Crys In The Night

Sometimes parenting is a nightmare. Scrounging up all the tolerance you can muster in the thick of the night as your little precious being hits notes in the angels octave range. She is hurting, irritated, needing you at a time when all you need is yourself cuddled in a ball in the silence of your being. I thought this would stop when she got close to 1.

In the beginning you are ready for it, know it is an endurance test, co-sleep, know that this is a temporary space and time, you also just get used to not sleeping. After a few months of sleeping through the night I was lulled into the belief that this was our new norm, that is until the rumbling volcano of my child started awaking in screams 3 nights ago and flipped my sorry idea of a good nights sleep on its rear. The thing with babies is it could be that this will become our new norm for a week then she will switch back. They are unpredictable and fickle and so deeply wonderful on this base level that one has to say, it’s worth it.

Can I admit that I am an attachment parent that lets my baby cry it out alone in her crib? That I can hold the ideals of always soothing her and the reality that I am as grumpy as a gremlin when awoken 4 times in 1 hour in the wee hours of the night? Then there’s all the theories you come up with for why she has decided to start crying this week, grandparents in town, co-sleeping while g-parents take our bed, sick for 3 days, only nursing with no solids during the illness so never full enough for a growing 11 month old body? Any one of these, and probably a combo, is the culprit, but my brain does not function on that level at 12:30am when after two feedings she decides to start wailing.

It is a test of will. I will not leave the couch where I have set up camp hoping the distance will lull her back to sleep and she will not stop crying in the other room keeping our full house including me awake. Her father comes out and cuddles onto the couch, "She needs you, you know?" He says in a muffled just awoken tone, " I know" I snap back, the 4 year old in me comes out in this moment, "she will not win this time." As if her cries are a way to make me personally break. As if my daughter was having a vengeful moment for the 6-hour date we took the day before, getting us back for having an adult day at the water park without her. Daddy just laughs at my weak argument. We both lay there listening to her scream, willing her to fall back asleep. She dies down for a moment, collecting breath? Or finally done? Collecting breath wins as she aims another blast of anger into the world.

I just saw "Where The Wild Things Are" the movie by Spike Jones and got a better understanding of the un-tame side of childhood. Children show us the raw and brutal reality of human nature and human potential. I find myself often questioning why horrid things happen in this world and can see how the unfettered behavior of a hurt child shows the thread of how extreme harm and hurt happen. In the movie, Max is dealing with his own inner demons, trying to understand the oppressive experiences that happen to him and dealing with all the emotions that are balled up inside from feeling neglected. I see an over worked single mother, a distant older sister and no friends that set Max up to act out and get in trouble. He is an intelligent and creative child that has trouble controlling his wild side. The movie is a great example of child nature. It was sad and helpful to watch as a parent. Anything that helps me to remember what it was like to be young is helpful in navigating being an ally and caring for my child. It is so hard being both the enforcer and the friend and finding when to play what role.

Her wails have reached a pattern of unhappiness that I can't contain anymore. I laugh a bitter laugh and tell daddy she has won tonight. I go and pick up my stricken child and sooth her to sleep for the 4th time that night. Rocking chair and nursing tames my little beast, hopefully this calm will stick.

Israel and Palestine part 1

I landed on the shores of the ancient holy land of Israel, on a hot August afternoon. The streets were empty, there had been a shelling near by to the city so most folks were staying home. I checked into my small hotel and went looking for dinner. Here is where I most delighted in the Middle East. One market had mangos the color of an orange and burnt red summer sunset, kissed by ripeness. The next market had all kinds of pickled vegetables; jeweled beets, onions and cucumbers suspended in heavily spiced brine of peppercorns and sesame seeds. Next to this was a falafel joint with the most delicious falafel I have ever had. Freshly dipped falafel balls sizzled in oil while the chef stuffed my homemade pita with pickled vegetables, hummus, fresh greens and tomato, drizzled in tahina sauce. I was in ecstasy over the good eating. I was also feeling the eerie quiet of a place under the repression of being a military zone. Coming from Greece, the tourist land of the islands, I really felt the intensity of Israel right off the bat.

The next day I decided to head down to Jerusalem. I came to Israel and Palestine to be in the heart of the conflict and I was feeling lonesome and ready for the next experience awaiting me in my non-violent direct action camp. On the way there I stopped by the sea for a swim. In the middle of the sandy beach 3 large watchtowers had been erected. A chance to see if the enemy was coming for a water attack? Maybe originally, but as I sat soaking up the rays I saw there true purpose. There were signs in Hebrew all over the beach and a sketched picture of a drowning victim. As the children and adults played in the water and one got out a little further from the rest, a man with a huge mega phone from within the tower would yell until the guilty person swam back to the others. First lesson in Israel, we will go to great lengths to keep our people safe.

Jerusalem is truly the center. A great pulsing heart runs the middle of the old town, where I spent most of my time. Ancient stone walls, a fortress of sorts, encircles the very fractioned districts within the city. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have a piece of this fortress and all seem to try to go about living shoulder to shoulder avoiding the eyes of the other. In the Jewish quarter I saw old men wearing fur caps walking in groups in the middle of heated debate, or perhaps just talking, hard to tell. In the Muslim quarter old ladies sold their fruit using an ancient weight and measure system, my bag of glossy grapes on one side, small metal balancing bars on the other. They would open my hand and count out the sheckles I owed them. I did not get a real chance to visit the Christian quarter but I do remember one night finding myself close to the Armenian district. A large stone wall with one small window of deep red stained glass showed me the way into this private and mostly empty district. I had just learned about the Armenian genocide and could feel the thousands of silent cries as I walked down the empty, echoing corridors of the street.

I met up with my team in Bethlehem; I had to catch a small bus called a "Service" in Jerusalem, which got me to the checkpoint into the West Bank. Check points were a huge part of this journey, being a part of the restrictive movement of this place really made me see how maddening it is not to have freedom. I was only a visitor; I can only imagine what life is like for those that have to deal with border crossings everyday to get to school or work. The tension and frustration were on high at these check points, the soldiers seemed to like what little power they held over the people crossing, making up all kinds of ridiculous reasons why someone could go or not go. I had the American passport, they only questioned my motive for going to the West Bank. I told them to see the holy land, at that point, 2001, the second Intifada had not started yet and travelers from all over were still making pilgrimages to Bethlehem.

When I arrived at The Paradise Hotel I had a cup of Arabic coffee with two of the Palestinian organizers and was shown to my room. Most of my nights in Palestine were spent at Palestinians homes, the hotel was a place for us to come together as a group and do trainings. I have been told this hotel was shelled a few years after our stay and did not exist anymore. In Palestine much felt ancient and temporary at the same time. It is a place of contradictions and a consistent state of turmoil.

The rest of the group arrived and I got to see what diversity we held. There was a small group of Israeli's, many American Palestinians, some American Muslims, Christian Palestinians living in Palestine, American and Canadian Jews, and a medley of Europeans with a larger group of Italians. We ranged in age from young adults; I was second to youngest, 20 at the time, to elders in there 60's. The average age was probably 40. We had vastly different levels of experience, backgrounds, personalities. We had all come there with one thing in common, we wanted to see change and we were willing to be on the front line of making it happen. It was so inspiring to be in that group. There were many times I questioned how I had even ended up there but I knew this was an experience of a life time so I stepped in and rode the wave.

The Czechs in Texas

Dear reader,
I promise to continue the tail from my last post and take you to Israel and Palestine. For now I am taking a brief detour from the land of memory to write about some of my people, the Czech Texans.

Heritage
parts of who I am, part of the makeup of me
I, the duplicity of being many things and only one thing
Self, reclaiming polka, reclaiming dirt under the fingernails,
reclaiming the sound of a tongue never spoken in my home.
Choosing to focus on one part of me, the me of my last name the people of my fathers father, the farmers of rural Texas and Rural Moravia, The people who chose Texas in all her glory to make their home, tell me your story

I am learning so much living in Texas. It is a heart felt experience doing the research of my immigrant people's to the United States. I love seeing small towns on the map of central Texas that have my families last name as the name of the main drag. Being an immigrant minority with a hard to say last name has not been easy. I have often wondered who my people are? What does it mean to be from the former Czechoslovakia? Also how did my people end up in Texas? I am finding out the answers to these questions and constructing a film all about it. It is so exciting being in the throws of a new and very personal project.

Today I read an account from one of the earliest settlers in Cat Spring Texas, Austin county. He talked about coming to the US to flee economic and religious persecution in Bohemia. He arrived here with all his children and started off living with friends and relatives until they saved enough to have their own farm. At this time the civil war broke out and Czechs were being forced to join the confederate army.
"Here I was fleeing my homeland, where I was a serf to the ruling German Hapsburg, and now I am being forced to defend slavery and fight to keep it in place." It is heart breaking to imagine. Many Czechs hid to not be taken into the army or opted to do manual labor in Mexico, hauling cotton. The man who write the account had a son that died doing this brutal work. I am learning how the civil war affected immigration, also about the importance of the cotton trade with Mexico to keep the confederacy economically afloat. It reminds me of the maquiladoras today where Mexicans are being badly treated and payed unfairly to produce tons of cheap clothing for people in the US.

I want my sweet pea to know about her people. I don't expect her to take the same kind of fascination with it that I have, but I want her to know where her people came from and have sensual memories of this place. That is one of the reasons we moved to Texas, to soak up this land and build our own experiences into the landscape of stories I only heard growing up. I am learning a lullaby in Czech. I have the melody and am now working on the words. This song I know my daughter will take with her. It can be her special piece in a great symphony of heritages we have blessed her with. If this is the only Czech she and I learn together I know I will have done a good job, passing on one of our native tongues.

Memories of salt and travel

The air was thick with anticipation, I read about the non-violent direct action camp on Indymedia. I had talked to the Palestinian organizer. Plans were set. I was leaving Lesbos. Lesbos the ancient Greek island ruled by Sappho and still ruled by lesbians, at least in Scala Arosos, the small beach community I had come to love for my weeks stay camping next to the sea.

I made British lezzy friends, fellow beach campers with adventurous hearts. We swam, one evening, to a small volcanic island just off shore made up of small indention's shaped like ears. we deemed ourselves prince's of the Isle of Ears and watched the sunset before heading back to shore. I stayed up one night into the early morning with Charlie trying to get on one of the fisherman's boats. They wouldn't let us on, try as we might to convince them to take a few young, wild women for there private and profound ritual of catching our lunch and dinner. I was a vegetarian at the time and would not have eaten the fish, but still liked the romantic idea of being on the boat at dawn.

My days were spent swimming in the deep teal of the calm sea, laying naked on the beach, feeling the warm sensation of sand caking my bottom. Then, run in again, for the rush of salty aliveness that only comes from being in the sea. I did not want to bath afterword. I let my hair get mated into new configurations. I wore the same sun dress for days on end and would lick my arms in the evenings, feeling the days swim coat my tongue. The salty sensual experience would continue into the night as I danced with my new Greek and Norwegian friends at the lezzy bar on the strip. Pumping our bodies to loud euro disco and drinking shots of ouzo, letting the waves of the sea send our dance moves into snaking, fluid, motion.

I found a new rhythm to traveling solo in the Greek Isles. I hitchhiked by myself, spent hours alone with my journal and my cassette player staring out into the sea, learning from her and other travelers and locals how to open myself up and how to contain all that I needed within me and my backpack. Being in such a beautiful place made me also contemplate what I wanted to do next, how I wanted to make my dent on the world. I wanted to harness the power I felt at the WTO protests in 1999 and continue finding ways to reach out and get to know people. I was searching for my next move. The plan was to meet up with my dear traveler friend in Israel. I wanted to see what was happening there with my own eyes. I knew that newspapers lied and I wanted to trust my own perspective.

In the tiny internet cafe on Lesbos I found my answer. The afternoon the plan was set a traveling party of Greek merrymakers paraded into the cafe with a boom box and a giant watermelon filled with homemade watermelon juice liquor. They filled the mouths of all the patrons with a ladle laughing and dancing in the buzzing heat of the afternoon. What a happy moment, caught in time, a sketch of what it was to be a vacationer on the Isle of Lesbos.

I set sail for Israel and Palestine the next day. I booked a 3 day ferry adventure that would lead me to Haifa a city in the north of Israel via multiple small islands including Semi and Cypress. I chose the sleeping on the deck option for the cheapest travel. I wish they had this option in the states. What could be more romantic then sleeping under the stars on a boat, waking up to buy fruit and olive oil at small markets on the tiny islands we would pause at along the journey? Well it was romantic and it was also uncomfortable, loud and sometimes very bright. I found a deserted part of the boat to sleep. On top of a metal box that held life jackets, I made my sleeping bag home for 3 nights. It was a little quieter there, a little further from the roar of the ferry engine and also away from the giant, florescent, lights, that the ship had on all night long, blocking the glow of stars.

I spent my days staring into the long stretches of deep blue and writing in my journal, similar to my beach meditations, but this time with more purpose and anticipation for the big unknown to come. I also met travelers from all over the place. A group of Germans were also going to Israel to study and become Methodist ministers. I met up with one of the women in the group later on and stayed cloistered in her abby a few nights under a pink peppercorn tree. There was a family that was Lebanese American going back to visit relatives in Lebanon. I was embarking on a journey to a new part of the ancient world. A place I had only heard stories about from my childhood. Thinking of walking around the old city in Jerusalem, walking where Jesus had walked, sent chills up my spine.

The Islands and main land of Greece showed me a window into a way of living and being in the present I had never experienced before. The heat and water got me in my skin, the time to just be with myself changed me and taught me even more self reliance and self love and care. I liked being alone. I hope to give the same amount of freedom to my daughter to explore who she is and how she fits into the web of life and this world.

On Turning 30

Thirty, sounds dirty, like thirsty, 30 years, 30 hours, more than a day. 30 minutes to myself as sweetpea does her late nap thing. 30 breaths I take in during my massage present 3 days before my 30th day of Birth.

This marks the day I came out of the womb, the doctors told my mama she had to be operated on so I was taken out of the womb and into my parents ready and excited hands. A girl, 2 boys and 1 girl, one blonde head in a family of dark brown and black. One set of arched dark eyebrows, poetic passionate dreams, deep green/blue/gray eyes that turn into half moons when I smile. The same half moons I look upon in my dad and babies eyes.

In 2 days I turn 30, I will have been on this planet, breathing this air, taking in all this information for 30 years. Now I am an adult, I will try on this label without the young attached to it. An adult, the chosen people, what we are striving to be, what we are told we should be to early on, now I am me. What next? What does life hold for me now? Will the adventures with white and gold foxgloves and deep blue Mediterranean sea continue?

I have this new unit of my very own called a family. For a very long time it seems I was solo, just me, the pure fun of deciding to have life completely on my terms. Now my choices involve another and then another. It is so sweet being braided into the inner and outer workings of two of my most favorite humans. Still I long for unbridled aloneness, the unpredictable adventures and twists and turns I get myself into when flying solo. I catch these moments now and hold them in a glass bottle like a tiny ship to examine in times of duress. I get them when I go on artist dates and write my soul out, when I take the time to go outside and listen to the birds of central Texas while my baby sleeps in the other room. I also get them while checking facebook and watching historical fiction movies on netflix while eating mint chocolate squares.

30 witching years, a time to reflect and notice some of my achievements

age 8 3rd grade, I write my first story about candy people who get stuck to their beds at night.
age 9 4th grade, I do a ton of art projects and miss a lot of school
age 10 5th grade, I win grand prize in a play writing contest after writing "The Spider Who Wanted to Find A Home." The Yale Dramat Children's theater acts out the play, my grandmother comes to see it from TX, my dad brings me a dozen roses. I am also editor of the school newsletter this year.

age 12 7th grade, Am hating school, decide to take a year off, feel like English teacher is crushing my love of writing, look into alternatives. Last day of school I take a role of caution tape and walk out the doors of institutional schools for 12 years.

age 14, Start hanging with a group of drop out/ unschoolers, make good friends, start thinking about youth lib, start talking about organizing. Help organize a teen weekend for unschoolers with new friends, really decide to stay out of school.

ages 15 & 16, Rocking the unschooler life, volunteering at the natural history museum, writing letters to all my good friends sprinkled across the North East. Regularly spending weekends in NYC, going to art shows, hanging out in parks and shops. Thinking about future dreams and travel. Start doing photography, learning from a neighbor and taking classes at the local arts center. Organize a teen weekend just for women, one of the funnest and most revolutionary experiences of my life.

age 17 Work as a nanny, my first job, save enough money to go and travel in France by myself for two months. Leave in April for Paris, inspired by Billie Holiday, a romantic from the beginning. Also fall in love. While in France decide to move to the North West, following adventure and where the person I loved lived.

age 18 Move to the North West, have my first big break up, decide to stay, get a job at a bakery, a new sweet little house with roommates. Join in the WTO Protests in Seattle 1999.

age 19 Go on a bus trip with dear friend to New Mexico, hitch hike around, camp, swim, stay in a tepee have the time of our lives. Go back to Seattle start a resource center for self educated and drop out youth.

age 20 Save up money and take friend from New Mexico trip with me to Europe for the third time in my life (first trip when I was 6 & 7 with my family) Go to Greece and work on an organic orange farm, Go to the isle of Lesbos, have a ball, decide to join a group of activist and do a 2 week nonviolent action camp in Israel and Palestine. Take ferry there, do the camp, completely life changing and very intense. Decide I am not ready to risk my personal safety for the cause but am very happy to have the experience. The rest of the trip takes me to Egypt, Italy and a road trip to Belgium. September 11th happens I decide I need to be back in the States. Fly into DC for protests against invading Afghanistan. Meet my mom on the street, tears in our eyes.


life is so raw and real, looking at all that I have managed to do I am happy to see how much I have packed in to my 30 years. I will continue the auto biography highlights in my next post. For now I notice, I am soon 30, what a life.

Ethnic Market Love and Raising a Little Foodie

There are these children's board books all about different kinds of food, they rhyme and tell a story from a kids perspective of eating that food. The pictures our photographs collaged with paper and cloth versions of the food. In short these are my favorite children's books. They inspire curiosity, our simple to understand and incredibly creative in their approach to showing the food. In "Yum Yum Dim Sum," we go to a cafe with a little girl and her father and try different kinds of dim sum, taking away the knowledge that dim sum means "a little bit of heart." These are the perfect books to welcome a healthy curiosity in my daughter about the wonders of eating all different kinds of foods.

A habit and happy adventure for me and daddy is to find the little off the beaten path restaurants and markets to make and eat delicious food. When we walked around our neighborhood in Olympia, I would often wish for a chance to happen upon a small grocer, or little house selling homemade goodies for cheap. Now that we are in Austin this dream has come true. Daddy called me from the road a few Saturdays ago saying he had found the coolest market yet. "I am buying ingredients for bubble tea" he told me delightedly, and " I just saw a mound of Chorizo shaped into a hogs head." I was jealous he had gone without me and also excited for the adventure to come in the not so distant future. I watch Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" and learn about a food cart in Austin that makes farm to market, fresh, in season meals each week and another cart that makes gourmet doughnuts the size of frisbees. Our next foodie adventure is set.

Sweet pea has always liked adventures, like her parents some fresh perspective and cool things to sensually experience has always been a great way to get her attention in the present. Ethnic markets and restaurants feel like travel. We don't have to go far away from home to get a similar sensual hit of being in a new place. The people that run the markets and restaurants are trying out their culture on new soil. Making the foods of a place available to its immigrants is a great way to keep cultural tradition in a new place.

My mother, the Southern born Yankee, would often make us her family recipes for dinner, homemade mac and cheese, oven fried chicken, cornbread and black eyed peas. The South was a part of us even though we grew up around the knee highs and sugar maples of the Northeast.

It seems that Sweet pea will grow up with the mix mash food her parents subject her to, but she will have the original versions of those foods as well as our homemade versions. She will have her Teba's corn bread, her Cece's meatloaf, her parents favorite Indian restaurant and some Seattle, via China, dim sum.

The books that inspire childhood foodies:
"Yum Yum Dim Sum" By Amy Wilson Singer part of the "World Snacks" series, check all the books of this series out.
"Bee-Bim Bop" By Linda Sue Park and Ho Baek Lee, a great rhyming story about a Korean dish with a recipe in the back.

Stars above roots below, some thoughts on faith Part 1

Places of Worship:

Oh how I have loved ritual all throughout my life. It started with Catholic church, the smell of frankincense, the texture of popping the air bubbles on the laminated covers of my catacism books, wearing the heavy red robes with the big white collars to choir practice, then the sound of sweet bells ringing as a dozen little voices harmonized.

The most vivid ritual of my early childhood I remember was my first holy communion. As a tiny infant I had been cleared of sin via my baptism, now I was to marry Christ along with all my other class mates.I remember doing lots of practicing and memorizing for the big days events. I remember my mom having me wear her wedding veil and an embroidered white dress. I remember holding a rose up to a statue of Mary and bowing before her in reverence.

I remember doing the stations of the cross for the first time, rolling my rosary in my hands and praying over each step Christ took, supposedly for our sins, towards the fateful cross he would be hung from then left to die. It was gruesome and intriguing and raised a lot of questions in my head, like what does this have to do with me? It was clearly important for all the adults that I learn this stuff and apply it to my every day actions, so I did, we all did as little believers trying to be good.

When I go into a church I want it to be beautiful, I want it to set the scene for prayer and contemplation. I want to feel that sense of elation, not from the words the person speaks from the pulpit but from the space its self, feeling God in every corner. When God's presence is clear to me I can then blissfully engage with divinity, see it as a part of me, feel a part of something greater then myself, feel as one.

When I first walked into a Unitarian church I did not feel this. the space was clean, open and empty, nothing fun to look at other then the pretty windows behind the pulpit where the forevergreens of the northwest always sat in quiet contentment. The sermon was quiet alive though, I felt like I could actually listen to the words and have it make sense, perhaps even apply it to my life. this was not something I had experienced in my adult hood in any church. The songs we sang were full of hope and ideas, some even re-written to have liberating lyrics as opposed to the ancient hymns of my youth. I felt lost without the repetition and ritual of Catholic mass but also elated at this new idea of worship.

My partner and I have sense gone to many Unitarian services, some exciting and new, others holding a similar dullness to the eulogies of my youth, except without all the fancy fanfare of the Catholic church. We started going to the church in Austin hoping to have some spiritual community and considering it a possible base for Sweet pea to have in her life. The church its self is going through some major transitions with a new minister coming in so it seems like a good time to add our new energy to the mix.

Last week daddy took sweet pea out of the chapel to take a nap and left me alone in the pew, well relatively considering every aisle was packed with folks. This time I got a chance to just be present with my surroundings, instead of the constant tug of attention that is a mother with her toddler in a new place. I got to breath it all in, notice the little ways the Unitarians have figured out how to make sacred space. My favorite was a wall of candles next to windows overlooking a live oak. Also the choir with its immaculate operatic voices echoing through the space.

There is a pause in the chatter of the minister to have a silent meditation and get up and light a candle if you wish. I got up and lit a little blue one that called out to me, I then walked back to my seat with my hands folded and started fervently praying. I prayed for myself and my family and all the people I know. I then prayed for all the animals, and all the people of our world and for protection from climate change and ideas for how to make it less hard. The prayers poured out of me like a sudden gush, I was feeling it, the divine spirit, the right mix of silence, alone-ness surrounded by people, and that ache of love in my heart.

Daddy eventually came back with the sweet pea strapped to his chest asleep, we held hands for the rest of the service. I had finally found my base in this chosen church.