To paraphrase the French, Le Baby Inca est arrivé!
Now hands up everyone who wants to hear all the gory details...
No, I though not. Neither do I wish to re-live them. However, should you ever have the opportunity of being interned in a maternity clinic in Peru you may find the following medical terminology useful:
“Un dolorcito” (a little hurt) is how they describe shoving a big epidural needle into your spine (no doubt also known in NHS circles as an “Optional Extra”).
“Un momentito” is what the anaesthesiologist says when he answers his cell phone in mid-operation.
“Un bañito” is when the nurses give you a perfunctory wash in your bed and then hose you down with your £40 Yves St Laurent Rive Gauche Eau de Toilette like its Limacol.
“fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck” is what you are allowed to mutter pleasantly under your breath while hobbling to the bathroom for the first time with a six-inch incision in your abdomen, because no one will understand what you are saying.
The most traumatic moment however, was being described as “housewife” on the birth certificate. Husband made all the right patronising noises about it being the “hardest and most important job in the world” blah blah blah. I resisted asking him whether he’d have accepted having his macho latino self described as “stay-at-home father”. Though at that point he might actually have said yes and meant it, such was his euphoria.
It won’t last of course. He’s still at the “ohmigod he’s so wonderful but why does he sleep all the time?” phase. I warned him in advance that he would be hovering over the crib poking the child awake to make sure he’s still alive and he scoffed at me. He did exactly that on day one and yesterday remarked in a disgusted kind of way that it is a good thing that breathing is required as a sign of life since, if it was optional, Smuggitos wouldn’t do that either. He will soon eat those words – no doubt raw with onions and a splash of lime juice.
Smuggies is also euphoric – though more cautiously so. In the run-up to the birth she was waxing philosophical about “the end of 100% of love” and “I’ll quite understand if you guys like him more that you like me. After all, babies are cuter than people”. I assured her that for most people babies are indeed cute but are, at best, fleetingly diverting, quickly becoming boring because they lack conversational skills so she and her brother would certainly not be appealing to the same audience.
I then had to get creative about the mathematics of love, explaining that it is not a finite resource and therefore not apportioned on a percentage basis. She was unconvinced. I tried to float the theory that there were different “love resources” and that there was therefore “Smuggie Love” which is specific to her and cannot be subtracted from in favour of “Smuggito Love”. She did not openly jeer at the suggestion but I suspect she only pretended to accept it to get me to shut up.
Having now returned to the pumpkin after the artificially regulated environment of the clinic, everybody is struggling to adjust to the Atahualpa in our midst.
Husband is caught between parental enthusiasm and extreme irritation at the minutiae of childcare. Having sweated over assembling the crib; accepted (with poor grace) that reading the instructions BEFORE installing the car seat might yield a more successful result than his first few efforts; and supported me in and out of bed to go to the bathroom; when then asked to find a specific white muslin cloth, carefully washed and sterilised for the purpose of wiping excess milk off the royal face, he snarled “why can’t you just use this?” and tossed me a sweaty T-shirt that had been draped for some days over the shoe rack.
Smuggies on the other hand has been vigorously playing both sides of the coin. She imperiously cites her previous childcare experience (a year-old cousin in the Dominican Republic) and insists on holding him, burping him, singing to him, walking him and generally hovering possessively over him. She then reports to everyone in an exhausted and long-suffering voice "I got no sleep whatsoever! I've been up since 4.00 am with the baby".
My father-in-law, having cleaned the house to within an inch of its life, seems to be at a bit of a loose end now. He comes in every morning before leaving for work and every evening on coming home to see whether the baby is awake. Asleep or awake, he peers proudly at him and then scuttles away.
My suegra is keeping me fed and watered (or rather chicken soupy wouped) and trying her best to resist teaching me how to breastfeed. She has also taken in good part our repeated rejection of her nutritional suggestions for Smuggitos. Breast milk only for 6 months is not a concept that she is familiar or comfortable with. She is however, a world champion burper and is now the official Gas Czar.
As for me, I’m suffering all the indignities of the barely ambulant. In addition, given the newly realigned family priorities and the sheer weight of responsibility he is now shouldering, I have been too terrified to ask my husband to retrieve my toothbrush from the bottom of whichever bag he shoved it into when we were leaving the clinic. However, I figure if I breathe ardently on him for a few days he may take the hint.
Saturday 24 October 2009
Wednesday 14 October 2009
Peruvian Conversations Parts I & II
Part I
I have been reading on the internet about the Nesting Instinct, “the name given to the distinctive urge to clean, tidy, and organize that occurs at the end of the pregnancy and is a sign that your baby is about to make its appearance”.
All true. My father-in-law’s got it. He’s been cleaning the house from top to bottom for the last two days. I get up at 5.00 am to use the toilet and he’s scrubbing the sink. I try to make breakfast and he says “don’t use the stove, I just sprayed oven cleaner all over it.” He’s been bustling around like a maniac with his trousers tucked into the top of his socks, crawling behind furniture with dust cloths and carrying buckets and mops up and down the stairs to clean up whenever anyone walks past.
This is a good thing because it looks like we’ll be living in the pumpkin until after Smuggitos is born. We’ve found an apartment and our shipment has arrived from London but a few problems have cropped up.
First, it is not easy to cram a three-story-townhouse-with-back-garden’s worth of stuff into a three bedroom second floor apartment (no elevator, no balcony). Six sturdy Peruvians stoically dragged boxes up and down the stairs, calling out the contents at the door so they could be stowed in the right room. (As an interesting aside, it is fascinating how many different inflections of dismay and disbelief can be infused into the phrase “more books”.)
Secondly, the container arrived with a large dent in the side and corresponding damage to a number of bits of furniture. Not, unfortunately, the ones I would have liked.
If memory serves, it was V.S. Naipaul in A House for Mr Biswas who introduced the concept of ‘insuranburn’. In my case it was a matter of insuranhope. With any luck my ancient TV and the more hideous of my accumulated 'artworks' would be ruined and I could buy myself a nice flatscreen with the insurance money. Unfortunately, the TV survived but my California King-sized mattress arrived with all the springs sticking out. If you have ever seen the size of my husband you will understand what a problem this is. And until the insurance claim is approved by the company in London I cannot throw out any of the damaged stuff. This means that at the moment there is no space to organise anything, let alone install such basic necessities as fridge, stove and washing machine. So for the moment, the future is orange.
Last week I took advantage of the nesting instinct and had my very first solo taxi ride. It was cunningly done. I had an appointment for my weekly check-up with the obstetrician and I omitted to remind anyone until I was fully bathed and dressed, then I waddled nonchalantly down the stairs and out the front door saying breezily, “voy a la clinica” before anyone could stop me. Of course, my mother-in-law was not home at the time. She had left my father-in-law in charge of my welfare and he would no doubt catch hell if anything happened to me, but he was safely ensconced under the refrigerator at the time.
Getting to the clinic was no problem, it's well known and on a large avenida. I was a bit nervous about getting back in case I had to give complicated instructions in Spanish, given that my sense of direction sucks. I once tried to drive to a shopping mall 15 minutes from my cousin’s home in North Miami Beach and ended up in Boca Raton. In London, even with a Tom Tom navigation device I got consistently lost. (That was not my fault however – the Tom Tom had one of those supercilious female voices which you just know belongs to a woman better looking than you and who is obviously giving herself a manicure rather than paying attention to where you’re supposed to be going.)
Anyway, on leaving the clinic I followed all my suegra’s taxi-taking advice to the letter: “Don’t take the smaller taxis, don’t pay more than 7 soles, and you must look at their faces first.” She always walks along a line of waiting taxis, craning her neck into each window to scrutinize the driver minutely before deciding on the 3rd or 4th in line and opening negotiations. I did all this but realised that she had never got around to explaining what I should be looking for in the faces, so I chose the best looking one and jumped in.
And had a most Peruvian conversation.
I asked to be taken to the junction of avenidas Canada y Rosa Toro. “Ah” he said in instant recognition, “the street with all the cevicherias”. I had noticed there were a lot of restaurants devoted to this favourite Peruvian dish near to the house so I confirmed the location.
“So,” he said, letting in the clutch and inserting himself into the traffic, “you’re going to eat ceviche”.
“No, I’m going to my house.”
“Oh, you don’t like ceviche? There are lots of chifas on Rosa Toro as well” (chifa is Peruvian for a Chinese restaurant).
“I know, but I’m just going home.”
“So you like ceviche?”
He was obviously irretrievably ceviche-focused so I confessed that raw fish in lime juice is fine but that I’m not a big fan of onions. Clearly I was a foreigner.
“Where are you from? The Caribbean? Don’t they have fish there?” (yes, and onions) “What else do they have? Fruit? They must have fruit. Fruit is good, I like fruit, we have good fruit in Peru.”
I admitted to fruit and to fish but gave Peru the edge when it came to other seafood and shellfish. He was fascinated to meet someone from the Caribbean and wanted to know all about it.
“So what other food do you have?”
I attempted to broaden the scope of the conversation by telling him about Trinidad’s proximity to Venezuela, the hispanic influence on Christmas music, etc. He listened politely and nodded in a fascinated kind of way.
“So do you have sugar? And coffee? No coffee? What do you export?”
Petroleum and natural gas left him completely cold.
“What about rum? En el Caribe you must have rum!”
By this time, if I had had any rum I would have drained the bottle and hit him over the head with the empty.
Until I acquire a Peruvian accent and a non-foreign look, that is the last time I attempt to leave the house alone. Next time I will drag my father-in-law out from under the fridge and haul him to the clinic with me.
Part II
While my suegro behaves like Mr Clean on steroids, my husband, on the other hand, spends a great deal of time poking my protruding belly button in a fascinated sort of way and asking questions like “how do you hold them again?” and “I don’t really have to learn how to change diapers do I?” (He was shocked to discover that a self-cleaning diaper had not yet been invented and I had to explain that it isn’t the diaper per se that needs to be cleaned.)
A few weeks ago his colleague's wife gave birth early and that catapulted him into a whirlwind of activity – rushing around to finish paying the clinic and exhorting Smuggies to help me pack the overnight bag. So he thinks his work is done.
But, as I have mentioned before, you get a lot of looking after here if you are pregnant (not necessarily from one’s husband, obviously).
Having also sampled the medical ambiance in the US and UK, I have reached the conclusion that one of the main differences is that outside of those two countries, medical professionals are more willing to communicate directly with their patients rather than strictly between each other. In the States, if you have good insurance you can – and do – get referred for every test known to man, each performed by yet another specialist. But at no stage will said specialist actually tell you what they find. They hook you up to complicated machines, squirt you with gel, attach electrodes and squish you into claustrophobic tubes, gazing portentously at monitors and shaking their heads dubiously all the while. Then they retreat to a back room, consult with various technicians and write lengthy reports in code. Ask them anything and they say “the report will be sent to your doctor” (Or rather, in the case of the US your ‘Primary Care Physician’ or in the UK, ‘your GP’s surgery’.) Depending on the facial expression or the state of his/her digestion, you then spend the next week thinking you have an inoperable brain tumour or some new and fascinating disease. The Primary Care Physician is no better, so cautious is the diagnosis that you will either end up being sent for more tests or being asked to sign several disclaimer forms before you are told that it’s merely the common cold. It must be the fear of being sued.
Here in Lima, I get sent for loads of tests with specialists who are more than happy to give me their opinion and to explain the process as they go along. I can now tell you exactly what a foetus’s kidney looks like and the possible causes and effects of a misplaced placenta.
Of course, there is such a thing as too much information.
Because the level of my amniotic fluid seemed to be lower than normal, I was sent to have a Foetal Non-Stress Test, which involves monitoring the baby’s movements and heart rate via electrodes attached to my tummy by two elastic belts for about ½ hour. It is to ensure that the baby is moving strongly and can resist the rigours of childbirth.
The test was performed by an elderly doctor who bore a striking resemblance to the mad scientist in Back to the Future. Like one of those specialist players they have in American football who sits on the bench the entire game and only gets called on to punt the ball, he is not in regular circulation, and had to be summoned from the lower floors of the clinic trundling his monitor, to which he attached me, giving us an enthusiastic history of late-stage foetal testing all the while.
According to him, years ago they used to test foetal blood by inserting a needle through the cervix and drawing a vial of blood from the baby’s head. But they found that since the head was being squeezed in the pelvis, the blood wasn’t useful in indicating stress. Then they invented a test where they would insert a syringe directly through the mother’s womb and into the baby to draw blood. 1 in 6 babies died that way. “They never forgive you when that happens you know. I used to do those but then I started telling patients that my arm was hurting so I couldn’t do it. Who wants those kinds of odds?”
“Nowadays” he continued, “all the monitoring is indirect. You can’t take the baby out, check it, then put it back in, so this test is the most important. I’ve done about 100,000 of these. Forget all the stuff you see on the ultrasound screens” he continued, attaching the electrode to where the ultrasound of 10 minutes before had indicated Smuggitos’ bottom was located. “Here’s the heart” he said.
When the monitor indicated no cardiac activity he adroitly slid the electrode to the correct location and continued unabashed. “Yes indeed, this test is crucial. I once had a lady in here – same age as you actually – almost no foetal movement, we had to operate so fast! The baby was born 900 grams. The placenta was the size of a dinner roll and as white a chalk. Another few hours and that would have been it.”
By this time both myself and the baby were wiggling furiously. He continued to regale us with tales of near misses and unintended disasters the whole 30 minutes of the test. “You don’t mean to kill patients you know. Doctors usually don’t but sometimes you try to cure them and it has the opposite effect. You have to be so careful, people don’t pardon that kind of thing.” He unstrapped me, pronounced that we had passed the test with flying colours and accompanied us back to the upper floors. “Look at that” he said as we waited for the elevator, sliding open the window and pointing upward. “About 6 months ago a man jumped from the top floor. He bounced off that air conditioning unit right there and landed in the courtyard below. You could see his feet sticking up.”
“Did he die?” I asked.
“Very much so! He was a depressive and had been diagnosed with severe arthritis. He asked the doctor what the prognosis was and the doctor told him it was incurable so he jumped. Obviously there’s no cure but arthritis isn’t fatal. He thought it was like cancer and he was going to die. That’s the problem with some of these doctors. They have no tact.”
I have been reading on the internet about the Nesting Instinct, “the name given to the distinctive urge to clean, tidy, and organize that occurs at the end of the pregnancy and is a sign that your baby is about to make its appearance”.
All true. My father-in-law’s got it. He’s been cleaning the house from top to bottom for the last two days. I get up at 5.00 am to use the toilet and he’s scrubbing the sink. I try to make breakfast and he says “don’t use the stove, I just sprayed oven cleaner all over it.” He’s been bustling around like a maniac with his trousers tucked into the top of his socks, crawling behind furniture with dust cloths and carrying buckets and mops up and down the stairs to clean up whenever anyone walks past.
This is a good thing because it looks like we’ll be living in the pumpkin until after Smuggitos is born. We’ve found an apartment and our shipment has arrived from London but a few problems have cropped up.
First, it is not easy to cram a three-story-townhouse-with-back-garden’s worth of stuff into a three bedroom second floor apartment (no elevator, no balcony). Six sturdy Peruvians stoically dragged boxes up and down the stairs, calling out the contents at the door so they could be stowed in the right room. (As an interesting aside, it is fascinating how many different inflections of dismay and disbelief can be infused into the phrase “more books”.)
Secondly, the container arrived with a large dent in the side and corresponding damage to a number of bits of furniture. Not, unfortunately, the ones I would have liked.
If memory serves, it was V.S. Naipaul in A House for Mr Biswas who introduced the concept of ‘insuranburn’. In my case it was a matter of insuranhope. With any luck my ancient TV and the more hideous of my accumulated 'artworks' would be ruined and I could buy myself a nice flatscreen with the insurance money. Unfortunately, the TV survived but my California King-sized mattress arrived with all the springs sticking out. If you have ever seen the size of my husband you will understand what a problem this is. And until the insurance claim is approved by the company in London I cannot throw out any of the damaged stuff. This means that at the moment there is no space to organise anything, let alone install such basic necessities as fridge, stove and washing machine. So for the moment, the future is orange.
Last week I took advantage of the nesting instinct and had my very first solo taxi ride. It was cunningly done. I had an appointment for my weekly check-up with the obstetrician and I omitted to remind anyone until I was fully bathed and dressed, then I waddled nonchalantly down the stairs and out the front door saying breezily, “voy a la clinica” before anyone could stop me. Of course, my mother-in-law was not home at the time. She had left my father-in-law in charge of my welfare and he would no doubt catch hell if anything happened to me, but he was safely ensconced under the refrigerator at the time.
Getting to the clinic was no problem, it's well known and on a large avenida. I was a bit nervous about getting back in case I had to give complicated instructions in Spanish, given that my sense of direction sucks. I once tried to drive to a shopping mall 15 minutes from my cousin’s home in North Miami Beach and ended up in Boca Raton. In London, even with a Tom Tom navigation device I got consistently lost. (That was not my fault however – the Tom Tom had one of those supercilious female voices which you just know belongs to a woman better looking than you and who is obviously giving herself a manicure rather than paying attention to where you’re supposed to be going.)
Anyway, on leaving the clinic I followed all my suegra’s taxi-taking advice to the letter: “Don’t take the smaller taxis, don’t pay more than 7 soles, and you must look at their faces first.” She always walks along a line of waiting taxis, craning her neck into each window to scrutinize the driver minutely before deciding on the 3rd or 4th in line and opening negotiations. I did all this but realised that she had never got around to explaining what I should be looking for in the faces, so I chose the best looking one and jumped in.
And had a most Peruvian conversation.
I asked to be taken to the junction of avenidas Canada y Rosa Toro. “Ah” he said in instant recognition, “the street with all the cevicherias”. I had noticed there were a lot of restaurants devoted to this favourite Peruvian dish near to the house so I confirmed the location.
“So,” he said, letting in the clutch and inserting himself into the traffic, “you’re going to eat ceviche”.
“No, I’m going to my house.”
“Oh, you don’t like ceviche? There are lots of chifas on Rosa Toro as well” (chifa is Peruvian for a Chinese restaurant).
“I know, but I’m just going home.”
“So you like ceviche?”
He was obviously irretrievably ceviche-focused so I confessed that raw fish in lime juice is fine but that I’m not a big fan of onions. Clearly I was a foreigner.
“Where are you from? The Caribbean? Don’t they have fish there?” (yes, and onions) “What else do they have? Fruit? They must have fruit. Fruit is good, I like fruit, we have good fruit in Peru.”
I admitted to fruit and to fish but gave Peru the edge when it came to other seafood and shellfish. He was fascinated to meet someone from the Caribbean and wanted to know all about it.
“So what other food do you have?”
I attempted to broaden the scope of the conversation by telling him about Trinidad’s proximity to Venezuela, the hispanic influence on Christmas music, etc. He listened politely and nodded in a fascinated kind of way.
“So do you have sugar? And coffee? No coffee? What do you export?”
Petroleum and natural gas left him completely cold.
“What about rum? En el Caribe you must have rum!”
By this time, if I had had any rum I would have drained the bottle and hit him over the head with the empty.
Until I acquire a Peruvian accent and a non-foreign look, that is the last time I attempt to leave the house alone. Next time I will drag my father-in-law out from under the fridge and haul him to the clinic with me.
Part II
While my suegro behaves like Mr Clean on steroids, my husband, on the other hand, spends a great deal of time poking my protruding belly button in a fascinated sort of way and asking questions like “how do you hold them again?” and “I don’t really have to learn how to change diapers do I?” (He was shocked to discover that a self-cleaning diaper had not yet been invented and I had to explain that it isn’t the diaper per se that needs to be cleaned.)
A few weeks ago his colleague's wife gave birth early and that catapulted him into a whirlwind of activity – rushing around to finish paying the clinic and exhorting Smuggies to help me pack the overnight bag. So he thinks his work is done.
But, as I have mentioned before, you get a lot of looking after here if you are pregnant (not necessarily from one’s husband, obviously).
Having also sampled the medical ambiance in the US and UK, I have reached the conclusion that one of the main differences is that outside of those two countries, medical professionals are more willing to communicate directly with their patients rather than strictly between each other. In the States, if you have good insurance you can – and do – get referred for every test known to man, each performed by yet another specialist. But at no stage will said specialist actually tell you what they find. They hook you up to complicated machines, squirt you with gel, attach electrodes and squish you into claustrophobic tubes, gazing portentously at monitors and shaking their heads dubiously all the while. Then they retreat to a back room, consult with various technicians and write lengthy reports in code. Ask them anything and they say “the report will be sent to your doctor” (Or rather, in the case of the US your ‘Primary Care Physician’ or in the UK, ‘your GP’s surgery’.) Depending on the facial expression or the state of his/her digestion, you then spend the next week thinking you have an inoperable brain tumour or some new and fascinating disease. The Primary Care Physician is no better, so cautious is the diagnosis that you will either end up being sent for more tests or being asked to sign several disclaimer forms before you are told that it’s merely the common cold. It must be the fear of being sued.
Here in Lima, I get sent for loads of tests with specialists who are more than happy to give me their opinion and to explain the process as they go along. I can now tell you exactly what a foetus’s kidney looks like and the possible causes and effects of a misplaced placenta.
Of course, there is such a thing as too much information.
Because the level of my amniotic fluid seemed to be lower than normal, I was sent to have a Foetal Non-Stress Test, which involves monitoring the baby’s movements and heart rate via electrodes attached to my tummy by two elastic belts for about ½ hour. It is to ensure that the baby is moving strongly and can resist the rigours of childbirth.
The test was performed by an elderly doctor who bore a striking resemblance to the mad scientist in Back to the Future. Like one of those specialist players they have in American football who sits on the bench the entire game and only gets called on to punt the ball, he is not in regular circulation, and had to be summoned from the lower floors of the clinic trundling his monitor, to which he attached me, giving us an enthusiastic history of late-stage foetal testing all the while.
According to him, years ago they used to test foetal blood by inserting a needle through the cervix and drawing a vial of blood from the baby’s head. But they found that since the head was being squeezed in the pelvis, the blood wasn’t useful in indicating stress. Then they invented a test where they would insert a syringe directly through the mother’s womb and into the baby to draw blood. 1 in 6 babies died that way. “They never forgive you when that happens you know. I used to do those but then I started telling patients that my arm was hurting so I couldn’t do it. Who wants those kinds of odds?”
“Nowadays” he continued, “all the monitoring is indirect. You can’t take the baby out, check it, then put it back in, so this test is the most important. I’ve done about 100,000 of these. Forget all the stuff you see on the ultrasound screens” he continued, attaching the electrode to where the ultrasound of 10 minutes before had indicated Smuggitos’ bottom was located. “Here’s the heart” he said.
When the monitor indicated no cardiac activity he adroitly slid the electrode to the correct location and continued unabashed. “Yes indeed, this test is crucial. I once had a lady in here – same age as you actually – almost no foetal movement, we had to operate so fast! The baby was born 900 grams. The placenta was the size of a dinner roll and as white a chalk. Another few hours and that would have been it.”
By this time both myself and the baby were wiggling furiously. He continued to regale us with tales of near misses and unintended disasters the whole 30 minutes of the test. “You don’t mean to kill patients you know. Doctors usually don’t but sometimes you try to cure them and it has the opposite effect. You have to be so careful, people don’t pardon that kind of thing.” He unstrapped me, pronounced that we had passed the test with flying colours and accompanied us back to the upper floors. “Look at that” he said as we waited for the elevator, sliding open the window and pointing upward. “About 6 months ago a man jumped from the top floor. He bounced off that air conditioning unit right there and landed in the courtyard below. You could see his feet sticking up.”
“Did he die?” I asked.
“Very much so! He was a depressive and had been diagnosed with severe arthritis. He asked the doctor what the prognosis was and the doctor told him it was incurable so he jumped. Obviously there’s no cure but arthritis isn’t fatal. He thought it was like cancer and he was going to die. That’s the problem with some of these doctors. They have no tact.”
Monday 5 October 2009
Mothers-in-Law and Other Saints
Disclaimer: On either side of the nine months of a planned pregnancy is a period known as the TWW – the Two Week Wait. The first is the nail-biting anxiety between fertilisation of the egg and the earliest possible official confirmation of pregnancy. The second is the last two weeks of waiting for the due date. This is generally characterised by a striking resemblance to a beached whale and extreme irritation and grumpiness. Given that I have now entered the second of the TWWs, whatever I write in the following posts may, with impunity, be vigorously denied at a later date.
Now I may be a lot of things but I am NOT cute! Why then does my mother-in-law insist on treating me like a puppy in a pet shop window?
Whenever I am in her presence she marvels continuously and vocally at my achievements, drawing the attention of anyone within earshot to my many talents:
Now I may be a lot of things but I am NOT cute! Why then does my mother-in-law insist on treating me like a puppy in a pet shop window?
Whenever I am in her presence she marvels continuously and vocally at my achievements, drawing the attention of anyone within earshot to my many talents:
“Oooh look, look! She’s making pancakes! ¡Que bonita! And you know what? She went to the market all by herself today!”
She gazes wonderingly at me, shaking her head in silent pleasure when she has run out of “ay hijas” for five minutes or so.
It is completely unnerving. I do not cope well with being cooed at. Treacly sentiment makes me itch. And I have discovered that I am completely allergic to being addressed in the diminutive.
This is a peculiarly Spanish language affectation, where speakers use the diminutive form (like sticking –ito or –cita onto the end of a noun) in order to express not only the smallness of something but affection. It is usually used when speaking to small children but also by adults trying to show intimacy or fondness. In moderation it can be endearing. In excess...not so much.
Being coaxed every lunchtime to eat “una sopita con un pollocito y un arrozcito” is the Spanish conversational equivalent of being invited to have some “soupy-woupy with some chicky-wicken and some ricey-wicey”. I’d rather gnaw on the sharpened blade of a knifey-wifey, thanks all the same.
When I do persuade her to let me do something for myself, I get trained.
“Oh my goodness! My daughter-in-law is washing her daughter’s school shirt – I must see how she does it! No, no, my dear, not like that, like this...”
In Latin America it is considered impolite to tell your suegra to fuck off so I try to smile and point out mildly that in the Caribbean we also have soap and water and, though our washing methods may differ, the results are generally the same.
The thing is, it is not that she has trouble believing that I am a well educated professional woman who has worked and supported herself all her life. That she accepts and is pleased with. But she is absolutely amazed that I can also use a stove and have conquered the mysteries of Peruvian washing machines (same brands as everywhere else!) with ease. She herself is an educated professional who has been taking time out from her job to ensure that I am not run over in the street on a daily basis.
Being coaxed every lunchtime to eat “una sopita con un pollocito y un arrozcito” is the Spanish conversational equivalent of being invited to have some “soupy-woupy with some chicky-wicken and some ricey-wicey”. I’d rather gnaw on the sharpened blade of a knifey-wifey, thanks all the same.
When I do persuade her to let me do something for myself, I get trained.
“Oh my goodness! My daughter-in-law is washing her daughter’s school shirt – I must see how she does it! No, no, my dear, not like that, like this...”
In Latin America it is considered impolite to tell your suegra to fuck off so I try to smile and point out mildly that in the Caribbean we also have soap and water and, though our washing methods may differ, the results are generally the same.
The thing is, it is not that she has trouble believing that I am a well educated professional woman who has worked and supported herself all her life. That she accepts and is pleased with. But she is absolutely amazed that I can also use a stove and have conquered the mysteries of Peruvian washing machines (same brands as everywhere else!) with ease. She herself is an educated professional who has been taking time out from her job to ensure that I am not run over in the street on a daily basis.
This is a woman who has listened in person to one of Castro’s three-hour speeches in the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana and is an official auditor of World Bank funded government projects in Peru. She has decided political views and prides herself on organising her household while maintaining her career but seems to feel that I would be incapable of the same. Either she has some very erroneous ideas about my pre-Lima lifestyle (references to the nanny may have contributed to this – though household help in Lima is common for anyone making above a living wage) or she considers herself unique in executing this dual role and is somewhat put out to discover that others also do it as a matter of course. Or maybe I am over-intellectualising the whole thing and it is just the visceral pleasure of having a daughter-in-law to mould.
In vain do I tell her that I have been all over the world in all kinds of conditions; that I have travelled on the back of tractors and forded piranha-infested rivers in Guyana; that I have fended off hostile takeovers of observer missions in remote Pacific provinces. Her reply is invariably “yes, but it’s different here”. The difference “here” apparently is that one must never walk too close to the edge of the pavement, cross the road against a green light, or leave one’s shopping bags unattended. Every time we leave the house she grasps me firmly by the elbow with both hands and shepherds me through the streets of Lima as though I’m a blind paraplegic with agoraphobia.
It is of course, nice to be so looked after and I have to give her credit for making a herculean effort not to interfere. She has maintained an admirable silence in particular on the question of Names. She was told by her son even before I arrived in Lima “¡no te metas!” and she hasn’t, though the temptation must be great, particularly for a good Catholic like her.
I may have mentioned in passing that Peru is a somewhat Catholic country. This means that saints abound and securing their various patronage is key when it comes to naming babies. Saints all have their days (don’t we all!) so the date of birth is influential, but one assumes that one can also pick and choose one’s area of interest. For example, if you want your kid to grow up to be Dr Doolittle, you name him after St Francis of Assisi or, in Peru, after St Martin de Porres, a mulatto Dominican monk who once urged his Order to sell him so they could pay off their debts and who is renowned for reasoning with mice to get them to stop chewing on the ecclesiastic robes.
You ignore the saints at your peril because, if you aren’t careful, you could unwittingly end up with a not-particularly-edifying saint (my father, I was delighted to discover, shares his name with the patron saint of syphilitics). If you don’t go for saints then there’s no excuse for not naming your child after a family member. Imagine generations of Julios and Juans with only their middle names to distinguish them. With all due respect to the many John Jrs and George IIIs of my acquaintance, it’s a boring practice and I’ll have none of it.
My own preference was to name the Baby Inca ‘Hugo’, after my hero Chavez but my husband, an apolitical but instinctive conservative with Fujimoristic tendencies, refused. We also considered Quechua names but while the girls names sound quite pretty the boys names are harsh. I cannot in good conscience name my son Wayna or Wanka – two of the more popular names we came across. And Tupac, unfortunately, is now firmly associated with gold teeth and gangsta rap.
So we are In Discussions and, until such time as the issue is resolved, we have applied both the masculine and diminutive forms and he is being known as Smuggitos.
In vain do I tell her that I have been all over the world in all kinds of conditions; that I have travelled on the back of tractors and forded piranha-infested rivers in Guyana; that I have fended off hostile takeovers of observer missions in remote Pacific provinces. Her reply is invariably “yes, but it’s different here”. The difference “here” apparently is that one must never walk too close to the edge of the pavement, cross the road against a green light, or leave one’s shopping bags unattended. Every time we leave the house she grasps me firmly by the elbow with both hands and shepherds me through the streets of Lima as though I’m a blind paraplegic with agoraphobia.
It is of course, nice to be so looked after and I have to give her credit for making a herculean effort not to interfere. She has maintained an admirable silence in particular on the question of Names. She was told by her son even before I arrived in Lima “¡no te metas!” and she hasn’t, though the temptation must be great, particularly for a good Catholic like her.
I may have mentioned in passing that Peru is a somewhat Catholic country. This means that saints abound and securing their various patronage is key when it comes to naming babies. Saints all have their days (don’t we all!) so the date of birth is influential, but one assumes that one can also pick and choose one’s area of interest. For example, if you want your kid to grow up to be Dr Doolittle, you name him after St Francis of Assisi or, in Peru, after St Martin de Porres, a mulatto Dominican monk who once urged his Order to sell him so they could pay off their debts and who is renowned for reasoning with mice to get them to stop chewing on the ecclesiastic robes.
You ignore the saints at your peril because, if you aren’t careful, you could unwittingly end up with a not-particularly-edifying saint (my father, I was delighted to discover, shares his name with the patron saint of syphilitics). If you don’t go for saints then there’s no excuse for not naming your child after a family member. Imagine generations of Julios and Juans with only their middle names to distinguish them. With all due respect to the many John Jrs and George IIIs of my acquaintance, it’s a boring practice and I’ll have none of it.
My own preference was to name the Baby Inca ‘Hugo’, after my hero Chavez but my husband, an apolitical but instinctive conservative with Fujimoristic tendencies, refused. We also considered Quechua names but while the girls names sound quite pretty the boys names are harsh. I cannot in good conscience name my son Wayna or Wanka – two of the more popular names we came across. And Tupac, unfortunately, is now firmly associated with gold teeth and gangsta rap.
So we are In Discussions and, until such time as the issue is resolved, we have applied both the masculine and diminutive forms and he is being known as Smuggitos.
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