The Martini Shot

The Martini Shot

I can’t complain. If in 2017 I was a sad bitch , in 2018 I was a bad bitch. I started out the year a bit wobbly..getting in a spat with my sister and realizing I had the next five months ahead of me in the mother country, still fraught with uncertainty of where  my next foot should fall.  “Surprises are good for you”, said my heroine Nora Ephron once. And they sure are. Those five months were exactly what I needed. While most think all I did was lounge around country club pools in tiny bathing suits the better part of my shift happened then, it was just not something you could see on Instagram.

What you did not see on IG:

- The terror of facing who we are. The relief in finding that we actually like what we see. Winter in El Salvador was  a time for Finn to learn where he comes from ,at least by half. He learned a new  language, but also some of the particularities and wonder that surrounded my childhood in that big old house camino a Los Planes. Before 2018 he was my kid and we were close- physically close (as in  I was always there and he was always near.) But in 2018 I chose to lead the life of a single mother - the responsibility and the joy of parenting both resting upon  me. We  weren’t just close in proximity anymore, my child and I developed a bond that had never been there before and that we will hopefully never lose. We laughed, we cried, he got  sick.  We got lice. Twice. I know that rhymes, but it’s true. We went to a fantastic island with Daddio.

 - I gave my mother the gift of lost time back, handing her the opportunity to have a child live with her  again, this time being a softer version of the woman who raised me. I gave myself the gift of forgiveness. I reopened old wounds and this time I opted to seal them instead of salting them, putting decades  long childhood resentment to its final bed. On the day I was about to fly back she told me she just wanted me to be happy. I said I was sorry I have always judged her so harshly. We both wept.

-I strove  for things worth having: peace, satisfaction, being of service. I tried to make decisions that wouldn't give me tummy aches after, or leave me vulnerable for mistreatment again. I’m not done, Probably nowhere near done, but I’m on it. And I’m learning and growing as I go. I learned the value of time affluence and chose to be a person who expands constantly  through learning and experimenting rather than one that seeks being established through career or money. 

- I worked hard. I worked in a jail, I worked as a florist, I worked with refugees seeking asylum my first two cases a woman and a child from El Salvador. I worked as an actress. I learned more in one year from all these interactions than I have in a decade put together. I finally understood the true meaning of gratefulness and a new, fuller appreciation for the small every day blessings bestowed upon me,- ranging from a keen ability to spot beauty and feel it  blowing my mind to the renewed breath of every morning when I open my eyes. I learned to just what an incredible extent the people in our lives shape it and enrich it. Every day I am grateful I get one more day on planet Earth with all you other animals. Fill in the blank with your name here _______.

-I learned  to lean towards acceptance and rethink the pride in anger because I just want to live in peace. I learned that the more I love the better I feel, and the better I live, the better I’m doing in fulfilling  my life’s  mission  which is the same one we all as spiritual beings on a human adventure have: To learn to live and love better. To be proud of every aspect of who we are , our bodies and our souls and how its great to be proud of the former but more satisfying to be at peace with the latter. I learned to appreciate the amazing things a body enables us to experience. Sensations ranging from wind in our hair, seeing the golden hour a the end of a day, hot showers when you are wicked tired, passion, a complicit squeeze of a hand, the understanding of friendship in a tight hug. The tenderness in kissing the top of a child’s head. I realized I perhaps need to take better care of my body, but most importantly that no one and nothing is worth endangering my soul.

Wrapping it Up.

In this recent venture in the acting world I pull twelve to fourteen hour days shooting  scenes you will see on your screen for not even a minute. By the time it’s time to go home  the day’s work has been put in,a fraction of something has been produced and it will come together with its whole eventually. It’s true of scenes in a film , and it’s true of life. I like thinking of  this year as  a constant shooting of scenes that we have finally come to the last of. This is what is referred to  in Hollywood slang,  as “The Martini Shot” . It is the last shot  of the day and after that the next one, well, it comes out of a glass. In my mind I hear the AC  yelling “Check the gate”  and the AD saying “Moving On”, meaning we are close to wrapping and indicating a milestone, a maker on the road to a finished film.

PASS ME BY

   

 Baby killers? Yes, that will catch your eye, capture your ear. It’s the debate du jour. Everyone who has ever wanted to hear the sound of their own voice will tell you about it, share their stance. Some do it from their Facebook status prompt, others on the floor of the Legislative Palace. Some will do it out of true conviction, others out of a very well calculated way to walk  the path to a political career. In spite of the extreme passion the subject of legalizing abortion in the two instances proposed by Johnny Wright  has aroused (Side note and completely unrelated to his proposal: you gotta love a man in politics who maintains his integrity and has a set of balls of steel...And so young too! But I digress.) I am happy to see debate going on. I am happy to see an exchange of views and for us Salvadorans, always so filled with apathy, to finally be speaking out. Whatever your view may be, by default it is an unpopular one for the other side-  and taking unpopular stances is good for you, it tests your mettle.

    In El Salvador our small world is very judgmental, and constantly seen in  black and white. There is a lot of living in extremes. For those of you unfamiliar with my country, it is one of five that still considers abortion a crime. Under no circumstance can an abortion be legal, whether the pregnancy is a risk for the mother’s life, whether the pregnancy is the result of raping an underage girl or (gasp!) whether  a woman for any other reason, powerful or not, does not wish to have a baby. Johnny Wright recently proposed a change in the current criminal law which would , if passed, legalize abortion in the first two instances mentioned above. The spirit of his initiative is preserving women’s health but it has been enough to launch a national morality competition. If this were the Trojan War, John Wright stole Helen. 

    I see a lot of problems here. But not the obvious ones. There are enough people out there giving their two cents on morality, principles, and even going as far as calling legalizing abortion under the first two proposed instances a genocide. There are enough righteous fingers zealously pointing at those who have sparked this debate, so I am thinking more than jumping to a condemning verdict on whether someone has a broken moral compass or not, who is bad and who is even badder, I would rather share the questions I have come up with.

The options. What are the options for girls/ women under these first two premises? What kind of resources do they have? Does this government know enough about them to come down with a condemnation that will affect their lives and impact their health in a huge way? Will the government give them some sort of support  after forcing them into a decision they were not prepared to make? Are we giving women the credit they deserve when we are  tying their decision making hand and foot by sending them to jail if what the State has chosen for them is not in alignment with what they want?  What will happen when you force women to have these babies? Will they actually follow through, or will they turn to clandestine clinics and get a procedure under the lowest medical care possible?  

For the ones who follow through and carry their pregnancies and give birth to an unwanted baby the obvious choice is giving them up for adoption. Where are we putting all these babies?Has anyone visited an orphanage here? Does anyone know what the chances are of these kids actually getting adopted in a vital phase of life were nurturing from parents is KEY? I would like to think they will get  scooped up by a nice family from Copenhagen who will buy them  an Ikea bunk bed and summer vacays in Biarritz , but it’s not happening. It is more likely that these kids will rot in an understaffed, under budgeted orphanage lacking love, lacking guidance and therefore lacking the pillars for the self esteem and sense of self they will need to navigate life in a joyful way.  I don't want to be a Negative Nelly just sitting here pointing out deficiency after deficiency but- Has anybody read the adoption laws in this country? Laws are not meant to be stagnant. For laws to serve their purpose correctly they need to change with the times. They need to be dynamic. Which leads me  to the following thought:

This debate is partly on legalizing the choice to have abortion when the pregnancy is the result of the rape of an underage girl. I don’t know a rape victim personally, but they are everywhere in this country. At the rate of one every twenty minutes, this issue should be getting a lot more attention than the abortion debate. I am not saying it is more important, I am saying look at the origin of things first. Nip that in the bud.  Why have we not looked at this more closely, why are we not debating to modify those laws? Why don’t we protect our girls as a government first,after all -isn’t the crime in this country what puts them in the position of having an unwanted baby in the first place? This is not a confusing case of what came first chicken or the egg. For an underage girl to get pregnant by her rapist  a crime needs to be committed first. Everyone talks about life as a constitutional right. But freedom is there too. What about health, a safe and secure childhood? How does one decide which life is worth more? a defenseless cell or a defenseless child who is already here?

As for the girls we are trying to protect from committing a sin that will make them criminals on earth and damn them to hell in the next life: 

I have had the privilege of working  with gang member girls as young as fourteen who have been incarcerated. In many ways they are not that different from you and me, in others the way they grew up has been a tough experience our silver spoon  fed selves cannot fathom. They are hopeless romantics who grew up in a home where they were not valued or loved in the proper way a child needs to be nurtured in order to thrive. They have lived on the streets, they have been raped a number of times, usually by a family member. Their mothers knew the truth but would not risk crossing the males who dominate their family. These girls turn to gangs because they are offered loyalty, and a sense of belonging, and the protection they never got at home. I know what some are thinking. That I am some sort of asshole because I am not saying we should throw them all in a hole and burn them because they are bad eggs. Yes, I have heard people say that. Because it is much more simple to declare that they are bad seeds who do bad things than to think of ways to help them repair their damaged selves. I’ll tell you what. No one is born bad. Perhaps if our circumstances had been different,  we would be their cell mates. We are all so passionate about defending the life that is to be. But what about the life that is already here? these girls have been forgotten. No one thinks of them, no one writes about them. Where are the enraged moralists? Perhaps speaking out for those girls, who are still our girls, is not chic. It is not the debate du jour. The problem here is crime, not the babies- but no one looks at the background. And so I join the ranks of those who use their voice, not to stir the pot even more, but to raise some valid questions. I am aware I am  taking an  unpopular stance, and unpopular as it is, I stand by it. I hope we can one day say girls here are safe from sexual aggression, but if this cannot be a reality I support them having a choice to be healthy not just physically but mentally and make decisions pertaining to their bodies and their lives along with their parents or guardians. I support them having those rape babies or not, I support them if they want to  risk their lives to have a baby, or not. I urge you to allow yourself a glimpse of who these girls and women are. I assure you the less privileged are the ones who will take the brunt of this. Try walking in their shoes- switch the Manolos for a pair of chancletas. Lastly acknowledge that this world is not black and white, and that our humanity lies in the very gray. If this all sounds like baloney to you, then, in the words of Frank Sinatra- “if you don't happen to like it , deal me out,  thank you kindly, pass me by”.

What If I Had Never Met You?

I opened my eyes and the room seemed way too bright. That was enough to send me into a tizzy as I live by “ If you are on time , you are already late”.  Because nothing can be easy on a day were the goddess Fortuna has decreed you will be miserable, Finn was a grade A brat, and I was destined to leave the house frazzled with a screaming kid in tow. 

“TE VOY A NALGUEAR!” 

I am not an advocate of physical discipline. Some books say it is inhumane. What’s inhumane is the crap he puts me through. But I get it. I would very much rather reason with him and talk it out but sometimes you just see red, you look at the clock and back to that shit eating grin on his face while defiantly kicking the furniture and looking at you square in the eye. All symptoms are eerily similar to  a panic attack but it’s merely a reaction to  Kindergarchy.

-“Please brush your teeth.” 

“NO.” 

Sigh. Positive discipline alternated with  threats. Everything is a fight.

Having left him at school I focused on what was next . Clear rubber bands, I needed clear rubber bands. I agreed to teach a flower arranging class and today’s work was “How to make a European Bouquet”. Rubber bands were of the essence. Still consumed with my thoughts as I was walking to my car, I met the eye of a fellow drop offer. I had seen her many times but we had never spoken. Today, of all days, we chatted. I discovered that behind that quiet face  I have walked by on many occasions over the past two months is a woman that I relate to and whose conversation am I enthralled with. Having written her off as another plus one wifey in athleisure I am embarrassed to admit I had never bothered with her. On the drive over I thought of how many amazing women are out there that we are missing out on. So many points of view, so many stories and wisdom. Friend FOMO. I thought of how we do ourselves such a disservice by trying to remain separate when connection is so much better.

I looked at the screen and Waze was saying I would be at CISF ( stands for Center for Feminine Social Integration in Spanish) at 9:17 a.m. “ I’m good,” I thought..Today was my first day at work and my second time meeting Merci, who works for an NGO that does tremendous work in Centers were girls between the ages of 14 and 25 have been locked up. I am charmed by her lack of pretentiousness, her ethic and her authenticity. We taught the “Girls Club” class together and all the stigmas I had about gang member girls were crushed in one morning. The girls I taught have not given up, the girls I taught still, in some small place in those hearts that we all like to define as black and white, are hopeful.

After class Merci and I took an early lunch before our next class. When I sat down and checked my phone (which I was not allowed to have in Juvie Jail), my heart sank. A ton of missed calls already, from the same number. And another call coming in. My kid’s teacher. She explained in that Montessori Zen voice that she is at the hospital with my kid. Merci looked up after listening a bit and got the check. We put together an emergency plan for her to take a stab at the class alone while she reassured me it would be ok. I felt awful I couldn’t finish the day. I felt awful for the girls. I felt awful for my kid, sitting in some hospital without his mama to hold his hand- and me still being at least 35 minutes away from reaching him. That’s the thing about women, they really do need us everywhere.

Pedal to the metal is nothing. I zigzagged from Ilopango to Finn’s school, where they had taken him back after the hospital visit in what felt like an eternity but was really half an hour. I spoke to the teachers and could not believe my luck that I had entrusted my child’s education to two women that are so competent, and assertive and compassionate and amazing. Later, as I sat in the Pediatrician’s waiting room talking to Adriana recounting the events of the day we somehow manage to laugh. How great to have a friend.

Like in those movies where you see seemingly stray lives come together in some way as the plot develops , International Women’s Day this year was a day when I was inspired, taught and saved by very different women: Girls who did really bad things but keep trying even if society has given up on them, a potential new friend, a woman with a very simple heart of gold, two angels who take care of other’s children as if they were their own, and the treasure that is a true girlfriend. Exhausted to the almost point of tears, tucked in bed in men’s pajamas I think: It’s a good day to be a woman and to have so many amazing ones around me. And one last ironic thought strikes me : With all the shit we have to get done and be, the people we need to comfort, the kids we need to raise, the careers we have to juggle-  these days you need a pair of  balls to be a woman."

A belated happy day to all the women who toil and laugh and live and are amazing.