Pancho the Noche Buena Pig

Every year, my family cooks a pig for Christmas (and Thanksgiving, and Halloween, and pretty much any special occasion). Like most Cuban families, our pig is gutted and then splayed out on a humongous baking pan, adobado with mojo and other seasonings, and then left to marinade for a few hours before going into the caja china the morning of Noche Buena. This means that for a day or two, there's a dead pig (looking very pig like with eye balls, hooves, and a curly little pig tail) in plain view of the children--either hanging outside somewhere to thaw or marinading for HOURS on the kitchen counter.

Pancho, the Cordeiro / Quintana family's 2013 Christmas pig, is hanging out in the living room this year (between the coffee table and the big screen plasma TV).  Tomorrow morning, he'll go into the caja china where the viejos will argue all day about how much coal to put in, when to turn it, and how to make the best chicharron.   In the end, the puerco will be delicious and everyone will give credit to everybody else.

My kids used to be scared of the dead pig, but now they don't even notice it.  They associate it with Christmas at Mima's house, along with:
1. Very loud salsa music blaring from every speaker in the house at all hours of the day and night
2. A house full of tias and primos and kids and friends playing dominoes, drinking Black label on the rocks, and yelling at each other to be heard above the music (but God forbid you turn the music down or you'll get called a hippie and told to get back to Texas because aqui hablamos asi! and the music no esta muy alta nada, chica!).
3. My mom running around como las locas (cooking, serving, cleaning, yelling) while everyone begs her to sit down and smoke un cigarrito with us, Haydecita. 
4. My sister and I hiding from my mom (who is on a tear), then getting busted for comiendo mierda.  
5. Dinner finally being served around 10 or 11pm, followed by multiple rounds of cafecito, dominoes and chisme.
6. Kids running around until 3 and 4 in the morning como si nada only to wake everyone up at the buttcrack the next day to rip open presents.  (Actually, sometimes Santa waits til the kids are distracted and shows up at 3am because maybe if they open the presents now, we can all sleep in tomorrow).
7. After the visita goes home, a nice warm cup of cafe con leche to get everyone ready for bed.

crazy in crush

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the relationships in my life. From those who are deeply in love to those who are alone to those who are stuck in circumstances they'd like to flee. And I wonder what secrets the future holds....for all of us.

Like a teenager with stars in her eyes, I daydream of kisses without strings. Of the mind-buzzing, heart-racing madness of crushes and mix tapes and broken curfews. Suspended in the playful moments between infatuated and in love.

Until recently, I thought very little (if at all) about what's next and who's right and how do I get from here to there. But it's time. And I want to dance.

homesick

I am surrounded by a magical community of loving, supportive, and amazingly talented friends. From nights at the bar to Sunday afternoon potlucks to street-dancing, stilt-walking neighborhood carnivals, we celebrate our relationships with the pomp and pageantry of royalty (though I guarantee that no one has more than a couple hundred bucks in the bank at any given time). They love me and adore my kids and make me a better person each and every day, and I feel so incredibly blessed.

Yet sometimes I feel so lost and lonely. Hundreds of miles from home, raising kids in a city without my family, without cousins and aunts and uncles, without the chaos that I grew up both hiding from and relishing in... I sometimes think about going back home to Florida.

To the refuge of my mom's house with the loud TV and the outdoor kitchen and the parrots that squawk "dame la comidita" and "ay, que rrrrrrrrrico" at all hours of the day and night. And the beach and the palm trees and the mango trees. And the cacophony of Cuban culture that I swore I would never ever ever miss once I left for college. More than ten years later, I miss it all so bad. But how could I leave what I have here? My kids' dad, my friends, my job, my life.

In a perfect world, we'd all live on a tropical island with a mojito in one hand and a child in the other... or maybe it's something like the Cuban version of Big Love or The Red Tent. And maybe it's not so much the Cuban that I miss, but the people and the chaos and the everybody up in your business and the we're all in this together. My life here feels too quiet. Too polite.

I know the answer isn't Miami. Trina and I outline every reason why not in this radio piece for Under the Sun. So maybe I just need my sister... or a sister wife. A big, loud, Cuban sister wife with a mean recipe for vaca frita and a healthy disregard for housework. Que rico!

fearless

Growing up in Little Havana, ghosts were as much a part of my family as my mother, sister, aunts and uncles. They appeared to my mom as frequently as Florida thunderstorms, and rarely caused her more than a moment's pause. I always knew when she was seeing someone because she'd become distracted for a moment in the middle of a conversation, would furrow then raise her eyebrows as she recognized the shape, and then go back to whatever she was saying without missing a beat. Acutely aware of her actions and reactions, I recognized the signs from a very early age and never got used to the visits. Every single time, my body would tense up, nearly paralyzed with fear, and I'd move immediately as close to her as possible. My mom, on the other hand, hardly seemed to mind the interruptions and seemed at times even comforted by the presence.

Other times, the visits were ominous. Plates would rattle inside the cupboards, windows would slam shut, or loud knocks would be heard from the other side of a door to an empty room. The knocks became so frequent, my family named the ghost Tun Tun, Spanish for Knock Knock. As my parents' marriage deteriorated, the visits became more frequent and more violent. My mom would comment to my aunt or grandmother that, "Tun Tun was in a real mood last night. No me dejo pegar los ojos. I didn't sleep a wink".

One day, I remember coming home from school to a priest sprinkling the house with holy water while some ladies I'd never met followed him around and prayed. Then, when I was 6 or 7 years old, I became convinced that there was a girl who lived in my closet who came out to smell my breath as soon as I fell asleep. I became so afraid of the dark that my heart would sink every evening at twilight, and most nights I slept with my TV on, watching reruns of M*A*S*H and Taxi until the sun came up.

We didn't live in that house for very long after that, but the ghosts seemed to follow us everywhere we went. Even in Costa Rica, in two separate houses, we had family ghosts. They foretold improprieties ("Ayleen, me dijeron that someone would become pregnant. Are you being careful?"), they whispered business venture ideas, and sometimes even brought in a little extra cash with lucky lottery numbers. But I always hated them, and I never stopped being afraid. Until I moved out and went away to college.

By my last year at New College, I had managed to trade in my childhood ghosts in exchange for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's, and was finally able to see the magic of Tun Tun. I've even grown to like the dark, and will only occasionally become spooked by a creaking house.

After having kids, the fear of ghosts has been eclipsed by fear of my own mortality and theirs... plane crashes, sharks, cancer... things that are much more rooted in reality though almost as irrational. A friend cautioned me the other day against living in the tragedies of the future, and I find myself repeating that phrase, over and over, when I start to make a tumor out of a headache. Cuban exaggeration is one thing, but living in hyperbole is not all it's cracked up to be, and I have got to get a grip before I impart my neuroses on my fearless kids.

custody

My heart is heavy lately. All the time, it seems. I could chalk it up to a summer full of misses and near misses--two family members' brush with death, the dissolution of my marriage, the death of a friend--all in a span of just a few months. But, somehow, it seems bigger than that. My confidence is rattled. My children are smelling my fear, and they don't like it.

A tough little guy but sensitive as all hell, I find myself both impossibly close to my son and completely estranged from him, all at the same time. His anger is so violent and raw--it reminds me of myself. And I don't know what to do with it. And Isa, with her penetrating looks and quiet calculations.... there's a storm brewing in there, too. She looks to me for comfort, to help her figure out why things are so strange and what happened to our lives. And I don't always have the strength or the patience. Each time I drop them off at J's, every single time I drive away, I feel like throwing up. My body physically reacts to the separation, knowing it will be days before I see them again. When I pick them up, it will take several hours to settle into ourselves, to adjust to being together again, to calm the sea of emotions that threatens to bubble up inside each of us as we learn to navigate these new circumstances. From full-time mama (24/7) to working mama (12/7) to part-time mama (4 days a week) in just 5 months... It's too much. And not enough.

separation anxiety

My childhood memories are a pretty mixed bag. As with most memories, it's not entirely clear to me which of them are actual recollections and which are fabrications--either from a story I heard, or a dream I had... Very few of them are from the days before my sister was born, but there is a memory that I swear is true from when I was a toddler, maybe two years old, that haunts me from time to time. I was at a party, and it was dark outside. I think the dress I was wearing was white and ruffly (but that might be imposed from a photograph of me taken around the same time). I just remember walking around, weaving between grown-ups' legs, and feeling happy. In another memory, I remember sitting in my living room with my parents and my brand new sister who they had just brought home from the hospital. I was not yet three. The only thing that is clear to me is the color yellow. Maybe her outfit? A blanket? The furniture? The sun shining through the windows? Or is that the color of what I felt? My parents' relationship was already on the rocks, and I'm sure the tension in our house was palpable. Yet I'm comforted by these two memories. I'm pretty sure I was a happy kid.

Whenever I realize that my kids' lives are still too young for lasting memories, at least in their conscious, grown-up minds, I feel a mixture of sadness and relief. I'm sad that they won't remember the fun days their father and I shared with them. All the cool places they've been, and the people they've met. Then there are days I'm glad they'll forget. Grouchy Sundays or exasperated bed times or days when I just didn't have much to give. Now that we're separating, I'm even more afraid of what their minds are processing, storing, re-visiting. Do they feel abandoned when it's Jeremy's night and I drop them off at our old house? I have no idea.

For better or worse, I've braved the world alone with my twins from day one. And that makes me feel like a Super Badass. How silly I think it is when moms have a second child and suddenly feel like they can't leave the house. Other days, I go to bed with a heavy heart thinking about the ways in which I lost my temper over the spilled water, or the public tantrum, or bedtime power struggle. And, on those days, I feel like a Big Fat Jerk.

My mom had a really bad temper when we were little. I remember seething after a spanking, swearing that I would never hit my kids. I understood very clearly then that the spanking did not teach me anything about why what I did was wrong. All it did was make me angry and afraid. And now I'm the mom, and mine are the buttons pushed, and mine's the big hand popping a little bottom, and I recognize the anger bubbling behind the hurt and wounded eyes. And I want so much to be the mom I thought I'd be.

Toddlerisms

The Itsy Bitsy Spider (According to Isa and Manu)
bitsy bitsy 'pider went up & bonked his head
down came the rain and the doctor said
mama and the sun and the monkey on the bed
no more 'pider jumping on the bed

Ring Around the Rosie
ring around the rosie
parker posie
ashes ashes
we all fall DOWN!

Reinterpretation of a Joke
Q: What did the lifeguard say to the hippie?
Real A: You're too far out, man!
I&M A: You far away, hippieeeeee.