Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Youssef and I are a couple that married, like officially, somewhere in the region of 4 times. Once when I was 18 years old in the Decatur courthouse. An event to which I wore tan, heeled boots and a light brown knee length dress. We ate at a Jamaican restaurant off of Lavista road afterwards with friends. The second time is when I took this photo:

The third time was this photo:

and I am sure we went to the Habouss at least one other time when I didn't even bother to dress for the occasion. I had no wedding shower, no wedding, no baby shower, otherwise known as the henna party, then we had no baptism for the girls and have really only thrown one Moroccan party as a couple (if you don't count the numerous dazed nights of youthful entertaining we did regularly in the West End many years ago). 

I guess you could call us, non-celebratory in traditional terms.

We are moving...finally. I am at peace with moving...finally.  I feel as though my destiny is being fulfilled but that's for a different blog post.

Back to the theme of the weddings and the moving...I have an idea. I want our new home to emulate love, our love, our partnership, a wedding that we never had, the official announcement to the community that we are a proper couple. So I am going with a theme for the new pad of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

Current hodgepodge of ideas:

1.) Thanks to Tahir Shah I am now totally into the idea of salvaging for tables and dressers and an entryway piece.
2.) Speaking of the entry way, to set the tone for the love house, I am going to (enchallah) put a Moroccan wedding blanket on the wall in the entry way. 

3.) Something new...well that's going to be a full on Moroccan salon. I. am. so. excited. see example HERE:

4.) Something borrowed - I am just going to consider the apartment as borrowed because it's not ours
5.) For the blue, I am thinking tiles...not really sure yet, but it will present itself to me of that I am sure
5.) We arer planning a carpet buying trip...I told Youssef last night, "Hell to the yes, a carpet buying trip to the mountains, that is like why I freaking moved to Morocco!", he was all "Good...I'm glad you've found your purpose".
6.) I want a piano for the girls, so that will be old as well most probably.
7.) I want a proper dining room table and I have something like this in mind:

but I am actually considering this as well:

8.) As far as my destiny being fulfilled...well...I will explain that bit later, but I mean it.
9.) I want to create an environment to create in. Life is too short. I am in the process of getting my Master's degree and that is for career path purposes but honest to god  I am sick of being afraid to create. Being afraid to go for it. Being afraid to write. POETRY and STORIES!!!! AHHHHHHHH
10.) I am reading the artist's way, can you tell?
11.) Plus there is just something about the ancient culture here mixed with the laid back "ma'caine moushkil" attitude thrown together with the crazy stress of the traffic jams from the donkeys in the streets and the black Mercedes zooming around juxtaposed with the beggars and the carts and the free roaming sheep in the middle of the city. All of that plus the changing economy and country lends itself to a lot of inspiration if you can manage to escape the stress. I am working on escaping that stress and allowing the inspiration to flourish. One thing is for sure, February will mark the end of my 3rd year here and the beginning of my 4th year, and I feel luckier than ever to be here. Yes... I desperately miss my family and still entertain ideas of up and moving back but I am not actively fighting to get out, my philosophy is to enjoy where I am at while I am there. I miss my father's land. I miss how it feels to be there. I miss him. I talk to my mother all the time so I don't freak out as bad about her and somewhere in the back of my head, I know that if I stay eventually one day, I convince her to come and live at least part of the year here with me. But the father piece is a bit different. That won't change, I imagine it will only worsen. The only solution I can see out of it is if I have this amazing free life as a writer and we have the financial means to send me over to the US often enough for me to get sick of it and want to be back in Morocco. You know...not asking too much! As far as my point above about the culture and the change...anything feels possible in Morocco. I feel closer than ever to being able to actually do something like that. But it takes work, hard work and vigilance and that is just not where I have been putting the work. This is what I am working on for 2012. Trying to set the wheels of that work in motion. And I sure this will move at the pace of the traffic on the route de j'dida at 6pm on a Friday...but I am prepared to inch along to get there. A great quote from the artist's way is when people tell her 'do you have any idea how old I will be by the time I master that new skill' and she says "yes...the same age you will be if you don't".'

I'll do a proper post about the move update later.

The Nanny Diaries

I have suffered. It has been going on for years. I hope there is an end in sight but I am not sure. Since I have arrived in Morocco I have been put off by the “maid” thing. It is second nature for most Moroccans. The maid thing inevitably, with the arrival of children, has turned into the nanny thing. My family knows my woes quite well. My daughters are now two years old and this is the situation I faced when I came home last night:

Scene: Dust flying out from behind the station wagon as I zoom along the dirt road not even caring if I happen to actually run over a duck this time…I need to see my kids. I have been gone since exactly 7:20am and it is exactly 6:00pm. I spent the past two weeks with them all day every day and I KNOW exactly how much I missed today in those 11 hours. I pull the car in front of our white house, get out and find the big steel doors open for me, make it to the interior garden and find the kitchen quite but see a light at the end of the house. The screen door is open for me as well. Mae is at the end of the hallway, she sees me and runs at me with an overwhelming rush of loving energy. She clasps on to my legs and I kneel down to hug and kiss her, before I even get halfway down she wiggles away from me and runs to…her nanny. She loges herself on her and hugs her. Caresses her arms and pushes her face into her, looking back at me only to make sure that I will not try to take her away from her. I have at this point made it to the brown rug in the living room where the nanny, Sophia and Mae were sitting quietly reading and waiting for me. Sophia is absorbed in a book. She lets me kiss her and immediately starts pointing out the characters. I am trying to ignore the Mae situation, be fine with it, not care, and tell myself all of the things that people have told me to help me deal with this exact moment. An anger starts to gurgle its way up my throat and out comes the mother I hate myself for being. Me: Sophia, you want to go bye bye with mamma. Let’s go get Baba. Mae: bye bye? Me: not you, Sophia is going with mama you will go home with Hanane. Mae: clings to Hanane more tightly. Hanane: also caressing Mae’s hair, and kissing her. Me: fighting the urge to rip my daughter from her arms. Only fighting it because I know that if I do it will only end in many many tears spilled between Mae and I. Sophia: bye bye? Me: yes, let’s go get dressed. Hanane: yallah Mae, zidi a mama. Me: no, no, ma cain mushkil (no problem) Mae goes with you. Hanane: nervous laughter. Me: In the room dressing Sophia, hating myself for working and then reacting to the consequences. Mae: finds me in the hallway getting their shoes and asks me to go with them. Me: okay benti (my daughter) of course you will go with us. We are going to take hanane home and go and pick up Baba and go and play. I kneel down again to try and kiss her finally. Mae: runs away from me and grabs onto Hanane again. Me: trying not to be angry again, getting Sophia ready, dressing myself, acting like everything is fine, apologizing to the nanny for the long day, showing her the dark circles under my eyes so that she understands that I was  out working, that I really do love my kids but that I have to provide for them and I am not out partying or having coffee with friends. 

Finally we made it out, we dropped off the nanny (me profusely thanking her and insisting that the girls kiss her and say bye bye), we met their father, they played in a soft play, and we had a blast. 5 hours later, I lay on the living room floor beside my sleeping husband after just having finished a Woody Allen film and sobbed myself to sleep over Mae.

I wish I were a less selfish mother. But I am coming to understand that this is how I love. I am selfish and all consuming and I hate betrayal, I hate not being the most important. I hate the competition and eventually hate the beloved when betrayed. My mom says that my kids are NOT HERE to fulfill me emotionally. She is right, so so right. I totally agree. But I think this issue is more about the way that I love than what I need from them…anyways, this is my truth. 

The girl who landed here...

She was quite something that lady. She had been badly wounded recently enough to still let her mind wander into it's memories. She had been operated on just three weeks before. They pulled FOUR of her teeth. As the anesthesia set in and she felt all of the muscles in her body relaxing her into oblivion, the surgeon came in the room and looked her in the eyes and said, "so you are moving to morocco?" she grinned and relaxed back into the darkness. When she had awaken her mother was staring at her and crying. She was somehow already weeping. It is so strange to wake up already crying, unaware of what has been done to you. She started to remember short little memories like little flash backs from a film. She remembered asking the nurse that walked her to recovery if she could see the teeth.

As she convalesced in her mother's bed, eating chicken soup and chocolate pudding cups, she would ask her mother repeatedly what she thought about him. Her ex husband. What she would think if they got back together, what she would think if they had a family, did she think she was in love with him. She was...but she needed her mother to tell her it was OK. She needed her mother's blessing to move forward.

Her mother told her this, "When you see him, you will know. You will either be attracted, or you won't be and you will know right away".
Her mother has a way of being right about most things that concern the love a woman is capable of feeling.


So the weeks passed and the swelling in her jaw rescinded and eventually the morning came that she had to tear her tear soaked face off of her father's shoulder. She had to walk what felt like an eternity to get in the red pick-up truck he had given her where her two sisters awaited her, watching, probably bemoaning her drama.


At the airport, she sat in the same bar she had bid farewell to her older sister in, six years earlier. When that one packed up and moved away for love and to meet her destiny. She ordered a vodka martini, devoured the olive, hating herself for never being able to wait until after  the drink to eat it so that it will have soaked up the vodka. As the hazy buzz f the vodka started to set in she and her younger sister exchanged words and promises and it somehow felt hollow. Her younger sister was trying so hard not to feel it, fighting it so hard. She only knew that when she received the desperate text from her declaring her love and admiration before boarding the plane.


She landed in Paris without incident and found her way to her hotel room on the right bank where her dear childhood friend was waiting in the cafe attached to the hotel.


They set out on two days of drinking and dining and reminiscing and catching up. Those two days came swirling to an end over a leisurely Vietnamese lunch when the girl checked her ticket and realized she had miscalculated and that her plane to Casablanca was leaving in exactly two hours. She threw the napkin down, bid farewell to her friend, grabbed her suitcase, and RAN RAN RAN to the metro, managed to catch an arriving RER to the airport and run to the gate just before check-in closed.


She had a nice seat on that flight, in the front row, first off the plane.


When she arrived in Casablanca, she knew he would be waiting. She took her time to exit into the general population because her heart was beating soo fast and she was soo scared to see him. Scared she wouldn't love him, scared she would. Either way it was nerve wracking. They had been eight years separated, five years since she had seen him.


As the crowd parted and she recognized his smiling face, her mother's words RANG IN HER HEAD and her whole body became a buzz with excitement. She was too embarrassed to really look at him before they left the airport, but once the exited through the sliding doors and they were shrouded by darkness, she gave him a once over as he fumbled for his lighter and she knew she loved him so so much. She knew it could work and that was it and they were done. She knew he loved her too, she knew she was foolish for the fear she felt before exiting to meet him. She knew she knew she knew.

These are my mornings

I wake each morning sandwiched between two little souls, their mouths puckered and gulping periodically throughout the night. I pull each one to the contour of my body and take the greatest pleasure in rubbing the lines on the perfect casing for their little hearts and veins and brains and breath. In the night if one cries and the other is just fed I whisper to Youssef , “quick pull that one over, hand me this one, shh, quite, is she moved yet, hurry before the other one wakes”. We are in it together and it feels like we are robbing a parent or something like that and have to hurry quick before someone turns around or comes in a room we shouldn’t be in.
When Youssef rises for the day, he takes one with him, whichever one I just finished feeding and he changes her diaper and I hear all kinds of going and gahhing and laughing and “oh my god Carrie you have to see what she is doing” coming from the bathroom. Then he will bring the one back and take the other or if he is ahead of the clock that morning he will put the dry one in a stroller and take the other one and then take them both out of the room. This morning he left me with both, but brought coffee to make it better.

I finally crawled my way out of the mountain of blankets and pillows on our bed and found my way to my slippers, half disappeared under the edge of the bed. My legs stiff and muscles sore from yesterday’s return to working out. I stretch and slowly make my way to the kitchen to make him breakfast. I relish in doing so, to be able to do something so little but so important for him.
Because he does so very much for me.

So many dinners and lunches. So much paper work and taking care of business, his whole life seems dedicated to working for us. So I love making him his breakfast in the morning. My favorite part of doing it is when I fold the aluminum foil over the breakfast sandwich and fold two little paper napkins onto each other and put the whole thing into a nice plastic sack that we have saved from the previous evening’s baguette. I set the precious goods on the table and he finds it and takes it with him.

Each morning as I am folding the napkins, I think about two things: One- I should really write him a little love letter on one of these napkins. And Two: I wonder if he notices the extra touch of my napkin fold, I wonder if he knows it means I love you and I think you deserve a folded napkin each morning with your egg sandwich.
After that there is usually laughter and conversation and sometimes I follow him around as he is getting ready, sometimes I am already back in bed with the brats sucking away at me again, Sometimes I say good bye a the door and then over come with emotion swing the door open and yell after to him to be careful on his motor bike, to come back safe to me, to please protect our happiness. Protect himself.

Pick Up Stix

I am not a huge game player, I have always been way too competitive. I am one of those known to display behavior that ranges from flipping the board and pouting off to straight up cursing and accusations towards those I am playing with of ganging up on me. Charming, I know.

BUT, pick-up stix has always been a favorite, as it is a game of sheer skill and cunning fine motor skills. From a very young age I have enjoyed the thrill of being good at extracting the next stick without the entire pile tumbling. (I was good at operation also)

On this sunny fall morning, from my first floor view (it's actually the third story) of the park across the street and after seeing Youssef off to work, with the babies asleep, another spotted night of sleep and feeding behind us, I must say that I have the same satisfied feeling with my life as I get when I am successful at a game of pick-up sticks.

Some days, it all feels like luck and destiny and the way the world wanted things to be for me, but this morning, it feels like a choice. It feels like I was living a different life, I was a different girl that had a different job and a different address and thought different things about...now here it would be easy to say I thought differently about love and family and marriage, but that is not true. I thought differently about two things: Youssef and myself. Separately and Together.

He was always kinda there, as a concept, a memory, my first love, the guy that I resented, but wasn't mad at. The story I loved to tell, the reason my heart got broken so bad in the first place. Youssef, the crazy, the philosopher, the muslim, the cook, the accident prone, the self absorbed, the sensitive. I never once thought, that I would be reunited with him. I did not know that I could make a choice and give him another chance and that we could love again, so profoundly. I did not expect that we would make a family and that it would be the most important thing in my life.

Now this is where the second thing that I thought differently about comes in. I did not expect any of that because I thought differently about myself also. I thought I had 'been there-done that' and evolved way past it. And it's true that I had evolved past the girl (teenager) I was then and the young 20 something he was then as well. But I hadn't evolved past Morocco. I hadn't evolved past this strong tie to family and cozy palots on the floor and not drinking alcohol for weeks and not even noticing.

The woman I had turned into before I came here, was brilliant, but maybe a bit more flashy (well she definitely wasn't wearing a leaky breast milk stained tank top).
She thought she so had her shit together and that she knew exactly what she was doing and who she was and that she was not someone that anything that she wasn't already could penetrate.

8 months later, to the day, that woman is gone, I picked her up with two sticks and laid her to the side. In her place is an even more complicatedly positioned stick. But I am not afraid of trying to get at that one because I am learning to trust myself and rely on the dumb luck of physics, the way the sticks all fall to the ground and my fierce motor skills.

My Brilliant Life In Casa

Hello,
This is an embarrassingly long time to go in between posts but I promise I have good reason for it. I have been sick, sick as a dog, for oh about 13 weeks now. I'm just going to jump right in here, rip off the band aide and stuff like that. I am counting my sickness in weeks because that is how pregnant I am. Of course minus the two weeks added to conception. The funny thing about that is that two weeks before conception I was not in this country and hadn't seen the babies' (yes, plural) daddy in about 8 years!

So There you go, pregnant, in Casablanca with Youssef's babies. Twins, two of em'. What do you know? How am I you ask? Happy, elated, finally going to be a mom. Expectant, nauseous all the time, thankful.

There are certain things that I have been saying over and over again for a very long time now. Things like, I want to be a mother but i want to leave the US before that, things like I want to have children in a city where I can walk to the market everyday and don't have to drive. Things like, i want to give my children the gift of speaking more than English fluently from birth. Well, I get all of that here. Plus a husband.

He who labors for me in the kitchen on the nights when the choice is either lie still or puke. He who secures a different car for every doctor's visit because we don’t have one yet. He who tells me I am more beautiful than I have ever been. He who said, "be my companion, please". He who I loved first, always and will love last. That is certain. He who picked me up at the airport and I knew in the first minute it was still there, still that pull, the attraction, the intensity, the complexity of the way we understand one another. He who has grey hair now that sparkles in the sunlight when we meet on street corners all over this big beautiful city. After work and in between on our lunch breaks like we always did. I love the grey, the salt and pepper. I love it that I knew him and loved him and had him when he was young and strapping and full of black curly hair all over his head, and I love the refined style of his mid to late 30s and the way he carries his experiences carefully like a pail of water he is careful not to spill out so as to wet me too much. I love him all the time. He is my closest friend and he will be the father of my children and I trust him more than I have ever trusted anyone.

I feel that at the end of the day, at the end of it all, the end of the suffering and the betrayal that it was only he who originally wounded me that is forever healing me. It is a case of very good timing for us. And we are both elated. I even love it when we fight and he is passionate and he yells and I see his tender care and exaggerated sensitivity to all that exists in his world. I trod carefully in theses moments, there is a respect there that I have never had for a lover. There is a deep emotional bond that is full of respect and tenderness for him and I protect this fiercely and instinctually.

I can't imagine doing this, this two baby thing, with anyone else in the whole wide world.

It's over - The non-homage

What a long sejourne from the truth...
I have been avoiding this one people.
Hugo and I are over...for good.
I can't say I am filled with regret but this final gesture is simply to update and inform those of you that love and share my life and my updates through this medium.

~How I Feel about Paris Today~
We almost made it. It was obviously something never meant to be. We were never meant to "always have Paris". I will always have the Paris of before and afterwards. I am leaving for the beautiful city on the 13th of September. With a bruised and heavy heart I will re-evaluate, decompress and hopefully above all else heal a little there this time. Closer than ever, closer than ever.

The Basics

I often find myself trying to fool myself into seeing my life in the simplest of terms as possible. I mean to say…the good things are simple things, like bread and olive oil kind of stuff. The most entertaining things are the free things like a night of love to be shared with your closest friends and a bottle of your favorite wine. And the worst things, the things that hurt the most are also the simplest of all as well – like being lied to and excluded from things. My whole point about the basics is that I only ever understand those pleasures for what they are – after they pass. In the middle of making a beautiful cake, I never feel like I am living the most beautifully simple and domestic part of my life. In the middle of the walks I take in my neighborhood I never feel like I am “WALKING” and it is a beautiful and simple pleasure. Most of the time I manage to understand these things for what they are after they have already come to pass. In the middle of these moments everything is always more complicated and over processed. The only time things really slow down for me is on the beach and even then sometimes my idea of what I should be feeling interrupts the simple pleasure of what I am actually living. I am planning a party – a brunch if you will – for Hugo. I intend for it to be filled with the best of the simplest of pleasures. I even intend the time to be simple and non-complicated. I intend sunlight and baking and open air. I see myself wearing braided hair and a sun dress – (you see how I over think these things) but most of all – I hope to see him smiling and hopefully feeling loved and cared for by the people in his life. That is the simplest, the least complicated, the most basic gift I can give him.

My Bosnian Berry

I had this whole post prepared. poorly written, rushed, winy, hungover poetry about how much I miss Paris in the cold gray nostalgia of Atlanta. Instead of all that...I am taking this moment to pay tribute to my brilliant boyfriend. Thank You HUGO - for making me smile and keeping me real...
double luv
me

Dear Hugo,

I am not sure what to write here, so I guess I will start with thank you. Thank you for cooking dinner for me tonight and bringing my friend to have lunch with me today so I could see her one last time. Thank you for never accepting less from me than who I want to be. Thank you for being so easy to hang around and thank you for ignoring my harsh mumblings directed at you in the mornings.
I miss you desperately when you’re not here. I think you have good things in store for yourself. I love you profoundly. I believe that we are experiencing growing pains in our relationship. I believe that is normal and we will only learn to love and understand each other better from that. Look how far we’ve already come.
What makes me laugh about you and me is that we have never, not even once, just had a fight. From our very first fight we thought we were breaking up. Every fight we have ever had has had those terms. I think I understand why now and I’m going to tell you. I’m not sure about you but I’ve got a hunch it’s the same way for you too. For me – it’s not that I think it’s the end, it’s that I’m terrified it’s end. Those are the terms because it works so well and I’m so happy and amazed to have found you, that a fight means that we might loose one another. So that turns into the irrational parameter we bang our issues up against. Maybe one day, we won’t indulge this fear of loosing one another and just have an argument during which we know we will still be together.
I wish you were here with me tonight. I love the way you look and I love the way your body feels. I love how round your head is and how well I understand even you most bitter parts. I am still crazy about you, still obsessed with you. I will never forget what it felt like to run down the street after you that rainy day when you had to go home for the evening. We weren’t arguing or in a bad place at all – quite the contraire- we hugged and pressed ourselves against each other and the car. And after your car pulled out of my narrow driveway I ran down the street barefoot in the rain after your car. You drove the mustang then and I started out too late so you did not see me. You called as soon as you got home, as you often do, and I told you that I had become overwhelmed with the love and need I felt for you and that I ran after your car when you left. You nervously laughed in disbelief. I suspected you loved it.
I am just rambling on here because love letters are important and I haven’t written you enough of them lately. I am so excited about our summer. I love you so much in the summer! Our initial courtship took place in the fall and winter and I used to promise you that I was a much happier person in the summer. At almost three years together, I feel that I have had ample time to prove that to you. I love it that we play games like badminton and cards and read books and cook out and spend all of our time in the park and by the pool in the summer. This is going to be the best summer ever. I am planning on hanging out by your pool a lot so you need to go ahead and make sure that you have the key to the pool this year.
I love your house in the summer. I love the cool feel of the hardwood floors and the coffee in the morning in the sun after long impromptu dinner with your parents where we drink too much red wine and I usually end up crying, laughing inappropriately or going on a rant about a certain type of cheese or nail polish or vegetable I am obsessed with at the moment. I love it that you let me rant and show my ass and don’t really do anything but stick your tongue out at me when no one is looking. You are also very kind when you have to be the ear that receives my verbal assertion. You generally just nod and agree with me until I pass out in the yard or go face down into the couch.
So, thank you for pushing yourself in my life and letting me love you. Thank you for saying to me that time that you felt as though you were the luckiest man in the whole world because out of everyone in the world you got to pick exactly who to fall in love with. That is my favorite thing that anyone has ever said about me and I feel the exact same way about you – still and always.

Love,
me