belly does not equal baby

so motoneta (formerly known as coco) and i were at the park the other morning, when a very long stroller came through the gate and caught our four eyes. triplets! i explained to my little motoneta that those three babies had all been inside their mom's belly together and came out into this world one right after the other. it blows my mind, but she seemed unfazed.

anyway, she continued playing in the sand and i continued looking at her playing in the sand, when she asked me, "how many babies does that señora have in her belly?". i followed her gaze and found a very large woman walking towards us. she did not look pregnant, but obese, and i had a feeling she spoke spanish. i quickly responded, "um, i don't think she has any babies in her belly". but, of course, this answer was not enough for the extremely inquisitive motoneta, who further investigated by asking, right when the woman had taken a seat on the bench in front of us, "then why is her belly so fat?".

in that moment i looked down at the sand, wishing i could dig our way out of the pickle we were in just like fantastic mr. fox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq2I7xs0Dtc).

motoneta

coco has stopped being coco for a while now. ever since we went to barcelona in may, she's insisted on being called motoneta, which refers to a small motorcycle or moped. she was amazed by these little vehicles zooming past us on passeig de gràcia or parked in clumps everywhere. i think she saw funny faces on each one, kind of like jack black's motorcycle on that new friends yo gabba gabba episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE3JRjcbcX8&feature=related).

so, it was really no surprise that when i asked her this morning about her upcoming birthday party theme, she quickly replied "¡motonetas!". i'm just glad her answer to the halloween costume question was "¡un cocodrilo!".

back to school mexican 80's style

panzón and i were reminiscing the other night about what back to school meant for us growing up in mexico. we travelled back in time to the stuffy and crowded second floor of a librería gonvil, where our mothers took us to buy los útiles escolares. behind the glass counter were a number of female attendants apathetically ready to take on each family's long list of school supplies. sluggishly, they would remove two black bic ballpoint pens from one drawer, two blue from another, two red from another and one green for yet another (i remember teachers being scandalized by those modern all-in-one multi-color pens and banning them from the classroom, even though they were so practical!). we would have to get different kinds of pencils too, like the B and the HB and sometimes even the 2H. and one of those horrid light brown erasers that looked like the soles of the canadá brand shoes most of the kids wore to school. our notebooks would come with lines, grids or blank, but all looked the same on the outside, the scribe logo in red and a mustardy gold.

it seemed to take these women forever to complete each order. one pair of blunt roma scissors, one round plastic pencil sharpener, one ruler to make margins, an assortment of modeling clay bars (like oily play-doh that never dried, and was really hard at first, but then super sticky), one pritt glue stick, one roll of plastic to cover books and notebooks... meanwhile, the place was getting packed, the line stretching down the stairs to the first floor, where the books were waiting patiently.

finally, when your pile of supplies was complete, the attendant would write each and every item on a little piece of paper and take the merchandise away from the counter (and *gasp* the client!). she handed you the little paper to take downstairs and give it to the older woman at the caja, which refers to the cash register, but was literally a glass box with a small opening for transactions, where she would add everything up and tell you (well, your mom) the total to pay. she would then give you a receipt, which you would take to the entrega de mercancía section, where your merchandise (that mountain of shiny supplies you had parted with so abruptly upstairs) would come down through a hole in the ceiling in a christmas paper-wrapped box with a rope attached, a makeshift elevator of sorts, and into the arms of another attendant who would almost always screw up the packages and give you the wrong one, which is why it was vital to always check inside.

all of this, only to lose, in the case of my darling panzón, half of it on the first day of school.

don't look down

my sister was seven, so i was probably three. we were playing outside of our high-rise apartment building in guadalajara, mexico. the twin towers stood out in the once flat city, looming over the country club golf course. we lived in the "poor" tower, which was identical to the "rich" tower, minus its high profile residents. anyway, there was a three story difference between the two free-standing buildings, which was basically a wall that only came up about a foot on the higher side. there was a row of short dying bushes with gaps revealing a little path between the plants and the precipice. and that's where we were.

this is what i remember. some parts might be real and some other parts might be dreams. there might have been a third child there. and there was possibly a rock roughly the size of a brick on the narrow path behind the bushes. my sister tripped and fell over the short wall. down, down, down, three stories. i was scared to look down, but did. i think a guard was nearby and ran towards her. she was lying on the ground. i don't know if it was my own initiative or if the guard shouted at me, but i went to look for my parents.

i ran through the lobby into one of the two elevators, which i had never been on by myself. i could barely reach the button with the six on it, which was our floor. did i jump or did i stand on tippy-toes, stretching my arm and my finger upwards? i remember the smell of the elevator and the feeling of the spring behind the button pushing my finger back and the circle that lit up around it. our door was on the right. did i knock, did i ring the bell, was it open? i ran across the apartment to their room. i found them. then i draw a blank. sometimes i wonder if i did anything at all.

my sister was lucky. she was a gymnast and followed her instincts as she fell head first towards the pavement by flipping in the air and landing on her feet. she broke so many leg bones and a number of vertebrae that my parents feared she might never walk again. but the doctors did such an excellent job that she recovered completely and we seldom remember that this ever happened. yet this event was one of the defining moments of my childhood. i had been brave and capable of helping in an emergency. in short, i had been a hero.

pop!

this is coco's first preschool art creation, a work of striking contrast, displayed on our refrigerator, which doubles as a gallery for temporary exhibitions.

panzón calls it paul, after the famous german octopus that recently foresaw spain's victory in the world cup.

i like to call it pop, which is the catalan word for our eight-tentacled marine friend that i personally enjoy a la gallega, but also in reverence for our dearest father of pop art, andy warhol. after all, it is andy's magnetic bust that holds the art in place. oh, the symbolism!

coco just calls it ¡un pulpo!. so, we proudly present to you ¡un pulpo!, 2010, mixed media (including some edible media). admission, as always, is free, and may or may not include a cold drink.

chewed gum

this one time, when i was around eleven (i might have been older), my parents and i went out to dinner with a doctor who had come from out of town. i hardly knew him at the time, but my parents were delighted to see him and to be able to invite him to a nice italian restaurant.

i being my usual self and was under very good behavior, when my mom turned to me with piercing eyes and asked me, "why did you put your gum there?". i had no idea what she was talking about, so i followed her pointing finger to find a piece of chewed gum placed on the booth divider. "um, that's not mine", i said quietly. my mom and i were looking at each other in a silent duel, when we heard a loud voice saying rather casually, "oh, that gum is mine. i put it there". we both turned in astonishment and were met with the smiling face of the doctor, who would become a close family friend.

the bucket

coco's sand toys include: two buckets, one shovel, one rake and a set of rainbow stacking cups. we have managed to keep the cup set complete, which is pretty impressive, considering we share our toys with the other kids at the playground, which is an unspoken rule at our park. in the past week, our modest toy collection has been targeted twice by parents infected with a very unsettling, yet common virus: greed.

the first incident happened when i was gathering up our toys to leave the playground. our blue bucket (see image above) was missing, so i scanned the playground and found it in the sand amidst other plastic toys. i approached the middle-aged father sitting nearby and politely pointed out mine saying, "excuse me, i think that's my bucket", to which he replied, without even glancing at the aforementioned toys, "it's not. this is all our stuff". i said, "oh, okay" and walked away, even though i knew for a fact that it was coco's. i'm not spineless, i just figured it's not worth arguing about a bucket that costs a dollar.

just this morning, i witnessed a similar occurrence. coco and i were walking back to the playground after filling her remaining (pink) bucket with water, when i heard a mom asking her toddler, "isn't that your shovel?". she then walked over to the bench where our things were, grabbed the plastic toy and inspected it carefully. unsatisfied with her findings, she threw it on the ground. this woman is very attractive, drives a luxury suv and has a giant diamond ring. why does she care so much about a plastic shovel? i wonder what i would have done had she taken it.

it saddens me a little to think that i'm going to have to sharpie coco's name on her toys to avoid future confrontations with greedy parents and not possessive toddlers.