• Home
• About
• Charles’ Barcelona 4-1-1

Family Of Five

• 17 And A Half Hands High

  06Apr
  Categories: London Comments: 5

  

  So last week, you might have heard, was the G20 Summit here in London. I work in Zone 1–that’s Central London, and I saw more cops on the street in about three days that I have the entire time I’ve been living here. This is Exmouth Market, where I eat lunch and buy coffee. The mounted police were there, and my god, look at that horse. I have seen some horses in my life–my mother was a rodeo competitor and my daddy a bonafide cowboy. They make me think of Texas, and of Hogg Jones, a friend of my PawPaw’s who loved mules and big horses. He had a wagon, of course, for the mules and big horses to pull. I saw him last at rodeo time in Sonora, Texas, years ago, I think. But this an English horse. Clearly he knows nothing about a Texas wagon.

• Well, Hello There

  24Sep
  Categories: London, political Comments: 3

  

  I got off the train in Victoria Station and this is what I saw across the platform. It lifted my heart a little. It’s just his picture, in front of 10 Downing Street, apparently. I have no idea what they’re advertising. Hope, maybe?

• Homesick

  02Sep
  Categories: London, Moving, culture shock Comments: 8

  I seem to have overcome my unproductivity, and am working diligently again on stories, reading a lot of great stuff, and feeling good about it. We’ve been in London a full year now, and although I still find this city unbelievably vibrant and exciting, I find myself often thinking, with uncharacteristic fondness, of the US. I feel out of touch with the election. I miss Trader Joes. A lot. I miss the ease of suburban life, the personal space, the expansive blue sky and cheap electronics. Staring down the long grey tunnel of another English winter I am missing beautiful, sunny (SUNNY) California. I didn’t go swimming once this summer. For the first summer in my entire life I did not submerge my body in water and soak up the sun.

  But, at the same time, I’m not ready to go home for good, not yet. I’m just getting some real things going here. I’m working on an important project for English PEN, and hallelujah, they are paying me. The kids are starting their second year of school here, and we have a social life, with interesting people, that I am enjoying. I haven’t been to Italy, or Amsterdam, or Portugal yet. So I’m feeling caught between worlds a bit right now, and just trying to get through the melancholia day-by-day, doing the work I need to do, and dreaming of December, when I can be in California again, if only for a little while.

• Let Me Recommend

  09Apr
  Categories: London, bookish, writing Comments: 9

  A book I haven’t read. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t read it–I’ve read this writer’s short fiction (it’s moving, vivid, lyrical and original) in various literary magazines, and this most recent book, Half of a Yellow Sun, has been critically acclaimed. She just won the Orange Prize for it, and Chinua Achebe called her “a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.”  But also–and this is the part that will interest most of my friends (Aaryn)–not only is it an accurate and heartrending portrayal of the effects of war on ordinary people, it’s also got some amazing sex scenes in it. Seriously, it was what people wanted to talk about for at least half the time in the auditorium Monday night. Here’s the author, probably answering a question about a sex scene:

  

  That’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Say it with me: Chima-maaaaaaaaanda Nn-gooooh-zee Adeeeeeee-chie. It’s like poetry, or music, and I defy you not to walk around for the next three days intoning, Chima-maaaaaaaanda, in your head. Sing it to yourself next time you’re in the bookstore, why don’t you?

  

• Snowing Again

  06Apr
  Categories: Baybish, London Comments: 11

  It’s snowing great buckets today, and I am housebound, again, with a rotten cough and sinus crap on the heels of last week’s flu. Since I’m new to London, I have no idea how often it snows, but I understand that today’s snowfall is quite unusual. It doesn’t snow every winter here, and April is late for it, regardless.

  Goodlooking took the chickens sledding a little while ago, and he said there were tons of snowmen and people out in the park. He’s going out again later to take pictures–maybe he’ll let me post some. Baybish and I stayed home, and I entertained myself with these:

  

  Her very first piggy tails. Aren’t they sweet?

• Leaving, On A Jet Plane. Again.

  28Feb
  Categories: California, Family life, London, Me, Motherhood Comments: 0

  

  Girlish & Grandma, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

  I don’t love L.A. I can admit that what you’ve heard about the weather is true: it’s almost always warm and sunny there. But most beautiful days are spent under pale skies, the horizon obscured by a haze so omnipresent you must love weather more than you love sky not to be bothered by it. On a few clear days in January and February, when you can see the ocean or the skyline in the distance, Los Angeles opens up and feels (almost) like a place I would like to live. Most other days, though, I find it crowded, polluted, and poxed by powerlines and a stripmall aesthetic.

  Los Angeles has one singular redeeming quality for me, though, and it’s not the sunshine. It’s family. Goodlooking’s entire family lives there. His mother and her two siblings, their children, and his three sisters. For five years just after Girlish was born, we lived there, too, and in my life, there have been few things as sweet as watching my children grow in the bosom of a group of people who love them almost as much as I do.

  I have been so happy on our London adventure. Seeing and doing new things, taking photographs, volunteering, traveling to Germany, Spain and France over the last six months. But yesterday morning, after a lovely wedding for Rod’s cousin at the beautiful Mission Inn in Riverside, we left L.A., dragging my thousand-pound heart behind me.

  This visit, Baybish discovered her Grandaddy. She toddled up to him in his favorite kitchen chair where he sits, reading the paper much of the day. She handed him shoes and other interesting objects, or threw toys at his head when he didn’t notice her quickly enough. When she got his attention (which was always) she rewarded him by batting her eyelashes and babbling conversationally. And although I was ready to come back to London yesterday, it broke my heart to take her so far away from him so soon.

  Then, around three a.m. this morning, a jetlagged Boyish crawled into my bed, wide awake and begging to get up and watch Scooby Doo. I kept him close, stroking his back in hopes of soothing him back to sleep. He tossed and turned, pressed his damp cheek against mine, and I asked him, “Are you sweating, Bear, or crying?”

  He rolled over into my chest and sobbed, “I want to see my Grandma!”

  “You’ll see her soon,” I whispered. “She’s coming to visit you soon.”

  “Is she on a plane right now?” he asked.

  It’s hard, see? I’m caught between giving my children the comfort of close family, close by, and the adventure of learning that the world is small and that the place they have in it is—complex. So here I am, pushing 40 with three small children, and still not knowing where I belong. I love the idea of settling down, raising my family in one place, but honestly, I don’t know where that place is, or when we might get there. In the meantime, I can only keep trying to make the most of where I find myself. For all of us.

• Father Christmas

  02Dec
  Categories: Family life, London Comments: 0

  

  I’ve decided that Father Christmas is giving old Santa Claus a run for his money. Over here, when you stand in line to see Father Christmas, instead of you paying money to have your picture taken with him, he actually gives you a present. How about that for the holiday spirit?

• The Heebie-Jeebies

  24Nov
  Categories: London, My Daily Struggle, Stories Comments: 0

  So Wednesday I’m coming home from London Bridge on the overland train around 6:00. The train is packed, it’s pouring rain outside, but I have managed to get a seat. Usually I read on the way home from London Bridge, because the ride is about 20 minutes, and I can lose myself, if only a little, before I have to get off. I have to be careful, though, as I have looked up before to find that I’ve missed my stop.

  On Wednesday I had spent the day working on my teeny-tiny map project for English PEN, and so my nearly-40-year-old eyes were shot. I could not face Bird and his terrible problems, and I could not focus on the printed page on the swaying train. So I pretended to stare into space, and surreptitiously observed the people around me.

  This is what I do on the train.

  The guy directly across from me looked just like my horrid law-school boyfriend, except that this man had brown eyes instead of blue. He was also wearing a wedding ring and carrying flowers for someone, and I wondered if Doug was married yet, if he had any kids. I felt reasonably sure, however, that wherever he was, he damn sure wasn’t bringing anybody any flowers.

  Also bearing flowers on the train was a man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a blond flat-top straight out of the 50s. Because of the configuration of the seats he was facing me, about as far away as someone might be diagonally across the dinner table. He clutched a dozen damp red roses in his fist, the first two knuckles of his hand swollen, the skin reddened and bunched there. I wondered what had happened. Had there been a fight? Had he punched a wall during an argument, maybe, and was now bringing roses to his lover to apologize?

  I played it cool, of course, but I was intrigued. A few minutes later he jammed his free hand in his mouth and bit his knuckles hard, baring his teeth and screwing up his face like someone in pain. When he lowered his hand I saw the same thick red knuckles, and a small crescent-shaped sore, from his teeth.

  And for the next few minutes, I questioned it. It was the kind of bizarre thing you see that makes you wonder immediately afterwards: Did I see that? Maybe I misinterpreted it. But no, a few minutes later he did it again. At least three times more before my stop. Each bite seemed more anxious – more vicious — than the last, and by the time we reached my station I was glad to be getting off. What was he thinking of? Biting someone else? There was unmistakable fury there, although it was impossible for me to tell whether it was directed only at himself, or at someone else. For all I know, this is what your average serial-rapist murderer does on the train to pass the time.

  He got off behind me. Had he seen me watching him? Did he think I knew his secrets now? And even after I saw him entering the cab stand I couldn’t shake that feeling that someone might be watching me, following me, all the way home.

  Tags: London, scary, trains

• Did you think I forgot?

  22Nov
  Categories: London, Me, culture shock Comments: 0

  No. I didn’t. I thought about it last night, when I talked to my mom for the first time in 5 months because she was out with my sister doing the last-minute grocery shopping.

  I thought about it this afternoon when Girlish asked if we could have a celebration, and our American neighbors mentioned that they were having dinner guests. I did remember.

  Today is Thanksgiving.

  I didn’t eat turkey. I didn’t eat much of anything, actually. Isn’t that weird? I had my tea this morning–which, by the way, is the initial marker of how the day will go. Did I have my favorite tea this morning when I woke up?

  So, that is one thing I’m thankful for. My tea.

  I am also thankful for my husband, who is really, so very Goodlooking, which is pleasing to me on the daily, and also for the support he gives me every day, in every way. He watches my chickens, he tries (sometimes) with the housework, and he always, ALWAYS flatters and believes in me. It’s a good foundation.

  I am thankful that I talked to my mother last night. We’ve been arguing constantly for months, but only in my head. I haven’t actually spoken to her, but I have been missing her, and thinking about her, and worrying about her for months. And last night she called me and I am glad.

  I am thankful I have such sweet chickens.

  I am thankful for my neighbors, who have been so nice to us. They give us rides to school for no reason at all, other than that they are nice. She’s the one that invited me to the movies, and he has written a book as is working on a novel. He has an impressive bookshelf; I’m hoping I get to read his novel. If he can still find it in his heart to keep writing, after England’s embarrassing display last night at Wembley.

  I am thankful that I am starting at Warren Wilson in January, because I am serious, y’all, I am going to write a book.

  I am thankful that this time next year, we’ll have a new President-Elect.

  I am thankful for grimy magical London.

  So although I didn’t eat turkey, I did remember to be thankful. I didn’t get to be with my family, though, which is what Thanksgiving’s really about, right?

  So, if you’ll excuse me, now I should really go make a couple phonecalls.

• A Scrambled, Unfinished Post

  20Nov
  Categories: Family life, London, Weblogs Comments: 0

  Alright, confession time.

  I’m worried. I’m worried about my graduate program. I’m not writing at all, except for NaBloJobMo, of course. Which feels a lot like work right now. How effing privileged am I, that my BLOG feels like an obligation? Apparently I need more to do.

  Because here’s what I’ve got going on:

  I’m trying to start a little portrait business. I’ve set up a little website, and tried to figure out pricing, and I need to make a flyer, so that I can go to this “mothers in business” National Childbirth Trust craft fair this Thursday at this super-cool chick’s house. She’s a former investment banker, but she sells toys now, and she’s very witty, and has a cool English slang vocabulary. She called us a bunch of “leary harridans” at last week’s month’s meeting and I stopped the whole thing and asked asked her what “larry” meant. Because it sounded like “Larry.” (As best I can gather, it means loud and obnoxious.) Anyway, I like her, but I’m getting off-track.

  We were talking about all the stuff I have to do. I’m just going to go ahead and make a list:

  Finish the map for the gala event. (Which includes cutting out the little tiny photographs I took, and coloring in the remainder of the map, praying that the A3 card I bought today will feed through the copy machine, and pasting all the photos on all 36 maps, and sorting the postcards into 36 stacks of 15.) And hope that the map will look okay once it’s copied. Fuck.

  And although I know that none of you have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, you get what I mean, don’t you?

  There’s more, but guess what? I just got invited to go to the movies! Girls only! I’ll come back to this later and edify you further about my to-do list, ‘kay? I have to put it up now or blow napblopomo.

  Apparently I’m actually not that busy.