From An E-mail to “A”: Culture Shock and Mother Love

“A” is my best childhood friend.  We have known each other for 22 years.  Lately, we have been expressing our wishes that we could be nearer to each other:  first it was me wanting her near me because I had just gone through the birth of a surrogate baby and then moved to Thailand almost immediately after.  Soon after that, she was wishing I were closer because she just found out her mom has very serious and advanced cancer, and as an only child, she is having to deal with more trauma now than she ever has before.

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to her yesterday.

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Okay, so, I cried for just a minute today…partly over my mom and partly over your mom.

I am sitting in a “Tourist Information Center” right now in Surat Thani, which is a town 8 hours south of Phetburi. I feel really cool and a little smug at the moment because I am the only tourist on all the buses that just came from the ferry pier to the train station (on my way back to my new “hometown” in Thailand from an island further south ) who has figured out that there is a free, air-conditioned, wifi-equipped place to hang out for the 3 hours until our overnight train leaves at 8 p.m. Everyone else is sitting on their baggage in the mosquito-infested dusk, or spending money Oh wait– two more people just walked in. An older couple. Okay so I was the first, anyway.

What’s funny is that in the movie version of my life (a comedy, of course), I would sit here being all proud of myself for being so clever and travel-wise, and then it would turn out that I’d miss my train out of here because it’s so nice in the Tourist Information building that I’d fall asleep in one of the comfy chairs, or something like that.

Have you ever seen one of those movies or documentaries where some western kids travel to the middle or far east, like somewhere crazy and backwards like Burma or Afghanistan, and they unwittingly find themselves on a bus held together with wooden floorboards and rope and duct tape and corrugated iron, smashed between a prostitute and a lady with 5 live chickens or a goat or something like that?  That’s kind of the exaggerated version of what just happened to me in the last couple hours.

I’m sure all the spoiled Eurotrash and Ameritrash kids who thought they were so smart or lucky to have found such a cheap ferry-bus-train ticket did NOT expect to be boarding a bus like the one we boarded, and then ride an hour and a half in it. No air-con, and it’s over 90 out there. Fans on the ceiling work for a while, then stop working when we hit a bump.  Big western kids crammed into Thai-sized, cracked vinyl seats, trying unsuccessfully not to touch each other.  Sun streaming through the non-curtained windows in the afternoon heat, skin sticking to skin in the humidity. It was so sad…we were all looking dejectedly and longingly at the nice, new, air-conditioned, bathroom-havin’, curtain-adorned luxury buses that the other people were climbing onto at the ferry pier. Like, “Why do WE have to ride the ghetto bus?”

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past hour and a half.

Anyway, if you have been noticing my mother’s last two facebook updates (though I doubt you have been online much) they are enough to make me cry, and today they did. They’re about how forgetful Fibromyalgia makes people, and how hard it is to be losing her mind so quickly (more than is normal for a person her age) when she has always been so quick and witty. And she always has been, and she is frustratingly forgetful. I am guilty of losing my temper because of it, and so are my siblings, and she even scolds us (for all to read) for being hard on her …in said facebook updates. But that part aside, I know it is true and it breaks my heart and it makes me terrified the same fate will befall me because maybe it is genetic, and when I think about her hurting, I can’t take it.

And that led me to your mom, and you. Any of this sound similar? And your situation is a thousand times worse and different, and I can only imagine how much more painful. And I love you so much and I don’t know what to do and oh shit I am gonna cry in public again.

I hid it quite cleverly when it happened on the bus ride because I had my white long-sleeved cotton shirt draped over my head to shield me from the sun, and when the tears came my head was already facing down over my knees so I just dabbed them away with the shirt—mascara stains be damned.

But on a less-depressing note I had a pretty funny cultural experience on the 200 meter walk from where the bus dumped us off and the tourist center. There were all these little food carts you find absolutely everywhere in Thailand and I went up to one and asked her for some rose-apple (a Thai fruit specific to the south, I think).  I watched her pick two and wash them off and seed them and cut them up and dump them in the plastic bag and put a giant toothpick-lookin’ thing in there as a utensil, and then she reached for this reddish sugar/powder mixture they serve as dipping-flavor-stuff (think Dippin’ Sticks candy…remember those?), and I said in Thai,

“No no…I don’t like the spicy.” (usually it has chili powder in it, see, or at least with green mango it does)

“Not spicy!” says the Thai woman, as a young woman next to her looks on. I look at her skeptically, because I have been told this before in Thailand, see, and it is quite often a MALCIOUS LIE!

But to prove herself, she took some out of the container with a metal spoon, and held it out for me to taste it. Naturally, I licked my finger and reached out to dab it in the powder. She jerks the spoon away and cries “Mai chai!!” and at the same moment I realize what I have done and gasp in horror and wai her (hands together in apology) and say “I’m sorry” and “Please excuse me!” in Thai, and she realizes that I must have remembered that Thais NEVER use spit for ANYTHING.

Remember one of our slogans when we were little, “Spit … It works!” ??  (referring to makeup removal, etc.)

Not in Thailand, it doesn’t.

If you lick your finger to count out money, to get the top sheet of paper off a stack of papers (as you might when giving classroom handouts) or to wipe something off your kid’s face it is TOTALLY REPULSIVE in Thai culture. They just don’t do it.

The way I was laughing, I felt (hoped) like maybe she could tell that I realized that I should have known better. That I have been here a while and was extra-embarrassed at my faux-pas…because the Thai I could speak might have shown her that. I couldn’t stop laughing, and she and the other lady laughed right along with me, and I finally regained my composure and reached out my palm to receive the sprinkling of powder.

It was sour-plum powder, and it is my new favorite taste in Thailand, and I haven’t had any new-favorite-tastes in a long time now.

I wish you simple pleasures and moment-to-moment appreciation beyond mere survival.

I will be 35 in 11 days. I am still totally lost.

A best friend of mine, who just found out her mom has terminal colorectal cancer recently, said to me in an e-mail, “I wish I could start my paragraphs with some word other than ‘I,’ but I can’t. ” She is in a more desperate situation than I have ever witnessed. I would give anything to be with her now.

“I” is my first language. I am the only thing I feel I have the authority to write about. To write fiction in the third-person would feel like lying or posing. I have accepted the fact that if no one would ever read what I write, I would still write. It is my anchor. Maybe “I” makes us self-centered. But maybe we should just write about “I” anyway because in times of stress and incomprehension, it makes us feel real. Fuck self-centeredness. “I” is all we have.

Thank you, Miss Ashley. Your sweet momma is in my visions of miraculous health.

I (!) beg the forces of the universe; please make this easier. I thought I was desperate in the UK after Charlie was born. But I was surrounded by love and support and exposure to baby if I needed it, and a reasonable-albeit-gray-climate and potential for communication then. Here, I am swimming in an alien world where I can’t communicate with anyone in real time, the climate is determined to kill me, and my body and mind cry for people and places I won’t see for years.

And it seems I’m being constantly devoured by bugs. Even as I type this.

Yet, I am always aware that I HAVE CHOSEN THIS FOR MYSELF. I must have been out of my fucking skull.

So, to remain sane, I have reduced my reality down to two things: militantly and daily taking care of my basic needs (eating well, sleeping well, doing yoga, and escaping at least once a day into creativity) and noticing the things that are universally beautiful, simple, and subtly joyous.

That last one sounds a bit hokey, so I will give some examples… and then I am going to bed. With the ants that bite me all night. Fucking ants.

Examples:

The two stray dogs with curled tails who have become the “house dogs” for this household (because we feed them) whom I have named “Momma” and “Papi.” When I sneak off to smoke under the banana trees, I snap my fingers and they follow me to my shady grove with such joy and pride that it always makes me laugh, or at least smile.

The bird calls that begin around 5 in the morning; the main one being a loud, whistled, repeated “Ahh-ROO!” I am hell-bent on finding out what this bird is called. It was in Bangkok and it’s here in the boondocks as well. This call is soon drowned out by the 7 or 8 local roosters who don’t shut up until everyone has been jolted awake through their screens (no one has the luxury of air conditioning this far out in the countryside).

The sight of a gecko leaping out of my shower caddy when I grab it. When you share a bathroom with 6 other people in a family, shower caddies are necessary. Geckos think these are very luxurious, sweet-smelling apartments.

The absolute joy and freedom of a $600 motorbike I have saved and budgeted for, and the one huge chunk of personal freedom and independence it has given me in a time-frame where I have constantly felt dependent on others.

The tiny, dainty little almost four-year-old girl who lives here; the granddaughter of the family, whose grandparents (my Thai parents) are raising her, who is constantly sickly, and who – during a long motorbike ride into town today – let me stroke her hair and gradually relaxed back into my chest as we sped over the asphalt.

The thrill and fear that tightens my chest and belly when I am driving my motorbike home from town anytime after dark. There are no streetlights out here. I am constantly aware that anything; a huge monitor lizard, a stray dog running from enemy stray dogs, or – god forbid – a wandering cow who escaped the dusk herding process; could appear in my path at any moment, thus rendering me very seriously injured or killed.

The speed with which I have re-learned to piss or shit in public restrooms to avoid being bitten in the ass by the EVER-PRESENT mosquitos who swarm in every Thai bathroom.

The golden-pink late evening sunlight on my Thai mom as she squats in a yard of long green grass, dressed in the all-covering clothes of a farmer, cutting fresh greens with a scythe so she can feed them to the rabbits they raise in the barn behind our house.

I am drifting towards sleep. I miss you all. These are the good things. I will not mention the bad. …at this time.

Leaving Again.

I have been here for three and a half months, and next week I am leaving.

During these last few days in Plymouth, England before I take off to live in Thailand, I’m finally seeing this place with appreciative eyes. This has not usually been the case. I’ve been pretty guilty of Plymouth-bashing. But just as it was before I left my beloved Minneapolis, sometimes it takes the knowledge that you will not see a place in a really really long time to open your eyes to it and appreciate it.

This is one of those quirky, time-tested things I love about upheaval and world travel.

I have recently been beating myself up over not “accomplishing” much (okay…besides the whole surrogate mother thing I did for my friend here. I guess that was fairly significant) and remaining relatively inert and uninvolved in the community or what this place has to offer.

I just decided to stop feeling guilty about that. Most likely, I subconsciously wanted to hate on Plymouth and England because then it wouldn’t be quite so painful to leave it behind when my planned departure date arrived. Two difficult separations in the last 6 months from homes I loved – the house I owned in Minneapolis, and my former roommate Kara’s home – was quite enough, thanks.

Maybe I’m just making excuses for myself for being “lazy.” But it’s nice to think my subconscious mind had a sneaky plan to protect me all along.

One thing I have done a lot of in Plymouth is walking. Both before and after Charlie’s birth, iPod in hand, I could easily walk around and explore this town for 3 to 6 hours on a good day. Walking helps me think…or if I am thinking too much, it helps get me out of my head.

With the huge variety of music I have on my computer, and the huge variety of different mindsets and moods all that music could produce in me, sometimes I feel guiltily narrow-minded that I have chosen to listen to almost nothing but hour-long Dubstep mixes on my iPod almost every time I leave the house. Occasionally I realize how “unnatural” it should seem, for example, walking across a grassy field on a cliff overlooking the ocean, enjoying the organic beauty of the English coast, while listening to such a mechanical, artificially-produced form of music.

Kind of like the thought of a military tank rolling along in a rainforest…it just doesn’t fit.

Dubstep music is aggressive, driving, hard-hitting, deliberate, strong, sometimes melancholy, sometimes disdainful, and full of continuous momentum that – in a one hour DJ set – doesn’t let up until the end. Why was I so drawn exclusively to this music the whole time I was in England? Maybe because all of those qualities are the qualities I have had, or needed to have, in myself to get through the last three and a half months here.

I hereby promise myself that I will create some new and very different mixes of music for my iPod in honor of the alien planet of Thailand: my new home.

Eerily Symbolic Dream

Sometimes when you first wake from them, dreams seem to make no sense at all.  They just seem silly.

“Silly brain…now why would you come up with that?”

I had no idea how meaningful this dream was until I actually typed it out.  It seems eerily symbolic of where I am in my crazy journey right now.

Jan 11th

I woke up having a dream that I was urgently needed to drive an unfamiliar car, and the person in the passenger seat was annoyed that I couldn’t even figure out how to get it out of the parking lot. I kept getting stuck in reverse and the brake didn’t seem to work and I kept running into walls and other cars.

There was a brief moment in there where I had just spilled food onto the floor in a hallway, knowing there was a person standing behind me, and trying to clean it up without the person knowing I’d made a mess.

Back in the car, at the end of the dream I looked down and realized not only was I trying to drive the car from the back seat, but I was expected to reach under the seat with my feet somehow and get to the pedals from that position.  Only at the last moment before waking did I realize there was a clutch pedal way over to the left that I had never noticed before. Good. Because I know how to drive a stick shift. But I woke up before I could prove I was capable. And where was the gearshift, anyhow? I don’t remember seeing one.

Determination and Dubstep

This is a story about how important music and dance are to my sanity right now. It is part of a process of re-birth. It’s also a story about England. And it also attempts to demonstrate what passion, persistence, independence, dorkiness, sheer pig-headedness and fifteen GBP will get you, if you try hard enough.

Please don’t be daunted by the length of my stories; I intend to write a book about this past year of my life, and books require large volumes of writing, so that’s how I write.

Okay, first of all: go to http://www.myspace.com/djcrissycriss. On his list of songs, down to your right, the second one down is “Kick Snare.” Click on it. If you have nice speakers attached to your computer, turn the bass up as high as it’ll go. This is one of my favorite examples of Dubstep music.

Maybe you don’t like it…maybe it sounds evil or weird or annoying…but imagine you’ve somehow grown to love it and you’re in a little club where there are 200 other people packed into a solid mass, waiting for the beat to drop after the voice says “Kick…Snare…It’s unbelievable…” and then the two enormous towers of speakers and bass bins at the front of the room hurl out the song so damn hard that the bass vibrates your skull and ribcage, and you and the whole mass of bodies launch into continuous, joyous movement to the same rhythm.

It can be pretty intense.

I am hopelessly and fiendishly addicted to these moments. I close my eyes and a huge smile takes over my face and I often actually laugh out loud as I’m dancing.

I had to loosen my grip on several addictions during 9 months of pregnancy, but this one just grew to be that much more powerful.

So, with the knowledge that this has been the only type of music that has moved me to dance for the last couple years, you should also know that this is one of the only things I truly love about England. This particular town is depressing, the weather has been shit, the food is shit, everything is ridiculously expensive, and the people in general are conservative, noncreative and gloomy.

But somehow…Dubstep music was born here.

The scene is so miniscule in Minneapolis that an event as well-attended as last night’s, if it were in my hometown, would be nothing short of a miracle.

Yep…it takes a special breed of people to invent and love something like Dubstep, and who knew the English were those kind of people?

The other thing I have to love about England, as reluctant as I am to have a now-permanent tie to this place, is that the child I just gave birth to was also born here. Incubated in a womb constantly permeated by yoga, orgasms and Dubstep, he is quite possibly the chillest, healthiest infant on the entire planet.

From the first week I got here in October until a few days before he was born, I went to this tiny little club situated under a bridge within a bus station, and danced my little pregnant ass off to Dubstep at least once a week. The doormen, bar men, and even some of the DJs and MCs know me by face – or, more likely, by shape – if not by name. I have been hard to miss. When I danced with Charlie in my belly, he was my only dance partner. I danced on my own, often with my eyes closed so I couldn’t see the people who were staring or sometimes even laughing. Anyone may have assumed I was “a bit mad,” but there could never have been any doubt I was there because I love to dance to Dubstep, and not because I wanted to get wasted or find drugs, and definitely not because I expected to pick up a man.

Last night was the first Dubstep event since before the holidays, and I have been looking forward to it since Charlie was born. I got dressed and beautified at Jackie’s house after spending some time with her and Charlie. I put my hand on his little chest as he was sleeping to say goodbye to him just before I left, and told Jackie it was a big moment for me to go dancing without Charlie as my companion.

I had become very used to his presence defining who I was, whenever I was there, and it had started to feel a little like security. This time, even though I was slim and back into my former body, and would be able to dance like I used to before I got huge, I was also – for the first time in 9 months – truly going alone.

This required a few extra deep breaths of courage when my taxi dropped me off. No one here ever goes to clubs alone.

When I arrived I walked by a side window of the club. The bass bins were on the other side of the glass, and I paused to feel the glass vibrate and to hear the music and wondered if there were many people dancing yet, since it was still only 1 a.m. – pretty early for UK standards. At the door I was astonished even at the size of the smoking crowd that was outside the club. I stood in line to pay my entry fee of five pounds, but then realized something was wrong. People in front of me were turning away from the door and leaving. The show was sold out.

I asked the doorman if they were letting new people in as people left. He said there was no way to know who was leaving for the night when they left, so no. I asked if there was any hope of getting in if I wait, and again he said no. This is not happening, I thought. I can’t not go in there.

So I picked a square of pavement 2 feet from the door, right in the middle of people going in and out, central in the doorman’s field of vision, and didn’t move from that space for over an hour. It was obvious I was alone, as I always am. There was no way I could remain there and look cool, so I chain smoked cigarettes without inhaling, in an effort to look just a little less lame, but I absolutely refused to leave.

I stood there in my heavy full length coat, sort of bouncing a little to the music I could hear through the door, and watched everyone around me for someone who might be selling a ticket. At one point I think the doorman realized I had not moved for a long time, and started looking at me warily, and from that point on I made eye contact with him every minute or so.

Every time a group of tottering drunk girls in miniskirts (you can’t possibly dance to dubstep in 4 inch heels and a miniskirt!) got in because they were on the guest list, every time a bloke stumbled outside to smoke, so messed up he could barely walk or even open his eyes, and every time someone walked out with their car keys in hand, I shot the doorman a glance. He eventually started to look down each time.

I was convinced I was wearing him down.

At one point when I looked up there was a different, nicer doorman standing there. This guy also recognized me and had even talked to me a bit in the past, so I made my move.

“Hey,” I said, “Look, you’ve seen me dozens of times, and this is the first time I’m not hugely pregnant, right?”

“Oh, right! Congratulations…when did you have your baby? You were a surrogate, right?”

“Yeah. Just before Christmas, thank you. Look, I know you have to follow the rules but there are tons of people in there who aren’t here to dance or because of the music, and you know I dance every time I’ve come here, and this is the first time I’ve gone out to dance since the baby was born. I need to get in there. It’s really important to me. Isn’t there someone selling a ticket, or a way you could let me in, like if someone gets kicked out?”

“Sorry, love, but we’re far past capacity as it is. There’s really nothing I can do.”

“Okay. That’s okay. But I’m not leaving. I have to go in. I’ll be right there. All night. Until I get inside.”

I walked dejectedly back to my square, and noticed him talking to the other doorman when he came back. I also saw several other bouncers talking to each other and someone gestured toward me. I was sure they would take pity on me and let me in. But they didn’t.

I chatted a little bit with people who came out to smoke and approached me, and told them my story. A couple of guys insisted there was someone inside who had a ticket for sale, and I immediately told them I’d pay them to find him. They went back in on a mission. I talked to others who were also looking for tickets. They were all in groups of several people. I told them my sad story as well. Finally, after an hour, I was started to lose hope. I had stuck one earbud in my ear and was listening to dubstep on my iPod. I was cold and angry and was ready to approach the original doorman with “Okay, before I give up and get a taxi home, I just need to tell you that…” and then plea my case one last time.

That was when one of the people in a group approached me with a guy selling a single ticket, saying it was no use to them because they wanted to go in as a group, and asked if I’d pay 15 pounds for it. DONE. I was in. I gave the ticket to the doorman, who said “Didn’t you just have a baby?” and ended up knowing my whole story without my having said a word, the coldhearted robot.

It seems I have never been so thankful to be somewhere, never danced so hard, never had so much love for that music as I did when I got in there. I felt like I had just won an enormous battle, even though all I had done was remain stubborn enough not to accept no for an answer.

I’m glad I got in when I did, because I was ready to do one of two things after giving up: I was either going to stand by that window I’d passed where I could hear and feel the music, and dance there by myself, or I was going to walk up the hill to the park by the ocean and dance by myself in the dark and freezing wind to Dubstep on my iPod until I was exhausted.

Both of these would have left no doubt in the mind of any observer that I was truly “mad.” I would have had to agree with them, and would have kept dancing anyway.

Birth of Charlie, Part 2. Or… How Labor Pains Can Be Fun.

I think that part of pain IS psychological, in a way, and here’s why I say that.  If you’re really scared because it’s a first-time-birth and you don’t know what kind of pain you’re in for, it might make it worse.  Movies and TV and stories and peoples’ accounts of labor and birth make it seem like the most painful scary thing in the world.  The difference with me is that I was guaranteed a c-section in the end, no matter what. Jackie and Tim paid about 5,000 pounds for that guarantee. As long as I was in the hospital, I knew I would get my epidural in the end, and that the procedure would take about 20 minutes, and I would not have to push that baby out of me by myself.

Because I knew this, I wasn’t scared.  Once the contractions started at about 4 p.m., I was in a state of adrenaline fueled giddiness.  I was tickled pink that my water actually broke, which seemed so movie-ish, and because I knew it only happens in about 10 to 12 percent of women.  It was dramatic and exciting to think it happened to me!  I doubted that Charlie would be early to such a degree that when the Doc told me it actually was my water that broke, I felt like I was suddenly on a roller coaster I could not get out of, and like it or not, I had to ride it through to the end.  It was so unexpected and exciting that I was in a state of euphoria from that point on.

Jackie, it should be said, was a bit more nervous.  But I can understand that.  I think I have an innate sense of trust in my own body, and all my previous irrational thoughts that I or the baby would die in childbirth disappeared.  I knew I could do this, no problem. I became a calm, wisecracking buddha right up through the point where I was in the recovery room, demanding more heart-shaped ice cubes.  Jackie was understandably more rattled.  She probably felt a little shocked, unprepared, and out of control.  We all had had this feeling that Charlie would be right on time, and we’d all been procrastinating doing the little things around the house, including packing my bag and Charlie’s bag, and suddenly there was no time stretched out in front of us; the time was right now, ready or not!

When the nurse gave us an approximate time of 8 p.m. for the c-section to take place, we thought we could pop home, ten minutes away, and go finish packing the bags.  That was hours away, after all.  It was only 3:30.  I didn’t want Jackie to have to rummage around for all my stuff, I wanted to do it myself.  At first the nurse said no, we couldn’t leave.  But we badgered her so much about it that she finally let us go, after promising we would be there to “check in” to my private room in about 45 minutes.

Feeling like we had escaped the prison of the uncomfortable waiting room filled with cranky fat pregnant women and their bewildered, deer-in-the-headlights-faced spouses, we were seated in Jackie’s little two-seater sports car five minutes later.  As soon as we shut the car doors, I said,

“I think I need a cigarette.”

“Oh my God, so do I.”

“Can we smoke while you’re driving?”

“We can today.”

“Won’t Tim smell it?”

“We. Can. Today.”

So the adventure started.  The ride home was funny.  I kept teasing Jackie about how nervous she was, making her laugh and hopefully relax a bit.  The commotion once we walked into the house and told Tim the time had come was funny too.  I packed quickly, and was soon sitting at the bottom of the staircase, waiting for Jackie who was running around like a headless chicken. That’s when the first real contraction hit.

I gasped and breathed through it, and afterwards, reeling a bit but happy that it was so short-lived, I tilted my head toward the upstairs where I could hear her opening and closing drawers.

“Jackieeeeee,” I wailed dramatically, “This was not supposed to involve paaaaaaiiiiin!”

“Oh, gosh! Did you have a contraction?”

“Yup.”

Anyway it got to be way past 8:00 and still no c-section in sight. Jackie and Tim sat in the two chairs to the left of the bed, I sat cross legged on the bed, and my laptop sat at the foot of the bed playing an episode of Desperate Housewives.

It was cool that they got too see what someone going through contractions look like. But maybe I didn’t get through contractions the standard way. I would bend over and press pause on the computer, get off the bed and onto my yoga mat to the right of the bed, and either go into a down dog pose (which took pressure out of my pelvis) or fell down into a sort of rocking, rolling childs pose, if it was a real baddy. Then it would be over and I would hop onto the bed again and restart the DVD.

I believe there may have been just a few that were bad enough (coming close to 10 p.m. and 1 or 2 minutes apart) for me to say, “Ffffffffuuuuuuuuck.” Those were the ones that made my hands shake and my toes curl. What’s funnier than that was that either Jackie or Tim would respond by saying a very British, “Oh, dear.”

We got out (and Tim came too) to smoke one time (but Tim didn’t smoke), when the contractions were still 3 or 4 minutes apart. Since I couldn’t do yoga on the pavement, I sort of slumped over forward instead. It just felt right to do whatever I could to take some weight out of my pelvis. Once I slumped onto their MG sportscar, once onto somebody else’s car we happened to be walking past (“Carrie! You’ll set off the alarm!”) and once I simply stopped walking and hooked my hands over Jackie’s shoulders and pulled my weight down forward off of her back until it passed.

So, did 6 hours of labor make me more attached to Charlie? I had never considered that I might actually have contractions but no vaginal birth. Because it didn’t happen in any way that I’d imagined it, I had no expectations and no fears. Those contractions made me feel alive, capable, and tough. Like I said, they made me feel like a bad-ass. It doesn’t matter if they made me bond more with Charlie, (and I’ll never know anyway, because I’ll never know how it would have been different if I hadn’t had them) because they made me feel like a total bad-ass, and that feeling is absolutely worth any extra pain I may be fighting through now.

The Birth of Charlie, Part 1

Knowing that I have been pretty lazy about posting new blogs since coming to the U.K. I can no longer avoid it, since I have now finally done what I came here to do.

Baby Charlie was born at 10:40 p.m. this Monday night (December 21^st), which was about 8 or 9 days earlier than planned…but hey; no time like the present day to be born, I suppose. I do appreciate the early arrival in some ways because the pregnancy was finally becoming a little uncomfortable. I am now free from that discomfort and am not spending Christmas OR New Years Eve in the hospital, as I had planned on having to do…which is nice. Although I did yoga and went to the gym up until the day before he came, I was starting to feel a little like the elephant in the room among my yoga-mates and gym-mates, both figuratively (is she gonna have that thing while she’s exercising?) and literally (I shouldn’t stare…but man, that looks weird.).

But I also have to say, I was enjoying every last day and second of the pregnancy. I truly did love being pregnant. The hormones elevated my general mood rather than disrupting it. I was in better shape physically than I was even beforehand. And there was always the upside of smiles, attention and praise from anyone around me to counterbalance the waddling, heartburn and constant trips to the bathroom.

The only negative about him coming early is that somehow felt I was “cheated” out of enjoying those last, few, precious days of being as pregnant as I could be.

And I knew I would feel lonely, physically, after Charlie came out. And I am. Being pregnant is like having a little pet inside you for nine months. You always have to think of someone besides yourself every time you do anything at all to your body; you’re also never quite alone. And as soon as you start to forget that there is someone else there, they remind you with a kick or a movement. It is a constant reassurance that you are serving a higher purpose; that you are temporarily more important, in a way, for 9 months of your life, than you are normally…simply by the act of breathing.

I suppose if all had gone according to plan, there would not have been anything exciting to report. There is nothing as predictable as a planned C-section, really. The date and time of the surgery still had not been nailed down, and I suppose that was a little unusual but it was more annoying than anything else. To have a C-section exactly halfway between Christmas and New Years is pretty inconvenient for all involved, and I was beginning to feel like a nuisance. The way Charlie chose to enter the world was actually the best way it could have turned out, because it is all done now and I have an extra week to recover, and best of all, I actually got to experience a taste of real labor. This is incredibly cool, because deep down, I have always wanted that experience, but was drawn to a c-section because of fears of pain, damage, and extra emotional bonding to a baby I would not keep.

Being in labor for a while made me feel like I know what to expect if I ever choose to do this again (and I would try to deliver vaginally in the future, which is possible these days), but more importantly, it made me feel like a bad ass. I definitely feel like I deserve more street cred in the pregnancy world now, having gone through 6 hours of contractions, than if I hadn’t.

The Ugly Man

The man driving the mini-cab was really, horribly ugly.  I almost never say things like that and almost as rarely think them.  But because he spent the next five minutes bitching at me and then ripped me off, I don’t feel too guilty telling you the dude was ugly.

 

I’d had the hotel clerk call the mini-cab (a privately run cab service, rather than a big company, common outside of the city) to take me from the Heathrow airport area, where my mom had just caught her flight to Germany, to the train station just 5 minutes away, so I could make my way to Gatwick airport, where I had to catch my flight to Italy that afternoon.

 

He wore a dark suit and had wiry black hair and a mustache.  He might have been Afghani, like our cabbie the previous night.  He was in his 50s, and his face was puffy and oily with deep and plentiful pock marks.  His face was usually turned away from me, so instead of making eye contact throughout the conversation I usually looked at his earlobes instead, which were swollen and distended grotesquely away from his head.

 

At first he asked me where I was going to fly to.  Standard cabbie small talk led to me tell him I was meeting my mom in Italy in a week, but that I was heading to Rome later in the day. Soon, however, my trip was reduced from a lovely Roman holiday to my first and immediate trip to Gatwick airport.  He asked – with blatant disgust in his voice – why I was taking all the separate journeys of taxi, train, London Underground and airport shuttle, rather than just hiring a taxi to drive me straight there.

“I dunno…” I said, a bit sheepishly.  “…because it’s cheaper.”  

“No…not cheaper.  Not really,” he growled in his thick accent.

My attention was grabbed by his irritation, so I asked how much a cab ride to Gatwick would cost, if someone were so inclined to go that route.

“About eighty quids,” he said.

I almost jumped out of my seat.  “EIGHTY QUID?!” I decided he was joking and started laughing.

“Look,” he said, not cracking a smile. “You will pay almost fifty quids the way you do it, and you have all changes and troubles…taxi, train, tube, bus…just to save 30 quids?  Is CRAZY!”

“What?!” I said, “It’ll be nowhere NEAR fifty pounds to get there!  I have plenty of time before my flight.  Is NOT crazy.”

“Yes, yes…” he said, patronizingly, “You see.  Is too much trouble.  Just to save little bit money.  Is WRONG way!” And with this he banged his hand on the steering wheel for emphasis.

I patiently explained, with a smile, that it’s not the wrong way; it’s the long way…the inexpensive way.  It’s the way I prefer.

“You wasting time.  All day long you will spend traveling. Is wrong way,” he grumbled.

“No…it’s an adventure.  I’m learning,” I said, patiently, hoping he would see the value I placed on experience, rather than spending money to make life convenient, which lazy Americans are infamous for.

“NOT LEARNING!” he shouted again.  “Is WRONG WAY!”  

Apparently he was counting on the fact that lazy Americans were generally willing to pay more for convenience, and I was not cooperating.

“OKAY!” I yelled back.  “I’m LEARNING…(and I paused here, winding up for the punch)…that I did it THE WRONG WAY!!”

At this, the man let out a roar of laughter.  It was the hearty, belly-originated, slightly patronizing, but genuinely amused “Oh ho ho ho ho!” kind of laughter I have heard many East Indian and Middle Eastern men use.  I laughed too, feeling a break in the tension and slightly justified at getting into this argument with a stranger.

As we pulled up to the station,  I felt I had made some sort of peace by promising to give him credit for being right, as soon as I arrived – exhausted, traumatized, tattered and broke – at Gatwick, after doing it my way.  Then I realized I’d forgotten to tell him to start the meter when we’d left the hotel.  Big mistake.  

“How much?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“Ten pounds, please,” he said, cheerily.

“Are you kidding me?!” I cried.  “That same ride was five pounds just last night!”  I accused him of punishing me for not hiring him to drive me to Gatwick by cheating me now.  He denied any wrongdoing. There was nothing I could do.  The angry ugly man refused even to haggle.  I forked over the ten quid and bid him an exasperated goodbye.

Just for the record, I DID enjoy the adventure of my long journey to Gatwick, aside from feeling a little pack-mule-ish when I had to lug my luggage up and down a few flights of stairs.  I was proud of myself for gracefully navigating the complex trip, and the whole process came to 31 pounds.  Would have been 26 if the ugly bastard hadn’t charged me double!

Pet ownership, and short-term romantic love…

This is for my Auntie Barb, who couldn’t be here because she had to put her dog to sleep yesterday.  It’s about my pet turtle Gertie, who escaped in August and was never found. And it’s about my boyfriend of the past 8 months, Logan, who I will miss even more than Gertie.

 

The day arrived when I made one final effort to find Gertie by riding my bike all over the neighborhood and posting signs.  I felt like a sad little kid.  People walking their dogs would pass me by and I could feel them pity me when they read the signs.

 

I got home and knew he was gone, and that I was done trying to find him.  I sat in the back yard and allowed myself to feel a little paralyzed and sad about the fact that the whole ordeal was beyond my control.  I had chosen to have a pet, loved him completely, and knew the whole time, in the back of my mind,  that someday, somehow I would lose him.

 

I called Logan on my cell phone while sitting in the grass.  I started crying, which is pretty rare for me. The tears broke loose when I suddenly linked loving and losing a pet…to our relationship.  The similarities were profound.

 

We had both gone into this relationship, eyes wide open, knowing that my plan to have a baby for Jackie and leave the country soon was non negotiable and imminent.  Knowing that a long-distance relationship was not a realistic option for either of us.  Knowing we would have to say goodbye to and mourn a relationship we both loved.  We made the decision to enjoy the time we had together all the more BECAUSE we knew there was an end-point, and to take on the ordeal of separation at the end with open arms, as a difficult but necessary piece of the journey.

 

When you adopt a pet, whether it is a puppy or a kitten or a turtle the size of a coin or an older animal from the pound, part of your decision to do so involves the acceptance of the fact that you will have to go through the pain of losing that pet.  Unless you adopt an elephant, most pets do have much shorter life spans than humans. We know very well it will hurt to say goodbye. Yet we choose to adopt and love our pets anyway.

 

The relatively short time we know we have with our beloved (whether the realization is conscious or subconscious) makes us treasure it all the more, and that is why we fall so fiercely in love with them.  The pain we will live through when we lose them is such an essential part of emotional growth and life as imperfect, feeling, human souls. 

 

It is the epitome of bittersweet.

Doubts and Triumphs.

The opposition was mounting.

 

It was coming from people who were important to me, and I found that pretty annoying.

 

“What if you’re doing this for the wrong reasons?”

“You’re doing this to avoid living your life fully.”

“You’re doing this for attention.”

“I think it’s a terrible idea.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”  (my little brother said that)

 

and then there was this:

 

“What an unconventional life you have chosen for yourself.”

 

This last reaction came from my mother. “Unconventional” is her favorite word. Thank God for this mother, who has tried everything, been through it all, been everywhere, and there is nothing remaining in this life that can shock or appall her. If my mother was convinced that this was a bad idea, I don’t think I could do it.  Not because I seek her approval, but because I trust her views on what her loved ones can or can’t handle.

 

For example, when I briefly considered spending a good portion of my pregnancy in Thailand, so I could start my new life and teaching career sooner, she said “Carrie, I have been pregnant four times, and I have been to Thailand.  The heat will make you so miserable, you will never survive it.”  I immediately decided against it.

 

And then there are “the others.”  My sister, my brother, my ex-husband, my favorite aunt, …….Brant.  –I’ve been dealing with the family and friends who see this as a bad choice, listening to their arguments, and agreeing to disagree with them, but ultimately I have to be sure of the reasons for my choice in my own head, and in my own heart, which is even trickier to do.

 

In this time of more isolation and sobriety than I’m used to, I can’t hide from anything and I can’t fool myself for long…IF I’m fooling myself at all.

 

The first good long hard delving came several months before attempting to conceive, while I was on a walk in the woods by my house this past winter.  I had my cat bundled up under my coat, her head sticking out of the fake fur collar next to my chest.  

 

It was the second time I’d taken her with me on a walk outside, and I know it seems strange, but I took her with me because I liked watching her look at the birds, to be able to be somewhat outside, which she loves, even if it was just her head.  The weight and shape and warmth of her curled up little body under my heavy coat made me think of what it might feel like to be pregnant.  As the walk progressed, I felt her tense up…and relax …  and often it had to do with how I was breathing or feeling or holding my own body.  It reminded me of the way I’ve heard a fetus reacts to the feelings and actions of its mother.

 

We had a lot of snow this year in Minnesota. I stepped through it slowly, making as little noise as possible. The silence that comes with winter was a welcome contrast to the constant, anxious chatter in my head, and the warmth of my cat and her quiet companionship made me think of the fact that I would grow used to that feeling in pregnancy, of always having a small quiet companion within me for nine long months.  

 

But no companion stays forever, especially a fetus.  After he leaves my body and starts his new life with my two friends – his new parents; after I leave their country and start my new life in another one; the feeling of emptiness and the absence of physical purpose will hit me… hard.  I know this already, and I’m trying to prepare for it, if that’s possible.  I will feel very, very lonely for that silent little creature in my belly.  I will grieve deeply for my faraway little friend, and I will miss his presence and think often about where he is in his new journey. I’ll wonder when I’ll get to see him again, and how it’ll feel, and how he will have grown and changed into his own little person outside of my womb.  

 

I will have to make new friends in my new life, just like I always have with every major move. I’m looking forward to it. This is part of what makes me a good traveler… I’m very adaptable. But will I be able to speak to these new friends right away about the surrogacy?  Or will it take a while to piece together my own story in my own head, in a way that even I can fully understand?

 

This is uncharted territory.  For a nonreligious person, sometimes I surprise myself with the amount of faith I have that it’ll be okay.

 

As for the physical properties of pregnancy, once I thought of it this way: assuming I never decide to have a baby of my own, unless I get a giant tapeworm or something, I have to accept that I will probably never have this kind of inter-bodily companionship again. Living in Thailand, I WILL be in the developing world, where the chances of growing a friendly “companion parasite” in my body are probably more likely, but I’m fairly sure that if that happened – the tapeworm thing – my connection with the parasite will probably not really match the emotional connection and friendly affection I feel for Jackie’s baby.

 

I mention this train of thought because recently, when I first began to feel the baby move, I was struck by how totally odd and wrong it felt, and freakishly large parasites and the movie Alien were the only things I could think about.

 

So, back to this past winter…

 

I crossed into an open field, and as the cat relaxed and sunk down lower in my coat, I forced myself to really think hard about the opposing opinions of my friends and family, and forced myself to step into a reality where every one of them was right.  I took each person in turn, put myself in their shoes, and imagined what they saw for me if I chose this path in my future.  The only thing each one had as a common denominator, the wall I ran into again and again, was some form of fear.

 

But I don’t really “do” fear.  I still fear death, and I hope to get over that, but I don’t fear much else.

 

I realize it takes an incredible amount of strength to get past your own fears and say to someone you love, “I could never do it myself, but I can understand that FOR YOU, IN YOUR LIFE, it makes sense.”

 

I don’t think a lot of people have this skill, so I tried another method of analysis.

 

I tried on each criticism like an article of clothing in a fitting room, to see how it felt and looked on me.  I tried on “doing-it-for-attention.”  I tried on “avoiding-living-fully.”  I tried on “the-wrong-reasons.”  I tried on “terrible-idea.”  I tried on “fucking crazy.”  I tried on “unconventional-life.”  None of them seemed quite right.  They were all ill-fitting. Then my own hand appeared and passed me something unexpected over the fitting room door.  I looked at the tag.  It said “filling-a-void.”

 

That was interesting.  I had to admit that among all those other garments, unconventional-life was the only one that seemed to fit even a little bit, but filling a void came in as the closest fit.  But…was that bad?  Or just honest, and sounded bad?

 

If I were brutally truthful to myself, could I admit that part of my many reasons for doing this was to fill some kind of void, and if that were the case, was it okay – was it honorable – for me to do it anyway?  Don’t all people have voids within themselves, and does this not motivate many decisions in life?  MY void was probably left by several forces:  the abandonment of my husband and the complete reversal in direction of the life I had chosen for myself, the absence of immediate purpose or adventure in my current life, perhaps the death of a parent, or of my belief in unconditional love?  If I admitted to myself that a void exists within me, and that this choice to be a surrogate has been made in part fill it up, was it unhealthy?

 

I eventually decided that the answer was no, it is not unhealthy… IF I am vigilantly aware of it.  I have to keep a close watch on all the choices I make to fill my void. I have not always done so. But voids exist to be filled.  Otherwise we would all just empty out, over the course of our lives, until we’re nothing but a shell.

 

This winter walk with my cat proved to be a turning point in my thinking about choosing to be a surrogate for Jackie.

 

As a side note, on another walk, later in the spring, another deep thought; shorter, jarring, and unexpected; tore through my head:  (are you ready for this? This is heavy.) Did I somehow believe – somewhere deep in my mind, where the roots of my Catholic ancestors continue to exist despite ALL the efforts of my atheist mother – that if I do something this difficult and this giving and this good in my life for someone else, that I will never die?  … ooh.

 

Will I finally gain some points in my eternal useless battle for immortality, which, I am convinced, is the curse of every child who has lost a parent early in life, as a way to get revenge on death?   Hmmmm….eh?

 

This proved to be fodder for several sleepless nights to follow.  I never figured out how to answer this one, but at any rate, as soon as I got pregnant, after almost two years of awful insomnia, I re-learned