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The Puzzle of My Life
It’s remarkable how quickly #LetsBlogOff comes around and the topic today is “Where do you get your ideas for creating what you do…Do you have a favorite writing table or a quiet corner in your house or apartment?” My ideas have varied birthing points but rest in only one repository—my writer’s notebook—which carries them forward, keeping them safe and alive until I’m ready to use them in projects such as this memoir. I’ve been in the hospital for a week—heading home today I hope—and I’ve filled page after page with sensory perceptions about my time here that I know I will use somehow somewhere. My Lucille Ball-esque run-in with the ice/filtered water machine is likely the only thing you won’t be seeing recorded anywhere amongst my copious notes (a girl’s gotta reserve some dignity!). To see how other #LetsBlogOff participants glean their creative ideas, click here for a full list.
The Puzzle of My Life
We were back in Siquirres. The morning had dawned rainy, the tip-tap of large drops drumming the tin roof making me so drowsy I slept longer than I should have. When the other noises of life finally penetrated my consciousness, it was the birdsong that capped all the other sounds. It was, in fact, always difficult to ignore in surround sound but I had to admit on that particular morning there was a difference—suddenly, the twittering of the birds seemed positive, quite a turnabout for me given how negative I had been of late.
I was far from proud of that and I wished I could learn to be different but I was having a tough time making an altered attitude stick. “Maybe it is time for me to grow up,” I wrote in my writer’s notebook, which was normally sturdy but was so damp it had become pliable—flexible to the point of disintegration. Was it possible that the environment here would help me to become strong if I could learn how to be more flexible or would I fall apart as quickly as this pressed cardboard book I’d grown so dependent upon?
Kimberly and Gertrude were taking the bus to Siquirres so they could have lunch with me, a break from the grind that I celebrated. I would give Kimberly the Barbie Coloring Book and Crayons I brought her. Little did I know as I placed them on the table in the kitchen they were bringing me gifts that would mean much more to me than the silly nothings I had brought from the states. Mrs. Green had sent me a wooden calendar. I was moved and humbled by its exquisite craftsmanship and the beauty of its presentation. She had made it, which meant all the more, and this level of generosity was so in keeping with the deep respect the people continued to show me.
Having news of her made me remember how close Gus and Mr. Green seemed. They would sit for hours on the porch talking about the most inane things, and every chance I had, I would light like a fly on the wall to listen in on their musings as I crouched in the corner of the porch. I learned that Mr. Green gleaned most of his medical inclinations, for which he was touted, from his wife. She was always recommending this treatment or that one, such as a “prescription” for Marcie, who had a sore throat. Mrs. Green insisted that she mix banana vinegar with black pepper, heat the mixture, and gargle it.
One day one of our volunteers had asked Mr. Green if he could think of anything he didn’t have that he might want. He thought for a long time, his ample lips pulsing as he rubbed the knob of his chin, then finally answered, “It would be money. I have everything else.” I was sitting with him one afternoon when a harmless crazy man, well known around town for his antics, passed by. He had a yellow ball cap socked on his head sideways, the bill pointing to the right making him look far younger than he was. Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” was blaring from the house across the street and he began dancing to it—quite well actually. When the song trailed off, he opened his mouth wide, looking side to side to see if anyone was admiring him, then held his hands up in the air, fingers splayed, as if to say, “Hold your applause!” Mr. Green and I laughed until we were doubled over in pain.
The rain had finally stopped and the sun was shining brightly. This was the tropics I remembered: sultry to the point of suffocating. The mosquitoes had multiplied greatly from the abundant moisture and I was battling a swarm of them when I bumped into Philip Wheaton on the way back from breakfast. A jack-of-all-trades who prided himself in the breadth of his skills, he had visited the job site several times, and was now helping with some of the new church’s paperwork. He typed with one hand flying and the other resting on the edge of the typewriter—his shoulders moving back and forth with the rhythm of his characters as they indented the paper in fuzzy black blobs.
He was tall and loosely jointed. Not too well groomed, yet not dirty. It was as if he’d been haphazardly put together and I marveled at his thin sideburns extending almost to his mouth. They angled off to a point as they reached for his lips, little more than skinny triangles of graying hair. His eyebrows were barely there, but the hair that did remain was wiry and unruly. He had a great deal of personality in his eyes, especially when he smiled. His great receding hairline was combed back, lending his sideburns more prominence and giving him the appearance of a scrooge or some other Dickensian character. I pegged him as rangy as he ambled along on spidery legs. He was almost hyper about his work, or extremely intent at the very least. As he talked about this project or that project, his brown eyes danced in his wide, creased face.
I was terribly homesick, was missing Sam so much I ached with it. I had brought a jigsaw puzzle to work and it had helped me to pass the time, but as I worked it, I thought of how simple it seemed to put together piece-by-piece compared to the puzzle of my life. I looked around the large front room with its alternating dark and light wood floorboards, walls made from the same, strong dark wood plentiful in Costa Rica—some of which had been painted yellow. In that moment of observation, I felt more isolated than I could bear but I couldn’t let the longing hold: the feeling was far too melancholy. I stood so quickly the chair crashed to the floor behind me, then headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. I felt ever more alien in the sparsely equipped room with its tiny refrigerator and petite stove, which were dwarfed by a huge porcelain sink spouting only cold running water.
I gulped down the water as I sunk into a chair covered in faded Naugahyde—the once bright pink, caramel and pert green flowers on the upholstery long faded to pastels. There was a tan mat woven from rushes under a tiny coffee table draped with a bright, though very dirty, linen shawl, which had been stitched with a decorative motive in silk threads. The furniture was straight and hard, and I sat on the clammy unforgiving upholstery thinking how relieved I was that I’d be heading home to greater comfort the day before my 31st birthday. I’d been trying to think of a way to sum things up as far as life in Siquirres was concerned and I’d hit upon the theme that life vibrated: music, birdsong, weather, the vivacity with which everyone spoke—everything vibrated. I might have given the idea “life vibrates” more power if my thoughts hadn’t been as dry and cracked as the dustbowl. There was no spark for the jungle, only the excitement of going home.
As I approached 31, I made the commitment to myself to try and rebuild whatever it was that was broken in me—not remake it as it had been but to refashion it into something stronger and real. God help me do it right this time, I thought as I packed and let the thrill of the fact that the next day I would be “home, sweet home,” fill me with hope.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
Get By Skinny
I was spending a great deal of time on the road with Roddy. He was so obsessed with trying to save money, or “get by skinny” as Father Calvin called it, that he cost us twice as much in gas, time and headache medication. I tried to teach him the meaning of “penny wise and pound foolish” but he either didn’t get it or didn’t care. I could no longer leave him to pay for things because if he perceived the bill to be too high he’d tell the merchant we didn’t need one thing or another after I’d retreated to the truck for our ad nauseam trip back to Germania.
We were meeting more of the villagers there. Jim had hired Norma, one of the women who lived near the site, to cook lunch for us everyday. She’d serve us homemade chicken noodle soup or one that tasted like beef barley. She would fry or bake chickens that had been racing around the yard just hours before, serving boiled cassava, fried plátanos or yucca with the meat. On the hottest days, she would make fresh ceviche or feed us bologna and cheese sandwiches. Everyone loved her Costa Rican version of Kool-Aid, choosing it most times over the soft drinks she offered. After lunch, the men would sprawl on her ample veranda and nap. Hers was one of the nicer homes in the village, built of clapboard, and elevated on stilts to prevent flooding and enhance cross ventilation. Unless the afternoon rains were pelting the jungle, the windows were opened to the breezes. In fact, most doors in village stayed open, allowing kids to straggle between the interiors, the large front porches, and spongy lawns. The youngest ones spent so much of their time naked that their entire bodies were tanned a deep golden color without a hint of a tan-line. The village held a boisterous mix of noises—the clucking of hens and chirping of chicks emanated from nearly every yard, children shouted to each other as they played games, and dogs barked and growled as they challenged each other for preeminence. As we walked up to Norma’s house for lunch one day, I heard a whooshing sound I didn’t recognize. When the house came into view, there was Norma, on all fours just inside the front door, polishing the deep-toned wood floors with a coconut shell. Her neighbor, who was accustomed to our comings and goings, was leaning on her windowsill, resting her chin on her folded arms. She waved and smiled as we walked into the dim, cool interior of Norma’s incredibly clean house. As Granny—my father’s mother—would have said, Norma was on the best side of house-proud, which meant you could sit on her furniture without being admonished while trusting her to keep her house neat! Like most of the homes in the village, hers was sparsely furnished—the furniture, like the walls and floors, made of local woods milled in Siquirres. Only single-family homes dotted this blotch of land carved from the surrounding banana fields, and only a few of the nicest ones had indoor plumbing. In Siquirres, there were fewer homes. Most of the two- and three-story clapboard structures were apartment buildings, and most of them had seen better days. Every year or so, the owners would slap a coat of bright chartreuse or flamingo pink paint on them to brighten them, but that did little to improve their posture, as many of them had at least one corner that sagged at an impressive pitch. In the sketchiest part of town, it seemed the paint was the only thing holding the poorest among them erect. Some landlords only painted the fronts of their buildings, leaving the dirt-pocked facades on the sides unadorned. One such storefront was painted such a bright yellow and green with blue diamond-shaped lozenges crisscrossing the wide stripes that it was impossible to stare at it for more than a few seconds during the brightest part of the day. When the sun was intense, the light actually made the building appear to vibrate. It struck me that day as we gathered around the dining table in the cool, calm interiors of Norma’s home that the atmosphere was as reflective of life in this indolent setting as the vibrant building was of the bawdy energy of Siquirres.If you are new to my blog and you'll like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the earliest post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar gives you the very first information. Thanks for stopping in!
Lost in Translation
Father Calvin took us to the Hong Kong Restaurant. The menu had two sides: one written in a Chinese-y Spanish, the other in a comical version of English. Instead of chicken breast, the restaurant offered chicken bosom, which was served with deep dry noody. I took this odd-sounding side to mean deep fried noodles when I ordered it, and was relieved when this was actually what was served, as I had no idea what a “noody” might be!
I tried not to laugh out of respect for the earnest restaurateur who was extremely excited to have Americans in his restaurant—not an everyday occurrence Calvin explained—but it was too much. I giggled my way through the gastronomic options, trying several times to slip a menu into my purse because my friends would never believe me if I didn’t have proof. The squat Chinese owner, who had the waitresses cutting napkins into four pieces and refolding them into tiny squares, was vigilant, making it a point of stopping at our table every few minutes to ask if we were ready to order, his hand extended to take my menu. We returned to the restaurant many times during our stint in Germania, but I was never able to get a menu out the door.As we walked back to the parish house after dinner, I couldn’t believe the change in the atmosphere of the small town crisscrossed with roads, many of which were dirt and some of them little more than rutted paths. From two-story lean-tos with screen wire for windows, a number of songs from Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" album competed for attention. While “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” blasted from one disco, “Beat It” throbbed from another. A block away, the rock superstar crooned “Billie Jean” from yet another smoky room.Bare-chested men holding cold cervezas leaned against the facades of restaurants and bars while women in their best dresses sashayed by. One particularly tall woman stood on a well-lit corner where the streetlight leaned at a precarious angle toward the ground. She was mesmerized by a group of children playing nearby. Her revealing dress in a juicy shade of red contrasted her wiry, dark hair that was pulled back to expose the smooth, sepia-toned skin of her face. I thought it odd that a lone shock of white ran along her hairline above her right ear. She didn’t look old enough to have sprouted gray hair, which made me wonder if the swath could be the result of hardship or trauma. Though I saw her for only a few seconds, I was convinced she’d lost a child. Her expression as she watched the children’s antics was part peaceful wonderment and part agonizing longing.It was remarkable how the inky air had turned the town into an antithetical version of its sun-drenched self. The streets had come alive, which made perfect sense because nighttime was the only tolerable time to be outside in August in the tropics. Like those of the discos, the windows on the parish house were unadorned openings cut into the building’s façade, covered over with screen wire. Until the wee hours of the night, the songs chosen by the DJs congealed into a soundtrack for my drama—a protracted tossing and turning on the single cot with its thin mattress. To their credit, Jacko, Springsteen, Madonna and Aretha held their own against a retrospective of the history of Reggae.If you are new to my blog and you'll like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the earliest post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar gives you the very first information. Thanks for stopping in!
Whatever You Need
I awoke early feeling hung over thanks to the migraine medicine that had shunted me into sleep. Jim dressed quickly, urging me to get going before he headed down to breakfast. Just as he was closing the door, he reminded me that the Bishop of Costa Rica would arrive at ten o’clock to drive us to Siquirres, as if I needed reminding. The Bishop’s name was Cornelius Wilson, and he was right on time when he strode across the dimly lit lobby toward us, his lavender shirt with its stiff white collar bright in the room flush with drab earth tones.
He greeted us with unabashed pleasure, then reached down to grab one of our L.L. Bean duffle bags, tucking the ornate cross dangling from a thick gold chain around his neck into his shirt pocket. As he lugged the heavy bag to his small pickup, knobby lines of gold scalloped across his chest, swaying to the rhythm of his gait. He looked pretty comfortable in his own skin, and there was a somewhat regal quality about him, hightened by the nubby white hair sprouting on his head. As he held the door open for me, I ducked into the tiny rear seat in the truck with its low-slung camper shell covering the bed. Being in the back, I was free to study the landscape as the two men talked about Germania, the town in which we would build our first church. The mountain peaks far in the distance favored hunter green velveteen while closer at hand, the fabric unraveled into slopes blanketed with a profusion of foliage so varied it would take hours to name every species. Shacks painted once-bright turquoise, fuchsia and yellow sprouted from the luscious vegetation like ragged flowers that had blossomed too close to the end of summer and had been frost bitten in full bloom. It wasn’t until we reached the outskirts of San Jose to begin a rollercoaster journey through mangled turns mimicking the mountainous terrain that their conversation grew quiet. The cleric was doing his best to avoid the daredevil maneuvers of the drivers heading toward us and it took his full concentration.I caught myself stamping at the floorboard every so often in the faint hope that a break pedal would rise up so I could slow us down. Not only were busses, jammed to nearly overflowing with people, barreling toward us around curves that were far too knotty for their speed, cars and trucks would whip around us when we approached even the shortest stretch of straightaway. Though it seemed chaotic, there was a rhythm to the zigging and zagging that I would come to call “transportation Tango.”“We say that driving is one way to prove you have faith in a higher order,” Bishop Wilson teased. “That’s because there is absolutely no order on the roads!” After a long descent, we skidded off the highway into the town of Siquirres. The Bishop slid to a stop in a ring of dirt surrounding the Church of Saint Mary, or Iglesia Santa Maria, where we would have lunch before visiting Germania. The minute they heard the crunch of tires on the dusty ground, the parishioners surged through a side door of the parish hall and dashed toward us across the scrubby yard, all toothy smiles and curiosity. Father Calvin, the priest of St. Mary’s, reached us first, his face alive with kindness. He put names to the other eager faces that flashed before us. I caught Arlene, Frances, Carmelita and Miss Morgan before the words balled into a jumble in my brain. Frances was a slender woman of West Indian ancestry whose kinky black hair was pulled back with lace. Her expression was perpetually stern unless she was concentrating on a conversation. When she was listening intently, she’d narrow her eyes into a tight squint, which raised the corners of her mouth slightly, turning her face into a droll mask of clownishness. Carmelita, a petite Spanish woman who fussed over everyone, had high cheekbones that gave her a gaunt air in spite of her shapely feminine body and voluminous curly hair, which was lightly speckled with gray. “We’re so glad you are here,” Frances said in her lilting English. Carmelita, determined not to be outdone, stepped in front of Frances, ever so slightly nudging her aside, and said, “We’re here to give you whatever you need.” A final stiff nod toward her competitor was her way of telling us that she considered herself to be in charge and we should, too.Arlene was a painfully bashful girl with legs so skinny her knees were as bulbous as burls on a tree trunk. Her fine brown hair hung limply into her eyes and parted around each ear. Jim had told me about the shy girl, who had been confirmed during his first trip to Costa Rica when he had met with the Bishop about building churches. This trip, he’d brought her a cross necklace as a present. She was so happy she had a difficult time holding back her tears. When he asked if she would have her picture taken with him, she nodded yes, but was so timid she could barely smile.Once everyone had greeted us, Father Calvin hurried us into the rec room of the parish hall where we were served freshly baked empanadas and tiny meat-filled sandwiches called arreglados. Instead of soft drinks, we had a Costa Rican version of Kool-Aid made of sorrel. Frances served us queque, or homemade cake, for dessert. As the women doted on us, I was relieved to find that most of the people spoke English in this part of the country. Everyone in the noisy, sparsely furnished room seemed prone to laughter and appeared to be remarkably genuine. We were preparing to leave for our visit to the job site in Germania when Arlene walked over to me and extended her closed fist. I put my open hand beneath it and she dropped three cherry lifesavers into my palm—sticky from being closed in her sweaty grasp. I was so touched by her gesture that it was my turn to fight back tears. I sucked on the sweet candy as we drove the eight kilometers to Germania, scolding myself. I was going to have to toughen up or I’d be reduced to blubbering my way through my experiences in the mission field, which would only serve to irritate Jim beyond belief.If you are new to my blog and you'll like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the earliest post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar gives you the very first information. Thanks for stopping in!
