Beauty in Simplicity

This past weekend Janae, Neyla, and I went to the beach with some friends.  It was a great couple of days filled with great conversation and beautiful views.  There is something about the beach that just completely levels me, and I know I’m not alone in this.  Everytime I watch the sunset over the Pacific the endless number of colors that come out are majestic.  The bright orange ball with pinks, yellows, oranges, reds and purples surrounding it always seem to bring my faith in a higher, more beautiful power back again.  That last moment when the bright orange ball finally dips beneath the surface of the ocean is truly mesmerizing.  We are watching something that has happened everyday for billions of years, and yet every time it does, it is enthralling.  



Sunset in Monterrico, Guatemala
 

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The most fascinating moment of the weekend for me was much different.  It reminded me the amazing perspective and creativity that kids have and how sad it is that so many of us lose that as we get older.  Neyla loves playing in the sand, that girl will play and build and move sand around until she is covered in sand.  Just the thought of that alone irks me.  I don’t like feeling sand everywhere once I leave the beach.  But Neyla doesn’t seem to care.  She was playing in the sand, mixing water and sand and patting away with her hands.  I asked her if she was building a sand castle, and she said no.  That was the only thing that I could imagine building, I mean you have a few buckets, shovels and strainer, what else are you going to make out of black beach sand?  She responded with a little 3 year old attitude, “I’m making goose apple pie daddy.”  I chuckled and said, “What’s that?”  She just shook her head and kept on making it.  A few minutes later it was finished and she gave me a taste.  

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For lunch we decided to take the beautiful 20 minute walk into the town of Monterrico for some fresh seafood.  On the walk, I was carrying Neyla and we were running in and out of the waves.  There were some teeny tiny crabs walking on the beach and Ney pointed them out to me.  She said, “Daddy, do you know what a crab says?”  I replied quizzically, “No?!?”  She said, “Hi, I’m a crabbie.”  How simple, too simple, I would have never thought of that.  

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It makes me wonder why I’m not like that anymore.  It makes me want to not raise this curiosity out of her.  Picasso once said, “Everyone is born an artist, the problem is to remain one as we grow up.”  Too many of us lose that sense of simplicity and creativity that make up the wonderment of childhood.  I’m trying hard not to educate that out of my daughter, but I fear it’s already been ripped away from me.  It’s never too late to regain what you’ve lost.  This is one of the biggest lessons that I have learned by being a father, to find the beauty in simplicity.  We miss it too much and I don’t want to be that way anymore.  I’m using my 3 year old daughter as a role model in this way.  I want more of that child like way of viewing the world with joy.  I just want to be able to have a blast making goose apple pie in the sand.  I want to appreciate those beautiful daily moments that have been happening for billions of years.  

Living my dream... or just perpetuating a nightmare..?

At some point during my college years, I don’t remember exactly when, I remember thinking how amazing it would be to teach and live abroad.  When I first found out that there was a demand for teachers internationally and that those teachers get a pretty sweet gig, it became my dream to do that.  

I love travelling and I love teaching.  To combine these two things became my dream, which I am now living.  Yes, I am living my dream and it is simultaneously an amazing experience and an extremely guilt-ridden one.  

I am so happy that my daughter is being raised abroad and will be bilingual from an early age.  I love the fact that she is growing up and has grown up in a place where everything isn’t cushy and easy, but is raw and real.  She is surrounded by so much natural beauty and amazing people that all help us to provide a unique and meaningful early life for her.  She is so lucky, and I want to impress that upon her and hope someday she uses her fortunate position in life to aid those who are less fortunate.

Here’s where the guilt-ridden side comes in.  I love my life.  I love my job, my friends, my boss, the beautiful country we live in and mostly my wife and daughter.  However, there is a lot of hurt in this country.  Over half the population lives in poverty.  It has been ranked on the top 10 worst places in the world for women and children to live.  And finally, corruption and impunity rule.  However, that does in no way tell the whole story of Guatemala.  Most Guatemalans have never played a role in the story of their beautiful country.

Over the past 75 years the United States has been a major player (in a negative fashion) in Guatemalan affairs:

• 

  Jacobo Arbenz, 1st democratically
  elected President of Guatemala

  In 1944 they led and supported a coup through the CIA to remove Guatemala’s first democratically elected leader,  Jacobo Arbenz, from office.  Why?  Not a simple answer, but a corporation named United Fruit Company was worried about losing land, so they used their connections to convince Eisenhower that the President was a communist.  He wasn’t of course, but nonetheless was seen as one in Washington and forced to leave the country under threat of violence.
• This led to a series of Right-Wing military dictatorships directly supported, both financially and militarily, by the United States.  This is when violence and impunity became the norm in Guatemala.
• In the early 1980’s Reagan ratcheted up support for the dictator Efrain Rios-Montt who, according to the UN, committed a genocide against Ixil Mayans in the northern highlands of the country.  These actions were supported directly by the weapons and money given to Rios-Montt from the Reagan administration.

These are just a brief overview of the horrid negative effects that my country has had on the beautiful country that I currently live in. What if another country even tried these actions in our homeland?  How would Americans react?  

While I am living my dream, I am often torn with the guilt of the actions my country took here.  Everyday I see the challenges that Guatemala faces and so much of the negative facets of life   here can be directly linked to the coup of 1944 and the aftermath of brutal dictatorships that divided this country and created violence as the norm.  Look what my country has done.  Worse yet, so few American even know or care.  

I wonder if I’m doing any good here or just making a difficult situation worse?  While I’m living my dream, my country helped to create a nightmare of a situation in much of Central America.  The little I’ve mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg of the USA’s negative influence in this country and region.  My hope is that in some tiny way I can inspire hope and progress in this often times forgotten, but incredibly beautiful corner of the world.

The Best Part of Being a Father...

Often times I still find it hard to believe that I am a dad.  Neyla has been with us now for almost 16 months now, and despite the fact that she monopolizes so much of Janae's and my time, the concept that I am her father astounds me.  There's no doubt that there are times that Neyla absolutely drives Janae and I up a wall and frustrates us to no end, but I have never felt the way I do about a tiny person (or a large one for that matter).  Each time she runs to me with her arms wide-open a new "greatest moment of my life" occurs.  To read her a book or feed her or to see her and Janae interact fills my heart full of love and admiration. 

            Janae is a fantastically amazing mother.  I could not have imagined just how maternal and loving she would be with Neyla, but when Ney was born it was like something just kicked in inside of Janae.  When I first met Janae (maybe some of you remember this Janae), she thought that the two dumbest things that you could ever do were to get married and have kids.  She said it made no sense and that people only did those things for self-centered reasons.  She was convinced she would do neither.  I told her that I thought both were admirable and that I hoped someday I would do both.  Luckily for me, somewhere along the path of life she changed her mind. 

            On one of our first dates, after years of not seeing each other, Janae had told me she had changed.  She said that she thinks that she wants kids now and would like to be married.  She thought that if she didn't have kids she would be missing out on a part of life that she was meant to take part in.  The only problem was that she wasn't sure she would ever find a man that she'd like to share this experience with.  Within 6 weeks she had identified that man and it was I, thankfully.  ;-)

            When we found out that Janae was pregnant we were so happy, but we didn't know why.  We were not planning on having a baby we just left it up to fate.  Shortly thereafter we found out it would be a girl and I was secretly panicking while Janae was celebrating.  I didn't know the first thing about being a father, let alone to a girl.  I knew that most boys were pure evil and that one day one would ask out my daughter and this future moment panicked me.  I wanted to time travel, find this boy and teach him a lesson nice and early, either that or early register Neyla in a nunnery. 

            These worries no longer exist within my silly head.  Mostly because Janae is so amazing with her and I know for whatever silliness Neyla gets from me, it will be balanced and nullified by her mother's beauty, grace and love.  Even when Janae was a young tough feminista I knew that she was one of the most unique and beautiful people I had ever met.  My favorite thing about Neyla is that she is half Janae.  That is the best thing about having a child, that they are half you and half the person you love the most in the world.