12 25 & 12 26 07

12 25 07
I’m in the breakfast room of the La Quinta Inn South in Tallahassee. It’s an ok motel, a few notches below the Hampton Inn which means the breakfast doesn’t have any boiled eggs or sausage patties. Every single thing here has sugar or corn syrup except the hot drinks and hopefully the juices.
There’s a Xmas news item on CNN. I’m sitting close to the tv screen. The digital image keeps breaking up. Now they’re showing a soldier in Iraq and the two week old daughter he hasn’t met. Before, the story was of a bridge in Nepal that collapsed with 1000 people on it. What is God thinking? At any given time?

Yesterday Noche Buena was good. A and I cooked at Lucas’. Alina’s first Noche Buena. Lucas was very happy we were there. No tree. Alfredo accidentally cracked the glass top table by putting on top of it the hot pan with the pernil in it. It’s hard to tell if Christina was upset. We’ll have to figure out how to replace it.

Alina liked ripping up paper. Christina gave her an activity triangle, with lots of knobs and pedals and wheels, just the right size for her to lift, push with her feet, turn. She loved it. She’s working very hard on standing up. I was on the floor with her and she climbed onto me, then held on to my head and let go twice, balancing free hand on her feet. She never stops, she crawls, she finds her way to where she can use her hands to climb up, the couch, chair, her walker, her activity center.

I wish I could see her every day.

Now they’re showing a guy who drove into a tv station. Can’t tell if he did it on purpose.

Right in front of me is a fake fireplace with decorative logs with pretty bark, in front of it in a green flat vase is an arrangement of dry weeds maybe, long branches with heart shaped leaves, stalks of small white flowers. Two green candles on metal stands on either side of the fake fire hole, fire tools. On the white stone mantel [this place is supposed I guess to look ‘souwes’] is a comical stuffed Santa with a big round nose, pompoms on his jacket and a big cascabel hanging from his hand.

How my father would have loved to know Alina!

This year may Lucas have his moment of clarity. Yesterday at one point he and Cristina were talking about two of her uncles who are “alcoholics”. It was clear that the identity, in their mind, doesn’t apply to Lucas.

Being Xmas day there are not too many people in the breakfast room.

Two more soldiers in Iraq, a brother and sister? Sending Xmas greetings. A story about Iraq’s Christians living in fear.

Yesterday L kept talking about how some people come to be punks. [Now it’s a story about Xmas behind bars. Moms in prison sending video messages home.] It’s my same preoccupation. Why did I turn out a punk?
The women on the Mom video are crying, throwing kisses in tears. Now Moms are singing We wish you a merry xmas. Digital break up…little boy talking about spending time w her. He’s alsmot in tears. Can’t tell if the families send video messagesback…The mom and the boy are hugging but I can’t tell where they are..I’m wanting to watch but wanting not to watch, to keep writing.

What will we do today? I wanted to drive to a town called Panacea I just found out about, a 45 minute drive away, on the coast. Lucas says he doesn’t want to go. I wonder if he drank a lot of beer last night after we left? Today he wants to go to a pig roast at the house of his Puerto Rican friends. Yesterday the friend didn’t want to stop by our Noche Buena, because L said, ‘I have nothing here for him.’ No alcohol.

I like how the picture looks when the digital breaks up.

Out the window there’s a bush with red flowersa beyond the squared glass panes, the sheer white curtains, the green brocade drapes, sky, a tree..

Back to the Nepal bridge. They seem to have no actual visuals so they are showing maps with dots. Jumping over to the Vatican. Pope Benedict bending down to kiss something in the smoke, wearing that tall gold pagan looking cap.
Special xmas meal in space for the astronauts.
Keeping a foster family of foster kids together black and white..who are they?
They have 3 children of their own and adopted three more…

One of my fantasies is to get a foster girl.
The sound breaks up too…there goes the video…They want to have one more…they now have 8.

Oscar Peterson died. Kidney failure.
High winds and power outages and fire danger in California. Scary sci fi global warming weather.

12 26 07
This has been a good visit. Yesterday L got to talking about North Star friends and how good that whole experience had been for him, and Red Cliff too...how good it had been to be stripped of everything and learn to survive in the desert. The time he washed his balls with purell and screamed with pain...The first time he made a fire during his solo, and although they were all supposed to be quiet, others saw the flames and screamed out "fire"..He talked about the near drowning in Costa Rica, how terrified he was and yet he was laughing. He said, at RedCliff and North Star he learned...something like this: that our families weren't our problem...at some point you have to stop wanting to have temper tantrums.

I feel very sad, wanting to cry..at separating from him, from them, from Alina, who is amazing and can communicate her needs and has such trust in life and adults still. Cristina is a wonderful Mother. Lucas is a good Father. I am heartbroken that I won't be able to see Alina every day. By now, right now, she has already risen, been dressed and fed, and taken to her Grandma's and her mother is at work.