I think if a person writes a long post about faith on the upswing, it’s only fair to write a post about faith on the downswing. So.
Life stays messy, and part of faith is acknowledging the mess and then taking some deep breaths and moving forward in the decision to remain content instead of living in the feeling of discontent. I will now take this opportunity to step away from the “we” and reclaim the “I”, since J has no idea what I’m about to write and may or may not endorse these feelings as his own. Probably not, because it involves sitting in the Lowe’s parking lot on the day after Mother’s Day with a six pack of Dunkin Donut holes (I said holes, babe! Not entire donuts!) and a kid-size cup of caffeinated coffee. In moments of high stress, I like to place as few demands on myself as possible, which means eating whatever I want and watching back-to-back DVR episodes of Revenge or something. Let’s get crazy.
The day after Mother’s Day, I continued to be not knocked up despite our prayers and hopes, and also that tiny little piece of us that clings to the could instead of the is. Denial or Optimism? Who knows. Either way, it should not be shocking, but somehow each time it still is. And each time this happens, I find myself telling myself: Fine. You don’t care about me? I don’t care about you. Especially you, adrenals, which I have been so diligently protecting since last fall. About every 4 weeks, I feed them donuts and caffeine. And also, Tangeray and tonic and some of those tiny cookies from Whole Foods by the handful. Then I feel very sorry and tell myself I didn’t mean it. I buy myself annuals from Lowes and reschedule an appointment or two to get my shiz together, plant some flowers, water the yard, drink my kid-size caffeinated coffee, do some abdominal breathing, and take some walks. I confess everything to J that very night during the middle of some sentence about how I feel so fat, and he doesn’t judge. He says: Yeah. Sometimes it’s okay to do those things. I browse through some Prayers for a Privileged People to recalibrate my perspective (I am privileged. You are privileged.) and some tequila Anne Lamott to take the edge off. Then, eventually, I drag myself back to the salad train and resume normal life.
This process ranges anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days.
Sometimes a Dill Weed incident happens. You know things are bad when someone in the house opens the pantry door, and the Dill Weed falls out and shatters, and that person makes a joke about Dill Weed and laughs, and then you explode, like, 8 minutes later to the Dill Weed person, because your computer died and you blame it on the Dill Weed spill. Displacement much? In our house, we now call each other Dill Weed. We also apologize to guests for our lack of screens on their windows and make references to buying children instead of screens. We would very much like screens, but we have to purchase a child first.
The point to all this is that: a) coffee and donut moments exist even when you know that you know that you know God is good. It’s okay. Just try not to get stuck there; and b) God sometimes moonlights as a DJ. When I was sitting in the car at Lowe’s that Monday morning with my mini-coffee and my 6 holes, nurturing the disappointment in a way I can only do all by myself, because all by myself is the only place I’m comfortable grieving something that never was, God sent another song to me on the radio. I’ve heard this song a thousand million times, but it especially mattered that morning, and filled up all those tiny holes inside the coffee and Dunkin were pouring through:
He is jealous for me Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me. Oh, how He loves us so Oh, how He loves us How He loves us so.
So we are His portion and He is our prize, Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes If grace is an ocean we’re all sinking So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way That he loves us, Oh, how He loves us Oh, how He loves us Oh, how He loves
I’m not real sure how to wrap this up except to say that this part happened: my afflictions were eclipsed by glory, and I remembered the purpose of my life is actually just to love God. That I am his portion (I exist for the glory of God) and He is my prize (not a child, or a job, or passing the LCSW exam, or living in BZ, or even J). He is jealous of how much I want something else.
It carries me to the next place God will meet me, because He always does show up.
Hi, it’s me again. I had to take a little internet break, because I almost came back to disclaim everything. Pride has a way of making you want to shout: WE ARE OKAY! EVERYTHING IS FINE! even though you let your own self out of the closet. But then J reminded me: this experience has drawn us closer to God, demonstrated our frailty, and humbled us. Sometimes those things feel uncomfortable, and part of humility is being okay with people feeling sorrow on your behalf.
(But seriously, we are okay.)
To everyone who reached out earlier in the week: Thank you! Our phones and inboxes were filled with messages from friends and family offering support and love. Some of these messages were from right down the street, people we see weekly. Others were from old friends we haven’t spoken to in 15 years in other states and countries. Many are walking the same journey at this exact moment. To quote Kim again (she’s good at this, obv) (oh, and it’s her birthday- Happy Birthday, K!):
However you’ve come to join this community—infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, interrupted adoption, or other form of desire unfulfilled, may I offer you a very sorrowful welcome? What I’d really like to do is come over to your house, wrap you up in the coziest blanket you own, pour you an inappropriately large glass of wine (if wine isn’t your thing, please have mercy on us both and substitute “hot tea” wherever I mention it), and just sit.
Yes, that.
To those who are walking alongside us: chin up! This isn’t the end of our story. We are not without hope, and nothing is final. We will not likely ever accept this as a permanent condition, just a working disease. But I know that down the road when/if we become parents by whatever means we’re able, I’ll likely have thrown the journey aside for the prize, and God’s work is evident in the journey, whatever the outcome. If we’re never able to become any kind of parent in any way, or if 3 weeks from now, you find me rolling on the floor eating a sleeve of Oreos, you’ll be able to point me back on track with my own words. At least it’s documented.
God has protected our hearts, and save for just a few of moments of despair, we are hopeful. While content in this circumstance, we don’t accept these immature eggs as the end of our story, nor as a definition of who we are. Right? Right.
A couple of months ago, my mom posted this status. If you don’t have a funny brother, go out and get yourself one:
What are some ways YOU guard your heart? “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. (Proverbs 4:23 NLT)
Bryan Wilson Flak-Vest with kevlar plates in them………and my Jesus Chain
Brooke Hartman I usually just check the weather radar and stock up on water and canned goods. Sometimes I sit on my heart’s porch with a shotgun, though.
Bryan Wilson You mean, you haven’t heard of the Heartometer 3000….ADT sells them in a package deal with your home alarm system..It comes with a little heart pendant to wear on your shirt to let people know you are “protected”.
Trisha McInnis Sellers You guys are brats and you’re probably going to hell for making fun of your mother
Bryan Wilson You should have picked up the Heartometer 3000 or invested in a vest…you might not have been offended by this!!
Brooke Hartman I only got the head n’ limb package. It was cheaper. Plus it comes with a little leg pendant, which was cuter than the heart
Brooke Hartman Mom, obviously your heart is exposed. Guard that thing!
Bryan Wilson Brooke, can you check your warranty paperwork…I think it also cover “not going to hell”….but I’m not sure???
Brooke Hartman My agent is Jesus. I’ll just ask him. He said yes. Policy is good for life. And death. Boom.
Bryan Wilson Mom….we can save you 15% or more on heart protection…Just make the switch – it’s so easy a Brandon Wilson can do it!
Bethany Sprinkle I’ve been thinking about switching my heart protection for some time now… is there a website I can look at before I make my decision?
Bryan Wilson Well first you must decide what’s right for you……don’t just protect your heart from those close to you…extend the coverage to that random mean guy on the subway, or rude waitress at the restaurant…My mom can tell you how quickly she found herself vulnerable, without coverage and her status was bombarded with lighthearted ridicule….Serious stuff
So here we are: piled under flak vests with kevlar plates, Bry’s Jesus chain, a shotgun on my heart’s porch, the Heartometer 3000, warm cozy blankets and large glasses of wine, and cross-country hopes and prayers from friends and family. J and I are wrapped in love, hope, and a pretty solid dose of laughter.
In some supernatural way, God has made us glad. Thanks, God. Thanks, friends.
The appropriateness of sharing with the entire Internet news about things like babies, or lack thereof, is unclear. For a minute (well, for 14 months) we have cocooned ourselves in a comforting and necessary privacy to navigate this strange experience together- the experience of not being pregnant. But in my own heart, which knows no interpersonal boundaries, which shares anything and everything with most everyone, a strange combination of fear/denial/uncertainty kept taking my words away. Taking my words away. This never happens! There are 190 posts over a span of 4 years on this blog. Part of the problem is that things like infertility aren’t so funny. I have a blackbelt in crafting hilarity out of awful and/or inappropriate things. Except this one time.
Then an old friend went and posted her journey in a space where I (on the comfort of my own porch swing) sat straight up and yelled inside my head, ME TOO! Not just the part about grief and sadness, but the part about overwhelming blessings and God’s presence in the middle of an awful experience. In my head I thought: GOD HAS SUSTAINED US! I HAVE TO TELL HER!
Which brings me to my own space: God has sustained us. I have to tell you.
After several rounds of blood draws, a laparoscopy, surgery to remove endo, an HSG (pray this procedure never happens to you), and several hours/days in a Reproductive Endocrinologist office, here is the punchline: I do not make mature eggs (yes, I will be using grown-up words like “ovary” and “egg”). I imagine my ovaries like that Cheeze-It commercial: A guy with a clipboard is evaluating the maturity of my eggs, who are just hanging around throwing paper airplanes and telling knock-knock jokes.
(Get it together, eggs!)
Throughout this process, we have experienced bottom of the barrel questions and thoughts that can be summed up nicely by my pal Anne Lamott: I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish (Bird by Bird). Here is an example: Why do some people have to pay $2k for a baby, and other people get to have one for free?
We have crumpled in shame immediately after those thoughts, because we have more blessings than we could ever list. If our lives remained exactly as they are today for the rest of our time on earth, we would be happy and thankful.
In those exact same moments, we have lived within the peacefulness and certainty of the answers to these questions: Are we enough for each other? Is God enough for each of us? Yes. And Yes. If He asks this of us, do we trust God to do something meaningful with our lives that doesn’t include a house in Carmel with a couple of kids? Would we be able to live with joy and purpose? Yes. And Yes.
Do you believe both the questions and the certainty of the answers can happen simultaneously? I do. I think that’s what makes it faith.
In the same vein, we have sincerely and wholeheartedly celebrated new birth and pregnancies of at least 4 friends within this period of time. Do you believe God can split a heart in half in such a way it’s able to feel such sorrow in its own loss, and such excitement in someone else’s joy? He can. He can do anything.
We have been 90% calm and confident in God’s goodness in our lives (J) and 10% loony and fit-throwy (Me). We have grief-eaten popcorn in bed and grief-watched International House Hunters and/or The Office for several hours on at least one occasion. J might deny this.
I have taken daily hour-long walks with Sara Groves on the iPod, creating a time and space for God to walk with me. Ask how many years its been since I carved out a time and space to be with God. Not to pray or ask or serve or showcase: but to exist with him in an unfilled space. A deep, peaceful breath began to flow through me during those walks. Don’t mistake this for resolved feelings, or unshed tears- the mention of this circumstance will bring up an emotional reaction in 10 seconds flat. But within 2 days, smiles returned, unexplained joy and gratitude filled us up, and life moved forward.
I have practiced yoga, and during my hour-long class, found myself commenting to God how amazing the body is, instead of how defective it is. How spectacular the circulatory system is, and the digestive system, and the liver. The miracle, I have realized—the exception, not the rule—is that we are alive. That our skin comes together and holds everything in. That our blood flows and our hearts beat. That we breathe in and out and are given a certain number of days to complete a certain task in the world, and that we think somehow our lives belong to us. We are created, and we exist so long as our creator continues to breathe life into our pile of bones and skin and muscle. Each time we breathe in and out, we are experiencing a tremendous, fantastic, unbelievable miracle. I believe that’s called worship. Worship in my yoga practice.
We have eaten the required amounts of fruits and vegetables (almost) every single day for 4 months. We have replaced coffee with tea. We have limited red meat, sugar and dairy. In February, after an entire Fall season of immune issues and blood draws, my doctor asked, “Do you eat fruits and vegetables?” I said, “No. As a matter of fact, I eat cookies and bread and lots of cheese.” She prescribed me several vitamins, a probiotic, and a regimen of fruits and vegetables. Would you believe I fed my body cookies and bread and cheese for 31 years, and then got mad at it for not functioning with precision? If body were not connected to brain, it would have punched me in the face. Would you believe I asked God why my body isn’t working properly while eating a chocolate torte for breakfast? For 4 months, I have made salad jars on Sunday nights to eat throughout the week for lunch. Each morning I make a fruit smoothie with greens in it. Rest assured that even if I choose to eat Snickers for the entire rest of the day past 1pm, I will have already consumed my minimal daily required amounts of vitamins and minerals, and can now answer the previous question with a little bit of self-respect: Yes, I eat fruits and vegetables. I had never before taken the time or energy to feed myself adequately.
We have regained control of our budget. This is important because we never really knew we lost control until we needed something. Poor planning, a tiny bit of greed and self-indulgence, and some unavoidable life events (don’t wait 5 years to go to the dentist) forced us to re-evaluate our habits and values.
Those are the things we have done. Here are the things God has done.
First off, He didn’t drink gin straight out of the cat dish. He put his arm around me in my car when I was thinking those awful thoughts about how life couldn’t get any worse, and sent this song to me on the radio, demonstrating that God even provides words for the prayer when you can’t think of any (skip the ad):
He did hold on to me. He didn’t let me lose my way. And He may have broken my iPhone, too, I’m not sure. My iPhone shattered that day, and it pushed me to the cusp of sanity.
I called J on my shattered screen, and before I could say anything negative, the sound of his voice offered truth and perspective in these things:
For unknown reasons except grace and goodness, God has given me Jeff: a wholly undeserved shower of God’s own love, faithfulness, creativity, humor and compassion on a daily basis. A person somewhere is longing for this. For unknown and undeserved reasons, we are cared for by others. A person somewhere cannot identify one single support person in his or her life. For unknown and undeserved reasons, we live in a privileged place. A person right this very second is standing in a refugee camp somewhere waiting to live to any place. For no reason but the grace of God, we have too much food. Somebody very close to me is hungry right now. We have joy in our lives, not fear. A person right now is living in fear of bombs, or dictators, or ownership. And for unknown reasons but our privileged lot in life, we have one viable medical option, and while the money appears to be a significant setback, we are able to budget. Someone right now doesn’t have a single dime to his or her name, nor do they live in a place that offers a “Reproductive Endocrinologist”. For someone right now, even three months of injections with a 25% success rate isn’t an option. Lord, have mercy. Our cups runneth over.
God brought to the surface things in our lives that needed healing: our health, our diet, our finances, our faith, although all seemed fine before this crisis. And God has provided us with the warmest community of support and compassion in women/couples who “understand this most intimate pain” (Kim’s words) before we even had to ask for it.
The awareness of God in our lives, our communication with and total reliance on Him, our awareness of our lifestyle in regards to the foods we’re eating and the money we spend on things, and our thankfulness for other gifts- like eachother- have increased dramatically.
I heard a quote at the Global Leadership Conference last year about a missionary guy who was fleeing for his life due to the practice of his faith. When someone from the US told him we would be praying for him, the missionary said to the US guy: “WE will be praying for YOU! I hear there are people in America who can go an entire day without praying because they have found a way to be sufficient without God.”
I do not lie when I say this: I prayed that day God would make me more reliant on Him. I felt like a pansy over here, forgetting about God because I was accidentally meeting my own needs. And then we saw the Endocrinologist who said, Welp. You don’t make mature eggs, sorry.
I can’t fix my own eggs, obviously. And I don’t think God ordained my eggs to be immature. In fact, I belive God sits next to me on the porch swing with more empathy than I could fathom, heartbroken over the disaster his earth and population and creation have become. There are lots of things that can be traced back to the exact moment they went awry- BPA, antibiotics and hormones in chickens, melanoma. And there are lots of things that just don’t make any sense.
I don’t understand the theology of infertility, not even a little. But I don’t think God creates disorder. He creates perfect things, and the depravity of human nature disrupts them. This is not the way He designed it. And I just read in Crazy Love (Francis Chan) that God has as much right to ask us- Why are your bodies defective? Why are my people starving? Why is there cancer? As we have to ask him- Why is my body defective? Why are people starving? Why is there cancer? Humans create disorder, and God doesn’t always save us from it. I don’t know why. But what God promises is that He will use the disorder to draw us closer, and to make something beautiful out of what darkness tried to steal.
In a tiny whisper, I tell you: I am content in this circumstance.
In effort to feed myself more appropriately this week, I made a bunch of salads in jars. The purpose was to grab one in the morning and eat it for lunch while out and about. This, after almost killing myself by donut last week. Turns out, donuts act all nice to your face, but they (along with 5-minute-cake-in-a-mug, hundred calorie snacks when eaten in multiples of 3, chocolate cereal- because people who eat chocolate for breakfast are the same people who finish off the whole box at midnight, cheese, and almost every type of bread) don’t actually care about you. Salad cares about you.
Here is my salad-in-a-jar review: The salad was good all 4 days. Days 2 & 3 were best, and nothing ever got soggy. By day 4, I was tired of salad. I don’t recommend eating the salad directly out of the jar, because you will end up with quinoa all over your coat. Also, your grandma might say you won’t find a husband because your salad bites will be humungous, with no space to cut the leaves. I recommend pouring the jar into a bowl to eat. Also, don’t stuff the jars full. I had to eat half the spinach before I could shake the jars. But if you leave room at the top, everything shakes together perfectly. I would not make the exact same salad every day. Boring. Next time I will alternate types of salads. And that concludes my salad-in-a-jar-review.
Bonus info: Next time on Tuesday, I won’t supplement the salad with a bunch of other high-calorie snacks before and after, like English muffin and yogurt and scoops of peanut butter and cake-in-a-mug and cosmopolitans. (What? It was paperwork day). All those other things defeat the purpose. My conclusion: salads in a jar work if I am driving and there is nothing else within reach. Although that exact circumstance makes eating salad out of a jar difficult…
The unfortunate byproduct of salad-in-a-jar is that you will be tempted to buy a dozen mason jars and find yourself stuffing all kinds of shit into jars, then pinning them to your pinterest boards. Like oatmeal and Muesli. Or fruit. Or pre-made easy cake mix. Self: just because something was made in a jar, doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
I am sick, and I am confused. Today I sound like a man, and my coworkers collectively canceled my sessions and sent me home after sequestering me in a tiny corner of the room during a meeting. I have tried every combination of allergy medication, alka-seltzer, over-the-counter cold & sinus meds, saline spray, nasal spray, expectorant, and finally, the neti pot. I remembered after I used the neti pot this afternoon, there were reports of death by brain-eating amoeba last month in Louisiana after neti pot use- as if warm salty liquid going in one nostril and out the other isn’t bad enough. I’m not sure if death by brain-eating amoeba is better or worse than death by donut. So I put the mix in a jar first, just to be sure, and pinned it to my board. I think that makes it trendy, quick and healthy, yes?
MD appointment tomorrow to get to the bottom of this mess.
About 3 months ago (wrong! That should tell you how long I’ve been writing this post- it’s now been 8 months!), I stopped working full-time in the ER* and shifted to supplemental coverage in order to do outpatient therapy. Also, it was because I hated overnights and holidays and weekends, which turns out to be what life is like in an Emergency Department. But I like the work, and it keeps my disaster mental health skills sharp. So now, a very small (read: balanced) portion of my professional life is spent in the ER.
*You thought I was only part-time? Me too, but we were critically understaffed for my entire ER career and worked things like 96 hours in a pay period for a number of months.
Now my professional life is a buffet of mental health services, constructed at the whim of a kid. Imagine one of those magicians who whips up a giant castle out of cards in 3 seconds flat, then stands aside and flashes a smile. Pling! (that was the sparkle in the smile). That’s me. With mental health cards. Most afternoons.
Indiana (and 10 other states) have this strange little grant designed to keep kids out of psych facilities. The grant allows a team of providers to be selected at random from a pick-list, and then interviewed by the family and chosen based on professional qualifications like “Is she younger than 30?” or “Does she like Selena Gomez?” or “How many pets does she have?”. The real confusing part cherry on top is, the kid who’s picking you is, like, bipolar. So it sort of depends on how everyone is feeling that day.
On some of these teams, I’m interviewing to provide Emotional Habilitation, like coping skills, or Rec Therapy. On other teams I’m interviewing to provide Clinical Consultative therapy to the family and team members, like behavior plans. I look good on paper for the adults, and I wear glitter nail polish for the kids. That’s my strategy.
My first interview last April was in the bag. I put on my sparkly-est silver nail polish and graphic T, and knocked on the door with a smile. 15-year-olds generally love me. Interviews are sometimes a formality anyway- many times a family will pick only you off the list, interview you, and then select you. Other times, they interview multiple providers, and the case manager calls you later with the yay or nay. I knew I was interviewing against 2 other providers for the Hab role, I just didn’t know I’d be interviewing with them at the same time. A panel interview scripted and moderated by a 15 year old:
Kid: What kinds of things do you like to do?
Me: Eat candy and ice cream. Buy gifts for kids. Have pizza parties. Just kidding. Take walks, be outside, photography, play basketball…
Client: you play basketball?
Me: Yes! Do you like basketball? I can teach you to play. I also like to swim…(score!)
Client: Swimming?! I love swimming! Do you go to that one park?
Me: Yes, I love going to that one park. (score!)
Client, to second panelist: do you play sports?
Second panelist drops her head: No, I mean, not officially. I was kind of one of those people who played, like every sport, but wasn’t good at one specific sport (defeated!)
Client, to second panelist: do you have any pets? I love animals. I want to be a vet.
Second panelist: Yes! I love animals too! I have a service learning and therapy dog. You could go with us to volunteer at different places.
Pause.
Client turns to me: Do you have a therapy dog?
Me: stupid. stupid. stupid. Why didn’t why buy a dog? Should I say we have one? We almost have a Yorkie. Is that the same as actually having one? “No, we really want to buy a little Yorkie. But I just love therapy dogs.”
Client, to second panelist (as they walk off in the sunset holding hands): So what all can we do with your service learning dog?
Like I can compete with a service learning dog?!
Lucky for me, Radio Disney is pre-set in my car and saved me during the next interview, in which I was asked to perform Selena Gomez “Who says?” on command. It happens that I know the words. She gave her mom the thumbs up, interview over. I’m in.
But that’s just the preliminary process, because unlike sales, once a client selects me as a provider (or, for DCS contracts and outpatient clients, once they’re assigned to me: cold calls)- they have to actually spend time with me. Learning mental health skills. Like, for 1-2 hours at a time, multiple times per week. This means every week, I have to re-pitch the idea that mental health is important, that positive coping and anger management, or appropriate parenting and healthy relationships, or completion of ADLs and positive self-talk, or not biting your autistic sister, or becoming sober, are all worthwhile things to invest time in. And I have to make it fun! Here comes the tap dancing, because if they don’t meet with me, I don’t get paid.
So, you might see me traipsing around town with a gallon bag of 85 mini play-dos. I may have pixie sticks hanging out of my pocket. Essentially, I’ll be traveling across several counties, knocking on people’s doors saying: You need this. And in my brief case (messenger bag) will be emotions identification and social coping activities between harmless coloring pages and little packets of goldfish grahms. I’ll sit down and spend a good chunk of the hour building a relationship. And then I’ll move in for the ask: So, it seems like you could sort of feel your anger signs coming yesterday. Should we write them down, so you know what your triggers are for next time? Yeah! Let’s write them down. With markers. And stickers. Score.
Or, for my adult clients: So, it seems like a budget would be helpful. Do you want to complete a budget? And they look at me like, yeah! Yeah, let’s do a budget. And I’m like, Oh look, I just happen to have one right here in my folder. Score.
The real hard ones go like this: I know you’re going to hate this, but you signed this goal sheet that says we’ll talk about such-and-such trauma. They (the state) will not let you out of your contract (give you back your kids) until we somehow work through this…
Or: I know this is the worst, but remember when you signed that sheet of paper saying you understood the limits of confidentiality, and how one of the exceptions to confidentiality is if you told me someone was hurting you, or that you felt like hurting yourself? (Each, weekly occurrences). I have to tell someone. But you can sit right here next to me while I do it, and you can hear everything I disclose to: (CPS) (The Stress Center) (Custodial Parent)…
There are moments and entire days when I feel like an asshole- not like that one time I played hangman with a suicidal 7th grader on the first day of my internship in NOLA. No, not like that. But close.
My saving grace: there hasn’t been one person- not even the chick who was terminated for discontinued use of heroin, or the chick whose kid was removed because her partner fractured the kid’s skull, or the kid who got checked into the stress center against her will, or the dad who got arrested due to neglect of the kid who got checked into the stress center- every single person contacted me later: “You were the only one who treated me like a real person, Brooke. I mean, I know I got problems, but you were always cool. Thanks.” You can’t fake caring about a person. You either care, or you don’t. Rule 1 in helping profession grad school.
So, I might pull out of the driveway in the morning and yell to Jeff- I have a big account to nail today! (Translation- I’m interviewing with a client who has 18 hours per month! or I’m seeing this chick who no-showed me twice last week!) And when I get home, I sit in the car and evaluate my day like: well, I closed that one. That one needs a follow-up. Or usually: What’s my competition here? After-school activities? Heroin. Daggers.
But in the end, it matters, I think. And I’m selling a valuable commodity, mental health.
Dis bus fa Dangriga.
Just lock di door dere den.
Where dis bus di go?
Rite ya!
Just give me a lee drop at di junction.
De next bus pass way da 10:30
I here now. Marning. Wat you di want? A lee snack? Coke? Wata? Alright then, I’m outta here.
Dangriga. Five minutes. Quick five minutes!
Dis bus da PG.
I can work. Man, I can work!
Gyal, dey train you good!
It hot man.
You got credit? I no got.
When we a reach?
So how you doing today? You understand me?
Right now I come back. I a buy someting fa eat.
I me say, boy, dis school! You hafta clean up everyting. His teacha 80 ears old!
Rite dere dey got people with bachelors!
Wat dey will ask you?
Dis a di best highway dey got, no true?
Come, mek I trade.
Fry Jack? Tamales? Hot! If you want it now I can put it eena di plate fi you.
Placencia? Dis your last stop!
Just take a lee hike five minutes down the road and you’ll find di wata taxi.
Dis da fi PG.
I hail she. She neva say noting.
Where you di go? Terminal?
You have to stop with the sugar. Berry Flavored Mike n Ike’s from “Jeff’s” snack jar does not provide the right kind of fuel. Also, lemon-lime is not an actual fruit. Incorporate an actual fruit and a vegetable into every meal. Stop eating when you’re full. You are not entitled to a dessert after every meal. Your thighs are tired of this dialogue: excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me… you could be in control if you really wanted to.
Along those lines, when your body figures out how to adequately fuel itself, exercise more than once per month. Walk daily, at least. Participate in a cardio activity and lift 3 times per week. Your heart rate monitor and pandora station are depressed and lonely. You’re in the season of life when people glance at your midsection and say, sooooooo? You’re running out of jokes for that one. You like exercise. You have a good bike. Running makes you proud. None of your clothes fit. Get to steppin.
Per the first two, speak kindly to yourself. J is always telling you this, especially when you flip out after running into someone you once knew and feel inferior to. To quote your own self circa 2009: Be yourself and trust that who you are is good enough, cool enough, nice enough, honest enough, funny enough, pretty enough, smart enough and competent enough.
Maintain a schedule. Wake up and carry out your appointments and/or write your reports no matter who is on Ellen. It does not help when the end of the month rolls around and you’ve only seen so-and-so twice instead of 6 times because their time slot is at 2. Same as Ellen. Ellen does not pay your bills. Progress notes pay your bills.
Along those lines, do not wait until the very. last. minute. to finish your paperwork, which, by the way, is not life or death. I think you gave yourself mono and shingles over July’s monthly reports. Practice the calming and stress-reduction skills you teach others and manage your time responsibly!
Stretch daily. You’ll feel better overall. End of story.
Clean your blasted car, girlfran. It is your office space, and no one likes goldfish crumbs or frosty drops all over their desk. Although, if you follow #1, you shouldn’t have a problem with the frosty drips anymore. It’s annoying for all of us when you have to spend 10 minutes collecting then thousand games and art supplies off the backseat and into the trunk before anyone can sit down. Don’t even get me started on the melted crayons. Respect your space. Once a week, clean it.
Water the plants! You are inattentive, and they will die. Do it. Every Sunday or something. Don’t even think about a dog or kids until you can manage this.
Develop a plan and do something with the front flower bed. Rip out that one last shrub, and create something spectacular there!
Become organized. Label your files. File your receipts. Archive old files. Maintain the system. It will facilitate the stress-reduction goal mentioned above. Oh, and maintain a home office. The ottoman doesn’t count.
Get more than 6 hours of sleep per night. At one time this meant limiting midnight back-to-back episodes of Chelsea Lately and Sex and the City. Now it means putting your kindle down and stepping away from books like The Hunger Games. What is WRONG with you? Sleep is better!
Stop buying Kindle books willy-nilly. You cannot be trusted to a) buy in moderation b) stop reading before 3am.
Make some friends. Yikes. Don’t know how to help you with this one. Two words: act normal.
Pass your LCSW exam in April. (That means start studying for this, like, yesterday)
Become certified in CISM and follow-up with the opportunities and resources that have been offered to you. It will open doors.
Go to France. Jeff needs to meet Mr. Gay, and Mr. Gay needs a hug, presumably. You need to hear these things again at least once in your life: Bwooookie? Happy. Bwookie resemble Karen. Thank you, Bwookie. Happy. Happy. Happy.
Stick to the budget. No exceptions.
Write daily. No matter what, about anything. Okay, maybe daily isn’t realistic. 5 times per week? Three? Done. Three times per week, you will write.
Before I write anything, I would like to share that “ninja spanker” was my top search this week. Where do people come up with these things? And also, how did my space become relevant to ninja spankers? (As I type this, I recall mentioning Spanker Banker after Krewe du Vieux sometime in 2008, and also dressing up as a ninja for Halloween that year and fighting pirates on Jackson Square. The internet don’t forget, y’all).
That said, it’s been two years since I did a year in review, two years since I wrote some resolutions, and consequently, two years since I resolved some resolutions. In the two year gap, I got engaged, got married, moved to a new city, bought a house, started 3 new jobs, graduated, became licensed, acquired a couple more nieces- you know: Almost all of the most important things that can happen to a person besides being born. Now that I sit down to review last year, it seems like nothing happened. But alas. It did.
January Co-piloted a tiny plane from Belize City to PG. Swam in a blue creek. Climbed into a cave. Met some fun UWisc Physical Therapy peeps. Watched the Rose Bowl on a rigged up TV, under a thatch roof outside, sitting on benches removed from a mini-van. Spent nights in tiny cabins above water. Ate seafood caught on a kayak with a spear. Took a 6 hour bus to Cayo. Shed tears over this discussion with my former supervisor: “Your work is being used here, Brooke. Every day.” Discovered God doesn’t need a person to use a person. Understood that sometimes we don’t even know we’ve been used. Said goodbye to the BZ. Again.
February Worked a 16-hour shift during Snowpocolypse 2011 and felt like a Lamb in a Bow Tie. Discovered, via Jeff, that cross-country skiing on the Monon during an ice storm is possible, and acceptable. Went to New Orleans and spent time with my good ole friends and co-workers. Got my Haydels King Cake. Got my Abita. Got my Steins, my Surreys, my house party with a nice brownie spread, my 2 days of 65/sunny, got my washboard band, got my Kim, got my Mandy. Could not have been happier until Tator Tachos appeared. Realized (besides the availability of junk food & supportive social worker friends) why the NOLA feels like home: it’s where I fell in love! J and my’s entire do-I-like-you-do-I-love-you-I-totally-love-you-let’s-get-a-daiquiri-let’s-get-married happened here. Sigh
March Went to CubaBelizeMexicoBelizeCubaBelize. Cuba with some good friends. (If you’re an immigration officer, I would like to state for the record I oppose the embargo.) Had many rooftop mojitos. I neither confirm nor deny the Cuban cigar or the night dancing in Old Havana. Listened to old men argue about baseball in the center of the park. Watched a Cuban baseball game. Became entranced by and forever drawn to Cuba and its music. Thanks friends!
April Unveiled Brooke 3.0 to the public. Not so bad, 30. Received breakfast in bed from a dude I thank God for by the minute, and a tent. Promptly camped in the backyard. Celebrated Lil’s 3rd birthday (where does time go?) Took down the Christmas tree… and put it in the Monon. Can you find it? Spent Easter with the Hartmans in WI, and got the Easter flu, which everyone mistook for morning sickness. If that had been the case, I’d be 9 months pregnant today. Told you guys.
May Started a new job! Waved goodbye to the hospital (although I still pick up ER shifts here and there when they need help) and joined a private practice in Carmel. Before you call me a yuppie, I still do home visits and school visits and drive 8-year-olds to the park to work on anger management and/or 14-year-olds to Steak n Shake to work on coping skills via therapeutic games & rec therapy. We call this Consultative Clinical Therapy through a grant being piloted in 11 states, provides state-wide mental health services for emotionally impaired kids. When I’m not hanging with kids modeling appropriate skills, I’m consulting with the team and writing behavior plans from home. Not a bad change from the 3-11 shift in the ER! Hosted the Kaminski Fam for Memorial Day and ran around Lucas Oil. Celebrated J’s birthday. He continues to be in his 30s. That’s all he would want you to know, I think.
June Celebrated our first anniversary with a romantic evening alone the Hartmans, Kaminiskis, Sellers, Sharon, Pat and 2500 others for the 18th annual Indy Nite Ride. Jeff and I enjoyed a burger at Bub’s after everyone left. The event has facilitated use of the following statement all year to justify anything we’ve wanted ever since: Well, this can be our anniversary meal/gift/trip since we didn’t really have one? Celebrated Maycie’s 2nd Birthday. Love her.
July Breckenridge! This was our anniversary trip, since we didn’t really have one. Also, it was truly the anniversary and location of our honeymoon! Hiked some hikes. Snapped some pics. Ate some good food. Drank with friends. Hot-tubbed with family. Surfed on snowfields. Biked down Vail pass. Garden of the Gods. Pike’s Peak. Celebrated a Hartman (the original Hartman- well, not the original original, but the Ron & Kathy Hartman ) Anniversary. This one gets 2 rows of pics, because I’m the boss of this space, and it’s what I want to do.
August Hosted the Sellers/Wilsons for Labor Day. Shucked some corn. Grilled some food. Played with some noopy nieces. Dad’s family reunion in Brown County. Spent some time in Nashville and a good night at a Brewery. Hosted Elaine & Doug, also Sprinky. Cut into a sex cake. Found out E&D are having a boy! Can’t wait to meet brand new Baby Luke.
September visited some good (fun!) friends in NYC. This was our anniversary trip, since we didn’t really have one. These friends appreciate my knowledge of pop culture, which is sometimes a foreign language to J (although he is the one who first informed me of the Kim/Chris split and insisted I see Bridesmaids. He heard both on sports radio). Observed 9/11. Held the Statue of Liberty in our palms. Went to the Catskills. Ate some good food. Played with an adorable baby. Participated in the first bonfire of Fall. Played in a kickball tournament, concussed myself on the pavement. Celebrated Callie’s first birthday. Love her. Joined a small group at church. Made some friends. (Right guys? riiiiiiiiiiight?)
October Destin! I know I’ve said this before, but this was our anniversary trip, since we didn’t really have one. Plus it was the location of our other honeymoon, between the ceremony and actual honeymoon in Breck. Spent some time with the Grampies. Spent some time at the Blossfolly (ceremony beachouse) beach, for nostalgia’s sake. Ate dinner at Henderson Park Inn, where God gave us the most amazing anniversary sunset ever imagined.
November Hosted the fam(s) for Thanksgiving: Hartmans, Sellers, the Grampies, Wilsons, Kaminskis, Sharon, & Grams. Got rear ended. Saw THREE rainbows in one day. Spent a noopy weekend with Callie.
December Watched the Badgers win the Big Ten Championships. For reasons unexplained, my nieces started calling me Uncle Brooklyn. Dressed up in snowflake placemats & battery operated lights for a party. Celebrated our engageaversary in Chicago on the 96th floor. Celebrated Christmas in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indy, and Sprinky (not a place, but a BFF). Celebrated the last moments of 2011 with good old friends and good new friends.
August tried to get me again, but then God sent this to me on the radio:
Some things end, but then other things begin. My little NOLA church wrote this a couple years ago, and it stuck with me: We will remember the storm (or the aunt, or the friend, or the city, or the experience) and give sacred honor, but in worship we inherit all things anew for this day.
So thankful for all new and beautiful things inherited today.
A few years ago I found this little thing on my blog that keeps track of page referrals. I was thrilled/disturbed to discover my words were a resource for immunization-seeking, parasitic, shingly OR scabie ridden people who have blood in their stool but want it to turn out okay, for those seeking life-changing moments in either Paris or unemployment, for pregnant women in 19th week, and also for the Jewish. Go ahead. Google “stirrups doctor Indonesia me“, there I am. Top of the page.
Tonight I logged on to see which health issues I might be inadvertently talking people through this year. Parasites? MRSA? It turns out, I have become quite influential in the field of… raccoons. Over 200 searches with 3-5 hits each, on the following (actual) searched topics:
Sleepy raccoon
Happy Thanksgiving raccoon
Raccoon driving a car
Smiling raccoon photos
Grilled raccoon
Raccoon climbing wall
Raccoon in red truck
A raccoon having sex
Raccoon crap
Raccoon homes
Raccoon wine
Raccoon fighting
Raccoon diet
Funny raccoon
Broke raccoon
Raccoon dancing
Mean raccoon pictures
Raccoon phone
World record raccoon
Raccoon ninja
Raccoon stare
Raccoon in school
Violent raccoon
Hilarious raccoon
Running raccoon
Raccoon thief
Caribbean raccoon
Funny raccoons driving
Birthday raccoon
Strange raccoon behavior
Raccoon house
Cute outfits for raccoon
Raccoon man
Raccoon jokes
Raccoon street in Belize City
Raccoon at bus stop
Raccoon in car
Wet raccoon
Raccoon toast
What?! I would deny any association to this crazy raccoon business, except for that one time when I actually did post a picture of a raccoon chained up in the back of a truck in Belize linked with the following sentence: The minute I caught that first campfire and coconut smell and saw my first raccoon on a chain in the back of a truck, I knew I was homein BZ.
Just like that, my blog-fluence was hijacked by this asshole raccoon (although, honestly, he’s kind of sad looking, and totally limited in mobility. Maybe it’s not his fault? Just his other dancing, mean, sleepy, smiling, grilled, funny, broke, fighting, world record breaking ninja ones in school, and driving cars, and on the phone in cute outfits, or else the wet and thieving ones in the Caribbean. It was probably those guys.)
Raccoon searchers, I wish you the best. Thanks for keeping this space active.
Honorable Mention Searches
lipglosses that are exotic colors (Guilty as charged)
denise sex fort wayne video What kind of space do you think this is? And Denise who?
ninja shoes Of course
“peed her pants” Yep. Google knows me.
hallmark card “thinks I’m funny” Punchline: they didn’t
sweatpants bulge? (Seriously, Google? I’m working on it)
friends are just parasites Aren’t they?
sprinky lobster I’m sorry. Did you say Sprinky Lobster?
kickball angry pirates Yeah I got all those things
1. While many people are afraid they’ll discover some kind of annoying habit about the other during the first year, it turns out marriage functions like a full-length mirror. You might discover some crazy habit you didn’t know about yourself reflecting right back. (Me? Yes, you.)
2. Sometimes you can learn adaptive habits from each other, like making the bed every day. There! Now, doesn’t your day feel more organized? Yes!
3. Per the prior, the last one out of bed makes it. Except for today.
4. Sometimes you need to go to the bathroom for 45 minutes. What you do in there (examine your pores, pluck your eyebrows, steam clean your face over the sink on one leg with John Legend on your ipod- whatever) is your own business. It used to be your SSB: Secret Single Behavior. Now it’s your Secret Married Behavior. It’s okay to keep it secret.
5. Separate bathrooms are icing on the cake.
6. Engage in hobbies together. People might laugh when you turn your living room into photo studio, but it’s y’alls own thing.
7. A programmable thermostat can help facilitate this discussion: The heat was on all day?
8. One of you may be the type to save the good champagne and Swiss fondue for a special occasion; the other may want to pop the cork at 8pm on a Tuesday. Find a way to make 8pm on Tuesday a special occasion. S’mores fondue night by the river? Yesssss.
9. Re-evaluate goals when things like thousand-dollar car repairs come up. You’re probably working toward something. Continuously reset the course together.
10. Keep a bottle of Fat Bastard in the house to uncork after your first fight. The presence of the wine itself may keep you from having a worst-ever first fight. For all who wondered, we have not yet opened the Fat Bastard…
11. You might accidentally buy a house. When you do, agree in advance how many towel bars and curtain rods you will ask him to help hang. There is a threshold.
12. Per the prior, don’t flood the house.
13. Per the prior, know where the water shut-off is if you begin to flood the house.
14. Per the prior, when your spouse floods the house, take the opposite temperament, call the insurance company, set up a fan, and get away for the weekend. It will fix everything.
15. Discretionary spending accounts: one of you may be at a constant balance of $5 as you happily line up shoes and play with new hair accessories (Jeff?); The other could fly to Hawaii with his. Mutual goals achieved otherwise.
16. The Ron Hartman rule: don’t take the last slice of pizza.
17. Post-it notes, breakfast in bed, and knee squeezes- excellent forms of nonverbal communication.
18. If you can make each other laugh, you’re already through it.
So. We went to CubaBelizeMexicoBelizeCubaBelize. Cuba. (If you’re an immigration officer, I would like to state for the record I oppose the embargo.) That’s how the conversation went in our heads all week, up to and including the nail-biting immigration line at ATL. J and I were looking at each other like, You talk? I talk? You? Me? You?
Turns out, nobody cares. They flipped through our passport and stamped without incident. On the other side of customs, J was wired and elated. All I could think about was how much Cuban Rum we could have brought back. And to think we were worried about the rolled up stuffed-in-a-corner purple “Industriales” t-shirt we bought from some guy’s plastic bag at the 1pm baseball game. It’s Havana’s team, and current champs- equivalent to the NY Yankees, says J. He knows these things.
But what a rich country! Well, not literally rich. But socially. Sort of. And healthy! Infant mortality is lower than US, and HIV rate is less than .1%. Architecturally rich. Beautiful. Colorful. Friendly. Inviting. Warm. Historically rich and totally preserved. Also pork-fat rich, which resulted in a day by the pool (read: bathrooms), and special “injections” by some lady named Julia. I think Jeff and Ricardo pretended to be sick the next day just to get a special injection from this Julia. No matter. Rachel and I made several trips to the crepe line, as the crepe maker was, how you say, crepetastic!
Catching a taxi feels like you’re at an antique car auction. Night club dancing with the locals feels like you’re in a black-lit, salsa-and-marengue-with-the-stars episode, where you can make up your own version as long as it involves some hips and twirls and drama. That experience was a fave.
And the mojitos. Don’t even get me started.
There is also a group of men in the square who sit and stand all day and argue about baseball. J heard about this group, and loving baseball and old Cuban men, went to find it. It exists! He listened, talked to a couple people and stood-bye as we witnessed a few near-fights. While we were there, we made a friend who explained that 2 or 3 years ago, nobody could talk to tourists. Now they are able to apply for a private license to be an unofficial tour guide in exchange for, like, a mojito. However, there is an officer every 10 feet, and if you say no, and the friend follows you, the officer blows his whistle and shakes his finger. Then the friend has to walk away. Poor friend. Our friend told us how to get out of the city and to the baseball game. He also offered us his aunt’s house for dinner.
The hotel we stayed at was a National Monument, with bullet holes in the front from mob shootouts, and our room faced the Hotel Libre, where Fidel ruled the country from the top floor during such-and-such time frame. Now it’s a disco.
Architecture is a colorful and stoic mix of Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. The culture is the same. I kept saying as we walked around Habana Viejo: this looks like the French Quarter! And Prague! And as we walked around Habana Central, with colorful laundry hanging and bright vibrant paint: now this is the Caribbean. And then with the all Spanish and dancing, Latin America. We visited Cuban China-town, took the cigar tour (I neither confirm nor deny that we purchased or smoked a Cuban cigar), went to a Cuban baseball game, ate lunch and dinners on several rooftop bars and in Cuban homes. We discovered this interesting new allowance the government is giving to individuals who apply for private licenses. People who apply can gut the inside of their home, fix it up, and serve meals- but limited to 6 or 12 people only. Here is a lunch place we stumbled on, plus the house on either side showing the disparity in opportunity:
Within a week of being home, we had purchased and watched Motorcycle Diaries, both Che documentaries, and a 3 hour music documentary on the creation of the Buena Vista Social Club. Also, we also almost got bitch-slapped by my grandma who assumed our enthusiasm toward Cuba (and our realization that many revolutionaries were idealists gone bad, that any government in its ideal state has strengths, and that the homeless dude living under I-10 might be okay with a socialist arrangement) was a plug for communism (what?). How she tied Obama into the conversation, I’m not really sure…
We are not socialists. But the trip was fascinating, and we are already planning a return- thanks to good friends who coordinated and visa’d us to be there, and who also had birthdays to celebrate! (No thanks to Julia for the injections.)
My pics are here. Jeff’s pics are here. Here are a couple of tider-overs:
Here I am working at the ER during an ice storm, reading drafts from last August about my experience in the ER during those first six months. Awful. Combined with the adjustment of procuring new name. Confusing. And, most recently, the evolution of this weird life we have in Indy put into perspective by a visit to Belize. So, in my 7th hour of a 16+ hour shift during snowpocolypse, after having watched all the episodes of SATC I brought with me, and after eating my lunch and dinner in the first 45 minutes, I have nothing left to do but talk with myself on the internet for a while and draw some kind of insight.
August
It’s kind of a let down, working.
In the ER.
At night.
Where I continue to be initiated, which is the worst.
Nobody trusts you till they trust you. And just when you think you’re almost good at something, you find out a baby you believed was at the fire station (because that’s what the girl told you) is actually in a box on the side of an interstate. Or, your own department believes you conspired with the ol’ manager to resist 12-hour shifts. You didn’t. Or, like, due to the shift thing, a handful of well-known staff are now circulating the rumor that you’re rude & entitled, per the departmental lady with the most seniority who really wanted those blasted 12-hour shifts. Plus, you were hired before the interns, who’d provided a year of unpaid service before you so obliviously accepted the open position. Everyone comes from the same school, except you. And where did you come from, anyway? New Orleans? Belize? Do you think that makes you special? (I mean, yeah, sort of.) Daggers. They hate you. You think you’re paranoid. You ask, am I paranoid? They say, nope.
Fake complaints come in, and the nice co-workers from other units who like you say: B, just ignore it. There’s nothing you can do. The nice people invite you to lunch and movie nights and things, thank goodness. Because without them, in this new city with this new job in this new home with this new husband (who also works in this place), your little social work wings might get all crumpled up and you might always wonder if there is chocolate pudding on your face as you round the ER, because in your normal life there is always something chocolate on your face, and this is your normal life only it’s the naked-dream or chocolate-pudding face part. You don’t feel comfortable being yourself, which has always been your secret weapon: being yourself. I mean, you’re funny and likeable, right? You are. (Right?) You are.
No one here thinks I’m funny. I’m recalling that Hallmark card with the little lamb wearing a red bow tie and a thousand other lambs not wearing a bow tie looking at the one lamb like he’s an idiot. The caption: “Adding to my misery. No one here thinks I’m funny.” That’s me. A lamb in a bow tie, here.
Oh. And then there’s the issue of my name: Amanda Brooke Wilson Hartman.
First name: Amanda, but answers to “Brooke”. At Doctor’s offices, the library, the licence branch, Grad school, etc. I almost always adhere to the following script:
What’s your name?
Brooke Wilson. I mean, Amanda. Well it might be under Amanda, but I go by Brooke, so maybe check both.
Over the years I’ve accepted that the name Amanda, although foreign, when combined with Wilson, means me: Brooke. But then I went and got married. Now my name is Brooke Hartman. At Doctor’s offices, the library, the licence branch, work, etc. the script becomes:
What’s your name?
Brooke Wilson. I mean, Hartman. Brooke Hartman. Well, it might be under Wilson. I just got married, so maybe check both.
You see where I’m going with this. I recognize Amanda Wilson. I recognize Brooke Hartman. But God help me when I am at work, on the phone with insurance agents, making a Doctor’s appointment, at the library, at the licence branch, even signing my own paperwork, and someone asks: What’s your name?
Brooke Wilson.
I mean, Hartman. Brooke Hartman.
I mean, Amanda.
Amanda Brooke Wilson.
Wait, Amanda Brooke Hartman.
Okay. Can you just look all these up: Amanda Brooke Wilson Hartman?
I smile, they look at me like I’m an identity thief
So. Here’s the kicker. Post-marriage, my work email is Amanda Hartman 1. What?! Who the H is Amanda Hartman?
There’s something unnerving about not being able to be yourself at a place you don’t even recognize your own name, am I right?
I’ve come to the following conclusion: Amanda Hartman must be the ER social worker who is incompetent and rude and hates those 12-hour shifts.
Me? I’m Brooke. I’m a good social worker, and my co-workers like me.
Moving on.
In January, I went to Belize. Big surprise. It had been a year since I was last there doing my professional project. I worked with the only social worker in BZE employed by the Ministry of Education, and provided a compilation manual of coping exercises to be facilitated with kids who had witnessed or experienced violence. I trained a lot of staff, worked with a lot of sad kids, and the project was amazing. The resources transferred perfectly, the improvements were documented on paper, I made great friends and colleagues, and I walked away feeling like I could do that type of work for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, God didn’t get my order right, and I ended up working in a hospital, providing bus tickets and violent crime compensation applications to people who are dealing with things like: gunshot wound to penis.
As expected, the adjustment to my job at the hospital was hard, and the learning curve was steep, and while the work here is equally as important, there are moments I find myself staring at the lady in the waiting room who is demanding an apple and a cab ride, dreaming about this oh-so-meaningful life I once had of facilitating coping-skills groups at schools and providing 1:1 counseling with kids who really show progress and growth, whose grief and trauma indicators decline, like, on paper, where co-workers are encouraging, and my actual developed God-given skills are put to use. Do you know how many times I’ve had to say to people here at the hospital: I’m good at things. Maybe not this, but other things. For example, counseling a 10 y/o whose dad has just committed suicide. Her grades went from Ds to Bs. Or a 5 y /o who saw his mom murdered. Or a 14 y/o who is real scared of hurricanes. True, though, I don’t know how to get a nebulizer at 2am on Thanksgiving night.
(Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this)
So I go to Belize, and I sit down in A’s office, and she asks me about work. I say all the good and exciting stuff first. You know, all that crazy ER stuff. Then there’s a lull. Then I explain how lucky I am to have a job at all. Then I slump a little lower. Then I get all teary-eyed for no reason. Then I admit: nothing I’ve learned or done or created is being used at home. My binders and manuals and therapeutic games are in a tub in my garage. My best skills are untapped. This treasure of a manual I really believe in is going unused when there are a million kids in this city who could benefit. For example: the kid of gunshot-wound-to-penis guy. Or the brother of 12 y/o sudden death girl. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know how to not be. This is where God put us. This is where I have to be.
So A gets up and opens the file cabinet. She pulls out like 158 files and spreads them out on the desk. I start opening them one by one. They’re drawings and colorings and narratives and “about me” pages full of all the tools and resources I left there in Belize filled out and helping 158+ kids. She says, “Your work is being used here, Brooke. Every day.”
(Full-fledged tears, you can imagine.)
It appears that God doesn’t need a person in order to use a person. It also appears that sometimes we don’t know we’ve been used, and many times we don’t get to see the outcome. Except me. For an hour and a half, I got to see those files. I don’t even know those kids. I guess my role in the plan was never to be the hands and feet. Maybe I was just the transporter.
I can feel okay about that. I’ll just make J play all my therapeutic games. And I’ll trust that God knows my heart, and knows our needs, and will provide for all accordingly. (I mean, but could He hurry?)
**We realize this never made it out to some of you. We don’t know why. It’s okay to put 200 stamped letters in your mailbox with the little flag up, right? I don’t really know about mail etiquette. But here is. A little holiday update. You’re drooling. I know.
Happy Holidays! Jeff and I want to take this opportunity during the season of Thanksgiving to express our sincerest gratitude for all who have planned, helped, participated, and celebrated the last 6 months with us. We were blessed with a spectacular oil-free wedding in Destin, FL and a gorgeous rain-free reception in Beloit, WI and were able to visit with many of you during those gatherings- although not for as long or intently as we’d have liked!
We also want to give an update on the life and times of the brand new Hartmans, including our relocation to a new city and new jobs- which we request as justification for how late (or how not at all) this thanksgiving has arrived in your mailbox! Please?
Following our honeymoon in Breckenridge, Colorado, Jeff returned “home” for the first time to Indianapolis, where Brooke had moved three months earlier to begin as a Social Worker at a downtown hospital in the Emergency Department. Prior to the wedding, Jeff accepted a unique position as Physical Therapist in the same Emergency Department and began on August 2nd. We have been working across the hall from each other for about three months now, and the Social Work department has seen a sharp increase in printing activity, as the printer is located in the PT office.
In addition, Jeff continues to work part-time as the Stateside Director of Operations for Hillside Healthcare International in Belize, and Brooke works part-time as a Behavior Consultant for developmentally disabled adults through the waiver program and a therapist for emotionally impaired kids through a state grant. Jeff would like you to know, he is not one of Brooke’s clients.
Jeff also continues to mourn the loss of Madison, but we’ve added the Big Ten Network to the cable line-up and he’s discovered an iphone app (yes, Jeff has an iphone!) that allows him to tune-in to the Madison radio talk shows. As we embrace our first winter in Indianapolis, Jeff asks things like: does water freeze here? And Brooke is rolling around in winter coats and boots she hasn’t had use for the last few falls in New Orleans or Belize. Somehow we’ll adjust.
Until this week, we’ve been living downtown Indianapolis on the Canal, but we close on our first home together in the Arts & Design District (spoken with an English Accent) in Carmel, a suburb north of Indy. We put those qualifiers on the Carmel home for the local friends who are standing by with Carmel jokes. We will be in Old Carmel, two blocks off Main Street, and we bought the house from the friend who set us up in the first place! Given that she introduced us and sold us our first home, we are considering an advanced order for kids. Kidding.
As we reflect on this past summer, we want to thank you (yes, you) for making 2010 the best year ever. Thank you for the gifts, cards, fellowship, prayer and celebration! Please accept this thanks, albeit a couple of months late, as sincere and heartfelt.
Welp. I’m back on the writing train, because every 5 days I think: Oh! I need to tell the internet that. No really, I do. I’m just that kind of person.
For starters, I got engaged.
Then, I got married.
Next I hiked to the top of a mountain.
The engagement was not a fee-for-service arrangement, which shocked my brothers, I think. It was totally voluntary on his part, and dreamy. This from our wedding site:
We met. We fell in love. We’re getting married.
More?
Okay, we were introduced by mutual friends and our work in Belize in the spring of 2008. We spent a few months sending e-mails like: Hello. How are you? The weather’s great! before Brooke left for graduate school in New Orleans and Jeff continued life and work in Madison.
We stayed in touch throughout the fall and discovered we would both be in Belize at the same time that November. Of course we would try and meet up! Unfortunately our plans were interrupted by country-wide flooding and busy schedules. We were 90 miles apart in the same foreign country working on two different projects with the friends who had first put us in touch, and still couldn’t meet.
Three weeks later, we met for the first time under the silver ball at Millenium Park in Chicago. It was December 20, 2008, and it was snowing.
We spent the next year jet-setting between New Orleans and Madison, Destin and Indianapolis, Las Vegas and Belize, and finished the year back in Chicago on the 96th floor of the Hancock building. Overlooking the city we’d first explored the year before and the adventures 2009 had brought us, Jeff proposed and Brooke accepted.
It was December 20, 2009, and it was snowing.
The real story is this: Jeff said, “Will you marry me?” and I said, “Wait! You have to put it on my finger.” So he put the ring- which was from Tiffany and engraved with I love you- on my finger and asked again. Of course I said Yes! But he likes to tell people he had to ask twice. What I remember most is that we sealed the deal over guac. What a story.
What I find hard to believe is that for 29 years, I didn’t have a fiance. And for 29 years, there has not been an oil spill in Destin. But then I get engaged and plan a wedding in Destin on the beach. A month later? The gulf is filled with 200 million gallons of oil.
Life’s like that, I guess.
Prior to the wedding, our families spent an entire week together at the beach house sharing meals and stories and sunscreen. To my knowledge, no one peed her pants laughing, which tends to runs on my side of the family. Whew.
The wedding was held on a private (oil free!) beach accessed by a spectacular 50-foot dock, lined with little flicker candles, at sunset. Perfection. I floated right down that long, plenty-of-time-to-turn-around aisle toward a handsome groom in a cream-colored suit without a second thought. Well. I did wonder if the flower in my hair was falling out, since it took a glue gun, wire cutters and a thousand bobby pins to secure in the first place. And the reception was held at the beach house, on the other side of that same aisle, with bistro and twinkle lights strung over tables and balconies.
It was an Olympic wedding. Literally. Our pastor, my friend Kim Black from grad school (go ahead, google her), was a gold medalist in the 2000 Olympics and brought her medal to our Olympic wedding to share. I held it. You want to touch me?
Of course we plan to renew vows every 4 years.
Next up: Honeymoon.
It’s juicy, I promise. And not like that.
There will be stories. Stories involving mountain goats, and stories about being passed by a 4-year-old up a 14-thousand-foot mountain, and then down said mountain with a metal tripod on my back during a lightening storm. Like I said: juicy. But I’m out of time. Next post.
August is this creepy little month that sneaks up behind me while I’m laughing and oblivious in July and says, Hey. Buck up. A lot of things are about to change, and it’s going to be hard for a minute, and very cold, but there’s coffee, at least, and fireplaces, and when it’s over, you’ll be okay.
Last fall, I packed up my comfy little 400 sq. foot apartment and said goodbye to New Orleans. I cried through 3 Gulf states, thought I didn’t know why at the time, and said goodbye to Jeff. Three weeks later, I was knee-deep in grapefruit-o-lanterns and Belizean 8-year-olds.
Two falls ago, I stuffed SJP and Sprinky into the Rendezvous and drove to New Orleans, threw my things into a supply closet, got evacuated during orientation, and came back a total stranger, still. A month later I was dressed like a Ninja fighting pirates on Jackson Square. With friends.
Three falls ago I was meeting my French uncle at a train station in Marseilles. I don’t speak French. He doesn’t speak English. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. Three falls ago, Katie died.
Four falls ago, I got rejected to 14 grad schools. For writing. Which ruined my whole plan. Tale spin.
Five falls ago, I was driving a 24-foot diesel truck, on fire, from Austin to Beaumont and living out of a 50-degree medication closet. Red Cross. Katrina.
Eleven falls ago, my aunt died. In a car accident. Just like that.
So here I am, in fall. In that strange quiet sunlight, with those twirly little yellow leaves, a ten minute drive from family, in a cozy home, with the most kind and loving husband, three little nieces, jobs we are blessed to have, access to pumpkin spice lattes- and I feel panicky. Even when I’m happy, I’m anxious. And even sometimes, sad.
I think August is really saying: Hey. Your aunt died.
She would have been 50 last week.
And further still, August is really really saying: life is out of control.
I’ve never been able to dissociate fall from that feeling.
But it’s only a season.
N.N. says it better than me:
And even when the trees have just surrendered
To the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in late September
And sending us inside
Still I notice You when change begins
And I am braced for colder winds
I will offer thanks for what has been and what’s to come
You are autumn
And everything in time and under heaven
Finally falls asleep
Wrapped in blankets white, all creation
Shivers underneath
And still I notice you
When branches crack
And in my breath on frosted glass
Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter
You are winter
And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
What was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green
So it is with You
And how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be
As You are re-creating me
Summer, autumn, winter, spring
I’ve been meaning to write this for a year and a half.
Last Mardi Gras I walked out of my St. Charles Ave. apartment at 7pm in a total haze to meet some friends for Lebanese food. I squinted my eyes and looked around after just having woken up from days- fine, weeks- fine, like a month and a half- of parades and parties and beads and king cakes and mimosas, staying up way too late and attending way too little class, to a totally empty and ghostlike street at dusk. It was trashed. It’s like the city partied itself silly, vomited plastic cups and beads, and disappeared.
Mardi Gras is, without a doubt, two of the most super fun weeks in life. Days end at 3 in the afternoon to get home before parade routes close local streets. It’s normal to be offered king cake 8 times in one day, and its normal to accept all 8 times. Weekends start on Thursday and are stacked with parades, sometimes two or three a day, full of 12-foot high-heeled shoe floats and themes like Your Stimulus Package led by “Spanker Banker”. It’s okay to set up lawn chairs in the middle of the street car track and be drunk at 10am. Mardi Gras is humanity in its most ridiculous glory. Six weeks of indulgence, leading up to the very last day, the very last hour of unrestrained, reckless abandon.
Why? Because midnight starts Lent- a forty day season of restraint and self-examination in preparation for Easter.
I imagine myself in life, how I must appear to God, like that street. The aftermath of Mardi Gras knocking on the door to mass on Wednesday morning. I’m sloshing beer and dripping gumbo all over the place, dragging a string of broken beads caught on my shoe, dressed in an Oyster outfit, living off of King Cake, momentarily sidetracked by tiny little ponies and fire blowers. And God opens the door, and i see him, then I see me. Then I see him, then I see me. And I’m like, well. Maybe I should wash my hands.
The thing is, at 8pm on Mardi Gras night, the police shut down the streets and intersections, the French Quarter is emptied and everyone goes home. Street cleaning crews start rolling, city employees set out on foot with brooms, rakes and blowers to push 100 tons of trash into the streets, the street sweepers sweep it all up, and dump trucks carry it away- all before midnight on Ash Wednesday. The city must be clean by midnight. While most of us are fast asleep in a drunken haze, smiling and filthy, our city is being renewed. We wake up on Wednesday morning to sparkly clean streets. The mess we made, no longer there. We were dirty. Now we’re clean.
So. Back to my story. I squinted my eyes and looked around to a totally empty and ghostlike street at dusk. It was trashed. What came to mind was a quote I’d seen earlier in the day: Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
God loves us. We trash ourselves. Jesus makes us clean.
This is the reason people hate web logs: I’m getting ready to talk about myself. And no one even asked me to. Plus it’s long.
Sometimes, we (and by we I mean “I”) go through these spectacular seasons- like, living in the land of Mardi Gras, having daily coffees and margaritas and bagels and shrimps and po-boys; becoming a scholar, trained by all the best trauma & Disaster Mental Health people around— even if they don’t actually lecture you, but start out their year on sabbatical, which leaves you staring at theories of attachment slides from the 60s, but whatever; you stumble upon an accidentally perfect international project to culminate your learning experience, and it happens to be in Belize, your fave, with all your favorite people, and you are sort of forging the way for this kind of work there, and you feel a tiny bit like floating because the project was executed so flawlessly with such a kind and encouraging supervisor; and you come home to a two-week graduation festival/margarita marathon with free dinners and parties and regalia and sleepovers, and you walk away from New Orleans with a diploma in one hand and a certificate in the other hand—I mean, so what if you ran to the LBC for your big congratulatory reception through the rain to find four stale pieces of cheese and two hundred confused family members (Tulane was sorry, they dropped the ball: would your family consider coming back for another reception? We promise cookies this time). It doesn’t even phase you. Your family’s there, your best friend is on your one side, and your boyfriend is looped through the other arm, and two weeks later, at the top of the Hancock building in Chicago, at dusk, in the snow, he proposes. Seriously. A spectacular season. It doesn’t get any better.
Then you come home and move into your dad’s attic. Although, to be fair, he did clear out a lot of drawers and squares of closet space to be the most accommodating. And you’re not actually living in the attic. All your stuff is up there, but you have a nice cozy bedroom on the main level. You start the job search. You! The best most awesomely trained Master Social Worker with the best resume in the world, straight out of New Orleans with your shiny new diploma and your new fiancé and your new city—Madison, of course, which you prayed and prayed and prayed God would help you love. And he did. You love it. So you start applying. The first place contacted you way back in Belize, so you go though two rounds of interviews with seven board members, including an hour-and-a-half role-play while they watch you through a two-way mirror, and they say, “We’ll let you know by the end of the week.” Two months have passed.
You apply for more jobs—part time, full time, lots of types, lots of interviews, lots of blasted role-play, lots of promising contacts, lots of people affirming your resume and experience despite your age, which is great because your smile is getting a little droopy, and you’re starting to wonder if Tulane lied to you. But nothing materializes.
So you go home. Or, really you feel like you leave your new home to go back to Indianapolis: land of boring familiarity with grey winters and no fiancé (not to mention a super bowl loss to your OTHER city), but a curious job opportunity. You didn’t apply for it; they found you. Before you know it, your sitting in a second-round interview with an unexpected chance to be the Social Worker at a level 1 trauma center, and the option to pick up shifts at the children’s hospital you always wanted to work for. It’s a dream. EXCEPT IT’S IN THE WRONG CITY! You’re like, “Hello, God? Remember that part about how I’m supposed to be in Madison? Wrong hospital. Call Meriter or UW or something. If I’m good here, I’ll be good there too.” God’s plugging his hears & humming like, “I can’t heeeaaaaarrrrr youuuu….”
In the meantime, your fiancé gets an opportunity to go to Haiti with an international organization and a team of PTs. Your joint dream has always been to find a way do these types of things together! This is perfect. The two of you put together a proposal explaining the need for a Disaster Mental Health worker on the team and list your skills. The agency, to your surprise, believes you, and they schedule an interview for the next morning at 11am. The hospital agrees to give you the six weeks off to go. You wink at God and say, “Okay. Okay God, I get it. Yep, this is it. This is better. We must be supposed to go to Haiti.”
You and fiancé spend the weekend weighing out the costs, benefits, problems and solutions of leaving for 6 weeks before a wedding in 4 months. You don’t really trust yourself making huge, life-altering decisions, so you’ve been praying all along that God will only open the door you’re supposed to walk through, and so far you haven’t had to make a decision. So, in the same way, you promise that if the Haiti door opens, you’ll walk though it. But if it doesn’t, you’ll trust the provision.
The door doesn’t open. You glare at God.
You’re disappointed for you, and for fiancé. You realize with the Haiti door closed, and the Madison door closed, you’re back to the attic. (Which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with dad’s attic, if he’s reading this. You have lots of food here and free laundry and water aerobics on Wednesday nights!) But you feel exhausted from stacking up every possible opportunity and then starting to build a life around each option, attempting to get a head start on every possible thing. On top of that, you did hot yoga and almost died. You really feel, physically and metaphorically, like every single thing in entire world is flowing in the opposite current you’re trying to walk through.
You don’t understand why God isn’t helping. You thought you were clear with your order. Obviously God didn’t write it down when he was at your table…
Then you read this, by Donald Miller (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years):
“A while back I was working on a novel about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist. I never published it because, well, it was about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist, and I couldn’t exactly find a market for the story.
I’d get up every morning and make my coffee and toast, I’d put my laptop in a backpack, and then I’d walk… I’d create my stories while I walked, thinking about what I wanted my characters to do, what I wanted them to say, and how I wanted them to throw headlong into whatever scene was coming next. By the time I got to my desk, I’d had plenty of time to plan whatever was coming in the book.
But stories are only partly told by writers. They are also told by the characters themselves. Any writer will tell you characters do what they want. If I wanted my character to advance the plot by confronting another character, the character wouldn’t necessarily obey me. I’d put my fingers on the keyboard, but my character, who was supposed to go to Kansas, would end up in Mexico, sitting on a beach drinking a margarita. I’d delete whatever dumb thing the character did and start over, only to have him grab the pen again and start talking nonsense to some girl in a bikini.
And as I worked on the novel, as my character did what he wanted and ruined my story, it reminded me of life in certain ways. I mean, as I sat there in my office making my worlds, and as my characters fought to have their way, I could identify with them. I was also that character fighting God, and I could see God sitting at his computer, staring blankly at his screen as I asked him to write in some money and some sex and some comfort [and some job in some city].”
Maybe I’m the ecoterrorist in Mexico. Who knows.
But I accepted the job at the hospital. Translation: I accepted three more months away from fiancé and the nights & weekend shift. I’m closing both eyes and crossing my fingers that a loving author is writing something perfect for the two of us…
Goodbye, 2009. You were Awesome. Let’s look at the list of things I promised you:
Wear less sweatpants. This is the beauty of a tropical climate. You own a thousand cute outfits that are perfectly wearable year round. Hello? After writing this last year, I immediately went to the outlets and bought 2 pears of comfy warm sweatpants from J. Crew- including the infamous “yellow sweatpants” from Vegas. However, after Mardi Gras, I did go organic and accidentally lose a bunch of weight which allowed me to wear pants without elastic waistbands more often. I even got new jeans. Resolved.
Do not wait until the last minute to read an entire semester’s worth of articles. You are paying a trillion dollars for this education, so you might as well learn actual theories and not just Marva Lewis’s notes on attachment via overhead (read: iChat). I never took Marva Lewis again. Resolved.
Get more than 6 hours of sleep per night. This will likely mean limiting midnight back-to-back episodes of Chelsea Lately and Sex and the City. You will manage. Ummm. Mostly resolved. It resolved itself when I went to Belize.
Remember the athletic center you are forced to pay $900 a semester to use? Go to it. Your friends used to have to come pick you up because you rode your bike too long and too far. Figure out where that bike riding joy went and reinstate it. Except, don’t ride yourself silly in New Orleans. You will get kidnapped. I never bought a bike. Unresolved. But I joined the ABT class at the Athletic center and started swimming when the weather got warm. I also took up running again for about 2 weeks. Resolved.
Do not drink Diet Coke for breakfast. Start each morning with a giant glass of water. End each day with a giant glass of water. If you must have the Diet Coke, at least buy it from the machine where Molly won $1.25 and haunted house tickets. Unresolved. End of Story.
Stop writing emails on Ambien. If you send an email after 10 pm, there’s a good chance it was written under the influence (cough, Judy Lewis). You are not more hilarious on Ambien. You simply have no filter. Find the tool on gmail that screens for irresponsible emailing and enable it. I’m 5 months off the Ambien!Resolved!
Stop being so afraid of new things the first time around. They always turn out just fine. Unresolved. I’m always afraid of new things. I just don’t like change.
Be patient. Timing is everything. Patience is not really my thing, but in this particular circumstance (and I remember what it was when I wrote this) I was. And it paid off. Resolved!
Clean your apartment so you can begin hosting the over-promised, under-delivered hot tub reading parties and Sex and the City Sundays. Your home should be your place. That means you should be able to walk through it without having to scale piles of clothes. Cleaning- Unresolved. Hot tub parties- Resolved!
Purchase cleaning supplies and hangers. Resolved.
Be intentional with keep-in-touch-Sunday even when other things try to crowd it out. Relationships are most important. Don’t forget. You tell me?
Ski. You know you want to. Un. Re. Solved.
You are about to become an intern again. Be yourself and trust that who you are is good enough, cool enough, nice enough, honest enough, funny enough, pretty enough, smart enough and competent enough. Resolved. Right, Mia? Riiiight?
Embrace the next eight months and try everything. You’ll never get this season back. Resolved. Mostly- with a few grass is greener… moments.
Graduate! It’s sort of the point. Re-to-the-solved!
Allow God to lead your heart. He did a fantastic job in 2008, and if you pay attention, your whole life could be as amazing. Resolved
It took me forever to be able to post this stuff, because I had to get permission from kids, parents, supervisors, etc… identifying information has been changed, details have been switched around, but you’ll get the idea.
Most of the kids we worked with were survivors of some kind of violent crime, usually within the household. Beginning in the second month, I spent half my time training shelter staff, teachers, and my supervisor how to facilitate coping exercises with these kids, and the other half of my time doing actual clinical work with them.
Like mentioned in previous posts, my supervisor was welcoming and eager to learn from me as much as I was hoping to learn from her. We were able to trade knowledge and skills—she taught me about family therapy and cultural differences in Belize, autism, schizophrenia and behavioral issues, and I taught her everything I knew about PTSD and grief and trauma.
About a month ago, the kids really started to open up and grasp the skills we were trying to teach them, and it was encouraging to see them progress. But at the same time it was sad to know that termination (for me, at least) was just around the corner. I felt like a big bad needle popping all these cute trusting little balloons of positive coping skills. We worked hard at making the transition to A seamless and positive, so I’m sure the kids will continue to grow, and A is happy to implement this specific model. A has had a hard time, though, convincing the Ministry of Ed that it’s important to address the trauma as a precursor to fixing the behavior issues. (Duh, Ministry.)
There are about 50 unbelievable stories I could tell, but they involve things like stabbings and decapitations and really sad kids. So I’ll just give you one really positive one. There were two little boys I was seeing separately, but they were in the same class. Both had been through the program about a year apart, but didn’t know it. They were in trouble for fighting in class. What I didn’t know was that they were fighting with each other, and worse—for talking about each other’s mothers! When the teacher told me this, I asked the boys if they wanted to have a session together (which wasn’t unusual—sometimes I saw the kids in groups—and they agreed). When we started playing the thoughts and feelings game, they found out they had a lot in common. Every time one of the kids answered a questions, the other would say: Hey, I’m the oldest too… I have sisters too… my dad was like that too… me too! Me too! Me too! Playing dumb, I said, “Wow. You guys seem like you could be really good friends! You really have a lot in common…” Throughout the session, they physically got closer and closer together, and by the end of the group, they had their arms around each other. Before they left, I said, “I really want you two to look out for each other. If you see someone trying to fight with your friend, stand up for him—okay?” They nodded and walked off side-by-side. Every week thereafter they asked if they could have their sessions together, and the teacher told me they have been inseparable every since. I asked if I could share their picture as new friends, and they happily agreed:
Teacher workshop
Just to keep things real, when I was trying to write this last post, I’d already left the village (I’m in Dallas now, after spending a week in San Pedro with my Dad & Kathy), and I just felt like I had nothing to report. I had read everyone’s international posts and felt like my cultural experiences, organizational challenges, work-related activities, new skills and lessons learned were just less impactful and shiny as everyone else’s. I actually said, the other night, when Jeff asked what was wrong: “Kim’s cooler”.
He asked if it was because of her gold medal, but I told him it was because she was doing AIDS stuff in Kenya, and Karen was interviewing child heads of households in Rwanda, and everyone’s work was just so international, really important and meaningful in the big picture. My niche was small, and the impact was limited to this little village in this tiny country. (But I actually re-read Karen’s post and caught the part about her feeling lackluster and tedius…)
I think I’m just emotional about leaving and evaluating. Its hard when things end, even if good things are coming.
At the very least, I finally developed a macro interest when I realized you can address issues forever at the individual level or you could go after the origin on a community level. I think I’ve walked away with a new (renewed) interest in public health and development, which I came to Tulane with but hadn’t really understood. We’ll see what happens.
For more pics on life and work in San Ignacio, click here
For pics of goodbye parties & time in San Pedro, click here
Well, there I was feeling all homesick for some fall in the Midwest—pumpkins, leaves, jackets, football—or at least a little Halloween fun in New Orleans, when lo and behold, I walk into the kitchen and they’re all carving grapefruits. They did it just like a pumpkin: cut a little hold in top, reached in and pulled out the insides, then very carefully, using gigantic knives with no handles and teeny little fingers and grapefruits, carved out spooky little faces. Then they put a candle inside, tied some ribbon to either end, and hung them on the doorknobs to greet trick-or-treaters, who don’t come on October 31st. They come on November 1st and 2nd for All Saints and All Souls days. They even have a creepy little version of trick-or-treat: Eshpasha pa la calabera, si no me das te da cagalera.
Translation: Special porridge for the skull, but if you don’t give me, it will give you loose stools. Usually, then, the villagers give the kids some porridge and sweets, sincerely wanting to avoid the loose stools.
On All Saints Day, they light little candles for the kids and babies who have died, and place the first plate of food they cook on the table next to the candles and wait for the steam of the food to go to the souls of the babies. After about half an hour, they say, “Okay. The souls are finished eating. Now it’s time to eat!”
They also place one plate of food and one little black candle on a chair for the anima soula: the lonely soul. Each person gets a plate of food, including kids who come to the door, and a special plate is always set aside for the lonely soul. The very next day, on All Souls Day, they do the same thing for adults who have died.
Also, we’re out of water again. The water went out Friday night, and by Sunday night—with no clean dishes, no reserve water in the drum and nothing to bathe with, people started asking around. Apparently a pipe broke. I suggested we try to wash some dishes with the maybe 5 liters of water we had left in the drum, but Antonia said it wasn’t clean. She said we have to be careful because these are the times when people, especially ones with babies, are desperate to use any water they can find to wash and cook and bathe, and people start getting sick from the unclean water. Point taken. Taking a shower now costs $2.50 in 1.5L of Crystal water:
Update: it poured all day. Everyone ran outside with soap and shampoo and bathed, right there in the front lawn. I really wanted to lay all the dishes out on the grass, too, but I didn’t think of it in time.
So. Things have been kind of busy and spectacular lately. Last last week, Dr. G came from the States to meet my supervisor and do a site visit. She was able to sit down with A and the Mary Open Doors founders, a couple of volunteers, Antonia and the fam, and visit both Faith Nazarene and Santa Familia schools. She also went to PG for a day to find out about possible internship possibilities in the south. Everything went really well, and I think both sides (Tulane & Belize) are excited about the potential internship placements here in the future, which I will henceforth refer to as My Legacy.
We also finally managed to pull off my first training with the staff and volunteers at Mary Open Doors last Tuesday. We’ve been trying to arrange this for 5 weeks, and even though it was an hour late, it happened. Even a client from Mary Open doors sat in on the training and asked if she could come back next week to participate in the therapeutic activities, which I had just thrown in for good measure. I was trying to demonstrate how the program feels to the kids, but everyone accidentally got a lot out of it.
Also, I had a beautiful moment with an 8 year old who hadn’t wanted to participate in the program at all to begin with—she has been very depressed and withdrawn—but she agreed to one session, which I disguised as “art activities” and “games” and “little stories”. At the end of the session, she said she would come to one more session, but no more. At the end of that session, she agreed to one more session, but that’s all. At some point, she started asking which day I was coming back, and would I bring play-dough next time, and can she use the orange pencil case next time instead of the pink one, and can she bring a picture of her dad to show me how their teeth are alike, and could I bring gummy bears instead of chips, and do I want to come to her cousin’s party this weekend? It’s been fun to watch her grow and smile and play and open up a little, and I already feel anxious about starting the termination process. Lucky for all of us, my supervisor A has been involved in these cases from the beginning and will be taking them over after I leave. She’s incredibly competent and caring and I trust that the kids are in good hands entirely. Con permission:
Also… smile… J came to visit. Inez gave up her room for a couple of nights, Antonia and Ricardo and Antonia’s parents welcomed him and then grilled him do death for incriminating information about me, the Chinchilla family took him canoeing and then drove us all to Spanish Lookout in the back of the pick-up truck for ice cream. We also walked up to Mr. Neil’s house, the tallest hill in the village, and Mr. Neil invited us in for a coke on his deck, which has the most spectacular views of San Ignacio.
After a weekend in the village we went to Cahal Pech (a village resort in San Ignacio) and spent a couple of days in town, and also lots of time on the cabana hammock. I introduced him to one of the founders at Mary Open Doors and went on a little walking tour of my day-to-day routine between the office and the school and the Ministry and the French Bakery and the juice guy and the bus stop, and all the other little places I like to eat and shop and check e-mail and sit. We also got to join a trip to Tikal, this old Mayan city outside of Flores, Guatemala. It has over 4,000 structures, including the tallest one in the Mayan world, and more are still being excavated. We saw howler monkeys (which sound like a horrifying combination of chainsaws and dinosaurs) and spider monkeys and toucans and one snake, all in the wild. We had our own private tour of the grounds by a really interesting guide, and I’m still not sure how that happened, but it was great. Mayan Ruins aren’t even my most exciting to-do list items, but I’ve always wanted to see Tikal, and the views and history were amazing.
After a few days in Cayo, we headed to Caye Caulker and, thanks to Hugo, got a free stop at the zoo and lunch at Old Belize. The important thing to know here is we saw jaguars and ate Pirate nachos.
We arrived at Caye Caulker via water taxi just in time for a panoramic view of the island at sunset, from the very top of our discounted low-season gorgeous hotel/condo, which was still being renovated since it just opened in July and tourist season doesn’t start until November. In all the times I’ve been to Belize, I’ve never gone on vacation. But THIS was one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever stayed, and we found it on accident! Two days before we arrived! And it was cheaper than the cheapest Holiday Inn Express! We had the building to ourselves, a sea-facing balcony with a hammock at sunrise, a sunset-facing bedroom over the other side of the island, and a rooftop Jacuzzi with a panoramic view of everything. Also, because it’s still slow season, the island was quiet and calm and sleepy and peaceful. Only a handful of places were open for business and the only sound we heard was an occasional golf cart, water lapping and some island music. It was a perfect recharge. With perfect company. And good food. (Except the cereal we bought from 2007. That was gross).
This week I’m back to the real world. Trying to finish papers, find a job, counsel kids, train volunteers, and begin the process of leaving… one month and I’m home to graduate. Weird.
So. After a 7-and-a-half hour ride on the non-express bus from Cayo, across the Western Highway, down the Hummingbird Highway, through the Maya Mountains and down the Southern Highway, through Belmopan and Dangriga and a bunch of little villages like Roaring Creek and Teakettle and Independence, I spent a surprise weekend with Jeff at the Hillside clinic in Punta Gorda.
Thanks to careful and sneaky coordination with the Brinkmans and Dan (one of the nurse practitioners) I got a pick-up from the bus terminal, homemade chocolate-chip cookies, an afternoon with Dan’s family, an introduction to the Jesuit volunteers, dinner with the doctors and a tour of Abby’s house.
Jeff and I got to stay in the Treehouse, and we lucked out on a little excursion with TIDE (Toledo Institute for Development and Environment). The TIDE trip was supposed to be a community event, but no one else showed up, so we had our own personal boat tour of the Rio Grande river, the mangrove Cayes, the TIDE lookout tower, and a burrito-pineapple-chips lunch with snorkeling at Snake Caye. It was beautiful and fun, and totally unexpected.
I may have spent more time on the bus than actually in PG—I haven’t added it all up—but it was a fun and sweet weekend. Thanks for all who helped!
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I guess its part of the process, so I’ll disclose. Honesty and growth, make way. I’m coming.
I spent all morning looking at my classmates’ pictures from India feeling jealous and regretful. There are mountains there, and silk, and friends. Now most of them are back in New Orleans finishing out an easy last semester at places like The Rue and Superior Grill, which sound like heaven to me right now… and I’m still here. In Belize. Again. Still. (I know, I know—Belize? You feel real sorry for me. You know I’m not on the coast, right? I’m in the jungle.)
While familiarity makes things easy and comfortable here, it also takes the new and exciting back to ordinary and routine. The exotic fruits aren’t so exotic—although, coincidentally, I did just eat a guava for the first time today. Rice and beans are just rice and beans, not: Rice and Beans! Cattle stop and stare at me when I hang my laundry. I walk past iguanas and step over roosters and make tortillas and wait for electricity and stockpile water, and never ever wash my underwear with my socks, and brush ants off my bed and eat mangoes and catch parasites and hail bus drivers and sit on stoops and walk up and down giant hills from school to school for work like its nothing. Like those things are normal. If you know me, this isn’t me! My specialty is finding extraordinary things in every day life—unless you’re that crazy life-changing story lady. If you’re her, then, no, you’re right, I suck.
Anyway. India would have been new and exciting. And besides that, I don’t think I was ready to be done with New Orleans yet. When I return, graduation will happen and this part of my life will be over. Why did I decide to spend the last half of it in another country? The work I was doing in New Orleans was good and meaningful, and Belize is always gonna be Belize. Here my work seems like a drop in the bucket. Then I started wondering: why did I think these kids deserved this program more than the kids in New Orleans in the first place? Is it just because they live here and not there? Kids are kids. Need is need. Was I being selfish in wanting to do this? I could have stayed in New Orleans, gone to India for a month, learned a bunch of new things about a new culture, and then continued to help kids in the exact same way I had been, right there. Did I waste this whole semester on something I’ve already done, that doesn’t even really matter in the big picture, when my heart really was in New Orleans all along?
I don’t know. But because I am a social worker, I have been knocked over the head with a variety of coping skills. I told myself there has to be a reason I’m here, and that I just have to trust God is doing something, somewhere, outside my view—that I may never even get to see. Maybe it’s the family I’m paying $100 per week to stay with. Maybe they were having a desperate time with finances, and I was their secret answer to prayer or something. Or maybe there is one specific kid who really needed something this program offers, and for that one kid, all of this will be worth it. Maybe Mary Open Doors or my supervisor were overwhelmed and overworked and kind of just wanted a person to have a Sprite with at lunch to recharge. Who knows, but I decided to be okay with everything because a bad attitude would be like poison, and deciding that there is still purpose for me here even if there’s not makes me feel better. Plus, there was that really undeniable string of events that happened in November… Everyone said: write this down, Brooke. There will be a time in Belize when you say: What am I doing here? and this story will be your proof. Hmm.
BUT.
Then I met the actual kids. Real-life little kids, shy and hyper and adorable and desperate: an 8-year-old whose dad committed suicide last year, four elementary kids whose dad tattooed his own birthmark on their faces, a 7-year-old who saw a knife fight between his mom and grandpa, a 15-year-old who dropped out of school after his friend committed suicide.
It’s like my heart recognized something my brain couldn’t catch up to. In New Orleans, there is a waiting list, a protocol, a budget and a set number of counselors. The same number of kids would have been seen with or without me in 3 months. But in Belize, there is only one social worker. One social worker for a hundred thousand kids in Cayo, who has never had any training or experience with grief and trauma. The 7 kids I saw today and yesterday wouldn’t have even been on the radar had Mary Open Doors not said- Brooke, these kids really need help, and had I not said- A, these kids really need help, and had there not been this ready-made program for their exact need. The school system has to focus primarily on behavioral problems in the classroom. There’s no time or manpower to waste on things like grief or trauma—even though the result of those things is behavioral problems in the classroom… but social work isn’t even a legitimate field yet. There are no standards, no associations, no practices, no codes, nothing. My supervisor keeps records for the Ministry of Education only because she wants to and because that’s how she was trained in the States. She has to constantly fight for confidentiality. She makes however many appointments per day she thinks she can fit in, and transportation is always an issue. No one has cars. The Ministry does not reimburse. She covers a hundred square miles, and we walk or take the bus or taxi on our dime. I see kids at 3 schools, and spend half my day walking up and down hills to get there. If she does home visits, she stays for a couple of hours because she knows it could be a couple of weeks before she gets there again. Her caseload is about 50 students. Every time she goes to a new school, she gets another list of 10-15 students she knows she may not even be able to see. Sigh. And yet she gives her absolute best to each family I’ve seen her with…
One thing I feel good about in this realm is that we’ll use the coping skills program I brought to train a team of 6 teachers in Santa Elena to respond to their kids, in addition to training the shelter workers. Maybe those 6 can feed 5,000…
Anyway. Some funny similarities between the kids in NOLA and the kids here—
No kid wants to miss computer lab
Every kid asks for a quarter
Schools never have space, and finding space with privacy is next to impossible
The schedule changes every day
Other kids walk by, stop, and ask if they can come too
Snacks facilitate anything and everything
In short long: I still really want to go to India. And I still miss my friends. And I still miss my little apartment and margaritas in New Orleans. But I trust that something here is happening outside my control, and I’ll gladly pour as many drops as I can into this bucket in the tiny amount of time I have here. Thank you for contributing to this trip if you did, and for believing in the project. I spent all these months convincing you guys this was important and almost completely lost sight of it myself. It turns out grass is everywhere, greener than ever…
So there you have it. The good, the bad and the ugly.
I got the flu. (Not the stomach flu—the coughing, fever, swine-ish flu.) I went to the doctor and discovered there is also a bacterial infection in my stomach. Perhaps a visit from my old friends Samantha and Jon? I spent a week in bed eating toast and rice and Dayquil and Nyquil and Cipro. Caye Caulker is closed, schools in Cayo and Belize City are closed and half the schools in PG are closed, because of flu. I had to go to town on Tuesday to see the doctor, and buy some meds and phone credit, ran into my supervisor for 10 minutes, and by Thursday, she had the flu. Everyone has flu. Everything is closed.
In the meantime, rainy season came! It started raining the day after Independence Day and hasn’t stopped. We welcomed the change for a few days, and then got stir crazy, and now can’t do laundry because nothing ever dries. I am still enjoying the cooler temps though…
On Monday, providing flu has passed and schools are reopened and supervisor is healed, I’ll have my first four clients. On Tuesday and Wednesday, hopefully the next 8. The majority are kids who have been through Mary Open Doors and are now in area schools trying to adjust. We’ll see them on an individual basis during the school day—once a week for the next 8 weeks, Children’s Bureau style. No one had really considered seeing the child during the school day, during art or some other enrichment hour, instead of at the end of the day. As noted from years of programming at the Boys & Girls Club, after school is a frustrating time to get kids to sit down and do some more work, even if you throw in a game and a pencil case. My supervisor got permission from the school system and principals, and we’re all excited to see how this goes. She’s anxious to learn from the ideas and resources I’ve brought, and I’m excited to learn from her expertise with families. A volunteer from Mary Open Doors will accompany us to co-facilitate the sessions and learn how to work through the manual for use within the shelter. She’ll take over facilitating halfway through, and my supervisor will continue with the school kids after I leave.
In the village schools my only task is to do a lesson with the Standard 4, 5 & 6 classes on how to write an autobiography. This is so they can enter CFI’s writing contest this fall and be awarded when the CFI comes this spring. No biggie. I thought it would be easy, and I reserved Thursdays exclusively for this purpose. But, as you might have guessed knowing Antonia and Belize in general, nothing of the sort has happened. The first Thursday Antonia whisked me off to take pictures of each class and of each building to send to the Ministry of Education for a report. No problem. I insisted on coming back Friday to at least award last year’s winners to generate some momentum toward the project. Somehow I ended up in Standard 3 doing a color wheel with Richard. Not only that, actual color wheels were never even created. They were pages of smeared red or blue paint. In some cases a long brown streak with a splash of yellow. I think the kids missed the point. Antonia came in, looked at me and Richard, who were covered in red paint, looked at the kids who had obviously not learned how to mix colors properly, and laughed about how she sent two perfectly capable people into teach the kids 6 colors, and we couldn’t pull it off. The following Thursday I showed up, and they sent me to build a float for the parade. The following Thursday- flu. Everyone. No autobiography. I did, however, manage to award last year’s winners and take pictures to document:
Next Thursday: Autobiography, come hell or high water or color wheels or parades or flu.
I had some hilarious and insightful ways of recounting the consistent inconsistency of water and electricity in the village, but after 2 days of temps in the lower thousands and no electricity or water, I am fresh out of jokes. And by fresh, I mean not fresh at all. Hot and sweaty and miserable. The water is on for a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple of hours at night. But the night water is a crap shoot, because when it comes on, every one in the village rushes to shower or cook dinner or wash dishes, which leaves one drop per 25 minutes in our little faucet. We walk around all night asking each other, “Is there water yet?” and when the water is on, “Is there pressure yet?”
You know me. I love hot weather. I love Belize. I’ve done this before, many times, and weathered fairly well. But for some reason this time I just can’t cool off. Every day they say, “Today is hot Brooke.” And I say, “Yes, and yesterday was hot.” And they say, “But today is extra hot, Brooke. It’s not usually this hot.” And I just nod, thinking every day feels the exact same hot to me, and I just have this god-given need to strip everything off and sit in front of the fan naked. But then there’s the problem of electricity. We’ve had blackouts in the evenings. Which means in addition to no water, there is also no fan. Which is why I haven’t been sleeping, which is why my immunity is down, and I guess, why I can’t keep any food in me. Or maybe it was the street tacos and papaya juice? I don’t know. I am on a solid diet of soup and oats until further notice.
As for my job, every day I learn a little more about patience, waiting and flexibility. Monday was really profitable: meetings were held, trainings were scheduled, plans came together, clients assigned, letters written, learning goals established, the right people answered the phones at the right times, and the day was full of shade and fans and productivity and calls from boyfriends and moms, and tomolitos for dinner. There was lots of smiling and motivation and hope and excitement. Tuesday, however, I stared at a wall. Then walked from empty building to empty building up and down that giant hill. It’s like everyone in the city got together and agreed to disappear. At the end of the day, 6 hours later, the only tangible thing I could recount having been accomplished was a uniform found for a girl who needed to start school Friday. I suppose for that little girl, Tuesday was a good day. For me, no. By the time I realized nothing was happening and no one would be in the office, I had missed the 1 o’clock bus. The next bus was at 4 o’clock. So I sat and walked and sat and walked for 3 hours and then caught the bus home—which, you should know, always adds 4 layers of dust to sweaty skin, which, you already know, may or may not be washed off when those 8 drops of water come at 7:30. You get the idea. They tell me every day, “Life in Belize is hard, Brooke”. Usually I reply with something like, “Yeah, but you have great social capital or Yeah, but the weather is nice, or Yeah but your limes are delicious.” Last night I nodded and said, “Yes. Life in Belize is hard.” Inside I was thinking: that stupid lime tree that gives such delicious limes pricked me and we can’t get the thorn out.
Sigh. Sorry. I guess I’m kind of complainy today. How about some pictures?
(As if on cue. No pictures on my flash drive. They’ll have to be on the next post!) Monday is Independence Day in Belize. They’ve asked me to judge the parade on Friday…
A. I take the 8 o’clock bus every day, and my agency doesn’t open until 9 or 10 or whenever the first person arrives. Lucky for me, an internet cafe is right down the hill, which is why I keep bothering everyone with blog posts. I can only sit on a stoop in the sun for so long before I go pay $2.50 for my hour in the shade with a computer. The same thing happens at lunch, and so I have made friends at the Ministry of Human Development, because they have fans. They are also at the bottom of the hill. The long, hot, steep hill. “You will reduce!” they say of me walking up and down that hill all day long.
B. I forgot to tell you this last time. I have been over the bus routine several times with the family I am staying with and others in the village. I know what time the buses come. I know where to stand. I know where to get off. I am all set. So Monday I felt fairly confident in my bus-catching skills. I woke up an hour early and took my time cooking oats, packing my lunch, picking out my first day outfit, loading my bag for the day, etc. and had everything ready to go by 8 o’clock for the last bus into town. I stood by the door looking far into the distance for that bus. I had seen the 7 o’clock bus pass and the 7:30 bus and both 7:45 buses. Mine would be next. Richard walked out sleepy-eyed and said: Brooke. What are you doing? It is only 7 o’clock. I looked at my watch and realized I was looking at the CST setting. I was an hour early.
(The funny thing is that when the 8 o’clock bus actually came, I was talking to Antonia and almost missed it. She saw it pass behind me a couple of minutes early, ran outside and yelled Boyeee! I had to run after it.)
Also, when I take the 4 or 5 o’clock bus home, many of the high school students take the same bus, so I wasn’t surprised to hear “Brooooooky!” from down the street while I sat on a stoop by the bus lot. Shawn, who likes to think he is an extra-cool version of 16, shook his head and laughed at me from way up the hill. He sat down next to me, which was nice because I had spent all day waiting for people that never came. I was tired, hot and out of water. He said, “Do you want to go on the bus, Brooke? You look like a begger.”
And here’s the worst part. When I got on the bus, Bryon said: Brooke! A strange thing happen last night. I neva see wah tornado in all of Belize, but last night a tornado came, right here da Cayo! I froze, and vaguely remembered a sleep-talking-walking incident from the night before wherein, during a huge storm, I shook Inez awake and tried to make her get under the bed because in my sleep a tornado was coming. She laughed all morning and told everyone at school. When I got off the bus, they yelled out the window: Brooke, be careful because an earthquake will come tonight at 6 o’clock, and hail will fall from the sky!
We’ve been laughing about that for three days.
I met my supervisor this week, and she was grrrreat. She works for the Ministry of Education and is the only social worker in all of Cayo! She seemed worn out just talking about all the need in the district for only her to attend to. I am looking forward to learning from her and traveling to different schools and homes. One boy, she said, was 14 and selectively mute. She said no one knew how to make him talk, so people hit him over the head and yelled in his face. They wanted to put him in the special needs program. But she went to his home a few times to play simple games with him like tic-tac-toe, and then progressed to snakes and ladders with the family, and the boy was talking within weeks. She is still assessing what caused him to stop speaking in the first place, but her work seems interesting and never-ending, and she has been very welcoming.
As for the shelter, I spent 4 hours yesterday talking with 3 ladies who’d been through the shelter and are now volunteers. Their stories are hard to hear. It seems to me that the most severe cases of domestic violence in the States are the middle of the bell curve here- hot dinner on at 5, windows closed and locked, no speaking unless spoken to, shut the kids up, etc… the more I hear, the more depressed I feel about gender roles. Even among well-respected, high-functioning families. Three times today I heard mothers telling their daughter, “No one is allowed to hit you. You have a right…” because the norm is that they don’t have a right—so much so they have to be taught NOT to tolerate abuse.
In other news, I have not instituted jump rope hour at the Flowers like I promised. It’s just too hot. I really can’t waste clothes on things like exercise
Essentials: On the plane next to me was a girl from the UK spending a month in Belize and then a month in Fiji doing some kind of medical internship. On the other side was a lady from Belize City who told the med student and me everything we need to know about Belize City. She had been visiting her daughter in Florida and thought it was hilarious that we came from the UK and the US to study in Belize, and her daughter left Belize to study in the States. She wrote out her address and phone number on an index card and gave one to each of us. She told us to call if we need anything, like lunch in Belize City. We’ll go out, she said. Unless it’s hot, then we’ll order in.
After spending an hour in baggage claim and immigration, and another 15 minutes with no power—200 of us clamoring for carts and luggage and air—somehow the three of us landed right back in a row in the customs line and were able to say goodbye as our personal items were spread on a table for all to see.
Onward!
The minute I caught that first campfire and coconut smell and saw my first raccoon on a chain in the back of a truck (what?!) I knew I was home.
David picked me up, and when I turned to thank the baggage guy, he was climbing in the front seat. That’s Belize. Your luggage guy is your neighbor. The postal guy is your grandpa. The checkpoint guard is your cousin.
We took off down the Western Highway at sunset—my exact favorite way to drive the Western Highway—and an interesting topic came up. I learned that the city is having a meeting tomorrow about a dam that was built a few years ago. It was contested by the Belize Zoo lady, along with many different environmental groups, and pushed forward by the electric company, the Belizean government, and those who wanted Belize’s electricity to come from Belize, not Mexico. The only problem was the entire dam. Environmentalists warned that the rock wouldn’t hold, the river would suffer, the quality of the water would decline, energy prices would go up, and the flooding would kill off the Scarlet Macaw (side note: The last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw is a must-read. It’s a story about the Belize Zoo lady who fought against the dam, and the rich descriptions of the Belizean government and the people here are unbelievable. It’s full of history about Belize and Cayo District. And the author is funny. His first impression of Belize City had something to do with a pedal-by shooting.) Anyway, I read this book before I came, got really into the dam issue and had meant to ask about it, then right there out of nowhere, David brought it up. He said they were calling a village meeting to discuss the dam. Apparently the water is orange. The orange water is downstream from the dam, right in San Ignacio. This is the water they bathe in, play in, clean with, wash clothes and dishes in… It has something to do with the chemical makeup and silt that have filtered out and around the dam, and worse, in order to remove or fix the dam, they’d have to release the wall, which would flood all of San Ignacio and the surrounding valley villages, like Santa Familia. David said they came around this week to the villages with a blue siren and said: If you hear this sound, you have 2 hours to get out before the flood comes. Omg. I just knew that Zoo Lady was right!
I arrived in Santa Familila to a welcome surprise, and also termite season in my room. Antonia, Ricardo and Inez had spent the day rearranging all the rooms so Inez and I could be roomies and each have a bed in the room that doesn’t rain!
Before I could even unpack or think about how tired I was, they whisked me off to the Miss Bullet Tree pageant.
(I am trying to upload a video of a punta dancer, but it’s taking forever…)
Garifunda Dancer
Fire Dancer
Sunday I went to church, and then to Guatemala in the back of a pickup truck, then squeezed into a cab with 6 people and spent an hour in the Melchor hospital. Richard (the son of the principal I am staying with) had a cough that wouldn’t lift because of the dusty roads and needed to see a doctor today for asthma. But there are no doctors in Cayo on Sundays, and so we had to cross the border. There are apparently also no doctors in Melchor on Sundays, which is how we ended up in the hospital. He got his treatment, and I bought all my little Belize gifts for you all at 1/3 price from the Gulatemalans. Finally a Guatemala stamp in my passport… although I’ve already been to Melchor. Figure that one out. Wink!
Today I am supposed to meet with my supervisor and she will accompany me to Mary Open Doors to begin the internship. But I have not been able to reach anyone. None of us have ever met each other, and the last contact I had with them was 2 weeks ago, by email. I still took (read: chased after) the 8 o’clock bus, and if I have to hang around the French bakery eating Mennonite cookies until I figure something out, so be it.
I have a phone number, and I will soon have a phone- hopefully by the end of the day. I can receive calls for free, but your carrier will charge you for the international call. I can make calls sometimes. And I can text sometimes.
