thefutureisred

Give Me Butterfly Wings: I Needed A Big Blog Break

Photo by e3000               

Sometimes death teaches more about life than what's on my computer.

After almost four months without a word from me, it's time to answer those gentle nudges of "Where are you?" What's going on with your blog?" I've been getting.

First, again, thank you for asking. I am grateful and, as they say, humbled that not only do people actually read this little red thing of mine, but even notice when it's gone. 

But it needed to be. It has become abundantly clear that I needed to focus on my non-blog life. 

The Catalyst

Or should I say catalysts, because it's rarely just one thing that causes change in our lives.

This past July while in New York, we learned from a friend of ours in Bocas del Toro that our old landlord Cher, a really lovely woman, had been murdered. By a serial killer. It almost sounds like a joke, but clearly, it's not funny. Not in the least.

Then, when I got back to Argentina after Burning Man, I learned that another friend of ours from Salta, Diego, had also been murdered. I don't really understand what happened. Apart from some vague intimations about it being a gay-related crime, that the murderer was an exotic dancer.... Quite frankly, that's when I stopped listening. Those details aren't the core of the matter. It is more that a really decent person is now dead for no reason at all.

It really fucks with a girl's head, you know?

I Wanted To Blog, I Really Did But...

I stopped writing soon after I heard about Cher's murder. Since then, the idea of writing about what was going on in my head just felt wrong, but to write about something else seemed forced and a waste of my time. I’d rather paint with Lila or hang with Noah or do something altogether different.

So that's what I did.

I Don't Want To Be Too Late For What's Most Important

With all the traveling, running around, trying to develop programs, meeting people and posting, I felt I never had time for anything. My life too often felt like a massive unfinished to-do list and I was always working to reach a constantly moving horizon.

If I continued like that, I would miss out on my real world. So I had to let go of the online world for a while.

My hits were at an all time high when I stopped writing, and I’ve watched them fall, fall fall, as well as watched how my connections with many of the people I know online have faded. That has been hard to see.

But I had intended give Diego a call and get together sometime, soon. By the time I got around to it, I was too late. I don't want to say the same about Lila or Noah or the other people who are most important to me. I want to be truly present in their lives and mine.

Making A Commitment To Real Life & Community

This week, Noah and I will sign the papers to buy a house here in Salta. It will be our home, yes, but it will also be a community center for traveling artists, writers and teachers. (And will be filmed for an upcoming episode of House Hunters International. We're even flying to NY in February to do some filming there.)

 

So far, we’ve formed connections with local universities and non-profit organizations. We plan to use the internet and social media as a tool to connect students between countries, allowing them to share their work with each other as well as with bring in international artists, writers and photographers, travelers and educators.

The goal of our program, though, goes beyond a creative exchange to an initiative to teach English, keep students in school and ultimately improve their economic prospects by connecting them with an international community.

We just finished our first semester working with 12 year olds at the experimental high school that is a part of the Universidad Nacional de Salta (la UNSa). Next year, we’ll work with the same group of students, incorporate online and gallery exhibitions of art and photography and are working to begin teaching at the two local universities of Salta.

Does This Mean We Will Be In Salta Forever?

It is unsettling to think of being settled. It is overwhelming, too, to commit to one place after being on the move for almost five years.

The underlying assumption of our program is that since it is based on the people, the needs and the soul of Salta, it will not need us permanently to continue growing. We are here until our work here is finished;then we will move on. 

Paper Mache Butterfly Wings and Walks By the River

Along the way of designing the project, I stopped to design paper mache butterfly wings with Lila. We picked dandelions by the side of the river flowing near our house. I stepped away from the to-do long enough to start weekly belly dancing classes with a really fabulous teacher. Someone who will be teaching as part of our community center.

And maybe, just maybe, I've learned a bit to accept that the most important thing I want to realize in this life of mine is how to be patient and not be too attached to any one outcome, because the bottom line is you never know what happens next.

Six Most Famous, Boobilicious & Even Offensive Posts From The Future Is Red

Which of my posts from the last three years received the most attention? And for what reasons? Read on.

MOST FAMOUS POST

Picturing San Pedro de Atacama

This photo was take February 2009 on our way back from Termas de Puritamas in Chile. That entire area of the Atacama desert is barren, empty and incapable of sustaining life except in a few spots with water. But the landscape is spectacular.

While this photo mostly took itself, I'm still going to brag and say how my photo was dubbed "smoking hot" by Huffington Post blogger 2morrowknight?

MOST POPULAR POST

Everything I Learned About Packing I Learned From Grandma Ruth

This is one of those posts I wrote in the midst of packing for a trip. Call it a good reason to procrastinate. I never expected this post to hit such a note with readers.

One tip: It's all about the ziplocs!

MOST POPULAR PHOTO

Making Your Way Around Albrook Mall

I really can't imagine why this photo seems to show up time and time again in searches. People link to it, send it to their friends. Hmmm.

MEANS THE MOST TO ME

A Portrait of Lila On the Eve Of Her Fifth Birthday

Lila's fifth birthday was all about reflection. She's just so beautiful in this photo. I really fall in love with it and her every time I see it. Her sixth birthday was all about the party. We were lucky enough to have Uncornered Market and Two Backpackers join us for the celebration. Thanks Dan, Audrey, Aracely and Jason for blowing up all those balloons!!

Photos of the party coming soon (which in Leigh-time means eventually).

MOST SOCIAL POST

When Will The Social Media Bubble Burst?

Most who know me or read my blog are well aware of my frustrations with social media, marketing and the culture of frenzy surrounding all these issues. Yet, at the same time, I am enamored of social media and the power that lies within.  

MOST OFFENSIVE POST

Is Thanksgiving More Than A Day Of Thanks?

This post caused me to lose more subscribers and readers in ONE DAY than I normally lose in an entire year. It was quite something.

The Gift Of Memory Is the Greatest Gift of All

Recently, I saw an old Mork and Mindy episode where Mork, after freaking Mindy out when he gives her a dead fly broach as a Christmas gift, learns that it's the thought that counts when it comes to gift giving. So he uses his Orkan powers to give her a new gift, a long forgotten childhood memory.

Today, I read a post on Julie Shwietert's blog Cuaderno Inedito titled There Will Be Some Days When You Get Nothing Done Except Loving Your Family. Reading Julie's thoughts on time with her family brought back vivid memories of the days after Lila was born.

That first week was the most free week of my life. I didn't think about work, cleaning the kitchen or how much baby weight I needed to lose. I didn't look at my watch. I turned off the phone and didn't once check e-mail.

I completely disconnected, in a very very good way, from everything in the world that usually plays such a huge part in my life and focused only on Lila and Noah. It was, without a doubt, the most memorable, most beautiful week of my entire life.

We moved by Lila's needs.

When she was hungry we were awake to feed her. When she slept, we did too. We regularly changed diapers. It's amazing how many a newborn can go through so quickly. I remember Noah and I standing over that tiny naked body. Four hands, two brains petrified of somehow destroying this new life as we tried to remove the old wet diaper, wiped her down with water until clean and then gently lift her little body to place it on a clean one.

Neurosurgery performed by two inexperienced parents. Neither of us had ever before held a newborn until the day Lila was born.

Seven suns rose and then set.

One morning, I lay on the couch nursing and watching how her body spanned the width of mine. At the same time, the sun rose, turning the walls of our apartment orange and golden, then lighter and lighter. The sun poured through creating shadows of window pane on every surface inside. The shadows moved slowly from one side of the room to the other and then disappeared as the day arrived.

Never before and never since have I been able to be so consciously, so fully in the moment. It made me wonder if  perhaps the days when I accomplish all else -- work, writing, organizing the house, running errands -- but I don't spend as much time with Lila and Noah, if perhaps those are really the days in which nothing of equal worth was done.

Thank you, Julie, for reminding me.

The Lila's Second First Day of School Give-Away

It's that time of year again. Lila goes back to school, and you know what that means? Another give-away of fantastic Brooklyn confectionery Whimsy and Spice cookies.

Last year, I went all proud mama when Lila went to her first day of school. It was a pretty big deal, and she was understandably nervous. Not only was it a first day of school, but a first day in a new country in a language she didn't yet know. Still, off she went in her little white knee socks and did her thing.

That was last year, though.

This year, she was excited to see her friends again, happy to finally have a place she calls home where her friends can visit and totally digging being a big girl in first grade.

This photo is Lila just before she left home her first morning of classes. She's standing in front of our new place. Lila and I planted herbs -- lavender, mint and rosemary -- in the pots behind her. That hammock used to swing on our dock in Bocas del Toro. We stuffed it into our suitcase the last time we came back from the US. Talk about not traveling light.

This year, it's time for more wonderful cookies. And this year, there are TWO ways to win. 

THE FIRST: Leave a comment for shortbread!!

I'm giving away boxes of shortbread cookies to three lucky people who leave a comment, any comment, below.

Choose from Chocolate Orange Cardamom, Brown Sugar Gingerspice and Honey Lavender.

Bonus points for anyone who tells me their own back-to-school story. One of you story tellers will also get one of the Whimsy and Spice Sampler boxes.

Please note: Remember to leave your e-mail address when you leave the comment so I can let you know if you win.

THE SECOND: Join my mailing list for marshmallows!!!

In addition to a chance for three more people to win a dozen box your choice of Chocolate, Caramel, Cardamom, Maple and Rose Vanilla Handmade Marshmallows, you'll receive notices of my new blog posts as well as any new contests and give-aways. (Note: I have something planned for my birthday this month as well as for Lila's birthday in April).

Enter the give-away by subscribing with your e-mail address in the box below. You must verify your subscription, though, in order to enter because unless you verify, I have no way of knowing you've joined the mailing list.

Enter your email address:

Soon after subscribing, you will receive an e-mail asking you to verify that you truly want to be on my mailing list. All you need to do is click on the link in that e-mail.

If you're already receiving updates, you're already entered to win the marshmallows.

Last day to enter: Last day of March, 2010. One more caveat: Whimsy and Spice only delivers within the US, so for anyone else, I'll send you a box of Calchaquitos Alfajores (Best I've ever had).

Any questions or comments? Feel free to e-mail me! I can't wait to hear what you have to say!

How To Raise Frogs & Other Tales Of Country Living

Today we fed the tadpoles. I learned how to keep them alive the hard way. At least now I know.

Back in November, when we first moved into the house, we collected tadpole eggs laid in rainwater in the pileta out back. I cut the top of a big plastic water jug and left them in fresh water. I read up on how to feed them and learned they can feed off the algae in the water.

What the internet didn't tell me on my searches is that there's generally not enough algae to feed ten tadpoles in a jug of well water.

So when our tadpoles started floating, I was surprised. Then I facebooked my friend Cory, a frog specialist and our neighbor in Bocas del Toro. She told me what to do.

Preparing Tadpole Food:

Take some greens. Lettuce. Spinach. Watercress, which seems to grow abundantly both in markets and wild here in Salta.

Boil it until the greens are very soft and dark. The water turns green too. Let it cool and drop it in the water.

That's it. So simple.

Hundreds, possibly thousands hatched from a recent batch laid in the the pileta, but we carried most of them to the San Lorenzo river nearby and set them free in the water. I felt bad at first, not knowing if they could live there, but when we found other frogs, I felt better.

About 20 remain. They are tiny, ant-sized and hungry.

Lila tells me she hears them scream out in tiny shrill voices. "We want spinach."

That, among other things, is what I did today.

Photo by Jake Wasdin

Then Last Night They Reminded Me Why I Love to Read

Last night, I began reading a new chapter book to Lila called The Pushcart War. I remember having this book read to me when I was her age. To be honest, I don’t remember the details at all, I just remember loving it.

I happened on a copy of this book while in college, found it sitting on the crowded table of  NYC bookseller on the Upper West Side. His name was Mr. Levin, a large man whose bulbous nose sported enormous pores and sat above a mustache worthy of the Mustache Hunt. He unloaded his books every day from a white van, and I would sit and listen to him talk with his big booming voice.

The Pushcart War he placed on his table had worn, ratty edges and pages of a cliché yellow all old books must have, but it was in decent enough shape for a dollar. I didn't want children at that point in my life, but I bought it to read to the children I might one day have if maybe I changed my mind.

I'm glad I did.

This book brings me to the beginning of reading.

To the days I learned that you can disappear into a book, and how one book can change your life forever.

Fast forward to fifth grade when the librarian of Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas introduced me to Madeline L’Engle and A Wrinkle In Time.  I remember certain details but if you asked me to outline the entire plot, you’d have me at a complete loss. I do clearly remember three witchy women who could bend time, wrinkle it, so you could move between places and dimensions in seconds. Close your eyes and you’re in a new world, a fantasy, where magic exists and anything is possible in spite of the danger inherent to your adventure.

Would you trade a safe spot for the thrill and excitement? I wouldn’t.

I read all Madeline L’Engle’s books and even had the chance to hear her speak live. She talked about the nature of writing children’s books. You don’t, she said, write as if you’re writing for a child. A storyteller writes for an adult, for any audience and if you do it well, a child will adore it as much as her parents.

I think about every author I’ve read who has opened new worlds and adventures. Shakespeare and Chaucer showed the adventure of language. How just because a word is foreign, doesn’t mean it can’t be funny, raunchy and fascinating. I devoured Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Virginia Woolf's A Room Of Her Own and Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love In the Time Of Cholera.

These days, I tend not to read books anymore.

They’re too heavy to carry around in a suitcase, and between having a child, a job, editing Matador Life and figuring out how to lead this new expat life in Argentina, I’m wiped out by the end of the day. That I spend my day writing articles and reading other’s work leaves me jaded to the written word.

But as I introduce Lila to the first book I remember reading, her excitement opens me up to the possibilities of reading once more.

And as I finish writing this blog entry, I realize how all of who I am today, all I’ve done and accomplished, the choices I make, the people I love and places that call my name, all became inevitable when I held that first book in my hand.

Photos courtesy of h.koppdelaney and austinevan

Picturing The Cow Jumped Over the Moon

My baby is learning to read and write, and this mama couldn't be more proud! Now helplessly watch as I show off her handiwork.

A couple months ago, Noah and I implemented a Sticker Chart based reward system to help Lila get ready for school. Each week, she had the opportunity to earn a prize of her choosing. Last week, she chose a notepad and set of pens.

She came bounding into our room recently to show us her most recent ouevre.

My favorite part, of course, is the cow. That she drew in the udder just makes me smile. Not to mention the look on the cows face. I love the backward moon. I love that she sounded this out and wrote the whole thing entirely on her own. Really, the whole thing just gets me.

Lila, for her part, is very proud to know her drawing and writing has made it to the internet.

How To Teach Responsibility To A Child

Perhaps a small stuffed cat doesn't seem very important in the grand scheme of parenting, yet for me, the mother of an only child, it takes on huge significance.

Last week, the three of us -- Noah, Lila and myself -- went to the supermarket.  Lila, admittedly because she was hungry, freaked out and had the first tantrum she’s had in as long as I can remember. We left.

Soon after, Lila turned to me and asked, “Where’s Susanna?”

Susanna is her little toy cat. She got it in a Cajita Feliz at McDonalds a few weeks earlier and they two fell in love with eqch other. Lila tucked Susanna in bed at night, took her to school, carried her in the car and everywhere else she went in her little llama handbag.

We went back to the store to search. Went back again this weekend, but Susanna was no where to be found.

She is gone, probably forever.

Lila has lots of questions, of course. What happened to her? Where did she go? Did someone else take her? Will I ever get her back?

I don't have answers to any of these questions.

Then comes the question for which I do have an answer. In fact, as the parent, I entirely control the outcome.  “Can we go back to McDonalds to get another Susanna?”

One the one hand: It’s Lila’s responsibility to take care of the toys she chooses to bring with her to the supermarket or wherever we go. Normally, she doesn’t lose them and is very good at keeping track. Her tantrum, I'm sure, has a lot to do with why Susanna was lost. She was too busy screaming to realize her beloved cat fell out of her bag.

Wouldn't buying a new one be in some ways, allowing her avoid responsibility for her actions? Would we in some way be saying tantrums are acceptable?

Beyond that, loss is a part of life, and not everything is replaceable. In fact, the most important things in life are not. Would we be doing Lila a huge disservice in quickly ending her sadness with another toy. This time, it’s easy. Next time, it may not be so simple.

Noah and I generally choose not to shield Lila from subjects such as death. We do our best to be honest when explaining what happened to our cat Paloma, or Grandma Ruth or why Daddy is sad when we visit Noah's mother in the cemetary.

What do you think?

Photo courtesy of Hitchster's Flickrstream

Welcome Home, Burning Man! Welcome Home?

I've been writing home for as long as I can remember. 

My first really big project developed itself into a discourse on the nature of home. Winter, senior year of college, my best friend Jen and I drove cross country to explore Native American culture in the United States, mostly focused on the Lakota Sioux, also known as Oglala, in South Dakota. I came away from that project clearly seeing how so many Native Americans consider this land their home, yet they have been displaced from it. I am the opposite. I have not been forcibly moved, and yet my connection to the United States is far more tenuous.

So upon first entering Black Rock City to hear the warm greeting of "Welcome Home!" I was discomfited. It felt strange, wrong. "This is not home," I told them silently.

No place is really home to me.

Brooklyn? It once was home, but I don't feel that way anymore. South Africa? I don't even remember it. Atlanta? My parents sold the house I grew up in almost a decade ago, and while I feel entirely comfortable in their house, it doesn't feel like home to me. Panama? No. South of France? Gorgeous, but not home.

In a sense, Noah, Lila and I attempt to create our home in Salta, but I suspect no where will ever have the weight and permanence of what I think home should have. Perhaps that's why travel comes so easily to me. I don't feel sad when I leave a place because for me leaving is as inevitable an event as arriving.

But staying, relaxing, creating a place, one place that is no longer an apartment, la casa or even a tent, but is regardless of brick and mortar, independent of form and furniture, a place I feel safe calling home, that has eluded me thus far.

I suspect I'm not interested in having a real home.

I like flitting around, a couple months here, a few days there. So on the eve of our return to Salta, I find myself apprehensive. We plan to go back, rent a house for a couple years (yes, years!), work, live life. And so you know, we decided to stay in Salta -- aside from it being a lovely place to live -- when Lila told us she didn't want to move around anymore. "Why do we keep going places and not staying," she asked. So it was time to be still for a while.

I'm finding the prospect of creating one place as home, becoming an expat instead of a traveler, as difficult and overwhelming as the process of selling everything and packing up to go. It's Newton's Law of Motion applied to travel. A body at rest prefers to remain at rest, and a body in motion, well, you know how it goes.

Yesterday, I asked Lila where she calls home.

She points straight down to the ground. "Right here," she told me. Right in Granny and Grandpa's house. She is also excited to go back to Salta, to return to school and see her friends and teachers.

I find great satisfaction in the thought that somehow, we have created a life for Lila in which she has a space to call her own. Maybe more than one even.

Photo courtesy of eyesplash's flickrstream

Picturing the Body As A Child's Painting Canvas

A woman from China Health Trends magazine contacted me recently asking me for photos of us to include in an article she's writing about long term travel. So I turned to our handy external hard drive, where a copy of every picture we've taken since getting a digital camera lives.

Such nostalgia. I lost myself in a swirl of photos from my pregnancy through Lila's toddlerhood in Brooklyn and to all the places we've traversed since our departure.

This particular image takes me back. See the high chair? We spent hours choosing that thing. Somehow these decisions seem so much more important at the time, particularly when you only have one child. We finally opted to go with this plastic IKEA job, because it was cheap and easy to clean.

This photo also makes me realize how our past connects to present and future. Lila has loved painting and drawing for as long as I can remember. Our friends Ken and Hanako gave her a first birthday gift of bathtub crayons. She drew all over the walls, the tub, the counter. She painted with non-toxic kid paint, yogurt, chocolate pudding. Her favorite canvas was her own body.
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I mentioned Lila's body art to a NY painter friend of mine. She was horrified. She's all for creativity, but insists it must stay on a real canvas. I was surprised. I enjoy the impermanence of the body canvas. Similar to Buddhist sand mandalas, the artwork is ephemeral, but instead of ritual destruction, the child simply grows up, changes, and the original canvas disappears forever.

But I digress.

The memories showed me how the seeds for What Lila Draws and  What Lila Sees were planted early on.

Lila took a look at this picture and asked me why she was painting on her body and the table. "Do you want to do that now?" I asked her? "No, I like paper," she said. And Styrofoam, cork, rubberbands, sticks, shells and leaves. I wonder what she will grow into next.

What Lila Sees: Photography From A Five-Year-Old

Months ago, I had the idea to post Lila' photography. I put up one gallery and there the idea sat. Children's photography as a window into the mind of a child? It's a great idea. I've had nothing but positive feedback on this section and even heard from a few people who said the section inspired them to hand a camera to their own children.

I finally uploaded new photos last night.

Taken by Lila at the Atlanta Chili Festival, Autumn 2008

The timing of this, though, isn't simply just so. I uploaded them for a reason. I'm applying for a grant to expand the What Lila Sees section. Over the past few weeks, I've been writing and research art, perception, psychology, education and child development in an attempt to narrow down my proposal to a clear, well defined and compelling project. I believe I am almost there.

You'll also notice a new section entitled What Lila Draws. This showcases a small selection of her artwork over the past couple years. This section, also serves in relation to the proposal.

The following is the short description of my project:

I am designing an online gallery space featuring primarily, although not exclusively, children’s art in an effort to explore works that shift the perceptive experience, turning the familiar into something new. The project will use social media to locate artists internationally in order to develop new exhibitions for the gallery while facilitating collaboration, community and an open dialogue on “seeing for the first time."

The final proposal is due Monday, June 8. That also happens to be Noah's birthday and the day I leave for Buenos Aires to catch a flight home to be with my parents while my dad has an operation. Needless to say, this is a hectic time.

Whether or not I actually get this grant, writing the proposal has been quite the learning experience, and whether or not I win the money for my project, What Lila Sees will move ahead.

In the meantime, enjoy these new photos. I'd love to hear your feedback on them, the proposal or any thoughts you have for the expansion of this area of my site. Oh, and feel free to wish me luck on finishing the proposal.

Picturing My Child Playing in the Dirt

This is one big reason why we left Brooklyn.

I was tired of telling Lila she couldn't play in the dirt. Dogs shit and pee there. I was tired of having to watch her constantly. You never know who is haunting playgrounds and parks. One park in my old neighborhood has a rule that childless men weren't allowed to hang out, even just to sip a grande and read a book.

I was tired of finding fun things to do indoors and having to plan specific trips so Lila could be in the great outdoors. That is, Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden or the American Natural History Museum. Ok, that part was pretty spectacular, but still, an easy, safe place for Lila to play right by our front door feels so much more comfortable.

So when I peeked outside one afternoon -- I still can't help but going to check on her -- I found Lila quietly making mud pies with friends. The taller girl on the left is Victoria. She lives next door and showed up later that night at our house, ended up staying for dinner. The other girl, I don't know.

This in NYC might well label me a bad parent

The Downside of the Adventurous Life of Travel

There's an unspoken rule of travelers. You don't talk about the difficulty of long term travel. You can bitch and moan a bit about lost luggage or stolen wallets, but it is verboten to say you're tired, isolated and maybe, just maybe, the idea of chucking it all and going home has crossed your mind.

But admit it or not, everyone, everyone feels that way at some point. Yesterday was that day for me.

My parents visited us this month to be here for Lila's fifth birthday. They flew back Sunday evening, arrived in Atlanta Monday morning. I didn't hear from them, but considering we have limited internet and phone access, I didn't think much of it.

Around 4pm, I get an email from Noah's aunt. "Have you heard about this?" she asked. Turns out, my dad was rushed by ambulance straight from his seat on the airplane to the hospital. They didn't even have time to get their luggage.

My dad hasn't been well for a while now. A couple years ago after what seemed to be a routine operation on a torn rotator cuff, my dad emerged from anesthesia to find that his pituitary gland no longer functioned. It sounds so simple, doesn't it. This tiny little gland, the size of a pea, who could imagine what a difference it makes to your body? Without it, the body cannot regulate itself.

So I'm all the way over here in Salta with my parents in Atlanta. My parent's cell phone sat -- as usual -- battery drained on my dad's desk at home and no one's checking e-mail. Had I been in Atlanta, I would have hopped in the car and gone straight to the hosptial. Or better yet, I would let my mom take care of things in the emergency room while I went to the airport to track down their luggage.

Of course, it hasn't entirely escaped me that my parents luggage wouldn't have needed tracking had they not been on that flight from Argentina. Nonetheless.

So what did I do? I waited until my mom came home to answer the phone. I waited, because it was the only thing I could do.

I recently read an article on Worldhum by Rolf Potts about how to tell your family you want to travel long term. It's a solid article, well written with good advice, but geared primarily for people just graduating high school or perhaps college. It's not aimed at traveling families with children who need their grandparents.

Back in January, I had dinner with two friends I met in Buenos Aires. Alysa, a woman visiting for a month with her husband and kids. The other, Jo, a woman traveling alone in South America for six months. All three of us love traveling, love living abroad and each of us has at least one parent with a serious medical condition.

Over a couple bottles of really lovely Torrontes -- oddly, from the Jose Mounier vineyard we visited while in Cafayate this past week with my parents -- the three of us discussed the nature of leaving a sick family member behind while traveling. It's impossible to shake the feeling that if you go away, you may never see the person again. Perhaps you should stay, not travel,spend time with the person.

But Jo, her mother has been sick for over a decade. Should she have put all her travel plans on hold?

There will times you look back and know you did the right thing. Other times, you will look back and wish you had made a different choice. There's no way of knowing for sure at the moment. You just have to make the best decision you can with whatever information you have at the time.

So last night, Noah and I had a long talk about what to do. Should we stay or should we go?

This morning, I finally talked to my dad. You know what? He sounds great. Apparently what he needed was an additional dose of his medication to get those pituitary hormones back in balance. He gushed on and on about what a wonderful time he had with us in Argentina. It was the best vacation he's ever had. We did so many interesting things.

What a huge relief!

Last night, I looked on Lila's camera to see what she'd taken of my parents. I found a video at the Amphitheater, a huge rocky space outside of Cafayate, my dad doing a little birthday song and dance for Lila You see things like that with very different eyes when you know the person in the picture is in the hospital and you don't know why or what's going on.

This morning, I feel different. I'll soon forget the homesickness and isolation I felt last night. After all, I'm a traveler, we don't talk about such things

A Portrait of Lila On the Eve Of Her Fifth Birthday

She's so peaceful here.

Come morning, though, Lila pops out of bed, feet and mouth moving before she even knows where she wants to go or what she wants to say. Lila takes photographs and videos. She will always stop to listen to live music and has no qualms about telling everyone else around her, stranger or no, to be quiet and listen to the music too. She loves tattoos, all her cousins and chocolate ice cream. She stomps her feet and pouts when she doesn't get her way.

She's an amazing traveler, but when she asked me "Mommy, why do we keep going places and not staying," I knew it was time to stop and settle down for a bit. I am amazed how well she knows her own mind. I am not like that.

But Lila and I are similar in many ways. We both get cranky when hungry. Both like summer dresses, the beach, blue nail polish and dancing to Gwen Stefani. She doesn't understand why the song Gracie makes me smile while simultaneously making me want to cry.

"I am an artist," she proudly proclaims when showing me a new painting. "I am a writer," she informs me as she takes out her pen and paper. She wants to be with her mommy and daddy always, never wants to be on her own and stomps her feet "No" when I tell her she might change her mind.

I am wholly in love with her

See My Guest Post on Nomadic Matt's Travel Website

Welcome to all of you who have made your way here from Nomadic Matt's travel blog. If you like what you see, please subscribe to my feed or, better yet, subscribe to my e-mail list -- if you subscribe in April 2009, you're automatically entered to win my April Fool's Give-Away.

Today's topic on Nomadic Matt is What Traveling Has Taught Me About Parenting. In it, I talk about what to pack for your child when traveling, what you can expect and some general tips for traveling with children.

As for the picture above, it was taken at Mont Sainte Victoire, best known for being the mountain Cezanne painted. We couchsurfed for two weeks with Maryanick and her wonderful family at the foot of this mountain, woke every morning to see it and another just as beautiful mountain on the other side.

What I also remember clealry about this place? See Lila's flip flops? We bought them for ten euros at some roadside stand. Then lost them. It was a devastating time. One filled with the heartbreak only a four-year-old feels.

We magically found them again, though. Apparently, they'd fallen out of the car when we stopped to make a reservation at La Beliere, a chambre d'hotes near Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. The owner found then, kept them and gave them back to us when we returned for our stay.

So thank you, Mr Mollinatti, yes, for a wonderful stay, but mostly for finding those shoes.