How Mirabai Happened

The pains first started on Friday at two in the morning. Courtney was up reading A Streetcar Named Desire, so to pass the anxious hours we took turns reading scenes to each other like the locos we are. You should hear Courtney’s Blanche, though.

And then, after four short hours, everything stopped.

Saturday was relatively uneventful, and on Sunday we hiked to Tzununa, a neighboring town, while the sun set on hillsides of brilliant yellow wildflowers. During the night the contractions began again at 2am. They seemed as though they would continue, so we called our midwife, Antonina, from Xela, two and a half hours away. They did not continue, though – four hours and out.

This cycle of four hours of labor continued through Wednesday, during which time we became excited, disappointed, frustrated, nervous – a huge bellyful of mixed emotions. One day was filled with relaxing meals and swimming, the next with tears and an interminable sense of limbo. Courtney took to walking at night, and one time was even surrounded by eight dogs in the barrio, barking and nipping at her – I imagine it was quite a sight (I was in bed).

Feeling something drastic was needed, something to clear the energy, we sent Antonina back to Xela where she was needed. We decided that our midwife here in San Marcos, Jenny, would be perfectly sufficient. This was the turning point.

Two notable but unrelated events bookmarked this decision. The first was on Tuesday night. Althea came home for a moment to check in with us during another bout of seemingly futile labor. While walking out on the street, she had come across a baby hummingbird that appeared to be hurt. She recounted her experience with the tiny creature: “Papa, I held her in my arms and I was worried about her, so I said a prayer for her and sent her my energy, and in the next minute, she started to move, straightened herself up and flew off. I think it’s a good sign for the baby.” Precious, no?

And then on Wednesday night, Courtney, Althea and I were visiting Rebecca (who would unexpectedly end up assisting at the birth) at Hotel La Paz. As we left the garden gate at the hotel, we heard a cat calling up in a tree. She was calling to us. We looked closer and realized that it was our old cat, Luna. We inherited her at the school, and she gave birth to our other two cats on our bed while we lived at the school. She took off shortly after Leroy arrived, about a year and a half ago. But there she was, still alive and well, up in a tree on the other side of town. We called back to her and she came down a branch and let us pick her up. A man approaching on the path soon scared her and she was gone just as quickly as she appeared. But we took that as another good sign. Oh, and that night was the luna llena – the full moon.
Courtney did not sleep much that night; she was up pacing the house, meditating, watching the moon, eating, singing all the kindergarten songs she could remember, and bouncing around as she slapped her belly and sang commandingly, “come on out now / stop being lazy / you gotta get your little butt out / so I can be a good mama to you.” Or something like that.
When I got up the next morning, she was at the kitchen table throwing down castor oil cocktails like only Courtney can do. She read in one of her birthing books that it speeds up labor. And it did. Wow. Like gasoline on a fire.

By 8:30am she was frenetically rushing Althea out the door. By 9:30am her water broke, and we started chaotically calling our midwives. We couldn’t reach Jenny for some reason, and Maria (our third back-up midwife) was stuck on the other side of the lake due to a landslide. The water was out in town. One thing after another. Finally we got Jenny and she came running up to the house. We called our friend, Rebecca, to come and help at the imminent birth. She was not expecting this, but she came quickly.

The labor was fast and furious, and by 11:45am I watched our baby virtually fall out of Courtney onto our kitchen floor – right in front of the refrigerator. She was caught by our midwife, Jenny.
We – and it seemed like nearly everyone else – were almost certain that it would be a boy. Althea, however, never tired of correcting us when we spoke of the baby as “he” or her little “brother.” She was insistent that this baby, whom she had brought about with her magic wand, special-ordered for this very purpose, was a girl. No doubts about it. When she came into the bedroom and saw her little sister, she looked at us with an ecstatic smile and knowing eyes. She graciously spared us those four patronizing words that are the due of the vindicated.
Mirabai Remedios Wilson joined us on Thursday, 13 November at around 11:45, weighing a solid 8 lbs.

She has already brought a little bit of heaven into our lives.

The Magic Wand

They say time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Time certainly goes by quickly, but I think fruit flies are faster. We’ve been eating beaucoup banana for the past several months. We cut the bunches off our organic trees and string them up in the kitchen at the school. Everyone at the school loves to sample the selection, and kids are always coming by and asking for bananas. Our harvests have been bountiful and delicious, and though we eat them voraciously in all imaginable manners (in bread, as pudding, with yogurt or solito), the fruit flies still get their share. Five entire bananas can virtually disappear overnight, leaving nothing but a small strip of blackened peel. I find them quite the admirable adversary, really. It’s a sort of friendly sparring that reminds you just how good the bananas truly are.

The last three or four months have been full for us. After coming off a rough spell of it in October and November, we spent most of December trying to relax and vacation a bit. We went to the beach here in Guatemala for the first time and had a wonderful time eating fish, swimming in monster waves and releasing baby turtles (you can see pictures in our Picassa albums - "more pics" link at left). Christmas here was a welcome change from the consumer chaos in the US. Here it’s a big party, with everyone sharing tamales in the street and lighting off fireworks. At midnight on Christmas Eve, each town around the lake lights off the biggest fireworks display they can muster, and from our house we had a spectacular view of three different towns’ shows. Right after Christmas an Italian friend of ours celebrated a surprise birthday party on a chartered boat. We spent the day cruising around the lake, eating on a beach, swimming out in the middle of the bay of Santiago. It was a magical day, filled with friends and fun.

In January we went back to work and formally launched the first full academic year for our school here in San Marcos. After the back-to-school craziness settled, we set straight to working on our accreditation with the Ministry of Education, planning for the construction of our next classroom, searching for new teachers for next year, and fundraising with gusto. It’s a lot of work, but it’s exciting to see the kids everyday and feel the rhythmic heartbeat of this school in its infancy. You can read more in our updates at the web site: www.EscuelaCaracol.org

Courtney's parents came to visit for the first time in March, and we enjoyed our Semana Santa vacation with them (Easter week). I think Guatemala made quite the impression on them.

We’re currently conducting a search for our grades teacher for next year as well as a new kindergarten teacher. After this year, Courtney is going to step down as our kindergarten teacher. The reason is, well, really it started with Althea and a magic wand that she requested for Christmas. A friend of hers said that she was getting a magic wand for Christmas and Althea asked her if it would work to wish for a baby sister. Soon Althea had us writing a very important letter to Santa requesting the wand. To our chagrin, Santa delivered at the last minute. Two months later, late one night, as Courtney and I peered over the results of a cheap Guatemalan home pregnancy test, Althea listened slyly from her room where she feigned sleep. When she heard us laughing with near astonishment over the significance of two lines, she began to giggle with uncontrollable glee, chanting, “you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant!”

Althea takes full credit and responsibility for this turn of events, and she is quick to assure us that she’s on diaper duty.

So, yes, we are pregnant and expecting another child during the first week of November. Althea and I have a friendly dispute going over whether it’s a boy or a girl. I want a boy, personally. It all seems to be happening so fast. We’re just trying to keep up, roll with the punches, and enjoy the bananas as much as we can. In that way, sometimes, the keeping up can be its own reward – it keeps you in the present moment.