A Perfect Summer's Evening

Last night I took my boys to see a friend, and perhaps my favorite band in the world, Ricardo Lemvo. He plays Afro-Cuban music (he is African) and his is the happiest music I have ever heard. He himself is like a grenade of happiness and joy. He played at the Culver City City Hall courtyard. My facebook invitation said 25 people would be there.

I packed up the boys and we headed over. We could hear the music from blocks away. We parked and walked forever, Benji in his superman cape, Theo skipping, me, salsa-ing down the sidewalk. We got there and there he was, my man, dressed in linen from head to toe, all style. The place was packed. There were old people, young people, yuppies, children, mamas, dudes, people dancing in wheelchairs (I am not exaggerating!)

We went right up to the front and started dancing. I told my boys, "You are Cuban Fernandezes. You must learn to dance. You must be good. This is your music!"

Benji danced. Theo watched. I thought he was sullen, but it turned out he was enthralled--by the trombones, the trumpets, the singing, the clave. The boys finaigled two seats reserved for the state senator and his date (they didn't show) and I squatted beside them, then squirmed in myself.

I remembered dancing in Cuba, in an church old courtyard in Havana. The people were penniless and gaunt, their instruments old, but the music was unforgettable, pure. We drank dark rum from plastic cups--50 cents apiece for the tourists--then danced with old men who moved like sexy young hombres when the music started to play.

I sat there, with my boys in my lap, watching the sun set, the palm trees sway, in a front row seat reserved for a state senator, and thought, I am the luckiest person in the world.

Theo's Dream

(revealed over dinner of tortilla espanola, manchego, spinach and lemon, by candlelight)

"I had a dream, Mommy. I dreamed that Jennifer (his kindergarten teacher) took us all up in a hot air balloon. We went two at a time. First Zazi and Omeed. Then Forrest and Ondine. I was next. But then I woke up."

This following the (mostly) true story of the first hot air balloon flight in 1783 from Versailles, with a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. (that part is true!)

Dangerous Freckle: Gone!

This morning I had a small, scary misshapen freckle on my toe removed. Probably not a melanoma, probably not even a pre-melanoma, and not very big at all (sorry, no photos will be provided). Still, I had put off removal for a year. The time had come to get the thing taken off. EVen if it is the middle of the summer and all I want to do is play in the ocean every day. I am banned from swimming for at least 10 days.

Surgery was painless. The doc shaved it off and then put my floating freckle into a vial. I have to do oral And topical antibiotics for 10 days and the antibiotic may make me itch and will definitely make me burn more easily in the sun.

Toes are the slowest thing to heal because they are furthest from the heart.

10 days til I can re-enter my element.

July 4: I DID IT!

Start:



Finish:





July 4, 9:20 a.m., Coronado California, water temperature 55 degrees!!!!!

We awoke at 7:15 a.m. in our tent in my aunt and uncle's backyard, so I could run down to the beach and sign up for the Coronado Rough Water Swim. I had gone in the day before with Theo for a few boogie board rides and the water was frigid!!! My aunt instructed (via a party invitation): "Pray for Warm Water." The race the year before had been cancelled due to fog. On some level I think we were praying it would be foggy again. But it wasn't.

Instead, the water was unbelievably cold!!! The day before (when I had gone in, and thought it was cold) the water had been a balmy 61. It had dropped six degrees overnight. My aunt, the triathlete and all around tough and amazing woman, told me she was not going to do it. She told me to talk to the man who told her not to do it. He was a former Navy seal. He said his daughter had pulled him aside and told him it was dangerous, and plead with him not to swim.

I am clueless when it comes to cold water. When does hypothermia set in? How long can a person like me swim in extremely cold water? And why was I doing this? Because I was too much of a chicken to back out?

I went into the water up to my ankles and I could barely walk out of the water. It was hard to imagine willingly throwing my entire body into that for at least half an hour.

My aunt told me that the scary thing about hypothermia is that you don't realize you are getting cold. Your body just stops and your stroke slows down, and you go under.

There were lots of lifeguards (in wetsuits) around on jet skis and paddle boards. Still.

Jonathan just stood by listening, offering no opinion for or against. He knew better than to weigh in. I wondered if I was about to say good-bye to my children. But I just couldn't bail!

Then my aunt made an offer: borrow my wetsuit. She called my uncle, who picked up her swimming wetsuit, which had been specially made to fit her and flown in from New Zealand. It had Ironman printed across the chest. Cool! It was so tight that my uncle said that at the big races they have a hot blonde going around and helping men and women into the suits. It is exhausting. Not like a surfing wetsuit at all. You have to pull and tug and grab and wiggle and writhe on the ground and your hands begin to cramp from pulling it up. I only had minutes before the race was to start. But I felt like I had an armor of good luck. I was in a totemic suit, worn by my lucky Aunt Judy, and flown from afar. I would finish. She gave me an insulated cap, too.

The race guy told us to jump in before we started to acclimate or we could go into shock. So I did. And it was a shock. Even with a wet suit on.

I ran out, kissed my husband and boys good-bye in case this was the end. I was the wimp here. Many many swimmers swam au naturel. By donning a wetsuit I was taking myself out of the competition. The horn honked and we waded into the water. Not fast. Gingerly. Slowly. With dread. Pushed from behind by other swimmers filled with dread. We all walked as far as we could. The water was so cold I could not breathe. Even in a wetsuit. (Jonathan said some swimmers waded in, then turned right around and got out of the race) My feet were going numb and so was my face, my only exposed skin. I couldn't breathe normally for a quarter of a mile.

And then I was just lost in the murky, frozen water. On my own.

The swim itself wasn't hard. It was only the cold. And after a half mile I knew I would make it.

I rounded the final buoy, halfheartedly surfed a wave to shore, and ran on wobbly legs up the beach. Benji ran out and grabbed my hand and ran with me to the finish.

I did it!! My lips moved like they were still filled with novacaine, the arches of my feet were numb, but I did it I did it I did it!

The race organizers said the swim was the second coldest on record (though another swimmer said the coldest year was 2000, when "the guy died of a heart attack."

After the race other swimmers told me that Alcatraz had been 61 degrees last year! No problem!!! That's practically lukewarm!

Now all I have to do is overcome my fear of sharks through special visualization techniques!!!!

Coronado Open Water Swim

Saturday morning (the fourth of July) I will dive into the waves with hundreds of other swimmers, a number scrawled on my arm, a red bathing cap on my head, and swim around three buoys and back to shore. The swim is one mile long and I will do it with my super cool Aunt Judy, co-creator of the Iron Man Triathlon.

I am out of shape and feeling fat. But I must swim, and prepare for Alcatraz. Next week I will have a dangerous freckle removed from my toe, and be forced to stay out of the water for 10 days. So this swim is key in building my confidence, fitness and sense of challenge.

And so today, I run down to the Y to make sure I really, truly, can swim a mile in the warm, indoor,1920s pool (I did Tuesday). If I can, I figure I can get through kicking competitors, big waves, cold water and maybe some fog.

Here goes...

It's Summer

You are a girl of summer, Jonathan says.
And I think, maybe I am.

At last, tis the season of sailboats, sandcastles and sunsets.
Tis the season of turquoise waves, bubbly sea foam and searching for sand dollars.
It's the season of salty beach fires, fried oysters and fresh squeezed lemonade.

We will stay up late and read too many chapters of too many stories.
We will sit outside in the warm, scented darkness and whisper under the stars.
We will eat feasts of fried zucchini, fallanghina, and fresh tomatoes and basil, accompanied by prosecco with the finest, most delicate bubbles on earth.

Jonathan and I will hike in the mornings when the light is still soft for a displaced Celt like me, and dream of what will be.

I will paint my toes orange and pink, and the boys and I will wear our bathing suits under our clothes all day long until we find water, and eat watermelon until our stomachs bloat and we are sticky with juice and seeds. Then we will jump in the ocean to wash it off.

We will paint and draw and laze and dream.

We will ride the waves on boogie boards, on surf boards and just by ourselves, carried like sea gods to the shore.

We will be beautiful, golden, freckled, laughing, happy.

I am a girl of summer.

In Search of Motherhood. And Myself.

This blog entry is dedicated to Jessica--who always encourages me to keep writing and blogging!

I miss my blog. And i miss myself. I feel like i am disappearing. I am just going to doctors, dentists, swimming lessons, errands, and supporting various amazing friends in their creative endeavors (where have MY creative endeavors gone?)

My hubbie tells me: Let's do a career day.

This is a tradition for us. We used to go every six months, to talk about our dreams, our goals, where we were going. We would talk in the car to good music on the way to Santa Barbara. Then we would hike for two hours on the Cold Springs Trail (it survived the Tea Fire!!!!!) following every tangent and mental detour and dead end with no interruption from children, phones or life. Then we would go and eat WAAAAAY too much at Superrica, the best Mexican food in California, accompanied by a cold bottle of Negro Modelo or Bohemia. Then, fat, happy and tired, we would drive down to the beach, walk in the waves, and decide on the goals. Both of us would focus 100% on the person of the day. The day would end with some scribbling in a journal, dated and down.

We didn't share days. We each had our own.

But in the last year I have dropped out. We talk about Jonathan's career, but not mine. It is not his fault. He always asks. Tells me he is available. He is even the one who drove to find out if my favorite trail with the cold, clear pools and natural water slides had survived the fire.

It is me. The longer I go without talking about my dreams, without writing on my blog, without writing in my journal, the further underground my dreams go. They don't die. They just go under my skin, my blood vessells, deep into the marrow of my bones. They become shy things, scared of the light, where I can't talk about them anymore.

So now, when Jonathan asks, I am not ready. I feel like I have to birth those ideas all over again.

I remember growing up how my mother used to say: "I have lost myself. I don't know who I am."

I was strong, willful and alive. I thought her words were ridiculous. I vowed to never be like her.

She didn't say them with self-pity, entitlement, or anger. It was simply a truth. I think perhaps she was startled by the fact.

But now I understand. It is not that you are less, or less important. Probably I am more vitally important to more people. It is that everything about yourself becomes submerged in caring for others. In the constant crush of daily life--
I fought to be here. To be on hand for my boys. To be here to pick them up, feed them, watch them. And for my husband, too. And I know I will regenerate. But I feel like myself, my real essential self, is just going into a cave. I am calling, but she is not answering. And I miss her.

I feel like I need a vision quest. Like I need to go into the woods alone. Like I need to walk and walk and walk, carrying only my journal, a pen, my oil pastels and a plastic jug of water. I would not prepare meals or get anyone ready for bed. I would not do errands, or put small people in and out of cars or protect them from giant SUVS bearing down on me driven by angry blond women on cell phones driving too fast.

I would just be still, and stare up at the stars. I would listen, and hear the earth. I would stop, and smell the flowers, the pine-needles in the sun, the air heating up the world for summer. I would feel my soul come back to life.

Hello, soul. Are you there?