Ten years, my love

Ten years.

One says the words easily,

they spill from the mouth like laughter,

like a sigh,

a sob,

a moan.

But it's more,

much more,

a lifetime it seems

at times.

And yet,

like we went to sleep one night

and the next day

we grew tired and old.

Months before our wedding,

I remember,

walking home from the corner store,

I thought of our marriage,

months away,

and it seemed far

like the mountains in the horizon.

It made me wonder

and it made me laugh

to think that before I knew it

it would have all gone.

And it did,

but I didn’t fathom being here

ten years after.

Ten years,

Half the time spent

just finding our way.

Adjusting.

To being your wife,

more to being your partner.

Me more than you.

You, who takes to everything like a fish to water.

But me,

complicated old me.

I have to turn things inside out,

twist life senseless

before putting it on like a shirt.

Our life’s biography

A laundry list of a decade:

Two countries,

and three coast-to-coast moves.

Two rented apartments,

and a lease of a house.

Three mortgages

and debt management,

twice.

Three double pink lines,

but only one

48-hour-long grueling labor,

well worth it for her.

Pelvic trauma and PPD.

Our endless disgust

to parenting books and Ferberizing,

our laissez faire.

Three years of infertility,

Four rounds of IVF.

An autoimmune disease.

Nothing to show for it

Two miscarriages,

Four D&C’s and Cytotec.

To be bonded forever in life and death

Six times I’ve gone under,

six times waking up to your eyes.

And that time you almost broke the sunroof

of your car

because I hurt too much.

Two companies for you,

graduate school and five universities for me.

More weight (for me)

Less hair and more beard (for you).

Lasik, glasses,

Less Hawaiian shirts,

More pantsuits.

Building a house,

buying a dog.

Daily drop offs to three day cares and two schools.

A bilingual child,

our swimming footballer ballerina

with her tooth gap smile.

Her ancient philosophy,

her clever puns.

Learning again all that we thought we knew

again

left-handedly.

Learning to love pink and purple

and princesses,

and unicorns.

Too many half-way done projects to count,

weekly trips to Home Depot,

three luscious gardens.

To get dirty with mud and happiness,

spending weekends cold and wet

planting and weeding on our knees.

All the road trips,

Maui twice,

Climbing up the Eiffel tower,

Alcatraz.

Taking the Chunnel from Paris to London

Space Mountain,

(“Never again,” I vowed)

Countless airports in cities I've never truly visited.

Dancing at weddings

until our clothes got ripped,

until our feet blistered.

Getting too drunk

more times than we’d like to admit.

A 7th year it itch,

those years when we loved each other

but we weren't our favorite people in the world.

PF Chang’s every time we had a broken heart.

Your optimism,

my fatalism.

Your military grade bed-making obsession,

and my messy ways.

Your love for tags

and driving creatively.

My need for silence in cars

and my unending chatter everywhere else.

Our shared stubbornness.

Family therapy,

two gym memberships.

Dinner parties,

several sets of friends.

Superbowls an World Series.

A gold medal for Mexico at the Panamerican games.

Two US presidential elections.

Only a Mexican one.

A green card,

my citizenship ceremony.

All the red tape and bureaucracy

of the Mexican immigration service.

Your learning the words to the Mexican national anthem,

my learning of the checks and balances system

and Guy Fawkes day.

Lazy Sundays watching movies,

torrented British shows.

Doctor Who

and Harry Potter

with 3D glasses on.

Deciding that the first one

to throw in the towel

would have to leave with our debts.

A published book of poetry

written only for you.

But most of all,

ten years of the undeserved love you have for me,

all those years of me being lost and unhappy,

of mood regulators and watching TV until dawn.

All those years of love

and your shoulder to cry on.

All the times you’ve tickled me

and made me laugh like a child

with your made up songs.

No,

ten years is barely a moment.

A miracle.

A big bang.

Musings of an infertile woman

There is one massive burden that infertility brings to you that nobody realizes until you have the misfortune of experiencing it: The way time passes is immensely different than how it feels to everyone else.

I live tied to a regular cycle that requires my absolute devotion of time and effort. A cycle where I know beforehand that my heart will be broken month after month, like a postmodern Sisyphus.

This month I’ve already been to the doctor eight times. I’ve had invasive check-ups, blood drawn and broken expectations and it's not even done yet.

It’s incredibly hard to keep my face straight and make jokes when I’m asked how things are going. Whenever you ask me if I’ll be attending this event or that one my mind is racing figuring out where I will be in my treatments, wondering if I can make it out of town, and most times I know I don’t want to sacrifice one of my last precious chances, even when I know it’s bound to end in heartache.

Old ladies ask me how many kids I have and I can’t mention my loss, they ask when I’m having my next, or if I’m pregnant or why I have waited this long. It hurts each time but I have to accommodate everybody else because they don’t know.

The people that know often say things like: “You just need to relax”, “Stop trying” or “The same thing happened to me and now I have three kids”. It hurts when you brush it off, it’s not going to happen if I relax (and I don’t know how I possibly can with all the stuff I need to do each month), and your experience is definitely not the same if it hasn’t been years, you haven’t required invasive medical assistance and spent large amounts of money. I cannot get pregnant naturally and I don’t even know if I can carry to term after my loss.

I’m a big gambler, you see?, I need to be, knowing that I have much to lose and very little to win, but I won’t get a shot at winning if I give up.

Please don’t say: “You’re young”. I am, only 32 but going into early menopause. So this goes way beyond my ability to reproduce. I have to accept a reality regarding my body that is coming too much early. This affects my day-to-day life, the things I can and cannot do and even my relationship with my husband.

I’m blessed with one child, one that I didn’t have to struggle to conceive. I know how lucky I am, I know many of my infertile sisters don’t have this fortune. It doesn’t mean that I’m not infertile, it means that my infertility is secondary and that it set, thankfully, after a wonderful non-planned, but very desired pregnancy.

I’ve had the misfortune to belong to two very sad clubs: infertility and pregnancy loss. Both are devastating, but combined are far more terrible than anything I've ever experienced. Losing the promise of a child is hard, but losing one that came after so much hardship (and one I haven’t been able to repeat) is earthshattering. So please don’t say that “It was for the best” I know my baby didn’t have a chance, I know it wasn’t my fault and I know there was nothing in this world or the next that could have changed it. But it still hurts like a m... f...

So far I’ve said all the things you shouldn’t say, but I’ll tell you what you can: ask me about it, let me talk, acknowledge that this is real and not a frivolous fancy. I assure you that I am happy, I have a beautiful family, I feel experienced and successful in my career but this is still important to me.

I can laugh and joke about going through IVF and being on the stirrups way too often for my comfort (but the life of an infertile is not known for its comfort) . I have plenty of funny stories about infertility that will make you laugh, I promise. So laugh, it’s not wrong to do it. When I laugh about it I feel better, I know this is not something for which to be embarrassed and I don’t need to hide the fact that I suffer infertility. I have secondary infertility, early onset diminished ovarian reserves and a really crappy lining. But I also have a very witty mind, a strong voice, plenty of dreams and a somewhat strong and tested faith.

Please don’t treat me as if I were a time bomb. There are times I’ll need to cry and curse. I’m entitled to my dark days as you are. If I share what something felt and how I was hurt don’t shy away from the topic, and don’t tell me I need to move on or that I think or feel too much. I promise to give the same importance to whatever hell burdens you as well. Because you know, we all have our own despair to carry.

I’m writing this because I’m not ashamed to say I’m an infertile. I may not succeed in having another child, I’m realistic enough to accept it, but I won’t give up without a fight. You may be my family or my friend and I care deeply about you, or you may be a stranger who undoubtedly has someone like me very close to your heart.

So my friend, hold my hand and laugh with me at the cards I've been dealt. 

In Google I trust

I tell Google the things I don't tell anyone else.

In the middle of the night
when the house is quiet
at my most vulnerable
I type.

But is not my kinks
nor my hypochondria
nor my morbid voyeurism I hide.

I don't erase my search history for that.

It is my most primal desire
that eternal gasp caught in my throat
the bleeding need.

Every night
I type
for a trace of hope.

The wild ones

The wild ones are not
the ones out on the streets at night
clad in black and stainless steel.

Not the ones bed hopping
anointed in anonymous sweat.

The wild ones
are far more sinister than that
they pay taxes and set their alarms
every night.

They obey traffic laws and vote.

They’ve breastfed and baby worn.

The feral ones wear their scarred skin
of past cuts and scraped knees
and surgeries
(that is not polite to mention
at the dinner table.)

Those wild ones are far more dangerous.

Their savagery
always crouching inside
and ready to leap
while their carpool
or do the weekly shop.

They sometimes hold graduate degrees
and they may teach at universities,
or practice law,
or something else
equally respectable.

They sing to their babies
and they teach them to read
and they stay stoic while their bleeding.

They don’t make a fuss.

And sometimes,
sometimes
 they break down
on the produce aisle.

Minor insomniac poetry

My stubborn insomnia

so much like me:

proud,

determined

and infinitely foolish.

I’d make a good vampire:

nocturnal and broody

disenchanted,

existential.

I surely know how to draw blood.

Afraid to see my sadness in a picture

On the fringe

These days I feel like

I’m living on the fringe,

out of control,

not very motherly of me,

but I’m off the hook

the baby died.

He/she doesn’t need me to be a good mom

or folic acid.

My other baby is growing up,

and she mothers me from time to time

(though my therapist frowns upon it.)

I don’t sleep well

no one taught me how.

My daughter is trying to teach me:

she says you only have to close your eyes

and think of something soft.

I guess I don't have enough soft things

to think about.

I’m reckless

with my body,

it may be my temple,

but I want to deface it.

No worries,

there is nothing sacred inside.

Not anymore.

I wake up early,

I do my chores,

I teach M her letters.

I mostly worry.

But I’m drunk with the vertigo of wakefulness,

I need to be knocked out.

I read well into the night.

I write from time to time.

Tomorrow I will wake up in time,

I won’t hit snooze,

it won’t be easy or pretty

but I’ll do it.

I’m not expected to be a good human being,

to eat on schedule

and go to bed at a sensible time.

No need to scold me,

the world does not feel the need to berate me.

I do a far better job

I'm a cotton ball

"I'm a cotton ball"

M said proverbially with all the abundant wisdom of her four years of age.

I humbly asked for an explanation, full aware that my ignorance of the term showed my poorly evolved and pedestrian mind.

What I was able to understand from her explanation is that dolls are stuffed with cotton and/or their hair is made of it. And that the silly crazy girls who deliver ingenious one-liners (such as herself) are cotton balls.

She called herself one after an effervescent display of zaniness.

She's like a cotton ball

weightless

and fleeting

as bubbles of champagne.

She's light

like a golden spec of dust

like a dandelion blowing in the wind.

Cotton balls do not possess the insanity of tortured poets. 

M's quirkiness is far above 

and I read it in her cotton candy smiles.

I have not reincarnated enough.

I'm not transcended enough

to reach that cloud-like state of being.

 

But I'll dream every night of being a cotton ball.

La femme violente

A couple years ago I wrote a post in Spanish about how a woman writes violence. It reflected on the word "hysteria", the concept for those unable to control their emotions, and forged specifically for women (the root of the word is Latin for uterus.)

The stigma we face as women is being perceived as beings unable to control their emotions, and therefore, our actions and beliefs lose their importance.

Even though today hysterics are not perceived as a strictly feminine ailment, women are still seen as primary emotional beings.

We all suffer like Cassandra, unbelieved and ignored because we are PMSing, or we're going through menopause.

But instead of stating that we are cold and unemotional I say that there is an inherent violence within me.

I know nothing else.

I deeply feel,

and my body,

the female body,

is primal.


It withstands violence,

the flesh rips,

it changes,

it breaks with each destructive wave.


But my mind is sharp because of the violence that fuels it.


A good friend told me a few weeks ago, that women are capable of enduring great pain and rising above because of their nature, because their essence and ability for bearing life (and the pain experienced when that promise of new life is taken away).

I don't shy away from the fact that I am a constant cataclysm inside.

I don't live and think in spite of it,

but because of it.


* "Ajax and Cassandra" painting by pre-raphaelite artist Solomon Joseph Solomon

Broken English

In one of Amy Tan's book (I just can't remember which one it is) one of her famous Chinese immigrant mother characters reflects on the perception her daughter has of her due to the level of English she is able to speak. Paraphrasing it goes something like this:

"She thinks because I speak this way that I think this way."

The idea is that when someone expresses themselves in a broken fashion, those listening perceive their thought as broken as well.

The quote moved me because of my interest in language, and because I live, as well, speaking a language that is not my own. Tan is, after all, a linguist and a daughter raised listening to English spoken as a second-language.

I worry about the way my daughter will think of me. For this I force myself to be as native in English as I can.

I worry how my in-laws will see me as well.

My daughter is being raised bilingually and I worry that she'll never be seen as one thing or the other.

This week Salma Hayek was on Letterman talking about eating escamoles and worms in Mexico, and the adjectives used to describe her in the news are "kooky and curious" and they criticize how all these years since she's been in Hollywood her English is still "funny". No thought goes into thinking that this woman speaks at least three languages.

But far beyond, I think about the perception we have of thought. That thinking cannot be separated from language. And so, the perception we have of other people's thoughts is based on their spoken word.

I also believe that being a second language speaker gives you a freedom and creativity that native speakers lack. Think about lyricists like Björk. The foreign language acquires a plasticity that native speakers cannot grasp.

I write in English in my own attempt to show my thought can be complex.

That I am more than my use of false cognates or my syntactic mistakes.

And I write, without knowing if anyone is reading.

A tradition of exile

I married into a nomadic family.

The last three generations of his people have move abroad for love.

And he laughed when his grandfather called it ridiculous when he decided to move for me.

He called his bluff and told him that he had moved to Africa during the war. His sweetheart followed him and they married there.

He moved for me and I did for him.

We both gladly gave up all we knew for each other.

I take pride in having jumped down the cliff without looking.

He told me the other day when we heard someone talk, once again, about moving to another country (and not follow through with those plans) that we are adventurers.

We follow through.

I've always thought it was my orphaned foolishness. Nomadic life is, after all, not in my heritage.

But yet it might be.

On my father's side there is nothing before my grandfather.

As if the universe started, on his side, with him and no one else.

I've heard the story many times before: Three brothers came from a Southern state. My grandfather was left in one town, his younger brother in another and the eldest went to another one.

It has never made sense to me since it sounds so infinitely sad.

I've moved three times into the unknown, thousands of miles away.

I am, after all, my grandfather's heir.

On interracial coupling

When I started seeing my therapist I gave her the back-of-the-DVD-summary of me and based on that she proposed the areas to explore/work on. Nothing really surprised me: sure, my existential mind (her words, not mine), our many and drastic moves, the trauma my body suffered given birth due to medical negligence, my miscarriage and infertility. But then she proposed something unexpected: my interracial, international, intercultural marriage.

"Mixed marriages have a higher percentage of conflict incidence" she said.

But it wasn't an area of concern for me. We've had, in ten years of this relationship, had rough patches but parting ways has never been an option.

Hearing from a third party that we have more of an uphill battle is not new to me. Catholicism, while not discouraging it, is really not too keen about it. They say it's more difficult to make a marriage work, especially if it is an interfaith marriage as well... Which we are...

The therapist said that the added problems come because "there's always a gap in communication, a clash that cannot be avoided."

Now, I have, quite literally written a book about it (not THE book, and it happens to be a poetry book, but a book nonetheless). My book explored the inability of man and a woman to communicate while they speak different languages, right after the fragmentation after the tower of Babel.

Years before I worried about the negative forecast.

Not anymore.

I have even written about our differences.

But I have learned that the biggest differences between us are not those based on our races or cultures. Not even our differences based on faith and belief. There is, indeed, an unbridgeable gap of understanding between us. A gap that has worried and made me sad before: a difference born of my metaphorical and word-based mind against his logical one; my weariness that keeps me up at night and his ability for happiness and calmness.

We are not unique. In fact, among our close friends there are many mixed marriages. Some have fared well, others, not so much. Even ones that seemed doomed from the beginning have flourished.

When we lived in the Bay Area it seemed we had arrived to the proverbial melting pot, a Shangri-La for interculture.

Even more so, in the recent weeks CNN published a study about interracial marriages being in an all-time high.

I write poetry in Spanish and even though he reads me I always had the nagging thought that he would never truly understand me. He does, in his way, without getting some obscure terms or a hidden image, but I have made my peace with it.

After all, just as my poems came to conclude, our biggest differences are not born of our nationalities or races.

It's because of that deep and unsurpassable gap between a woman and a man.

Alia Oliver

Maya gave you that name.

You live in the stars, and you twinkle at night. She told me this.

I believe her because my faith lies in the words falling from her mouth.

My grandfather carries you in his arms, Maya told me this as well.


Alia Oliver

I love the beautiful alliteration of your name.

Hope prevails...

Sometimes life can sucker-punch you right in the face harder and rawer than death....

...hope prevails

Nesting in reverse

Just a few days ago I found a bird nesting in the most impossible of places: a little corner between the mosquito net and the glass of the faculty restroom.

It was the third of a three-part bird omen.

The very first one was the discovery of a dead pigeon right outside the glass wall of my classroom. I was able to see where it hit it and died.

I wonder how long after that sight my baby's heart stopped beating.

A couple of weeks after, another dead pigeon lied dead on the street just outside my house.

I shielded my daughter from the sight as I took her to school.

I didn't want to explain once more about beautiful creatures dying.

She didn't see it but I drove thinking of the dream that had flown away.

And then, that nesting bird came to me unexpected.

And it gave me hope.

I don't remember if I really did nest that other time, long forgotten, when things went well.

I nest in a different way, I make a cocoon of papers and books and baby clothes I can't bring myself to give away.

To my mother's dismay, I have never been good at cleaning and putting things away.

But tonight, that I no longer wait for the writer inside to flicker its hidden messages in Morse code on my skin, I have nested in reverse:

tonight I've thrown away pill bottles long ago expired, mutilated magazines awaiting Maya's left-handed scissors to cut away, hand-outs for students that will never read them, hopes and dreams of a me that no longer is.

Tonight little bird I nested for you in reverse.

But maybe, just maybe not too long from now, I'll make my cocoon of words and over-worked poems in the least expected of places.

And maybe

just maybe

you may come back.

I've bled your blood

Thank you for your tears and your blood. They've mixed on our bed, forever stained by our love gone wrong.

My body failed you. And it didn't even get to the point to show the palms of your hands the wonders it hid inside.

We aren't novices.

We know of bloody hospital sheets, the stench of surgical disinfectant and of residents and nurses that chat away ignoring drugged-up me on the table, just about to be cut open.

An anesthesiologist asked a nurse about her son while he waited for me to surrender to sedation and have our baby (or its remains) scrapped from my insides.

And I'm always a trouper, I'm always a patient that doesn't want to cause problems, I'm the one who doesn't cry and makes jokes just before I get broken.

I don't know what you do while I'm out. While all the king's horses and all the king's men unsuccessfully try to put me back together again.

The most beautiful declaration of your love was when you tried to break through the sunroof of your car with your fist.

I bled your blood and I painfully passed your life during that horrific night.

My love, in ten years I've held your life inside of me.

But I failed you this time.

Back when we were ingénue

I haven't written in here forever. And I haven't written something for you, dear husband of mine, accessory to my many crimes and the most fabulous of my arch enemies.

The other day someone asked about the times when we lived in different countries and relied heavily on the written word in order for our love to get by. Now, we may lie adjacent but our dreams are thousands of miles apart.

How sad. Once I wrote a daily kilometric letter to you in the wee hours of the night. A letter you would wake up to. And you'd write back and I'd read you then when it was time for me to get up.

I wanted to tell you that lately I've been seing and reading blogs of young couples in love, and I think back when we were that ingénue. Before health care, child-rearing and huge life changes made us cynical.

I mourn the loss of that lovely naiveté, of all those bubblegum kisses, your silly songs and my long-lost idealistic romanticism. But know, now more than ever, that you are here to stay. That I can bicker, and yell, and curse, but I won't be storming out anymore.

I know the precise moment a certain innocence died for me. We were leaving the hospital to get a shower while a little super hero lied under the fluorescent lights, and we crossed paths with a couple just like us a few days before, walking stupidly enamored with their soft pillows and their yoga mats under their arms. I remember looking at them and thinking "Fools!".

We had crossed to the other side and I'm glad to be here with you.

But then, from time to time, I miss being stupidly naive with you.

Itching and wondering whether to get him copper or wool

Rumor has it, it takes seven years for one's cells to be renewed. If this is true, this body I dwell in is completely different from the one from seven years ago.

I suspect this is all bull. On the top of my head I seem to remember that brain cells don't get renewed.

But taking that piece of urban folklore at the metaphorical value, it is interesting to think about us being renewed after a seven-year span.

I've always thought one's life is nothing but a chain of lives, of variations of oneself.

After seven years is hard to think of something new.

Last night you recited Beowulf to me in old English.

After seven years we've managed to find something new, things still unsaid.

Thank you for Beowulf, thank you because it was neither copper nor wool but the promise there will still be new things to learn.

Lost and found

A couple of weeks ago I lost the ring you put on my finger seven years ago. One afternoon my hand felt cold and naked and the letters of your name were nowhere to be found.

It saddened me not because I would lose you, but because of all parts of us that get infused into everyday objects. If one day you were looking for my voice, you should know I keep a stash hidden away in the belly of my guitar.

I didn't cry for my lost ring because I was actually happy to think that at least I still had you. But I felt melancholic thinking about it, and I wondered if in twenty years someone would find it at the bottom of a drain, or perhaps I'd find it when I gutted a fish just as I had read about in a children's book.

But I have never gutted a fish, and I suspect I never will.

Today the ring came back to me.

And my hand doesn't feel so empty anymore.

Escapism act

Houdini has nothing on me.

Ladies and gentleman, I'm about to perform an act of escapism.

Please be assured that I have nothing up my sleeve.

No key under my tongue, no fake chains or rope.

Nothing is ever what it appears to be.

A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R - A
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A
A - B - R - A - C - A - D
A - B - R - A - C - A
A - B - R - A - C
A - B - R - A
A - B - R
A - B
A

I'm gone

Letter to all the things I've lost

To: All the things I've lost over the years
at a random Lost and Found or maybe, the magical land where rogue socks escape to be free from their evil twins

From: Your former owner who misses you terribly

I hope you are well when this message reaches you. I thought about sending a letter when M's black school shoe went missing. We looked everywhere, but we couldn't find it, so we sent the kid to school in sparkly leopard print flats.

Retainer, I thought of you first, you were, perhaps, the one I was the sorriest to lose. Not only I missed you (I know we didn't have the best of relationships), but I was terrified to let my parents know I needed a replacement.

Books I lent and never got back, I hope you found good homes, I imagine all of you in beautiful dark wood home libraries, next to first editions. Or maybe in the hands of a young kid passionate about reading. I just hope you didn't end up as kindle.

Glasses I left on a plane. You were my favorite, and I have not replaced you, I can't. I rather have blurry sight.

My late grandfather's magnifying glass. Your departure was violent. It was my second grade teacher's fault. I believe now, looking back, that she had mental problems. That year was bad. She would tell seven-year-olds scary stories (that later I found out where Horacio Quiroga's and horrible apocalyptic movies,) and she told us about life just plain sucking. She took you away even though you were a family heirloom, along with one of my favorite books. But I'm better, I hope you are too.

And dear, dear old socks.

Rock on.