Zora Travels

Getting what I asked for

A few days ago I freaked out.  I was rifling through my messy closet looking for a pair of black dressy shoes and cursing having to get all gussied up for the weekend wedding.  I lamented that my clothes were all Target/Old Navy variety, that I had nothing to wear and finished off my frantic search by lobbing "I wish I would just get sick so I wouldn't have to go" into the air towards Daniel...who always maintains a perplexed and mellow face as I'm flipping out.

Well, fast forward three days and I'm in Las Vegas, wearing my funky pajamas, having slept seventeen hours, and hopped up on NyQuil...foregoing the wedding to wallow in this sudden flu/cold affair.  Daniel and Ryan left a few hours ago in their tuxedos with ruby red vests, along with Heather in her lovely black dress with killer heels.  I am ravishing in blue lounge pants, an old t-shirt, and a stained sweatshirt.

I did get what I asked for...but now, facing an evening of night sweats and chills, a sore throat and an empty house...I'm not sure it's actually the wish I wanted.  Instead, I should be more clear with what I need.  I know that we are on a crazy budget (for us that translates into "save all for travel and the weddding" budget)...but at some point in my adult life I have to invest in some decent clothes.  Sweaters that aren't falling apart, pants that hang nicely, and shoes without Payless pricetags still stuck inside.  A few nice dresses and shirts...maybe a purse...things that I'm not embarrassed to wear out with the Jones.  I may never keep up with the Jones, but I'd like to meet them out for a cup of tea sometime.

Okay, it's back to the couch, the blanket, and the cable tv.  There is a silver lining- cable tv and a sweet dog named Roxy who doesn't find my coughing, moans, and hacking annoying.

Sweet cheeks

Two of my favorite little ones!  Rafeala, with her sweet cheeks & Diega, acting shy (with Mara and me).

The paddle with the largest holes, please!

The meditated me is stuffed inside of a ratty college sweatshirt, green fuzzy beanie, and black lounge pants. My bare feet engage in a cricket rub atop the scratchy carpet for warmth.  The obnoxious office clock steadily ticks and I wonder how long until I simply must make coffee.

Today is one of those ambitious days that strike every once in a while.  I will have meditated, yoga'ed, blogged, and gymed all before work....hopefully leading to a calm day in my windowless bat cave with my little resisters.  It's odd being hated by most of your students.  I don't claim to be a teacher who has never faced resistance; however, I've always had the time and the space to build a relationship with a class, a mixed-level group of students, who sense that I'm at the helm and inviting them to on an adventure (an admitted "geeky" adventure that has me with a plastic mocking bird on my shoulder whistling throughout Harper Lee's unit).  We have time to cultivate our dynamics; feel each other out in the course of a school year. 

With my current clientele (all seniors who have failed an 8th grade level English exam five times and have one more chance to pass it on March 17th or they won't graduate), I know their lashes of anger and contempt are not really directed at me...and rather a seething contempt with all contributors to the broken "system" that has them now eighteen and unable to functionally read and write...but they are still cursing, resenting, and yelling at me, thus, whether it's meant for - or simply in my direction, I am still told to "f___ off" or "shut the f___ up!" on a daily basis.  I must awaken each day and revitalize the choice to look at them through a lens of compassion and find respectful moments when their minds relent and accept some help.

I prod myself to consider:  if they were my children, how would I want them to be treated.

No, wait a minute, that doesn't work, because I would want my child (if filled with curses, disrespect, and violent outbursts towards a well-intentioned teacher) to pick out the paddle with the largest holes and hand it to the principal for a public swat...or two.  But then again, I'm old-fashioned...and absorbed in my current predicament.  Yes, I know that public education lost the right to inflict corporal punishment upon students.  No, I don't actually wish for it to return.

But I can tell you this, as a nanny for many years, a child who grew up with my mom's home daycare, and multiple friends who do and don't spank - I think I'll spank my own.  This may all change once the caramel cherubims bat their lashes...I may just send them to sit on a bumble-bee mat for a minute.  Then I'll take their picture and post a blog about how the "time-out" versus the brutality of spanking is my revised strategy.

Knockers, Gruyere and babies

Behind every door knocker lingers a good time.  This I have always found to be true.  My love affair with door knockers started years ago in '99.  I had just graduated Berkeley, thrown a few skirts, a German dictionary, and a journal into a backpack, and bought a ticket to Frankfurt.  I dabbled in waitressing and babysitting, met Fadime (my soul's sister), and regularly set out from Cologne on solo adventures.

So, after many months, what else could I photograph, beyond the monuments, plazas, and familiar vistas of famous cities?  The door knockers, of course.  It became my passion.  Slap my sandals down a random cobblestone street, notice the intricate knockers, and capture them on film.  I interspersed these shots with those of my hands and feet...and my travels suddenly didn't seem so lonely.

One day I'll make a book.  A gigantic coffee table book that showcases all of my international knockers (Florentine knocker shown below).  It will gather dust upon a shelf...but occasionally on a gray afternoon such as yesterday, long after my wrinkled hands have sun-spotted and accepted the weight of wedding bands, I'll wipe off the cover and rediscover those doors that held such mystery and intrigue.  The doors that would almost always remain closed and cautious...but when they opened might spill forth a struggling old lady pulling at her laundry cart in Rome, a jovial half-naked professor in Croatia, a giggling Lisbon couple....or two French artists.

Behind the door knocker above exists the creative paradise of Jean-Francoise and Olivier's home.  My arms draped upon heavy wooden chairs, my feet propped on a tiny stool.  My mouth sipped Earl Grey tea while my fingers turned the vibrant blurb.com pages of their recent Vietnam adventure. (Have I found a better version of snapfish albums?")  I left with a renewed lust for travel, a belly full of Gruyere and salty salmon, and a photo of their knocker.

And for the past twelve hours, my heart has been sailing upon a different sea.  I have long since read this blog about Ethiopian triplets adopted by my brother and Kathy's friends in Kansas.  I have saturated my eyes and ears with their ever-growing gurgles, baby chat, and pot banging...but I had never delved into the larger Ethiopian adoption blogging community.  There are thousands of parents waiting for their Addis Ababa babies.  Some, like Julie, are still waiting for their referral.  Others, like Cindy, have learned who their child will be (await their courtdates in Ethiopia to bring little Olly home)...and some mothers have recently arrived at the airport to begin this new chapter of their life. 

I have marinated for hours on these websites...and a chord has been struck.  Somewhere between one website and the next, I turned to Daniel:

"What do you think about adopting a baby from Ethiopia?"

"I had never thought about it."

                                                            click...double-click...click

"When do you want to start trying...tonight?"

"You'll be showing during the wedding."

"Oh."

                                            click...oh, sweet little brown eyes...scroll, scroll, scroll

"Should we try and have one by next summer?"

"Sure...let's get right on it."

                            imagination whirls, click...click...scroll...post a comment

I want a baby.  I've wanted forever...but now it's physical.

Yeah, I know.

Get past the wedding part first.  And maybe this has much to do with reading the pains felt so deeply by mothers who have tried to have biological children for years, suffered loss, cancer, miscarriage, and now turn to adoption to complete their families.  Women whose desire to comfort their crying children and watch their husbands become fathers is so brilliantly unraveled in words that I've come to champion their hopes and smile brightly thinking of their eventual bliss.

But alas, the gym awaits.  Yoga and meditation were today forsaken...no time to even make coffee...packing some bean soup and off into the darkness of a ripening morning with brown babies on the brain.

The ostrich and the French

Ostriches makes me nervous.  I discovered this yesterday at a petting zoo in San Juan Capistrano.  My feet crunched on straw as I sauntered close to the ostrich pen.  The beast at the fence bobbed his earless head near the ground.  Nervously I readied my camera for when he would appear above the fencing, my heart quickened.. and suddenly his enormous eyeball and terrifying beak launched towards my hand...like a true photojournalist, I took the picture despite being in harm's way (while closing my eyes and loudly shrieking). Daniel found this whole scene quite amusing; I was just happy to be alive.

We were ogling the ostriches, pigs, lamas, and bunnies in this quaint mission town because of a kind lunch invitation from my grandparents.  In a lush, fountain-splashed courtyard at L'Hirondelle I delved into creamy crab-stuffed mushrooms (*shown bubbling here), a creamy chicken curry sandwich with garlic fries, a creamy tureen of soup, and finished with some creamy coffee.  Did you catch the theme?  I felt as if Bessie had aimed her udder stream right down my baby-bird throat.  I was blissfully dairy-filled...but must admit that my stomach reminded me of these transgressions long into the night.

What's up with the French?  How is it that they eat this way and stay so svelte?  I mean I'm on WW and my lunch alone slurped up each of my 24 allotted daily points.  Do they simply skip a meal or two to compensate for the rich cuisine, are they genetically predisposed to quickly metabolize fat and carbs (thus, evil and deserving of my disdain)?  Are they all smokers or avid runners?  Or do they eat such small portions, that the decadence is tolerable.  Regardless of the reason, I'm envious.  I feel true intimacy with bread...crusty bread with doughy interior...serenading butter pats and a quick soak in a creamy soup.

Hmmmm....It's a really good thing that my rented dress is for my body "as is."  If I felt under the gun to lose weight or be naked, it would really freak me out.  But am I taking the situation too lightly?  My mother is earnestly shrinking and I seem to be dragging my heels a bit.  At a recent happy hour with my former "lunch friends," I indulged.  It was not an indulgence that echoed the sentiment, "I am sampling but under control" but rather screamed "I have been eating rabbit food...now where's the next fried morsel."  Okay, one fried appetizer doth not the gown seam split; but dipping a fried churro into ice-cream and caramel sauce has the potential to keep a tailor quite busy.  Bless seams for their flexibility but come on already...unless I start turning down social occasions, I must learn to enjoy them without always being the one who seeks out the neglected fried crunchies on the dish.  There is a different mentality to thin people.  We look at situations through a very different lens.  They see greasy fried remnants while I salivate.

But what differentiates the person I am today, the "day after" such an indulgent week, from the me of years past?  I forgive.  Because if you fell half-way down a flight of stairs, would you ever pick yourself up and throw yourself down the rest? 

Now, back to my cup o' tea and my Sunday tango with the travel section.

Lover's Weekend

I am lover of many things on Valentine's Day...beyond the obvious.  Food comes racing to the top of the list...potatoes that shine with a generous olive oil rub, fish flaking into a creamy mushroom sauce, and kernels of corn that burst with sweetness.  Pair it with a delicate muscat wine (and I mean so sweet that it literally makes you wince) and my heart is really pit-a-pattering.  Throw a handmade love note on the table, light some candles, and put on some funky Brazilian tunes, and I'm a gonner.

I know there will come a day when our bank accounts, real jobs, and little progeny might very well create the demand for Hallmark, Sees, and freeway onramp roses...but for now in the tale of "The Grad. Student and the Sub," we still make our own cards.  We use scissors and glue, scraps and imagination to whip up sentiment.  Afterwards, I shuffle over to the scrapbooking cemetery and enter the newest members.  They saddle up right near the Italy scraps from '08.  Now, I admit that sometimes it would be nice to have a luxurious dinner, a romantic weekend vacation, a delicate piece of jewelry...but then there's a strong chance that this little pile of love notes would not exist in such cherished abundance.

And before the mush....there was a perfectly luscious morning spent under red umbrellas and paper lanterns at Tantalum.  In the midst of my Aunt Pat's circle of friends and family, we celebrated her radiant 60th birthday.  She's the oldest of the three and she radiates joy, confidence, and genuine interest.   Both of her sisters (my mother being the middle child) share her same zest.  And when they all stand behind my grandmother, I am captured by the brilliance that I hope genetics will gift me in thirty years.

Missing them already

After a luscious week of giggles and little hands that pinch my neck, it is quiet.  Last night was spent here at home, boiling pasta, and opening up a sweet engagement gift from Courtney -- but no Sam to tickle or Becca to jiggle.  I'm adjusting to the reality that it will be five months until I see them again.  She'll be walking on tipsy feet; he'll say more and perhaps squeal less.  I'll always treasure this past week and I long for the future weekends when we'll get them alone...on a special visit.  Just Daniel and I.  We'll fix them pancakes shaped like Micky Mouse or roller-derbies (my dad's word for crepes stuffed with cottage cheese) and we'll all lay around in pajamas until lunch.

I am also trying this week to be positive.  I feel as if I'm working in hell.  This job tears daily at my spirit, scratches my soul.  I walk onto campus each morning and the violent overtones, the cursing, the largess of the ghetto flow past.  I wade through the verbal and visual sewage to reach the library where I sit all day at a table near the laminating machine, no windows, no light...awaiting the toughest seniors in the class.  They have all failed their state English exam five times and must pass it to graduate.  Students shout and mumble  "C--nt, b---ch, f--- you."  Their overflow of belly and booty squish from atop tight jeans, beneath metallic tops, and ebb from under short-shorts.  Make-up smears faces that can't functionally read; picks, mirrors, combs and text phones busy hands that can barely write.  And if I accidently bump one of them with my gigantic lunch pail, then the curses rain down with a more focused target.  One student, upon being told in my peppy manner to start writing her essay, yelled that I needed to "calm the f---ck down, get a massage, and a boyfriend."  She then put her hand up to my face and snapped her fingers closed in a symbolic "hush your mouth" gesture and said, "shhhh." 

But what can I do?  It's a recession, we need the paycheck.  I haven't been asked to sub anywhere else.  The students I serve, all of whom read below a 6th grade level and are 18 years old, need the help.  It's close to home.  And as Eckhart Toole reminded me yesterday in his excerpt in Oprah magazine...it is our thinking about the situation, not the situation, that produces our reality.  Now, he said it in a much more poetic version; however, the point is....I construct my reality.  I choose to focus on the child who hushed me versus the young man, the first of this current experience, who looked at me yesterday and kindly said, "Thank you.  Thank you for taking your time to help us."  He is the lanky young man, with fuzzy corn rows, an old USC sweatshirt, and a cell phone that continuously drops from his lap, that I should focus on.

And now I should drag my own ample behind, the one that needs to squish itself into a rented Reem Acra dress on a summer night in July to the gym.

**and because of my photos-of-hands fetish...here's a final snap of a Sam/Dan/Me sandwich**

Chopstick antennas

When chopsticks become antennas, boxes blast into space, and pillows become a lunar landscape...you know that you're playing with a four year old.  I relish these moments with Sam.  Knowing that the next time I see him he'll be even taller, more talkative, and more boy - less toddler. 

His imagination is functioning at the speed of light.  My brother told me a recent story in which Sam crawled behind him on the couch and said, "Look Dad, I'm hiding in your hair."  Each time that Shane turned his head, Sam maneuvered to stay behind him....as if he was clasping onto the tiny hairs...truly believing he had shrunk.

I love the vibrancy of his mind.  It reminds me just how dull my own imagination has become.  With Sam I can pull a box over my head and become an astronaut.  On our walks I can pick up leaves that turn into wings or boats that sail across puddles.

He'll still cuddle in your arms.  He'll still squeal at every possible idea for a game, a hiding place, or an adventure.  Part of me wants him to stay this little forever, with the crackling voice, the belly laugh, and the high-pitched excitement...but another part can't wait to see the boy he'll become...the athlete, the artist, the actor, the scholar, the brother, the man.

Being an aunt is great.  I get to love, hug, wash, feed, change, cuddle, tickle, and kiss them....but at the end of the night...when one is still bathing, the other tentatively sleeping, I get to go home to an assurance of a solid night's sleep, and a slow quiet morning.  I am not yet ready to give up sleeping in and the magic of my mornings.  The three blissful hours before work that I float into meditation, yoga, coffee, blogging, newspapers and the gym are priceless.  But we're thinking of bumping up the "baby train" and the precious drooly face of Becca Bean certainly helps this concept.

Now I'm just going to squeeze my eyes real tight and pretend that they aren't about to leave on Thursday morning.  Ahhh, my imagination is getting stronger.  I don't feel like my heart is breaking.

Squeals and smiles

Somewhere in Long Beach this morning is one happy Grandma.  She is going to awaken to the squeals of this little boy, whose hair sticks up in the back, and whose excitement, laughter, and toy cars zoom through the air.  I just love my nephew.  Seeing him last night when I walked in was divine!  As soon as we opened the door he yelled, "Auntie Zora and Uncle Daniel! " and although at different points in the evening I also became "Grandma," the point is he remembers me.

When you live so far from children you love, that's always a curious issue.  At one point do you cease being that weird voice that your mother is always forcing you to talk to on the phone, the face that's stuck to the fridge, the name on the Christmas presents that Mommy says you need to thank?  Well, last night I realized that with Sammigan-Sambo-Sam-Sam, I'm past that point.  There will be summer visits, camping trips, boat rides to Catalina, and one day....a long time from now, he'll have a question, take out his cell phone and call me himself.  What will his sweet voice sound like then?

And Rebecca...oh, now she's too much.  A megawatt smile spreads across pink cherubim cheeks.  Light blue eyes with ashblond lashes blink as her drooly grin shines.  Just as I dreamed...her little finger grabbed one of mine, she took a few wobbly steps and then...I scooped her up and against all "proper wisdom," held her all night.  I just couldn't quite giver her up.  It took her bobble head and slight whimpers insinuating "Okay, crazy aunt, I've been traveling all day...I want my mom's boob and some sleep" for me to relent and hand her to Kathy.

And with a belly of my mom's turkey soup over mashed potatoes, lemon bars, and pomegranate martinis, I headed home with my heart alit, already anxious to get off work today and see the munchkins yet again.  A couple of beers with my brother isn't such a bad idea either.

Mi familia es muy bueno!  Meine Familie ist die Beste!

And in case that wasn't enough, here are two videos that capture Sam's little voice talking about cars and belts.

Enlightened

Last night I visited my second German course at Long Beach State.  The professor lived up to every expectation: electric, bold, frenzied, fascinating, hilarious, and insanely intelligent.  He could flow from Obama's inauguration speech, to Schiller's thesis, to Scottish philosophers who inspired Thomas Jefferson, and back to the guillotine scenes of the French Revolution in one breath.  It was a mesmerizing dance to connect some of the greatest intellectual, philosophical, literary and democratic thinkers of the 18th century to themes of morality and reason.  Household names (Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Hamilton) ebbed with vaguely familiar names (Aristotle, Socrates, Kannt, Locke, Hume, Goethe, Schiller), all of whom reveled with previously unknown names (Hutcheson, Ferguson, Abel).  And their words were dotted upon a bloody timeline accented by ruthless leaders (the Duke of Wittenberg, Ferdinand II, Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis XVI).

It is a testimony to Professor High that this morning, still awaiting coffee to drip into my veins, I can recall that many elements from his lecture.  I entered the Enlightenment of Europe and was schooled for three hours...taken on a verbal and literary exploration of the time period.  He's a lover of Schiller and multi-lingot bibliophile.  Yes, he has crazy hair and returns from the break smelling of cigarettes.  Yes, he yells and grabs students in the front row.  Yes, he writhes in political and sexual innuendo, peppered with curses and sarcasm.  But he is witty and the students bask in his glow.  After class, the history and German students, both graduate and under, stayed behind to listen to him rant some more.  He loves revolutions.  He loves controversy...but more than anything, he loves German.

Is there a better wing under which I should tuck?  I still wonder what I would do with a German degree.  I want validation that I can pursue my interest of the Turks/Kurds born in Germany and yet forever regarded as foreigners.  I want to read their poetry, their experiences, understand a Germany identity through their eyes...but my language needs work, my brain craves exercise.

Hmmmmm....graduate school....it sounds especially alluring after two weeks of students who upon entering the room and noticing my outstretched hand, smiling face, and passionate approach to teaching, say things like:

• "F--- this, you can't make me do this bullsh_t!"

• "I don't give a f--- why you're here.  I'm not staying."

• "My mom is texting me. She be pregnant, so I gots to answer."

• "I don't give a f--- about passing this stupid test.  Why these mother f---ers care if I can't read?"

Brilliant, young scholars.  Just brilliant.  I think after nine years, I'm ready to move on.