I'm sorry - even my feminist self has a hard time referring to Luca's pussy as a cunt. Even pussy seems sexualized. She still hasn't really started masturbating yet, so I'll keep it Venusian for awhile.) I don't think we have. But when she is dancing, all things centered between her hips get quite the work out with the back and forth and the wiggle wiggle wiggle. She doesn't watch MTV or anything beyond school where she might have learned this. She does watch assorted Carnaval videos over and over again, fascinated by the samba and working hard to get her feet to move that fast. Watching her dance, it seems like there must be something else at play.

Is it just that body physics work that way - around your core are the hinges that make up your body and if you're dancing, it's fun to move those hinges? The center stays still or else it is wiggled with intention.

Watching her body makes me pay more attention to mine - both its aging aspect and how well I wiggle my mound.

Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Driving from our house to the grandmother's house, we stopped by a gas station to get cash and pao de queijo. Brief aside - pao de queijo are these little round cheese breads made from three different kinds of manioc flours and fresh cheese. They are the junk food of choice here - you eat them in the movies, at the bakery, when you just need a quick pick me up. I will miss them when we move back to Minneapolis NEXT WEEK.

But anyhow, we stopped by the gas station and while I was waiting for my friend, Anthony, to get money out of the cash machine, I browsed the post card rack on the wall. Now, post cards racks here usually mean advertising. Upcoming plays, movies, new products get advertised on lovely glossy postcards that are free and many of which you can actually use like real postcards. How cool is that!

One of the glossy numbers caught my eye because of the return address: www. quebec.immigration.br On the front it said, in Portuguese of course, "Quebec invites you to immigrate! We are open for you!!" Then, if you turn it over, there is a little introductory paragraph about how lovely Quebec is then it says, "Why immigrate? Because.." followed by bullet points, "You will be respected for who you are here, it is safe, we speak French, you can get training for work and there are plenty of jobs." Then the postcard directed you to a website where you could take a quick online test and find out if you can pack your bags and leave Brazil for Quebec.

I have never and I mean never seen an advertisement for immigration. Change that - I have seen signs in Ireland inviting Irish ex-pats to come home. I have seen flyers when living in England telling you how easy it was to work for a few years in Australia, here's how you do it, but don't stay more than two years. I have seen many many signs asking people to stay, please, don't emigrate somewhere else. And, of course and not only recently, I have seen millions of signs saying we don't want immigrants. But I have never seen a postcard advertising easy immigration.

It makes me think of the 19th century - posters posted in southern and eastern Europe begging folks to come do the cheap ass jobs. Land rushes and false advertising.

Rocki and I talked about going on line and seeing if we could immigrate to Quebec. But then we got nervous: what if we filled out the forms and the Quebecois found us favorable. What if we then disconnected without following through on the immigration. Would someone show up at our house, banging on the door, "Hey, you said you wanted to come live with us, we have your apartment and job ready. Where did you?"

It's a strange thing. This world of begging-immigration. I've never seen it before and, seeing as how we're returning to the States NEXT WEEK, I don't expect to see it again.

The price of motherhood

Yeah, it's real for so many women but this morning I sat by the pool with my daughter, another child her age, that child's newborn brother and their nanny. The nanny is 25 and has three kids of her own, ages 6, 8 and 10. The nanny lives three hours away, takes the bus on Monday morning and stays here, with her work-family, all week and then goes home late Friday night. Three hours on the bus again. Her mother lives with her and takes care of her three kids while she is taking care of someone else's kids. Her job is to get up all night with the newborn, including bringing the new baby to the mother so that the mother can nurse. Meanwhile, papa sleeps on in the bed. Nanny is exhausted in the way of new mothers - no sleep because of a crying baby, all day long with a baby and a four year old. New mother was sitting by the pool in the early part of the morning getting some sun. Papa came in from surfing, riled up the two children, and then went upstairs to take a shower, leaving nanny to deal with the now squirrely children.

Nanny goes home on the weekend and mostly catches up on sleep.

This is so typical. So insanely common. And everytime I meet someone for whom it is their reality, I just want to grab my daughter, Luca, and hold on tight.

The Privilege of Looking Back

We head back to Minneapolis in about three weeks. I can't believe how quickly - and how slowly - these six months have gone by. My partner, Rocki, and I were admitting to each other the other day that we are, indeed, both proud of being here. Even before I got pregnant, we made a commitment to spend significant time in Brazil so that our child would grow up bilingual.

So, besides me and Luca speaking better Portuguese, I am thinking about the other goals we had for this trip. Getting rest - well, that has happened. Our sleep reserves have reserves themselves. When I hear about the lives of those I love with small children, I am chomping at the bit to get home, cook for them, and take their kids for overnights. Not that I don't have my own selfish reasons for spending time with them.

The other big thing I said that I wanted to do while I was here was to focus on a project about privilege. In particular, I wanted to record and reflect over the ways in which Luca, my four year old daughter, becomes white. How does a blob of baby without culture or conceit learn how to inherit the tools of privilege and power? What do we as parents and the community at large do to foster this social role? I wanted to do something other than what I find when I look for research on raising white children: introduce them to other cultures, bla bla bla.

It's funny - in trying to watch how Luca becomes white, I am continually struck by the way that race is the USA's class system. Her privilege, at its root, is really about a kind of class privilege that her whiteness gives her carte blanche to use. I think there are other specifically racialized moments that will come up as she ages, but in this preschool four year old period with six months spent in Brazil, the most obvious privilege is class. Some of the racialized children's moments - the color/race of dolls and toys, children's television shows, etc - happen differently here.

It is a strange thing to talk about Luca's privilege while living here in Rio. Her privilege is in sharper relief than it is in Minneapolis. Here, the basic rights of her privilege (having enough food, a safe place to sleep, a safe place to play) can sometimes mask the subtler signs. In the States, there are certainly people without enough food, a safe place to sleep and a safe place to play, but they don't live next door or around the corner. Class/race in the US can be so ghettoized - intense poverty kept to some neighborhoods and not others. Here, everyone lives next to each other - rich, poor and in between. It is always in front of you. Part of having privilege in the US is that you DON'T have to see it. And sometimes, unless you play tourist in communities where you don't live, it can be hard to see it.

In Brazil, Luca's "whiteness" is tied up with her "American-ness" and even more, her English. To speak English here is a huge privilege, one that opens the doors to work and education. Her literal whiteness - as in her coloring - gives her the power of the exotic. She isn't that light in a midwestern US context, but she stands out in Recreio. She gets a lot of attention when we wander around just because she is attractive in a less typical way.

To try and get past my own usual thinking about privilege - I have done a lot of reading in biochemistry and neurology - wanting to understand behavior from a completely different angle. I learned a lot - and it was damned interesting - and one book in particular - Us and Them - gave me some deeper understanding for why we create boundaries between folks we decide are "like us" and folks we assume to be "different." But the only thing they gave me towards understanding this project on Lucaness was to remember that yes, the way we parent Luca and the world that Luca lives in will do a lot towards determining what kind of a white person she becomes.

It's funny how you have to learn and relearn the same things over and over again. This would be an example of that. All of this thinking, this reading, this watching did, at some level, was to get me back to an awareness that I have had in the past: privilege is. It can not be given away or denied. Instead, it has to be tempered. In other words, what is the best way that Luca can be raised within her privilege to be someone who seeks to change, who sees other people for whom they are and not for who she assumes them to be, who knows how to live within the context of seeing herself straight up compared with those around her. What is the best way for Luca to be raised to understand that every moment of her life, she lives in community and to then understand her fluid role within those moments of community? How will she learn to make choices so the context surrounding them is visible?

This is just where I started, but now there are more nuances within that sentence. And what I realize is that I can't create a strategy all laid out with perfect steps and situations. Instead, Rocki and I just have to respond to situations as they come. Which means we have to watch ourselves. Not just as parents, but as people in the world.

So it gets back, again, to what I already believed. The reason why working against whatever social category you're talking about is so difficult, is that it is about responding in unexpected moments, not about knowing the right thing to say or the right way to behave. It is about being sincere and trying to pay attention every day and when you screw up, not getting lost but taking a deep breath and starting all over again. There are and will be moments every day where the fact of who Luca is - her skin color, her ethnicity, her culture - is reified by her surroundings. That is going to happen her whole life - even when she notices how she is different (bilingual, binational, child of queer parents), her racialized self will most often be experienced in her unthinking moments as "normal." Thinking about what flavor of white she becomes is about teaching her to pay attention. And to be curious.

Luca is white and whiteness is a kind of cultural vapor that she has to dance with. Our job is to try and teach her to be critical of whiteness, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and to try very hard and every day to not forget that she is white. Like walking through clouds, she has to learn to see it even when it is hard to see. And Rocki and I have to do the same.

I had visions of writing something very practical, a kind of day in the life account of a white child becoming white. But that isn't as easy as I thought. Or it is still too early as Luca is only just four. She is still at the age where, for the most part, race is not the first thing she notices, if she notices it at all. But then again, that is probably part of her privilege.

Life is a Musical

I sing. A lot. Actually, I sing most of the time. Even if I don´t do it out loud, it is happening in my head. A conversation about going to work is likely to spin into "Don´t leave me this way," by the Communards or "Working 9 to 5" by the beloved Dolly. My partner is very patient. So is everyone else who loves me. When I am not singing other people´s songs to fit the occassion, I make up my own on the spot. Every child born into my community has a signature song and I sing it when I see them, over and over again. Luckily, children under three find this very appealing.

My daughter, Luca, sings a lot as well. She has even started to make up her own songs. Sitting in the back seat of the car, she will start with a monotonal prelude before launching into her full orchestral production complete with chorus. Right now she only does it in Portuguese. Half the time it sounds like she is just practicing speaking. The other half of the time, it sounds like therapy.

This afternoon, for example. Some background first. Luca is a four year old girl with short hair who sometimes just wears shorts and t-shirts. This means that everyone most of the time assumes that she is a boy. At that age, without the gender markers of pink or pierced ears or long hair, people read male child. We have wondered if and when it would start to bother Luca. We have hoped that she wouldn´t particularly care. This afternoon, as Rocki was driving and I was passenger-ing in the front seat, we both suddenly tuned on to Luca´s musical in the backseat. In Portuguese: "Everyone thinks I´m a boy, but I´m not. I´m a girl, I´m a girl, (crescendo moment) I´m a gi-i-i-irl" Sung without sadness or annoyance or anything other than rhythm and concentration.

A little bit later, same concert, Luca starts to sing (again in Portuguese): "I have a mama, a lovely mama, and a mae and a vovo, mae and a vovo, but I don´t have a daddy, no, I don´t have a daddy, is mae my daddy, is vovo, la la la la."

Her singing today included our upcoming move back to Minneapolis, the trip we are about to take this weekend to Rio Bonito, and the fact that she was hungry.

So what can I tell you? I am proud. I love that Luca sings. I love that she makes up songs. And I love that she has figured out a way to deal with the confusing bits of life. By SINGing about them. Doesn´t that just rock and roll?

A day in the life

Recently, I've had two friends write blogs detailing the current insanity of their lives. Both are parts of families with two full time working parents and two children, both under five years old. Their blogs make the unions weep: the 40 hour work week, supposed to grant both income and time, has grown long in the tooth and quaint. Kristin and Vikki's lives are normal - only in so much as multiple families can compare notes with their daily agenda and show the same kind of insanity. But in terms of what most of us would agree is a sound quality of life - time with those we love, time doing meaningful work, time sleeping - their days are painful to read about. Too much running, too little breathing.

Here I am, living in Brazil for six months. We've just moved under the month mark, meaning we have less than four weeks before we return to life in Minneapolis. We have another week and a half of quiet life before our last spurt of guests and family takes us up to our leaving date. I am profoundly aware of how graceful our days have been, how gentle, and how those empty days - sometimes lovely and sometimes long and boring - are going to change.

I wrote Kristin today that I was embarrassed to compare notes: what I consider a full day is laughable next to my "full days" of seven months ago. But for the purposes of entertainment and posterity - I have to remember this four months from now - I am going to list our regular schedule.

I will say here that the notion of "regular" is laughable as we have many guests and/or Luca spends time at her grandmother's house, but this is the vaguely mostly typical weekday schedule for a day. Quite honestly, minus the school part, the weekend schedule isn't that different:

Anytime between 6am and 8am: Luca wakes up which means that Rocki wakes up while Susan snores on. On very rare occassions, Susan or Rocki wake up first, get up and make coffee but usually Luca wakes up first, comes into our room, snuggles on the bed and starts hugging our boobs.

Anytime between 7am and 9am: We put Luca off for as long as possible but eventually someone, usually Rocki, gets up to make breakfast for Luca and coffee for the grown-ups. Breakfast can be crackers and cheese or cereal or yogurt or fresh fruit like pineapple or melon or apples.

During this morning period, Susan and Rocki drink coffee, wander to the computer, look to see if anyone wrote them, look at the headlines, sometimes read people.com, sometimes all of the papers, sometimes just surf for awhile.

Anytime between 9am and 11am: Sometimes Rocki has a surfing lesson. Most often Susan and Luca put on their bathing suits, grease up and wander down to the pool. Three to four times a week, most of the family is submerged in water - either ocean or chlorinated. Susan always brings a book to the pool and beach but rarely reads it. Usually she swims, plays with Luca, dozes in the sun. Rocki surfs and comes back, brown and sore.

Anytime between 11am and 1pm: Showers happen. Luca might spend some time drawing or Susan tells Luca stories or Rocki and Luca play games. Somewhere in here, lunch happens. Either Susan makes it and they eat at home or else they order from Golden Sucos, a local place that serves fresh juice, acai, cheap sandwiches and omelettes.

1pm: Luca goes to school. Rocki and Susan share the business of taking her there.

1pm to 5:30pm: Two or three times a week, Susan puts in between one and three hours of work at the computer. This work could take the form of "real work" for District 202 or obessesive emailing with Kristin and Vikki. Sometimes she writes her blog. Sometimes Rocki is at the computer creating photo websites, sometimes just surfing. Sometimes Rocki and Susan watch a movie, sometimes Susan goes for a walk or does something in the kitchen. Sometimes they run to the store. Rocki does a lot of laundry.

5:30pm: Luca comes home from school. They all play. Susan makes dinner sometimes or they eat out. Sometimes they go for walks, watch the skateboarders, play together at home. On Wednesdays, it's family movie night and the family watches nature documentaries on their laptop computer. Dishes get done, school stuff put away, they kiss and cuddle or Luca throws a tantrum or they do stuff on the computer.

Anytime between 7:30 and 9pm: Luca goes to bed. The hour is based on how tired she is, when she got up, how fed up Susan and Rocki are from their hard days, if it's time to take a shower, if they went for a walk, if it's movie night, and so on.

Anytime between 7:30 and 9pm: Based on when Luca sleeps, Rocki and Susan sometimes watch a movie, read a book, have sex, play on the computer.

Anytime between 9:30 and midnight: Rocki usually falls asleep first. Susan reads until later and falls asleep second. At one point during the night, Susan gets up and turns the ceiling fan on to a higher speed. This is after she has been munched too many times by mosquitos.

Language

Yesterday, my four year old was at a swimming pool with her Brazilian grandmother. At one point, her grandmother noticed another child swimming nearby with his family. This child was American and clearly spoke no Portuguese, only English. "Luca," said Iara, "That little boy is American. You should go speak English with him." "I can't," replied Luca, also in Portuguese, "I only speak a little English. I speak Portuguese."

Luca's english is degrading. It's not horrible, it's just younger than her Portuguese now. Funny how the tables can switch completely in six months. When we first arrived, she sounded like a baby in Portuguese and her English was stronger, faster, better. She preferred to speak English. Now she prefers to speak Portuguese.

I look at her - just four years old and already with a lifetime of experiences - and I think of all of those adults I have met who lived outside of the United States before they were five, speaking other languages fluently, and how many of them no longer remember anything other than words and feelings in that other language. Those early years, that early verbal self, no longer exists in their adult minds. And I think, if we had moved here - really moved here - and were planning on staying, then we would now have to begin only speaking English at home or Luca would lose her English.

It's such a funny thing. I am used to thinking of English as the primary and Portuguese as the language I have a responsibility to help make happen. The language that I still don't speak that well. But now I am the minority in our family. When I discipline Luca in English, she can get a little blank-eyed. It's so easy to dismiss me now. So easy to just turn off. If I'm not speaking loudly, she asks me to repeat myself a number of times. The same way I do when someone is speaking Portuguese, there is background noise, and my brain can't just intuit sentences from glimpses of sounds. Yesterday, when she and I were alone in the car, I said something about the roads we were on. "What is "rodz" she asked, tripping over the pronunciation. "Roads," I replied, "you know, like streets, avenidas, ruas." "Oh," she said, "ruas." And then she spent about five minutes repeating over and over again, "rodz, roze, rode, rodz" trying to get it right but getting confused about the difference between rose and roads. "I can't say it very well, mama," she told me.

We head back to Minneapolis in a month and I keep wondering what it will be like for her. Easier, so much easier than coming, and she is so excited to be with her friends, these children she has grown up with from womb to toddlerhood. But I wonder if some of the beginning connections will be complicated by language. Her friends will expect her to be older but right now, in English, she is younger. She will get home and have to grow up all over again.

If it weren't for my god damned community

It usually takes about two months before I stop noticing flesh. My flesh, to be exact. That's when the fact that I am wearing a bikini most of the time no longer informs my every action. A few weeks after that, I don't notice that my body is 42 years old. Well, not too much. I love this about living here. I am remembering it again as I watch our recent pod of friends from the United States adjust to showing so much skin. One of them won't take off a shirt. Another talks incessantly about how much courage it took to get into her suit. Not all of them are highly self-conscious, but a lot are.

I want Luca to grow up with Rio skin and not midwestern US skin. I want her to forget she is almost naked because skin is just skin is just skin is just skin. I watched her today, running out of the ocean carrying her body board, then turning around and with her small four year old body, shrieking as a wave raced her towards shore. She is all hard bodied and brown from so much swimming and running and playing and good food eating. She is healthy. We are all very healthy.

For the first time since being here, I actually wondered if growing up in Rio would be better for Luca than growing up in Minneapolis. It's nice to wonder that. Most of the time I am dead certain that Minneapolis will always be our base. Reason number one is so high on the list above all the others that it really deserves its own list - our friends and community at large. Irreplaceable. Without fanfare or footnote, it is the underbelly of our every day.

And then there is the easiness of living there, the beauty of the land, all of that - which has to compete hard with going to the beach every day and being the kind of strong that comes from simplifying your life.

There is no way to replace our people. Missing them pulls at us, carries us, informs us. But I also love my partner's homeland. It was nice today to actually have a moment of missing the future that Luca might have if we didn't have the people we have right now, waiting for us at home.

what it means to live in a developing country...Part 2

It's always hard to know what is "developing" as in things ascribed to economics and infrastructure and what is "cultural" as in just plain difference.

Dead bodies. I've seen more of them here than I have seen anywhere else. Cars hitting cars, cars hitting motorcycles, cars hitting bicycles, cars hitting pedestrians, the end point is always the same: bodies. There have been four different times when, passing on a side road or on the highway, the telltale red flashing lights and slowed down traffic tells you something is up. And you drive slowly. And there are people just standing around, not doing anything, and there on the pavement is flesh that is broken and red and there are bones or strange angles and again, no one is doing anything. It took me awhile to realize that I was seeing a cadaver, not a wounded person. People standing, smoking cigarettes, waiting for whoever needs to come to confirm the death, move the body, take the relevant information. All of their inactivity means there is nothing more that can be done.

Dead bodies are not unusual. There are dead bodies on the highways in every country that has roads. But I've never seen them before. I'm not sure if it's cultural or due to infrastructure weaknessess as to why the body stays there, uncovered and unchanged on the road, for enough time that multiple passing cars can see it.

Ten years ago, my brother-in-law was in a serious accident. The driver of the other car died. For close to 24 hours, the dead body remained in the car, slumped in the driver's seat, until it was finally removed.

Is it a comfort with death that keeps them uncovered? A law that says nothing can be touched until the medical examiner comes and a developing country infrastructure which means the medical examiner can take a whole day to arrive?

I'm not sure but at this point, if we pass a body and Luca is in the car, Rocki and I practice the art of distraction - successfully, I might add. It's hard enough to pass them at 42 - four years old just feels too young.

what it means to live in a developing country

It was a beautiful night last night - no storm, no strong wind, a gentle sunset with a sky that twisted you up inside for all of its pinks, purples and blues. Calm. Gentle. And just as the sun was inching towards the horizon, all the power went out in our neighobrhood. No reason, no car accident tumbling a pole, no sudden tempest tearing down lines. It just went out. I had a phone meeting in the States when there was no power. My partner, ever smart and resourceful, had made sure we had a non-electric phone so I switched it with the electric dead one, called Minneapolis, and by the light of candles and my laptop, talked about nonprofit fundraising. After the call, while the batteries lasted, we cuddled our daughter by the light of the Macintosh.

Ah, yes, the smell of vomit in the middle of the night

There are a lot of people living in our house in Minneapolis while we are here in Brazil. One of my friends moved in a few months before we left, willing to sort of camp out on the family floor until we had airlifted off and she could have peace and quiet upstairs. One night, it must have been around 3a.m., Luca woke up crying. I staggered out of bed, groping for my glasses and then shuffled down the hallway to Luca's room. En route - and no, the hallway isn't that long, it just felt like it that night - I passed my friend, Coya, with her door open, looking out to see if someone was coming to get the crying Luca. I mumbled something, "I got her, " or "hi" or "jabberwocky" and flopped into Luca's room, cuddled her, she went back to sleep and I stumbled back to my bed.

Now Coya has been my friend for something like eight years, five of them Luca-less. During those childless times, we used to go to a lot of the same parties, the same performances, the same community things. Post-Luca, I don't get out as much. At least not after 8pm. This means that these days I mostly see Coya when we get together for lunch.

A few days after the nighttime stumble, I ran into Coya during the daylight hours. "You know what's strange," said Coya, "In some wierd way, some part of me hadn't really realized you were a mother until I saw you getting out of bed, all sleepy and confused, to go to Luca in the middle of the night. It feels dumb to say, but watching you I suddenly had this - oh my god, Susan's a mother - kind of feeling."

It's true. There is something largely invisible about the other half of parenting - that half that makes you a dirt under your fingernails parent. Unsurprisingly, it's the part that often defines your days. Sleepless nights to not cheerful daytime company make. This morning, there were emails in my inbox from multiple friends in the States, all who spent sleepless nights last night listening to coughing, cleaning up puke, and generally forgoing a night of sleep.

When Luca woke up last night at 2am, came into bed for a cuddle and then promptly blew her cookies all over me and our bed, then there was no doubt that it's mama time. I have quite a few friends - childless friends from my world before Luca was born - who have told me that they are hurt because we don't see each other as much as we used to, they feel like they have to have kids in order to hang out with me, etc. Many of these are friends who invite me to their parties that start at 10pm or who call at 6:00 (kid dinner time) while we are eating at the table to see if I have dinner plans for the evening.

I guess I need to invite more of them to sleep over. Then maybe they'll get that - at least until the kid is older - things are just plain different. I'm a mama. It took me spending six months in Brazil to fully make peace with that sentence.

bodies that speak different languages

My lower back hurts today - and I am sunburned. Today was my daughter's fourth birthday and we had her party - Luca's party - at a friend's sitio. That means little piece of land with a house upon it. Except this one doesn't really have a house but instead just a pool and a wide open covered only for shade kitchen kind of place with a bathroom and shower. In other words, this friend is wealthy and this is their third property. The closets and storage spaces are elsewhere.

The fact that my lower back hurts is, according to one of my teacher's, based on the fact of being an American feeeeeemale. It's because I walk all sway-backed. Not as extreme as a toddler, with their rounded belly and concave backs, but the American version of it. In other words, as a woman growing up in the States, I learned to emphasize my boobs and butt with special emphasis on the boob part. Even though all these years later, I don't walk for display as much as I did in my 20s and yes, early 30s, my body and in particular my spine formed around this cultural girl self.

When this teacher - who is an exercize/physical therapist person who comes to the building where I live once a week to do stretching classes with all of us middle aged mamas - works on my body, she is always surprised. "But look how much you bend here, " she says, as my thighs end up around my ears and my hips hinge back and forth like a swinging door. "And what is wrong here, why won't you move? Brazilian women always move here," when my lower back and hips won't swivel fully and my hips, while hinging back and forth, are frozen against making any grown up sized circles.

She believes that the United States fucks up women's lumbar region and that's why we always hurt "down there." Brazilian women, she says, don't have lots of lower back pains. They get it at the top, in their shoulders where they stoop. This teacher, her name is Leslie and I adore her, used to live in Japan. She did this same work in Japan for years before coming back to Brazil. In Japan, she says, because women (and men) sit on the floor so much rather than sitting unnaturally upright in tables and chairs, Japanese women have the kind of cores that only Pilates can give you. "They hold themselves up, all the time. They don't let the chairs do it for them. Japanese women rarely have back pain. They have other problems."

Don't even get her started on American men's and Japanese men's bodies versus Brazilian men's. She's pretty clear that Brazilian men are miles ahead. "They are allowed to move their hips without anyone thinking they're gay. American and Japanese men have to walk as though their penis is the only mobile part of their bodies between their torsos and their toes."

Since meeting Leslie, I spend much of my time walking around, trying to get my scapula to kiss in the middle of my back, my butt to tuck in a way that makes my spine longer, my belly to be fierce and tight and my breasts to just sit there in their quiet pacifist way.

Brokenback

Have you seen the Brokeback Mountain parodies circulating around the web? Hundreds of I-Movie buffs are recreating film clips for a range of mainstream films and turning them into love stories between men. Back to the Future, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings: they've all manipulated the clips and soundtracks to get a score of trailers featuring the world of Hollywood homoeroticism. Very funny. There's a New York Times article on this - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/movies/02heff.html?th&emc=th - and scores of websites with Brokeback examples.

Glimpses

This past week has been full of company and traveling, Carnaval and more company. Hence, no blogging time. I can't even begin to do a chronological recreation, so instead I'll be indulgent with some meandering reflections.

While we were in Minas Gerais, in Ouro Preto to be exact, we went on the tour of a mine that closed down with the ending of slavery in 1888. Not a modern mine large enough for a cart to go through on tracks, this was a scratched out hole through the granite that depending on short adults and children - all slaves - for its labor. Our guide was 50. His grandmother lived to be 106, she died when he was 16. Do the math. She was 26 when slavery ended - already had 6 children although not yet his father. She carried her liberation card with her on a thin chain around her neck and she demanded to be buried with it. A friend of mine in the States - a little older than me at 45 - had a similar story, although her great-grandmother who was born into slavery and freed while still a baby, died when she was very young. I always forget how often history is really about something that happened yesterday, not only in some misty past.

Our tour was a strange mixture - like most of Brazil. Intense information about how the mine worked - did you know they killed some of the young men who grew too tall to stoop down deeply enough and most slaves died before they were 30 after first going blind and deaf from the sound of the pick ringing against rock and the silicate dust settling in their eyes? See how loud it is when I ping this pick against the side - and a very ringing sound called out that made my head ache - well this is what they worked with and now, this would be a lovely photo opportunity so stand here and hold the pick. Click.



That's Pat, my traveling companion. It has been funny trying to describe Pat's relationship to my family as we traveled: "She's my mother's ex-partner and one of my daughter's grandmothers but no, she isn't a mother to me, more like an aunt or a very very dear friend, something for which we have no word in English and no word in Portuguese."

Driving the main road from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte - kind of like going from Chicago to Indianapolis or from Los Angeles to San Franciso - there is one road. Much of the time it is a two lane road. People bike on it, a few horses graze along it, grass grows on some of its edges.

Carnaval, it's insane and I love it. We've taken Luca to quite a few kid's parties. I swear, she's going to be the first gringa child to actually samba. I wish for her flexible hips. Last night at the last party of the season - not that Carnaval is over but it's our last party - I had a deeper understanding of this Brazilian approach to pleasure and joy. Imagine a room full of screaming children who are dumping confetti and streamers on top of each other, throwing it in the air, throwing it on top of adults, dancing to traditional samba songs (including one lovely samba original about a dyke - sapatao ), following the adult group leader as he and she thrust and wiggled their hips and waved their butts singing about being sexy, everyone with great big grins on their faces. I love that here, when women are dancing mostly naked and body painted, they don't do that pouting "I'm so sexy" look that women in the States do. Instead, it's with an ear to ear grin. Lovely. Pleasure. Fun.

Taking Pat to Porcao (that's Big Pig) for an experience of Brazilian culinary excess.



I apologize to all those I love who are vegetarian or vegan. Pat was very happy.

A night in the life

It's 10pm here, which means that true cariocas are just taking their showers to get ready for a night out. I'm sitting in Luca's bedroom which is also the computer room. She's asleep on the bed behind me. Rocki is reading in our room. I've just been surfing the net for news about Rio.

We live on the far southern edge of Rio in Recreio, a town that used to be sleepy in a beach kind of way but is now witnessing the burst up of tall condominiums. If you go a few minutes down the road from where we live, you're in true country: hand threshing and horse-drawn wagons. This is what is meant by "developing world," this mix of SUVs and wireless internet in one building while on the corner there is no electricity or indoor toilet.

I went online to find out more about the latest in Rocinha. Rocinha is a favela - read "slum" - that we pass everytime we drive to Rocki's mother's house. It's huge - one of the largest in South America - and like any city, is a mixture of devout families and well entrenched drug lords.

And maybe it's different. After all, Rocinha has been able to close down the city of Rio on a number of occassions, by calling for a general strike. And the cabs stopped running and the stores were closed. They are not without power.

And in this city within a city, for the last few days there has been the full battle of a civil war. Drug lords in Rocinha fighting against drug lords in three other favelas.

Here is why I was looking online for more information. Here is what is so strange. I ride the buses here, I drive around with my family, I walk on some streets and I never see any of this. I have gone to Rocinha. I took Luca on a tour, called gaggingly enough "Exotic Tours" but a program in which Rocinha kids get job skills in tourism. I wanted to climb up the streets, to demystify this place that claims so many headlines. I knew that I would see the good Rocinha, the land of families and genuine people, because of course they are there, too. And like south central and the neighborhood in Cleveland where I spent part of my childhood, they don't get the press ink. And so I took Luca and we did the tour. And everyone loved that I brought my child and we got lots of attention and people were lovely and the streets felt sturdy and planted.

Boom crash fourteen dead and the military police have occupied the neighborhood where we were wandering. And I never see any of this and I don't want to see any of this and the older I get, the more used to privilege I get, but this is just too strange.

Even stranger, they are building a temple to the Rolling Stones on Copacabana Beach. This will be the largest Stones show in history and the city is giving it completely free "to the people." They are building a stage, there will be eight large screens to flash the show to the millions they expect to gather. They have built a walkway from Copacabana Palace and over the street to the stage for the VIPs. They are spending millions.

And they are cleaning up the city to make it beautiful. The Stones arrived today. They are waiting in town.

Is there any connection between Rocinha and the Stones or is it just the day's pattern?

And my social security number is...

Ok, so I'm slow on the uptake with a lot of things. Usually they fall in the category of "the new paint color on your walls," "that change in the style of your glasses," and other visually subtle differences. Anything that has the faintest whiff of possible conspiracy, well I'm usually there pretty quickly.

So what took me so long to realize that I am probably the only blogger in a universe of bloggers who uses her real name for her profile and webpage? Everyone else seems to choose anonymity.

With no direspect to the Patriot Act, I hate these protect-my-privacy times. I am the kind of person who usually tells you how much I make, who I voted for, and what sort of sex I'm most interested in having. The US is too focused on protecting and extending the hyper-individualism that has isolated us fairly profoundly from each other. As a queer woman in a state that only very recently reversed the laws against sodomy (yes, I do), I can appreciate the importance of protecting privacy. I believe in protecting privacy. But within the context of the current United States of "this is mine, not yours", I don't believe it's the ideal starting point. Particularly when we no longer have a public to weigh against the private.

You can not stand on a street corner and orate about war, the new Wal Mart around the corner, the birth of your new child or Jesus Christ unless you have the necessary permit and, in many places, there are no permits available. The largest "public space" in Minneapolis, where I live, is sadly the Mall of America. In the frozen winter, the majority of Twin Cities residents spend some amount of time visiting this place where you can leave our jacket in the car. If you have small children but hate to shop - again, yes, me - you go just so your kids can run and get some energy off when it's too cold to be outside. But the mall is private space - as are all malls and increasingly parks, streets in front of any business, and so on. I can go there with my child so that she can get some exercize but I can't open my mouth about public education (I still believe in it), health care, the war in Iraq, or how silly the store is that only sells refrigerator magnets.

Those places that are public - parks, wilderness areas, etc - are usually places where individuals go to commune (individually) with nature or to strengthen their individual bodies with exercize. Other places - halls of government, etc - well, you can go and schedule your token protest, make sure the building has enough security to protect your safety, and take your litter with you when you leave.

I didn't buy my first car until I was 31 and the first time I got into that car, I burst into tears. Ok, for those of you who know me, as my partner says, I cry like I sweat. But still, I was "havin' a feelin'". I cried when I got into that car because after 31 years of public transportation and foot traffic, this symbol of my growing privilege gave me way too much control. I could get quickly and easily between two places, stay warm in winter, and have a complex agenda for the day with all of my crap in the back seat, but I was alone. Before, my day and life were unwillingly affected by the people who sat next to me or walked up to me outside. Their days, views, lives, and body odor affected mine. Half the time, this was neutral. A fourth of the time it was a pain in the ass but a fourth of the time it was positive - I became more than I had been before meeting this person. And I knew people, had learned of their lives in bits and pieces of bus rides and street walks, people who did not otherwise connect with my world in any way, shape or form.

Now, public space or "the right to be infringed on" is described as a mark of poverty. And it's true - the only folks who inhabit public space with all of its warts and without the ability to change tend to be folks who have no access to private space - a car, a home, an i-pod. My family uses one car in a city that was not built for walking - so we bike and bus to make up the difference, But these days it's choice. And that's an entirely different thing. There are too many times when I am lazy and pick up my option for easy.

I'll care more about protecting my privacy from internet terrors (I don't have credit cards for them to abuse, only a checking account and a cash card at my credit union and they call me when anything wierd happens on my account) and protecting my identity and protecting my privacy, when there's a public that is accountable to each other. When there is a public that exists more than on the fringes of our lives, that is not the realm of those with few resources, and one in which there is space for that dance between anarchy and democracy which has the potential of getting us somewhere.

Want to know how to find me, where I live - just give it a google.

This one's for Luisa

I walked into Zona Sul, purposefully and with head held high, meandered to the back of the store and there I met its baleful stare. That big red sea bass - peixe vermelha - was going to be mine tonight and not in any wimpy American way - prefilleted and wrapped in plastic before bringing it home. No, I was going to buy it the honest Brazilian way - barely after its last breath with its eyes only just filming up.

What the hell, I decide to do it the middle class Brazilian way: "Pode limpar essa para mim?" Of course the guy behind the counter could clean it, that's why he was covered in rubber and plastic and sparkled with fish scales. "Enteiro o de costas?" he asked. Ok, he got me. I know what those words mean literally - "Entire or of/from/be (I hate prepositions) the back" but what does that mean? If you're like me and learning a second language, you overthink things. While my first thought was "Oh, entire means keep the fish in one whole fish and not cut in pieces and of the back means cut along the back and split." But then I thought further, maybe it means "entirely done or just done along the back" oh shit, maybe he's saying to me, "do you want me to do it with my entire body or just use the muscles of my back?"

I could have smiled at him, batted my gringa eyelashes, and admitted to being the naive foreigner. I could have smiled and asked him to explain, but he had looked annoyed when I asked him to clean the bloody red thing and now he was just standing there, spiritually tapping his foot and waiting for my reply.

"De costas," I said first, smiling and acting all sure of myself. "Nao, espara, enteiro." I said, changing my mind.

He went in the back room, although I could see him through the glass, and pulled out this mother of a long knife and then another one and then a third. Goodness, Susan, don't try this at home.

And then he bent over and I could see him no more. So I wandered off to pick up a pineapple, some limes, some sweet corn, and a few other bits and bobs, checking every few minutes to see what he was up to. Finally, I saw his head pop up, walked over and then heard the plastic roll going round and round and round and with each rotation, the chunk of a big ass fish hitting the chopper block.

And he gave it to me. And it was a whole fish. And it was still staring at me.

And I brought it home and while Rocki went to pick up Luca from school, I ran to the kitchen and got out my knives. "Have you ever cut a whole fish before?" she had asked and I had nonchalantly replied, "Sure but years ago" which translates to once I helped someone else while I was in college. Come on, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Fish to me meant Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks. My partner was not going to watch what happened when me and the peixe vermelha got friendly.

Of course, before Rocki left, I was on the internet googling "filleting fish" and "how to clean a sea bass" and they all called for special filleting knives and who knows what else so I decided to just wing it.

Even as we speak, I have two highly uneven and very scraggly looking peixe vermelha fillets baking in the oven, covered gently and lovingly with olive oil, sea salt, lime juice and garlic. Luca loves fish. So do I. My Brazilian lover hates it. She's having leftover pasta tonight.

Tenho saudades, Luisa.

What a woman carries inside

When I walk into a pharmacy in Brazil, move through the aisles past the beauty creams and pampers, I come upon the same thing time and time again: twenty to thirty different packages of sanitary pads and maybe, if I'm lucky, one very expensive kind of imported tampons. Why do women in Brazil not wear tampons?

I've asked a lot of women here already but no one has an answer for me. There are pads for all sizes and flows, brands I recognize from the United States and brands that are home spun or grown or synthesized. But usually only a few OBs or the occassional Tampax for catching the flow further upstream.

This really makes no sense to me. It is hot here. Very hot. And more women on average wear clothes that are either cut tight or cut short or barely there. Skimpy for sweat support. Living in Rio means living near an ocean. Swimming pools are in abundunce and on the weekends, you can barely find space for another body whether on the sand or poolside. And bikinis here, well, the majority are made from dental floss and cotton balls.

Where do they hide the pads?

When I was a tadpole, tampons were just moving from those things that liberated sexual women wore to those things that every woman who didn't want to feel like she was wearing diapers could now choose. This was before toxic shock when fear struck deep into the national vagina. No, television and magazines had pictures of thin thin white women with tight white clothes bending over to pick up golf balls from the green. Look! No bulky pad! No embarrassing red spots in the crotch line!!

I embraced my tampon self, except for the period in my 20s when I opted for natural sea sponges. I still prefer them, but I got tired of going into public toilets and walking through the doors with a bloody red mound in my hand, wringing and rinsing in the sink along with my unwilling sisters, and then going back into my stall to reinsert. For most of my life, I've been a tampon kind of girl.

Have I been misled? Is there something that women here know that I don't know? Has marketing gone so deeply to my brain that I don't realize that even with dioxin-free Nature's Choice tampons, I am still causing some profound bodily harm?

A month or so ago, I asked a woman who was sitting and sweating next to the pool - and wearing shorts which she never does - why she didn't get in the cool refreshing water. It's lovely, I told her, and the sun is so hot. She glanced left and right and then leaned in to explain that she was mensturating (I don't know the slang in Portuguese, I only know menstruating which might sound normal to a Brazilian ear but always sounds Victorian to mine). She couldn't go in to the pool - "get myself wet" was actually what she said - until she was finished.

There I sat, on the steps leading in to the pool, my vagina safely submerged with a tampon tucked carefully away inside, and I wondered if she could see those small microbes of blood that, along with my other womanly juices, must be slipping from the sodden white cotton and delicately polluting the pool.

I never drip, I never stain. And I stay swimming, even when my uterus is cramping up to beat the band. If anything, water pressure like orgasm can really help a girl get through her monthlies.

Why don't women in Brazil use tampons?

And no, don't blame it on Catholicism. You should see the bottle dance. They can aim their girl-bits over the lip of a bottle - from three year old children to happy grandmotherly types - and writhe along with the rest of the family. How come they can't soak up the love with a bit of white cotton?

PS: This is just a side question but when I click on the button at the top right of the page - next blog - about half of the blogs it takes me to are in Portuguese. Does the blogger man know that I am in Brazil and assume my billngualism? Are you all getting the same thing? This is very odd to me, as the internet is not physically located anywhere.