Things I am Really Going to Miss

 Things I am really going to miss -

My goats. I will miss sitting outside on a sunny afternoon (like I am doing right now) watching the goats grazing, reading a book, or writing, or just thinking about things in a loose, unconnected way. I will miss observing my healthy, shiny, vigorous animals living their ordinary animal lives.

I will miss my ponies - the smell of them, mostly. How I love the smell of horse. I will miss leaning my back against Poppy's ribcage, warmed by the sun, and breathing in the sweet scent of her mane. I will miss blowing into her nostrils, and feeling her green, grassy breath blow back at me. Her strength, her solidness, and the incredible softness of her muzzle. 

I will miss my earth: this earth, and all the herbs that grow from it. I keep meaning to make a list of all the plant species I can find on my land; at least, the ones I can name. I haven't done it yet, but right here from this folding canvass chair in which I am presently parked, I can identify:

four species of pasture grass

white clover

red clover

bull thistle

canada thistle

lance leaf plantain and broad leaf plantain

common tansy

amaranth

dock

creeping buttercup

ox-eye daisy

German chamomile and Roman chammomile

Blackberry

mugwort

bachelor's button

dandelion and false dandelion

alfalfa

canary grass

hemlock

stinging nettle

Not including those I planted on purpose:

apple trees and plum trees

cherries, pears, and

hazelnuts

Blueberry

Raspberry

Rhubarb

A veritable poem of plant life.

I know this piece of earth and my animals inside and out, now. I know which of these plants the goats like to eat, and in which seasons. Right now they are eating the thistle buds, just before they flower purple, the only part of the thistle they will eat. They are eating dock leaves, which they ignore at other times of year. They are nibbling on the branches of the neighbor's pie-cherry which lean over the fence, and now is the only time that they may do this, because cherry leaves turn poisonous once they begin to wither in the fall. The clover is nearly done, and has become brown and unappetizing, but the blackberries are at the height of their deliciousness, hung with clusters of small green fruit. Tansy in flower is a natural anthelmintic, and the goats seek it out when bothered by worms. 

I will miss watching the seasons pass. In that tropical, nearly seasonless land there is no winter, no spring and no bright autumn, only the stark division between wet and dry. I will miss the mountains. As I sit here, in August, Mount Baker's wide white skirts are turning pink in the light of the lowering sun. My entire northern horizon is lined jagged peaks, glittering with ice in winter, cool and blue today. I will certainly miss snow, the magical way it transforms  mundane landscapes with mysterious shapes and shadows. I will miss my children's excitement at the first snowfall, and the homely rituals of Christmas. 

I could go on and on. I will miss services at my church, and singing out loud as one voice among many. I will miss my kitchen - oh how I will miss my kitchen, which I have slowly and organically arranged entirely to my own liking. I will miss my knives, my favorite soup pots, my grandmother's cast-iron skillet. I might miss my jewelry, a little, I suppose. I will miss espresso. 

But all of these are mere details, and a way of avoiding naming what I will most. I lapse into trivia because I am afraid to say that I will miss - terribly, frighteningly, horribly - my daughter Rowan. 

I will miss her help, of course, for she helps me a great deal, but more I will miss her silliness and her wittiness. I will miss her crazy curly hair and her dimples. I will miss her sharp and funny sense of style, her bravery and her whip smart insights. I will miss her company and her conversation. She has the most outsized, ridiculous laugh, and I will miss it rediculously. Rowan, my gorgeous, intelligent, funny child, I will miss you every day.

Crunch Time (Too Much House)

The house is nearly empty: there is nowhere to sit, nothing to cook with or eat off of, and nothing to sleep on. The horses are gone, off to my friend Brittany's house for the year. In the refrigerator, there is nothing but olives and mustard. We are eating frozen pizza off of paper plates and sleeping on the floor.

There is an expanding pile of trash, made up of used paper plates and recycling which we no longer have the energy or time to recycle; there is a constantly rotating tornado of clothing, clean and dirty, whirling in and out of the messy hedge of suitcases propping open every door. There is an unending stream of visitors, friends, family, and acquaintances, who all want to touch base before we leave. I have had overnight house guests for each of the last three nights. Each night included a toddler.


There is still a daunting amount of work to be done - right now Homero and Juan are up on the roof fixing the leak (see previous posts) and I am taking a break from scrubbing out the fridge and defrosting the freezer. I simply can't believe how much dirt and junk we were living with. I don't know about other people's houses, but around here, we seldom see the bottom of a drawer. It's always covered with silverware, or hand tools, or clothing, or old schoolwork and broken crayons. Turns out, when I emptied out the drawers, all of them were coated in a thick layer of grime, which had to be scrubbed off with bleach water.

The insides of my kitchen cupboards were undeniably disgusting. I am a pretty serious cook (if I do say so myself) and I am a collector of condiments, oils, spices, and chutneys. The shelves in my cupboards were laminated in a mixture of molasses, curry powder, sambaal oleak, shrimp paste, homemade blackberry jam, rice wine vinegar, and peanut butter. Sprinkled across this sticky mess and partially embedded in it was a blend of cloves, mustard seeds, and enough other spices and seeds to have made a medieval peasant rich for life. I've used up a lot of rags today.

The other thing I am amazed by is the sheer number of unidentifiable items I own. Mostly these are variants of the genus electronica: chargers for handheld devices which went extinct in the nineties; snippets of red, blue, and yellow wires; strange clips and snarls of wire. Homero is responsible for a metric shit-ton of small plastic and metal thing-a-ma-jigs such as fuses, tips for small tools to which we no longer own the handles, nearly used up rolls of duct tape, paint rollers, and so many other things which I can only stare at in bafflement. I have the sneaking suspicion that if I consulted him, Homero would press the case for keeping every single one of these nameless items, so I simply dumped them into a couple of hefty bags and put them out with the trash. Don't wince like that; he did the same thing with my kitchen drawers.

Speaking of which, nobody needs three different kinds of citrus reamer. Or two manual food mills, or indeed any food mills at all. I had an entire drawer devoted to plastic lids. There must have been two hundred plastic lids in there, but nowhere did I have the plastic containers to which these lids were once appended. And seriously, would I have needed two hundred of them if I did?

I think I see the problem here, and the problem is too much house. This isn't an enormous house by today's standards - it's about 2,500 square feet - but it's twice as big as the house I used to live in, and it has five times as much storage. Just about every room in the house is lined, on one wall or two, with built in cupboards. The bedrooms all have built in dressers and shelves, and the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room have more cupboards than you can shake a stick at.

Everyone remarks on this and says, "oh, how nice to have so much storage available!" It is, or I mean it would be, if I had real stuff I needed to store. But I don't, so my storage is not filled with, say, folded linens or grandma's china. The actual results of having unlimited storage space is that whenever I or Homero find ourselves with aomething in our hands and no immediate idea of where to put it, we simply open the nearest drawer and chuck it in. Multiply this scenario by ten thousand and you have our current situation.

I've procrastinated long enough - it's time to get up and start throwing crap away.

Famous Last Words

The house is just about empty. We spent two days boxing everything up, and then our friends Crecencio and Juan came and helped Homero clean everything out. We no longer have mattresses to sleep on, a TV to watch, or a kitchen table to eat at. In the kitchen, I kept one pot and one knife. We are eating off of paper plates with plastic forks from here on out. 

 The three men worked all day in the hot sun - and it was very hot - to pile everything we own onto the flatbed trailer. They sweated like pigs and (strictly for reasons of hydration) drank a whole bunch of beers as they worked. When the last box was on the trailer, they collapsed under the tree in the shade and lay there like dead men. It was about 8:00 at night and the sun was setting.

"Aren't you going to put the trailer in the shop?" I asked.

"Tomorrow," Homero groaned.

"What if it rains?" I asked.

"It's not going to rain," Homero replied. "Look at the sky."

I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but here are all our worldly goods, heaped onto the trailer and ready to be stored in the shop.... soaking wet.

The Newest Mexicans

Last friday we woke up at 5 a.m. and drive to Seattle for our 8 o'clock appointment at the Mexican consulate to get Hope and Paloma their Mexican citizenship. It is a fairly long and annoying process, but my guess is less so than getting American citizenship for a child born abroad to an American father and a Mexican mother. I'm not even sure that the U.S. grants such children automatic citizenship.

Mexico requires the same documentation here that it requires in Mexico to issue a birth certificate: both parents must be present at the correct office, and they must bring two witnesses who will swear that the children actually belong to the parents. Parents must provide their own birth certificates and witnesses their identification, all with multiple copies.

Our witnesses were a friend of Homero's named Juan and his wife, Carla. Juan and Homero have worked together at the Seattle garage for years now, and are good friends. You have to be good friends with someone to ask them to get up early and spend four or five hours hanging around in a stuffy little waiting room with you. It wasn't until Juan was actually signing his name on the form, however, that Homero suddenly realized that according to longstanding tradition, he and Juan were now officially compadres, and Carla and I were now comadres.

Homero felt a little embarrassed, because also according to tradition he ought to have asked Juan more formally if he would like to become his compadre, but as it turned out, Juan was delighted. Now our families are related in a way, and have serious obligations to each other. For example, when Juan wants to get his daughter her Mexican citizenship, it will be our turn to get up early and hang around in a stuffy waiting room for hours.

Afterwards, we all went down the street to Mama's Mexican kitchen and had a big old enchilada feast.

Accomplishing this task is a big deal. It means that Hope and Paloma can be enrolled in school and that they will have access to Mexico's national health system. In the future, should they choose to, they can attend Mexican Universities, where tuition is a small fraction of what it is here. Due to Mexico's socialized educational system, Homero's mother, a woman raising five children alone who had only a seventh grade education, was able to put four of them through university, and her children are now physicians and engineers.

I feel that dual citizenship is one of the greatest gifts I can give my children (or really, that their father can give them). This upcoming year will give them fluency in the language and culture of their new country, and strengthen the ties to their Mexican family. I don't really know if it is possible to be "bi-cultural" in the way that one can be bilingual, but certainly I want my kids to have the opportunity to find out.

Setbacks (Frustration and Friendship)

After signing the lease, I was feeling pretty light and breezy. I thought we were just about home free. Now it's all about packing, I thought. And a few little things here and there like getting Rowan's apartment set up with some cooking facilities.

If only.

My disabled father was visiting us for a few weeks, giving his wife some long-needed respite. Last weekend I drove Dad down to Salem, Oregon to meet up with JoAnn (said wife) and do the Dad-handoff. Two of my best friends live in the vicinity, so I took a couple of days to visit each of them, and I had a wonderful time.

When I got back, I discovered that in my absence, the dryer had gone kablooie and the old roof leak had reasserted itself and Rowan's soon-to-be bedroom was all wet again.  The dryer is a minor annoyance - Homero can fix it, and the part only cost $28 from Sears - but the leak is another story.

This roof leak has a long and ugly history that I don't care to reiterate at the moment. Those who wish to hear the whole unsavory story of mold, racism, and multiple marital spats may do so here. And here. And, finally, here. The short version is that despite the employment of two separate professional roofing firms and a boatload of money, we still have a mystery leak.

I don't know how you find out the source of a leak like that. Get up on the roof with a hose on a sunny day and have someone else in the attic with a flashlight? Maybe. Tear the whole roof off looking for the damn thing? Oh great, imagine that - "Hi new renters who have already signed a lease. Come on in and look around. Oh the roof? What about it? What do you mean where is it...?"

The way we fix problems like that is to throw a barbecue. This isn't an approved method, but it generally works to invite over a dozen or so Mexican friends who collectively have about a century of roofing and carpentry experience. After feeding them all grilled chicken, potato salad, and plenty of cold beer, just tell the story. Within minutes you will have Mexicans all over your roof, pointing out problems left and right. That's what happened at our house a few days ago, anyway.

"Caray," said our friend Juan. "Este no esta nada bien." And: "Hijoles," and even "Carajo."

These are words you don't want to hear when your Mexican friend is crawling around on the roof. It either means he's found some really bad shit, or that he's fallen off. Juan had, indeed, found some bad shit. No flashing where there should be flashing. No "drip panels" along the gutters, whatever those are. No metal guard around a vent pipe, which is where he thinks the leak is. He said he could stick his finger right through the roof, and that ain't good. It elicited a hearty "Caramba" from Homero.

Allow me to indulge in a cliche for a moment. You can't find good help these days! What is it with contractors in this town? Does nobody do things the right way anymore? You pay through the nose and  get crappy workmanship, and if you dare to complain, it's all "I'm gonna sic immigration on you!" I know, those of you who didn't click on the backstory links are going "WHAT?!" Go on, click on the last link. I'll wait.

Our friends said that if we just bought the materials they would come back up next week and fix what could be fixed without tearing everything apart. Juan is certain he can fix the leak, at least. They won't hear of taking a dime. The very idea is insulting to them. These are the same friends who gave us presents to bring to their families, the last time we went to Oaxaca. We made a day trip out to their village and feasted with their mothers, sisters, and wives. We handed over the gifts of cellphones, earrings, and love letters, and brought back fresh photos and videos of growing young children singing happy birthday to their faraway Papas.

These friends are the same ones who help us with butchering the goats, and for whom Homero has crossed borders which they cannot cross themselves. Our family and this family have become, quietly and without fanfare, part of one of those circles of mutual aid and support which are so very Mexican. Crecencio and Homero are not formal  compadres, but the relationship between our families is beginning to seem like it.

Crecencio is bringing his family home to Oaxaca at about the same time as we are leaving. For a while there was talk of trying to caravan, but I don't think anything is going to come of that. In any case, I am so happy that we will have some friends within striking distance down there. Homero, of course, will have scads of friends, but I will have none outside of family. It's nice to think we will occasionally be able to visit our friends, and my children can visit their children, who are also friends.

Friends are good, in any culture.

What Shall We Bring (Part One)?

Now that we have the house rented, and our move out date - August 1st - is looming, I have started to think seriously about packing. "Packing" is a kind of vague, all inclusive term by which I mean sorting all of my earthly belongings and deciding what to throw away, what to give away, what to pack for storage, and what to bring with us.

The last time I moved, five years ago, I was moving out of a house in which I had lived for fifteen years. There was, as you can imagine, a great deal of accumulated stuff, and I dreaded to move it all. Luckily, we were not working under a deadline, and I had ample time to go slowly through the closets and drawers and move a few boxes at a time.

This time, we are working under a deadline, though not a close one. Somehow, we seem to have accumulated as much stuff in the five years we have lived here as I did in the previous fifteen. I blame my husband. He inherited the pack rat gene from his mother, whereas I look on moving as an excellent opportunity to get rid of half of what we own. In fact, I like the rule of thumb my own mother laid down - if there's a closed box, and you haven't opened it in a year, and you don't know what's in it, just throw it away unopened.

My husband is adamantly against such a policy, and in the interest of fairness I have to admit that five years ago, he was right. When I tried to toss several boxes unopened he snatched them away and put them in the truck and drove them up here, where he proceeded to put them in an old shed where they sat moldering for another three years. Then the shed fell down one winter, and we had to remove the debris.

"Let's for god's sake just toss these boxes now, please?" I said.

"No," he said, and carried them inside to go through one by one.

Among other, less important things, he found a box full of my best jewelry and - ahem - the deed to our house in Seattle. I still maintain that I wasn't actually missing the jewelry if I didn't even know it was there, and that we could have always got a replacement deed. But factually speaking, he won the argument and no boxes shall be thrown away unopened. Probably we will simply carry them unopened to the shop, where they will remain until we return and carry them, unopened, back into the house.

My mom, when overwhelmed by clutter, used to fantasize out loud about becoming a nun and living in a small empty cell. I completely relate. I have a definite monkish bent when it comes to material possessions (books excepted).  Fewer things means less work, right? Fewer dishes to wash, fewer clothes to wash and fold, less general upkeep. However, now that I am faced with something close to my fantasy becoming reality, I am finding it very difficult to figure out how to make it work.

I am not certain I have described our prospective living situation, so I'll do so now. First off, we'll be living in my mother-in-law's home. For a year. Yes, that's what I said. More about my feelings on that subject in another post; for now I will confine myself to a clinical description of the actual quarters. Abuelita (as we call Homero's mom) has a nice home. Homero and his three brothers built it from the ground up when Homero was a teenager.

It is a two story concrete home, laid out in a straight line. On the first floor is the living room, nearest the street, then the kitchen, and then two bedrooms, one after the other. As in most traditional Mexican homes, there is no communication from one room to another on the inside - in other words, no hall. You leave the house to move from one room to another. This doesn't mean going out on the street, because the entire property is enclosed within a tall wall. The rooms line one side of a rectangular courtyard, and to move from room to room you go through this central space. I hope that's clear.

One one end of this line of rooms there is a cast iron spiral staircase leading up to the second floor. Half of this upper area is a flat area open to the sky: this is where the dogs live. In the other half are three small bedrooms, laid out in a straight line. The upstairs rooms are not as wide as the downstairs rooms, which leaves room for a balcony that runs the length of the house. The doors of the bedrooms open on to this balcony.

We will have two of these upstairs bedrooms, together with the the balcony in front of them. The bedrooms are small, about ten by ten feet, and they do not have windows except for one window in the front wall, next to the door. The truth is, they are hot little concrete boxes, pretty much exactly like the monk's cells my mother used to fantasize about. Each has a double bed, which takes up most of the space, but is otherwise devoid of furniture.

Trying to create a plan for how to live in these rooms for a year, and trying to decide what we absolutely need and how - first of all - to bring it with us in a minivan that will be carrying four people and a dog, and how - second of all - to make it fit into our allotted space is mentally grueling.

I have a few absolutes. I insist, absurdly, on having a kitchen. Having been the mistress of my own domain for twenty-something years, and the matriarch of my family for ten, I know beyond a doubt that I will go stark staring raving mad if I do not have my own kitchen, be it ever so humble. I'm thinking of a folding card table and four chairs placed out on the balcony, with a beer-fridge and a hot plate. I can make coffee in the mornings for Homero and myself, and the children can sit at this table and do their homework in the afternoons. Homero will never understand this and thinks I am being difficult, but I know that this kitchen table is fundamental and integral to my sanity. It MUST exist.

Inside the bedrooms, we need a way to manage clothing. Being extremely lazy, I have for the past twenty years used a simple cedar chest for clean clothes, and a hamper for dirty ones. Pile of dirty; pile of clean. This system would work in Oaxaca as well, except that we have no way to bring our chests with us. For now, I'll assume we can buy some there. Additionally, in our bedroom, I'd like to install a few wall-mounted shelves for books and a lamp, and have a comfortable chair for reading. Perhaps a bedside table for water and such.

Homero will be bringing a selection of his mechanic's tools, which will take up most of the space in the minivan, even though he swears he is bringing a bare minimum. The girls and I will more or less have a generously sized suitcase apiece, and my suitcase will be partially filled with kitchen things (I can't leave my cast iron skillet behind, nor my best soup pot and a couple of good knives). The girls will have a couple of teddy bears. That's about it.

Oh, we are bringing our computer. That means I have to make space for it in our bedroom. All of this needs so much more thought, I feel like I need a blueprint. It's a sort of Tetris puzzle. How can four Americans and all their shit fit into a small part of a Mexican home? The answer is: they can't. Forget it. We can't live like Americans in Oaxaca.

Once again, I keep running into the same brick wall. We aren't going to live American lives, Aimee, wrap your head around it. We are going to live Mexican lives. You, Aimee, are not going to go on in the same manner, just in a different, exotic locale. You are going to go on in a different manner, a Mexican manner, a smaller more efficient manner. At first, a cramped and uncomfortable manner. But hopefully you will adapt gracefully and come to enjoy it.

You may even find, Aimee, that it is a fantasy come true.

Great Leap Forward

Scratch one major item off the to-do list: the house is rented.... or almost so.

Several weeks ago, I posted an ad on Craigslist. After some thought, I decided on a strategy to market our rather unorthodox rental as an adventure listing.  Here's the Craigslist ad in it's entirety:

Unique opportunity for a family or people interested in finding out if the farming/country life is for them. We are moving to Mexico for one year, starting in August, and are looking for a family to rent our farm on five acres outside of Ferndale. We will be gone for the entire school year and will write the lease to that effect - no worries about an interrupted school year. School district is Ferndale, Custer elementary, Horizon middle school. Spacious three bedroom/one bath with a gigantic wraparound deck that takes advantage of the sweeping view of the Canadian Cascades (yes, that is the actual view in the photo below). Pretty much wall-to-wall mountains. Hardwood floors, huge playroom, fenced dog yard, and many extras such as Rainbow "safest in the world" trampoline, and play structure. Three fenced pastures and two small barns ready to receive your animals - or, if you are interested, you could take over care of our small herd of Nubian dairy goats (if not interested, we will make other arrangements). If desired, house could be rented partially furnished (dining room and living room). Bedrooms have built-in dressers and enormous closets. Propane heat. 
ONE slightly unorthodox issue: the house has a completely self-sufficient mother-in-law apartment (separate entrance, kitchen) which will be occupied by our daughter, who attends WWU. Quiet and non-annoying. No shared facilities except laundry, 100% at your discretion. 
Rent $1025. We are looking for responsible, stable people who understand that this is a short term rental, one year only. Respond for more information, tons of photos. 

The photo I included was my favorite of the view to the north - the main view off the front porch, and the view on which all the windows in the living and dining rooms open. Many people answered my ad. Lots and lots of folks, it seems, are attracted by the idea of country living, without the risk and investment of actually purchasing real estate. A surprising number of folks are interested in goats - I included the language about goat care on the off-chance that I might not have to sell off my goats, not with much actual expectation.

We have spent much of the past three weeks showing the house and property to a stream of interested parties, only a small percentage of whom seemed to us like real prospects. There were hippies without obvious sources of income, and a few folks who seemed suspiciously like meth-addicts. Maybe we had set the rent too low?

But there were also serious prospects: a newly divorced dad looking for a place that his three kids could visit him; a woman searching desperately for a place she could bring her two horses. Strangely, I got a few e-mails from folks who lived far away. I hadn't thought about that possibility.  A man called from San Diego - his business was expanding into British Columbia and he was looking for a house near the border, he said. He was serious, and seemed legit enough that I asked him for references, but they didn't check out.

Another man wrote from Texas. He was from our area, he said, and wanted to move back because his father was old and frail. He had a job lined up (health care professional). His wife was a stay-at-home mom who specifically wanted to get into dairy goats. They have three children, seven, five, and three.
They asked a few pertinent questions, and requested more photos. Then they said "we want to commit," the first people to say so.

I told them I wasn't comfortable committing until they had "met" my daughter Rowan, so we set up a Skype date. She talked to them for an hour or so, and carried her laptop around the house, showing them all the rooms. Rowan gave them the thumbs up. They sent me their excellent references.  All of us got a good feeling from this family. We liked them, insofar as is possible to like people you have never actually met.

But Homero was still uneasy. To tell the truth, so was I.  Just as, in a relationship that starts over the computer or by letter, you cannot possibly know for certain if things will work out until you meet your inamorata in the flesh and smell their sweat - until you have tested the chemistry - we felt that it was impossible for a family to commit for certain to live a year in our house until they had actually entered our home.

Given that we must ourselves make a commitment - cross the rio grande, as it were - by purchasing plane tickets and making other non-negotiable arrangements, we decided to speak plainly. "We're worried," I said, "that you might change your mind. Surely you can understand that we can't take our home off the market and buy plane tickets without being certain. Are you and your wife absolutely sure you can sign a lease without having visited the house?"

They offered to pay a deposit, plus the first month's rent. They said "We are sure, and we give our word." Well, what can you say to that? Either you decide to only consider locals, or you accept their word. We decided to accept their word.

Tonight I will be writing up the lease. A first draft, anyway. I'll e-mail it to them, and then we'll get on the phone and go over it, tweaking it to our mutual satisfaction. When all sides are content, I'll fax them a hard copy, and they'll sign it and fax it back. They'll send us the deposit via Western Union, or perhaps Paypal. And then we will all pray - they that they will like the place and find it adequate to their needs, and we likewise.