Unloading

I wrote this several weeks ago, but lacked time to post it.

Today is International Recycling Day according to our local newspaper, which included a special supplement on the subject. (Also included were heavy glossy magazines from department stores and a travel agency, one dedicated entirely to SWEATERS, and another to the latest in giant TVs, promising the same sensation as actually BEING at the upcoming World Cup in Brazil.)

I took a big load today to our local recycling center, not because it’s International Recycling Day. I’m just tying up loose ends before we travel to New York tomorrow. I expected a line at the recycling center, but I was the only one there.

Preparing for a trip does weird things to my head. I feel the need to put order in my life and our house, rather like emptying an Inbox labeled “Life”. I cleaned up a pile of papers in my study – drafts and rewrites and more rewrites – which gave me a light, uncluttered feeling. I checked the garden for any urgent last minute snipping or spraying, responded to all the pending emails and deleted all the spam (over one hundred!), and bought boxes of pills to cover my medical needs for two weeks. I’ll sort them into bags marked “a.m.” “p.m.” and “other”.  

Next on my list is choosing a lightweight paperback to read on the plane. I’ve only read half of Cien Años de Soledad but this deluxe edition is way too heavy for travel. I do worry that, when I return, I will have totally forgotten who is who among all the Aurelios and the Arcadios.

I could spend hours at the Strand bookstore in New York. But there’s never enough time to browse and then there’s the tough decision of narrowing down my choices to what will fit in my suitcase.

“Narrowing down” is a must when traveling. And in life. What do I need? What are the essentials? For this trip? For my life? I feel a certain anxiety about leaving home, because it involves some uprooting, if only temporary. To travel I must leave behind the known and the comfortable while also I go forth to the novel, the stimulating and eye-opening unknown. I am ready for that. Long stretches of time in the same routine in this city stultify me.

                                             A Rant and a Laugh

Still no rain. The weather predictions for the next week: sunny. I miss the sound of falling rain on the roof, vegetation and stone, the plunk-plunk in the rain spouts. I yearn for the smell of wetness – wet leaves. It’s been so long, these feel only like childhood memories. The air is saturated with smog, vegetation layered with soot. Yesterday, out walking on the city streets, doing my errands, the golden fall colors helped dissipate my negative thoughts. I don’t like living my day with a black cloud lurking over me. But beside a fallen yellow leaf there was a candy wrapper, a coke can, and further along cigarette butts. I once read that litter attracts litter. My observations tell me this is true. Bits of trash litter a weed-ridden, unkempt corner yard two blocks away. People think it’s acceptable to toss a crumpled paper there. I take that back – I doubt they think, which gets me thinking about recycling and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I Googled the phenomenon which is also known as a gyre and the Great Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s all about PLASTIC. 

Grocery shopping takes me longer now as, glasses perched on my nose, I examine the underside of containers. Does the tiny triangle hold a number 1, followed by the letters PET? If not, back on the shelf it goes. But I often have no choice. If I want to eat yoghurt or buy household cleaning products, I must sin against planet Earth. How I’d like to have an interview with the CEO of Johnson and Johnson and give him an earful.

This lack of rain and the thought of all that accumulating plastic on land and sea frustrate me. I feel powerless, even though I sign every green petition that appears in my Inbox, refuse a plastic bag for my box of aspirin at the pharmacy and take my own cloth bags to the supermarket, while all around me customers file by with carts filled with plastic bags.

Experts here say there’s a good chance La Niña will bring us rain this winter. I’ll believe it when I see it, hear it and smell it.

Now that I’ve had a good rant, I’ll admit that, arriving home yesterday, the trilling of the hummingbirds at the feeder in our backyard cheered me up. Then I sat down to watch an entire hour of “The Big Bang Theory”, which had me laughing out loud. There’s nothing like a good laugh to put things in perspective – for a while.

Forecast

Rain is predicted. Dark clouds have loomed threateningly today and yesterday, but all we’ve gotten is an occasional teasing drizzle. It hasn’t rained here in 7, 8 or 9 months and this is the fifth consecutive year of drought. I look at the clouds and I make a silent prayer. Please. Rain.  If we could understand the language of the trees and the ground beneath us, I imagine they’re begging for moisture. I’m certain my redwood tree is.

Strong erratic gusts of wind knocked over our small ilán-ilán (Aloysia) tree in the backyard. It was top heavy with branches tipped with wonderfully fragrant white, lacy flowers, abuzz with a multitude of honey bees. Cutting off all the branches in order to lift the tree into an upright position, I saved the flowers to put in a jug in the house. The bees clung to the cut flowers, and I regretted having to deprive them of their source of food. Where will they go now that winter is on its way?

Return to the Tropics

I brushed my hair, put on a touch of lipstick and asked my husband to take a head photo of me. “You’ll have to take about fifty to get a decent one.” He took thirteen, all of them unacceptable. Do I really look like that?

“They’re fine,” he says.

“Not for public consumption,” I reply.

I’m hoping to do some blogging on the Peace Corps Writers webpage. They’ve asked for photos from my Peace Corps experience, fifty years ago, and a current headshot, a true eye opener. What we see in the mirror is a photo-shopped image, not how others see us.

Going through my old Peace Corps photos, many of them on slides (remember them?), stirred up memories, particularly the forgotten faces of people I’d known in the Colombian barrios where I worked.

Those memories and the familiar tropical climate and coastal vocabulary of Cien Años de Soledad motivate me to read on. Tackling it in Spanish isn’t as difficult as I expected, but I do not recommend it for bedtime reading. It requires concentration, especially if you want to keep straight the names of the male characters: José Arcadio, father and son, Arcadio, Aureliano, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo. Thank god for the handy family tree. García Marquez had a mischievous sense of humor.

            Returning to Colombia is at the top of my bucket list. I want to see how those impoverished barrios have changed. Would I see people who remember me? Would the precarious roads be paved and the shacks converted into solid dwellings? I want to taste fried plantains again, hear the wild chorus of nighttime frogs and inhale that humid, heavy air that sharpened my senses and opened my eyes, in those days when I was young, smooth-skinned and innocent.

HAPPY EARTH DAY !

Shortening Days

Nature is never still, but a new season brings about more noticeable changes. Yellowing, falling leaves and a more northerly sun, blooming chrysanthemums, cooler nights and shortening days have accompanied us through our first month of fall. We take along a sweater, just in case, and add a blanket to the bed. Next weekend the country will turn the clock back an hour.

I’m not happy with the idea of “shorter days”, though it’s really just fewer hours of daylight. At this age, I've become extremely conscious of my shortening days, intent on making the most of them. There is so much left to do, to learn, to see, to explore, and, as a friend said to me, lamenting her arthritis, the body isn't always up to all the things we desire to do. So perhaps my mantra now is Carpe diem, seasoned with a good portion of mindfulness. My challenge is to reconcile “seizing the day” with “being in the moment”. After my teacher years of harking to school bells, I refuse to rush, giving careful thought and priority to what I now consider to be worthwhile activities: reading, writing, gardening, exercise, and coffee with a friend, Internet chatting with my New Yorker son, taking granddaughters to the theater, a tea-time break with hubby.

My next project is to read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish. In Latin-American literature class at the university, I cheated, reading it in English. I hope it will enable me to revisit in a flight of fantasy my barrio days in Barranquilla, Colombia, just across the river from Gabo’s (I doubt he'd mind if I use his nickname) mythical Macondo.

Story

            “Tan linda tu historia,” he said.
I leaned in closer to hear him over the strident, pounding racket. On the dance floor, dozens of young people jumped and shouted, flinging their arms into the air.

“What story?” I asked.

“How you gave up everything – family and country – for love. To come here and

 live at the other end of the world. How were you able to make such a decision?” His words wafted on waves of wine-scented breath.

I doubted he’d remember our conversation tomorrow. How much effort did I want to invest to answer these heady questions? Besides, I was tired after sitting at this wedding banquet for over nine hours, carrying on small talk in Spanish with the other guests at our table. Once the loud dance music started, I caught only words and phrases in the din, smiling and nodding as if in agreement with whatever was being said. Hours of that became torture.

We started off at noon from the city on a bright warm fall day. The wedding ceremony, held in a colonial, adobe chapel in the countryside, began late, Chilean-style. Then we drove to a country house where the several hundred guests spread out across the broad lawns or sought shade under enormous old trees. Black-aproned waiters served champagne, pineapple and basil juice, and canapés until we were summoned to a ballroom-sized white tent where we sat at our assigned table. Lunch was served about 4 o’clock along with copious amounts of fine wine, followed by a buffet dessert table where I made a weak attempt at exercising willpower, faced with the variety of temptations.

It was still light outside when the bride and groom danced the traditional waltz. Then the volume increased to indescribable, deafening decibels and, from then on, things went downhill for me. While my husband and his jogging pals gathered like football players in a huddle, wine glasses in hand, I wandered to another table to chat with two women with whom I knew I could carry on a conversation beyond small talk.

It was hours later, when Mr. S’s friend perched on the chair next to me and wanted to hear ‘my story.’

“When you voted, which country’s elections excited you most?”

I thought for a minute. “The States”

“Do your boys feel more Chilean or American?”

"Chilean. After all, they were born and raised here.”

“Do you regret your decision?”

Oh, boy, he was treading on dangerous territory. I mentioned how hard it had been for my parents, my being their only child, and that, when I married, I thought we’d return to California. “But I have no close family left in the States. My family is here now.”

He went on to sing lengthy praises of my hubby, such a fine person, an example for all, etc., etc. I nodded in agreement, while looking over to the man in question for signs that we might leave soon.

“In fact”, he said, “if I’d been born a woman, I would have married him myself.” And bending over, he planted a warm kiss on my cheek.

A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on

I felt it first- a slight movement. And was that a barely perceptible rumble? Or was I imagining things? I mean earthquakes have been in the news for several days. But, I assured all my friends who emailed their concern: It was way far north. We didn't feel a thing.

    I've been here long enough to have developed very sensitive radar and sure enough…. “Temblor!” I called to my husband who was brushing his teeth noisily in the bathroom. The overhead lamp swung, the room jolted and something crashed upstairs. Then it stopped. A 5-point-something the news said. No sweat. We'd lived through THE BIG ONE. “Better go check your office upstairs”, I told him. “Something fell with a bang.” Nothing broken.

    That rumble from deep in the earth and house-shaking jolts are strong reminders that we live our lives ON A PLANET.

    The morning after the earthquake in northern Chile our fourth grandchild, and first grandson, was born. We were at the Clinica Alemana early. Mr. S. and I entered the spacious labor room, where around our daughter-in-law’s bed stood her parents, our son, the midwife, the doctor and the anesthesiologist. Soon they wheeled her off. An hour later she was back with the infant in her arms. It was almost too much to take in….looking at that tiny boy just minutes old. A brand new person.

    The event brought back shreds of memories of my sons’ births in the same hospital almost forty years ago. I feel deep regret now, looking back, that my husband wasn't with me (unheard of then in Chile) and that my infants weren't immediately passed to me to hold. Cleaned and dressed, they were placed in hospital cribs and wheeled to my room. That important first contact was denied me. I didn't know enough to request it.

    I don't want to be a pest, but I'd love to see that child every day, hold him, feel his warmth, his weight in my arms, hear his little mouse-like squeaks, and soak in every detail of what I no longer remember about my own newborn boys.

Beltrán