Loose Change

One night hubby and I clicked the numbers on the remote control hoping for a glimpse into the wonders of the natural world on NatGeo. Question marks appeared on the screen. We checked other nearby channels. Nada. Nothing. A message at the bottom of the screen informed us that the cable server had “rearranged” their grid of channels. Nobody consulted us. Where were our favorite channels? Just when we finally had the channel numbers engraved in our memories, they up and CHANGED them!

It’s like at the grocery store, when someone gets the brilliant idea to change the location of their products, and shopping takes an hour and a half instead of the usual hour. On my yearly visit back to my hometown, I head to a favorite shop and…it’s no longer there.

Slow changes, fast, surprising changes. Changes in our aging bodies. Stiffness getting out of the car. When did this happen?

The month of March charges in like a lion – not with cold or wind but with hordes of returning vacationers, massive traffic jams, Back-to-School frenzy and mind-boggling bureaucracy: income tax preparation and car license renewal. Yesterday I sat in a line for six hours to renew the yearly technical revision/smog control for my car. (My fault. I’d let it lapse.)

While I was stopped at a red light, a grizzled beggar approached wearing on his thin frame an over-sized blue tee-shirt with bright yellow letters declaring “Virginia State”. His eyes twinkled when he thanked me for the coins I handed him out the window.

Last week booming, house-rattling claps of thunder and flashes of lightning in the night. Usual in Florida but not in Santiago, Chile midsummer. Two nights ago the Villarrica volcano presented a pyrotechnic show, spewing red hot lava down its flanks. Add a few daily tremors up and down this long country and it’s clear why Chileans call their country the land of geografía loca, “crazy geography.

Day and Night  

Controversy and disgrumplement are rampant. (I’m exercising my writer’s license to invent whimsical words.) No turning the clock back in the fall? No on and off daylight savings time? The government has decreed that Chile will remain on the current time system throughout the year. Voices of protest point out the disadvantages for school children and workers who will enter school rooms, offices and factories in murk fit only for alley cats. This also means I’ll have to readjust my thinking when calculating the time when calling friends in California or Skyping with son in New York. A rather drastic decision to be made without consulting the populace forced to grope half their mornings through the penumbra.

This morning hubby asked, “What happened?” referring to my early rising on a Saturday. “I want to go out for a walk while it’s still cool,” I explained. Every summer day in Santiago the thermometer soars to what we already know– the high 80’s.

The sun was just peering over the cordillera as I took off down our street invigorated with the touch of cool air in my face and arms. People were already out and about: concierges sweeping apartment entrances, workers installing a new garden in a neighbor’s house, a man sleeping on a park bench, head propped on a backpack. In the park blackbirds, doves, austral thrushes and one parrot grazed in a patch of grass. The city streets were unusually calm, though usual for February, the big vacation month. The crowds and congestion have migrated en masse to the coastal beaches or southern lakes.

I spend the hottest hours of the day indoors, moving about the house in search of a cooler       spot to read and write. Yesterday, checking my emails, I opened a link to the newsletter from my small northern California hometown and read about precautions and preparations for flooding as it was currently raining. The usually tame town creek, which eventually empties into San Francisco Bay, has the nasty habit of converting into a raging rogue during very heavy rains. Hey. There was a link to a fixed camera at three locations on the creek. I clicked on the link and there I was watching the creek water, dotted with rain drops, flowing along through my hometown. Live and direct!

Mornings and late afternoons, the sun at a gentler angle, bring me outside. Nothing beats long summer afternoons and evenings. At nine p.m. we watch the local news. The current Socialist government seems intent on making vast sweeping changes with a dubious amount of planning. Educational reform and a pro- abortion laws are at the top of their to-do list. As in the case of no-time-change, major decisions are being made while paying little heed to opinions coming from outside the governing coalition – until mounting opposition forces them to take a few steps back. The buzz words for educational reform are “free education for all”, “equality” and “diversity”. Very noble objectives I’m in total agreement with. The question is how to go about it.

As the summer days shorten and nights lengthen, I suspect the hour-change issue may be subjected to reconsideration. Meanwhile, I harvest two or three very, very dwarf cherry tomatoes from my one potted bush, savoring the special scent of the tomato leaves, pluck off dead petunia blooms, observe visiting bumble bees and encourage our tortoise, Speedy Gonzalez, to eat the plum I’ve placed in his path.

Ping

Hubby has a new WhatsApp group – his fourth – five old college classmates. There’s another for his running group, his cycling club and his family. I sense creeping jealousy with every Ping. Is his cell phone getting more of his attention than me?

He carries the phone to the table at mealtime. Ping as I serve his salad. Ping while cutting my chicken. His eyes can't resist checking to identify the sender. He keeps the phone in his pocket – Ping – while we watch “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. Ping. Ping. A few nights ago, he left – Ping – and went upstairs to his office. I climbed into bed, savoring the cooling touch of sheets and sighing in horizontal contentment, read a while and then turned off the light. Eleven o’clock. Just as I slipped into that cottony twilight zone before sleep takes over – Ping. Ping. Don’t those people know what time it is? And why the obsession – Ping – with responding immediately? Channel grazing with the remote control now faces severe competition as THE MOST ANNOYING HABIT. Ping.

Our Brooklyn-er son spent a month with us over the holidays. He immediately went out to get a phone number to use while here, though he seldom talked on the phone. With the apparatus before him, he texted message after message arranging get-togethers with his local friends. I watched his thumbs tap–tap the tiny keyboard, wondering to whom he was writing. Texting rules out any possibility of motherly eavesdropping. I don’t want to appear like the Grand Inquisitor: “Umm -who are you texting?” Granted, he did install and instruct me on the use of Drop Box, Bluetooth and a National Geographic Birds App on my iPad.

WhatsApp-ing and texting are exclusionary forms of communication. Anyone in the vicinity of the texter or WhatsApp-er is transparent, invisible, and YOU ARE NOT A PART OF THIS GROUP or THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

This is a lot to take for someone who grew up with clunky, black dial telephones, handwritten letters, thank you notes and get-well cards sent in stamped envelopes,  delivered by the postman.

St. Francis’ Garden

It was probably the hottest day of the year yesterday – over 90 degrees and definitely hotter along the sizzling sidewalk of the Alameda, downtown Santiago’s main artery at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I had considered postponing my appointment, but, no, Franciscan Brother Jaime and I had each reconfirmed twice that we’d meet at this hour at the museum of the old seventeenth century San Francisco Church.

          It was dark and wonderfully cool inside the museum’s thick adobe walls, hung with large colonial religious paintings. Why did colonial artists paint their scenes in such lugubrious colors? A young guide directed me to Brother Jaime’s office in a corridor bordering a central garden, where he met me at the door with the traditional Chilean peck on the cheek, though we hadn’t met before. I had expected him to be clad in the brown Franciscan habit, but instead, I was met by a young man in tee shirt, chinos and sandals. He led me to a table where he sat at his laptop. The walls around us were lined with bookshelves, paintings and a couple of Christmas stockings.

            “Are you satisfied with the contract?” he asked.

I said it was fine, pulling out my copy which conceded me the rights to quote in my upcoming memoir some words of Gabriela Mistral, Chile’s Nobel poetess. In her will, Gabriela left rights over her works and all her property to Chile’s Franciscan Congregation.

We each signed our copies. Just then a strident squawk sounded in garden.

“Was that a peacock?”

He smiled. “Yes, and the female is perched on some eggs. We also have exotic chickens and a pond with fish and a turtle. Down the hall is a small room dedicated to Gabriela and you can see her Nobel medal.”

I thanked him and said I thought I’d go enjoy the garden for a while.

I stepped out into the heat, although tall old trees provided welcome shade. A gnarled cork tree looked to have been planted there by the original monks. There was the peacock, an elegant queen on her ground-level nest. I peeked into Gabriela’s room, admired her Nobel medal and then headed to the wide, round fountain with water spilling in the center. I sat on a bench, where a small mud-colored cat joined me. I stroked its head and wondered how he was allowed to wander freely in this garden, populated by doves, chickens and peacocks. When he jumped up onto the edge of the fountain, I thought, Oh-oh. The fish! But all he wanted was to drink some water. That assortment of animals living in harmony seemed so appropriate for that church and monastery named in honor of St. Francis.

I had a view across the garden to the opposite corridor and the second floor, the monastery corridors forming a square enclosing the garden. Above the roof, in the distance, rose a glass skyscraper, tapering into a needle tip. The roar of revving engines of busses passing on the Alameda carried over the adobe walls. I tried to imagine what life had been like for the monks who first planted these trees, which now, centuries later, provide me with a shady oasis of serenity.

Herbivore Orgy

Apricots bearing severe symptoms of herbivore gluttony litter our backyard, some attacked while still attached to their respective branches, beacons to marauding austral thrushes. The elegantly groomed plant cutter birds eat at tree level or leftover pickings on the ground. I gather what I can salvage, slightly eaten or ripe enough to harvest. These make great afternoon milkshakes, to which I add whatever other fruit I have on hand. Some cherries are still to be had, while nectarines and peaches are making their round, bright appearance in fruit stands and supermarkets.

Our tortoise, who in the past gorged himself on the fallen apricots, is still not showing interest in food. He and the birds used to make a great environmental team, one dislodging the fruit, while Speedy ate what was left. This year he shows no interest, even trotting right over the fruit I’ve placed in his path. Yesterday we made another trip to the vet’s office. He’s puzzled why Speedy is still not eating, took a blood sample and asked me to get another x-ray done. Meanwhile, we continue to give him three kinds of antibiotics daily. He seems to be getting accustomed to being handled so much now and is allowing us to pet him. If only he could tell us his problem.

Table Talk

Recently, we attended a barbecue hosted by one of hubby’s cyclist friends.  After a couple hours, the meat was finally ready and the men had exhausted the topic of cycling. Seated at the long table, I tried to follow the different strains of lively conversation. In spite of the decades I've lived here, I tend to be quiet at large social gatherings, self-conscious of my accented Spanish. This allows me to listen and observe – and learn, especially when it comes to politics.

Even after forty-one years since the military coup, the circumstances preceding and following the coup continue to be a frequent subject of differing and strong opinions. Last night was no exception as the conversation turned to Chile’s painful past during the Allende government and the military government that followed, now often referred to as the military dictatorship. (Interesting how one different word changes the perception.) What called my attention last night was the increased openness or maybe I should say a softening of the rigid stances of those on the pro-Pinochet, political right which were most of the guests present.  Everyone listened as one guest gave what I thought to be a balanced evaluation of the military government, summing up the good – the establishment of a successful economic program – and the bad – the serious human rights violations. No one disputed his points. Had they moved slightly out of their bastions of denial? Maybe it’s like the climate change deniers, when exposed to increasing and undeniable evidence, they began to listen.

I arrived in Chile a year before the coup so I experienced a before and an after as well as the return to democracy. What I did not experience and which must be factored into any understanding of the past was Chile’s political and social history prior to Allende. With the perspective of hindsight, those at the table may have gained a more objective view of their nation’s recent history, although expressing concern about the socialist direction of the present government, fearing a return to the past. Much of the population is too young to have that advantage of perspective over time while others seem to have forgotten or are easily swayed by clever slogans. And there are others whose pain and anger is so deep that they cannot forgive.

Chileans refer to this on-going struggle of settling differences as reconciliation, a painful process that nations, ethnicities and minorities throughout history have undergone and presently experience wherever violence and war are waged.

How relevant to our world are the lyrics to “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

Dry Days

A line of water trickles along the gutter of our sidewalk. I follow it down the street. I can’t identify from which house it came. I do this often – this sleuthing to identify which neighbor is wasting water. I’ve seen a neighbor washing his car on the street with the hose running; gardens being watered mid-day and malfunctioning sprinklers; people hosing off a driveway and sidewalk rather than sweeping. I don’t want to earn the reputation of a busy body with too much time on her hands, so I don’t say, “Do you realize that Chile is in its fifth year of drought? Shouldn’t we be conserving water?”

Few city dwellers consider where our water comes from. We’re too far from its source. Captured from wild rivers, it’s channeled into wide underground tubes and then into smaller pipes to buildings and homes and gardens and golf courses and fountains and pools. Turn on the faucet and out it pours. Or pop a few bottles of water into your shopping cart. So easy. Here in Santiago most people know it comes from some river that flows from the mountains. Fewer think about the dwindling snow melt that feeds the rivers. I imagine that small town residents and farmers are more aware of their dependence upon wells and shrinking reservoirs.

California has suffered three years of drought. In spite of recent rains, it’s too soon to know if this will be year four. In my hometown north of San Francisco drought awareness is high. Public bathrooms display signs reminding the public to conserve water. The low level in nearby water district reservoirs is clearly visible to the frequent hikers and bikers. The severity of drought makes an impact when you can see it. I travelled with my husband two years ago in the fall to Yosemite, his first visit there. I had to describe to him what the valley looked like in a normal year. Not a drop of water in Yosemite Falls.

As a child our camping vacations in the Sierras always involved walks to Indian Springs to fill our canvas water bag. There was no sign indicating the way along the faint trail that passed through a meadow bright with alpine flowers and fragrant with the aroma of wild onions.

Tiger Lily

Up a short slope, those of us who knew could locate the old pipe through which poured delicious, sweet, cool, crystalline water. I want my grandchildren and every child to have the experience of seeing where water comes from and hearing the tapping of rain on the roof.