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The Rich Coast
The airport coffee shop—a long, thin room with a garishly bright red tile floor and beige, nondescript wallpaper rising above the wood paneling—was separated from the bar by a rounded wooden partition of staggered boards. I was studying the random patterns of the roughhewn slats when Jim brought me a cup of strong coffee and toast grilled in butter. As we waited to board what would be my last flight from Costa Rica to the U.S., a constant flow of camaraderie enveloped us—the travelers awaiting their chance to wander out of the country with a nonchalance bordering on disdain in spite of the fact that they were obviously determined to go elsewhere.
Rick and Christy were still kidding Jim about an episode that had taken place at the San Jose McDonald’s drive-through the evening before, causing his face to go as red as the floor and a nervous chuckle to slide from his throat. We had wanted French Fries after weeks of rice and beans, and since Jim was in the driver’s seat, he was the one who had to place the order. He stared at the menu board with its sunken speaker and no matter how many times we coached him, he couldn’t wrap his tongue around a large order of French Fries in Spanish. After a very pregnant silence, we resorted to shouting papas fritas grande in unison in the hopes that the person receiving the order would hear us. When it became obvious that it wasn’t working, Jim held his hand up for us to be quiet and shouted with great bravado papas fritas Gandhi. This sent us into throes of laughter as we thought of skinny little fries with bald heads. It’s one of the stories that would be repeated often as our volunteers came together to talk about their times in Costa Rica.
It seemed an excruciatingly long wait before we were ready to board the plane and take off. Once TACA Airlines finally whisked us away, we climbed above misty mountains, the clouds resting peacefully as they clung to the volcano Irazu’s textured slopes. I thought about how we’d made so many memories in the lush country, one of the funniest of which was our first day of the trip that our flight home was bringing to a close. Jim and I had been walking around San Jose when we noticed a man following us for an alarmingly long time. Jim had finally worked up the nerve to ask him why and he answered, in broken English, that he wanted his autograph. “Why?” Jim asked. “You Sean Connery!” the man had replied, grinning from ear to ear. “No,” Jim said, “I’m not.” The fellow simply wouldn’t believe him no matter how many times he said it wasn’t true and he continued to doggedly follow us until I convinced Jim to acquiesce because the guy was giving me the creeps. The piece of paper the man had been waving in our direction every time we had looked his way was finally signed with Jim’s own signature but that hadn’t mattered to the sincerely excited man, who held the scrap of paper in the air as if he had just received a priceless treasure as he walked away from us!
The silliest things had always come about because the people were so genuine, I thought as I took a long last look at the fading peaks below. I said goodbye to the rich coast that had held such a paradoxical mix of experiences for me, thinking to myself, “Emma, how could I forget you or anyone else here?” I realized I’d mouthed her name aloud when my warm breath fogged the portal-shaped window, which had grown frigid as we climbed higher, and we sliced into a cloud that further obscured the land below. I leaned back in my seat, wrestling with a mixture of relief and grief, as I wondered, Was this all there would be of my relationship with Costa Rica and its gentle people?
The question faded only slightly once I was back at home, a two-week respite before traveling west to South Dakota. During the rare down-time we visited a development called Dunaway, a getaway for the area’s elite with wooded lots large enough that cabins could be tucked into the middle of lush foliage for privacy. It was in its early stages of being carved from the Tennessee hills and Jim was purchasing a sequestered parcel of land on which we would build a cabin. The seclusion was a must for the wealthy determined to have safe havens when they attempted to escape from their “lives”—a fact that I found ironic because “they” always took their lives with them (I suppose this is where I should own it and say “we” because I was among them at this point in my life)! There was a beautiful lake on the property and I sat in a canoe one afternoon, filling myself with the comforting silence broken only by the intermittent buzzing of cicadas and the occasional click of dragonfly wings.
I was so steeped in the deep dampness of the abundant setting that I was able to quiet my mind for the first time in months. As my eyes followed the shoreline hemmed in cattails, a thought took hold of me so forcefully that it was as if some unseen force had grabbed me and shook me hard. My own voice, buried deep inside me, whispered, “You don’t have to wrestle with your spirituality; you don’t have to worry that you are at odds with religion—there is room for your way of being. Yes, there is much to know for certain, but you have begun your search for your meaning and that is all you need to know for now.”
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