Mateo’s New Suit

My son Mateo recently discovered my old Mamalita blog and told me he loved reading about himself when he was a little boy. So I decided to cut and paste entries into a file and put together a little book for him and Olivia–the baby book I never kept except for my years of blog posts.  Here’s an entry from Spring 2013, written during a trip Mateo and I took to Antigua, Guatemala, just the two of us. Lovely to remember. Mateo’s New Suit If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably figured out I’m Catholic and my husband and I are raising our kids Catholic. What does that mean, exactly? A lot of things, which I won’t go into here because I believe every religion is valid and to be respected, as is the choice of no religion at all, by the way, and I’m not telling this story as a platform to discuss my faith. No, my reason for bringing up Catholicism is to share the experience of buying for my son Mateo his very own First Holy Communion suit, from the charming purveyor of First Holy Communion suits in the photo above, who practices his fashion genius somewhere in the depths of the municipal mercado in Antigua, Guatemala. The year before, Mateo and I had bought a suit from the same distinguished gent, intending to save it for the Sacrament this April. What we hadn’t counted on was Mateo’s growth spurt, which steered the original suit pants and jacket toward clown costume territory. But try finding the same tailor in the maze of the mercado! My remembered directions sounded like this: “Walk down the right side aisle, through the section with the pirated DVDs, past the candles and flowers and soccer balls, turn left at the section with the raw meat hanging, through the wrapping paper and baskets and candy, past the shoes and wallets and leather belts, beyond the place with the sacks of rice and beans and the guy who sells machetes. Somewhere around that.” Fortunately, the lady in the First Communion dress section knew exactly where the tailor who sold First Communion suits was headquartered and she kindly escorted us to the proper stall. Success! Not shown here are the suit’s handsome complementary items: the white ruffled shirt, the black bow tie. For that, we’ll have to wait for Mateo’s First Holy Communion “big reveal.” xoxox

Olivia’s visit

Olivia visited this weekend. Took the train from Merced to Emeryville, where Tim picked her up. The weather was gloriously sunny and she spent Saturday in San Francisco with a friend, eating takeout from Maya Fusion, walking through Golden Gate Park, listening to drummers from Brazil and wandering through the Cal Academy of Science. For dinner we ate outside with Susan and family and the menu included bounty from our garden: gazpacho with fresh tomatoes, pesto with basil picked a few hours earlier. We ended the meal with a delicious plum upside down cake Susan baked and brought. The set was setting and the evening was warm. We sat outside until it was dark. Olivia returned to college on Sunday. So far, so good. We’re holding our breath.

Missing the world

Yesterday Olivia said, “I miss the world.” And I said, “Honey, I do, too.” So this afternoon, masked and armed with hand sanitizer, we drove over the bridge to Golden Gate Park–Olivia, Tim, and I–and met two friends from our circumscribed pod, Susan H. and her daughter, M. We ambled through the Botanical Gardens–Where I’d never been! after 20 years in the Bay Area!–watched skate-boarders and street musicians, held our collective breath for a girl on a unicycle. We miss the world, still. But today the air was clear. The sky was blue. We saw good friends. We’re ready for tomorrow.

In conversation with Woven Together

On Tuesday, September 22 (tomorrow!) at 8 PM Eastern time, I’ll be in conversation with Woven Together, discussing my family’s experience with international adoption. Registration link on Eventbrite is here. Admission is by donation; any amount is fine. Woven Together serves all sides of the adoption triad, with a mission that includes education. I appreciate their deep understanding of the subject. Should be a good chat ~ Eventbrite registration.