Urban Birding

A few years ago, at our previous post, I had this discussion with a visiting children’s author about our lifestyle of moving around every few years. This author is a trained zoologist and fierce environmentalist. She said her only real concern was that children raised in this lifestyle will probably never have a native knowledge and love of their natural surroundings. They will never be in one place long enough to learn the local species or get lost in the same forest summer after summer. And I said to her, in some silly high minded expat way, “Sure, but I hope they’ll have a greater sense of their place in the world as a whole. Their sphere of stewardship won’t just be their backyard but the whole world. You know, in a general sense.”

And in her great wisdom she said “Ah, but the power of nature lies in its particularities.”

This phrase inspires me/haunts me often. 

Of course the power is in its particularity! A “general” sense of things is fine, great even. But nothing can replace having a specific experience with a specific landscape. I grew up in the foothills of the rocky mountains and their snowy peaks are part of my very self. I wasn’t an avid hiker and didn’t wade through mountain streams each spring, but their outline shades and protects every memory of my childhood. Wee Felix won’t have one set of mountains or one coastline running through the decades of his life like a thread. Rereading this exchange from my journal reminded me how important exploring the natural world is. For this baby guy, but also for me.  

“Just teach them the birds every time you move. At least the birds.”  She assured me this would be an adequate start. 

So, in that spirit, Felix and I have been urban birding around Cairo. On our first day out we spotted a Eurasian Hoopoe at the botanical gardens. And one afternoon I discovered Max and Felix, halfway out the church door (in a possible escape attempt) staring up at the trees. A small green parakeet had made perch high in the branches. There are terns everywhere as well as the ubiquitous Palm Dove, or, it's better name, the Laughing Dove. Herons dot the marshy receding edges of the Nile, which variety I'm not sure yet. And last week, out of the corner of my eye I swear I saw the impressively dotted wingspan of a black and white Pied Kingfisher just before it flew under the bridge to Tahrir square.

In Which the Red Sea Teaches Me Things

Journal 9.9.17    Soma Bay, Red Sea, Egypt

I left Max to put the baby guy to sleep and headed for the Sea. 15 months since I've been in the ocean. Too long. I've moved to another country, quit my job and had a baby since then. But the Sea is the same. 

The reef is beautiful and I swim a bit too close from time to time, my body stretched tall and thin like superman. Holding my breath. The reef is populated by giant blue clams that flash their ruched insides like skirts of flamenco dancers. If I watch carefully, slowly, I can see them breathing. See their shells open slightly and then close. Their cobalt interior flesh quiver, expand and then retreat. I am particularly mesmerized by a lime green shelled clam and watch it breath for some time. The wind is picking up above water and the clam is speckled with sunlight slanting through water. 

Later I will introduce my baby to the ocean. His Dad will hold him in his lap while waves dribble over their legs, delighting both. But this morning it is just me and the giant clam. Breathing slowly and deliberately. 

I read later the Red Sea coral reefs contain unique species that defy categorization, that are found no where else in the world. As the underlying Arabian and African tectonic plates shift apart, it is expanding, essentially becoming something different every day. The sea is also growing warmer and saltier and experiences frequent turbidity due to sand storms in the region. While these difficult conditions would normally damage reef and dependent life, the Red Sea reefs have adapted over time to become tolerant of the environmental extremes. Thriving even.

When I first wrote this I was riding a moment of new-country-new-mom abundance, but it has been a hard winter. These ideas of resilience and intentionality are much more valuable to me now. 

The Kindness of Strangers

A few days ago My husband had to work late and the baby guy and I didn't feel like cooking dinner. Nothing says "night on the town" like walking to KFC with your 6 month old for some piping hot chicken-like products. While we were ordering (yes, spicy) the manager pulled out a little plastic container of something white and handed it to me.

"For the baby" he smiled. It looked a bit like milky rice pudding. Then he rustled around until he found an orange Marinda soda under the counter. "For when he grows up" he said, thrusting it at me with a pumpkin grin.

Halfway through the meal, after a handful of people had stopped to kiss baby guy on the noggin, the manager came back over and brought us an extra piece of chicken. Instead of explaining that my baby has no teeth (and also that he doesn't generally eat food given to him by strangers with their bare hands directly after a smoke break) I discreetly added it to the things at the bottom of my bag I was grateful for but would not be eating.

This baby is a big deal around here.

There are at least six people, and often times more, that little "Master Felix" pays homage to every time we walk the neighborhood. I'm not sure if they are actually calling him "Master" or "Mister" but either way, he is King of the block. The boab with a shock of white hair gets the best grins out of Fix and he will often take him by the hand and kiss his chubby knuckles. The man who sits in front of the optometry clinic, who once offered the dog his fried chicken, is a bit more wary of the baby, but still gives a nod of respect. Walking one length of our block takes about ten minutes, as we ping back and forth across the street to greet the regulars.   

And these are just some of the many kindnesses I've noted in my journal over the last few months.

Last week I took baby guy to the fruit and vegetable souk and en route an Egyptian woman caught my eye and asked about the baby. We walked a few blocks in step while I tried to ask her basic, very basic, questions in Arabic. Sharboot said to me as we parted "Your Arabic will come, Shwayuh Shwayuh. Inshalla." Little by Little. If God wills it. And then she welcomed me to the souk.

A large woman with filthy fingernails at the market wrapped an extra bushel of mint in an already bulging bouquet as I fished in my pocket for money.

I found a lovely local bookshop this week with English titles and they basically let me treat it as a reading library. Without access to a local library this has rocked my world.

I sometimes stress that I've gotten every parenting thing wrong, every expat thing wrong, every modern feminist thing wrong. But these small kindnesses remind me to be as generous to myself and others as people have been to me.     

Takin' It to the Streets: Cairo From the Ground

I have a theory that the more you walk the streets (paths/beaches/bridges) of a place the more you can love it. Something about the sweat and mild leg cramps just ties you to a physical location in an emotional way. So I've been pounding the pavement around downtown Cairo in hopes to crack this city open a little wider.

  

And Also

Out and about with baby guy

x

A few weeks before I gave birth to our son Felix, Max discovered a well-worn vinyl of the soundtrack to the movie Shaft in my Mom’s basement.

I know, that’s a sentence with a lot to unpack.

If you know my mom, you probably can’t imagine her grooving to Shaft today or any day in the past. But people are complicated, aren’t they?  

And yes, we came home from a gloriously long home leave with a perfect baby boy. Honestly, I was worried a new baby would be boring. Just being real. They don’t talk politics or play guitar or make books with you. I thought he would grow on me as he got older and more fun. But I have been completely delighted with everything about this baby. I love all of his baby noises, every sweaty walk through the neighborhood and his adorable fat feet. This kid is great and being a mom is great.

But I’ve also had moments of identity crisis. Pretty mild, since I was expecting them, but still. Moments when I’m not sure quite how to integrate this new role into my old self.

These moments usually occur during one of the many harried sitcom mom scenes I have found myself enacting since returning to Egypt. Last week I answered the phone with dog poop in one hand from my apparently newly un-house-trained dog who was barking maniacally at the phone, a squirmy baby rocking a gnarly spit-up beard in the other hand, and most of my chest covered by the dripping spit up beard. I then tried to put on my shoes hands-free before walking down three hot flights of stairs with the baby for a delivery where they almost never have change and I either have to trudge back up the stairs and search for small coins or find an ATM outside with a baby on my hip.

So, as much as I hate TV Mom stereotypes, sometimes that’s me.

Is this who I am now? My former self, suffocated by drool? 

But before we left home, I had a moment of clarity at the local Target. (Not the first of these moments to occur at a Target, I’m sure. It’s a magical place.) I reached for my wallet to pay for a box of diapers and the contents of my purse spilled out onto the counter in front of the red-vested cashier. I picked up my keys and also a handful of Egyptian pounds, a package of wet wipes and also a water color pencil, a stick of  gum and also a guitar pick, a tube of chaptsick and also my three day pass to see the temples at Angkor Wat from last spring.

And Also.

I am a mom, and also a person. A mom, and also a traveler. A mom, and also an artist. A mom, and also a mediocre-but-getting-better bassist.

I’ve been a little gun shy about blogging because I didn’t want to drift into the land of boring, naval gazing baby poop stories. Sure, it’s a large portion of how I spend my day, but the circle of people interested in my baby’s poop is very small. And said poop doesn’t define me anyway.  

The mothers in my life knew this. I’m lucky.

So here’s to writing, to making art, to living, and also, to momming.    

Expectations

Taking a breather at Horus' Temple in Edfu

On our first trip to Egypt, we visited an old house with a whale bone affixed to the floor.

"Walk around it 7 times and you will be sure to have a baby!"

Well, I didn't because...that's dumb. 

Now here we are in Egypt again, almost nine years later, finally getting ready to welcome a wee baby in March. A boy. It wasn't easy for us to start a family, and it certainly took a lot more than a whale bone.

I've heard a lot of advice over the years. 

"Put a thread of saffron in carbonated volcanic water. Drink it while you are at the Hammam and then make sure to stay wrapped in blankets after you...you know...chika..chika" came from Morocco. 

In an incredibly kind gesture, someone brought me water from the Zam Zam well of Mecca after attending Hajj for the first time.

"Each morning, for seven days you should eat two dates and drink the Zam Zam water and ask Allah for a baby"   

Taxi drivers from one end of the Middle East to the other have offered many unsolicited opinions that Max had the foresight not to translate for me. 

People often recommend that you quit your job, or get a job, or take up Yoga or quit running. Adopt, don't have kids, try every treatment available as soon as possible. 

Here's what I say. It's personal and everyone will figure out what works best for them.

When someone in the Middle East asks you why you don't have a baby, and they will, all of them will, the best Arabic response is to say "Illy begeebu arrabb kuweis".

What God gives is good enough.  

And it is.

We are thrilled for this baby guy to join our family and to show him the world that we live in.