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There’s no “former” in foster

Posted in Adoption, Family, Seychelles, tagged on December 10, 2007| 9 Comments »

Through an interesting set of circumstances, it came to pass that we had the wonderful opportunity to spend a lot of time this weekend with our former foster son, T.

He doesn’t like that designation, actually, and suggests that there is no “former” about our relationship and that he will always be our foster son, with the emphasis on “son”.

He no longer calls me Mom … I’m Sandra now … but my title is most definitely “Foster Mom”.

I’m still processing two days and one night with a mix of kids that felt so normal, so right, that the thought of it not happening again is almost more than all of us can bear, so I’ll not yet be writing a lot about weekend. Photos will have to do, for the most part.

Mark’s sister’s daughter, Emilie, was with us at the beach … that’s her peeking out from behind T and me in one shot and walking along the beach with T and Cj. At one point, she and T spend a good deal of time in deep conversation. Another little girl you’ll see more of tomorrow, a bit miffed at being left out, began teasing them about “liking each other”, but the taunt had no impact.

Eventually, it was time for dinner, so T and Emilie joined the group again, but T took me aside.

“Is Emilie really Mark’s niece?” he asked.

I answered to the affirmative and explained the familial relationship.

“Wow!” T said as a huge grin broke out across his darling face. “That means she’s my foster cousin!”

The next morning, he approached Mark’s mother, explained the connection and asked if he could call her “Grandma”.

Family is very important to this boy, and with his bio relations leaving much to be desired I am so happy he continues to take whatever he can from the tenuous, fragile and far too easily manipulated connection to ours.

Some words of wisdom from this nine-year-old wonder …
As I slipped into an emotional trough on Saturday at the thought of this time being our last together, possibly forever, T put his hand on my shoulder and explained carefully, “In my experience, it’s better if you don’t think about endings. Think about middles.”

T reaching out to me …
Reaching T

T and me, and Emilie, too …
T and M, and Emilie, too

An evening stroll for Emilie, Cj, T and Jamie …
Walking the beach kids

The kids and Grandma’s mac&cheese. Note the similarity between T and Sam! Goodballs!
Kids eating Grandma’s mac & cheese

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A new swipe at adoption … or new to me, anyway

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Family, International Adoption on December 8, 2007| 25 Comments »

A comment left on this post on a blog I’m contributing to these days has raised a concern I am amazed has evaded me for all this time I’ve been reading and writing on adoption. It comes from a reader named Julie who claims psychological testing for prospective adoptive parents as her agenda in the adoption world, and I must admit this is a new one on me.

I would agree with you if prospective adoptive parents were psychologically tested. Unfortunately, this is not the case except for a tiny handful of agencies across North America.

Having done my research on the psychological caliber of adoptive parents – particularly those who suffer from infertility – I have learned that your presumption is dangerous one.

Until psychological testing becomes a standard in the adoption industry, I will worry far more for adopted children than I do for those being raised by psychologically challenged biological parents.

Adoptive parenting requires far more skill and empathy than parenting one’s natural children.

Wow.

I’m temporarily at a loss.

Okay. I’m over it.

Being that I’m often accused of spewing … although most often by people for whom spew is a lifestyle … I might as well strap on that lather (or leather?) for a minute here:

RAD! FAS and FAE! ADD! PTSD! “A parent is the perpetrator in most homicides of children under the age of 5” … and that is almost ALWAYS a bio parent! therapeutic foster care!

Whew.

Oh, wait. There’s more … but don’t take it from me, check out the day-to-day of some adoptive parents who will spend their lives trying to make up for the damage done to their children by institutions and bio families.

Any yet, someone actually worries “far more for adopted children than I do for those being raised by psychologically challenged biological parents.”? Now, that’s a new planet inhabited that doesn’t look much like this one.

The “psychological caliber of adoptive parents”? Excuse me? Let’s see the research that indicates that the “psychological caliber of adoptive parents” is in question in any but the most miniscule of numbers, then compare that to the millions of children in the world in need of families.

And, do da word “homestudy” ring a bell?

Infertility hasn’t been considered an indication of insanity, a punishment for sins or a personal failing for a very long time, and I am concerned by the thought that any of those old chestnuts could be once again finding fertile soil for roots.

Break out the kindling and tie that barren woman to the stake, boys! According to our test, she’s low in the psychological caliber department, so damned well don’t deserve to live … or parent!

And the last statement: Adoptive parenting requires far more skill and empathy than parenting one’s natural children.

Does anyone really believe that parenting one’s “natural children” comes naturally to all parents? That a wondrous bounty of love and caring pours forth from some genetic fount that guarantees each child a special place in the hearts and minds of their biological connections that protects them throughout childhood and provides for everything necessary for a healthy and happy life?

That parenting biological offspring is a breeze, while being mother and father to an adopted child is a task that demands skills and empathy so much above and beyond the need of “naturals” that ever more tests must be passed and bars must be raised so that only the most perfect should be allowed to add a child to a family? And what is perfect?

Not only does any walk around the Real World block reveal that biological parents do terrible damage to their children in big numbers on a daily basis while adoptive parents tend not to, one idea of psychological perfection might scare the bejeezus out of someone else, while the quirks in a family could suit an equally quirky child to a T.

I’ll get to UNICEF, trotted out with pride in another comment, later.

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Goodbye, goodbye, goodbyer

Posted in Adoption, Family, International Adoption, Older Parent Adoption, Seychelles, tagged on December 6, 2007| 9 Comments »

If you’ve followed my story where any of the various bits of it have been presented for perusal, you know that the first toe I dipped into the adoption pool was shaped like foster care and has a name that begins with T.

Through dire circumstance, T came to our house and stayed for a couple of years. Although the bonds that built between me, Mark and T did not start out all buttered with love and oozing schmaltz, we did get around to that pretty darned quickly.

Mark held out the longest, with “This is going to end in tears!” as the mantra he chanted until he threw in the crying towel and fell as deeply in love as I had. Of course, he was right … he actually is fairly frequently, but don’t tell him I said that.

Just after T’s fourth birthday — a fab occasion celebrated during a trip to the States that found me under one roof with daughter, granddaughter, brother, SIL, niece and nephew AND T, my youngest — things changed. A week after we returned to Seychelles, T’s mother returned from her galavanting and wanted him back.

With what every foster parent will understand at the root of my being, we stepped back and she stepped forward. They weren’t far, however, so we had some contact and kept up to date on how he was doing. Living nothing like the life style we hoped for him, he was at least healthy enough and reasonably supervised.

Shortly after, however, his mother took T for what was supposed to be a two week trip to her home country. I knew she wasn’t coming back, and she knew that I knew. The only one who didn’t know, or pretended not to know, was T’s father, a 70-year-old with many 20-something girlfriends who had no problem letting one slip away for “a few weeks”.

The scene at the airport was drama and trauma and nothing I ever want to live through again. T clung to me like kudzu to an oak, screaming his head off. I cried, His mother tugged. His father wore a bemused expression. The goodbye was horrible.

Amazingly, it turned out that T’s teacher at the school he began attending shortly after the relocation to this far distant Asian land happened to be a friend of mine … a woman who had taught in the International School here and was now teaching in one there, the right one in the right town out of all the places in Asia. Imagine how thrilled I was to learn that I could still follow his progress and send him letters and photos and such!

I was less than thrilled when I learned that his mother was pregnant, however, but not at all surprised when she and T ended up back here shortly after she delivered. T had a baby brother, but baby brother had been left in Asia never to be seen again. Her relationship hadn’t worked out and she didn’t want the child, so left it with the father … “didn’t want” being her own explanation, although hers was a bit more callous. T’s dad had money, and she was in need of that again.

Although concerned in the grand sense, I was so happy to have T back … not with us, of course, but within sight and some access.

By this time, Sam had joined our family, and then Cj. It took T a while to get the hang of how our family hung, but he figured it out without finding any slight to his own importance. Both kids were a bit young for play buddies; after all, what self-respecting 7-year-old boy wants to spend a lot of time with a three-year-old? He was kind and gentle, however, and Sam absolutely worshipped the ground T trod.

It’s time to say goodbye again, however, as his mother has once again decided to leave the country. His father is dead now, and a “new dad” has plans that don’t include a lifetime in Seychelles. Mom is already gone, and T has been left to finish out the school year with someone who doesn’t understand our relationship or how important it is to all of us to have time for a proper farewell. I will try to track him down before he goes, and will stop by the school if that ends up being the only way to kiss and hug this boy and tell him that we will always love him.

I don’t expect to see him again, but there is no telling what’s around any corner.

I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to say goodbye to this kid, and every time rips my heart out. I’d do it again anytime, though, if it means another hello first.

The boys 2006
My boys … well, two out of three

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XXX

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Cambodia, Entitled to opinions, Family, International Adoption, NaBloPoMo, Writing for a living, WTF?, tagged , , on November 30, 2007| 55 Comments »

Funny how things work out. At the beginning of this month when I started the whole NaBloPoMo thing, I would not have suspected November would end up with an obscenity of the XXX variety, but it has.

It seems that budget constraints and an abrupt shift in editorial policy, or something, has prompted Adoption.com, one of my employers over the past couple of years, to terminate the contract of their highest paid and most uncompromising blogger: me.

I have not been provided with any official explanation; in fact, there has been no explanation at all no matter how many times one is asked for by me or other bloggers confounded by my sudden departure. A change in editors in October did signal changes in the wind, however, and the handwriting began to appear on the wall when I decided to discontinue the assistant editor role I had stepped up for.

Is it a money issue? (They did bounce paychecks recently.) Has my advocacy for adoption been more than the site is willing to support?

It most certainly can’t be my lack of dedication, as I have been the most prolific of all writers having posted hundreds of well-researched blogs over the past two years.

It can’t be a lack of talent, because I can put words together well and keep to topic.

It can’t be for lack of readers, because before Adoptionblogs.com began hemorrhaging bloggers and listing dead blogs by the dozen I was topping out at more than 100,000 hits per month.

Yes, I did manage to piss off a few people along the way. The looney fringe of the adoption community whipped themselves into a frenzy over some of my posts … and, yes, I can hear them jumping up and down, elated over my temporary departure from the adoption blogging world. (Enjoy it while you can, ladies. Oh! and those three guys.)

Should I mention that the new “editor”, someone who freely admits on her personal blog that she can’t write … Whose bright idea was it to put someone like this in an editorial position? … is a birth mother? Should I read anything into this? (I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. But so many of the personal attacks, the truly hideous assults I have suffered over the years, have come from that angle of the triad and I can’t ignore the connection.)

Since she removed my access to the blogs before I had an opportunity to adios my wonderful readers there, I’ll just invite you all to continue to join me here.

I’m rather sick of the adoption world for the moment, however … rampant abuse and nastiness tends to do that, and XXX feels as bad as it looks and leaves one sore … but, as always, I’m happy to help out when I can.

It is a bit strange that after writing so much about abuse in the world, I find myself the victim of those who provided the platform. I’m still trying to figure out what that says about them, but I’m sure it isn’t pretty.

I do know the real world, however … I’ve seen first-hand how cruel, how base, how downright evil people can be … so I should not be surprised by bad people doing wrong things.

No matter how old I get, though, I’m still side-swiped by petty meanness and a tendency to behave badly. I simply expect better of people.

I’m happy about that part of me.

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Time for another “pupdate”

Posted in Family, Fun, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 25, 2007| 8 Comments »

They’re doing well, Dinah’s puppies, and growing so fast I can almost see the size increase as it happens, especially around the belly. Dinah is a good mom and has been very attentive, but now that her brood is approaching 3 weeks of age she’s spending more and more time away from them.

Can’t say that I blame her! Eight pups latched on and sucking for all they’re worth has to be draining in more ways than lactation can account for. There’s nothing subtle about a bottomless pit o’ pup, and there are a lot of those here, and a few hours of peace and quiet in the garden or a friendly romp with another adult dog must feel like a little bit of heaven to a mother of eight.

(I know I could sound so much more professional about all this dog and breeding stuff if I referred to Dinah as a bitch, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. She’s such a sweet girl.)

Voracious as these guys are, solid food is already relished as you can see, and because of that, I’m guessing, their mother is less interested in cleaning up after them. (Can you blame her? I am SO glad we humans don’t have to tidy our children the same way other animals do. Sure, it would save on wipes, but … blech!) With proliferating piles of puppy poop plopping on my porch, we’re moving the whole family down to the kennel today. It won’t be as easy to schmooze a pooch when they’re not right under foot, but having them elsewhere will freshen the air up here considerably and provide me with a good excuse to take a longer break more often.

I’ve taken some shots this morning, but they’re not great. The pups are almost more than a handful now, so it’s a lot harder to get a decent photo of them.

A good mom
Dinah and pups

Eyes open, but is anybody home?
Eyes open

A handful, and with big feet
Handful

Solid food!
Solid food

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A typical Saturday … grab the earplugs

Posted in Adoption, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 24, 2007| 3 Comments »

Ahhhh, Saturday. The weekend. The break between one work week and the next. A chance to … to … to what?

Around here, it’s a chance to play a game of Scrabble with Gay while the kids hang with dad in the garden, pitching in with the yard work … or pretending to … while a relaxed and quiet atmosphere prevails.

Or not.

Today, not only did we have the now-constant racket of puppies a-whinin’ and a-howlin’ and perpetually-hungerin’ loud enough to beat the band somewhere in the upper octaves, these often ear-splitting wails were accompanied by the whine-whirl, vroom-vroom of weed-wacker, the deeper bass growl of chain saw, with assorted power tool embellishments.

Yes, it was men-doing-stuff day, and in my world that means NOISE.

From eight o’clock this morning until about fifteen minutes ago I could, almost literally, not hear myself think. Three men doing stuff … cutting the grass, building something, propping up the banana trees, getting the kennel ready for the puppies to move off the verandah … can make my Saturdays a practice in concentration, a day-long search for a quiet moment, wistful wishing that I still owned a mouth guard so I could take some measure to keep my teeth from rattling out of my head.

Our house is a work in progress, so some Saturdays include carpentry work. Our garden is over an acre of lush growth, so the grass needs cutting and shrubs need pruning and coconuts need picking up. Mark’s list of chores never seems to get any shorter, so there’s always something that needs doing, and just about everything requires some piece of equipment with a motor attached to do it.

There’s an hour lull for lunch … Didn’t I just clean this kitchen? … when the machines are switched off and the mouths on. With the conversation completely in Creole, I don’t spend any time trying to listen in, not that I’d need to strain my ears. Three Seychellois men munching down fried mackerel and baked breadfruit somehow manage to carry on conversation without pause and seem to crank up the volume with every bite. The talk must be engrossing, as there’s not even a second’s let up, but whenever I ask Mark what all the yack was about, like an evasive teen his answer is always, “Nothing.”

Lunch over, it’s vroom, growl, whine all over again, and seeming even louder for the absence.

Knowing that think time would be limited, I opted to clean the shelves in my kitchen, so instead of something deep and interesting for the last NaBloPoMo Saturday post, you get this.

A thought, though, before I go …

If women worked with power tools more than men did, do you think we’d make them quieter?

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Thanksgiving … the act, not the day

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 22, 2007| 4 Comments »

I am thankful. I am SO thankful. I am really, really thankful.

I am thankful for my life, the fact that I have had one and that I still have one. The emergency heart surgery in Singapore in ’99 was a close shave that puts me in mind every day of what a gift each is.

I am thankful for the miracles that are my children and am perpetually astounded at the people they are and how lucky I have been to have them in my life.

I am thankful for my husband, for his kind and loving nature, his generous spirit, his humor, and for the circumstances that allowed us to find each other even though he was on one side of the planet while I was on the other.

I am thankful for all my family, for my friends, for the people sharing the same plane of cyberspace I cruise.

I am thankful for my home, for clean air and clear water, the comforts my life provides, for the timing and circumstances of my birth that have allowed me to live without war in my back yard or the horrors of life as a refugee. I have never been truly hungry, and neither have my children, and that’s enough right there to fall on my knees in appreciation for.

Because my life is as wonderful as it is, I have the time and energy today to wallow in misery, and although that may sound like a mouthful of sour grapes, there is no way I can let this day pass without spending a good bit of it sad as anything and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. I am miserable in honor of all that I have that I no longer have access to, and as happily content as my life is now my losses still deserve commemorating, so here goes …

Today I miss my mother. I miss my oldest daughter and my granddaughter. I miss my grown son. I miss my brothers, their families, their humor and their appetites. I miss green Jell-O. I miss the country that celebrates thanksgiving so wonderfully and enthusiastically. I miss a chill in the air and the sight of my own breath. I miss the smell of sycamore leaves. I miss pumpkin pies cooling on my mom’s washing machine and the pattern on her good china. I miss the company of those who have known me for all their lives or all of mine. I miss sharing memories of Thanksgivings past with people who where there. I miss a shared comprehension of what it means to eat turkey and how important variations in stuffing can be. I miss hand-print gobblers on fridges. I miss my childhood, or at least the good parts. I miss the drive up I-5 and my mother’s kitchen.

I rue the fact that I could be in California today, that Mark and the kids and I, had we planned well and done what needed to be done, would right now be a couple of hours away from waking up on Thanksgiving morning and preparing to sit down to an early dinner with some portion of my family somewhere, if not the whole fam damily … if the planning had gone really well.

As I say every fourth Thursday in November: Next year, for sure.

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So damned mad!

Posted in Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , on November 19, 2007| 4 Comments »

People are so strange. It takes just one look at the stats page for this blog to see how true a statement that is — here are some search terms entered that ended up bringing people to this site yesterday:

plastic boobs
top ten things in a good man
big honkin tits
adopt as an expat
nurses cleavage
things women want in men
the meaning of pre occupied
green thanksgiving jello

Okay, I get how it works, but can’t for anything imagine someone Googling “nurses cleavage”.

Anyway, on to what’s on my mind today …

Rape and pillage and plunder. Yep, that’s it. Not in the sense of ancient Vandals who found such methods conducive to compliance with their expansionist goals … well, not literally in that sense … but rather having to do with hotels doing what amounts to the same thing.

It’s land and lifestyles being raped and pillaged and plundered around here right now, and today provides quite the good example of how this works.

Please keep in mind that hotels in Seychelles will try to pass themselves off as all environmentally aware and culturally sensitive. Bollocks!

The new Four Seasons Hotel project that has been reducing nature to rubble in my backyard for the past couple of years is getting ready to move into another phase of destruction that involves an area yet untouched that will eventually be covered in ‘executive villas’ … multi-million dollar holiday homes for obscenely rich Saudis and Russians.

The first step in ruining this part of the island for anyone but rich Saudis and Russians is to get rid of the road that runs down to Anse Soleil Beach. Never mind that there is already a small, locally-owned hotel there, not to mention my in-laws’ house, the home of Mark’s grandmother, uncle and family, and a restaurant, because they apparently count for nothing. The plan is to build a parking area a good half-mile-plus of hell hill away and let the people that live down there, and the people who support the hotel and the restaurant, walk.

The arrogance of this is beyond belief.

Mark’s grandmother is 86. Mark’s dad is 67. The walk, even in good weather, is long and tough; in the rain it’s slick and treacherous. PLUS, it’s a public road there to provide access to people that need to get back and forth from the beach to the village.

I won’t even go into the mess they’re making of one of the world’s most beautiful bays, how the construction waste is taking a fatal toll on fish, sea turtles and corals. (In the environmental impact assessment required before permission was given to build this horror, a big deal was made about the “low impact lighting” they would have so as not to bother nesting sea turtles!)

We’re set to get 60 more of these hotel projects over the next few years … 60 … none of which will be built where the white elephants of past trends stuggle to keep afloat with 10% occupancy are rotting away. And all will be just as arrogant, just as much a disaster as this Four Seasons project. Tourists will come and go, see only the artificial and groomed corpse of what once was and figure they’re getting their money’s worth, while the super-rich will stop by as long as it’s trendy to stop by here, then will move along to the next victim.

In the meantime, the people living here will watch the bits and pieces of this beautiful body of land as they’re bloodily hacked away, and try their best not to be shoved out of the way with the rest of what belongs here.

Today it’s my in-laws fighting for the continuation of the right to drive to their own home. Tomorrow, it will be something else as this island is turned from paradise to playground, and like everywhere else in the world this has already happened, it will be ruined forever.

How long ago did Joni Mitchell sing the song?

I am so damned mad!

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A big, white mutha of a well-slung vessel — or ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 16, 2007| 4 Comments »

There was a boat bopping around Isle Therese the other day … I watched it for a while from my veranda … a big, white, sleek thing with a helicopter pad on the back complete with helicopter.

Now, thought I, isn’t that exactly what everyone needs? A big white mutha of a well-slung vessel complete with chopper? What better to hug the shoreline of Mahé in, heh? Never know when one might need to hop quickly the four miles over to the other side of the island for … what?… some SupaSave youghurt, which by the way is going up to 14 rupees a tub next week.

I eventually mention said boat-of-superior-boaty-stuff, avec helicopter, to my well-informed spousal unit only to learn from him that during this given week it’s nothing but a trifle. Over on the Victoria side of things, there’s a big, white, sleek boat with TWO helicopters on the back helideck.

I’m guessing the one-chopper floater came over this side to avoid comparison and subsequent embarrassment — helipad envy.

Really! What could be worse than showing up in your big-ass-hangin’ bazillion dollar watercraft with sparkly chopper pleasingly perched aft at an island 1000 miles away from anywhere else only to find your parking space, or whatever is boatish for such a thing, is right down the way from a BIGGER one with TWO choppers?

Don’t know who the double-birdie boatie belongs to, but Radio Bamboo has it that the single-padder is the frippery of the owner of Tata, the huge Indian company that make cars, busses, and other carbon-producing mechanical clanky things, and that the big white mutha of well-slung vessel was tooling around Therese because Mr. Tata Boat Guy just bought it.

Great. This is what’s happening to my neighborhood: Bill Gates is carving a big honkin’ hotel to my left, with the addition of 20-some “executive villas” hewn into the scene; a Taiwanese company (Sofetel) is planning a big honkin’ hotel to my immediate right, also with 20-some executive villas; some Qataris are getting ready to plonk another huge hotel … WITH a dredged-up bit of bay attached as a ‘marina’ … and 20-some executive villas, just around the bend in Anse a la Mouche, and now the little wild island that makes up a bit of my lovely view is headed toward becoming something else.

Executive villas are going for $6 to 10 million to the sort of folks who hanker for big boats with helipads and toys of equal ostentatiousness, and although I’m sure some of them are right nice people, I don’t see them fitting into the Creole culture, shopping at SMB or working to level the Pearl S. Buck-type playing field that can only have the poor feeling even poorer in the face of so much bright and shiny loot.

I know we’re going to be looking a bit shabby in comparison with our simple wooden house, Mark’s desk-sized pirogue and our obvious lack of sycophants and hangers-on.

Progress, smogress, and ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron.

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My November Blues are green

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , , on November 14, 2007| 1 Comment »

November is a tough month for me under any circumstance. Following directly on the heels of a Halloween that isn’t in this country, we have a Thanksgiving that isn’t anywhere I’ve lived since 1993.

Thanksgiving is … was … probably my favorite holiday; all about family and food, but without the pressure of gifts and parties. Important traditions run deep and wide, and emotions can run high over things that to an outside observer might seem a trifle, like green Jell-O.

From the beginning of time, my mother’s Thanksgiving meal included a Jell-o mold of green Jell-O with alternating pineapple slices and red maraschino cherries. One year … for some reason she never clearly explained, but one that must have had something to do with the onset of menopause — at least that’s how we’ll call it now … she took it upon herself to throw years of comfortable ritual to the wind and make an ORANGE Jell-O mold, with carrots.

Well! You can imagine how THAT went over.

Yes, the customs of Thanksgiving are dear to my heart, and I have now had to forego them for 14 years.

Sure, I try to revive them here, but my attempts are pitiful imitations, piffling forgeries of fowl, as many years no turkeys make it this far until just before Christmas, and they’re pathetic representations of the species most of which have known the frozen state for many years before I can even think of stuffing them.

I’ve learned to be grateful for a skinny bird topping out at 6 or 7 pounds … Cornish Game Turkeys, if you will … and have managed in recent years to coax flavor and enough juice for gravy out of birds that died in Russia circa 1999.

Because there’s no holiday on a Thursday in November in Seychelles, any Thanksgiving that I may pull together has to happen on a weekend, and no matter how long I live here that just doesn’t feel right.

Because there are very few Americans, the guests I invite never ‘get’ the holiday, and few have a clue even about cranberry sauce.

Worst of all, of course, is the fact that my mother, my grown kids — my daughter, with my granddaughter, and my son — my brothers with their wives and kids, are all sitting down on the other side of the world. They may not be at the same table, but they’ll all be looking at green Jell-O.

There will be more on this before the month is over …

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