workplace worries

Amidst all the vomit, sleeplessness, frenzied trips to the hospital, and other turmoil of the past two weeks--which I am earnestly hoping is over--something unexpected came up.

After returning from the hospital, we had one day where the baby's health was a little shaky, but good enough that Dan and I could both go back to work.

We thought we were in the clear.

But that afternoon, Dete started throwing up, and had to leave early.

And the next morning, both E. and R. woke up with the virus, too. By six a.m., we had removed vomit-drenched sheets, cleaned barf from the floor and children's hair, and changed clothes several times.

Dete called to say she was still sick, and going to the hospital herself.

None of this, of course, was unexpected.

Dan went in to school for a couple of hours, and came home when I called to say three sick kids was getting to be a little much for me to handle on my own.

What took me by surprise, though, was the phone call I received in the afternoon, right after Ju had thrown up again, setting my maternal worry back into overdrive.

My boss at school, after expressing cursory condolences about the kids, told me he was concerned about how much work I was missing, and how this was perceived in the school community.

Are you kidding me?! You're calling when my baby was just hospitalized, and now my other children are also violently ill, in a third world country where we have almost no support network (not to mention no pediatrician), to tell me you're worried that people are gossiping about me missing work?

Well, that's what I wanted to say, but instead I stammered something mollifying, got off the phone, and promptly broke down in tears.

Dan, however, picked up the phone to call back and gave said boss a piece of his mind.

And to be fair, the director was receptive, and we had a meeting with him the next day to discuss the issue. I don't hold it against him, exactly. He's just trying to do his job, which involves appeasing many different parties.

Still, it left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I guess as a working mother, this treatment is par for the course, and I'm sure it's not just Brazil, either.

What do you think, readers? What are your experiences with this?

a brief interlude of good health last week

virus

We thought we were done with this virus. Two trips to the ER in a week should be enough.

But no.

Ju ended up back in the hospital on Sunday, unable to keep anything down, even more dehydrated than the last time.

They gave him another IV, and more medicine for the vomiting, but even so, he wasn't improving, so they admitted him.

We spent three days there. I stayed overnight with him, and Dan came home at night to sleep with the older boys.


This was a rare moment of shut-eye.

You know you're in a Brazilian hospital when the children's ward echoes with cheers and curses and the blare of the TV at 9:30 at night, and when you ask the nurse what's going on, she shrugs and says, yeah, there's a soccer game tonight.

Luckily my in-laws were visiting, so they took E. and R. for most of the time during the day.

The doctor finally liberated us (as they say here) on Tuesday.

Today was the first day of classes, but--guess what? Now Dete has the virus and had to go to the hospital.

So Dan and I were left juggling baby-care, which meant Ju spent a couple of hours at school with us, being passed back and forth when I had meetings and Dan had class.

I'm not looking forward to Carnaval in a couple of weeks, when everyone says this city is really overrun with viruses.

Here's Ju, being a good sport about the whole thing.


And here's R., overjoyed to see his little brother after three days. Although Ju didn't quite know what to make of the vigorous affection.

acerola

After all the rain we've been getting lately, the acerola bush in front of our friends' house has burst into fruit.

Since said friends are out of town, the boys have been taking the opportunity to pick as many as they can.


An acerola is about the size of a cherry, with soft flesh and a cluster of white pleated seeds inside. Acerolas are supposed to be an excellent source of vitamin C. They are tart, and a good one tastes vaguely of fruit-flavored candy. (Weird, huh?)

Because they're so sour, people here mostly make them into juice (add tons of sugar, mix in blender, strain out pulp).

But what appeals to me about acerolas is that they're not overwhelmingly sweet. They're more like wild fruit, small, sour, unpredictable.

a trip to the er

We spent Sunday night in the emergency room with Ju.

I was pretty shaken up (as you can see in the photo--not sure why Dan took this picture, actually).

He started throwing up around nine at night, and after barfing six times in an hour, he was really listless.

When we got to the ER, he was so dehydrated that he needed almost a liter of IV fluids.

It's scary whenever a kid is that sick, but it's especially scary in a foreign country.

Coincidentally, the attending physician is a neighbor who lives in our condominium, whom we'd heard about but hadn't met yet.

She was friendly, and offered to see us in her (already over-full) practice, and also gave us a recommendation for a doc who's closer to where we live.

(Yes, we still don't have a pediatrician. We've tried numerous times with various recommendations from friends, and it appears that you should not plan for your kids to get sick between the week before Christmas and the week after Carnaval, because all the doctors leave Salvador on vacation for two months or so.)

In any case, the tests revealed that it was either a virus or bacteria (gee, thanks), and they finally released us at 4:30 in the morning.

Ju let us sleep in until six.

But at least he's feeling much more like himself now.

rainy day churrasco

Dan's parents arrived yesterday for a 10-day visit.

It rained all day--downpours, thunder and lightening--very unusual weather.


We had planned a churrasco, which ended up taking place in the covered garage space where we hang our laundry.

But it worked out.

(Look at all those chicken hearts on the grill. The kids love them.)

It rained most of the night, too. But when I walked outside with Ju at five this morning, it was beginning to clear.

vovó nina

I wrote earlier about Bisa, the elderly woman who lives next door to us on one side.

Our neighbor on the other side is also an older woman (though not nearly as old as Bisa). Unlike Bisa--who for some inexplicable reason incites R.'s fury--my middle son is completely in love with Nina.

When he wakes up in the morning, his first question is: when can I wake up Nina?

As soon as he gets permission, around nine (Nina likes to sleep late), he stations himself under her window and screams at the top of his lungs, Nina, open the door! Nina, come down right now!

(Nina speaks English, having lived in both London and Troy, New York for many years.)

And Nina loves R. She has grandchildren of her own, some in Salvador, two in the States, two in Africa, but because of strained relationships with her daughters, she rarely sees them.

She is lonely, but that's only part of it. She loves E. and Ju as well, but she it's a special connection that she has with R.

She says it's because their personalities are so similar.

Nina moved in just a couple of months after we did, and her house is still full of boxes. Every day she stops by with something to give us that she can't bear to throw out: a forty year old baby's hairbrush, an kid's ink set from the seventies with dessicated ink pads.

Talking with Nina is like walking through her house--her conversation, too, is cluttered with artifacts, some fascinating, some bewildering.

She knows everyone in Salvador, from the head of public health who was just indicted for embezzlement and having a man killed when he exposed the scandal, to João Gilberto and Caetano Veloso.

Her piano teacher was the legendary Luis Gonzaga.

Years ago, Nina experienced a nasty divorce. Once E. asked her, Hey, Nina, do you have a husband?

Nope, she said.

Why not? E. wondered.

He left me, she said, quite matter-of-fact.

Well, do you have a boyfriend? E. wanted to know.

Nina found this exchange hilarious.

When R. is at his most ornery, and difficult for me to handle, he spends some time at Nina's house, and it calms him down. He likes to lie on her bed and watch cartoons. He likes to sit in her kitchen and keep her company and eat cornflakes.

(We've asked Nina repeatedly not to feed him anything except fruits and vegetables, because then he won't eat his meals, but I guess in her mind cornflakes count as a vegetable.)

Initially I felt kind of weird about him calling her Vovó, as though she could somehow replace his grandparents.

But, while other people sometimes refer to her as Vovó Nina, R. just calls her Nina. And Dan pointed out to me that she really isn't so much like a grandmother, but more of a friend who just happens to be sixty-odd years older than him.

feijoada

Yesterday we hosted our first feijoada, for my birthday and E.'s.

If you're familiar with Brazil, feijoada needs no explanation. For those of you who aren't, this is a meal of rice, beans, and meat, served with collards and tomato salad.

But feijoada transcends mere rice and beans. In part because of the enormous quantities of meat that it's cooked with--calabresa sausage, beef ribs, bacon, lombo, charque (Don't ask me what lombo and charque are. I don't know.)

Feijoada is also labor intensive--you have to start days in advance, desalting the meat, soaking it and changing the water multiple times.

I wish I could claim that I made it, but once again, it was Dete, who worked an insane number of hours to create this lovely meal.


(Plus the birthday cake--gluten-free and everything!)



The collards, of course, are cooked with bacon.

You have to love a meal where bacon is one of the vegetables.

help

Something has been bothering me since my last post.

The ending, to be specific.

It was the end of a long day--for me. But Dete went back to work for another four hours.

There is something I'm trying to work out in my head, and it's not working. Maybe it's because I'm too American, but I find my relationship with Dete difficult to fathom.

Rather, since I feel perfectly comfortable with her, maybe it's more my idea of the relationship I'm struggling with.

It mostly feels like we're friends, or colleagues--chatting while she sweeps or hangs laundry and I give Ju a bath in the back veranda.

But then there are the times when I hand him off to her so I can go to the beach or do some work upstairs.

Then it's harder to maintain the fiction that this is a reciprocal relationship in the same way other friendships are.

I'm not saying that I'm wracked with guilt or anything. Just that Dete occupies a large amount of my mental space--and not in a bad way. But I doubt that Brazilians devote as much thought to their empregadas or babás as I do.

We're actually trying to hire someone else to help out, too, partly to alleviate the burden on Dete. And because it's truly impossible for one person to do all of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, plus childcare for a family with three little kids.

(Yes, I know people do it. I did it myself in the States. But that was with a dryer, a dishwasher, no ironing, and way lower standards of cleanliness.)

Anyway, we've found someone who will hopefully start working next week two or three days a week.

We'll see how it goes. I guess it should make things easier.

And--who knows?--maybe more complicated, too.

What's your take on this, readers? Have you hired household help? What are your feelings about it, or your relationship with the person that you've hired?

birthday party

We went to a birthday party in our condominium today, at the house of our neighbors who Dete used to work for. Their son turned eleven.

It was a small affair, seventy people or so, a feijoada, a hundred homemade geladinhas (popsicles in little sacks), two enormous cakes, a rented trampoline (with attendant).


(One advantage to attending a party that's in our own condominium is that you can always slip away for a quick nap in the middle of the festivities.)

The feijoada was prepared by none other than our own Dete.

I think she kind of got roped into it. The boy's mother began calling her from Ecuador (where they now live) weeks ago, before they arrived, with instructions and shopping lists.

And Dete...well, to say she's a hard worker would be an understatement. She brought her twelve-year old daughter, Lorena, and her baby, Enzo, and they all slept here last night.


Dete woke up at five to start the beans for the feijoada. It's seven-thirty p.m. now, and she still hasn't stopped moving. She made a brief appearance at our house in the morning to wash some dishes, and again around an hour ago, to put cuscús on the stove for the boys.

Do you ever stop working? I asked her.

She shrugged. I'm used to it. I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not working.

Dan finished up the dishes. I sat on the floor of the kitchen with Ju, who was playing with an avocado. After she put on the cuscús, Dete sat down next to me with Enzo and handed him his own avocado to explore. Lorena leaned in the doorway. E. and R. clamored for cuscús.

That's a lot of people in one tiny kitchen.

But what a sweet moment, at the end of a long day.

body boarding

During this vacation, I've been trying to learn how to surf.

The first couple of times, Dan just sent me out and said, go ahead, try surfing.

I got pretty freaked out, the waves crashing onto me, a nine-foot board attached to my leg, and me having no idea whatsoever what I was supposed to do.

Once he realized that I'd have to work up to that, we started just at the edge, and now I can finally stand up (only in the whitewater, though, not actually catching a real wave).

It's really hard.

I feel pretty stupid out there, standing in the water up to my shins, trying to get up on the board.

It's probably good for me, though. I hate doing things that I'm not good at, and usually I just prefer to not try.

(Well, that's not exactly true. I often feel that way about my new job. And about raising kids, come to think of it. But somehow it doesn't feel as public as standing up on a surfboard with people all around and falling down over and over.)


I'm not bad at body boarding, though. For my birthday, Dan got me a pair of flippers. (Which is something else I have to figure out. The first time, it took me fifteen minutes to get out to where the waves were breaking. I kept tripping over my feet.)

I know body boarding isn't as cool as surfing. But hey, if it's good enough for President Obama, it's good enough for me.

feliz ano novo!

New Years Eve (Reveillón) is a big deal here. Different venues host parties where you pay a fee per person, or per table, and that includes food, drink, and very loud music.

We didn't attend such a party (per se), but our condominium hosted one, so did get to partake of the music and the drunk revelers on the lawn.

The pool area was decked out with tables and chairs and a gazillion balloons.


Beginning around 11 pm, there are fireworks that go on for a couple of hours. E. was excited to get to wake up at midnight and watch them from our neighbors' balcony.

When I woke up with Ju at 5, the speakers were blasting Michael Jackson, the doormen, their black ties askew, were clearing the tables away, and the last few stragglers were popping the balloons.


(Just an aside: how is it that I can now sleep through fireworks and music at top volume, but I'm awakened immediately by the slightest whimpering from the other room?)

Since we were up, I wanted to go to the beach early, before it got crowded and the sun got too hot.


There's a Brazilian New Years' tradition that involves diving under seven waves, and making seven wishes. Or something along those lines. (I heard about it yesterday from two friends who are both married to Brazilians, and they weren't totally clear on the details.)

But it seemed like a nice idea, a meaningful way to start the New Year.