The Canadians

Anai says:

I have been feeling like two different people these days. Well maybe not exactly, maybe I feel like two different states of me. The most overwhelming is the joy I feel for having started my pregnancy. We've spent a lot of our time reading up about what is happening to my body and how, who we are affectionately calling Poppy, is progressing. They are no longer the size of a Poppy seed but has stretched out to the size of a sesame seeds and has a creepy not-face developing. Poppy also has a sort of brain and a heart beat. One we will get to hear in an ultrasound within just a few days. Our appointment will also rule out the possibility of twins and probably make this feel all the more real.

I don't always feel pregnant. However, every once in a while it creeps up on me and slaps me in the face. Like how yesterday I cried because Jenni left me hanging during a high five and when I discovered about a dozen tiny skin tags popping up in a bunch of different places. Those moments make this feel real and though I had a panic attack about the tags and Jenni had to spoon me until I calmed down, they have brought me an unimaginable happiness.

Then there's a part of me that it very down. I love my birth country very much. It is a wonderful  place that can show off it's beauty despite it's short comings. Even when things seem like they are so wrong, the gorgeousness of its people and its landscape strives. I've always seen that, I have always felt pride of having been born here and lived a few years of my life here. Yet the times I have returned as an adult, I have failed to find a home here. I don't know what changed. Was it me? Or was it my country?

Whatever the change, I cannot seem to find a way back. I am in Panajachel now. It's a lovely little town where my parents started raising their young family. It sits at the shore of Lake Atitlan which even in photographs is breath taking. Being here is the closest I have gotten to comfortable and has always had that affect on me. It is what my grandparents home used to.

I fear that my own disassociation with Guatemala has made it impossible for Jenni to find a place here. How can she fit in when I have outgrown mine? It feels like the open arms are not long enough to embrace us. As a normally timid person, who has to exert a large amount of energy to open up or even hold conversations, I feel like every time I have reached my arms out to close the distance I come out miserably short as well.

Part of the problem is that my family here doesn't know me. My short comings have come across as cold and distant. My efforts have been lost to them. They labeled my wife and I as cold Canadians and have removed the Guatemalan part of me I want so much to reclaim. It is something I want so badly for my children to have. It is the reason we came here to start our family.

On our earlier trips, I thought the crowd had drowned us out and that the excitement of having the whole family arrive together overwhelmed the opportunity to shine as an individual. I thought this time would be different and Jenni and I would be able to connect. I don't know where to go from here.

I want to focus of my little growing family. I want to attend to Jenni and our own journey. It is my responsibility to maintain our state of being and ride the ups and downs of fertility treatments. I want to be the most supportive and strong as I can be and maybe that makes there be three versions of me these days.

The most overwhelming of all is my joy and my urge to keep our dreams for our family inline. My hopes for my time here in Guate are now torn. If I knew how to best tackle it I might be able to move forward. I recognize that it is not all in my hands and that it cannot be as helpless at it seems. But for now, while it's just Jenni and me enjoying Panajachel, I will let it lie. I will focus on our slow going TWW and making plans for Poppy and their siblings and give my wife lots of kisses.