Today is Guatemalan Mother’s Day. The day started at 4:30 a.m. with huge explosive fireworks and a megaphone blasting through the neighborhood waking us all up. I think I can speak for the other mothers that we’d prefer another extra hour or two of sleep.
I understand now why we are often hearing firecrackers early in the morning. It is tradition here if someone has a birthday, to set bundles of firecrackers off in front of their door. So we’ll often hear about 50 of them going off at 6 am. Now I get it!
There was a parade of women that appeared all over town during the day. The weird thing was how these women were dressed. They had on these outfits that I can best describe as looking like professional women’s wrestling outfits with an essence of vikings gone wrong. They had huge wigs on, wooden masks, crazy high heeled boots. They were doing this little two-step walk around in pairs showing of these totally over the top outfits. But no one was laughing at them, everyone looked on with the utmost respect and awe. Was kinda weird for a mother’s day parade. Perhaps it was more along the lines of, aren’t you grateful your mama doesn’t look like this? Then go get her some flowers or something.
Kier and I went out for a quick Mother’s Day breakfast before school. Madi always likes to go to school early, Kier not so much. Madi gave me a beautiful card she’d been working on for a week, it had incredible detail. At breakfast Kier gave me a ceramic owl that she bought at the co-op in San Marcos the day before with her friend. Cali made all sorts of pretty things for me at school, one of which was a candle holder that she was very proud of.
After that I had a coffee with another friend for a while. Another person joined us and we had a particularly funny conversation.
I went to pick up Cali a little later that usual. She wasn’t there, Dominga had taken her to the market. The kids who were there said she’d be back in 10 to 20 minutes, but 45 minutes later I was in danger of missing my choir night. I told them to drop her off at my house when they got back. She got dropped off after 6. Madi was awesome and totally looked after Cali, got her supper and put her to bed so that I could go to choir.
After the choir, all of the mamas had our own celebration . We went to the hot tub for a while, then came back and ate beans and rice. Great day.
There was a huge explosive sound on the roof, that really feels like the world is coming to an end. Happens every few weeks. Cali woke up, Madi woke up, Kier didn’t even stir. Her phone also rang at 1 am, but she didn’t hear that either. Someone pocket dialed her by mistake. This year’s Mother’s Day didn’t come with much sleep, but it was still a great one.