you may say that i'm a dreamer, but i'm not the only one...

father's day is almost here (again), and not un-like mother's day, facebook has kindly prompted it's masses to copy and paste (and post) assorted pater related paraphernalia (south africa, 1975, dad is third from the left, next to mum, both sitting behind me).



but which photo? staring at the albums i got that same glazed over feeling which happens at baskin & robbins. but this is the one i went with; awali, bahrain, sometime in the mid 80's, on his way to work to do a couple of fillings. there were a lot of different names on the house signs, some in arabic, but as far as i can remember there weren't any others that started and ended with a z-- and believe me, there are a lot of arabic names that do.



at this point i think it is fairly evident that i cant commit to much of anything-- and i do thank, not blame, my dad for that (it is his fault about the flat feet though) geographical transience can do that to a person. iceland; circa. we were very small-- somewhere in the 3 foot range-- but this demonstrates how the fedorowicz's never travel light, regardless of how much practicing at it goes on.



then there was the "badass" one where he ran the comrades ultra-marathon in south africa (that's 90k south of the equator) some time in the late 70's.



or the one where he took "teenage me" mountain biking around the jebel (bahrain) with his windsurfing buddies, post-gulf war (the first one).



speaking of windsurfing...sheik's beach, bahrain, the 90's.



there was also the apres 'ride around the desert', in the paddling pool, with floating beer...



scuba diving in the red sea in the 80's. well, diving and drinking home brewed wine for the grown ups, ripping apart sea cucumbers and starfish for the under 9's.



and the "poo thing"...duba, saudi arabia; we were so proud of the home made camping toilet that was the sum product of the fedorowicz, wood and barnes families' hard labour.



because this is what we all had to put up with before; a shovel, sand dune and a roll of andrex...



always a family favourite, dad laughing uncontrollably while pointing out the giant, steaming pile the horse (that just carried his son and future daughter-in-law away by carriage) left behind. (keysoe, england, 5-ish years ago).



my birthday card (from my brother), detailing the finer points of a dog's bum, caused such silent mirth and tears of appreciation, that we could not miss the opportunity to document it (buckden, england, two-ish summers ago).



at this point, it's clearly evident that freud would have a field day; the apple cant even be pried off the tree. dad in his dental chair, bahrain.



last christmas.

things learned on my international middle east christmas vacation

~ the similarities between mother and daughter are disturbing, not a good thing when one is the driver and the other is a passenger. and while both father/daughter exhibit a very british selective mutism when in mixed (but still mother tongue) company, oral dilation is swift when the more senior member finds a gulf national to banter with.



~ i am a conservative puritan, where hummus is my evangelical platform; roasted red pepper, sun dried tomatoes, spicy chipotle, chunky kalamata olives, and caramelized onions belong on a pizza. if you want 365 overpriced flavours, rocky-road-oreo-mint-supreme is available at a strip mall near you.



~ architects responsible for designing airports across the globe grew up watching a little too much dr who. as evidenced by "abu dhabi international for the sensory deprived".



(going to the airport also seems to trigger the kind of anxious personality swings usually displayed on those "heavy flow/super absorbency" days-- in all members of the family).

how do i get there from here?

following the assembly directions for a "made in china" target desk poses as much of a challenge as navigating betty crocker's "just add two eggs" brownies. i am also pretty useless at map reading, and while i did not find ty pennington or jamie oliver stuffed in my christmas stocking this year, i did get something a little more useful (although not as sexy in a pair of board shorts).



an internal GPS system is as relevant to the middle east as a string bikini made of bacon rashers. bahrain has zero "no child left behind" friendly, numbered or alphabetized street signs-- not even the locals can identify shaikh isa highway from abdul jassim avenue. and while the western hemisphere may suggest: "go past the petrol station on the left, take a second right, and it's at the bottom of the hill", directions to find the little hole-in-the wall tailor in the souq can only be located from these coordinates: "go out the back of the yateem centre, follow the road past al zaineh plaza, take a left at the road that comes up from the bab (for translation, refer to paragraph 4 and accompanying image), walk in the direction of the gold souq, when you come to the intersection with the perfume shop on one corner and the indian guy who wants to sell you "real fake rolex/camel/mosque clock", take a left. keep going past the gold shops, and when you get to a cold store (this is equivalent to a 7/11 in the US, except with more sacks of rice), it will be across the street, on your right, next to the shoemakers." these are guaranteed directions-- unless you are accompanied by a guide dog with no receptive language skills.

during the first round of 'growing up' years, i remember all party invitations coming with a rudimentary map, supplemented with an extensive, descriptive novella beneath. in more recent years, however, the topography of the island has changed due to vigorous land reclamation efforts in order to support the development of a "financial harbour", 8 shopping malls, and associated highways to manage the increasing volume of traffic on its' way to debenhams, the gap and virgin megastore. many locations are still sentimentally referred to by their original landmarks. "pipeline road" (large, above ground oil pipes coming from saudi); "shwarma alley" (as with the close geographical proximity of starbucks' in the US, it's a basic human right to be able to choose which of the 15 establishments crammed within half a block are going to make your 50 cent beef, chicken or lamb gyro); "the irish embassy" (not an actual embassy, but a small mosque with an abundance of green lights); "coffee pot roundabout" (sadly the powers-that-be had the giant arabic coffee pots replaced a few years back, but "clock roundabout" just doesn't sound as catchy).

"dairy queen roundabout- the one by that really colourful mosque"; although the roundabout has since been bulldozed and replaced by a 6 way traffic light system to 'decrease accidents and better manage the flow of traffic' (i was recently told by a terminal expat that red lights were to be ignored, as status and degree of importance was determined by how many traffic laws one could break, with no consequences being meted out by public security).



"the bab (al bahrain)" ("bab" meaning: "gateway"); a popular meeting spot for parents to collect their shaggy haired, funereally attired teenagers that have spent the morning trawling the souq for shi-sha pipes and fruity tobacco, to then collapse, from the exertion, in hardees.



"egg cup mosque"; a personally christened landmark by father and daughter.



now, back in the states, i am looking forward to GPS dependency-- as soon as i am able to decipher the installation and operation directions.

how to raise a serial killer

the prognosis for the child who routinely introduces animals to kitchen aid appliances, lawn equipment, or the u-bend behind your toilet bowl is probably not going to attain high office at the united nations. rather, these profiles represent the budding antisocials more familiar with quilting a throw out of your intestines (to wrap your still warm corpse in, before abandonning it in the nearest landfill), than fretting about bombings in belfast, saving the monarch butterfly, or kim jong il's agenda for the next 6 months.

as adults, it is normal-- often desireable if you have a very "girly" significant other (x or y chromosome)-- to posess the skills necessary for stomping on spiders, cockroaches, and ants the size of grapefruit. as children, we make do with the cards, and regional critters, we are dealt, in order to develop these lifelong skills to either maintain an intimate relationship or secure admission to medical school. i become quite maudlin when thinking about 6, 7, 9 and 11 year old me engaging in the kinds of activities that any recycled paper membership card carrying constituent of PETA worth their organic, free range, vegetarian salt would be come enraged at-- albeit in a peaceful, kumbaya sort of way. so while there was a little less incineration of creepy crawlies under magnifying glasses or smacking of fireflies with baseball bats going on, my brother and i were able to entertain ourselves adequately with what the red sea and persian gulf had to offer.

in saudi arabia we enjoyed collecting shells washed up or scuttling onto the beach; those that walked were assiduously evicted from their homes. the shoreline also yielded the more seasonal crop of 'marooned jellyfish', which we harvested by the frisbee load to assemble onto driftwood kebabs. sea cucumbers fascinated us foremost because of their poo; they eat sand, which passes through a single intestine, to be expelled in a more refined state out of an anus that is shaped like a cake decorating nozzle, thus forming a perfect little flower that could bring a french pastry chef to his knees. sea cucumbers also have a unique, but nifty defense against prey and 8 year olds trying to pluck flower turds from their bottoms. instead of changing colour or shooting out volts of electricity, they eject an artillery of something that looks like silly string and ramen noodles. we, of course, attempted to initiate this reflex by treating them more like empty tubes of toothpaste. when not performing enemas on sea cucumbers, we kept ourselves busy practicing advanced amputation techniques. and while they were typically not repeat patrons, the brittle starfish was a favourite because the detached "point" would continue to wriggle for several minutes in our hands.

moving to the desert inland we shifted our focus to arachnids and reptiles. i had been warned from the age of 9 about the hazards of camel spiders and scorpions seeking refuge in my shoes, although i did not have my first foot/scorpion encounter for another 10 years, when i was cleaning out buckets of flot at an archaeological dig. word had obviously travelled to the other side of the arabian peninsula by that time, because he disappeared under a rock before i could get a long (very long) and pokey stick to turn him into a kebab. fortunately we didn't really have to leave the air conditioned environment of the house to find a couple of ghekkos that had taken up residence under the fridge. meal preparation was always a bit more exciting when mum was stirring the spaghetti bolognese and a scaly squatter sprinted through the gas burners, leaving a glowing tail behind him like cinderella's slipper. of course she should have been used to domestic and deadly drop-ins after her experience with a butcher knife and a black mamba that had smuggled itself into the kitchen in a bag of dog food when we were living in south africa. little did i know that part of my current job description would also include extermination.

"a christmas bollocking"

so read the subject title of an email from my brother. not a forward of a cartoon santa getting his nuts caught in the chimney, rather a multi paragraphed instructional on how to conduct my holiday travel plans to the middle east this year. re-check your luggage when you get to chicago; get in the club class queue so you don't have to wait with all the riff raff; when you get to heathrow meet us (he and my infinitely patient sister-in-law) at the first class lounge by 9am so we can sign you in as a guest- unless you want to sit in a plastic chair with the riff raff, waiting 5 hours for the flight to bahrain; make sure your presents are wrapped before you leave so we don't spend christmas eve waiting for you to wrap yours; make sure you put some of them in your hand luggage in case your suitcase doesn't arrive (it hasn't the past 5 years, why change the habit of a lifetime?); don't put any liquids in your hand luggage. perhaps this should be called a christmas bum wiping?

the night before departure i got out my suitcase, and the unwrapped presents (that's what gift bags are for anyway), and my passport, which apparently expired last month. shit. i was not going anywhere. my worst nightmare was real; landlocked and unable to leave. not only that, christmas has always been "my" holiday, or the expanded version "my day to bicker with my parents/brother with an illuminated red and green backdrop". for 31 years. this was bad. and then my mother called.

"christmas is just a day". no, it is no longer about tearing downstairs in pyjamas to eat all of the cadbury's ornaments off the tree for breakfast and rip through presents by 6am, to pass out in a sugar coma amongst the wrapping paper. now it has evolved into sleeping in, getting a buzz on by 11am (champagne and OJ), peeling potatoes while my brother and i harass my mother (and she returns in kind), to pass out in a mimosa/red wine/vodka tonic/port coma amongst the wrapping paper. it has changed. i have been trying not to. because christmas is also "just the day" where no matter where we were in the world, my mum made sure we were as griswald festive as we could be. when we lived in saudi arabia you couldn't buy trees, ornaments, paper, or mulled wine, so she made ornaments on her sewing machine. the grown ups made wine out of grape juice, sugar and yeast, and we pulled christmas crackers my mum had bought on shopping trips to london earlier that year (and smuggled back in her suitcase). during my (miserable) years at boarding school/undergrad in england, christmas was always the one constant that i would be reunited for the purpose of getting into adolescent power struggles with my mum, my brother would find a way to fart on me (repeatedly), and dad would lecture me about how i should just get on a plane to go teach in hong kong.

my first goal for the new year is to renew my passport.

wine cooler camping

its not until you share what felt like very "normal" childhood stories with others that you realize perhaps your experiences were a little...unusual. my original "bestest friend" was also born in south africa, until her parents decided to move to the middle east, which is where we met. looking back, this is the first conversation i remember having where i/we realized and validated at the same time, being born somewhere, but not feeling or identifying that we were: proper noun + an/ish/ic/ian.

"...i remember when louise and i used to play with the silver bags used to hold the boxed wine her parents gave us (they gave us the inserts, not the wine) and we would blow them up into space shuttle looking "pillows" and pretend we were going camping. sometimes we would even take them to the pool and use them to float on..."

we were 7 years old.

this took place in the united arab emirates.

god i wish i had pictures.

open water

when i lived in saudi, we used to go camping at the red sea every other weekend. my dad was an avid scuba diver, the rest of the family enjoyed sitting in the sand racing hermit crabs/hot wheels cars (james), playing scrabble/canasta (mum), setting things on fire/reading (me).

my brother and i usually traipsed behind dad across the reef until we reached the edge (about 15 minutes of wading, swimming, and shuffling to avoid sting rays and lionfish). he would swim off the edge and submerge, we would snorkel around the sharp, pokey drop-off looking at rainbow fish, anemones, and spanish dancers swimming amongst the fire coral. we'd try and peek into the little coral caves looking for moray eels, not too closely, just close enough to look brave. every once in a while i would turn my head to look at the great expanse of water behind me; there was nothing immediately visible, detailed, bright or bitey to see. visibility was pretty murky, but i knew somewhere beyond there were all kinds of big, interesting things that i would like to see, even if (or probably because) they had teeth and stingers.

i was mesmerized by the immediate, but i couldn't help but be intrigued by the distant; because i didn't quite know, and i couldn't quite see. i have changed my position in the water, the imagined possibility and unseen is now in front, the obvious and visible to my back.