I’ve been working at a magazine for the past couple of months, covering for an editor who is on maternity leave. When I started coming in-office, Amalía was six months old, so she was already eating puréed fruits and veggies and snacking on rice crackers. But I was also breastfeeding her, and still am. So once or twice a day, at my appointed time, I leave my desk in the open-plan office and sidle off to the “Mommy Room”, where seven other women and I take turns expressing milk. Every half hour, from 9 to 6 is accounted for, our names written in marker on a whiteboard on the wall.

Last weekend, Amalía, her grandmother and I visited my sister in San Francisco. The trip was great; we saw redwoods and tasted wine and ate lavishly and caught up with old friends. But we took the red-eye back, and there were some casualties. A certain moo-ing cow never made the flight. We left a few infant socks in our wake. And, in my half-awake stupor my first day back at the office, I somehow lost, or threw out, one of the bottles that goes with my breast pump.

So yesterday I was pumping into a bottle off of one breast, and into a water glass off of the other. I tried to tell myself I was MomGyver, making things work on limited resources. But what I was really making was a mess. And then Time magazine had to get all up in my face to ask if I was breastfeeding enough or looking good enough while doing it. Right after that French “feminist” decided that breastfeeding was setting back the women’s movement and reducing me to self-chosen slavery. And it just makes me wish that everyone would get their minds off my nipples.

I like reading online gossip in the Mommy Room while I pump, and cuddling with the baby when I feed her (except when she bites me, that’s not such a delight). I thank my lucky stars that I can do it—those and the no-nonsense lactation consultant who taught me how, and the supportive husband who dragged me to her after I burst into tears not being able to figure it out on my own. I’m really glad I’m breastfeeding. But if you’re a mom, too, and you want to do it for longer than I do or for less time than I do, that’s your business. I’ll mind mine if you mind yours. If only everyone else would follow suit. For Mother’s Day, what would be really nice is if everyone would stop telling those of us in the proverbial Mommy Room that we’re doing this mom thing wrong one way or the other and just let us do it.

Two weeks ago I went to a wedding, the first one I’ve attended since Amalía was born. And when the beaming bride walked in with her parents, my husband turned to me and said, “Someday that will be us.” I had been thinking the exact same thing, that I hoped someday someone would love my daughter as much as I do, that she would have everything she wanted, whether that was a partner and a family or a chance to travel footloose and fancy free (but with a wifi device that allowed her to email her parents frequently).

Weddings used to make me think about my own plans and desires. Now a happy future for Amalía is the thing I want most in the world, that and a chance to watch it unfold. I’ve never felt more like a mother than I did then, when I realized my first thought was now for her.

As my first Mother’s Day approaches, I want to thank Amalía for making me a mom. And to tell Time magazine, and Elisabeth Badinter, and everyone else who thinks I’m doing it wrong, that I’m being the best one I can. And so are the other moms I know. And I think that’s more than enough.

Why is this man smiling?

Ashton Kutcher—what were you thinking, dude?

I know it’s hard to stay grounded when you’re constantly surrounded by celebrities and security. But what part of you thought it would be a good idea to put on “brownface” and play a creepy would-be Bollywood producer named Raj lmaking dubious use of a video dating service, all in the interest of selling PopChips. I have a sneaking suspicion that you don’t need the money. Or the potential cringing of Demi Moore when she sees you in an ad that’s based on the idea of you as a single man looking for love in all the wrong places? And in some offensive faces. As tech entrepreneur Anil Dash wrote in his blog, “if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course.”

I saw the controversial segment of the ad—which has now been pulled—on a Today show segment this morning which reported on the outcry from Indian-American groups after it first ran. I felt so embarrassed for all concerned—Kutcher, anyone named Raj, all the Indian people I’ve ever met, the guy who invented TV—that I almost left the room to get away from the mishegoss.

But then I wondered if I might be the pot calling the kettle brown. See, my novel, Other Waters, is about Indian-Americans and the conflict they feel as a result of being bicultural. It’s written in the third person, but it’s a close third, largely written from the point of view of the protagonist, Maya Das, an Indian-American psychiatrist who thinks that her family has been cursed. The book hasn’t generated any outcry from Indian-American readers. In fact, it’s gotten a fair amount of praise from some of them, such as Michelle d’Mello, who wrote in the Bamboo Online, “The ultimate twist is that Ms. Gage, who writes with such authenticity about the ‘desi’ experience is not, herself, South Asian.”

So what’s the difference between me and Ashton? We both “pretended” to be Indian in a way, so how come I’m an author who gets a pass for her “authenticity” and he’s just a big, fat racist? (OK, no one is calling him big and fat. He’s a handsome, buff racist, but he is being called a racist nonetheless.)

And I’m not the only non-South-Asian author to write from an Indian perspective. Nell Freudenberger’s new book The Newlyweds, also has a South Asian woman as its protagonist and a white woman as its author. (I have yet to read the book but am eager to; I went to college with the author and met her a few times and she seemed wicked smaht, as I used to say when I was growing up, even then.) In a review of The Newlyweds in the New York Times’ Book Review, Mohsin Hamid wrote:

“At stake here isn’t — or shouldn’t be — the question of authenticity, which is a red herring: nationalities, ethnicities, genders and even species do not ‘own’ the right to fictional narratives spoken in what purport to be their voices… No, the more pressing issue is that of verisimilitude, truthlikeness, the illusion of being real, a quality without which fiction that adheres to the conventions of what is commonly called realism (a problematic term, but useful shorthand for the more cumbersome ‘let’s try not to draw attention to the fact that this is all made up’-ism) starts to feel to its audience like an ill-fitting and spasmodic sock puppet.”

So are we not big, fat racists, or literary colonialists because our stories seem “truer” than Kutcher’s bad accent, phony complexion and cheap achkan jacket? Or are all three of us just embarrassingly on-trend and everyone wants to be Indianish these days? When does something stop being an homage and start being a stereotype?

I don’t think these questions have easy answers. But I suspect the media involved (TV versus novels) has something to do with the distinction between exploring another culture and mocking it. Maybe it has to do with the time needed to produce a novel as opposed to an 18 second piece of an ad. But I think it also has to do with the amount of time it takes to read a novel rather than to watch an ad.

When the Pulitzer committee failed to give a prize for fiction this year, novelist Ann Patchett (one of my favorite authors) wrote, “Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.”

I couldn’t agree with Patchett more. She wrote her Op-ed weeks ago, so she clearly wasn’t commenting on the Raj Upset. (Although she is right on point with her disdain of Twitter—Kutcher got into hot internet water when he tweeted to protest the JoePa firing, without being aware that a child abuse scandal was involved, and the backlash to the Raj ad has largely played out on Twitter.) But I think she couldn’t be more right about empathy, and, to extend her thought, I suspect that one of key differences between stereotype and characterization is the act of taking time to imagine what a person—and the ethnic group they identify with—feels. As readers we are forced to imagine what it’s like to be someone else. As viewers, it’s all too easy to laugh at a person as you would at a cartoon character. It’s the difference between trying to get inside someone’s mind, and just slapping on their makeup.

Maybe this experience will cause Kutcher to slow down and take some time to think before he tweets or applies foundation that doesn’t complement his skin tone. Maybe he’ll even take up longer-form writing, extending his range beyond 140 words. And if he does find himself with time on his hands, I’ve got a few good novels I could recommend.

Amalía meets tsoureki—Greek Easter bread

A few weeks ago my mother, Joanie, called me up all atwitter, as she often does after reading not one but two newspapers first thing in the morning. (Bless her heart, she is singlehandedly keeping the physical, print version of the newspaper alive.)

“Guess what!” she chirped. “The newspaper says that according to the census, 15 percent of all new marriages in the US last year were interracial—and yours counts!”

Joanie was delighted; she loves it when I’m on trend. But something was bothering her. “The thing is,” she said. “That’s only because this new census counts ‘white Hispanics’ as a racial group.” She sounded a little disappointed, like she’d been given a present and then had it taken away. I think she had fantasies of being on-trend herself, updating the Katharine Hepburn role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which the mom is shocked at her daughter’s choice of a Black husband (the dreamy Sydney Poitier!), but comes around in the end to realize that we’re all the same deep down.

Instead my “interracial” marriage to a “white Hispanic” was so unshocking that no one even noticed it was one until a year and a half later. The biggest cultural conflict Joanie and Emilio faced prior to our marriage was that she didn’t understand why he thought it was hilarious that she bought a “Shake Weight” to tone her arms in anticipation of the wedding. And since both Saturday Night Live and South Park have mocked the phallic workout tool, that has to be chalked up to a generational difference, not a cultural one.

So I see Joanie’s point: our interracial marriage is much ado about nothing at this point. We haven’t faced any kind of discrimination or criticism that I’m sure other interracial couples confront. But we have reaped a whole lot of the benefits of crosscultural marriage. Because when Greeks and Nicaraguans come together, I quickly found out, more is more.

So Amalía, our little Greekaraguan, has a larger jewelry collection than I do, three grandmas, and not one, but two Easters. The past two weeks have been a nonstop religious holiday in our nomadic home. First, Amalía’s abuela Carmen came from Nicaragua, where she lives, to New York, where we’re living for a few months while I complete a work project. The first weekend she was here, Amalía put on her Easter 1 dress (handsmocked in Nicaragua) and hat, and headed to Catholic mass for Easter. She slept through the first half, but woke up in time for several hymns. Amalía then hit the Holy Wednesday service at the Greek cathedral in New York before heading to Massachusetts with Papi, mama, and her abuelita for Orthodox Easter. Emilio and his mom were shocked that in the Orthodox church, we all take communion from the same spoon and goblet like one big, happy family, instead of receiving it in sanitary, individual wafers, but otherwise, most of the services were familiar: the refrain of Kyrie Eleison (Lord Have Mercy) during the prayers, the midnight service in which all the lights are extinguished and the congregation waits in hushed darkness until the priest brings a lit candle from the altar and passes the light around the church from worshipper to worshipper, to represent Christ being the Light of the world.

The next day, for our Easter lunch, Amalía wore a second (Easter 2) dress, given to her by yet another adoring grandma-type family friend. At seven-and-half months, Amalía is still too young to comprehend the spiritual aspects of Easter. But she clearly already gets the fashion angle, and, given her expression as she listened to the hymns in the Catholic church on Easter 1, and the fact that she was singing to herself while gazing around the frescoed ceiling of the Orthodox church on Holy Saturday, she’s already wrapped up in the wonder of this amazing time of year. And cultivating a sense of wonder, is, I think, the first step to understanding realms beyond our physical existence.

Watching Amalía take in the glories of this world with rapt enjoyment makes it a more awe-inspiring place for all of us. The Resurrection is so nice, Amalía celebrates it twice. I hope the parents of all the other children of crosscultural and interracial marriages—even those who only count because of the new census—have found their world similarly expanded and their joy multiplied by the experience. Rock on, trendsetters.

It was fun to write the essay. But more than that, it was a real eye-opener to read the 181 comments that have been posted since the piece went up on March 15th. I learned so many things from the people who wrote in–for example, that keloid scars may be less likely to form on baby skin than on adult ears during piercing. Also, that the gold you can buy in the US is junk compared to the good 22karat stuff that is the norm in India.

But the most surprising thing I realized was how apparently trivial things  function as cultural flashpoints, bringing up race and class prejudices that most of us are, perhaps, likely to keep buried when discussing more obvious hot-button issues.

Before moving to Miami Beach almost two years ago, I lived in New York, where fashion scrutiny and overthinking everything are as commonplace as earrings on baby girls are in Miami. So I expected that, upon learning that I’d taken my daughter to the pediatrician to get her ears pierced, a few holier-than-thou types would be outraged. I anticipated the “it’s her body, wait until she asks for earrings before slapping them on her” argument—it was one I’d made myself before deciding that it just wasn’t a big deal, given that if Amalía grows up and doesn’t want earrings, she can let the holes close up. If anyone ever noticed the two little scars that resulted, she could explain that she was Greekaraguan, and that in Nicaragua, they pierce baby girl’s ears. It would be a reminder of her heritage, I thought, one she could flaunt or ignore.

I even anticipated the melodramatic comparisons with female genital mutilation, the old “lots of atrocities are cultural norms” argument. But if a person can’t see the difference between permanent alteration of an infant’s genitals, which can result in lifelong pain, and pierced ears, which most women voluntarily undergo at some point, then clearly I was not going to change his or her mind. (Oddly enough, only one comment mentioned circumcision of boys as a parallel to pierced ears of girls. I guess that’s because circumcision–which I don’t have an opinion on yet–is our own cultural norm in the US.)

What shocked, and ultimately amused, me was the reaction of multiple readers who saw earrings as an issue of CLASS, not of culture. “I have never seen an infant born to middle or upper class parents who had her ears pierced,” wrote Taylor from Boston (really? “Taylor from Boston”? I mean, it would have been slightly less stereotypical if the signature had read “Thurston Howell III of Kennebunkport” or “Waspy McWasperson of White Haven”).

What amused me a whole lot less were the few openly racist and vaguely threatening comments, like this gem:

“There is a clear geographical line separating us from Latin America. That line divides us culturally, too. We don’t eat horse meat, don’t conduct cocks and dogs fights and don’t pierce babies’ ears.

If you cannot learn to appreciate the beauty of a baby girl with natural, pierce-less ears, than maybe you don’t belong in our culture.”

Thank you, sir, for appointing yourself the voice of Anglo America. Where do I go to secede?

Jut as creepy as the cockfight guy were the handful of people who equated earrings with sexuality (as opposed to gender), asking when I was going to get Amalía a boob job and “stripper heels”. This just struck me as a wildly strange link to make; how many of us have grandmothers who wear earrings? And do those venerable ladies wear stripper heels and have boob jobs? (Although if your grandma happens to wear stripper heels, let me be the first to say, kudos, madam!)

The bottom line is, we all carry around associations—some of them toxic—with certain articles of clothing. This point was driven home much more tragically with Geraldo Rivera’s “hoodie defense” of George Zimmerman, who shot the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin because he found his appearance threatening. Rivera tweeted “His hoodie killed Trayvon Martin as surely as George Zimmerman.”

I’m not trying to compare Earringgate to the Trayvon Martin situation; one’s a tempest in a teapot and the other is a tragedy (it would be a bit like comparing pierced ears to female genital mutilation). I’m just pointing out that I now see I was naive to be shocked that people have such strong visceral associations with what we wear (and, apparently, what we eat. I’ve never eaten horse meat but I’m a little unclear as to what makes it that much grosser than eating cow meat. And I say that as a non-vegetarian. But that’s another post).

The other shocker in all 181 comments I received? Not one of them chastised my husband for piercing Amalía’s ears, even though it was his desire that led us to do so. Instead, all these self-proclaimed feminists did what people have from time immemorial: blamed the mama. And I’m just as guilty as all the rest of them–I didn’t even notice the fact that not one reader singled out my husband until he pointed it out himself.

As the guilty mama in question, I can say that I had mixed feelings while bringing Amalía to the doctor for her “beauty visit”. But all the criticism I’ve gotten since made me glad that we pierced her’s ears.

The last comment in response to “Baby’s First Bling” is one of the most damning. “Custom will justify any atrocity,” writes Chandler. “Way to put a girl in her place and show her what’s really important in life, right from the very beginning.”

I have two thoughts in response to Chandler (another name that I would never let myself use if I were writing a novel with a judgey honky character, because it would be too cliché). The first is if s/he really considers ear-piercing “an atrocity”, I hope Amalía will live a life that is just as trauma-free as Chandler’s.

As for the second, I pierced Amalía’s ears for no other reason than because I thought it would make lots of people I love happy, including her someday. But now I hope that Chandler’s right, that having pierced ears may in fact help show her what’s really important in life, right from the very beginning: Family. Tradition. Diversity. And, sandwiched between two blinged-out earlobes, an open mind.

You have to click on the link below to read this week’s post, which means I’m guestblogging for myself, I guess! Make sure you check out the comments in which readers share their own ear-piercing stories, tell me I’m screwing up Amalía already with my gender-centric ways, and point out that my husband, and our adorable daughter, are “lower-class” because none of the Very Best Latinas pierce their ears. (That last part was my favorite comment, ’cause Amalía likes to keep it real; she pierced her ears in solidarity with the 99%!)

But you, dear reader, do get a little something extra here that you won’t find on the nytimes.com; pictures of the bedazzled little lady showing off her new look.

Baby’s First Bling

Image from fashionbombdaily.com

It’s that time of year again–empty beer bottles are sprouting in my garden like so many crocuses, flocks of young chicks in bikini tops and belly rings keep swooping into my neighborhood Starbucks, and, if the boys who have rented the apartment across the courtyard are any indication, young men’s fancy is turning to lust.

Yes, it’s Spring Break in Miami Beach. And for the hordes of college students descending on my adopted hometown, I am the biggest buzzkill. Actually, I’m the second biggest buzzkill; top honors go to my six-month-old who likes to scream every day around three p.m., just when the boys across the courtyard are waking up, projecting smooth jams over their sound system, and trying to look cool for the young ladies they’ve invited over.

“Hi, ma’am,” they say, sheepishly, as I pass by, pushing the stroller. I say hi back. And I look meaningfully at the six-pack they’ve placed on the wrought-iron table in our courtyard, as if to say, “you’d better be planning to clean that up, son”.

But part of me wants them to know that I get it, I know what they’re up to, and on some level, I respect it. Not that I was ever a rabid Spring Breaker. I never got a tattoo or anything pierced. Come Spring Break I was usually visiting my boyfriend’s parents or watching the Holy Week parades in colonial towns in Mexico. Any spring-break hurling I did was the result of water-borne parasites, not Goldschlager.

I was less than a party girl in college. But I was a Folklore and Mythology major. And in the course of studying the rituals of several cultures I can’t help but notice that come February or March, many religious, ethnic and cultural groups have a sanctified, codified, plan for cutting loose. And somehow, that seems to make all this partying seem OK. Or even necessary.

In Catholic countries and cities, it’s Mardi Gras or Carnivale, when revelers are supposed to feast, dress up in costume or disguise, and gorge themselves on delicacies before the self-imposed privations of Lent.

Image taken from carnaval.com/greece

In Greece, where Orthodox Christians give up meat and dairy during Lent, the just-before-the-fasting celebration is Apokries (the word literally means “farewell to meat” in Greek, the same way Carnevale does in Latin). There are regional variations (people throw flour at each other in Galaxidi, for example), but mostly, the same recipe for fun is followed–disguise+gorging=religiously sanctioned good times.

Image taken from openlib.org

In India, where I traveled extensively to research my new novel, Other Waters, this time of year brings Holi, the spring festival when adults and children alike throw colored powder or water at each other, social norms are reversed, women harass men in the street, and hash milkshakes are consumed. (An anthropology professor of mine wrote his dissertation about Holi in Varanasi, but had to extend his fieldwork by a year, because the first Holi he was there he passed out after taking his neighbor up on the kind offer of a hash milkshake, and missed the whole festival).

Queen Esther looking good in a painting by Edwin Long

And today is the last day of Purim, a holiday which commemorates Esther saving the Jews from destruction in Persia. In celebration, little girls dress as Queen Esther, everyone boos the villains as the Book of Esther is read aloud, and adults party hard. “I have heard that the usual prohibitions against cross-dressing are lifted during this holiday,” writes the author of the Purim page on Judaism 101. “But I am not sure about that.”

There are no hash milkshakes at Purim, but plenty of sugar highs as the triangle shaped hamentaschen cookies (formed to resemble the evil Persian Haman’s hat) are baked and distributed. And there’s lots of booze. “According to the Talmud, a person is required to drink until he cannot tell the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai,’” says Judaism 101. “Though opinions differ as to exactly how drunk that is. A person certainly should not become so drunk that he might violate other commandments or get seriously ill.”

If only I could convince the Spring Breakers across the courtyard to heed that last sentence.

There seems to be something primal, maybe instinctive, that makes us want to dress up this time of year. Is it the longer days making us feel frisky? Or do we just need a little taste of good times to get us through the spiritually serious time to come (in the case of Lent and Easter) or the hard work ahead of us (in the case of my temporary neighbors and final exams)?

These are questions that don’t seem to trouble the boys across the courtyard, who are leaving to head to the beach as I type this. So if I can’t beat them, I think I’m going to join them. I’m going to dress up Amalía as a mini Queen Esther (did Queen Esther wear faux leopard coats from Babies R Us, perchance?). And then I’m going to leave her with a babysitter, change out of my spit-up stained clothes, grab my husband (who will not cross dress for the occasion), and go out to dinner, where I will drink not one but two glasses of wine and eat king cake or hamentaschen if they happen to be on the menu. But I’ll probably save the hash milkshake for a year when I’m not breastfeeding.

S'Mores milkshake photo from foodspotting.com

Reader, forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been 20 days since my last post–the longest I’ve ever gone without posting since the inception of this blog. My head has been spinning with event both glorious (much celebration surrounding the launch of my novel, Other Waters) and less so (my outpatient surgery became inpatient surgery as I had to stay overnight in the hospital and recovery is always slower than one expects). But the most glorious news of all is that my ovarian cyst was completely benign. I am so grateful and pleased about that. I don’t know a benign result ritual (although someone should invent one, hospitals are so sterile they could use a little ritual) but I did light a candle in church the weekend after my procedure, and I also drank a s’mores milkshake from Five Napkin Burger, a treat I allow myself after each surgery (the last time I had one was when Amalía was born).

So there has been a lot going on in my life over the past 20 days, but, as always, there has been so much happening folklorically as well.

First came Valentine’s Day on the 14th. My parents were still in town so Emilio and I took advantage of the free babysitting to try a restaurant we’d never been to, Vita by bâoli. There were chandeliers hanging from the trees and longstemmed red roses on the table and the name of the restaurant spotlit on the wall; it was fun but very sceney, the kind of place I think people imagine we dine all the time when we say we live in South Beach, when really dinner out for us means a stroller pulled up to the table at our favorite little Italian place. It was fun to visit the world of people with vomit-free, blown-dry hair for a night, and in between reveling in the good test results, we relived our Valentine’s Day dinner last year, when we didn’t need a babysitter, but I had pregnancy-induced bursitis that caused me to hobble from a candlelit table to our car as other patrons stared at me in horror wondering what was wrong with the poor girl with the swollen abdomen and the impaired mobility. I teased my husband about sickness and health, but I also wondered why it seems there’s often something wrong with me at this time of year–this surgery, my last cystectomy, the bursitis, they all happened in February.

I discovered one reason why two days later on the 16th, when we launched Other Waters at Books&Books in Coral Gables, one of my favorite bookstores in the world. The event planner is a friend of mine and I had emailed her I was having an outpatient surgery but didn’t specify why, so she hobbled up in a cast and said, “what happened to you?” I asked the same thing (she’d tripped and broken a bone in her foot) and when I mused that something always seemed to be going wrong at this time of year, she offered a reason why that might be. “I practice Tibetan Buddhism,” she told me. “And the period before the New Year, known as the Dön Season, is a particularly dangerous time when obstacles are thrown your way.”

This year the Tibetan New Year is February 22, so my surgery technically fell right before Dön Season started, but it struck me as an interesting theory nonetheless. I’ve done a little bit of googling about Dön Season, and have seen it described both as a “karmic blizzard” and a “spiritual flu season”, but most people seem to agree that the glass half full interpretation of this time is that it’s meant to slow us down, to force us to acknowledge what’s important.

Dön Season, my surgery, and even Valentine’s Day did that for me–made me focus again on health and my family. But life speeded up again almost as soon as it was over. I’ve been in book launch season ever since, reading in Coral Gables, Manhattan, Worcester, and, tonight, Boston, with a few more dates before I’m through, and guest-blogging and being interviewed all over the web thanks to the wonderful virtual community of writers out there. I’ll include links below in case you’re interested, but what I find most fascinating about this explosion of opportunities for “virtual book tours” is that, as far as I can tell, it’s all sprung up since my last book, North of Ithaka, came out in 2005. A whole new set of rituals, largely centered around interacting with readers through blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc, has developed around book launches and I love how it makes writing a less solitary, and more interactive process. And from a reader perspective there are sites such as GoodReads, LibraryThing, even Amazon and Barnes&Noble where readers can review what they’ve read, note what they plan to read and generally “read out loud” instead of alone. It’s all very exciting.

My BFF, Katherine, also came up with a genius gift to give at a book launch–she had a onesie for Amalía made up with the title of my book on it. So now I can put the little lady to work as a PR machine; who can resist this face?

Which brings us to yesterday, “Clean Monday”, when Orthodox Lent starts and in Greece people fly kites to symbolize the soal soaring closer to God. I started my blog a year ago talking about kites, and, a few weeks later, Clean Monday, and the responses I’ve gotten from readers have kept me soaring year round.

I’ve been googling “nursing mothers and Orthodox Lent” and have learned that those of us who are breastfeeding are exempt from fasting, which is practiced not as deprivation but as a reminder that this is a special, sacred time of year. “My priest said nursing is our fast,” one mom wrote, which I think is a nice idea. I’m going to drop meat from my diet, as I think I can get enough protein from eggs and fish, but I’m keeping dairy. And if that doesn’t work for me, I’ll re-think.

That’s one thing I love about folklore–its flexibility, the way we can ammend it to fit our lives as they change. In times of stress, as in times of celebration, I get by with a little help from my (real and virtual) friends. That, and a ritual or two.

And here’s a little of what I’ve been up to:

Beyond the Margins

The Bamboo Online 

Free Book Fridays

Women’s Fiction Writers

My doctor assured me that the cyst was probably nothing to worry about, that it was most likely water-filled, or a benign growth like afibroid or a dermoid. But a post-surgical biopsy showed it to be a low-malginant potential tumor, which isn’t cancerous, but isn’t benign either, and a CT-scan revealed that I still had two small cysts on the back of that ovary.

Some people counseled me to have that ovary removed, pointing out that your chances of getting pregnant are the same with one ovary as with two (because the remaining ovary steps up its hormone production and releases an egg every month instead of every other). But I was young (27) and very single, and didn’t know what the future held, so I wanted to keep both ovaries just to be safe. So I opted to have routine ultrasounds to make sure that the cysts hadn’t grown in size.

They stayed the same for the next ten years, even throughout my pregnancy. Then last week, in my six-month post-delivery checkup, we did the usual ultrasound and it revealed an 8-cm cyst on my right ovary (actually, the cyst is so large it has sort of swallowed the ovary). Everyone agreed that it (and, this time, the dwarfed ovary) had to come out. It was déja vu all over again.

Only this time everything felt totally different. On the one hand, I was much better off than I had been during my first surgery, when I was young and single and had no idea if I’d ever have children. I now have the incredible husband I wasn’t sure existed, and we already have one very funny, highly adorable baby. A baby who came partly from an egg that the problematic right ovary had dropped (I know because during my pregnancy ultrasounds we saw the corpus luteum cyst, which remains when the egg is released, on the right).

But that’s where things get complicated. That what’s changed the most since my last surgery–this little baby. She depends on me for everything, down to the food she eats. The truth is, she’d get by just fine if I weren’t around–she has her papi and three grandmothers and loving aunts and grandpas and all the rest–but she’s also such a delight to be around that I don’t want to miss watching her discover the world, not even for the day I’ll be surgery. She gets so excited feeling the wind or watching the rain or when a stranger waves at her, and I want to see every one of those smiles and hear her guttural little laugh.

The oophorectamy I’m having today is an outpatient procedure. If all goes well, I should be in and out the same day, and after three days of pumping and dumping (and Amalía’s grandma giving her milk I’ve stored) the anesthesia will be out of my system and I can feed her again.

So I’ve been trying not to get all Terms of Endearment about what I hope what will be a minor procedure. The doctor told me that there’s a 20% chance the mass is cancerous, given my history and the tumor’s size, but I’ve been trying to focus on the 80%. And eighty percent is pretty good odds, even though it’s a B-, and nobody likes a B-, not even in gym class. That’s probably my problem–my life is the equivalent of grade inflation; I have the family I always wanted (although I would like to keep adding to it), and my novel is coming out in a week; maybe I’ve been too lucky and now I want everything to be A+ all the time without the interference of clear-liquid diets, surgery, and whisperings of mortality.

But I’ve been talking to some of my girlfriends, and I think it’s not just me and my unrealistic expectations. One friend was about to go in for dental surgery when I called her, and, knowing she was about to be put under general anesthesia, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about who would raise her child if something were to happen to her, where her husband would move, and what influences would dominate her baby’s life. It may be maudlin, but it’s also natural and unavoidable. Everyone tells you that everything changes when you have a baby; this is just one of the unexpected ways in which that is true.

I think that’s one of the most significant things that changes when you have a child; you become aware that if something were to happen to you, you would miss out not only on experiencing your life, but also on witnessing his or hers. The joy of life doubles, but then, so does the risk, the potential loss.

I realize this blog’s a bit of a downer. And that’s how life has been lately, but only in moments. Because every day there are incidents that are so amazing, watching Amalía laugh at her grandparents who are visiting, as she tries to bite their knuckles to soothe her teething, or they pinch her nose. And those moments are so purely fun that they’re not even outweighed by the fear of missing out on them.

So I’m trying not to worry too much, to stay calm until the surgery happens and to hope everything goes well. I do what I can to feel in control, employing the rituals that give me comfort. I pray. I went to church and took communion. I bought my mother a necklace with an image of Ganesh, remover of obstacles, on it. And I had my toenails painted, because every time I look at them while I’m having a medical test they cheer me up.

I also see signs everywhere, or I hear them rather; “the Rose” was playing on the muzak system during my MRI, and I remembered singing it with my sister in the backseat of the car on a drive across Greece with my parents. “Dynamite”, which was sort of a theme song of our wedding reception, played on the radio the way to one doctor’s appointment, and I had to laugh out loud that I considered a cheesy disco tune to be a message from on high. I saw a big rainbow en route to my pre-op blood typing. And every time Amalía chuckles her vaguely evil little chuckle I think it’s a promise that I’ve got a lot more of those coming to me.

Because after the initial appointment when I learned I need surgery, I rushed home to relieve the babysitter, who was already late for her next appointment, since what was supposed to be a routine doctor’s visit took so long. Then I wheeled Amalía’s stroller down to the beach to show her the ocean and to promise that there’ so much more we’re going to discover together in the future, and she laughed to show she understood what I was trying to tell her.

Bird's Eye View of Amalía

A couple of months ago a young male friend asked me, “How has motherhood changed you?”

I thought about it but I couldn’t quite put into words how everything had changed, and yet, thankfully, I still felt like myself. But I wanted to give him an honest answer, so I tried to think of some concrete examples of how my life had changed.

“Well, I cry at everything now–grocery store commercials where a family sits down to dinner, “the little drummer boy” on the muzak system in the GAP. I never know when I’m going to get all choked up,” I said. “Also, I used to find it sort of relaxing to watch those Law and Order shows sometimes. But now I can’t handle anything violent. Some starlet is up there playing a missing stripper, and all I can think is ‘she’s someone’s daughter.’”

My friend took a sip of his mojito. “So, mainly, your life has changed for the worse, then,” he summed up.

But that wasn’t true at all. Sure, I have lost my ability to watch endless cop shows, but I can live with that (and there are seasons and seasons of Real Housewives just waiting for me to use them as my guilty pleasure). And the tears can be inconvenient, but I can always pretend to have allergies. While my life is messier and more expensive, I think it’s infinitely better now that Amalía is in it.

So I’ve decided to list a few ways motherhood enriches one’s life on a daily basis. Not the major stuff–that’s obvious and also personal; everyone experiences motherhood differently. But there are a number of minor pleasures of motherhood that all of us flawed individuals can and should exploit daily. Below are my impressions of the minor highlights of motherhood:

1.) It’s a major ego boost. To paraphrase a Hallmark sentiment, to the world you may be one person. But to your baby you are a big old rock star. About 12 times a day Amalía looks at me like I’m Santa Claus trotting down a rainbow on a unicorn with a mermaid riding piggyback. Her eyes light up and she smiles a huge, open-mouthed, gummy smile like, “I can’t believe it’s YOU!”

She also smiles this way at her babysitter, the Starbucks barista, and the waiters up and down Lincoln Road, but I get the vast majority of the smiles. And if I’m ever depressed, I just grin at her and she smiles back every time. It’s pretty amazing.

The Dowager Countess is hungry.

2.) You get to talk about yourself in the third person, as if you were the Queen of England or the Dowager Countess. This is fun even if you’re just saying “Mama loves you!” to the baby. But it’s especially great if you’re passive aggressive like I am. It allows you to make demands on behalf of someone else, only guess what, that someone else is you! I realized this early on, when I was pregnant and would say things like, “the baby wants apple crisp.” Now that my little accomplice is on the outside, I have ammended those things to “Mama’s hungry” or “Mama’s tired” and somehow the people listening feel compelled to help me address those issues, because I’m not just gluttonous, lazy Eleni. I’m a hardworking mama! You may be thinking I’m evil by this point (and we’re only on point 2!) But I’m evil like a genius!

3.) The people around you seriously lower their expectations. These days, if my hair doesn’t have vomit in it my husband’s all, “You look great! What did you do to your hair?” And I know that the poor man has to live with me so he’s just trying to get on my good side. But it’s not just him. Unless you’re a celebrity mom–so Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, and Heidi Klum, stop reading right now. You can  join us again next week–people expect you to look as huge and overwhelmed as you did the first month or so after birth for years. If you can manage to put on clothes that match and step outside the house, I guarantee someone (usually a young man or woman who fears motherhood and has never really been around babies or moms) will ask, “How old is the baby?” Say anything under six months and they’ll say, “Wow, you look great!”

It’s not just the looks thing either. You can forget birthdays, stretch deadlines, or cut your productivity in half and no one’s surprised. Now, I realize that I’m outing myself as a slacker here and one shouldn’t really use “Mommy brain” as an excuse for everything. But it’s true! This mommy thing is overwhelming! And you do have way less time to get anything done. So I appreciate the slack people are cutting me and I plan to work it for the next 18-20 years. Consider yourselves warned.

4.) People give you free things. I’ve been given extra slices of banana bread and free iced coffees at two different Starbucks. And I realize that this comes from misguided love for the baby (I think the banana bread guy thought she was capable of eating a piece as well) or plain old pity, or a desire to clear the riff-raff out of the store. (During the iced coffee incident Amalía and I were covered in mashed apple puree and other unidentifiable substances and we smelled bad, too.) But I’ll take it! If we stink up enough Starbucks to feed ourselves for a few years, Amalía can accummulate a nice fat college fund!

5.) You get to sing a capella, made-up songs about poo poo all day long. I didn’t realize that this was something I’d ever want to do, but it’s really, shockingly fun. And it’s not just scatalogical musical humor either. I realize I have made up lyrics and music for virtually every moment of the day, and because there’s a baby listening, no one can call me criminally insane. Like, she smiles a big fat smile, and I sing, “My fatty fat face! You are my fat face! You are the cutest little fat face…IN THE LAND!” (I am trying to ammend this to My Sweetie Sweetface before she starts to understand words, for obvious reasons.) There’s the bathtime song for when I am cleaning the folds under her double chins and in her arms and legs:  ”Can I wash your nooks and crannies? Can I wash them, yes I can. Can I wash your nooks and crannies? Sweetest baby known to man.”

Now, my husband and I have made up the Ballad of Amalía, which makes a lot more logical sense than the above. (It contains lyrics such as “I was born in Miami Beach on an August Day. And if I could talk I’d have much to say. What?”) But most of what  I sing all day is virtually unintelligible or borderline offensive. And the beauty of a baby is–she’s not going to complain. No sir. Whatever crazy thing I sing, she’s going to smile at me like I’m Unicorn-Mermaid-Santa, and that is better than an entire season of Law and Order.

Logo from waterdragon.com

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “There are no second acts in American lives.” But I suspect that’s because he didn’t know much about Chinese New Year. Personally, I never miss a chance to celebrate it because for me, the lunar new year, which  falls on a different date in late January or early February, is a kinder, gentler new year’s eve. You get all of the good times associate with New Year–eating, drinking, luck-seeking–with none of the stress (resolutions, gym memberships, feeling old).

I’m aware that I might see Chinese New Year as low-stress, high-fun proposition because it’s not the new year I grew up celebrating…maybe Chinese people wake up in the new lunar year hung-over and asking how they got to this point in there lives, and why aren’t they rich/married/successful/whatever it is they thought they’d be by now. So maybe mine is a patronizing, Orientalizing view to take of the holiday. In which case, sorry about that.

BUT I would like to make a case that my view of the holiday as nothing but good times may also stem from the day’s emphasis on luck. On Chinese new year, celebrants eat lucky food (noodles for long life, dumplings for prosperity), wear red, which is a lucky color, and don’t clean their houses for fear of sweeping away good luck (a philosophy I like to follow most days of the year). And anything that involves inviting good luck gets me feeling giddy.

Year of the Tiger from Gameaxis.com

I’ve had some good Chinese New Year’s; in 2010, the year of the Tiger came on February 15th. My husband (then my boyfriend) and I were on the way to a party in Queens and happened upon the dragon parade in Chinatown. We realized we were both tigers according to the Chinese zodiac, so it was supposed to be a particularly lucky year for us. And I think it was; three months later we were engaged, four months after that we were married, and two months after that we were pregnant. Way to go, tiger!

Rabbit from chinalawandpolicy.com

Last year, the year of the rabbit coincided with my mother’s birthday, so my family met in New York and went for a dim sum banquet that included dumplings in the shape of rabbits. I was carrying my own little dumpling, who would become the baby Amalía. According to the Chinese zodiac, rabbits are stylish, quiet individuals. Thanks to the gifts of her (real and appointed) grandmothers, Amalía is definitely the former (my husband’s family calls her “Suri” because they say she changes outfit for fabulous outfit more often than Suri Cruise (see her fashionblogspot here)–but then, that’s partly due to her penchant for spitting up). But I have to say that she is not super quiet, particularly now that she is teething (in fact she is making an odd pteradactyl sound, half trill, half shriek, as I type). After a little more research, however, I’ve learned that each year of the Chinese calendar has an element associated with it, as well as the animal, and that 2011 was the year of the metal rabbit, which makes Amalía (and the others born along with her) more resilient and outspoken than the average bunny.

This year, according to the Chinese zodiac, is the year of the Water Dragon, a particularly auspicious animal said to emphasize creativity. It’s my own narcissistic spotlight effect that makes me see the year as the ideal time to launch my novel, Other Waters–which even has water in the title!–but it’s also a good time for marriages, and considered such an auspicious time to give birth that private hospitals in China have raised their room rates. (Hear all about it in this video from the New York Post.)

Sure, there’s some concern that the water dragon will bring erratic weather, particularly flooding, but as someone who lives three blocks from the beach, I’m choosing to ignore that prediction. I learned all of the above about the year of the water dragon last night at a Chinese New Year event at the Standard hotel here in Miami, where Amalía enjoyed her first al fresco happy hour a week after she was born. (Emilio and I have made up a song we like to think she sings that includes the verse: “I like happy hours/and power naps/sucking my hand/and spitting up in your laps”.)

The event took place on the mud dock, where I once slathered myself (and Amalía in utero) in nourishing green mud. But that was back in July and tonight I was fully dressed and joining my fellow revelers in drinking green tea shots and eating dumplings (lucky!) out of take-out containers. An astrologer gave a talk about the water dragon (creativity, floods, you remember), and then sparklers were passed out along with instructions to light a sparkler and make a wish. (I think this is a variation of lighting fireworks at Chinese New Year to ward off evil spirits.) The last time I’d seen sparklers was at our wedding, where guests lit them as we left the reception. It was beautiful to walk through the swirls of light but it was also fun now to have the chance to make my own.

But the highlight of the evening for me came when a number of “sky lanterns” were lit. I’d never seen one before, and to me they looked like mini hot air balloons. Apparently, in some regions of China, celebrants observe the new year by writing wishes on the side of a sky lantern, then lighting it and setting it afloat on the theory that the wishes will be carried to the sky. The sky lanterns set off last night at the Standard behaved like wishes themselves; some sputtered before landing in Biscayne Bay, others soared, and the most dramatic came within an inch of landing in the water until it too took flight.

Along with being Chinese New Year, last night was also the first evening we let Amalía with a non-grandma babysitter. I kept thinking how much Amalía would have loved watching the sky lanterns, but I wasn’t sure why I felt that way until just now, as I was feeding her. I was sitting in the rocking chair in her nursery (also known as my office), and she was so tired she would stop feeding to yawn, but then she’d turn her head to the right to check out the silk elephant string from India hanging down one windowsill, and to the left to see her butterfly mobile over her crib. It was as if she were afraid she might miss something, even though she’s seen the room almost every day of her life. And I realized that the reason the lanterns made me think of Amalía is because she, like them, is full of wonder and possibilities.

As the water dragon would say, Gung Hay Fat Choy. (Yet another reason to love the holiday: the ritual greeting has the word “fat” in it.)