Lovely Firm Turd and Enrique’s Journey

I stopped giving Thelonious the Tylan on July 13, and also stopped the wet food, and figured her diarrhea would clear up, but it didn’t. After a lifetime of eating dry food, she suddenly decided she vastly preferred wet food (maybe it’s like the difference between broccoli and potato chips), so I had to start putting wet food out, along with her bowl of dry food, though I feared it was the wet food that was causing the diarrhea.

She has been eating very sparingly lately. She is almost not touching her dry food, and while now and then she will suddenly wolf down some wet food, many times I come home from work or wake up in the morning to see that she has not eaten any wet food whatsoever.

Therefore, nothing has been coming out of her other than pee, for days now. Last night I heard her scratching in the litter box and walked in to see a lovely, round, firm, perfectly shaped turd, for the first time in more than a month. I was so happy. If the diarrhea is gone for good, it must have been caused by the Tylan rather than the wet food, or maybe she just needed to get used to the wet food.

I gave up on Robert Frank’s Luxury Fever, which I could not get into, possibly because almost every single line was footnoted, and went on to Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Journey to Reunite with His Mother, which I couldn’t put down. It’s about a Honduran boy who travels by himself, in the most brutal and dangerous conditions, to try to find his mother in America. Mothers, often single parents, in Mexico and Central America leave their children behind to go to America to work, sending money home to ensure that their children are fed and educated. The parting is painful and the mothers intend to save up money and come back in a year or two, but most of the time, it ends up being many years. The children’s lives are improved by the money and gifts sent from America, but they miss their mothers desperately. To get to their mothers in America, they hop on trains where they are routinely beaten, robbed and raped. Many are killed or lose limbs; being robbed by the police is common, and there is the constant threat of being arrested and sent home.

Enrique makes eight attempts before he is successful. By the time he reaches his mother, they have been separated for 12 years. Alas, the reunion is not what either had hoped for, and this is often the case, as the parent and child barely know each other by the time they meet again. The child is enraged at having been left and rejects the mother’s attempts to tell him or her what to do, while the mother is acutely aware of everything she has missed and feels that her sacrifice and financial contribution are not being appreciated.

It’s a heartbreaking book and an amazing feat of reporting by Nazario, who actually went and rode on the trains herself, among other things, to get a firsthand experience.

Enrique leaves behind his girlfriend, who is pregnant with their daughter. The plan is for the girlfriend, Maria Elena, to join Enrique in America. By the time the daughter is three and a half, Enrique and Maria Elena have become quite distant, though he sends money and they talk on the phone now and then. Maria Elena has become, of course, very attached to her daughter and decides she can’t leave her. She tries to screw up the courage to tell Enrique she won’t be coming.

But in the end, Enrique persuades Maria Elena to join him. He says it will be the best thing, in the long run, for Jasmín. There is a photo of Maria Elena with Jasmín in the book; she is the most darling little girl. Enrique says they will save up money together in America and return to their daughter soon. Maria Elena can’t bear to tell Jasmín she is leaving. When Jasmín hears that the family is going to the bus terminal to drop her mother off, she insists on coming along. As the bus pulls out, Jasmín waves both her hands and yells over and over, “Adios, mami.”