December Days

Well I'm back. I haven't written in a while because I didn't want to always be a whining mess of indecision and strife so I took a small break. Alot has happened in that time. I went to America and back. My grandmother died. We decided to move back into the city and found a place and started packing. Then we changed our minds and unpacked. (apparently we are having a hard time leaving this place)

The part about my grandmother dying deserves more attention. The week that I went home to see her ended up being the last week of her life and I ended up with the shared and tragic honor of caring for along with my sister. What a thing to do. I sang her songs that she taught me to sing to my kids and washed her hair and held her hands and kissed her head and told her I loved her a million times. She told me details of her life so that I might write it one day. The details of what we all experienced are coming back to me one at a time in a fog and as hard as it is to go through this, it would be a lot harder if I hadn't gone. A lot harder. So I am grateful for it. Everyone back here has been so kind and caring and supportive of me. Inviting me to eat and calling me and extending their condolences. I love that about the culture in Morocco. Death and birth and marriage are such big deals. But then again I think people make big deals out of it also in the states and that maybe it is just part of being an adult.

The girls had to suffer through a week of their mom being gone and then a week of their dad being gone and now we are all back together and I am so grateful and happy for it. They are happy for it as well. It will be many many years before they will understand just how special their Gigi was. Everyone knows that when you loose your grandmother it is horrible but there is a significant amount of people on this earth that had the pleasure to know my grandmother that are currently mourning her loss through playing her favorite songs and videos of her singing, remembering her favorite sayings and celebrating her life through the tears cried from the news of her death. Those people are located on three continents (that I know of) and divided into many states. She would get such a kick out of that.

Right now it has been less than a week since she passed but before we know it it will be more than a year and then many years (hopefully) and then I will be staring at my own inevitable fate as well. That did not escape me. But I think this experience was the first one for me in terms of  accepting death. Being even maybe comfortable with it. Seeing that even when it is a horrible viscous cancer like leukemia that shows up and erases you from the inside out and you can cease to exist in two weeks flat, that even then...it's ok. You can go with love and if you're lucky you can whisper the sweetest most special things in the ears of the people you love.



I am going to try to get better at writing more often on here.

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. 

Medical Leave

I have been on sick leave for the past two weeks and have so so much to write about. I was supposed to write it all down as it was happening but I became so entangled in the daily drama of running a home, being a mother to two toddlers, reacquainting myself with higher education as a student, remembering and finding out all of the millions of details that equal everything that happens in life between 7AM and 5PM Monday through Friday. I was also busy reaffirming that I could not work from home, that I want the girls in school, that I also want to home school them, that I want to move back to Casa that I want to stay here in this little village...see where this is going. I found myself and almost "done lost my damned mind" in the process. Or actually maybe that should be the other way around...

also...I found snow in Morocco. More on all of this soon. I promise.