Lately, I’ve been reading (and in some cases, re-reading) books on the history of Guatemala, many of which address the country’s 36-year armed conflict, and its long-term effects. Today, this photo-essay on Upside Down World by James Rodriguez, on the exhumation of remains of wartime victims, appeared on my Guatemalan Google alert. The powerful pictures and words speak for themselves.

(I’m not sure why, but to view this link, you’ll need to paste the address below into your browser. Please be warned: the images are disturbing.)

http://www.mimundo.org/2012/06/13/2012-05-exhumation-inside-cobans-former-military-garrison/

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My interpretation of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project continues. And although months have gone by, I remain stuck on her first task, the de-clutter phase. That segment alone could occupy the rest of my life, because no sooner do I get rid of one thing than a second thing materializes to replace it. In my defense, most of the stuff does not belong to me, but enters the house via school backpacks carried by the family’s junior members. As a kid, I don’t remember having nearly the papers, folders, and projects that my children lug home daily. However, because this first-world problem bedevils only people who possess enough resources to buy paper and folders, not to mention enjoy access to schools, I’ll stop complaining.

Back to clutter. In the culling, purging, and donating phase, books for me represented the final frontier. I love and cherish my books, to the point of irrationality. Maybe this is because for so many years I dreamed of owning books, and couldn’t. A career in the art world, undertaken sans trust fund, will do that to a person. Not until I met, fell in love with, and married my husband—who, thankfully, works at a decent, steady job—did I feel solvent enough to indulge my passion for books by buying them. And buy them I did, with abandon, until our room downstairs, my quote unquote office, overflowed with books that, until recently, crowded my desk, the shelves, the floor, and indeed, threatened to overwhelm my psyche.

How could I give up even one of them? When I knew the story of each acquisition, the tale of how it came into my hands?

But give them up I must. Give them up I did. My de-cluttering mania forced me to make decisions. All books about adoption and Guatemala, I kept. Any book signed by a writer, I kept. Books on the craft of writing; art volumes from my museum days; any novel, collection, or chapbook I simply adore; and the one book I owned as a child–Teena and the Magic Pot—remain. Everything else, gone. Donated to the used bookstore run by our local library, or to the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Somebody else can and will treasure my books. From now on, with few exceptions, I borrow from the library. As we say in California: Reduce, reuse, recyle.

My Gratitude List:

In Guatemala, during my last trip, I bought a gorgeous pillow cover made from a full-sized purple and orange huipile. Too big for a standard pillow form to stuff it, the cover sat folded for weeks, useless. This weekend, I bought three yards of muslin and two bags of fluff, and—easy as that–Olivia sewed me up a form on her handy Singer. Friends, we have a pillow. Thank you, Olivia!

When I go to bed at night, I can’t wait to wake up so I can eat breakfast, my favorite meal. Also from this trip to Guatemala, I brought home a stash of the “Salvavida” granola served in Guatemalan restaurants, which you can buy packaged in Antigua’s large grocery, the bodegona. For days, I’ve been sprinkling a tablespoon of Salvavida on my usual cereal, fruit, and yogurt, and remembering my sojourn to that special country. Delicious!

Which reminds me: I’m a coffee drinker who cannot think or talk without caffeine. Every morning, before I get out of bed, my husband Tim brews a pot of very strong coffee, and hand delivers me a cup. This before my feet have touched the ground. Thank you, Tim. Thank you!

Onward to the holidays. ~

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Judi Dench stars in Philomena, coming to theaters this fall. From the movie website:

Philomena is the true story of one mother’s search for her lost son.

Falling pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena was sent to the convent of Roscrea to be looked after as a “fallen woman”. When her baby was only a toddler, he was taken away by the nuns for adoption in America. Philomena spent the next fifty years searching for him in vain.

Then she met Martin Sixsmith, a world-weary political journalist who happened to be intrigued by her story. Together they set off for America on a journey that would not only reveal the extraordinary story of Philomena’s son, but also create an unexpectedly close bond between them.

The film is a compelling narrative of human love and loss and ultimately celebrates life. It is both funny and sad and concerns two very different people, at different stages of their lives, who help each other and show that there is laughter even in the darkest places.

The book “The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee” was published in 2009. It acted as a catalyst for thousands of adopted Irish children and their ‘shamed’ mothers to come forward to tell their stories. Many are still searching for their lost families.

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At the risk of outing myself as a stick-in-the-mud, I will confess here that I hate Halloween. The pressure to find or make the perfect costume, the actual trick-or-treating itself, the excessive hauls of candy, the subsequent battles over the rationing of said candy, and my own inability to resist the stashes of chocolate I know are hidden in every cabinet, tote bag, pillowcase, and drawer: All of it conspires to bring out my worst characteristics.

So when my friend S, another adoptive mom to two kids born in Guatemala who lives near us in California, invited my sister Patrice and me to share her rented house in Antigua during the All Saints’ Day celebration on November 1, we said yes.  For years we’d wanted to witness the flying of the giant kites at Sumpango—constructed with colorful tissue paper affixed to bamboo frames by teams of builders who compete for glory and prizes–and last week, we finally did. Magnificent!

Later, we visited the cemetery in Antigua, where, as in cemeteries throughout Guatemala, families gathered around gravestones to remember their beloved dead.

It’s easy to get to Sumpango from Antigua. Just be sure to leave early, because the traffic becomes insane. We made arrangements through the fabulous Nancy Hoffman of Guatemala Reservations.

To learn more about the Sumpango celebration, read Things to Do in Guatemala: Visit the Sumpango Festival of Giant Kites.

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Earlier I mentioned that I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, which inspired me to purge my closet, donate everything I could spare, and attempt to clear a few square inches on my desk downstairs. Encouraged by my success, I took another step forward and completed delayed maintenance projects that have been pending, literally, for years:

I called the fence company to repair the gate that hasn’t worked since the day it was built ten years ago, and now swings back and forth without sticking.

A stone wall in our back yard is studded with colorful tiles I’ve accumulated during various sojourns to Guatemala. In 2011, I bought a tile with my initial “J” woven around a jaguar, but never got around to mixing the cement needed to add it to the group. For two years, that tile has been sitting in a brown paper bag in a drawer in the kitchen. Last week, after a few failed attempts, I affixed it to the stone. Yippee!

I hired someone to repair our “drip” watering system—in our desert state of California, we water our gardens with thimbles full of H2O instead of sprinklers–which has revived the yellow flowers that are visible from our kitchen window, that I look at every time I wash dishes, or load or unload the dishwasher, or toss scraps into the compost, which is often. Yay!

Perhaps motivated by my activity, Tim and Mateo trimmed back our ever-expanding stand of bamboo (the kids use it as a fort), a job bigger than it sounds.

Tim and I took advantage of the “free” pick-up by our sanitation company (we pay for it) and emptied the load of stuff hidden under the deck. This hauling-out-from-under could be accomplished only while the kids were at school because anything they see leaving the house is the thing they suddenly must have.

Followed the advice of one of my Facebook friends, I no longer exit any room in our house without taking with me something to recycle, launder, or trash.

We’ve made great strides on the de-clutter and organizing fronts, which does in fact make me feel more in control and thus happier.

Which leads to my Gratitude List:

I’m grateful that sometimes, when I’m driving the kids around, and we’re listening to the pop music station that they love, a song by Adele suddenly will emanate from the radio. If you follow pop music, you know Adele currently is “out of the rotation,” and thus her songs get little airplay. But occasionally the DJ will take pity on listeners who miss her, and spin “Rolling in the Deep” or “Someone Like You,” and Adele’s throaty, earthy, passionate voice fills the car, and I’m grateful that such a gorgeous sound exists and I’m alive to hear it.

I’m grateful that, when asked to fill out his “All About Me” poster, in the section titled “I Wish,” Mateo wrote: “I wish I could live in the library so I could read books all the time.”

This past weekend, I flew down to San Diego to visit with my parents, who are aging and can no longer travel, and one of my sisters and my brother, who live nearby, came over for lunch. My sister brought pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans, with a homemade chocolate cake for dessert, and we ended the marvelous meal by singing “Happy birthday” to my brother.  My entire stay with my folks felt like a great and wonderful gift, for which I am very grateful.

Finally, I’m grateful to have a friend to walk with once a week, another adoptive mom who understands me and my family and our joys and challenges. With her, I don’t need to hold back or edit or fear I will be judged. The rest of the week, that one hour of walk and conversation sustains me. Thank you, friend. Thank you. ~

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Today I treated myself to the 3D version of Gravity. What an experience. Even more so than the epic tension of being literally lost in space was the realization of how beautiful and fragile life is, how important it is to focus on what is right in front of us, to embrace what is good. I know this. Of course I know this! But a gripping and moving reminder never hurts. See this film if you can.

Today I also received the lovely news that one of my favorite adoption-related blogs, Creating a Family, named Mamalita to its list of Recommended “Adoption Books for Parents.” That makes me very happy! Perhaps unreasonably so, but  I don’t care admitting: I’m happy! Grateful, too. (I’d add this to my Gratitude List if I were still keeping one. Another ball I seem to have dropped, alas.)  It’s always nice for work to be recognized by an organization you admire. Thank you!

Last night I attended a reading by one of my favorite writers, Ann Hood. She read from her most recent novel, The Obituary Writer–a great read–and talked a little about her writing process, always the best part, for me, of any writer’s presentation. To try to recap here will make me only sound pretentious, I’m afraid, but one lesson I will share is that thinking about the structure of a book, before sitting down to write a word, is never wasted energy. I left the reading inspired to keep going on my own at-the-moment somewhat undefined project, to write a synopsis, to nail down the elements and “about-ness.” If you ever have a chance to listen to Ann Hood speak or read, make the effort. She’s fabulous.

This weekend I will go visit my parents. Looking forward to the trip. ~

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You’ve probably already seen this–published last January and still making the rounds, recently posted in an adoption group to which I belong (thank you!). But in case you haven’t, it’s a very good article, from the point of view of a woman who was adopted as an infant, and is now a marriage and family therapist who specializes in adoption. From the Huffington Post, by Lesli Johnson: Ten Things Adoptees Want You to Know.

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