Lisboa in two days

And all I have to show for it is this lousy airplane photo. 

This trip was not the European lushful romp of my youth. It was a refined, somewhat boring  business trip. One in which I was too tired to even the leave the hotel at night and for the first time in my life, didn’t push it, let it go, promised to come back instead. Told myself I would rather see it with my husband and kids anyways. This is new for me. I had to not so willingly but not so dramatically let my facial moisturizer lotion be thrown away in airport security. It was either that or check it and quite frankly I have done too many waits at the Casa airport to bother with the whole thing.

 

I am writing this in the time before my flight home to Casa and I find myself reflecting on myself (surprise surprise) in the paradigm of Europe, work, adulthood, youthfulness, and relative perspective.

In my youth I raged through airports, I wish I could have a montage of camera footage of every airport passing I have done in my life. We would see some of my worst (never my best) moments and it would make for much humor. I had long crazy hair, was way too skinny, but the rush from that alone made me feel high. I was a young American girl out there doing what young American girls do best. I was being special and unique and gathering stories and memories that will last me the rest of my life. In fact anytime I feel bored or mundane now I can think back to those times and be so grateful that I lived them and remember why I wouldn’t want to go back. When I see young, stylish, European lovers, couples, confused, happy, before kids and marriage and all of the weights that make us not feel that way anymore, when I see them in airports on the way to hear and there, knowing how lucky they are to be living it right now, I feel so happy for them. Not envious or angry or annoyed, but truly happy for them because it is their moment and because I know I had my moment of such, and I know that there will be more that follow them, the next set and they will one day be sitting from my perspective (I hope, for them). I set a goal for myself at that time, and it would appear for all intents and purposes I have reached that goal…kind of. 

When I left Paris to return home to the states, I said that I wanted to go home, and get a job that would allow me to live in Europe and travel home, see my family, be a proper part of society. I was not that in Paris. I was a vagabond at best! A brilliant beautiful vagabond that wrote poetry on the scene and lived about every cliché you can imagine about life in Paris for a 21 year old anorexic American. 

Anyways, at the time I knew that I loved life there and I saw the women of my age, and I knew that when I was their age I wanted to be proper also, I wanted to belong to that club, have sophisticated clothes (still not there yet!), have gorgeous little kids and a great job and a husband that slightly touches me on the back as we enter or exit cars.  I have those things. I imagined it to be in Paris and it is not. My life  is in Casablanca for the moment, but I haven’t given up hope for Europe. 

That brings me to my final point about perspective. When I only knew Europe, the convenience of America was the best and anytime I went home I marveled at the wonder of it all, anytime I went back to Europe I cursed the inconvenance of it all. Now that I live in Morocco, I am non-stop impressed with European organization and customer service. It’s quite funny really. Perspective is so relative. 

For those Americans that think America is the best and that Europe sucks in comparison, I challenge you to go and live in Africa. I realize also that I live in north Africa, in the Maghreb, which is magical and consumer oriented and WAY MORE developed than many other places on the continent and in the region. So maybe the solution is not for me to find a way to move to Europe but to go and spend some time in somewhere less developed than Morocco and then go back to Morocco! Again, perspective is so relative and I am glad for mine, all of it.

I still dream of Paris, but Lisbon is nice too.

Moving to Casablanca…

This is a sorrowful moment for me. As I eluded in an earlier post, I feel as though certain of my life’s wishes are about to be fulfilled. Yet I am sorrowful. All of our dreams come at a cost. That has been clear to me since the days of sorrowful packing and kitchen floor sleeping curled up with Shaka in an empty apartment in Piedmont park in the weeks before I got on my flight to Paris and then to here. I said goodbye to a faithful (furry) companion of ten years and it was one of the most heart wrenching things I have ever done. I now have two gorgeous daughters standing in her place, but I still miss her, cry for her, feel guilty about leaving her and wish her the best. I imagine it will be like that for the rest of my life. 

And now it is time for another change. You see, Youssef and I moved here because it worked for us. Because I hated Casablanca, because I was stuck in traffic for hours every day, because there was nowhere to take the girls outside for a walk, because there was a balcony and a little girl that lived across the street from us that fell to her death at 7 years old. So we left, we decided that raising our young daughters by the beach was the best for them and we left. We found this place and never looked back. Our girls learned to walk here and yell “abdellah” across the field to the farmer. 

They learned all the names and sounds of the farm animals and grew deep love for the other little girls that they play with everyday. 

They made best friends and deep loving connections with nannies that live nearby and they became used to seeing the beach on the horizon every day. 

Then the day came when we started looking back. The day came that we started thinking about school for our girls and couldn’t figure out a way to get them back and forth. Many many days came and went that I turmoiled over the distance between me and them while I was at work (figuratively and literally). So we found a place in the city, in the right neighborhood, in the right residence with the right kind of doorman and elevator. Then we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t leave. It wasn’t right yet, so we made people angry at us and we chose what was best for us and we decided to stay further. 

Then something happened. I stopped caring about the right this and that and started thinking of what made the most sense. I started imagining a scenario in which I could drop my girls off at their school and pick them up, exchange words with their teachers about their progress and their issues and their work and their lives at school. 

There is a neighborhood next to my job that I drive through everyday and everyday I started to think about how clean and close and good it could be if we lived in that neighborhood. Then…I remembered.

Once, a long time ago, many many many years ago. When I thought I was stuck in Atlanta forever but was kind of ok because I thought I was living with the guy I was going to marry and I had a beautiful apartment on the park and a great job and a dog that I adored and couldn’t imagine leaving…I used to pray. Now I am not really a religious woman, but I have always believed in ghosts and energies and more…so on the darkest nights, the nights where my heart longed for something more, knew there was a part of my life not yet lived, knew that my soul would inhabit a place very far away again I used to pray and I asked for three things, specifically:

1.  To have children (this was always something I thought was weird because most people start by wanting one, but I always knew I would be a mother of more than one child)
2.  To speak to those children in French
3.  To walk them to school and to walk to work

Now…when I connected all of these dots last month and I realized that the only thing I had to do to actually have all of my dreams come true was just not try so freaking hard and fight so freaking hard for the best and most special and most different, when I accepted that, I realized that actually, I am about to have the life I prayed for, like opened up my heart and begged for. And I feel so lucky, so so lucky. I feel like my grandmother has worked a little magic on my behalf also and that I am not sure what I am supposed to do with my time in this situation. I know that it will not last forever, my work will move, my husband will not want to pay this amount of rent for too long, things will change. But in the time that I have, whether that be one or two years, I have the sense that I meant to create. Whether that be art or life, or both or whatever, I feel that I am destined to do this move. And that, my friends, is the only thing that keeps me from a constant stream of tears. The tears are here, that is certain, but I have this understanding to draw on, to lean on, to turn to and seek comfort in. 

How could one NOT be sad to leave this:

And this 

Sad is a part of the process, real hurt, not the kind of hurt that I can reason away, the kind that you just have to carry with you, digest, keep in your pocket and hope it makes you a better person hurt, is the hurt I feel to leave this home we have. But I go forward strongly and with the conviction that we are making the right decision. The girls start at their school in a couple of weeks, they will be learning French, I will wake up in the mornings and dress them and feed them and walk them to school before I continue on to my work on foot. 

For now...here are some of our favorite memories, the ones we caught on camera anyways:

Oh How lucky we have been.

 

Moroccan Road Trips

I miss travelling. I miss the feeling of hitting the open road in Morocco.

I miss the way the sun feels in summer time. I miss the red walls of Marrakesh and the frenzy of the medina coupled with the calm of the hotel. I miss swimming in gorgeous pools with exotic looking palm trees sprouting out from them. Travelling through Morocco is always such a wonderful experience. I ask myself why. I answer myself with "because it's beautiful - of course it has dug way down deep in your heart and periodically spits up images at you".

When I first came to Morocco, before I (knew I) was pregnant with the twins, we took a trip to Marrakesh on a train. When my mother saw the pictures of me looking out the window at the countryside, she said "I can't tell if you are crying or just really happy".

I told her I was crying because I was so happy. It was in that stairway of a beat up old train, with a door open, speeding by rolling green hills of country side that I realized that I felt really safe with my husband. I was not afraid to sit by the open door because I knew that if I fell, if I slipped and my body flung towards the open air, that he would catch me, he would do what it takes to make me safe.

What a glorious trip that was. When our pride was about our newly re-found love. Our pictures were about us being so proud and feeling so strong and confident to be back together again. it was pure magic. The snails in djemaa el fna, the dinner at chez ali, all of it.

Whenever I start yearning for Marrakesh, it's actually that, that I have in mind.

Of course we have been back sense then with the girls. We had a gorgeous poolside room

and as soon as we got into the hotel the girls fell busy pulling themselves up on the furniture and we set up the cribs and then we found Mae had crawled inside of the cabinet. this past summer I found a picture of myself at that age doing exactly that.

We took a carriage ride at sunset around the medina.

We walked past the koutoubia, we had dinner in the square and took pictures by the pool and the girls pigged out at the breakfast buffet. 

We visited a gorgeous guesthouse in the valley, we ate a posh lunch overlooking a beautiful lake.

We drove through Berber villages and decided that if we ever did have a wedding, we would do it there. Then we abandoned the girls in djemaa el fna!

I miss vacation in Morocco. I want to hit the road but it's not going to happen anytime soon. We have other priorities right now so the goal is on making it through this winter for a spring retreat.