MotherJungle

All of a sudden I look at a photo, and I am blown away at how much my kids have grown. Teeth fall out; teeth come in. Freckles sprout; feet outgrow shoes. When I step back, I see miniature grown-ups. Coco limped off to school today because her knee hurt. She twisted it while running. Sounds like something I would say. All grown up. She brings home this homework that’s full of intellectual stuff “we all” have decided is important: solids, vertices, nouns, verbs, spelling, geography…..

Which way is north? I asked her.

That’s easy mom, as she points upwards.

What if east was over here? I ask her, where would north be then? She adjusts her body a bit; thinks, and appropriately points to north.

Would you like to take the compass to school tomorrow? I asked her as we finished up the evening book and talked for a few minutes before turning on the light.

No! Mommy, she said as tears welled up in her eyes and her voice cracked with every syllable. That’s yours, and I don’t want the kids to break it.

Well it might be fun to show everyone how to you learned to use a compass. It wasn’t that expensive, I said. We can always buy a new one if something happens.

She shook her head, bowing in reverence as if I just asked her to reveal her deepest secret.

All right, I said. But it’s there if you’d like to use it.

She opened her brain and said her thank you for all the things she can think of that day.* She worked her way from her family, to things in her room, to her toes, all the way to the Universe. She then closed her brain; locked it with a key; and we said good-night. As I left the room, I spun her globe twice for good luck. If you asked me to reveal one of my deepest secrets, I would tell you something like this: I don’t really care what it is she learns. What I care about is how she contemplates what she is learning, and what she does with the information and how it effects everything in that spinning world. Maybe you could say after all those degrees, and careers, and titles, and all that jazz…I’m growing up with two of the best teachers in town.

*Brain opening is a strange little ritual that evolved out of bubble releasing. It’s possibly too lengthly to completely reveal here, but it gets the child to sleep.

A new bridge opened a few months ago near my home, and I was giddy. Finally finished, it is a small bridge, but alleviates a lot of traffic for the busy autopista (highway). Then, one day I drove by and……wow! More landscaping! These huge royal palms are no piece of cake to plant. It’s not like plopping in a few daisies and tossing them some water. Trucks, person-power, and all that figuring of how to get them to not fall over on passing cars or down the ravine means only one thing: Someone’s back there thinking again! I love it.

The palms are natural beauty, will help fortify the dirt retaining wall, and add well….you know about the green house effect thing…..Turns out I’m little too excited about a bridge again. Yeah Costa Rica!

Kids have to put up with all we do to them: paints, art, glue, projects, classes, medicines, rules, and all our goofy baggage. At times I can see Addison just sit and consider it all. After carefully pushing each leaf onto the paper with one finger, he tolerated his mother sticking these cute pink glasses on him. I’m graced he puts up with me.

Bouganvillas bloom and grow so much, at times they’re a hazard. I can see why it’s hard to trim these gorgeous things. I had to duck to pass on this sidewalk. This bunch has been around awhile. It can be tricky getting this flower to establish. They need just enough sunshine, sun, and shade mix. Then, once bigger, the flowering bush seems to thrive on sunshine. More blooms pop up now, during the beginning of our rainy season. Then, they’ll burst another wonderful crop of colors come December. Though, they will flower most of they year, just a little slower. After trimming a few bushes over the years, I’ve gotten a few good scrapes from the thorns along the leaves. But it’s worth it. These colors never fail to impress.

This morning, sirens wailed around our neighborhood. Either there was a very large accident, a fire, or….or a marathon. We raced out in front of our complex and along came an ambulance, a motorcycle officer, and a blue van. In between were the two last people in the race, running a bit, and then walking. There bodies were floppy and tired. We watched them walk/run off down the marathon’s route, sirens blaring right in their ears.

Since I’ve taken up running, I’ve though about entering one of those marathons. With kids under three and four years of age, I am not sure how “us” mothers do anything not related to children. I got the kids ready for a morning of gyms classes. I planned on sneaking out for an hour and run through la sabana park while my kids bounced around in their classes. About five minutes into the run, little sprinkles of rain dotted the asphalt path. After fifteen minutes, I thought it would hold off until I was finished. I looped around the big eucalyptus trees and wanted to take a picture. They line up in a row, bare and tall. They were just so there and did it so effortlessly. No, I thought. I want to keep the pace up. I’ll take a photo on the loop back.

The little drops got bigger. My hat kept my glasses dry, for awhile. Soon, it was a down pour. My mother always said: You’re not going to melt; it’s just a little rain. And in Costa Rica, it is one of the best policies I’ve brought down from the States. I’ve got rain coats and umbrellas - and trust me - there are times the rain is cold and I need it. But running from car to house or store, I don’t mind getting wet.

My shoes began to squish with each step and little bits of grass and mud flicked up on my legs. The hat wasn’t keeping my glasses dry any more. A few soccer players huddled under shelter, a few stuck it out. I passed other runners as we all were determined to finish what we started. It’s too hard to try to carve out another chunk of my day to exercise. I had ten minutes to go.

I circled back to those trees. I laughed because I should have taken that photo earlier. I hopped in place and pulled out the camera and got a shot. The camera got pretty wet, and the fanny pack was soaked. On the way back to the car, I ran with a velocity that surprised myself. At this rate, I could actually be one of those runners in the marathon. As I sat in the car and peeled off my wet shoes, and shirt, and hat, and cleaned my glasses. The window shield fogged up. I was a little damp, but I was still in one piece, and present. Maybe this is how those trees feel?

After defrosting the windows, I drove to pick up the kids. The rain began to stop. It didn’t matter: I hadn’t melted; it was just a little rain after all.

In a western Suburb of San Jose, another organic market has sprouted up. Every Wednesday from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. (mas or menus - it is Latin America after all!) this gorgeous food market is open at the Cruz Rojo. It was a beautiful sunny morning and the place was busy. I hope it stays that way. I filled my orange cart up with a bounty. The celery was taller than my son. The woman running the market says she’s been working with farmers for 14 years. They didn’t believe her when she asked them to plant some of these odd things like bok choy and red cabbage.

Who’s going to eat that? they said.

Just trust me she told them. They’ll eat it. And there I was sticking a bunch into bag. I’ll be back. And if we tell a few friends, they’ll keep planting and we’ll all be the ones growing stronger in the end.

At least once or twice a week, I can count on looking right up a horse’s behind during a long mountain drive. And if it’s not of the equine persuasion, I’ll be staring at the business end of a bovine, or porcine. It’s slow going when I get stuck behind one of these little trucks. But I always get stuck behind one of these little trucks. Luckily this one wasn’t spitting out stinky diesel fume or burning oil. The horse’s didn’t emit anything either.

There’s no where to pass, as you can see. So, it’s another lesson in patience. In fact, I like to turn it into one of those weird and hilarious music videos I see on a daily basis. The Crash Test Dummies come up on the shuffle:

How Does a Duck Know?

How does a duck know what direction south is? And how to tell his wife from all the other ducks? You can cut a chicken’s head off, but it will keep on running and twitching….

When everything seems planned out. Everything seems nicely planned out. Well the human race will come smack your face……

And when the Dummies fade and Billy Holiday begins a delicious Cole Porter ditty, I turn up the volume and sit back and enjoy the view.

At Addison’s last therapy session, I confessed that it just didn’t seem like he was progressing. At times the milestones seem so slow in coming, it feels like we’ve pushed the pause button.

“No. No,” said the therapist as he taped animals and toys to the white board and encouraged Addy to climb up to them. “His development is really good. What Addison has is a lot of quality in each step. It is better to develop slowly and do it correctly than to rush and then walk all funny the rest of his life.”

I know that. I knew that. And I am certain Addison will walk. There’s not a shred of doubt in me, and I don’t walk circles around the house mumbling how slow it’s going. We do our daily exercises; cherish Addy in our little family fold; take baths, play, and eat like other kids. But I never knew it could be this slow. All of a sudden another 3 or 4 months go by and I’m a little surprised he’s not walking yet.

As I watch my son learn to walk, I am humbled and educated at the same time at what an incredible feat it is. I see soldiers come home from Iraq without legs, and they are right in the position of my son. The muscles, the neurons, the balance, determination, and the concentration it takes to connect pieces looks effortless when we have all our parts, but it’s is one of the hardest tasks out there when you’ve got a missing leg or born with an extra chromosome. With Addison’s older sister, I thought about walking for a few months, like every mother does. At eleven months she was up. And down. And up again. Then she was off, and I never had to think about it again.

The parallels I can apply to my own life are endless. And as I watch Addy climb that mountain and come face to face with the ladybug; I learn how to approach my new life with tranquility, even when I fall. And when I stumble so far, so far down that I think I can’t find the strength to put one foot in front of another, there’s my little son leading the way and teaching me how to put one foot in front of the other as if to say: Hit the play button mom! Get on with it!

I was talking to a friend about the environment in Costa Rica. She said: Companies like Auto Mercado and others have to step into the 21st century and get a clue that they are part of the bigger picture. This coincided with an article I was reading in Vanity Fair about an architect and designer, William McDonough. He’s written about a concept he termed: Cradle to Cradle Design. Waste is food. No one gets squeamish when we think of cow manure being spread on plants to fertilize fields. What if we thought of the world as this abundant place that just recycles and regrows and re-digests everything it spits out?

“Minimizing toxic pollution and the waste of natural resources are not strategies for real change….Cradle to Cradle Design’s strategy of eco-effectiveness is rooted in the systems of the natural world, which are not efficient at all, but effective. Consider the cherry tree. Each spring it makes thousands of blossoms, which then fall in piles to the ground-not very efficient. But the fallen blossoms become food for other living things. The tree’s abundance of blossoms is both safe and useful, contributing to the health of a thriving, interdependent system. And the tree spreads multiple positive effects-making oxygen, transpiring water, creating habitat, and more. And it is beautiful!

Eco-effectiveness seeks to design industrial systems that emulate the healthy abundance of nature. The central design principle of eco-effectiveness is waste equals food.

When waste equals food, the “be less bad” imperatives of efficiency fade. When a product returns to industry at the end of its useful life and its materials are used to make equally valuable new products, the minerals or plastics of which it is made do not need to be minimized-because they will not become waste in a landfill. Industry saves billions of dollars annually by recovering valuable materials from used products. Similarly, products designed to be made of natural, safely biodegradable materials can be returned to the soil to feed ecosystems instead of depleting them.”

I think Costa Rica has this great opportunity to pass over some of the destructive ways of our more “developed” neighbors. We have a culture of people that at one time, used everything! Nothing went to waste. Unfortunately, I see these sad signs of the times when motor oil is dumped down the drain, insecticides are sprayed wherever and whenever someone wishes, and cars spit out disgusting fumes and “supposedly” pass inspections. Sometimes I wish I could scream - no! no! Costa Rica you had so many things right. I mean, WE DON”T HAVE AN ARMY!! Let’s be leaders - even as small as we are - for designing a culture that relishes and reuses everything we need.

When I went to the grocery store, mentioned above, I looked up and right in front of me where canvas bags - the kind that’s reusable. For a moment I was so happy! I bought one right away. The answer? No. A little step. You bettcha! Cotton involves an intense agricultural barrage of chemicals…yikes….sometimes change seems impossible. But I get excited about the fact that someone is thinking a little.

In Costa Rica, the grocery stores range from those that cater mostly to the Ticos, and there are those that stock their shelves with more imported goods for the ex-pats and the Costa Ricans looking for more goods such as blueberries or garlic stuffed olives or imported chocolate. Every Saturday, I get an organic food delivery to my home from NaturaStyle. The food is fabulous. It’s comes from happy cows eating grass; coconuts swinging in the breeze; vegetables harvested without pesticides. Coco was assigned a project based on a book photographed and written by Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

As National Pubic Radio reported: “The husband-and-wife team wanted to see how globalization, migration and rising affluence are affecting the diets of communities around the globe. Each chapter of their book features a portrait of a family, photographed alongside a week’s worth of groceries. There’s also a detailed list of all the food and the total cost.”

Most of the food we get on Saturday is also in less packaging. The milk comes in a big milk can (the one Coco’s leaning on) like in the old days. I transfer it to glass I’ve recycled. The vegetables don’t come in plastic bags. The vendor crates them in boxes, sets them on my counter and takes the crates back for another use, and another and…It’s a lot of work. On Saturday, I can spend up to four hours cleaning, condensing, and getting all this stuff to fit into my refrigerator for the week. When I’m done, I set the containers to the side and the organic company picks them up next week.

Most of the time, I’d rather have someone else cook for me. When I face yet another load of food, I’d rather go out to eat. But it’s not just budget concerns that keep me thinking about what I eat and HOW it gets to my table. It’s this planet. It’s the planet - you know that thing we walk on - get air from, the water….that planet. I do have to go out and shop once a week to get those other things that doesn’t come on Saturday. But even there, as I’ll write about tomorrow, I can try to reuse, reduza & recycle.

Possibly a paradigm shift will save us from choking on all the plastic and toxic bits and parts we produce. Instead of a disposable society where we have to figure out how to burn, bury, or dump or old stuff, why not make it so it all rots and we eat, breath, and drink it all over again? That could be the ultimate paradise.