Christmas eve in Bed

‘‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse….

Late, lazy afternoon day. It’s very warm as I lie on top of the bed. A dog barks. Robins tweet.  A strange way to spend this  Christmas Eve. I’ve been bed bound for the past  4 weeks as I recover from back surgery. It doesn’t seem that long, but certainly longer than we expected. So I watch the news, read , answer phone calls and check the multiple WhatsApp dinging into my phone.

    Based on the volume of my WhatsApps, I picture the entire city whatsapping and texting this Christmas Eve afternoon : digital Christmas cards. Santa and reindeer jokes, photos, video of glittering Fifth Ave. NYC. And digital hugs. I haven’t checked Facebook yet.  It might seem like I’m quite busy yet all those activities  are interrupted by long, morphine-induced naps and mind explorations. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed thinking so much. If only I’d have the energy and clarity of thought to jot down those illuminations and pursue those rabbit trails. Oops, I’m dropping off…
    This is my first attempt at writing. At least it’s a start. Now, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the view, internal and eternal.🌈🌎

Tradition

“I am so very thankful for having all our family reunited here today,” I say. We raise our glasses, even 3 ½ year-old Beltrán, glasses filled with wine or water or juice. I look at the faces around our table: Nico and his girlfriend Laura, both recently arrived from the States; Danny, Ale and their four children: twins Colomba and Manuela, Pascuala and Beltrán; and my husband, Santiago. Table conversation is a lively mix of Spanish and English and translations.

            What a joy to spend the day in the kitchen preparing the Thanksgiving fixings with Laura, sharing menu ideas, googling for recipes, a job I'd usually done alone. She makes a delicious apple pie.

We’d seldom celebrated Thanksgiving here at home over the years. Not being a holiday in Chile, Santiago was at work and the boys in classes or studying for year-end tests. When the boys were younger, we’d gather with other bi-national families for a Thanksgiving pot luck picnic at Marion and Bob’s farm. That tradition ended when families became too numerous. But now, with Nico and Laura here, I wanted to do a traditional Thanksgiving to make Laura feel at home and to impart some of the Thanksgiving tradition to our grandchildren.

I pull out all the stops: best blue linen tablecloth and my mother’s china and silver. Some of the silver is tarnished from little use, so I sit down to polish a few pieces which brings back memories of family Thanksgivings of my childhood. The job of polishing silver often fell to me. My mother rose early to prepare the turkey and stuffing, the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. I’d help set the table with a white linen tablecloth and napkins and the same china and silver we use today.

At the end of the evening, my heart is full. I am contented and grateful for a traditional American Thanksgiving with all of our binational family gathered around the table, complete with spilled juice and Frida, the dog, scouting for crumbs under the table.

Breaking News!

Finally, happy breaking news!

Our son, Nico, is back in Chile after over 6 years in the U.S. with a short stint in Costa Rica. Laura, his partner, arrives next Tuesday. Time to celebrate with a real family Thanksgiving. Another addition to the family is Frida, a Costa Rican rescue dog, who we think may be part terrier, part pincher. She wakes us in the morning jumping on our bed and giving a quick lick to our faces.
    It's fun having a son living at home for a while. He is a Mr. Fix-it, offering to make home improvements. I love it!

    My second happy news flash is that I have a contract for my second book, Notes from the Bottom of the World, A Life in Chile, to be published November 20, 2018 by She Writes Press. Whoopee!!

Hometown

The Familiar

Back again in my hometown for my yearly visit, I soak up the rich scents of vegetation – elm, bay and sequoia trees – and the familiar birdsong as I stand on the deck overlooking the creek of my adoptive family’s house. They receive me warmly as in the past and inform me that a coyote family has taken up residence by the creek. I’ll hear them howling at night.

    I take a walk along the main street, San Anselmo Avenue, past the Coffee Roastery, where I’ll meet with old classmates on Saturday, the firehouse, Hilda’s Coffee Shop and Booksmith, my favorite bookstore. Sadly, I notice many empty storefronts in this town that used to draw antique buffs on weekends. I drive to my old neighborhood, park and walk past the home where I grew up. On my route I notice new 2 million dollar houses – the gentrification of a once modest middle class neighborhood.        I call old friends and set up dates for coffee or lunch. With a college classmate we take a nostalgic stroll across the Berkeley campus. On a glorious sunny day I take the ferry to San Francisco to meet with the editor who’s been guiding me through my manuscript. My oldest friend, Paula, and I share many meals, reminiscing on pets, childhood in the barrio, and names of nuns at St. Anselm’s School. Sister Eulalie Rose, Sister Miriam Josepha, Sister Benigna (a favorite). Nothing can compare with sharing childhood memories with a dear friend.

St. Anselm's School

A canine evacuee

 The Unexpected

Raging wildfires to the north mark my final week. Heavy smoke, like thick fog, creeps silently into our world. My adoptive family takes in a family of four - Santa Rosa evacuees, their four boxers and a sack of twenty ball pythons. (They have beautiful markings. I actually ask to hold one in my hand.) Mom and Dad python are left behind, but survive. 

    The kitchen becomes a busy place, people and dogs coming and going, cooking for nine and conveying the latest fire updates. The evacuees stay close to the television, watching the flames consume entire residential neighborhoods, not knowing for days if their house is safe.

The Tragic

    Another guest in the house is an Iraqi war veteran who suffered brain damage and PTSD- post traumatic stress disorder. He describes to us how the vehicle he was driving hit an IED. His halting speech and awkward bearing are the outward signs of trauma. He attempts to fit into the household routine and participate in table conversation – to be normal – but in moments of weakness seeks relief in drugs. My heart goes out to that young man. Those in national positions of power would think twice before sending men and women off to war if they could spend time with these young victims.

I mustn’t end on a sad note. Once more I’ve been able to enjoy the richness of this landscape where I grew up and experience a diverse sampling of American life: the generous sacrifice of firefighters, the growing presence of Latinos in the work force, a friend’s struggle to make ends meet, another friend recovering from cancer surgery, televised baseball playoffs, the pleasure of old friends and the limitless generosity of my hosts, whom I now refer to as “my adoptive family.”

Signs

Just overnight, it seems, several white blossoms have opened on our old apricot tree, harbingers of sweet summer fruit and announcing the advent of spring. 

    Other signs of this season of hope are surfacing in our garden: the first fragrant freesia blooms, fragile California poppy seedlings (I’ve marked off their area with small sticks to protect them from the gardener’s shovel), pink snapdragons and blue forget-me-nots. Birds know it’s almost nesting time. Our resident turtle doves have taken to chasing each other, warming up for mating. Regular as clockwork, the juices of renewal and birth appear. Small miracles. The air is still cold, yet trees, flowers and birds know it’s that time.

    All these signs of spring inject me with energy and hope, a time of looking forward: to the warmth of the spring sun on my back, more time in the out-of-doors and the upcoming visit of our youngest son and his girlfriend. Like the birds, my nesting instinct is activated. I’ve contacted a painter to do some small jobs around the house. We just bought a new barbeque and can’t wait for warmer days to invite family and friends to enjoy our backyard and share a meal. I’ve contracted spring cleaning fever, anxious to clear out accumulations of junk and papers. I’m giving the paper shredder a workout.

    The gardener and his son (Daniel and Daniel) pruned our avocado tree a month ago. The tree, now over thirty years old, grew from a pit planted by our son, Nico, as a child. The pruning allowed us to harvest over 400 avocados. What pleasure to give the fruits of our harvest to family and friends. Suddenly, they’re all ripening at once, which has me racing to find takers. Another small miracle in our garden is an heirloom tomato plant that wintered over and now has its first tomato.

    Rain is predicted for tomorrow. A spring christening that azaleas, the camellia, the hydrangeas, the sequoia and all their garden neighbors will welcome .

My Love Affair

I’ve been meaning to buy a new one, but the old one, split in half with loose pages, does me just fine. I’m not sure how long I’ve had it, so I open to the first page to check the date. “Roget’s 21^st Century Thesaurus” reads the title page. But, what’s this? My son’s name is written in the top right hand corner and, under his name, “Berkeley Fall 98.” He must have bought it when he arrived to Berkeley as an exchange student.

    My Thesaurus and I are inseparable. It has been my faithful wordsmith throughout my years of crafting Word Prompts for my writing group, blog posts, magazine articles and essays, multiple edits and re-edits of a memoir and a collection of narrative essays. This yellowing, battered treasure has been my salvation in my struggle to extract words from the tangled jungle of my shrinking memory word bank. I say “shrinking” because in a non-English speaking country, a plethora of words fall by the linguistic wayside from lack of exposure and use.

    Logophile: a lover of words. I embrace them, their multiple meanings and uses and sounds. Gleeful gladiolas, riotous revelry. Magnificent metaphors and sly similes, allusions and delusions, hysterical hyperbole and holy hosannas. A scene of beauty, a moment of ecstasy, a spark of understanding – on the wings of words all can be revealed. The incredible silkiness of an owl feather, the trill of a canary, the tingle of a spicy, hot pepper, a watermelon sunset, the heady scent of spring’s first acacia blooms.

    Some ask why I don’t use the Thesaurus online. Habit. And there’s the pleasure of turning its pages, immersing myself its world of words. When I hit a word block, I gently pull it from the bookshelf and fit together its two halves. I turn the pages eagerly, hunting for just the word. I then try out the alternatives until I reach that satisfying aha! moment. Got it. The perfect word for the occasion. Sesquipedalian.

My dear old Thesaurus Rex.

Coco Fifty Years Later

During our recent trip to Costa Rica, I knew I had to return to Playa del Coco. Fifty years earlier, while traveling by land back to California after our two year Peace Corps stint in Colombia, Barbara and I took a local bus to Playa del Coco in northern Costa Rica. It was a small town and we stayed in a very minimal cabin facing the beach. I took two photos while I was there. One of a veranda with a thatched roof and the other of a lone tree on the beach.

            When I learned that this Costa Rica trip would take us near Coco, as the locals call it, I dug around in a box of old photos until coming across those two possible Coco photos. I say ‘possible’ because I hadn’t labeled them.

            So now our group – my son, his girlfriend Laura, his Argentine friend Sebastián, my husband and I and Frida, the rescue dog – piled into the worn pickup truck and bounced the forty minutes into “town”, Playa del Coco, now a rather shabby but bustling tourist destination. Nothing looked familiar to me – until we reached the beach. I looked up and down the curving stretch of white sand, trying to recall the moments all those years ago when I’d stood in that very place. I showed the group my two photos and we set off down the beach to find where I’d snapped the tree-on-beach photo.

“There, those hills bordering the beach look just like these in the photo.”

“You’re right!”

“Isn’t that your tree?”

“Oh, my gosh! It is!”

I ran up to it and wanted to hug it. There was no mistaking it’s broad, deep green leaves and its tilt towards the ocean. It hadn’t grown a lot in fifty years. They snapped several photos of me under my tree. 

I filled with nostalgia for the young woman who’d stood on this spot five decades earlier, never imagining I’d be there again in later life. I was moved by something more that has taken me some time to identify. The place had taken on a special meaning for me. Perhaps it was euphoria or gratitude – not only for the possibility of returning, but also for a deep sense of completeness.

            I still had the other photo to identify and needed to locate someone who’d been here in 1967. Walking along the beachfront, I spotted an elderly ice cream vendor with a friend. Aha!

“Señor, are you from here?”

“Sí”

“Then maybe you can help me. I took this photo here fifty years ago, but I don’t recognize this place.”

“Oh, that was the Playa del Coco Casino. It’s no longer there.”

“Muchas gracias! Would you mind if I took a photo with you to commemorate this fifty years event?”

We posed, smiling, in front of his ice cream cart, Playa del Coco and the Pacific in the background.