a thoughtful time

I’m coming up on an anniversary of the beginning of a very sad time. For years it hasn’t made me sad anymore, more thoughtful around the end of April. I’ve written more specifically about it in this post. Today I was floating around the lazy river at the water park, being end-of-April thoughtful, and found a tiny baby bird just below the surface of the water. I scooped it out with my hand and put it gently under a plant.  Thoughtful meant I could not help remembering that I’d only held a dead baby in my hand that one time before.

And then also it’s almost exactly a year since we rescued a one-day-old kitten. We (mostly I) bottle fed her every 2 hours, then every 3 hours and eventually 4 hours, night and day for weeks.  For awhile not confidant she would live, nor really confident that I would cope well if she died, I was feeling in some tiny barely-and-reluctantly-acknowledged nook in my soul that she was some kind of chance to pick up where I left off and not fumble it this time (a day-old kitten is around the same size as a 16-week fetus).  I can’t believe I’m sharing this, and I probably wouldn’t be able to except that she is now sleek and fat, bigger and snugglier than either of our other cats and a special friend to our youngest, born three years after we lost the little brother.

A friend of mine has been through this baby-losing lately and reached out to me to see if I had any insight, experience, and support. I shared that post about Dhaka and some of what people said that was helpful and some of what was less helpful.

I’m reluctant to give advice here, to tell people how to feel or behave, because that seems like one of the most irritating and click-hungry areas of the Internet.  I’ve been deleting nearly everything in my FB feed that starts bossing me around. But. I have found the most interesting and helpful advice comes from people who have been through hard things and want to help you help other people who are going through hard things, because it’s difficult to know what to say or what people will need, even when we want desperately to be able to say it and provide it.

This is one that I like: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407

I also like the one that’s been written by lots of people lots of different ways that suggests that asking a person to let you know if they need anything means that you might feel like you've done your part though the person in need will likely never ask you- so specific suggestions of ways in which you could help might be more likely to support people.

The one part I add, that helped me then and I have remembered ever since, is about woman who came in to me the morning after, to my bedside in the hospital in Bangkok, and simply told me that I was doing hard work. She was visiting in her role as a patient liaison person but had previously worked as a midwife there. She didn’t encourage me to think to future children or the ones I already had, she just met me right there and acknowledged the process and my place in it without hurrying me through it. The memory of this one encounter has stayed with me over the years, even as that work has eased, is the core of what I offered my friend, and is what I share with you as I’m passing through this thoughtful time.

When Doha gets me down

I’ve been stuck for a while on what to write.  I don't want to seem like I'm always complaining, or always grasping for some shred of what I appreciate about Qatar so it won't seem like I'm always complaining. The weather’s getting hotter, friends are busier as the school year winds up and I am dreaming of a certain little valley in Vermont every single night. 

Doha can seem like a microcosm of all the worst ways of humanity: greed, laziness, disregard for environment, poor treatment of animals, starkly stratified class system, how much human civilization has been about manipulating everything we can reach for our own ease and glory.  It gets me down and makes me fantasize about living elsewhere.

Dreamworld interlude (meaning I don’t have to be fair and balanced and realistic): I want to live in a little cabin within walking distance from my nearest neighbor.  I want to have a garden and some fruit trees that provide most of what I need to eat, a large pantry for storing food and a big fridge and freezer. I want a porch with some rocking chairs and a table with benches for eating at and a screened-in part for sleeping in good weather.  I would like a few goats and some chickens for milk, cheese, eggs, and meat. I would like a toolshed with all the tools I will need to work and maintain the place and an art studio with big windows that can open.  I want friendly neighbors who are as welcome at my house as I am at theirs.  I want mountains and trails nearby. I want seasons I want to be able to avoid getting in a car or going to a store for days at a time. I don’t want to be global anymore, I want to be thoroughly locally connected to the people and land around me.

Exit dreamworld (because it will not happen anytime soon and I have responsibilities in the here and now)

What to do? Sink into the sofa for hours and weeks on end staring into a tiny handheld screen in hopes of connection with someone anyone from the outside because my living room windows just look out onto a wall ten feet across our brick-floored backyard? No, except for sometimes.  Find other expats who loathe Doha and meet them at Starbucks so we can tear the place down over lattes? No because I am very picky about the friends with whom I choose to complain. Do I follow the advice of the cranky people on the internet who say if you don’t like it then leave? No, obviously. I have committed to staying for one more year, regardless of how I feel about this place, because I still believe it's best for my family and will provide us with more choice in the long run.  

And so I work hard on it.  When the ridiculousness of it all starts to get me down I narrow my focus to kids, art, and long walks, appreciate small connections, try to minimize time spent in traffic.  And then out of the blue I get a gift like the one a few weeks ago: my youngest had been stuck inside all day so we decided to go for a walk to a little store to get ice cream.  The path leads across huge empty lots both paved and gravelly, past compounds, rubbish heaps, mansions under construction and mansions fully decked out with gardens and fountains and expensive cars. There is one spot where the sand is full of shells, though we’re miles from the sea. We decided to take the long way around to say hello to some horses and came upon some Qatari people apparently having a party.  They invited us over and then a few minutes later we were up on camels having rides!

I've been appreciating the hard part of the work because then I can feel very acutely what’s wrong, what’s out of balance, and not slip into complacency. And there are still powerful examples of the good parts of humanity here too, like the Qataris who shared their camels and these people who are helping the porters in the central market, that I can start to feel more hopeful that we aren’t totally at the mercy of these people who spend millions on license plate numbers. No way I will fix it but maybe little by little I can shift my momentum in a more positive way.