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.

naïveté

coco's back and she's more potty trained than ever! ready for summer and (hopefully) ready for preschool, which is only a month away.

meanwhile, i'm filling out forms that make me realize two things: 1. that my hands start aching after two minutes of writing with a pen, and 2. that things might happen while coco is at school. i'm not talking about her being lost in translation or getting her feelings hurt by another kid. those are little things that i expect to happen. i'm talking about big things like THE BIG ONE. it freaks me out that i have to prepare an earthquake bag with an extra set of clothing and a meaningful item from home and pay $10 for an emergency kit containing food and other supplies.

this reminds me of the time panzón and i went to get my second or third ultrasound when i was pregnant. we were so excited to find out the sex of our baby that it hit us like a ton of bricks when the technician said quite indifferently, "the fetus shows no signs of malformation". and then, very causally, "so, do you want to know the sex?". holy crap. there could have been something wrong with the baby. that, it suddenly dawned on me, is why when asked what sex mothers want their unborn child to be, they answer with a (now-i-don't-think-it's-so-)corny, "i don't care, as long as it's healthy".

i guess i'm just naïve sometimes. which will probably come in handy when coco decides she wants to give scuba diving a shot or turns seventeen and wants to go to france for a semester. i'm just thankful that other people (people in schools and hospitals) give these things more thought.

el sarcófago

this is our car. oh, how it glistens under the california sun! see how it takes flight like a magnificent bird! it can also, if you have good arranging skills, fit a large amount of ikea furniture in the back. did i mention it has a sun roof? it's such an awesome car that i've even learned to live with its maroon interior, which is leather, by the way.

however, lately there had been sightings of oil on our driveway. i immediately pointed out the spots, which had been growing larger and larger, to panzón. i also pointed out several bird droppings that decorated the hood. he checked the oil and said that everything looked ok. everything, except the poop, of course, which he didn't clean. but neither did i, so i couldn't really complain.

anyway, weeks went by and alas! the car *almost* broke down yesterday. in all probability the transmission was to blame and repairing it would cost more than the car itself! el sarcófago is priceless. we couldn't possibly afford more than that!

this morning i was already thinking about ways to survive temporarily without our only car: panzón rides his new foldable bike to work anyway, coco's new school and the park are both at walking distances and trader joe's is only a couple of blocks away, as is whole foods... when panzón called to tell me it was not the transmission after all! from my somewhat limited understanding of the subject of mechanics, it was something a lot cheaper. who cares what it was!

after this scare, i vow to keep el sarco poop-free, even if it means doing more than pointing it out to panzón, like handing him a bucket and a sponge, and maybe even getting my t-shirt a little wet for motivational purposes only.

hair

this may be obvious for people who have known me since childhood, but i'm going to set the record straight for all of the newcomers: coco has my hair. my light brown, curly, unruly, truly adorable hair. i somehow lost it along the way. puberty? bleaching? pregnancy? negligence? it's a mystery.

i think i sensed the change and tried to do something about it sometime around my tenth birthday because i spent the $100 i got from a family member and spent it all on a brush. one mason pearson hair brush. ñaña, my childhood friend, swore by it and she had nice hair. plus, it came from england. i probably used it twice. i never brushed again. seriously, i don't even own a brush.

come to think of it, my hair has only looked good in three stages of my life: 1. early childhood, when it looked exactly like coco's; 2. late adolescence, when i was a hair model and got my hair colored (platinum blond) and cut (boy short) every month, in front of an eager-to-learn group of hairstyling students; 3. that planchado express era during my early twenties, when i got my long hair straightened for only 40 mexican pesos at least once a week.

other than that my hair has been either just okay or an absolute disaster, as was the case in barcelona, where i did not get a decent cut in two years. these days my hair gets the same treatment as my teeth, except for the brushing: once a year in mexico.