The evil eye or as I know it, Ojo. Ojo occurs when someone has starred at your baby a little too hard sometimes with jealousy and it causes your baby to cry and become so fussy that nothing will calm them down for no apparent reason. Sometimes it can be so bad that your baby gets a fever. The cure? Rubbing the baby down with a room temperature egg and saying Our Father Prayer 4 times, and if a twin does it, it works faster. (It sounds a little crazy, believe me, I know!)
Is there a way from preventing this for happening, you might ask, yes! Yes there is , and it’s called in Spanish El Ojo Del Venado (Translated literally: The eye of the deer) which comes on a little red bracelet with a picture of a saint, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary on one side of the velvet bean (No it’s not really a deer eye!)
Growing up I never thought it was anything weird or different, I didn’t even really believe it myself until Camila was rubbed down with an egg one night while we were visiting my grandma. Five minutes later she was in a deep sleep. As I got older I realized that this was only a Hispanic-catholic thing. Especially now that Jeff is a Guatemalan Christian the differences between the way we grew up are evident even in our parenting styles.
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| My Famly |
Jeffrey was raised in a Pentecostal Christian church, was a youth leader, played the bass in the church band and attended vigilias (like a lock-in at church), I, on the other hand, was raised catholic, went to Sunday school maybe 3 years out of the 20 that I’ve been alive and occasionally went to mass and only knew how to pray the rosary. My religious journey didn’t really start for me until I went to Fort Jackson South Carolina during basic training and attended church on Sundays. It was the first time that I actually had fun at church, I sang, danced, cried and clapped and felt the Holy Spirit every Sunday. It was what I needed, after being worked so hard every other day, I would not have made it through basic training without the strength and joy I had gotten from praising the lord and it wasn’t until then that I truly understood the kind of upbringing that Jeff had.
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| Jeff's Family |
Needless to say that with the major differences between the way we were brought up caused a lot of clashes in the things we want and our families want for our daughter, and things like my grandma rubbing Camila down with an egg cause a little argument. Things like whether or not we’re going to celebrate Halloween because he was never allowed to and I always threw parties and went all out with decorations. Some of these things we’ve talked about when I was pregnant, we always decided that we would handle things as they come but some of the things like my family pushing for me to baptize the baby aren’t things we really thought of beforehand.
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| My grandma, Noah, & Camila |
We love every single member of our families, but it’s hard trying to make decisions because we want to please everyone and not cause any arguments. I’m starting to see a pattern in this parenting business. You live in fear that what you do with your child is going to upset someone, or they’re going to tell you you’re doing something wrong. No parent wants to hear that they’re messing up, especially from strangers that don’t know you, it hurts even more sometimes when it comes from someone you know too. There isn’t exactly a manual on what exactly to do because not every baby is the same, and there are so many different things on the internet it’s hard to decipher what’s right and what’s wrong. Parenting overall is just not what anyone expects I imagine.
In the end Camila is our daughter and we ultimately decide as parents what’s best for us and Camila. I never thought that coming from different religious and cultural backgrounds would be a difficult bump in the road to cross over, but I’ve been blessed with a (sometimes) patient and understanding man that stands by me even when my family buys Camila a bracelet to ward off evil (lol)
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| Jeff & Camila |