Here in Brazil #2: "Mirror Mirror..." or Good and Bad News

[note: I wrote this on Thursday morning (12/22), and other things have happened since, but I still want to keep this post the way I wrote it, and add other thoughts only at the end]

I have good and bad news, which ones do you want to hear first?

I'll start with the good, Everyone is doing well, in spite of travels and being in other people's houses. My husband arrived last Tuesday and the boys are delighted to have their father back. Let me just give you a quick update about where we're at and what we've been doing. We were in my parents' house (which is located 120 miles west from the city of São Paulo, in the state of the same name - this is a state in Southeastern Brazil, one of the most the developed in the nation, the only state which has multiple lane divided highways throughout, like in the U.S., just to give you an example).

Last Friday two of our best friends (who happen to be my brother's brother and sister-in-law whose mom lives only 4 houses down the street from my parents) arrived to spend the weekend. Their daughter Beatriz (or Bibi as we call her) is less than a month older than Kelvin (they'll be 4 in February and March) and they played together all weekend long, which was great, because this is one of the things Kelvin doesn't have at all back in the U.S. -- friends his own age to play with in a regular basis. They did everything together, ate lunch and dinner, played for hours on end at her sandbox and little plastic house. The only downside was that Kelvin was too engrossed in play to remember to use the bathroom (and I wasn't around to remind him), and I had to change his clothes 4 times (sigh). I got to talk to my brother and SIL, and to my friends a bit while I worried where Linton was and what he was doing - there were 3 boys around 18 months around because my friends have a little boy, Leo, and my brother's other sister-in-law also has a son, Guilherme. So we tried to talk as we watched the boys, and tried to eat our meals (we ate lunch and dinner together all weekend).

Then on Sunday, we drove to Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná, which is south of São Paulo. It is a 6-7 hour drive, and in the ten years I've been away they have finally duplicated the highway (divided, with two lanes on each side), except for a strech at a very steep mountain range. Most highways that criscross the country are two lane affairs, not divided, and, with the extremely heavy trucking traffic, become unimaginably dangerous. Until a few years back, road accidents were one of the major causes of death country-wide. This highway between São Paulo and Curitiba, for instance, used to be called "The Road of Death." (this is why I mentioned above that the state of SP has divided highways - it's one of the "marginal" reasons we only want to live there - the other, and most important is that it has the best universities in the country, the only ones my husband wants to work for - more on that to come in the future). The drive was fine, the boys slept for almost 3 hours, and then for the remainder of the trip I used the handy portable DVD player I'd brought (part of the Black Friday spoils - I even sold 3 of them already :) until they fell asleep close to our destination (we arrived 10 pm).

Because of the wedding tonight [last Thursday] (my youngest and 3rd brother-in-law is getting married and this is the main reason we are here), we've been very busy since Monday. I've had to choose and rent a gown, rent a kind of tuxedo (I don't know the name in English for their outfit - after I post pictures you can tell me) for both boys, buy shoes for me and them (this time I will have to imitate Manuela, from Thin Pink Line, and post a picture of my shoes, they're AWESOME!!), pick up DH at the airport, visit my grandmother (I forgot to mention that my WHOLE family lives in this city, my brother was born here, and my mom spent many years of her childhood and adult years here, she was married in the same church my BIL is getting married tonight. I lived here for 4 years as a child, when we moved to the north of the state after I finished 1st grade. Two of my mom's siblings and three of my dad's and most of their children and grandchildren live here, as well as my dad's mom -- I FINALLY get say these things that Jo(e) writes all the time and make me so jealous), going with DH to the mall (10-11:30 pm! they closed at midnight) to help him buy a suit (no tuxedoes for men in weddings here, usually just the groom, maybe more on Brazilian weddings later :), then yesterday there were some fun parts to the "busyness" - I cut my hair and had it blow-dried, had a manicure and pedicure, and in the evening my husband's family got together at a photographer's studio so we could get some photos taken. We also took pictures of only us and the boys. This was the very first time we were photographed in a studio, since we take pictures so much, I'm too thrifty to even go to department store picture taking facilities, and we don't have ANY formal studio pictures of the boys (which is OK with me, we do take nice pictures, but still... I always feel we're lacking those :) Later we went to my BIL's apartment to hang out with the family and ordered pizza.

OK, I'm done with the good news. The bad news now -- it's not a huge crisis, really, and it's mostly in my head, but some recent events have left me feeling that I really wish I could quit being a mother for a while... I'll tell you the whole story, which is surprisingly short, now that I come to think of it (even though I can't tell it in a short way, please bear with me). On Monday I went to a bridal place to rent my gown. It had been a tiring almost useless morning, because we drove to the tuxedo rental place only to find out that the whole store had just moved the day before. After putting the boys in the car again and driving to the new location, we found out they didn't have anything that fit the boys... By then it was almost noon, so we went to a nearby restaurant to eat (here the main meal is lunch, and people eat out in small "home cooking" buffet style restaurants that sell food either by weight -- around 5 dollars or less for 2 pounds - 1kg, or as much as you want [5-10 dollars]. These are open from 11:30-2 pm and after that it's pretty hard to find a place to eat, except for fast food places. Then, only formal restaurants open at night [6-7 pm on]).

Before going to the other location of the tuxedo rental place, we decided to go to the bridal place which was nearby. Linton slept in the car, and it was OK because they had a shaded area in the back for my mom to park and stay in the car with him. Obviously Kelvin wanted to go with me (he always wants to go wherever we go). He enjoyed looking at the dresses a lot, particularly passing his hands on the parts that were embroidered (?) with shiny and colorful things (I have no idea what those different embroidered details in dresses are called in English - I barely know their different names in Portuguese!) I selected a few dresses and started trying them on. The salesman left the room by closing a sliding door and curtains, and then came back to help me close the dress and to talk about it. Kelvin was busy with the door, but he soon was attracted to the huge floor to ceiling mirror that covered almost half the room. He went close to the mirror and touched it a few times while I kept trying on dresses. The salesman invited him to go to the other room with him while I changed dresses and talked to Kelvin, but he had to leave to answer the phone. It was then that Kelvin came running from the other room and ran to the mirror to place his hands on it, and I guess he accidentaly hit the mirror with his knee (he was running, after all), and the whole lower part of it cracked but didn't break, except for a circle that was completely shattered, but didn't fall off. We were both stunned, him much more so than myself. He immediately apologized, "I'm sorry, forgive me, I didn't mean to do that." I noticed that he had a tiny splinter of mirror in his knee and I removed it, there was a tiny cut which started bleeding slightly, which further scared and bothered him. He was barefoot - and I quickly put his shoes back on, and told him to stay clear off the mirror, because there were tiny splinters of glass on the floor, including on my dress, that was on the rug. Then we had to wait for 5 minutes before the guy returned. Me, in a long blue dress that was open in the back because I couldn't pull up the zipper by myself, and Kelvin, who by now was saying "Why there had to be a mirror here? Why did they have to put a mirror in this room? I wish that man hadn't put this mirror here so it wouldn't break." He was still in shock and getting increasingly frightened by the blood in his knee and insisted in going "home" (my aunt's house). I tried to calm him down saying that we'd have to talk to the man about the mirror, and that I still needed to choose a dress...

Meanwhile, I heard crying from the car - Linton had woken up I saw it through the window and asked my mom to come in. The man came and I said that we'd probably have to pay for the mirror, we talked a bit about it but then I had to change into my own (nursing) dress and nurse Linton who was crying. I also had to calm down Kelvin, who'd become super clingy. I went to the car and left them there with my mom (that was when I saw that the upper half of the wall the mirror was mounted on was a big window, and I became critical of the way it was installed - my mom also told me right away that she thought I should not pay). It was in this situation that I had to choose a dress for the wedding. I asked the guy if they had insurance or something like that, and he said that they didn't, and that he was the manager and the owner would ask him to pay for the damage. He informed me that the mirror had been installed only 10 days prior, and cost over 200 dollars, which does not sound much, but is quite a lot in the currency here, and considering our finantial situation, quite a burden on us considering the other expenses related to the wedding. Of course I knew right away that I should be thankful that nothing serious happened to my son, because a mirror shattering like that could have even killed him, but I was quite upset about the whole thing, which got only worse.

The next day, my mother-in-law went there to pick up her dress and mine and the guy didn't want to give her my dress!! She called my mom, who mentioned it was probably because of the mirror, and urged her to be firm with the guy because she thought we shouldn't pay for it. When my MIL got off the phone, the guy told her and my FIL his version of the story, saying that he had warned me twice about my son not touching the mirror (something I can't recall even though he could be right and I was just too engrossed in trying on dresses), and that he had tried to keep the boy away, but when he went to answer the phone, the boy went in and kicked the mirror anyway - Kelvin never kicked that mirror!!! Anyway, he showed them the mirror and convinced my in-laws that I was in the wrong and had to pay, and they, in turn assured him that we would pay, and then the guy agreed to hand over the dress I had already paid for!!!!! I was extremely upset when my mom told me this. I didn't talk to my in-laws, about it, but I overheard their conversation with my husband that night and that was enough to make me feel like they probably thought I not a good enough mother, one that can't say to her son"stop doing that" and he will stop doing it the same minute. Later that night, when I talked to my husband about it, I really felt like a failure... and on top of all that, I didn't feel it was fair to pay for that mirror.

OK, there's an ending to this story - I was able to "forget" about it for a while and enjoy the wedding on Thursday night, but then on Friday morning my husband went there with my dad to return the dress and talk about the mirror. I should add that on Thursday morning, he had called several people who install glass and mirrors, and they had told him that the mirror in question was probably wrongly installed, and besides, it was too thin for a mirror that big. He even called "PROCON" which is the service of protection of consumers here in Brazil, but they told him there's no legislation for the safety of mirrors and that he had the statements of 3 merchants attesting that that particular mirror had been wrongly installed, then he could negotiate or sue the bridal store. In the end, when he went to the store on Friday, the manager that was there when it happened wasn't there, and he offered to pay only half (a little over 100 dollars), which they accepted... Phew... but it was a stressful week, and I felt really bad about it all. After it was clear that the mirror in question was very unsafe, I relaxed more, because it wasn't completely my son's and my fault.

Last but not least, some more bad news turned good (for now) - we had just arrived when we learned that my mom's oldest brother had had a massive heart failure. It didn't sound good at all and everyone was very worried, however, he's quickly recovering -- the doctor's say it is really a miracle, because they had declared that 90% of his heart was affected. This is my "rich uncle" who's almost 80, but certainly doesn't look it. He's always been physically fit, and led an extremely healthy lifestyle. What upset us all was that he'd just had a check-up the week before which had turned out fine, and this misled the doctors, who kept misdiagnosing his symptoms. He'd been feeling pain since Friday, but was only admitted to the hospital on Sunday. We're extremely relieved that it turned out well, and we hope he has a full recovery. These are very unsettling news and things to happen right around the holidays.

Well, I'll be back for more later tonight (I'll try) about the wedding and stuff, because this afternoon we installed a wireless router and I'm writing from my laptop in bed, yay!!