Home again,home again, jiggety jig.
Back in Oran in my very own apt., with my very own clean underwear and toilet that flushes every time you push the button, where I can spray away any odor my child dislikes with a fancy, all-natural orange oil spray that lights up my life. Where I am in charge of the fucking kitchen and no one else.
When I spend the afternoon by myself I forget it's Ramadan. L. takes the kids for an adventure (egg chocolates and the beach, where L will wade in with little Z but not go under water, head and all). I am left with my ipod playing fionna apple and laundry in my washing machine that sings a pretty song when it is finished working for me. Would it be that all things in life could be such.
Organizing toys we sent over in a container a friend of L's sent to algeria via ship last year. Stashing toys in our cabinets, drinking Mouzia bubbly water, brewing another pot of coffee YES! And I forget that outside the city is quietly biding it's time, using energy sparely, staying mostly inside out of the sun, drawing the blinds and waiting for the sun to go down, when the party will begin.
I forget Ramadan and turn to other things.
My biggest fear as a mother is this: my regrets will outweigh what made me proud of the way I was with them: my two brown-eyed boys, is what I give you, will give you enough? What I did and still will do to damage them, will that be what they remember?
And it's true, I am most patient with babies. Their potensial, the secrets they hold that will unfurl. When he gets older, and his bad habits rub on me and I nag and nag and feel myself looming bitter and creeky over him.
When did I become a woman who would rather order than the chaos that tug a war brings? Lord help me, I am she.
Will you PLEASE stop snatching from your brother? Will you please flush the toilet after you do kaka? It is nasty, S, nasty and I am sick of doing it for you!
I am never afriand, in writing, to reveal my pale and hideous underbelly; and this is it. I lose patience. I loose my mind. I become a nagging, old bitch who only craves calm and quiet and order, not fun and sponteniety and rough-housing and craze that makes up the best moments of a child's life.
Am I destroying their lives? Alright, dramatic, I know. But I sometimes feel I need a big house so that they can go off to another room farther from my hearing and live out the life that they should have. That with me in our small NYC apt, they get no relief from my monitoring gaze. At least, here, in Oran their father takes them away from me and let's them run wild along the beach, drag their skinny butts up the mountain's edge through the dust without holding their hands. He lets them be where I overlook and push in too quickly. This is going to make me cry, facing this possibility.
Maybe this is why I feel my older son's love slip a bit and fall over to his father. Not that there isn't enough for us both, but I have become the toothbrush nag, the cencor of food, the cautious mother holding him back and his father is one mad adventure after another and he come home more in love with his father each time.
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