These are the times

the best of times for me. really. ever. And I am not writing it down. I am too consumed with living it. I have a twinge of regret about this every time I remember that writing makes my heart go pitter patter. But then I usually just say, oh well, whatever.

I want to write it down because I want it known, for the record, that I am happier and more grateful for the things I have in my life than ever ever before. I am grateful for the lives I have lived that have led me right here, to this busted up faded blue upholstered office chair in my in my living room.

There is a patch of dead skin, on the big toe of my left foot. well, basically, I hate it. It is so touch and I tried to get a pedicure when I was in the states and the lady said I didn't need it razored and I said oh yes I do, I haven't had a pedi in a year, you take a razor to my feet now. Well she did and then it started to crack and now it just turns the color of whatever shoes I wear, which are usually black. Point? I even love that patch of dead skin. I love and appreciate that ugly and annoying patch of dead toe skin. Because it was a part of getting me right where I am.

A mother of two very very brightly shining stars.
A wife to a very very sincere and loving man.
A professional occupying a very very sweet gig as a director...again, at 31 years old.
A driver of a very very awesome (french) station wagon.
A renter of a very very beautiful apartment which is very very centrally located.

you see here I go again with this compulsion to rattle on about all of the suffering and disgust and angst and tear jerking madness that preceded this current phase of my life. But I won't - not tonight. Tonight I will just say...thank you universe. Thank you energy that inhabits all of the world and conspires at times to torture and at times to delight us. I am happy, so happy and so blessed and it is NOT lost on me. I am not taking any of it for granted. I am thankful and humbled by it everyday. I live in constant fear that it will be taken from me. Constant anticipation of doom. But today...just tonight actually...I am enjoying it. I am saying thank you, I am exhaling and I am going to sleep with this old french proverb floating in my head.

'earthworms bury their heads in the earth so they won't fall so deeply in love with the stars'

goodnight.

World Cup 2010

I am really really enjoying this world cup, but it is with, at times, a heavy heart. The games, the nations, the excitement, the analysis of the players and the significance of the teams...It all reminds of the last world cup. How different my world was four years ago. How not a single thing is the same. I literally, sat in a bar last night with my husband, my kids at home with a sitter, having a cold draft, watching the game on a large screen while thinking, "is there any one thing the same about me?". I contemplated this for a good five minutes and decided that the only thing the same about me sitting watching that game last night and the girl that sat in bars and watched the game 4 years ago is that she has the same eyes. It was the same eyes watching the game. Some parts of my heart are the same, but many many parts are changed forever. New people and places now occupying previously empty spaces in there.

It was the first time in MONTHS we had gone out for a drink. And it would have been so much easier for me to stay home, not to insist, put my babies to bed, extract my joy in life from them and their little angel faces and smiles and sweet soft skin. But I chose to go with him, I chose to insist on he and I being alone, however inferior we are to them, for the evening. To watch a game in a bar, to have other interests, other things to share and discuss. And we had a blast - A blast. We decided to do it again, for the final.

Also, on a side note, how cool is it this world cup is all about Africa and I live in Africa? I love it, love it, love it. The games are on a VERY convenient time schedule for one thing and I feel somehow united, somehow a part of it.

Ghosts, the ghosts of my world cup past, do haunt me. It is not lost on me. Watching Spain and Serbia and knowing the other three are out there, watching, analyzing, celebrating, maybe boohooing it a little, thinking of us all, thinking of the times and the games and the memories of us all together to argue and make fun and become excited over it all...it is not lost on me. I am not separate from those memories. It is a little hard to digest at times. So I sit with it. And I watch.

And I know that the memories that fill my head four years from now, will be so excruciatingly different from these. The memories that fill my head four years from now will be of little bald headed babies that I carry from room to room, that run around this huge apartment in their walkers and that we put to sleep at half time. The memories will be of breastfeeding them one by one while watching the end of the game and then slipping out into the living room to analyze the game with him. There will be memories of me riding around on the back of his scooter, singing 'si yo fuera Maradona' and watching Maradona youtube videos and my husband filling me in on "the schools" of football, The Brazil School, the Argentina School. Each world cup I find new idols. Last time it was Zidane, this time it is Maradona,on the sidelines, slapping butts with his rosary wrapped around his fingers. (I know, welcome me to the world out from underneath my rock).

Such a wonderful, magical, precious time in our lives will be fondly remembered, I am sure, with a heavy heart and teary eyes at the next bar, over the next draft, in another four years (wherein Youssef swears that we will be watching in Brazil...and I smile, 50% because I believe him and 50% because I have heard it before, from different lips, concerning different places). Damn I love the world cup.

I miss the creativity of American Life

I probably need to read back through this website to remind myself a little bit of the things i don't miss. One thing I know for sure is that I miss the inherent creativity of life in America. I miss the possibilities to grow your own food and raise your own chickens and the art walks and the parties and sense of community. In Morocco tradition rules. You cannot even be creative about the food you serve and in what order it must be served at parties. The American in me is always trying to mix things up, try new recipes, inflict my sense of culinary adventure on potential visitors and party guests. But that is not how it works. That is scandalous. So when the girls have their first birthday party/announcing to the community that two new muslim babies have been born traditional things must happen. No venturing with recipes, none of my veggies and mole enchiladas served up. Will there be cake? Yes but it will be store bought to serve everyone from the finest patisserie so that people won't call us cheap or comment nasty things about us. The same food and the same procession of drinks - first juice, then mint tea, then sodas will be served in that order.

As a visitor to this country and a guest at one of these parties it is down right charming, the tradition, the magic, the wonderful cookies and the yummy dishes served, the traditional clothing and all of the people gathering for hours to chill out and eat without alcohol. But as a resident of this country and someone who attends these parties on a regular basis (though I do still love getting the invites) it feels downright suffocating (and tiring and expensive to do it right).

So we compromised (which is what an intercultural relationship is all about). We will have two separate parties. One for their birthday and that will be ours and we will invite friends and I will make whatever I want to make and we will celebrate making it through this year and the other for the community (and for their Dad so that his obligation to do this is fulfilled) and we will invite everyone and their mother (literally). Oh yeah and we will have to slaughter two sheep at the community thing. I don't have to watch. And they will be donated to charity, which I like. Poor people will eat good meals because my daughters were born.