On Beggars

Brandon and I have always tried to be generous with beggars.  Everyone living in poor countries has to come up with their own personal code about beggars, because they're something that you will deal with whether you want to or not.  It's easy to think that you are a kind and generous person until a beggar comes up to you, asking for money.  Suddenly you realize how much someone invading your personal space and demanding that, by virtue of having wealth you should give it away, is intensely irritating.  Then as you brush them off you feel the immediate backwash of guilt from dismissing another human over fifty cents.

Repeat a couple hundred times and eventually your conscience develops a callus.  But it's never quite thick enough.

So, Brandon and I give to beggars.  It's probably not a fiscally wise policy and it may not even be a wise policy in general, if you believe the stories of stollen drugged-out babies carried around to open the pockets of willing people.  But we've decided to assuage our own consciences, rationalizing the giving by quoting scripture and figuring we'd never go broke by giving money to beggars.  And at least some of them have to be legitimate.

But then they learned where we live.

And so we've helped them.  One man needed a loan for a project.  Another wanted a job.  A third came by every few weeks for a little infusion.  The beggar ladies always got bread an a handful of somoni.  It's not hard to help when everyone here is so poor.  Sure, they might not manage the money well, but that was up to them, not us.  

Then one of the men ended up in jail this morning because of things that happened on our property.  And suddenly the money and the dependency and helping and not helping all got mixed up and the questions got more pressing.

The whole situation – the situation with multiple people constantly asking for money – has been an interesting study of where king Benjamin’s sermon hits reality.  It’s really quite easy to give to a passing beggar on the street, but it’s something else entirely to give, give, and give again to people who come and ring your doorbell several times a week demanding that you give them money because their wife is sick or their daughters deserve toys for their birthday or they’re going to Russia for work or they’re trying to pay first month’s rent on a house.  You never know what is lies and what is truth and what is truth stretched into a better lie to get a little more money out of the situation. 

My inclination and Brandon’s too it to tell everyone to take a hike and leave us the heck alone.  Friends in the embassy community don’t give on principle, quoting security concerns (and after this morning, that makes more sense) as a shield to hide behind the fact that really these people are irritating and their demands are so offensive.  Why does my having more mean that you deserve to have any of it?

But then King Benjamin reminds us that we are all beggars and the beggar should not put up his petition in vain.  And don’t forget about Lazarus and the rich man.  So then telling everyone who rings my doorbell to take a hike isn’t so simple.  Is it right to create a situation where these people count on you to get them out of every little situation that comes up?  Is it right to tell them that you can’t help because you think that surely that many children can’t get sick in so short a time?  What if the last ten times are a lie and this one really is a truth?  What if they’re taking your money and spending it on getting drunk and beating their wife because they’re in such a desperate situation?  What if this money will bring food to the four hungry children at home?  I don’t know what it’s like to be hungry.  I don’t know what it’s like to not know where your next meal is going to come from.  I’ve never worried a single day in my life about money. 

I don’t know if there is a good answer.  I don’t know what we’ll do about this going forward.  I don't know what is good for these people ringing my doorbell and I don't know what is bad for them.  And it's frustrating not to know.  

And even more frustrating is knowing that I will never know.

Living in Tajikistan: Earthquakes

I didn't know that Tajikistan was a seismically active country.  When I think of earthquakes I think of California or Japan or somewhere on the Pacific Coast (ring of fire, right?), not somewhere smack in the middle of Asia.

But it turns out that having lots of very high, very young mountains isn't just related to seismic activity, it's caused by seismic activity.

I remember the first earthquake we felt last year.  I was sitting in our study, which is on top of the front porch, and the room started gently swaying.  There had been an earthquake (maybe two?) in Egypt, so knew what I was feeling, but earthquakes always take you by surprise.  My first reaction is to look for the child who is jumping up and down enough to make the floor shake and a half second later I realize that no child can make the floor sway like that, no matter how hard they jump.  All of our rooms have chandeliers and they are the best confirmation of an earthquake - chandeliers never sway for anything but an earthquake.  It seems like they should sway on the slightest provocation - after all, they're just hanging there by a little chain - but they're pretty picky about what makes them move.  And it's pretty much just earthquakes.

After watching the chandelier sway in fascination for a few seconds, I decided that maybe the study that was only supported by two concrete porch pillars wasn't the safest place to ride out an earthquake and so I got out and watched the hall chandelier sway for half a minute more.  Then I asked the children if they had felt the earthquake.  They hadn't.

Our next earthquake was more dramatic.  I was laying down for a nap when the chandeliers started swaying.  Then the doors started rattling right as all of the chandelier crystals started tinkling noisily.  My housekeeper ran in my room, pointed at the chandelier, and grabbed Joseph while I grabbed Eleanor before running out of the house.  We all sat in the courtyard and waited for the chandeliers to stop swaying before trying to go back to life as normal.  The kids talked about that one for days.

The third earthquake happened on Christmas day.  We were asleep for that one.  But everyone else was not asleep and tried to call our radio (off), call Brandon's phone (not in the room) and have mobile patrol check on us (didn't hear the doorbell).  But we were fine.

It has been quiet recently until this past week.  Tuesday we were eating lunch and Joseph started jumping on the floor.  But it turned out (again) to be an earthquake.  One day I'll be able to tell the difference.  We looked at the chandelier (swaying), listened for the tinkles (one or two) and went back to eating our lunch.

Sunday we were watching conference in the study and the swaying started up again.  After watching the chandelier (why is that so fascinating?) for ten or fifteen seconds, we evacuated the study and went to my bedroom (outside wall) and watched the chandelier sway in there instead.  After ninety seconds or so, it calmed down enough that we could go back to watching conference.

I still remember the big Alaskan earthquake that hit when I was in elementary school - the pictures of houses sliding into enormous cracks in the earth haunted my nightmares for years.  Earthquakes and tornados (we've all seen The Wizard of Oz) battled for being the worst natural disasters I could imagine.  Tornadoes could pick your house up and earthquakes could swallow your house.  Both bad.  I was very glad to live in North Carolina where no earthquake has happened ever (oh wait, I just checked.  There was a 2.6 this year).

But it turns out that most earthquakes aren't the huge-cracks-open-in-the-earth type.  They're more like the the-chandelier-is-swaying-keep-eating-your-lunch-kind.  Which are definitely less dramatic, but ultimately much easier on the decorating.  And I'm pretty okay with that.

Living in Dushanbe: General Conference

It was General Conference weekend this past Saturday and Sunday.  In the US (and probably the rest of the whole world), LDS General Conference is held the first weekend in April and October.  But in Tajikistan, it's held the second weekend in April and October.

Tajikistan is exactly twelve hours ahead of Utah time, makes it pretty late to start watching conference when the first session begins at ten in the morning.  And the next session - two in the afternoon - is right out.  And I suppose Brandon could get up early on Sunday morning and watch the evening priesthood session that starts at six, but he hasn't yet.

When we were in Baku, everyone watched one session together on Conference Sunday - usually the Saturday morning session - and then tried (and in our house, failed) to play catch-up to watch the other sessions.  It's really hard to get everyone excited to sit down and watch two hours of conference when they're already spent two hours in church on a Sunday - for three Sundays in a row.  We always started out with good intentions, but never finished very strong.

So when we came here and Brandon - by virtue of being the only priesthood holder in the country at the time - was assigned group leader, we decided to do things a little differently.  I've always enjoyed having a weekend dedicated to watching conference.  It's a special time, and the atmosphere builds on itself as everyone sits (or wiggles or colors or lays) and listens to talk after talk from apostles, the prophet, and other general authorities.  It's just not the same when you break it up.  And so we just made our own conference weekend - a week late (thanks, internet!).

The children are pretty reasonable about watching four hours of conference on Saturday and four on Sunday, and I get to feel the warm glow of having seen all of the sessions in one good go.  Sure, the timing may not be orthodox, but we're in Tajikistan and that means we pretty much get to do things however works best for us and our group.

And it turns out that the talks are the exact same ones that everyone else listened to last week.  So haven't it a week later doesn't make that much difference.  Hopefully.

Baby Things

About a month ago I washed a load of diapers.  After drying, the diapers stayed in the laundry room for a week or so.  Then I hauled them up to Eleanor's room.  They sat in her drawers for another week or so longer.  When I finally got tired of them taking up a drawer, I put them away.  In storage.

Back in January I pulled out the toddler bed from storage.  With Eleanor and Joseph watching intently, I awkwardly (and grumpily.  I hate those slats every time) put the little white bed together.  Eleanor, in transports of delight, cooed over her bed, climbing off and on and off and on.  With other things to do, I left her crib up.

Then a week later, I put it away.  In storage.

For the last nine and a half years of my life, I've never been without a crib somewhere in my house.  One baby finishes with the crib because the next one is kicking them out.  I've always had a full bin of diapers.  Packages of wipes are scattered through the house, waiting for the next impromptu diaper change.  Now those wipes are all going dry.

All of my children are walking.  All of my children are talking.  All of my children can (can, not do) feed themselves.  All of them can use a toilet in public.  And I'm still wearing normal clothes with no date in sight for anything different.

This was not my plan.

I've never wanted a break in the babyness, never wanted to take the crib down or put the diapers in storage until I was ready to give the crib away and hand the diapers over to somebody who needed them.  My motto has always been 'the only way out is through.'  Just keep having them until you're done.  And then be done.

My mother, at my age, found herself with an unused crib and extra diapers and that crib waited for four years until my brother was there to fill it.  Our gaily decorated nursery, with cloud wallpaper trim cheerfully marching around the room, waited empty, with no purpose but to wait through the pause.

I always vowed that I would not have the four year gap as I pitied my brother, lagging so far behind everyone else.  He spent all his high school years alone, going on vacation alone with my parents, going out to dinner alone with my parents, and fought the parent-teenager battles alone.  I would not do that to one of my children.

And now here I am, at my mother's age with my own crib waiting and my own plans spoiled and a new level of empathy for my mother.  We make plans and then life makes other ones.  We all know which plans always win in the end.

Sometimes as I look at our five little ducklings playing together I wonder if these are all I get.  And if these are all I get, am I okay with that?  I am okay because I know that if God is okay, then I'll either get okay or spend the rest of my life angry and bitter.  But that doesn't have to mean that I can't be a little sad.  I wonder that if this is just a pause like my mother's, how long will the pause be.  Will I have my own caboose to apologize to as they watch everyone pack up and leave them to be alone with the insufferable parents?  If it is a pause, how long do I wait until I decide that the pause is a period?  Do I try something heroic or just say that five children is enough heroics without getting complicated and expensive medicine involved?  Will I feel like that is giving up?

I had always had a secret plan about how many children I could squeeze in before I hit 35 and I could claim old age as a good excuse to stop.  My secret plan sometimes felt a little selfish - why let age and a number mathematically determined when I was in my twenties stop me from having even more children to welcome in to our noisy happy family and make it even noisier and happier?  Now I have the opposite problem - not enough instead of too many.

I've always known that I would get older and things wouldn't work as well as they used to.  Mostly so far, this has been theoretical.  I've enjoyed great healthy pregnancies that never took more than a month or two to show up.  No morning sickness, no gestational diabetes, no preeclampsia.  I probably took all of those things for granted, although I tried not to.

But now aging is rearing its ugly head and I get to feel the very beginning of what life will bring me with increasing regularity - wanting something that my body can't give me.  In the end I will die and resurrection day will come and that will never happen again.  But for now, I'll just have to wait.

How Medical Care Works in Tajikistan

Joseph has reflux.  We didn't know that when he was a baby.  He didn't have any of the classic reflux signs - crying, slow weight gain, general unhappiness - and so I didn't wonder if he had issues.  A sleeping, happy baby is a healthy baby right?

When he got a little older, I noticed that he would make a strange gasping noise as he sucked his thumb.  I talked with the doctor - he also smelled like bile after the gasping incidents - and she said to see if he still made it after he stopped sucking his thumb - maybe he was just gagging himself as he was sucking.  He's stopped and it hasn't.

So back in November, I talked with the Regional Medical Officer about the reflux and Joseph got put on medication.  If it didn't work, let him know.  It didn't, so Joseph got another medication, at half dose (turns out little boy reflux medication is the same thing as adult reflux medication, just less), which also didn't work.  So then Joseph got a whole dose.  He thought this was very cool, and swallowed his 'capsule,' as he insisted on calling it, every morning with great aplomb.  His favorite trick was to do it without anything to drink.

That, unfortunately, didn't do the trick either.

So Joseph and I are going to London.

If we lived in America like the majority of Americans, we would go to a pediatric gastroenterologist.  If we lived in a large city, we would choose the one that accepted our insurance.  If we lived in a small one, we might drive an hour or so to a nearby city that was large enough to warrant a pediatric gastroenterologist.

But we live in Central Asia.  We also go to see a pediatric gastroenterologist.  Because reflux in Central Asia is the same reflux that happens in America.  But we just go see a pediatric gastroenterologist in London.  See how that works?

Going to London is a fairly involved process.  First, I have to abase myself before Brandon fifty times to apologize for leaving him with the rest of the children to galavant off to one of the most fun places in the world to be stuck in for a doctor's appointment.

Then we have to get plane tickets.  In Baku there was a direct six-hour flight to London.  It was great.  But we don't live in cosmopolitan Baku anymore and our direct flights to western Europe are: Frankfurt.  Once a week.  On Saturday.  Otherwise, if you want to to west, you go to Istanbul.  Thank heaven the embassy provides the plane tickets because it turns out that plane tickets with an open return date from Dushanbe to London are very expensive.  Very.

Next comes the hotel.  Which, thankfully the embassy also provides.  Turns out that there's a whole office in London dedicated solely to taking care of people who live in places where they can't get outlandish things like pediatric GI appointments, or root canals, in the capital city they live in.  It's great.

So Joseph and I are booked at the same hotel that I went to last time I was in London.  It was a very nice room, but I hope that this time my room does not have clear glass wall separating the bathroom and bedroom.  Because I'm not really a big fan of waiting to use the bathroom until Joseph's asleep.  Or showering only after bedtime.

And, of course, the doctor's appointment.  I guess pediatric GI specialists are very busy in London because we couldn't get a doctor's appointment until May.  But also, done by the London medical center (or centre?  After all it is London.  But the American embassy.  Which one?!?).

Then the credit card.  We only have one credit card right now - I'm not big on spending money I don't have - but the limit's a little low.  It's fine for every day spending, but maybe not for London medical spending.  I heard a recent story of a friend who went for testing and spent $15,000 on testing.  Just testing.  Not the room or other expenses.  Our insurance does reimburse the fees, but it takes a few months.  So, another credit card was in order.  Hopefully it will get here before May.

And last, but definitely least, child care.  There was a time once when Brandon pointed out that really it might be better for him to take any medevac'd child (this was a theoretical discussion) to London and we could just live our life like normal without any interruptions.  Then reality intervened and I'm going to London with Joseph because it turns out that Brandon has work to do and doesn't like dropping it in someone else's lap without fair warning.  So that still leaves us one adult down.

My housekeeper doesn't speak English.  Her daughters do (enough) and so they're always a babysitting team.  Anisa comes because she speaks English and Zarifa comes because in Tajikistan unwed young ladies don't go to people's houses alone.  This works well in the evenings, but not so well during the day when things like school are in session.  

Luckily a friend has a housekeeper who speaks fantastic English and is looking for some extra cash.  My (wonderful) friend was happy to loan her housekeeper and so the children will be spending their time with Mrs. Guli.  I don't have high hopes for jobs or school getting done with any consistency, but I'm pretty sure that nobody will die between the hours of nine and six, which is really what I'm looking for anyway.

So after we get the flight, hotel, appointment, and child care lined up, Joseph and I will go to London so that a doctor can spend (maybe) an hour talking to me about Joseph's reflux.  Then we'll hang out for a few days and come home.

Because that's how we get things done in Central Asia.

Bukhara

After visiting Samarkand, we visited Bukhara.  Instead of being nestled up against the mountains, Bukhara is on a flat, flat plain west of Samarkand.  Our initial reaction to Bukhara, after visiting green and (relatively) well-kept Samarkand, was disappointing.  

And it degraded to downright worried when we, as the last in a seven-car caravan, stopped in the middle of a narrow alley surrounded by crumbling brick buildings.  I had flashbacks to driving in Baku as we wound our way through very narrow streets to find a parking space (what are these parking lot things that everyone talks of in America?) so that we could check in to our hotel.  

When we made it to our hotel, and the building sharing a wall with it was actually a pile of rubble, we were even more dubious.  But, much to the CLOs' relief, the hotel turned out to be a very picturesque hotel arranged in a series of courtyards and decorated in traditional style.  Sure, we couldn't flush our toilet paper, but that's the cost of charm.

Bukhara has a much more defined (and walkable) old city than Samarkand, so we had a nice time walking and seeing the old city.  The children, who had spent five hours in the car, had had enough of tours by the end of our walking tour and decided that really, the best thing to do inside a historic old mosque was play 'airplane.'  As I mentioned earlier, historical sites are wasted on the young.

The next day we saw a few sites, including the last emir of Bukhara's summer palace, a fortress, and a mausoleum, and after lunch called sightseeing a day and got down to the real purpose of the trip: shopping.

Eleanor was sick with a fever, so Brandon bravely volunteered to stay at the hotel with the boys while Kathleen, Sophia, and I did some souvenir shopping.  We picked up a few gifts and mementoes and finished with a nice Persian miniature and declared ourselves shopped out, bravely resisting the very tempting impulse to go rug shopping.  We only have three, and you can always use more rugs, right?  I'm still a little sad about my resistance.

And then the next morning our fun was over, with everyone in the cars by seven to make the twelve-hour trip back to Dushanbe.  I think that I'm just getting inured to travel because twelve hours in a car seems like a cakewalk compared to thirty hours in a plane and airports.  

When we asked the children how they liked the trip, the responses ranged from "I hated it!" from Edwin to, "Well... the bus was fun," from Kathleen.  Brandon was equally balanced between the stress of wrassling the children for five days and seeing important silk road cities he's wanted to see for over half his life.  I, who am always happy for a change of scene and pace and not cooking, enjoyed everything immensely.  Eleanor had no comment.  One out of seven isn't bad, right?

Take Your Kids to Samarkand!

When Brandon was in language training, he and his Tajik teacher would often have conversations about linguistic misunderstandings.  Karim told Brandon about one advertisement he heard when he was new to the U.S.  'Take your kids to Samarkand!' it told the parents listening and then listed all of the fun things the kids would get to do.  Karim couldn't figure out why anyone in America would haul their children halfway across the world to take their children to a silk road city in Uzbekistan.  Sure, Samarkand was pretty cool, but it's not that well known in America.  Only later, when his English had improved, did he realize that the advertiser had said "summer camp" and not "Samarkand."

The CLO here organizes a trip to Samarkand and Bukhara every year.  Last year the children were too young (and nobody else with children went), but this year, Brandon decided, would be the year to take our kids to Samarkand.

When he announced that we were going, I was skeptical.  "You do know," I pointed out, "that we have a ten-hour drive there, a four-hour drive to Bukhara, and a twelve-hour drive back?"

"I know," he replied.  "It'll be fine.  We've done longer drives."  I then wrote down his statement that the trip was his idea and that if anything went wrong he couldn't blame me.

The drive our first day turned from ten hours to eleven and a half (for a 290-mile drive.  That's an average speed of thirty miles an hour), but the children actually survived - and we did too.  After a money exchange deal in a hotel room and dinner everyone got to bed.

The next morning, bright and early, we set out to see Samarkand.  We spent the day driving around in our tour bus with Dennis, our Russian guide, seeing the amazing sights of Samarkand.

And they really were amazing.  When Brandon got excited about going to Samarkand I couldn't see what it was about.  Old city in Uzbekistan.  Sure, there was that silk road thing, but I've seen Istanbul.   And Cairo. I think I've got Islamic sight-seeing down. 

Turns out that I was wrong.  By the end of the day I could understand why Brandon had wanted to go to Samarkand for over half his life (not kidding.  He remembers seeing a picture of one of the sights in a book when he was eleven or twelve and wanting to go see it for himself).  

The children, on the other hand, weren't too impressed.  Sight-seeing is wasted on anyone under the age of ten.  And since that's all our children, it was wasted on all of them.  Their favorite part was partying in the back of the bus with their friends.  At least it kept them happy.

By the end of the day everyone was exhausted and there might have been a few cranky babies (three under two), but we all saw some pretty amazing stuff.  And now for the rest of their lives the children can say that their parents took them to Samarkand.  

Mother of Seven

For the past week I have been a (temporary) mother of seven.  In addition to my own five children, I've been watching the two boys (ages six and three) of a friend here at post.  Something came up and she had to be in London, so I offered to watch her boys so her husband could come along.  London is always better with a friend.

I'm not a martyr, however.  We had already talked about a child swap before and I'm pretty sure that she's getting the worse end of the bargain.  Because two children and five children, no matter the ages of the five children, is not the same number of children.

I've watched more children before - when we were in Virginia I watched my sister's four children and so had nine children ages eight and under for four days all by myself - so I wasn't that worried about two extra boys.

And for most of the time, I was right.  The six year old went to school (another reason to pity my friend - one extra child during the day is not five extra children during the day) and the three year old played very well with Joseph and Edwin.  He may have wandered around the house naked from the waist down from time to time, but that's a pretty regular occurrence here anyway.

I still got my nap and school still got done.  We had the situation so well under control that on Monday we held Family Home Evening.  As I cuddled in between the two boys for our lesson (also known as Stories From the Friend), the younger gave me a big hug and exclaimed, "I LOVE you, Sister Sherwood!!!"  I felt the warm glow of a mother hen taking in a few extras.  See, easy.  No problem.  Let's all sing Kumbaya together.

We took the children on a picnic for International Women's Day and everyone enjoyed themselves.  Yes, there may have been some rumpled feathers when people had to stay in the stroller, but everyone recovered enough to enjoy their picnic.  We were just fine.

Then Eleanor got feverish and Brandon had to make and emergency trip to the embassy.  Followed by daily visits to the med unit.  So our mornings went like this: get everyone fed, get everyone dressed, put child number one on the bus, put everyone else in the car, go in to the med unit, get Eleanor's finger inspected, get everyone back home, start school.

Thursday night I hosted Ladies' night, which meant that I made three dozen doughnuts, cleaned up the house, made dinner, fed dinner, and packed everyone off to bed, all before seven o'clock.  Then on Friday, in addition to getting Eleanor's finger inspected we also took everyone's pictures for Uzbekistan visas.  Before heading into the embassy, I gave everyone a buddy then gave them an order in line.  So as we marched into the embassy I trailed three pairs of children, all holding hands, marching in formation.  It wasn't quite twelve little girls in two straight lines, but we were halfway there.

Saturday was rain, so we didn't go anywhere and Brandon and I took turns napping while the children played happily upstairs, destroying the toy room.  But toy rooms are the sacrificial room so that the rest of the house stays intact.  By that night the boys were back home with their parents and I was once again the mother of only five.

I've realized that, no matter how well behaved children are (and these boys were well behaved, often better behaved than our own boys), two extra children is two extra children.  It is two more sets of pajamas to be put on, two more sets of teeth to be brushed, two more plates to dish, to more pairs of shoes to be put on, two more mouths to ask questions with, and two more pairs of hands to make messes with.  It's just a little more chaos in an already chaotic house.

It's almost enough to let my friend off her side of the bargain.  Because I know that five more is so much very worse than two more.  I can't actually imagine the chaos that will create.  It will be a perpetually unfolding nightmare complete with sound effects, smell effects, and mess effects.  I don't think that's nice to do to someone I like, much less a close and dear friend.

But it's just not quite enough.  Because the Greek Islands - all alone with no bums to wipe, meals to cook, or messes to clean up - are looking really, really nice right now.

Living in Cities

I used to think that cities were awesome.  I grew up in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, and I would dream of one day living somewhere awesomely urban like Manhattan.  I'd have piles of money, a rooftop terrace, and live where everything was happening all the time.  I even switched housing assignments in my college study abroad so I could live in Vienna's urban third district instead of the suburban thirteenth.

Then I lived in Cairo with children.  Now my dreams are of eighty acres with a house plopped exactly in the middle.  I don't see anyone, nobody can see me, and I can spot visitors coming a quarter mile off.  The nearest stoplight would be at least twenty miles away.

That eighty acres, however, is only a dream and a retirement account for now, and cities are my reality for the next twenty years.

I can smell my northern neighbor's Chinese food cooking every lunch time, and my southern neighbor can watch the children play noisily in the courtyard.  I can watch my back neighbors' wedding parties and they can watch me run every morning.  And every single person who feels like it can ring my doorbell every time they walk by.  The sound of cars (and trucks and motorbikes and scooters) comes through the front windows and I can hear children playing through the back ones.  I hear when the milk man comes by and I can tell when the neighbor has his Harley-driving friend over.  It's all very cozy.

The one thing I will miss, however, about living in cities is the convenience.

A few days ago I made black beans and rice for dinner.  Every Monday I plan out the week's meals, make a shopping list, and give the shopping list to my housekeeper.  And every week I forget at least one ingredient.  This week it was sour cream.  Last week it was carrots.  And the week before it was onions.  One day I'll just make up a basic shopping list, print off twenty or so and just check off what I need.  Until then I'll just keep forgetting ingredients.

In America, this would mean that I would have to get in my car, drive to the store, park the car, walk in the store, walk through the store, wait in line to buy my one carton of sour cream, walk back out to the car, drive home, park the car, and go back to cooking dinner.  I know this drill very well.  Once, while living in Virginia, I went to Target three times in one day.  It was very irritating.

In Dushanbe I just had to walk out the door, walk seven minutes to the store, get the sour cream from the refrigerator case twenty feet from the door, hand over my money, and walk back home.  No cars (which is good because Brandon takes the car to work), no parking lots, no lines of angry 5:30 Target shoppers.  Just a brisk walk on a nice spring afternoon.  Maybe even soothing.

One day I won't smell anyone else's cooking or hear their friend with the Harley or listen to conversations through my bathroom wall.  I'll only smell my own cooking, hear my own family, and listen to the birds.  It will be very peaceful.

But I'd better make really really sure to have my shopping list in order when I finally drive those twenty miles to the closest stop light.  Because my days of walking to the store will be over.

Eleanor and Her Fingernails

Thursday morning started out very well.  Chores were finished quickly, school went smoothly, and we were almost finished half an hour early.  As I read through the last few grammar exercises with Kathleen (please label the subject pronouns and object pronouns in the sentences), I considered what to do with my extra time.  Maybe I could start lunch early and get an extra-long nap.  Or I could work on some organizational things for school.  And of course there's always Facebook.

Then the screaming started.  

I've acquired a fine tuned sense of screams throughout my nine and a half years of parenting.  There are the irritated screams when one child has taken another's toy.  And then the frustrated screams; this toy just won't come apart they way it's supposed to.  Screams of fear when the daredevil car ride is just a little too fast.  Pain screams when a finger gets pinched or a face accidentally kicked.  

But this screaming was none of the above.  It was the scream of pain that meant blood, and lots of it.  

I bolted across the floor to Eleanor, who was sitting next to the running treadmill screaming and screaming and screaming while blood dripped from her fingers to the floor.

I scooped her up, rushed her to the bathroom, washed the fingers, and inspected them.  The tips and fingernails of her pinky finger, ringer finger, and thumb were bleeding and torn.  They appeared to be unbroken, or at least without any visible bones sticking out, so I bandaged them up, gave her a double dose of ibuprofen, and called Brandon.  He told me to call the doctor, so I did.  If she's still unconsolable in the afternoon, give them a call.  Otherwise, buddy tape the two fingers and keep everything clean.

After Eleanor's nap I consulted with Brandon, sending pictures, and he agreed that she would probably be okay.  Eleanor had calmed down by then so we decided to wait until the morning and see if any swelling had set in.

She wasn't any worse in the morning, so we said thanks for keeping us out of London and the surgeon's office and I went on with my day.

By Sunday the fingers had scabbed over enough that we stopped taping them (have you ever tried to tape a baby's fingers?  They're very, very little) and declared the crisis over.  The fingernails had fallen off Eleanor's ring finger and thumb, but we had hope that they would grow back.  

Tuesday was International Women's day.  We took the children to the botanical gardens and everyone had a nice picnic.  I noticed that Eleanor's finger looked pretty swollen and could tell that her temperature was rising.  We put her down for a nap and when she woke up a few hours later, her temperature had spiked to 103.  So Brandon called the long-suffering local doctor (yes, these things always happen on a holiday, on the weekend, or at night) who met him at the embassy.  She attempted to lance the finger, but nothing other than blood came out, so after some poking and spraying with antibiotic, she sent Eleanor home with oral antibiotics and an appointment for the next morning.

I took Eleanor in for the next three days, and by Friday she was declared to be on the road to health and free of her dressing.  As the doctor looked over Eleanor's poor thumb, she shook her head and sighed.  "I'm pretty sure that thumbnail isn't going to grow back.  The nail bed looks too damaged."

And so, at the tender age of twenty-two months, Eleanor has lost her thumbnail forever.  When she gets her nails done for her wedding one day, she'll have to tell the tale, one that she will have told countless times, of how she stuck her hand in a treadmill as a baby and the nail was ripped off.  And then her irresponsible parents let the thumb get infected and she was disfigured for life before she even turned two years old.  Both she and the manicurist will shake their heads at such derelict parents - who would do that to a baby? 

So for the count, we now have four out of the five children scarred for life; two chins, one eyebrow, and now a fingernail.  But no broken bones.  So I guess we're not doing too badly.