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.

L'hamraak Garagh

This is a type of pumpkin or winter squash that is very common here. It is called in Arabic L'hamraak Garagh, which actually means pregnant pumpkin. I feel like one of those right about now! I long, however, to feel like a glass of overpriced champagne in lieu of desert after a small but satisfying meal of knife and fork eating accompanied by a bottle of red wine.

I have these shoes. They are strappy, gold, high heeled sandals and I usually wear them with this boxy, white silk dress. I bought the ensemble to wear to my dear friend's soft opening for her restaurant. These were one of the three pairs of heels I chose to make this move with me. Today as I was grunting to rub my anti-itch cream all over my swollen body and periodically yelping out in pain from having to turn half an inch to the side, the sudden image of me putting those strappy heels on made me burst out laughing. I was laughing at the pure absurdity it would be to try to shove my "shrek feet" into those strappy gold heels. Never-the-less, I want to be a woman in those heels again! I want to wear red lipstick and show off my legs and show up way over dressed for something. I want to sniff a glass of red wine and act like I know way more about it than I do.

There is a part of me that desperately misses my old bedroom (the last one I occupied before here) because I have so many memories of getting ready for evenings where I felt like that. I often contemplate how my life would have been different had I stayed in Atlanta, what kind of a woman I would have become.

I feel that my twins and this pregnancy are magic, they are my reward for having the courage to leave, not my burden. Had I stayed in Atlanta and not made this move, I wonder if I would have continued to drink away my thirties and find myself ridden hard and hung up wet in 5 years, with no magical African born twins and salt and pepper haired husband to show for it. I often think that is the case.

In this state, in this perpetual state of physical expansion and discomfort, I long to feel like that budding late twenties woman that drank and smoked and still thought that people weren't really as bad as I now know they can be.

The third trimester SUCKS

I may look like this:



but really I feel like this:




Okay there, I said it. I am suffering, big time. Here is my list of complaints:

my feet and ankles are swollen unrecognizably
I have itchy skin
I am so heavy it hurts to stand up, sit down or roll over
I can't cook or clean or prepapre anything for the babies arrival
socializing is almost too much of an effort for me at this point
I can feel myself OUTGROWING my MATERNITY CLOTHES!
I live with a constant deep and insatiable hunger
trouble breathing due to the transverse baby across the top of my chest
totally psychadelic dreams
totally bitchy attitude to the husband unit because let's face it...he did this to me
a feeling of being totally handicapped
I can't even think about bending over(or forward more than two inches)
and then some other not so pleasant pregnancy symptons that i will spare you from having to contemplate

But really truly the worst and biggest one of all of my complaints is this constant awareness that I want my babies. I am ready to hold them and love them and feed them and not sleep because they are on the outside of me. That is coupled with the keen awareness that they have to stay inside for longer and that I can't wish too hard to see them just yet. I have, at minimum, another 5 weeks to go. That will put me squarely at 37 weeks.

I always thought I would be the picture of grace and ease during pregnancy. Way more Grace Kelly than Elizabeth Taylor's Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. But honest to goodness, while there are definite sweet and beneficial times to being pregnant, it really really really can suck. People who say otherwise, I am convinced, ARE LYING. Or they had really easy pregnancies. I think the fact that I am already carrying the baby wieght (over seven pounds of baby between the two of them) of a 9 monther of a singleton pregnancy is greatly contributing to my complete and utter discomfort. I also realize that even with singleton pregnancies it can be really really challenging for the woman. I have women soemtimes tell me, oh well, you are suffering double than her or stuff like that and I don't agree with that attitude at all. In fact, it pisses me off for pregnant women everywhere! I think that each body is made differently and maybe mine is made to carry a twin pregnancy better than some women are made to carry a singleton pregnancy.

Okay, off the soap box now and done complaining, thanks I feel much better now! (not really) Going to make myself have contact with the outside world.