Why a watermelon will be the end of us

Today I was doing what I do anytime I catch a moment to check out, I jumped on facebook. After a short scroll I had been reminded by several of my friends of the tragic shootings of 2 black men, 10 Dallas police officers and the more “vintage” Orlando Pulse massacre, when suddenly a photo of a most beautiful watermelon caught my eye.  It’s flesh was a sunny yellow and the skin looked like more of an artistic rendering than a real watermelon.  My friend had unknowingly bought a yellow-doll mellon and was inquiring if anyone had ever tried one, was it good, safe? Having seen and eaten watermelons of this sort I started to answer.  One of the comments read: No, it’s GMO.

Um…no.

I took to to google and quickly found info on it’s origin, Africa, and posted the statement “It’s a yellow doll, the color is natural” It hadn’t been 5 seconds from pushing the send button that I got a reply.  “No, it’s a hybrid. It’s GMO.”

Uhg!

My fingers began to furiously type and link info as to why she was so WRONG.

Wait…

My mind started to flash back to the stories I had scrolled past just to land on clicking a photo of a watermelon. Dead fathers, sons, children. All dead in the street, never to have the chance to taste a watermelon or have a meal with their family again. They were dead because someone was so certain they were right. Right that a back man carrying a gun could not be up to any good. Right that all police are racist scum. Right that loving someone of the same sex was an offense punishable by death. Right that above all else, our constitution gives us the right to carry guns and use them to shot people about shit we think we are right about!

And I… I needed to be right about a fucking watermelon.

Our problems are not about guns, or sex, or a uniform. Our problems are about our need to be right.  Every war in history was about 2 sides needing to be right about something.  Too many times about nothing at all really.  In 1969 El Salvador declared on Honduras after losing a football game.  And while a cease-fire was negotiated 100 later, 3000 people lost their lives. 3000 casualties over a leather ball being kicked into a net.  It’s not such a big leap to think a watermelon will be the end of us.

What are you being right about?

Read about a few more wars that cost lives for no reason other than our need to be right here. http://listverse.com/2011/12/16/top-10-bizarre-wars/

 

Dear 12 year old me,

You don’t know me yet, but I am the woman, mother and lunatic you will one day become. First off I must say buckle in, it’s going to be a wild ride.  Now I don’t want to give away too much. Far be it from me to change history. No, I would rather make history and shape the future.  I write to you instead a letter of forgiveness.  I forgive you.

There is not much I regret in life.  Each misstep will lead you to fantastic lessons and adventures. As I look around me, there is not much in my life that I am not grateful for.  You will be a teen mom, leave home with a backpack at 18, marry young and have more than the average 2.5 children.  You will also have seen more of the world at 19 than most people see in a lifetime, own your own business and raise some of the coolest people you will ever meet. Oh and your husband.. he is pretty hot and crazy smart. Despite all the doubters, whispers and vitriol, know that it all worked out beautifully.

No I don’t have many regrets, but I do have one.  You see it won’t be until your mid 30’s that you will accept who you are, where you came from.  You are the daughter of a Cuban immigrant. Your mother, also Cuban.  You are a Cuban-American.

I know right now, in the late 80’s in Miami,  being Cuban isn’t all that cool.  Your parents are blasting Eddie Santiago and Celia Cruz while you’d rather be listening to punk rock. You never answer your grandmother in Spanish despite the fact she doesn’t speak English, and you’re grateful that you were born with looks that can pass for a gringa. But here is the thing you will wait years to understand, you are American.  So much of your life will involve running away from your roots that you will for a long time forget that you are of hispanic decent.  You will spend years looking down at your peers for speaking with an accent and having their quinceañera. Ok bad example, a party that involves a 15 year old girl in a wedding and choreographed dancing does not have to enter this equation.  None the less, you will deny all the traditions and customs in a fight to be  American.

Then one day you wake up and realize your parents are getting older, your grandparents are gone and your kids have zero idea what they went through when they arrived in a strange land, with a strange language with nothing but a suitcase made of duct tape and cardboard. That is when you will finally start to let it in, or out. You are hispanic. You are a Cuban-American.

I can only sit here and speculate as to why you’re lying about your ethnicity.  Does it just sound cooler to say you’re Russian?  Or is there something more? Despite my want to let in my culture so that I could than express it to our children, I never really pondered why.

Then one day you will get a text.  Yeah, you have no idea what a text is and if I tried to explain that one day you will be walking around with a computer the size of your palm, you wouldn’t believe me.  Oh that reminds me, keep learning programing on that Apple 2C you got for Christmas and tell Papi to buy stock in Apple Computers.  But I digress… one day you will get a text from your oldest friend that will inspire you to dissect your childhood. I have always chalked my non-identifiction of ethnicity to the cool factor, but the thing is why wasn’t it cool?  Was it totally in my head or was their some deeper sense of self loathing brought on by subtle and overt racism?

The 80’s brought the Mariel boat lift. It’s said Castro emptied the prisons and sent them all over then. But the reality is there were so many wonderful people that arrived here during this period.  I can’t help but liken it to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s statement on Mexicans being rapists. Yes, Trump. The guy that runs casinos in Atlantic City. It’s a long story and even I don’t want to hear it.

No being Cuban in Miami in the 80’s was not cool.  And if you think people calling you a marielitta is bad, 10 years later you will have to put up people asking you if you came over in a raft. Maybe you lie because when you did say you are Cuban you somehow left the conversation feeling like dirty gum stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe.  At this point all I can do is reflect and speculate.  What I won’t do is blame you. But one day when you get that text and you’re accused of wearing your ethnicity as an inauthentic political coat of arms, don’t let it get you down.

A very wise woman gave me the weirdest feedback not that long ago. She said I was like Cuba without the music, the color or the struggle. For one year that statement has driven me nuts. And while I will probably never know what the hell she meant, I am choosing to believe it’s the fact that I avoided the struggle of being Latino by denying I was.   Perhaps this IS your struggle.

Hasta Siempre,
Moonbat aka Mirita

 

 

Haiku for u

Some dream of spaceships

Some of traveling the sea

I, of knowing me.

Heart Compass Retreat

I can see clearly now the rain has come.

Ever have one of those weeks that is just so perfect that suddenly everything seems crystal clear? Yeah, neither have I. But I have just experienced one that was so insane and convoluted that my entire life just came into prospective.

Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a bad week. No one died, family is healthy, and my business took in a good amount of money. Yet it has left a sour taste in my mouth.  I realized this week how tired I am of running on the treadmill I built myself.  Although it does seem I forgot to install that little wrist band that will make it stop if you fall off.

I saw two new little lives enter this world. Well sort of… the second one beat me there. But I also saw more than one friend worried sick, with their kid in the hospital. Coming from a place of perspective, It made me feel like a bit of an ass that I sat on the side of the road in the pouring rain crying because my shoe was swept away in a rainstorm and I had to chase it down the road half barefoot. Yes, V is for victim.

But what I truly saw is all the time I have spent building my business and championing for mothers and babies has left me destroying my dreams and neglecting my own kids.  I used to cook every day.  Fresh bread on the table every meal.  We had Beach Wednesdays as a family.  I have loved every moment of being a midwife. Even the ones that made me curse under my breath, but my kid’s memories should not be of a mommy who was always taking off to take care of someone else’s baby.

I am midwife. But I am also mother, wife, friend and daughter.  I have opened up a new possibility for myself that maybe it’s time to begin writing the chapter titled my final days as a working midwife.  Not as snazzy as “I wear Jimmy Choo’s in a Birkenstock World” but it’s a working title none the less.

I am not saying I not answering my phone tonight, but I am starting to see that there is a new day on the horizon for me.  It’s only dawn, I’ve got some time before the light of day reveals what it looks like.

 

Wash, Rinse, Re-Pete

When I tell people what I do for a living I get one of a couple responses.  The most common is “Oh, that’s so great….” which is an indication that they have no idea what a midwife is. Once I have explained and assured them that yes, people still do that, they rhetorically ask me “That must be a fulfilling job, right?”  The look of admiration on their faces, for my selflessness keeps me from immediately blurting the thoughts that rattle around my head all day:

*I have to be fucking nuts to do this job.
*I really wish I knew what REM sleep was like.
*OMG pregnant women can be bitchy
*Should I get another Slurpee?

The truth of the matter is, my job isn’t all watching babies slip into their mother’s arms or thankful fathers high fiving me for a job well done.  There are the sleepless nights, the missed holidays and birthdays, the copious amounts of vomit – which, trust me, is the preferred bodily fluid to get drenched in.  It’s hard to feel fulfilled when you are covered in god knows what, driving home at 4 am with nothing but coffee in your stomach, hoping for just 3 hours of sleep before you have to get up for carpool and a full clinic day. These are the days I wished my “calling” had involved a stewardess uniform, a small carry on bag and an Airbus 380.

No it’s not all that glamorous, and no one in their right mind would choose it. But this is my path, sometimes paved and more often rugged. There are the moments that have me in tears of pain and many more in tears of joy.  The days I want to say “fuck it” and the ones I want to freeze and enjoy for a lifetime.  And then there is the day you realize you’ve known the biological sister of one of your “babies” for several years, even before she even knew who her biological parents were.  But as I sat there hearing a familiar voice tell me a strange story of adoption, separation and  reconnection and the part I played midwifing her baby brother into this world, I was once again reminded of the gratitude I have for this wild ride I am on.  I made a difference in someone’s life not knowing that it would one day be noticed by the most unlikely of connections and familiarity.  On that day I proudly thought: I AM MIDWIFE.

 

 

Re-entry tips and ways to keep busy between trips

So it’s been 9 days and 10 minutes since I arrived back in the States.  Surprisingly, that’s only 9 days more than it took me to plan my next trip.  Our flights felt eternal and once again I somehow ended up next to the man who likes to fly shirtless. But what lied between my times in a giant tuna can was so glorious that I just don’t see why I “live” anywhere.

Of course, as with any prolonged travel, I have found it difficult regulate into what we will call “real life.”  Where is my house staff? My 7-course breakfast? My perfectly brewed coffee upon awakening?  Ok, so I have trained the kids to handle that last one, but it’s just not the same when you’re not sipping it while floating in an infinity pool overlooking your own private jungle.  Yes, I know these pleasures were afforded to me as a foreigner who could afford a spectacular villa and that this is not the typical life of a Balinese citizen, so please refrain from lecturing me about appropriation and white privilege. Besides, I am more of a carmel color.

All that said there are definitely some re-entry tips I can offer up to those who may be returning from their first long trip to Bali.

1. Talking about the consistency of your bowel movements is not acceptable – while explosive vs drippy may be normal table talk in Bali, you will quickly find yourself asking for a table for one. No one wants to hear about that shit.
2.  Don’t forget to use articles, prepositions, and other necessary parts of speech – when you are in a place you don’t speak the language you tend to simplify your sentences in hopes that locals with broken english skills understand you enough that you don’t end up with an inflatable alligator in your bed when you request apple butter and bread. Most of my sentences were like: You have car? and Open wine!
3. The lines in the road are more than just a suggestions in the States, drive accordingly – and on the correct side.
4. The proper response to someone doing something nice for you is not bowing down with hands in pray and saying Suk-suma –  A simple thank you will do.  Don’t be weird.

While I await my next big travel adventure I of course have to keep myself busy in everyday life.  So when a friend/pilot calls and says “Busy today?  I have to move a couple of planes.” You clear your schedule and say “I’ll be right there.”  As recovering Pteromerhanophobiac
I push myself to take on my waning fear of flying, and how better to do that than to learn to actually fly.  So yesterday I got to pilot 2 planes. The first a 10 seater Conquest that I was casually told to fly between 2 clouds…at 9000 ft.  According to my friend, I was giving the cloud a run for it’s money when it came to being white. I sat grasping the controls so hard that had we crashed they would have found my two hands still wrapped around it. Flight 2 I got to pilot a 4 seater Cessna.  After the first 9 seconds of panic and an offer from the pilot instructor to take back control, I became determined and flew the plane all the way from Ft. Lauderdale to the landing strip in Boca.

Captain Nate

Shotgun on the Conquest

Taking the controls on the Cessna

Left Seat!

Well it may not be Bali, but Boca holds it’s on adventures if you’re willing to look for them. This won’t be my last time at the wheel.

Mr. Potato Head, white privilege and the art of spell removal.

We find ourselves back in beautiful Ubud, Bali after a week at the beach side.  I know when you think of Bali, you conjure up images of floating bungalows and crystal clear waters and the sad truth is that is not where it’s beauty lies.  After a week at Villa Madu we were ready to head to the beach for a change of pace and as always it just isn’t as Bali as Ubud is.  Trust me, I am a ocean girl at heart and being half mermaid it is my natural instinct to gravitate there. But the richness of Bali is lost and gives way to foreign surfers on extended holiday.  Actually I am pretty sure it’s just there life.  How I missed to chanting, offering baskets and even our rooster with a fucked up time clock. No Mr. Rooster, 3 am is NOT sunrise, neither is 2 am or 4 for that matter.  Yet even with the change we found plenty of adventures and shenanigans to keep us and hopefully you entertained.
A few nights ago we went to meet with Bapat Wayan.  He is known as a powerful healer with a divine connection. So much like the Eat, Pray Love author, we set out to get our respective messages from the universe.  As we sat in his car park we studied the various autographed photos and in some cases magazine cut out pictures of the famous people that had come to seek his guidance.  While most were too international for our knowing, we were most impressed by the Indian guru with the biggest ‘fro I have seen since 1977 and I am pretty sure one of the cut outs was an extra on the set of clueless. We were individually given health check ups and clean bills of health from the voices in his head and confirmed by the incense and flowers he uses in his process. Some of us even got some other messages from the ether about where our lives were headed.  And then it was my turn…. Well it seems a long time ago, while I was living in Ecuador, a man from Argentina fell madly in love with me and got a black magic spell from a Brazilian witch to make me fall madly in love with him, Sadly for this chap, it didn’t work. Well of course… Duh! So for 20 years I have been living with some voodoo in my body that has been causing severe headaches and knee pain.  Here i was all along thinking it was the caffeine, stress and snowboard accident.  At the end of the evening he asked to see me again and proceeded to pull the demons out of me.  There was stomping and spitting as he plunged his hand into my heart and pulled out the bad mojo.  Good times were had by all, except for the poor Argentinean man who will forever have me out of his reach.

(Bapat Wayan in the center dressed in all white)

Our villa was a lovely 6 bedroom “cottage” just a short walk down the most terrifying and endless rock stairs, which we affectionately referred to as the scares.  No one bothered to tell us that in high tide the end of the stairs would be underwater making our last walk down more of a fully dressed snorkeling experience.

The downside to paradise is the shoddy power-grid.  Here is a riddle for you.  What do you get when you put 10 american women in an underpowered villa that has individual AC units in every room?  If you guessed a  power outage you win! So for 4 hours most of us sat in the pool afraid some of the ladies may burst into flames upon exiting.  Our little experience of “authentic Bali” didn’t get these ladies down though, and as we we all sang the words of Bob Marley “Every little ting’s gonna be all right” the lights came on.  Walking up to our room I caught site of our neighbors shack and realized they too were glad we got our lights back since they didn’t have electricity and had to use the light our villa gave off to cook their meal on their outdoor gas stove.   While this isn’t my or Lorie’s first rodeo in a developing country, it was just another reminder to how good we have it.  It also assured me that if Donald Trump wins the election I will be able to survive in the most desolate of places because God knows I am not waiting for him to deport my Cuban ass to Mexico.

Seriously though, these ladies were troopers. We have walked miles, sweat buckets, and survived a few cases of Bali Belly.  So as a reward for being good little adventure travelers we took our last afternoon off and snuck in to the world famous and hoity toity Potato Head Beach Club.  If you can picture it, this is was a lot like the beverly hillbillies going to dinner at the white house.  After convincing their flamboyant pool boy we belonged there, we opened a tab at the pool bar, dove in and proceeded to drown, in alcohol of course.

Radom girl from Egypt wanted in on our photo

Hunter S Thomas goes to Bali

When you catch Meredith taking a selfie with your phone.

Force-fed a Baroung Zombie.

The well rum was Cuban Rum

 

It was like South Beach with a sunset.  This is what most people come to Bali for, and while it was a great little side trip, I just don’t get it.

So I sit here typing with about 26 hours to get to the airport to start the long trek home. Most of me wants to say fuck it and fly Zach, the kids and my pets over here, but the universe has given me a clear message where I belong.  So for now I head home and begin planning the next couple of big trips and hopefully a permanent move to a location I will announce at a later date, you know after I drug my husband and get him to agree to it.

 

Abandonment Issues and New Year’s Resulostions

Once again, I have been the perpetrator of abandonment and neglect.  To this blog… not the kids. Although as I sit here half way around the world my husband may have a difference of opinion on the latter.

Today is Hindu New Year; Nyepie as it is referred to here, and I want to say that I have the good fortune of being here in Bali for it, but I think that the word “fortune” discredits everything I have done, endured and conquered to be here.  I am still young-ish by many people’s standards and today, in one of the 23 countries I have visited, I did a sun salutation in front of a full solar eclipse in the most beautiful of lush greenery, in Bali.  I feel like I should go find a Mic, just so that I can drop it.  And…. I know there is so much more.  So since this is someone’s new year I am going to make 1 resolution and 1 only… to tend to this blog.  I figure if I am going to keep it entertaining enough for anyone to read it I am going to have some big adventures.

So with that let’s get to it!

Happy Nyepie! Today is what is known as the day of silence and the first day of the new year on the Hindu calendar.  While the same days are celebrated in India, the names and traditions differ and I have to tell you, I think Bali is winning.  Celebrations started 6 days ago when we arrived on the island and mostly, if you didn’t know any better, you would have thought it was just another day in Bali.  There seems to be a ceremony for everything down to good dental hygiene, so the beautiful women wandering the streets with offering baskets on their heads is an almost daily occurrence.  If you have any clue that you have landed on this island at just the right time, you may notice the village men, teens and boys secretly working in their respective herd on their Ogoh Ogohs. I guess I should first explain to you what Nyepie is and what the hell is an Ogoh Ogoh anyways.

Nyepie is a Balinese “Day of Silence” that is commemorated every Isakawarsa (Saka new year) according to the Balinese calendar (on this year, 2016, it falls on March 9).   Observed from 6am to 6am the next morning it is a day of silence and self reflection.

There is only 1 rule in Nyepie Club. Ok, so there are four rules, but I could not resist the fight club reference.
1) No fires.This includes lights.
2) No working.  Our villa staff prepared meals for the 24 hour period and went home to their families.  Somehow our chef, Nurdy, thinks she will return to our shriveled emaciated white bodies and went home very concerned for us.  I assured her we had noodles and beer, so we are all set.
3) No entertainment or pleasure.  Although in this paradise situated villa, it kind of feels like we are cheating on the pleasure part.
4) No traveling.  This means we cannot leave our property, nor can anyone else.  The bustling streets of Ubud are a ghost town.

Many of the native island residents fast and stay in total silence.  Our group of 10 is observing the silence as well, with only purposeful whispered communication.  We were totally silent but then realized that using interpretive dance was NOT going to get me the damn butter for my toast.

A lot of tourists and non native residents leave the island before Nyepie, thinking that a day trapped in your compound sounds awful, and oh my are they wrong.  While I am enjoying the silence, it is really the day before Nyepie that makes it best time I have ever visited.  Imagine Mardi Gras meets Burning Man and then gets wrapped in a Carnival sa’mich.  The Bhuta Yajna Ritual begins with what appears to the naked eye as  3 people whacking every inch of their property with a banana leaf whip, banging pots and trying not to actually set fire to anything with a makeshift straw torch. This is done in order to vanquish the negative elements and create a balance with God, Mankind, and Nature.  Simply put they chase away the demons that have settled down in their hood over the last year.  As sunset falls everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, gathers at the town center aka the village Futbal (soccer) field and then the delicious craziness begins.  The Ogoh Ogohs are finally revealed to the town as a procession, including 30 foot poles meant to hold up the electrical wires, marching down the street to drums, gongs and gamelans.  Each group carrying their giant paper maché statue set on a bamboo stretcher carried by 30-50 men each.  The main purpose of the making of Ogoh-ogoh is the purification of the natural environment of any spiritual pollutants emitted from the activities of living beings (especially humans).  The silence is meant to be a time of self reflection and family. They also stay quiet so that the demons can’t find their way back.  I mean even the airspace is not to be used.  No flights, nada! And now that I have bored you to death with the a history lesson let me show you some cool shit so that those of you who hung in there through this incredibly long post can be rewarded.

 

If you would like to see what near death by Ogha Ogha looks like click here!

After the Ogohs battle each other in the town center, you make the long walk home through a sea of scooters parked smack in the middle of the street. I am pretty sure they stay out there for 36 hours because no amount of safety patrols could untangle that mess.

Silence will be ending in just a few minutes and this post is likely a symptom of not being able to gab all day.  Happy New Year and may all your demons be gone.

For Colleen…

Our little birth house has a heavy heart this week as we surround and support beloved midwife Colleen Scarlett through a tragic loss.  Her son-in-love, John, passed suddenly this week leaving behind his wife, 2 young children, and a lot of sadness. Take a moment to hold John and his family in your thoughts and prayers.  If you would like to make a donation towards his funeral, the family has started a fundraiser to cover the cost.

Babies, TV shows, and vaginas…oh my!

Lucky number 13 was quite a ride, just not the one I thought it would be.

I believe the way we rang in the New Year should have been a clue that this would be a relatively calm one.

We started 2013 the same way we ended its predecessor, in front of a fire place on a llama farm in Asheville surround by 3 of or 4 kids.

We fulfilled Eli’s dream to be a llama farmer.

and managed to convince the animals we were one of them.

We even squeezed in a visit with our NC cousins.

Then it was back to sunny SOFLA for my gorgeous niece’s wedding
My girls are the non-gansta’ ones.

and then began what would be the theme of the year, BABIES!

Noah – waited  42 weeks and 3 days to make his grand entrance.  His mama fought the “law” and won, delivering naturally with one of our back-up hospital practices.

and Maximus 2VBAC at home.  I had the pleasure of attending both VBACs.

While I am sure you get the point, I can’t help but share this little man.  Born more aware than some grown-ups I know.

Calder was one of 3 babies born in 16 hours.  They had perfect timing and I made every single one.

and that was only January.

February brought about about my biggest babies 22nd Birthday

More baby-babies, and an amazing opportunity were born.

(This one has generally been a secret by contract)

The staff of The Palms Birth House was contracted to make a  pilot for a docu-series (just a classier name for reality show.) At the very first filmed birth we had another very first.  Two babies born in side by side rooms within minutes of each other.  It made great footage.

March was filled with music.  We attended the Winter Music Conference and even got a ride as VIPs on the Red Bull party boat.

and then of course… more babies

April brought the opportunity to see the documentary about birth legend Ina Mae Gaskin and see her speak in person.

We also got to eat tacos out of a truck.  It was awesome

Then celebrated Zach’s 42nd birthday by taking a cruise without children. If that wasn’t enough of a gift, he got to deal with me on oversized drinks and my win at all costs personality during cheesy cruise ship game nights.

May brought more babies and more filming and the show got a name!

In May I got a new car, I call it my 5th child. The fur-kids love it too!

and The Palms celebrated our 1 year anniversary of babies, babies babies!

Daphne choose July as the month to cut off all her hair for donation.

and I bought a bus…

you can read what THAT is all about here but in short it is a mobile unit for prenatal care to the underserved areas of South Florida.

Then  the yearly trip to Bimini where I got to do this!

and Lorie and I got some much needed time off:

In August ELi got his first paying job! yeah….

I got to play with more babies,

and I celebrated 10 years as a Florida Licensed Midwife! (with a shell of course)

September was a blur of birthdays that led straight in to Halloween, or so it felt.

I celebrated my 10th annual 29th birthday on Noveber 21 with friends. 

and Thanksgiving with (most of) my family

New Year’s Eve also meant our 15 year anniversary. So a quiet dinner and then out to party with the rest of the world.

Zach is still learning to smile with his braces.

It was a pretty cool year.  My lucky number 13 didn’t disappoint.  As for the TV show there wasn’t enough table throwing I guess/ But we are still working on it. Happy 2014!