Category Archives: Anxiety

Jan22

Borderline

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Peace Arch

Peace Arch

This weekend, Z and I went to British Columbia to celebrate, belatedly, our 4th anniversary, which we had to spend apart last month.

Z has a freshly minted Canadian visa burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s never been north of the 49th parallel in North America, so it seemed like the best place to celebrate. (Also, I like to think we were celebrating the occasion of my 50th blog  post with a little international travel.) It wasn’t my first trip there; a conference in Vancouver almost a decade ago was my first introduction to this part of the world, even before I met Seattle, so I was anxious to see it again now that we’re neighbors.

 

Because I grew up smack in the middle of the country in a town situated on the National Road and I-70, it often felt as if there was nothing but wide-open space and an open road that led to other more exciting kinds of lives. Since moving to Seattle, I’ve sometimes felt the pinch of this geography. It’s not exactly that I want to run anywhere, but the close(ish) proximity of the Pacific to the west and the Canadian border to the north, has, at times, made me feel hemmed in. I have elaborate apocalyptic fantasies that I blame on being raised during the End Times crazed 1970s, so while we were sitting in line at the Peace Arch waiting to cross into Canada, my brain got a little overactive, thinking about how our twenty minute wait would be hours and hours if we ever had to run away from home because of some sort of Red Dawn style invasion or Zombie attack or what have you. And that “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity” etched across the top didn’t soothe me so much as make me imagine ways in which this would become a mockery in some dark future, not unlike that scene of the decimated and mostly submerged Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.

 

Is there a word for being simultaneously creeped out and fascinated by something? Someone should invent one if there isn’t. (And if there is one, someone should tell me. I can’t figure out how to google such a query.) Aside from end-of-the-world concerns, I’m also weirdly drawn to and repulsed by those places in our lives that are neither here nor there: airplanes in mid flight, waiting rooms when someone is in surgery, the place where the sea and land meet, the gloaming. It’s magical and kind of terrifying. What is that no man’s land, that is neither one thing nor another?

 

While we sat in line waiting to cross into Canada, where were we exactly? We were, I think, still technically on US soil, yet the houses we were looking at beyond an inconsequential fence seemed to be in Canada. The yards looked Canadian, if that’s possible. And if we got out of our car and walked in the roadside park, where exactly were we? Would anyone want to tackle us to the ground for stepping over some line we shouldn’t?

 

Also, I felt really geeky that at this friendliest of borders, the adrenaline rush I was feeling was tantamount to moving between East and West Berlin before the wall came down. When we finally made it to the border patrol agent and he asked us a few questions about how we knew each other and what our plans were, in my mind the whole trip had grown into some caper we were trying to get away with. All we really wanted to do was get to our hotel in New Westminster, eat some food, see some sights in Vancouver, relax, and after two days, return to Seattle in time to see the Seahawks playoff game from the comfort of our own sofa. Yet as the questions got fired at me, I felt more and more like we were smuggling  someone across the border in our trunk. Also, because Z doesn’t yet have a green card, I often worry that someone with a badge will decide we aren’t legitimately married and make us live apart. (Why I thought a Canadian border agent was the person to do this, I don’t know.)

 

The guy looked at Z’s documents and asked a few more questions about why he’s here and not in Zimbabwe, and Z, being Z, answered with authority and reminded me of Obi Wan Kenobi when he does that Jedi mind trick on the storm troopers and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and the storm troopers sort of shrug their shoulders and give up the hunt for R2-D2 and C-3PO. Z is amazing. Meanwhile, even if I seemed calm, inside I felt as if I had baggies of heroin stashed in unmentionable places, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice the sweat on my brow.

 

Something snapped inside me though when the agent asked why we had a rental car instead of our own. I can’t say why it annoyed me so much except our lack of car here sometimes gets under my skin. I miss Hilda, my beloved CR-V that is parked in my parents’ drive-way currently covered in snow, waiting for my return, and I love the ease with which you can drive places back in Indiana. So it was kind of a sore spot, frankly. I was pleasant, as is my Midwestern training, but for some reason, I wanted to say, “Screw you. We’re going back to Bellingham where we’re wanted and no one questions our life choices.”

 

In retrospect, I wish I’d acted morally superior about carbon emissions and how we don’t own a car because we love the planet more than most people.  (Though just between us, the reason we don’t own a car is because parking in our neighborhood is $4 an hour, traffic is tedious, and Z walks to work.) Anyhow, he seemed to believe me and waved us on.  Never mind my body cavities filled with imaginary drugs or the imaginary Peruvian in our trunk, trying to get into the country illegally.

Dec19

Christmas with a Carpetbagger

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Today, I was happily Christmas shopping in the fancy little café/chocolaterie with Mom, feeling full of holiday cheer, glad to be in one of the old warehouses of my hometown that has been repurposed instead of torn down. Though rain is coming tomorrow, which will melt the snow that has made a gorgeous backdrop to my holiday, it was that kind of snow-covered, holly-laden day you look back on as nearly perfect. Mom was trying to select a box of cleverly shaped chocolates for a dinner party she’s going to tomorrow night, and I was admiring the case of cheesecakes that have gravity-defying architectural elements.

It was a day of errands, so I was slopping around in my favorite fleece boots and oversized sweater. I’d failed to brush my hair because brushing hair sometimes bores me, and I was no doubt looking like a big, gray-coated slob. But I don’t care. When I’m home, I’m home. I’m not here to impress anyone.

This is the type of un-brushed, minimal make-up moment when I inevitably see some old boyfriend from a million years ago. Though I have no interest in such men what with Z being so fabulous and all, it is preferable to have such a creature look at you with interest or as if he is harkening back to yesteryear, wondering where he went wrong instead of displaying signs of relief that he escaped a fate worse than death by not hitching himself to ratty-haired, skwonkily buttoned you.

But on this very Christmassy day, I did not see an old sweetheart. Instead, I saw someone infinitely less tolerable: my nemesis, Voldemortress.

There are many things I could say about Voldemortress, but what you need to know about her is that she is a carpetbagger, who has no one’s best interests at heart except her own. She made my life difficult once upon a time for no good reason other than she was doing a little world building and I was in the spot where she wanted to construct a grist mill. Plus, she is the antithesis of me, and while I generally have a live-and-let-live policy with most human people, because she was a thorn in my side, I find myself loathing those differences between us, which begin with the sartorial (she’s a clothes horse, and I am, well, see photo to the right or a few paragraphs above) and ends with the way she says “important” (just like John Edwards back when he was on the campaign trail, lying to all of us about his personal life). Impordant, like that first “t” is a “d” and she hasn’t noticed.

So there I stood, salivating over cheesecake, which I do not need because my jeans are large but also tight, and I looked over and there she was, having some sort of impordant business meeting. She didn’t even look like herself. Her hair was puffier (but combed, unlike mine), and she’s done something really dark and unfortunate with her eyebrows. Was it her? I wasn’t sure, and then Mom sidled up to me and said under her breath, “Is that Voldemortress?” Confirmation.

Chocolate purchases no longer mattered. We skedaddled out of there, exactly the way I always think Harry Potter should skedaddle whenever he is in the presence of He Who Shall Not Be Named. In the face of some evils, my motto is that it really is better to run. Though admittedly, today  I wasn’t really hell bent on leaving because those tiny cheesecakes looked so good. Mom, however, was spluttering and full of rage on my behalf. I feared my mild-mannered and very gentle mother might bean Voldemortress with a box of chocolates if we stuck around. As we walked out to the car, Mom was still hissing.

What surprised me though was how light I felt. For a while now, I’ve had a variety of interior monologues with this woman that range from giving her a piece of my mind in the Meijer parking lot to stopping to help her change a flat like a good Midwestern Samaritan, and then hopping into my car with her tire iron clutched in my hand and the tire unchanged. (As I drive off in this fantasy, I am laughing maniacally.) But today, I felt nothing much really. In fact, it struck me that the three times I glanced her way trying to figure out if that was her underneath those unnaturally dark eyebrows (and what exactly had she done to them anyhow?), she was holding her hand in front of her face, as if it were large enough for her petite self to hide behind. Instead of sitting there grandly, assuming that I would cower in her presence, my presence clearly made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as driving off with her tire iron, but the rest of the day I felt some impish pleasure, knowing that for those few minutes when we were under the same roof, she was having a hard time concentrating on whatever machinations she was putting into play with the men in suits. Possibly she feared I’d cause a scene and ruin whatever scheme she was embroiled in. She doesn’t know me well and may mistakenly believe I’m a scene maker. However, I prefer to believe that she is fully aware of what a rotten person she was to me and she was filled with something akin to shame, and thus had to hide her face.

Mostly, I can’t tell you how relieved I am that I did not give in to the Midwestern inclination (and curse) to be polite to someone who has been adversarial.

Happy Christmas to me.

Dec13

Flashback Friday: Our Bold Lies, Our Selves

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Now that you know the improbability of the fairy tale coming true, I thought you deserved a peek into darker days seven months before Z had his love epiphany.

Monday, March 13, 2006

It’s March. It’s hot. I hate summer, and today has been a painful reminder that we’re heading straight for the inferno. Kamikaze flies are buzzing around my lamp because I opened a non-screened window in hopes of catching a breeze. I’m thirsty and feel like I should sleep in mosquito netting tonight and go on safari.

A while ago I had a thing for an African guy I know. A friend. In my deluded, lovestruck state, I actually thought for the right man (and he seemed like the right man) I would be impervious to heat, to bugs, to dictators, to poverty, to eating crocodile. This is why women haven’t ruled the world for a few millennia: if a man is involved we believe the most ridiculous crap, and most of it is our own fabrication. This guy wasn’t hinting I should come home with him where we could make a home at the foot of the Ngong Hills with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Mostly, he wanted someone to go to movies with, someone to play miniature golf with, someone to drive him to the airport for his 20 hour flight home twice a year. I’m the one who filled in all the blanks.

No. It wasn’t any sweet nothings he whispered to me that made me imagine this Daktari-style future. It was all me. And yeah, I wanted him (he smelled good, he was funny, and I loved the way he said ‘banana’), but it is  possible that I also wanted to believe I am the kind of person who doesn’t require air conditioning and porcelain. A person who could say at cocktail parties, “Oh, yes. That’s when I lived in Zimbabwe.” But I’m not. I’m me. I need several months of cold weather to get me through July and August. I need a suitcase with wheels. I don’t really want to drink out of a canteen.

So I kind of know who I am, but what I wonder is this: who ARE those people we imagine ourselves capable of being? What’s the line between having a goal/overcoming personal obstacles and just completely deluding yourself? I’ve never really wanted to be a self-deluder, yet the evidence indicates that perhaps that’s exactly what I am. Perhaps that is the only way we are able to live with ourselves. I could admit–at nearly 40–that I’m never going to join the Peace Corp, yet I like the idea that I might. I might quit my job and join the Peace Corp. I might become a foreign correspondent. Or maybe one of those people who cashes it all in and lives on a sailboat.

This is how fairy tales (and heat) addle our brains.

Sep15

Return with an Itch

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I won’t pretend I knew from girlhood that I was going to marry a man with an accent, but I will admit when I would hear about some daughter of a friend of a friend of my mother’s who had married someone from Scotland or Italy, I’d have a coal of envy inside of me that would ignite. When other young women were thinking about partners who would be good providers or who would support their careers or who would change the world, I was thinking more along the lines of: is he smart, can he make me laugh, and does his voice make my knees weak. I hit the jackpot with Z in all those departments.

His students who don’t know he is from Zimbabwe can never guess properly. They know it isn’t exactly an English accent, but they guess a variety of possible nationalities for him, some of which make sense (Australian) and others that make us scratch our heads (Belgian). Back when we were just friends, he knew I liked his accent, so if he was leaving for Christmas break or summer break, he would leave a message on my work voice mail. My favorite was, “I just called to say ‘banana.’” I’d save it for weeks. Play it for my friends. Sigh over it until he got back, and then hit delete.

Now, it is just Z’s voice. Friends will mention his accent and I think, “Oh, yeah. I do like that.” I barely even think of it unless he is razzing me about how my Midwestern pronunciations of “pin” and “pen” are identical. Then I have to remind him that he can’t say my Aunt Barb’s name without sounding like a pirate. (He tries and tries to stuff that “r” into her name, but inevitably it sounds like either “Aunt Bob” or “Aunt B’arrrrrrrb.” Kind of how Hagrid in Harry Potter speaks.)

But the minute we land in America, I realize that for three weeks I’ve been listening to softer versions of my native tongue from his whole family and set of friends. It’s jarring to hear Americans barking things at me over loudspeakers and shouting into their phones like they are walky-talkies. (Why do people DO that? Hold it to your ear—YOUR EAR—people We don’t need to hear the whole conversation.) My paisanos  suddenly sound so loud, so harsh.

What’s worse, as we stand in the very slow immigration line for folks without a U.S. passport, like Z, I realize that accent of his has a price and it costs a lot of my own  itchy, itchy time. This line is going nowhere fast. If anyone is watching me on a closed-circuit camera, they probably think I’m smuggling something illegal in my capri pants because I’m hopping from foot to foot, trying to secretly scratch my bites and it is impossible for me to stand still.  Plus, I’m pretty sure if anyone really got a load of the nickle-sized red welts on my legs they’d assume I was bringing some plaguey kind of horribleness into the U.S. and put me in quarantine immediately.

The  Americans get to go ahead of all the rest of us, and I want to cry out, “But I AM an American. I’m just standing here in this slow line because Z has an unfortunate passport and I’m being supportive!!” All I can think about is the bucket of ice water I’m going to plunge these mosquito bites into when I get to our apartment. Z tries to distract me with fantasies about the day when we actually bother to get him a the green card so the two of us can hold hands and skip through the express “Welcome Home to America” line, but it doesn’t help. Instead, I look at the grumbly Americans who have nothing to complain about zipping through the line I should rightfully be in. I can’t help it; for a minute, I hate them. What have they got to grumble about?!

Z’s scholarly specialty is intercultural communication, so he’s generally aware of the things people are saying directly and indirectly before mere mortals like me have even noticed that communication is happening. Over the years, we’ve discussed at length his particular intercultural focus, the re-entry process for people who move back from their host culture to home and the phases they go through as they re-adjust to their old lives. But while we stand in the insufferable immigrant line, I can feel the dreaded fingers of re-entry grabbing me by the throat and it is no abstraction.  By the time we get to the immigration official, I’m starting to feel really annoyed with us for not applying for that card the day after we got married in 2009. In our defense, we were busy and also, I didn’t want to give anyone in my family who had any doubt about Z’s love for me the satisfaction of thinking he was only in it for better immigration status.

The immigration official looks at Z’s passport and at mine and then back at Z’s. Our last names are different, so we assure him that we are married, and what I want to hear him say is “Welcome home.” One of the delights of traveling abroad is that moment at passport control when one of your fellow citizens looks at you, acknowledges you as one of his or her own, and says, “Welcome home.” I’m not the world’s most patriotic person, but it’s one of those moments like casting a ballot in a general election that makes my chest puff up and tears threaten to drip from the corners of my eyes.

Instead, this official looks at Z , looks back down at his Zimbabwean passport—which needs a visa jammed into it so he can go basically anywhere on the planet that isn’t Zimbabwe—and with a thick, Eastern European accent the guy says, “If you are married, you really should apply for a green card. It’s so much better.”

You think?

Things I’m glad to have in America as we navigate the airport include lines that basically work in a linear fashion and are as efficient as they can be, running water in the restrooms, lights. Also, my cell phone works again and I can call my mother and tell her I have not been eaten by a crocodile, which she appreciates. It is four o’clock and no mosquitos are coming out here and when I go to bed I won’t need a mozzie net. Tonight, when we settle down in front of the TV as we try to regain some brain function, we’ll have more channels than French news in English to choose from. These are all good things.

Yet, as we pass a tiny fluffy dog in a quilted jacket and then later, an old man hollering into his cell phone while holding a giant walking stick with an eagle carved onto the top of it, I find myself missing Zimbabwe. I can’t even name what I’m missing, except the Americans around me seem ridiculous.  For three weeks I’ve been missing people like me and now I’m amongst my own kind, and they seem so big and loud and self-important and unaware that they are blocking walkways or being rude.  This is re-entry. It really isn’t them; it’s me. Re-entering your home culture is like putting your jeans on in the fall after you haven’t worn them all summer, and they constrict you in ways they didn’t before and the legs seem suddenly wider and more untrendy than you remember. For a moment, you suspect they aren’t even your jeans.

And that’s how I feel, as we stand on the escalators, re-emerging into our American lives. I’d feel better, I think briefly, if one of these smiling faces here belonged to my family. Our existence out here on the edge of North America feels tenuous at a time like this. Who here would know if we never got off the plane and returned to our lives? No one. A few friends who would be hard pressed to contact our families if we both die of my mosquito bites.  I have this urge to glare at people who are being welcomed by large families in particular.

Our friend Hudge, who is retired from the Army, comes and gets us, though while we wait for her, we get a little ratty with each other. We have been having fun and then suddenly nothing feels like fun. I’m annoyed with my highly sensitive body that can’t handle insect bites like a normal person, and Z has to be tired of my whining and snappishness. I’ve got my giant, swollen, bite-addled feet propped on the little strip of air conditioning that comes out of the floor. My leaking plastic bags of ice have dribbled a trail of water across the baggage claim area, and I don’t care. I move my legs from place to place, trying to find optimal ice cold air since my real ice has melted. My swollen ankles make me feel 15 years older than I am.

I am the lady with ankles that hang over her shoes now. Swell.

Mostly we sit in silence and wait and wish we’d just taken a cab home because we’d be half way to our building by now. I think things like, “I will never go anywhere without snow again.” I’m mad at myself for not having taken a fresh bottle of DEET with us to Zimbabwe because obviously being frugal and using three-year old DEET was ineffective.  Z does not look as miserable as I feel, and momentarily I feel annoyed at him for having less delicious blood than I do. He could be sharing this burden if only the insects of his homeland had found him as tasty as me. At some point, I turn into Woody Allen and start obsessing about whether I’ll need to see a doctor and what this physical over-reaction to bites must mean about my immune system and how if I scratch them and one gets infected from something on this filthy airport air conditioning strip, I’ll probably lose my feet, and then how will I get to the grocery since we don’t have a car in Seattle. Will my insurance pay for one of those electric scooters, and what kind of brakes do those scooters have? The hills in Seattle are so steep. It goes on and on these voices in my head. I look at Z and he’s just sitting there, stoically. If I were him, I’d probably go sit at a whole other table away from my miserable self. Forget the green card. The man deserves instant citizenship for putting up with me when I am tired and itchy.

Hudge pulls up and we toss our suitcases into the back of her SUV. She hands us plastic containers with hot food she’s just cooked for us because she knew we’d be hungry when we got off the plane, with the added bonus of chocolate covered macadamia nuts that she got on a recent trip to Hawaii. Briefly, I wonder where the gift we got her is and immediately realize I’m too tired to try to find it. She’ll get it later.

I sit up front and the heat from the engine blows directly onto my feet and makes them feel as if there are a million tiny insects inside ankles and legs, all carrying micro-knives that they are using to liberate themselves from my skin. We are almost instantly in a traffic jam, and I’m picturing how the pothole filled roads of Zimbabwe were never this crowded. Why aren’t all of these people walking instead of driving, thus freeing up more road space for hard luck cases like me?

The entire drive is a pityfest.

Hudge is talking animatedly about everything she’s done since we’ve been gone. We’ve been to Zimbabwe but she’s out adventured us by weathering two weeks of vacation with her parents, a trip to Hawaii, and doing a stint at Burning Man. She’s well-rested and upbeat and ready to talk, and I feel like a caveman right after a bison hunt. I want to be a good friend and concentrate on the details of her trips, I want to be able to tell her the details of mine, but instead, all I can eek out is “It was good. We saw over 40 elephants,” because it takes that much energy not to scream about the itching and about the stupid Seattle traffic that stands between me and my feet’s date with ice cold destiny. When Hudge misses the exit to our house, I think I’m going to burst into tears. We will never get home. These bites will never stop itching. I am a bad friend. A bad wife. A big whiner.

Finally, we pull up to our building, unload our goods, wave goodbye to her and say what I hope sounds like a sincere thanks because I do sincerely mean it, I just can’t sound sincere because I might be dying of terminal  mosquito bite. We knock our bags into half the walls of the hallway and I swear, like I always do, that next time I travel I will pack light. How stupid are Americans, thinking they need so much luggage? And also, why is Seattle warmer than Harare was? Is this city trying screw with me?

Z unlocks our apartment door and I strip off my clothes before he has it shut and locked. If we had neighbors at our end of the hall, they would have seen me starkers and I wouldn’t have cared. He looks at me like I’ve gone off my tree, but I know if I don’t get instantly into a cold shower and calm the crazy that is crawling up my feet, ankles and calves towards my brain, I will die. I’ve been through this before. It’s just exhaustion and moving my brain and body across time zones and cultures in a 24 hour span, and the pills I’ve taken to make the itching tolerable, and the intolerable itching. At this exact juncture I don’t like the city, I don’t like this tiny shower with the curtain that grabs me instead of Z-mas lovely big curtainless shower room, I don’t like our aloneness, or that we’ve missed tea with Skampy. I cry a little while the last traces of Zimbabwe wash off of me and swirl down our hundred year old Seattle drain.

When I emerge, slightly more sane, Z has three fans pointed at the sofa and a pan of water on the floor filled with ice cubes. He smiles at me like he loves me and I wonder if he’s suffering short-term memory loss. But this is how he is: he has patience and an accent and he’s taken me to one home and brought me back to another.

I might be itchy, but I know I’m lucky. So lucky.

Sep6

The Seen and the Unseen

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When we head to Lake Chivero, a national park outside of Harare that has been a favorite spot of Z’s family for decades, I have high hopes of seeing a rhino, despite the fact that none showed themselves when we visited on my first trip two and a half years ago. Then, it was the height of summer and everything was green and overgrown, so I left without “rhinoceros” ticked off my list but was sure I’d see one if we returned sometime in winter when the landscape is more barren, like it is now.

Rhinos look a lot more like rocks than you might imagine. I think I’ve spotted about fifteen within the first ten minutes of our bumpy game drive into the heart of the park. I haven’t. What I see is only a few big roundy, rhino-shaped rocks. So much for my new prescription sunglasses.

When you grow up in a land where Holsteins are easily spotted as they stand in pasture against the razor edge of a skyline, it’s a shock to realize how animals in their natural habitats blend in so seamlessly. You’d think, for instance, that a zebra would be the easiest creature to see because of its black and white stripes, or a giraffe because of its long neck, but it turns out the patterns and shapes their coats and bodies make are better camouflage than Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak. On the last trip, I had trouble seeing the animals at first. On this trip, I see them everywhere, only most of the time there is nothing there. At one point, I am even convinced I’ve seen one of Z and Z-ma’s beloved rock rabbits (Google it—they are more meerkat/tiny elephant than rabbit), even though they haven’t been in the park for years.

Fortunately, a giraffe has the good grace to stand in the middle of the road in plain sight, and this gets the game-sighting party started.

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Before long, we’ve seen about twelve giraffe, several zebra including a baby that was suckling, and a variety of buck.  (I’m never excited about buck since there are approximately two deer to every one resident of Indiana, but Z’s family gets as excited about “lesser” animals as they do the Big Five, and their lack of favoritism is a quality I love about them). And then a rock moves. And the rock has a horn. And another rock with a horn. And another.

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When I was a kid, I had an alphabet pop-up book, which I now realize wouldn’t have been so engaging without the animals of Africa to illustrate the different letters. I was never a fan of the “R” because a rhinoceros popped out of the center of the book aggressively, its horn pointed right at me. Last time we were here, I must have had this image in my head, because while we were picnic-ing, I saw a rhino headed straight towards us, only to realize after my heart had amped up to 800 beats per minute that it was a game warden on a bicycle with a gun slung over his shoulder. (This is why I have new prescription sunglasses.)

While I am happy to see these rhinos (a different type has recently gone extinct because of poaching, and given the stupidity and greed of some humans, I realize how lucky I am to witness these in their natural habitat), I’d be lying if I told you I am disappointed that mostly we see the backsides of them, lumbering away from us through the tall, dry grass.

Before we leave today, we will also have added a couple of anxious looking warthogs to our list, as well as a bush pig, which I’m assured are usually hard to see. The warthogs are one of my favorites. Their tails remind me of the teasel weed that my mother used to have stuffed into a pitcher for decorative purposes, and that’s what I see first before I realize an animal is attached. We look at each other for a moment, this particular warthog and I, and then it goes skittering into the bush. We see it running parallel to the car as we drive, like it’s hoping to keep tabs on us and won’t feel safe until we’re nothing but a cloud of dust.

But before we see the warthog, we make our way to Bushman’s Point, our picnic destination. We are disappointed to see other people already there, so we situate ourselves in a less perfect picnic spot next to a thatched information kiosk highlighting the animals that are in the park and could, if they want, interrupt our lunch. Z has regaled me with tales of his niece’s birthday party here when she was little and how a monkey snatched her baby brother’s bottle. I’m keenly aware that there is no security fence between us and the animals we’ve seen on the drive, and I won’t even let myself think about how you can’t really create a snake-free zone so near a lake.

Z suggests that I join him on the wall of the kiosk instead of sitting on the ground. It would be a good vantage from which to eat my cheese sandwich, except for the part where I am incapable of hurling myself onto the wall, nor am I able to climb up and on to it. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to do, but it is high and I am not athletic. (I instantly feel the failure of every elementary school gym class when the teacher would decide it was “pole” day and we needed to try to climb this slick, wooden pole that hung from the ceiling of the gymnasium to demonstrate our worth. Mostly it was an exercise in mortification because I could never get myself any higher than wherever I first placed my hands, meanwhile classmates were shinnying up to the rafters, at which point I would try to make myself feel better with the knowledge that I usually scored higher on math and spelling tests than the best pole climbers. And then I’d worry that one of my classmates would fall.)

Finally, I flopped myself onto the tarp with a sigh, and then the flies came. They couldn’t have had less interest in Z or Z-ma, but they were trying to fly up my nose and into my mouth. I flapped my hat at them, furiously, and realized how I looked like a caricature of an American tourist in Africa, fussing about a few pesky flies. In my defense, they were so annoying and persistent, and I was relatively certain that just before trying to crawl into my mouth they’d probably been sitting on the giant rhino poo we’d seen on the road. If we weren’t on a sort of pilgrimage, I would hop in the truck, rolled up the windows, and demand that we drive away from the rigors of high kiosk walls and overly extroverted flies.

The truth is, though, I love this spot for a lot of reasons and so don’t want to leave. It’s a beautiful. Huge rocks balance on each other in impossible contortions, there’s a lovely tree canopy, and the lake is in the background. While the rest of the park looks dry and brown at the moment, the area around the lake is verdant. When you see water in Zimbabwe—especially in the dry season like now—it feels kind of holy. This place especially so because of the San (or bushman) paintings on some of the rocks near the water, and because Z’s father’s ashes were scattered on the lake fifteen years ago, three years before I met Z. His family has made regular trips here  to celebrate his life, which to my mind is a lot less depressing than going to a cemetery because the place is alive.

The walk to the water is rocky and worn. Chipped stone steps and pathways leave me lumbering like a bear, and huffing and puffing like an asthmatic, which I wouldn’t feel so bad about if Z-ma, who has almost three decades on me, weren’t navigating the path better than I am. We stop when we are almost at the water and Z tosses some rose petals on the wind near a tree where his aunt’s ashes were scattered a few years ago. Z-ma says hello to her younger sister, using a pet name, and we move on.

We stop next at the San paintings in a recess in the rocks. They’re behind a fence, but close enough that I could touch them if wanted to. When I see the reddish pigment on the canvas of the rock, I have a lot of questions about who they were and the meaning of life and what I would have done if I’d been born a hunter-gatherer, since I can’t handle the insects, rough terrain, lack of indoor plumbing, or, let’s face it, lack of indoors period. Looking at the paintings, I feel the way I did when I first saw Stonehenge or Poulnabrone dolmen in Ireland, which is to say, I can’t take it in in any sort of satisfactory way.  It is too huge a thing to contemplate.

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Finally, we move on to the cement jetty, where Z and Z-ma cast their petals onto the water, and I stand back, wondering what the appropriate way is to mourn or offer homage to a man I’ve never known.  Though I don’t feel it here, when I am back at Z-ma’s, I’m very aware of Z-dad’s absence and what I’ve missed out on by nature of having come to the family too late to meet him.  At the house, I look at his rose bushes, the structures that used to encompass an aviary, the now irretrievably empty pool where two proud-looking lions used to spit streams of water. At night when we watch the one channel of TV that Z-ma manages to get, Z sits in his dad’s old chair, and I can imagine his father sitting there, even though my vision of him is only a guess, based on what I’ve seen in photos and what I’ve sussed out by watching Z and his brother: how they speak, the way they hold themselves, their strong senses of self.

It’s another mystery I can’t solve, and so after a few moments, I get distracted by lizards, sunning themselves on the rocks.

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Aug26

Xanax Safari (Part Four)

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Oh, that right there? That’s a crocodile slide. You know, the indentation on a sandy bank where a crocodile slides into the water. It’s less than ten feet from my bedroom. You know, the one without a door. But don’t worry about it. They aren’t interested in us really and they can’t board the boat when the gangway is hauled up, and Nhamu and Aleck are bound to haul up the gangway before nightfall.

The one thing I’ve expressed a real hatred for here (other than heat and eating fish) is crocodile. I don’t mean to sound racist, but I don’t like their looks and I liked Peter Pan as a kid, and that crocodile was no sympathetic character. Last night when my brother-in-law flashed the spotlight into the weeds so I could see how many of their beady eyes were glowering at us, I got chills. So imagine my disappointment when Nhamu decided that our nightly docking would happen at a place called Crocodile Creek. He’s done this with no irony. The fish are meant to be biting here, but I’m pretty sure the crocodiles have gobbled them all up because Z has been fishing for an hour and hasn’t hauled in anything larger than a minnow.

There’s hippo poo on the bank too, so that’s promising. Maybe there’ll be a real Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom moment for me to report.

P.S. Did I tell you about how despite my careful packing for every eventuality on this trip to Kariba I left my delightful book back on my bed at Z-ma’s? All I have with me is Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, the Blogess. I’ve had to limit how much I read so it will last. I’d estimated this as a two-book trip. One of my biggest fears, aside from death by wild animal, is running out of reading material.

–later—

For most of the day, there wasn’t a single crocodile sighting, or any other non tiny-fish wildlife. My sister-in-law decided she’d venture off the boat to have a quick look around. She was gone, perhaps, a minute and a half before we saw her running in what appeared to be slow motion, clearing the rope that kept Tambonette tied to the shore, cigarette clutched in her hand. Z yelled, “What is it?” and she yelled, “ELEPHANT.” Remember how quiet I told you they could be? She nearly walked right into one. We couldn’t quit laughing. We wouldn’t have been laughing, of course, if the elephant had followed her.

Awhile later, the same elephant came out of the brush, nibbling on trees, followed by a smaller one. The larger male, noticed us, and expanded his ears and raised his trunk. Did I mention that the boat was only about eight feet from the shore? I was quaking in my flip flops. But then my brother-in-law talked to me (and I think the elephant) very calmly and said, “That’s just bullshit, there. He’s just saying, ‘I see you. Stay where you are.’” And sure enough, when we made no move towards his territory, the elephant went happily back to his tree munching. Aside from Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones, I’m convinced that Z’s brother is a little like Dr. Doolittle, only without the top hat. (And yes, that was a reference to the original movie of my childhood and not the Eddie Murphy version. Because I’m just that old.)

Aug23

Xanax Safari (Part One)

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Since this is my second trip to Zimbabwe, I had minimal anxiety other than concerns about whether I’d packed enough reading material. We arrived in Harare at night, I got my visa after a short wait, we were greeted by Z’s mother and brother, our suitcases were all accounted for, and because people who were apparently going to be doing big game hunting were in front of us at customs with all of their equipment, we easily breezed through the line and didn’t have to justify the various dog treats we’d brought Skampy that may or may not have been made of meat by-products (a customs no-no, apparently). For two days, I was pleased with myself and my adaptability, and how genuinely happy I was to be with Z’s people and staying in his boyhood home. Yay me.

Back when I was in love with Z and he thought we were just friends, he’d told me a lot about trips to Lake Kariba, the massive human-made lake and reservoir on the border with Zambia. It’s a favorite spot of his family’s, and given the lack of power cuts since my arrival, I’m grateful for the hydro-electric power it provides too. This morning when we loaded the truck and headed northwest, meeting Z’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew on the road and driving towards a five day holiday there, three of which would be spent on a houseboat, I was excited.

The drive up was a long six hours. The main roads are “good” and by “good” you should imagine an American country road in terms of narrowness and random potholes, and this one is heavily trafficked by long-haul trucks moving goods from Zambia to Zimbabwe and South Africa and back. (This was nothing compared to the bush road we took into Kariba National Park once we arrived, which I do not recommend with a full bladder.) The last time I was in Zimbabwe it was summer, and though Z-ma had warned me before I arrived that the country is very brown now, I wasn’t really prepared for how dead everything looked on the drive to Kariba, particularly the burned up stretches of land where there had been veldt fires. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up” that was on a continuous loop when I was in college started playing in my head and threatened to put a damper on the adventure buzz. Zimbabwe was beginning to feel hostile towards human habitation.

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What helped, however, was arriving at the holiday home where we’d be for the first and last nights at Wild Heritage. It was a beautiful, two-story house with a huge second story thatched verandah off of our Africhilled bedroom that overlooked the lake and the lush flood plane. When we arrived, there were about fifteen hippo grazing peacefully in the grassy expanse.  Because I’d been told that more people are killed by hippo than any other animal in Africa (not counting mosquitos), I was surprised to see people walking in what seemed to be close proximity. It was very serene, though one baby hippo chased away four zebra that he thought got too close to his patch of grass. It was like something Disney had imagineered just for its guests in terms of how amazing it was to see so many animals all at once: hippo, zebra, buffalo, monkeys, baboons, crocodile.

My new favorite sound: hippo voices. Google it. I can’t even describe it. I was more than a little annoyed when some folks who wanted to fish there shouted voetsak (“buzz off”) and the whole group of hippo went scattering.

Seeing elephants was my primary goal for the trip, and Z-ma had had her prayer group on the case, asking God for an elephant sighting for her American daughter-in-law. We hadn’t been there an hour before I saw my first elephant. I was quite pleased to have been the first to have seen it and to have seen it without binoculars. This probably seems like a no brainer—elephants should be the easiest things to spot on the landscape because of their size, right? Well, you’d be surprised. They move so gracefully and with undetected speed, that one minute there is nothing, and then suddenly, this grey mass appears, flapping its ears and noshing on leaves. Just as quickly, it disappears.

Not long after the first sighting, my brother-in-law came and got me because there was an elephant going through the dustbin of the house next door. He is kind of like a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones (my brother-in-law, not the elephant), which I mean as compliment, though how could that ever be anything but a compliment? That is: if you find yourself standing fifteen feet away from a wild animal the size of an elephant, you want someone like him there, telling you confidently that it’s fine, the elephant won’t be charging you, and even if it did, you’d be safe because elephants have horrible eyesight and your white shirt blends in nicely with the truck you’re standing next to. Plus, he has this really low, soothing, animal-talking voice. The elephant soon grew bored with the dustbin and moved on to a decorative tree before sauntering off towards the water, as if it were perfectly normal to be hanging out in a holiday home community with humans. Here’s hoping someone encourages the elephant that such behavior is not in its best interest. (We won’t speak of what happened to the last Dustbin, who got too friendly with the humans.)

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After the sun went down, something ugly happened in my brain, and I got anxious thinking about the next day’s adventure on the houseboat. My fears included but were not limited to: will eight people (six of us and two crew) want to kill each other when staying on a houseboat? will a roving gang of hippos capsize our boat? will a crocodile come aboard and gobble one of us up? will I have a heat stroke? will I get bitten by a malaria-infested mosquito, whose strain of malaria won’t be contained by the anti-malarial drugs I’m taking?

Most importantly, I worried that Z would look at me and realize what a terrible mistake he made three and a half years ago, hitching his wagon to my big, pasty creature-comfort-loving American star.

On the drive up, Z-ma had regaled me with the myth of Nyaminyami, the Zambezi river god who was none too happy when the dam was built and separated him from his other half and thus wreaked havoc while the dam was being built and, it is said, will eventually destroy the dam. And also, why exactly did my brother-in-law think it was a good idea to pack that giant machete and big cudgel? Who or what was he planning to need these things for?

Z assured me that I didn’t need to worry about any of these things, but Z is an optimist and while he is safety conscious, he has more faith in the goodwill of other people and nature than I do. So I took a Xanax and then, before it took affect, worried that there’d be some emergency in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t be able to protect myself against the elephant stampede or hippo invasion. The voices in my head kept saying, I don’t belong here. I can’t ever come back to Kariba. Then it cooled down and eventually the voices quieted. We spent the evening playing Tenzi on the verandah, and I didn’t really want to be any other place on the planet.

Basically, what I’m trying to establish here is that I have very bi-polar reactions to Zimbabwe. One minute I distrust it and can’t understand why God even bothered with Africa at all because it seems broken beyond repair and has caused strife for people I love, and then the next minute we’re bouncing down the road and my hair is flapping in the wind and Z’s hands are firmly on the steering wheel and I think, Hell yeah, this is my life and it’s so good. How lucky am I? and then, Oh, a monkey not in a cage—look at that! I’m still trying to operate under the assumption that one day Zimbabwe’s wonderfulness will stick with me without the mood swings.  Why else would God have put all the most amazingly unique animals on the planet right here in this one spot? There’s nothing on any other continent that compares to an elephant or a giraffe or a hippo. (Well, I suppose the Indian subcontinent has elephants, but it’s just a subcontinent and those elephants are smaller and more subservient. Not that it’s a contest).

Aug20

The Pattern

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Here’s the pattern:

1)    Make brilliant travel plans or plans for some new experience.

2)    Either look forward to trip/experience or ignore the fact that it is impending until the departure date.

3)    Depart.

4)    Freak out upon arrival. (This “freak out” could include but is not limited to: mild depression, anxiety, weeping, or need to call all manner of friends and loved ones for reassurance. Self-absorption is a given, as is possible hatred of everyone in surrounding area who seems to be enjoying self.)

5)    Calm down.

6)    Enjoy self minimally but count down hours until ordeal will be over.

7)    Realize trip is almost over and get morose because no longer wish to leave.

8)    Go home and wax nostalgic about what a good time it was, completely forgetting hours spent wailing and gnashing teeth because just want to be home.

Keep an eye out for it. It’s going to happen. Again and again and again.  I won’t remember myself that this will happen, and I probably won’t appreciate it if you remind me. But you’ve been warned.

Aug19

Be Prepared

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When I was a kid, I thought the scouting motto Be Prepared was excellent. My single mother had a lot of fears, and so I grew up being prepared for all sorts of eventualities: tornadoes, boredom, how to put out a kitchen fire with a box of Arm and Hammer baking soda, strangers with candy.

The downside of being prepared is that when you pack for three weeks in Zimbabwe to visit your husband’s family, this is what the suitcase situation looks like:

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When I met him, there were a lot of shortages in Zimbabwe. Now, you can basically get what you need for a price, but on this, my second trip there, I’m still inclined to think I ought to pack entire boxes of Band-Aids, peanut butter crackers in bulk, and a lot of hats, even though I’m not a hat-wearing person. But you know, there’s all that sun. Also, my tiny stuffed turtle named ShellE, goes on all trips with me for photo ops and makes me feel guilty if she gets forgotten.  A set of cobalt blue prayer beads that I never really use have to go because I’m too superstitious now to leave them home. My carry-on alone is stuffed to the gills because I’ve imagined all sorts of eventualities for the 24 hour flying time and I want to be prepared for that too, even though I’ll basically be eating, sleeping, and watching B movies the whole time. (But what if we get stranded in Amsterdam for a night and need extra pairs of underwear, more reading material, and bonus peanut butter crackers?) Z, on the other hand, carries a green man-purse with a magazine, his passport, and three cough drops on most trips.

I remember how disappointed I felt when my Girl Scout troop leader explained that the motto “Be Prepared” was selected because the first letter of each word corresponded with the initials of scouting founder Baden Powell. First of all, I was annoyed because the Girl Scouts hadn’t bothered getting their own motto, and they were willing to take boy castoffs instead of using JGL for Juliette Gordon Low, the woman who got scouting for girls started in the US. More importantly, even when I was ten it seemed an arbitrary way to pick a motto. What if his name had been Xavier F. Allen? Would the motto be Xylophones for All? (Of course if they had gone with JGL, what would the motto have been? Just Get Lumber?)

It doesn’t matter. I’m as prepared as I can be, and we’re off. On my first trip to Zimbabwe not long after we got married I was hoping I’d fall in love with it for Z’s sake, but I didn’t. I loved seeing where he grew up, meeting his extended people, and my first zebra and giraffe sightings, but the land itself didn’t speak to me the way I imagined it would when I was in college and Bono was forever talking about it. But I’m open to new discoveries and allowing myself to love more than one spot on the globe.

Aug18

Who Are You and Why Are You So Reluctant?

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When I was a pre-teen in Indiana, I read an article about then TV Heartthrob Dirk Benedict, who said his ideal woman was one who could throw some things into a backpack and spend three weeks with him in the desert without worrying about her hair. I was certain I could do this, despite the evidence in front of me: I hate heat, I’m a pack rat who has never learned the less-is-more rule of packing, and I’m allergic to the outdoors. The only quality I really had going for me, then or now, that would have met his needs was not caring about my hair. I’ve got that one nailed down.

So, I did things like sign up for Girl Scouts, an experience that was mostly torturous. I loved collecting badges and following a code, but I wasn’t crazy about my troop mates, had gastrointestinal distress whenever we had an overnight, and generally looked completely wrong in the uniform. After two months in Troop 91, I should have known it wasn’t for me, but instead, I wanted to add Girl Scout Camp to my list of accomplishments (and also, there was an awesome camping badge), so I signed up for a miserable six days at Camp Wapi Kamigi, where I was damp, homesick, cynical, and just wanted to be home with my mother, watching Dallas.

I still sign myself up for things and then spend the first day and a half crying because I’m homesick and hate it. What’s worse, I have no idea why I do it. For my first forty years, my adventures were mainly of the Girl Scout camp variety and I lived as low-regret as possible. I didn’t marry. I never left my hometown. I took trips to “safe” places for short durations. A lot of my clothes were black.

And then I met the Zimbabwean, and despite all my very best feminist training, I changed everything. For a man. He’s a good one, though to be with him, I had to move to the Pacific Northwest, and I’m now earning (metaphorical) badges in City Life, in giving-up-everything-I-know-for-something-new, in cross-cultural marriage, in travel, in quitting my eighteen year college teaching job for the question mark of a year off writing, and in a lot of stuff I haven’t even figured out yet. While he hasn’t dragged me to the desert yet with only a backpack, he has introduced me to Zimbabwe and a continent I thought I’d only ever see in Out of Africa. He’s introduced me to other things too: being content in a moment, eating an occasional green vegetable, and the value of a well-honked horn in Seattle’s ridiculous traffic. (It seems so impolite. We sometimes still argue about this one.)

What I write here is true, the best I can remember it. Unless it really annoys you. That stuff is all a big lie, meant only for entertainment purposes.