Month: February 2008

Obscurity

~ marobbie ~ 1 Comment

The latest mindless book I read was by Evelyn Anthony. I am happy to say that I no longer have any of her works in my possession, this is the last one and it is going out the window soon. The title is obscure enough that only ten people have it listed on librarything.com. I am not listing it because I try to appear a little more intelligent than I am.

Today I have resumed menstruating unexpectedly. My body is perhaps telling me that I am ready for the next baby, which is not bloody likely to happen unless I get raped – well lets not tempt fate shall we, this place is full of nasty crime and I am not planning on becoming another statistic.

On Saturday the weather was extremely hot, Sunday was cloudy and humid, today it is raining and cool. But give me the cold any day instead of the suffocating heat.Hubby is resuming his social life, which is a great success since he never had one to start with. Yesterday he was out with (???). He later said that they went to a pizza place and a fish restaurant. Well, whatever floats his boat. Meanwhile I am still coasting and waiting for what he comes up with in the next few weeks. He wants some time, and as he constantly drones whenever I try to talk it out with him : “Give me a break”.A friend of mine spent the weekend in Swellendam, which is medium sized town two hours away from here. She and her family are planning to relocate there. Considering that she has a very successful swim school here and her husband runs a successful plumbing business, the move might be foolhardy, but I can fully understand. People move on with their lives, they take charge and they make workable plans. Unlike my husband who is fond of dreaming of whatever is not achievable at the moment.I also have plans. I can relocate with my son to join my family. I can also move upcountry and build a small house. I have thousands of different plans. The only problem I have is the husband, who has a difficult time accepting available options.

I have been knitting as well. Knitting is therapeutic and very relaxing. As you build up the stitches of your work, your mind wanders and you consider your life. I hatched many dreams and plans as I was knitting. I even came up with a plot of a new story. It is a kind of sci-fi scientific thriller and takes place in a futuristic world where women learned to do without men. They even managed to pro-create by cloning without the need for men. Quite a neat idea, don’t you think, but it doesn’t end as you would expect, because women in the end are their own worst enemy and they actually give men the power over them. My story is still unformed, but the knitting has taken shape and it is a purple turtle that will find its home with a special little girl. There are plenty of flaws and mistakes in the turtle, but I learned quite a few techniques by making it. The pattern had just enough kinks and twists to be challenging.While my husband was painting the town I cooked and I baked. I cooked a kind of paella with a tin of mackerel, which turned out a little bland. Then I baked chocolate brownies which were slightly over-baked and tasted funny. The recipe came from here. I thought it had too much salt for one thing, and then there was no vanilla or any other flavouring. I had my fill of chocolate batter and crunchy over-baked, funny tasting brownies. I simply pigged out, since there is no one at home with beady eyes to watch every mouthful that I take. Yes, I needed it.

His Mother

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what my husband wrote his mom about the problems we are having. He could have written to her anything and her response would have been the same. I feel sorry for the man, turning to his mother when deep down he knows that she might the reason behind at least some of his woes. If he had a different mother, he wouldn’t have become this selfish, for instance.

I begged the man to talk to people. So his solution is to talk to his mother. He also told me that he is talking to some “friends”, but his meeting with them never took place. He doesn’t want to talk to me because: “You are the problem”. Please explain to me, how can be the problem, when he is the one who is unhappy? Apparently life has cheated him out of some great prize, or better still I have withheld this great prize from him. Pray tell, how?

Yes, I do talk to people as well, and it is good to be reminded sometimes that he was the one who wanted me back. In fact, he came on so strongly that I bolted and decided that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. Admittedly, the timing was in very bad taste, but it was my due for years of emotional abuse. I think it stuck in his craw that I was the one who left him, and it was oh so good of him to want me back despite that, but now he decided that he shouldn’t have let me get away with it a second time.

Well, for me this second time was for keeps, and I promised that I will never leave him again, and I am still good on that promise. When I had this baby with him, it was enough for me. I was no longer interested in anything or anyone else. I discovered that having a family and a baby of my own is all I ever wanted in my life. Now, it is his turn to discover that, this will never be enough for him. To me this clearly translates into: “The man has a problem” not to his crazy accusation that I am the problem. Let’s leave it at that.

 

In his wallet today I discovered a piece of a newspaper. He had written little notes on it: Wadi Halfa, Knowledge Systems, the button, FARIS, Cockroach for dinner and some other stuff. To anyone else it will sound like rubbish, but I knew all these headings. They are stories from his life that he considers important. I enjoyed listening to them, not because of the brilliant experiences, but mostly because it was obvious how much joy recounting them brought him. His trip to Africa, the company he formed when he came out of college and then sold, some invention he patented, software he wrote and other strange experiences from his travels. This disjointed set of haphazard sketches are the sum total of this man’s life. Fortunately for him, or unfortunately, I could not laugh at the list, I felt deeply and truly sorry. If the notes were near the computer I would have thought that he is putting some email together to his daughter, but I think they are there for a time when he talks to some real people. Some fleeting acquaintances he wants to show off as his non-existent friends. He wants to impress them with these random trophies of an empty life; a life where these sad phrases are desperately trying to hide fundamental flaws. I now know all the flaws, and the stories have lost their sparkle.

 

He did not need to read off his mother’s response to me. Her concerns were as expected: 1) Money 2) Herself.

She interpreted the problem as financial and her brilliant solution was for me to work fulltime, while he looks after the baby; until such time when he can get a better job. Then she went on about the possibility of him getting pension when he goes back home. Huh? I thought he told her that he was unhappy because he has no life, what does that have to do with money? The problem as he summed it up to me today was: We are living in a rented apartment – and these are things he is totally and completely against (both renting and flat dwelling)- and he does not have space for his hobbies: gardening, and woodwork. And this is actually reason enough for him to break up with me? Aren’t there really any other solutions? Go figure.

His mother ended her mail by saying: “I don’t like this type of messages, now I have another thing to worry about and spend sleepless nights over, like this last night”. Well, now you can stop wondering why he turned out as selfish as he is.

The Joys and worries of Motherhood

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Robert and I spoke to granny yesterday. Through the video stream of Skype my mother’s love to her little grandchild is palpable, and my dad asked when we were coming to visit. I never believed it was possible, but being a mother to Robert rewarded me with a special tenderness towards my parents, especially my mother. Every time I bathe my baby and wash his smooth back with baby soap, I think that my mother must have done the same for me, and it fills me with wonder and brings tears to my eyes.

I am content to sit at home the whole day with Robert, and watch him grow and learn new tricks. Before he came along I did not realize the depth of love I was capable of, and the extents that I would go in order to see him smile. Loving him made me love my life more and view it from a different perspective. The balance has shifted, and somebody else is now the centre of my universe. For this brief space in time, I am also my baby’s main focus, and I am enjoying it while it lasts. Soon enough his world will expand to other people, other places and other interests. Until then, I will have a second chance at reliving my childhood, to cherish the good times and avoid mistakes of the past.

More food for thought comes from this blog post:

“Having a child is not for people who like to play safe. In giving birth, we give the universe the power to enrich our life immeasurably or shatter it irrevocably”. Yes, I am also grateful every step of the way. I pray all the time, in gratitude and in hope. Mashallah, “There but by the grace of god go I”. I share this journey of joy, and worry with every mother on the face of this earth. But most of all, becoming Robert’s mother connected me emotionally with my own mother. Because there is a deep bond of unselfish love that passes on from one generation to the next, and you can only truly appreciate the love you received, once it is your turn to pass it on. I love you mom.

The World is Still Okay

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

At midday today I was labouring up the hill from the supermarket, loaded with packets of groceries in both hands and on one shoulder. It was hot and I was sweating, concentrating only on the road ahead, wanting to get home to my depressed –and depressing- husband.

A man in dirty clothes was sitting in the shade of a tree by the roadside; he mumbled something to me that I wasn’t going to acknowledge. In this harsh city there are so many like him, drunks and vagrants who normally ask handouts. Still I looked back towards him, and his words made sense once I saw what he was on about.

He had said: “Look at my baby ma’am”, and his baby was a sleeping puppy cradled peacefully on his lap. I smiled and said: “What a beautiful baby”, and as I continued my walk I held the picture of the man and the puppy in my mind and my heart, I thought: The world is still OK. or as we say in Arabic الدنيا لسه بخير .

In this cruel and rough country, where a man could kill another for a cell phone, where babies are raped, killed or thrown in garbage bins, there is a scruffy man, who cradles a little dog and calls it his baby. Mercy and kindness still go around, and life is definitely still worth living.

 

Another Spy Thriller

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

One day I will finally get through the masses of books that I bought in another life. I have a sort of masochistic rule: If you bought it, you have to read it before tossing it out the window. So for every new interesting book I read, I have to get through three old unfashionable ones. This is one of those latter ones.

Evan Kendrick is a larger-than-life all American hero, a la Rambo (minus muscles plus brain and wit), he gets involved in a commando operation in Oman, and from then on lots of other trouble.

During the adventure he joins forces with one Kahlela Adrienne Rashad, a special agent, half Egyptian Arab and half American. He is also reunited with a business partner, father figure, Emmanuel Weingrass, a Jewish, eighty-something old man with connections to the Mossad and impressive fighting skills, both physical and verbal.

 

Conspiracy is the name of the game and it keeps going on and on. I think what made me buy this book years ago was the Arab and Middle East connection, but the treatment of the region was extremely shallow. Yes, duh, what did I expect? What is really funny however is the rendering of Arabic in some of the dialogue, for example, a seedy neighbourhood in Masqat is transliterated as الشارع المش كويس literally : the no-good street, as if we Arabs lack the imagination and the tact to call it anything else. Besides who came up with خليلة Kahlela as an Arabic name? and teaching us that it is pronounced Kai-Layla or something like that? It actually means mistress (as in lover) among other things, and no Arab man in his right mind will call his daughter that name.

I still have three Ludlums to get through, but then no more, so help me god.

Back to Square One

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Guess what? I am back where I started. I have been sugar-coating reality for a while now. I made myself believe that my husband and I have truly made amends. We got back together, had a healthy love life, and even had a beautiful baby boy. Go figure, it turns out that I was living an illusion. The husband that I fell in love with again for the last two years is not happy. He has been biting his tongue and putting up with my weirdness. Really? He either did very good pretending or I was incredibly naive. He claims it is the latter.

Well, I have enough on my plate fixing the errors of my life, so unfortunately I cannot take on fixing half a century of mistakes for him. This doesn’t change things for me in the least, I have got the word divorce out of my system for good, and whatever happens next I am content with being a mom to my precious baby.
I am still hoping for a miracle, that he will find some interest to keep him busy. A vocation, a calling, a job, a hobby, anything, I am really desperate. I was naive enough to think that his interest in his son will be the thing to bring him back from the brink of depression. I was wrong, we will see what he comes up with.
Meanwhile, the errors of the past are rehashed for me. My mean spirited breakup with him on his birthday, and the way I made him sell the business. I roll my eyes heavenwards and ask God, if I was guilty as charged of the first, I was never party to the second, but of course, he is convinced otherwise.

So here we go again, and the saddest thing, my little boy will be taking the consequences.

More Milestones

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did not post for the occasion of Robert’s 5-months birthday. Obviously I was busy doing other things or thinking other thoughts. There aren’t even any pictures to mark the day.

However, I can now comment on some developments in the five months period. I get a weekly newsletter from www.babycentre.co.uk which charts out the progress of an average baby, and Robert is always right on target. The page for the 5 months development phase is right here : http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/development/05mth/ and as usual he has mastered every skill mentioned.

In the verbalising department he is very keen on blowing raspberries and grunting – he gives this low pitched growl which sounds as if it is coming from his stomach. Ron doesn’t like it, perhaps because he feels that it signifies some sort of distress, but I think it is just one more noise Robert enjoys making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He is definitely able to track and grasp smaller objects. He also uses the raking grasp, for example to get a hold on a bunch of keys lying on the floor.

He is beginning to get a sense of his balance while sitting upright. He can hold on with one hand, and keep his back steady. He also tries to pull himself up while lying down on his play mat. Standing is still his favourite daytime sport, as it has been for a month or even longer. Yes, I hear that it causes bow-legs but the pediatrician never warned us against such a thing, besides Robert is the one who wants to stand up, and by now I think it is safe for him to try anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do still keep a vigilant eye on baby, but some of our concerns are slowly diminishing. I was petrified one day when I checked on him one night to find that he had rolled over onto his stomach. He does that regularly now, and although I still roll him over onto his back, I am no longer losing sleep over it.

In fact I find him on his stomach in the morning now, and if he is fussy or crying, he always calms himself down and finally gets to sleep on his tummy. Sometimes he even sleeps with his head on his arms, like a grownup. I think it is so cute.

I have been reading some family blogs lately, about women and their experience with motherhood. Some of them make profound statements while others take the comic approach. Here a link to the latter approach, and maybe some profound thoughts will emerge later.

Some unsolicited baby advice, not for the faint hearted:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More of these on: http://www.c00lstuff.com/1133/Do_s_and_don_ts_with_babies/