Stuck in the Middle with You

 

It is a big picture because it has made me think a lot.

This past Sunday, Peanut and I went with our church to visit another church outside of Barranquilla to celebrate their anniversary. We went on a big school bus singing songs and enjoying the wind in our hair. We wound up sitting by ourselves, but there were several empty seats and my long legs have trouble fitting, so we spread out a little. We all piled off to join the worship service that was ready to start, and Peanut and I settled ourselves on the floor so she could move around and not climb over everyone.

At 9th (our home church), Peanut gets special attention. All the kids are loved and cooed over, but everyone remembers Peanut's name, she made it on a new church banner, and she just does get something extra. Still, she is a known quantity. She is not new.

At Pital, she was new. She sat with my quietly keeping an eye on what was going on for a while. It is her way. We do not call her "the Observadora" for nothing. Still, after getting a handle on things, she inevitably makes her move. There are probably 30 kids or more at Pital, and they sit in kid-sized plastic chairs in the very front of the sanctuary, and Peanut decided she was going to go hang with them for a little while. There was not a place to sit (and she can't really climb up into a chair on her own so well yet), so she just stood in the aisle. From my spot in the back I saw hands begin to stretch out from chairs on all sides to touch her skin or her hair. At one point she had 5 sets of hands on her somewhere. She took it all in stride - walking back toward me when it was a little too much, but returning again to give it another go.

After the service we went to a church member's home to eat a big stew and share some fellowship time before heading back to Barranquilla. While the food was finishing we all sat together talking and playing ice-breaker games. Peanut hung out in my lap for a bit (watching), then made her move again. I took the picture above just to capture my sweet bean in the midst of so many kids, but after taking it I couldn't help but catch my breath. She is in the middle of everyone, but she isn't a part of anything. 

You may think it is a lot to put on one picture, but it was more the catalyst that put lots of pieces together for me than a commentary on this single moment. It is representative of a lot of Peanut's life, and of our lives, quite frankly. The thing is, we chose this adventure - Peanut, not so much. Right now it doesn't really matter. Peanut is little and she simply feels special I think, so the extra long looks, the patting of her skin, the remarks about her hair or her eyes don't make her self-conscious or worry her like they do me sometimes. I know that when people get to know her, they will love Peanut for the person she is because that is just how it works. Still, some day she will come to me with slightly sad and truly confused eyes and ask me why it is that people treat her differently (even if sometimes it is that they treat her "better"), and why can't she just be like everyone else.

None of this is to discount her privilege in this place, nor our own, but it is to say that same privilege can extract someone from community rather than bond them into it. And so somehow she is in the middle and on the margins at the same time. It is a funny place to be. It might be okay to visit, but I am thinking hard about how or whether she can live there.

Exploring our Options

This post could be about a lot of things - most of them options that seem to be available in the United States but not so much here (where/how you want to give birth, quick and easy but healthy eating, infant car seats, etc) - but nothing so heavy as that this go around.  It's back to names...

I mentioned before that names are tough, and we have some extra requirements that make the decision a little more challenging, but there are some names that I can rule out no matter where I live.  The unfortunate thing is that most of them show up when you look up my name on Baby Center.

Now, there are a ton of pregnancy-related web sites out there.  I mean, a ton.  So pretty early on we just picked one and have stuck with it.  Baby Center sends out emails several times a week with various updates.  Every Thursday it tells me I have begun a new week and talks about Peanut's size and development.  Other days it is information about healthy recipes or pre-natal testing or...baby names.

As it turns out, I don't care what names Jamie Lynn Spears is considering, nor am I likely to look to the movie Twilight for naming inspiration.  However, I thought the "Baby Name Explorer" looked interesting, so I put on my explorer hat and went to check it out.  The deal is, you put a name in their name finder and then you can look for sibling names (because of course you want to coordinate your children's names as you do their outfits...), or you can look up "suggested names."  I have no idea where these suggestions are coming from, but I thought it would be fun to see what came up when I put my own name in the database.  You know, just for a lark. 

That was wrong.

In case you are curious, or you really wanted to name your next child Mamie but you felt it too embarrassing an homage (it's not...), these are some of the other options the Baby Name Explorer suggests that someone who was considering the name Mamie might also like (in no particular order, too hard to choose from the bounty...):

Hattie 

Queenie (I didn't think middle school could get worse, but I think this would do it)

Mabel

Maeve  (substitute teacher nightmare)

Pippa

Prudence (seriously?)

Maisie

Magnolia (oh sure...)

Mathilde

Pepper (not Salt?)

Pearl

Clementine (oh my darlin'...)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Mamie ranks 5,894 on the list of popular names for Baby Center.  I'm sure 2010 will bounce me into the top 10.

At any rate, feel free to do your own exploring, but don't say you were not warned. 

April Checkup

Today we went back to the doctor's office for our monthly checkup, and all seems to be well.  We have a really nice doctor that I like a lot, but the visits are pretty different than those I might expect if I were going to my doctor in the United States.  We are also going to a more "popular" clinic than we might in the States (popular in Colombia referring more to folks with lower economic resources), so my comparisons are not particularly equivalent as I have always had private, insurance-covered health care.

I could name a variety of things that strike me as odd or just distinctive, but I think the main difference for me revolves around time.  In the United States my doctor made appointments.  She did not always manage to get me in at the precise time we scheduled, but she was always within shouting distance, and I only had to read People magazine for 15 minutes or so before someone attended to me.  Here, Dr. Lily does not take people by appointment.  It is strictly first come, first serve.  Hence, if you show up at 10am when her office hours begin on Saturday, you could easily wait until 11:45am before you even get into her office.  It all depends on how many other people showed up to see her on that day.

What struck me most today about this was how annoyed I could get just waiting there.  Rather than just sigh loudly, I started to think about what was so frustrating to me.  After all, it is not as if she suddenly changed the system on me, and it is not as if I had anything particularly pressing to do -- I was simply perturbed at having to wait.

And then I remembered going to the VA clinic with a homeless guest from Room in the Inn in Nashville and waiting the better part of the morning.  I thought about how much longer it takes us to catch the bus rather than find a taxi to get to and from work.  I thought about the hours-long line one can find at the emergency room or the day-long journey to get social services in Chicago for someone needing help from First United's Walk-In Ministry, or here in Barranquilla the mountain of people outside the stadium here when the government gives out a measly $30,000 COP ($15 USD) subsidy to families from lower economic backgrounds, and I realized that I was irritated because I have always had enough money to avoid such waiting.  Being poor (which, let's be clear, Richard and I are not) takes time.

It was a good reminder that I remain a deeply privileged person, and that such privilege rears its head in all sorts of forms - including internal disconnects when I choose not to exercise that privilege.  Don't worry about Peanut.  I have total confidence in Dr. Lily, and I am glad that someone of her care and quality attends to people in more difficult circumstances, as well as to privileged North Americans like myself.  And when we finally did get in to see her, she was pleased by how much Peanut seems to have grown and we were tickled to hear 140 beats per minute from our still en-stomached friend.

We have our first official obstetrician-gynecologist visit/interview on Tuesday, so keep up the good thoughts!