It's Probably the Cells

Back barely eighteen hours from a short time with my kids in the US, I am a bit of a mess.

To my credit, should I need any, this was the first time in two years that my three children and I have been in the same room. That part only lasted about fifteen hours minus the time we were asleep, some of us with jetlag. Think Super Concentrate. And then, then, it was the first time in all of my life and all of their lives and all of my cells’ lives that we were all together with Baby Girl.

Baby Girl who officially arrived four and a half months ago but really secured her spot in my heart about seven months before. I am not going to say more about her right now because I still don’t have the right words but yes, it was the first time that we were all together.

I got to see my son be a dad, my son be an uncle - possibly surprised at how touched he was by this little bundle of magic who shares his DNA - and my daughter be an aunt. Tatie Titi.

Of course, I am aware of how usual this is, how common. How boring it might be for you to read about it.

That’s ok. I’m still going to write because good god, I need to.

I was there for about eight days, with various assortments of where to sleep that night, who is on their way to the airport, from the airport, to the airport again because flights are finicky, what are we going to eat, how do we all fit in the car, how is everybody doing.

I left my house on foot, my rubber boots through the mud and heat, and the humidity of the jungle, and made my way to the bus. Hours later, I got off a plane in a place that feels like another planet - with the beginning of a cold. A most inconvenient, ill-timed cold. I knew that no way was I going to want to hold Baby Girl, no matter how many weeks I had been waiting to do just that. My friend called it a god joke.

When it was gently, kindly announced to me four days later that I had gifted her her first cold, I sobbed in a way I still don’t quite understand. My daughter held me tenderly and my son joked that I would surely not be this upset had I given him a cold. I tried to explain and gave up. It was a big, funny, tragic, and delightfully messy family moment. We only had a few hours together and we were apparently going to give it all we had. I was then told that the good news was that hey, now I could hold her! I don’t know how many times I whispered to her that I was sorry. She made it through her first cold very gracefully, seemingly aware of just what her body needed: lots of sleep. She smiled the whole darn time, too.

Then her parents caught it.

All of us together. Something I used to take for granted. Something that now requires hours of planning, travel, and willpower. Something that’s one of the highest priorities of my current life. A short time to learn what the phone calls have left out, to remember the body language, the across-the-room inside jokes. To remember the us that was, and discover the us that is.

My kids and I, we’re all different and our different sometimes works and sometimes irks.
We have years of common history, and we don’t always agree on where it was and who was there, and what really happened.

And then this thing. This thing that makes it so that no matter the different, no matter the irks and the colds and the well… yes, the different, something in me, when I am with my kids, just IS. Something in me purrs in the background, a continuous note that does not stop while I sleep.

It’s probably the cells.

We arrived separately, we left separately, miles and miles and miles between us again.

Yesterday, I walked out of the last plane, got on a bus, and then began the trip on foot towards my house. Mud, heat, humidity.

My home, my furry girls, a week’s worth of growth bringing the grass to new heights.
I felt weird, tired, confused. Unsure.

I often think that our minds and hearts can’t move as fast as planes and that it takes longer to truly land.

I also know that I ate a huge dish in the last few days and that it will take me a while to digest it. I am aware of some brand of calm I feel when I am away from my Mexican life and of how quickly it goes away when I return. In its place, an intensity, a rawness, an aliveness. Another form of belonging.

I wonder: why am I living here, so far away from anyone who shares my cells? Is it enough to love where I live, to resonate so deeply with a place, when that place is on the other side of a border from my family? I scan my mind for the compromise, the solution, the yes. I even question the sanity of living this deep into nature. Should I move back to the village? All I find is exhaustion and a clear knowing that for tonight at least, the most important thing is to let my mind rest, to get into bed, and give it all to the pillow, “consultar con la almohada,” as we say here.

So that’s what I do, even though it is still light out, even though the full moon is on her way. The full moon in Capricorn, my full moon. May she organize me while I sleep, I need to close my eyes, to shut my mind.

The pups and I walk to the bedroom, I lift the pink sheets, ready to turn everything off except for the ceiling fan, and right there in front of me, at the exact spot where I so very much need to rest, brown on pink, flesh on fabric, is a scorpion.