Staying Home

It took a while for me to admit that I wanted to stay home with the baby for a year. Because who the hell did I think I was? A delightful Canadian? I wish and so do you. 

But what I really was was a teacher with no paid leave and a husband who had made much better decisions than I did in our formative years. 

Part of me was embarrassed to tell people. I quit my job way past what was courteous, and it hurt my feelings when people told me that they thought what I was doing was great, but it just wasn't them. 

"It's not me, either!" I usually said. 

Because I like working. 

One of my first jobs was washing dishes in a teahouse when I was twelve years old. The owner  and I were in charge of the back of the house staff consisting of only me. The other owner worked the front of the house wearing late 19th Century dress and would wait on customers only after she descended the staircase and preformed a short monologue as the woman who owned the home when it was built. Her lines and staging never changed. 

The best days were when we had a tour bus of Mormons come through. Because we were running the ship with a skeleton crew, I got to help serve our guests in a cotton shift dress. More than once, I was asked if I was a nice LDS girl, and I would say, "Yes, I probably am," in the hopes of getting a tip because I didn't know what LDS meant. 

And only once did I get a co-worker at the sink. He was one of those larger than lifes, the greatest person I'd ever met in my tiny, rural Missouri town, so I'm sure I literally skipped home to tell my parents. He'd been a former student of theirs. 

"Oh, him!" They said. "He stalked another boy in high school then tried to shoot him in the parking lot of his university. I guess he's out of prison now." 

None of my other jobs were quite as good as that first one, but I've had a very robust and fulfilling work life. 

It was scary to stop something I'd done continuously since before it was legal for me to do so. I was fully reliant on Jaime. The baby fully reliant on me. And she refused to give me any money for doing by far the most difficult work I've ever done. 

If you haven't been a stay at home parent, the closest thing to it might be the personal assistant to an influencer with billionaire parents. But you probably haven't been that either. 

I didn't wear a complete outfit for almost an entire year. During Sol's sleep regressions, neither of us slept for more than two hours at a time. My brain atrophied, and I was constantly worried about saving money. Jaime and I didn't feel married anymore, or maybe we were feeling for the first time what it was really like to be married. 

Sol never, ever wanted to stop gnawing on my nipples. The house was never clean. I felt like I was losing my mind and screwing up my baby. Everything was my fault. 

And unlike sacred Canadians, I had to find a job during this time. The night before I gave an interview lesson in front of high school students, Sol and I were up several times just to make sure my nipples hadn't run off and left her. 

I bombed the lesson. They still hired me. The state of American education is absolutely dire. 

But it wasn't until our unlimited time together had that end date that Sol and I started to relax. We ruled the park and the grocery store. She started crawling, and we began to communicate with each other in a way that finally made some fucking sense to both of us. 

Sol started daycare when she was eleven months old. We both cried every day for the first two weeks. I felt like I was missing part of my body, so I can't imagine how she felt. And even now, when I pick her up after pushing my Nissan Sentra to its absolute limits, I snatch her to me and smell her head. She smells like daycare. 

It's the saddest smell I've ever smelt, and I feel like the solid layer of guilt wrapped around my shoulders will never leave me. 

But I still like working. 

Teaching sucks, but it's important and easier work, in my opinion, than staying home. I also want Sol's world to be really big, much bigger than our house. Her daycare is diverse and full of people who love her because of her personality and not because they have no choice like Jaime and me. 

There are a lot of things I wish I could change for my daughter, but staying home for our first year together will never be one. 

Photo: This is how I want to imagine Sol feels at daycare if everyone 

else were named Sol, too, and were clip art. 

Restoring the Artichoke

I asked Jaime's cousin, Felix, how his mother was, and he said something like, "Oh, you know, she's restoring the artichoke." 

But I didn't know, so we stared at each other for a while. 

He continued...You know, the thing that is suspended from the ceiling of the church with a child singing inside, and as it comes down, it opens. 

He used his hands for reinforcement.  

I was also raised Catholic, so I've seen some weird shit, but this was definitely not one of my repressed memories. 

I assumed it was the extreme jet lag I had after flying to Valencia with a 6-month-old. 

Or maybe it was because Sol had shit from her butt to her neck in the car, and I didn't have a change of clothes for her bringing great shame upon myself in front of Jaime's tías. 

Felix and I eventually found our way out of the conversation, and Jaime's tías found clothes for Sol. 

But I had to admit that I hadn't been all there for awhile. 

Since we'd had the baby, Jaime and I had almost completely lost ourselves. We were in the same house all day long, but we barely saw each other and spoke even less. We didn't even sleep in the same bedroom because I was constantly up with Sol, and Harper, my sister wife, assumed that while I was up, I might as well do something for her, too. 

But that bitch can't fly, so I got my husband back in Spain. 

We decided to go in March instead of summer this year because I'm not working, and that might have been our only chance to see Fallas together until we retire. Lolz. 

Fallas is an insane combination of art, pyrotechnics and tradition. It's indescribable but, at the same time, kind of describes Jaime. 

The first thing he wanted Sol and me to experience was the Mascletà. The Mascletà happens at 2pm every day from March 1st-19th, and you've probably guessed by now that it's when the entire city dangerously packs itself into the plaza in front of the city hall to listen to five minutes of uninterrupted, ear-splitting explosions before dispersing immediately like nothing happened. 

I bought Sol some ear muffs for this psychotic event, and everyone thought that I was the fucking lunatic. 

They all went as children and claim they don't have hearing problems, but I live with a Valencian who cannot hear a word I saw, so I know better. 

The noise of Fallas I will never understand, but bury me in the beauty of the fallas.   

Artists work year-round on gorgeous, themed sculptures (fallas) that are erected all over the city in the days before the festival and burned to the ground at the end of it. It comes from the medieval tradition of carpenters welcoming the warmer, longer days of spring by using their rejected work as kindling. 

I cannot believe Valencia is still standing. 

But because it is, Sol had miraculously embraced sleep and my mother-in-law rules, Jaime and I got to run around the city one night to see as many fallas as we could. We've never forgotten that we love each other, but that night reminded us why we like each other. 

We even held hands, but it was because we were literally running around the city, and he didn't think I was running fast enough. This happens weirdly often. 

Our family welcomed and took care of us like they always do, we ate, our precious friends came to visit, we ate. Jaime ran to the sea every morning. I didn't, and we ate. Sol met Jaime's grandfather for the first time and said goodbye to him for the last time. We ate. 

And this artichoke felt fully restored. 

Top to bottom: The restored artichoke in all its glory, visiting Jaime's aunt's studio to see the artichoke in progress and the brilliant artist herself, Mariá José Ortega Rodrigo, with Sol and panels of the artichoke. I get it now. 

 

Floating

 I'm worried that I'm an anxious person. 

So when my sister-in-law "and brother" gifted me a float in a sensory deprivation tank for Christmas, I knew this was my chance to prove that I could fucking relax. 

I left Jaime and Sol, for the first time, with two bottles of pumped milk, his parents and a tense vibe.

Marlon gave me a quick run down before I entered the tank. He said to take a 5 minute shower under cool water first. 

I'm going to stop you right there, Marlon. 

It is impossible to take a shower in under 5 minutes. You need at least 5 minutes at the top to stand motionless and unsuccessfully try to talk yourself into shaving your legs. And cool water? Go fuck yourself, Marlon. 

He explained that I would know when to enter the tank because the lights and music would start fading. He also stressed that I needed to get in there before the lights went completely out and I lost my orientation. 

He opened the door to the tank to show me where I'd be spending the next 90 minutes. The heavily salted water looked inviting but also fathomless. I asked how deep it was, and his condescending smile told me he'd been asked that hundreds of times. 

What happens if I fall asleep? He'd also been asked this hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. 

When you're done, take another 5 minute shower in warm water then meet me at the front desk. 

Right, Marlon. 

As soon as I noticed a change in the lights, I stepped into the pool and closed the door behind me immediately convinced it had sealed shut and that no one could hear if I screamed. 

Of course I couldn't drink the water, and I recently learned it isn't running out of oxygen in confined spaces that kills people. It's their own exhaled carbon dioxide poisoning them. Which sounds like the same fucking thing. 

The lights went completely out, and my mind went directly to Harrison Okene. 

A week before floating, I'd listened to a podcast about a shipwrecked man who'd survived for 3 days on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean inside a 4 x 4 foot air pocket. Divers sent to recover bodies in the completely dark, shark-infested water noticed him when he reached out and lightly grazed one of their backs. 

I was Harrison now. 

Every time my toe skimmed the side of the tank or a piece of my hair touched my shoulder, I screamed inside of my body and braced for the great white that lived in 10 inches of water inside a yoga studio in Waldo. This would be my coffin. 

I forced myself to think of lighter things like the climate crisis or what I would wear to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. I design dresses or pant suits for that occasion often, but not once have I actually thought about what I'd do to win one. I didn't then either. 

I thought about Sol but not as much as I thought I would. She wasn't scary enough. 

I considered leaving the tank early, but I couldn't open my eyes. If I opened my eyes, it would be just as dark as it was with my eyes closed, and that terrified me. 

I also didn't want to waste my sister-in-law's money. She would definitely have wanted me to stay in my mind prison for the full 90 minutes.  

At least the children on the Thai soccer team had some light while they were trapped in the cave. I needed someone to sedate me, strap me to their body, carry me out of there and release me into my parents' loving arms. 

But I think they were all taken away in ambulances. I probably didn't need an ambulance. 

The moment I perceived the lights and music fading in, I sat straight up, and my engorged tumescent boobs dropped like anvils. 

I was alive. 

I met Marlon at the front desk, and he asked how it was. I told him that I'd never felt so relaxed in my life and that I would like to purchase a shorter session in the tank for my husband. 

Stockholm syndrome can come for anyone at any time. 

"I'm not fucking doing that," Jaime said when I gave him his appointment reminder card. 

Right. I called and got our money back. 

This is not me at a yoga studio. This is Harrison Okene ten stories under water (please read about him). I hope he was able to get his money back, too.