Hope everyone has their tickets or reservations to Tuesday's Andaz Pen Parentis Authorfest! It's going to be a great time! If you haven't yet reserved: click here and please note, it's standing room only at this point! In the meantime, please read on for the first guest blog from Pen Parentis member Birgitte Rasine who is leaving today for a writing trip to South America with her toddler in tow:
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First things first: a big warm thanks to Milda De Voe for
enthusiastically embracing the idea of blogging from the field as my family and
I embark on a 2-month-long trip in Colombia.
Yes, we’re about to ship off to one of the world’s most
beautiful, exotic, and in some minds, dangerous countries.
It’s not the first trip—I’ve been to Colombia a number of
times, and loved it more each time. But
it was never a writing-retreat-slash-black-piranha-wrestling-in-ancient-rivers-slash-Caribbean-island-vacation-turned-potential-international-conflict. With a toddler.
It’s the end of the year, and three years since my husband
and I were able to have a real vacation (get-togethers for weddings and
Christmas in Florida don’t count!). So
we decided to take two months in South America.
For him, it’s a chance to soak up several weeks of extreme fishing in
the Orinoco river, for me it’s a long-deserved break from clients to do nothing
but write, and for our daughter, it’s everything she has only seen in books—and
the iPad.
(I’ll reveal what the Caribbean island is and why it’s
involved in an international conflict in a future post.)
As any parent knows, the B.C. (“Before Children”) era simply
does not compare with the A.B. (“After Birth”) period. One is freedom, tranquility, restaurants and
romantic evenings out. The other is
sleepless nights, food-strewn carpets, and classes in advanced psychology and
negotiation skills. And yet, somehow,
nothing but nothing compares with being able to give your child the experience
of a lifetime, many times over. This
trip is one of many that I want my daughter to experience, to open up her
already inquisitive, nimble mind.
Discovery of the world simply cannot wait.
A little about me before we head off. I’m a Czech-American author descended from a
loooong family line that apparently goes back to the eleventh century. I write shorter fiction (short stories and novellas)
inspired by the painful romance of real life.
And the occasional non fiction work, like “The Serpent and the Jaguar”,
a book about the Mayan Calendar and sacred time.
As I sit here writing, my 2-year-old tucked in next to me on
my usually ample executive chair, wriggling all over my lap while I endeavor to
hit the right keys, I reflect on how stable and safe everything here in
Northern California is (generally). In Colombia,
life is intense. A kiss from a beetle
can give you Chagas disease. Untold parasites in standing water
everywhere. Paramilitary trucks just
around the bend of a rural road. But the
light is brighter, the air cleaner, the food richer and tastier, and the people
are some of the most social, warm, hospitable on the planet. Your senses sharpen, your memory is young
again, and you forget where you came from.
I can’t wait to share it all with you.
Birgitte Rasine
Author
