Saxon Henry's Blog, page 28

You Can't Save Everyone

We were finally heading home, our volunteers feeling regretful and emotional about leaving while I couldn't wait to get the hell out of Dodge! Tobie had heard about the train that puttered its way between Siquirres and San Jose so a few of us decided we'd like to have the experience of slicing through the jungle in open-air cars. The bright blue coaches with red and white stripes had crimson vinyl seats that were punctuated on the aisle-side with wooden armrests. On the window-side, cornflower-colored ledges were the perfect height for resting the elbow so I leaned there, soaking in every second of the scenery as we trundled through what seemed to be an unending swath of green. 

There was so much to see, both downtrodden and picturesque, that I didn't quite know where to focus my attention. Men with machetes worked diligently to keep the jungle from taking over the tracks, their floppy hats soaked with sweat and grime. A few yards away a bum in a grease-covered yellow slicker slumped on the rail of the opposite track as if he'd given up on his last hope. Trees dripped moss, and frothy rivers crashed over boulders the size of automobiles. Cicadas throbbed, drowned out only by an occasional piercing yowl of steel on steel as the train ambled along. I couldn't believe how high the tufts of bamboo shot into the cloudy sky, spraying like fluffy fountains reaching for heaven. 

We pulled into El Rocio where the train station looked as if it would topple, its warped boards straining to stay in place. We gave begging children chewing gum. One cheeky boy sniffed the scent of the piece I gave him before unwrapping it and stuffing it into his mouth. His smile immediately bloomed to reveal intermittent teeth—about half of them gone from a lack of dental care and I was guessing too much sugar. The crop and the processed form were plentiful in the country. Fields of it spread out in all directions, the plants gracefully bobbing pointed, limp-wristed fronds as they intersected with patches of burly coffee bushes—the interweaving of the two creating an organic collage. 

The higher we climbed, the more prominent the coffee bush became with its red and green marbles ornamenting its fingering limbs. Banks of daisies crowded the tracks, their friendly white scalloped disks with yellow button centers interrupted by clumps of impatiens in pink, fuchsia and red. Confetti-like petals peppered the ground as the train's passing jostled the fading ones from their stems. Children in ragged, colorful clothes crowded the doors of shacks outside of Turrialba, and a woman, the heavy skin of her upper arm flapping as she worked, scrubbed a porch floor with coconut shells. On one particularly steep slope, men dug blue-black mud from beneath the mountain's skin, the yellow John Deere front-loader looking so out of place in the dense jungle.

As we began a more pronounced ascent, the scream of the wheels echoed through deep valleys, and the town of Turrialba—clinging to the mountainside—came into view. The multi-hued rusted roofs of its buildings favored a tile mosaic in bad need of a cleaning. Once past the town, the landscape grew verdant again. The train waddled through tight grooves and sliced through blasted-out mountain passes, the wheels becoming impromptu flutes that spurted brash concertos. Men scoured the slopes like mountain goats, one standing with his knees flexed as he sorted through the raw coffee beans in a round plastic container the size of a clothes hamper, which was belted to his waist.  

Unpainted wooden shacks dotted the rolling peaks and hollows, and from time to time, a primitively made bell tower topped with a cross would appear amongst a cluster of houses. Out of nowhere in an isolated stretch of railroad, an elderly Indian woman ducked out of the jungle and walked along the tracks, flipping bits of brambles from her long, thick ponytail well peppered with flecks of gray. She was framed by ferns so large their spiky tongues licked the air around her hips as she paused to wait for the train to pass.

A river churned far below as we tripped over a bridge so high it took my breath away. It was such an intense experience that my lower back muscles tightened as if trying to clench the seat. Two men in a field of coffee raised their faces to our noisy crossing, and rocks stitched a haphazard flame pattern on the mud-stained water that crashed nearby. Viewed from above, a field of banana trees spilling down the slope looked like a cascade of green stars huddled together. 

At times, the train arced into a half circle as it skirted steep indentions in the mountains. Houses were strung along the train tracks like square beads of pink, blue and tan. The air cooled with every inch we climbed, and at Santiago, fields of corn took over, and grapes strung on chicken wire were molded along bumpy inclines, making slopes of their own. Here lichen-covered rocky banks were so close to the window they breathed a musty dampness into the train car. 

In El Yas, squash blooms with giant yellow throats extended skyward, and a lake rested peacefully in a wide, flat valley like a piece of gray-blue water glass. The greenery was emanating a pungent odor like moist liquorish as a dark, rain-colored sky loomed above a giant moss-covered bolder favoring a scab on a knee-shaped slope. When the rain came, it obliterated everything, as opaque as liquid solder pouring from above. 

The shower passed quickly and just as I was wondering what I was missing, the sky cleared, the first thing coming into view a goat shaking the rain off its back as we drew close to Cartago. The train stopped square in the middle of the marketplace and we were surrounded by bins filled with jewel-colored vegetables. A dark-skinned woman with pronounced cheekbones was yelling at a vendor, haggling as if her life depended upon it. Her black-on-red fern-print dress, white belt, bright red sweater, and ancient claret-colored hat with a tangle of satin ribbon carved a dark profile from the backdrop of shiny red and green peppers she argued over. The onions beside her glowed like tiny moons and the cabbages shone like larger planets in the light. 

Fat, stumpy carrots oranged the hazy sunlight, and in the midst of all the lusciousness, sad, hungry dogs scavenged the curb for a bit of garbage to fill their stomachs, their ribs visible beneath their sagging skin. As we waited for passengers to board, Allen, one of our volunteers, was belting out the words to "Rhinestone Cowboy," channeling his inner Glen Campbell as he listened to the singer's version of the song on his Walkman. He didn't have a clue that he was as loud as he was given the headphones he wore. I was watching him, laughing at his enthusiasm, as the train inched forward, readying to leave. In a nanosecond, a man lunged from the compartment behind him, grabbing his cassette player and jumping off the train—his movement so fast and fluid I questioned whether it had really happened until Allen, who was silenced in mid sentence, shouted, "What the…?"—the chord of his earphones dangling from his upheld hand.

I had been wondering if I'd overreacted by sticking my legs through the handles of my bags when we'd left Siquirres, but I was glad I had. Everyone felt a little shaken after that and we were quieter for the rest of the trip. I returned to the scenery as we took off from Cartago. Just outside of town, a poor soccer field had goals made of small saplings forked at the top and driven into the red dirt. A stick resting in the Y-shaped sockets formed the top bar, which held no net. 

A quarter of a mile further along the track, several large villas hugged the mountainside—marble white against the lush green backdrop. Orange barrel-tile roofs topped smooth stucco structures like bright sun hats. The trucks and cars, like the windows, were locked behind wrought-iron gates painted the same color as the trim—always in an intricate, geometric pattern. Lacey curtains daintily shaded the windows—the message being that the home's inhabitants didn't want to acknowledge the poverty lurking beyond the boundaries of the property. As we drew closer to San Jose, the foliage died away and an urban dirtiness took over, clapboard façades segueing to brick and stucco buildings. 

The experience, which had exhilarated and unsettled me, stayed with me for the entire trip home. As I sat on the uncomfortable, black Naugahyde and stainless steel chairs at the Lacsa gate in the San Jose airport, my tennis shoes anxiously flexing on the orange indoor-outdoor carpet, I celebrated the fact that I was going home even while I felt a resignation building in me. It was a flat, stale deadness that had begun to grow when Jim said to me that morning, "You can't save everyone, so why do you even worry about it." I didn't answer, truly at a loss as to how to explain my feelings, which ran along the lines of How could I not?

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Talking Back to the Night

 

Our friends and volunteers were having a blast soaking in every nuance of Costa Rican culture. As we returned to the center from dinner one night, we passed a street dance like none I'd ever seen. An entire block was filled with bodies writhing in unison, and the scene held me in a trance. The drumbeat was so elemental it felt like a pagan rhythm preserved from a time when early humans were burning fires in caves to keep warm. 

The energy of each soul was so alive it was as if it danced beside the person holding it enslaved. As the bodies dripped sweat, the street vibrated and the air convulsed with the sound of the drums. These were people possessed, conspirators in the spell they cast over the shifting, swaying crowd, its participants looking on enviously though far too self-conscious to join in. I did not move my body, but my spirit gyrated beside me, and I thought about Steve Winwood's lyrics, "I can feel the beat like a Spanish dancer." I was aroused and I was jealous: I wanted to dance like that, but with abandon, and that was impossible given the reason I found myself in this primitively stimulating situation.

It was so evident that people in Costa Rica loved the street and there were usually so many worshipers that it was difficult to tell where the gravel-strewn pathways ended and the crowd began. I thought about how it seemed they were talking back to the night because they were joined in a communion of passionate engagement with the inky air but their ardor was contentious at times, especially when the rain began. Storms had been a persistent challenge since we'd arrived but at least nighttime monsoons were less frequent than those bombarding us each afternoon. As the daytime rain waned, it would usher in the glare of weak sunlight, which painted the slick pavement silver through a lingering misty haze. 

Post-squall, water-filled potholes shown like odd shaped mirrors in the rugged, rocky roads. As I thought about the visage I would find if I approached one of these reflective surfaces, the question loomed: How can I begin to feel comfortable in my own skin in this place? I spoke of having depth, but was I really so shallow that I couldn't understand the reasons for wanting to come back time and time again? Or was it merely selfishness that limited me? Was it the fact that it was Jim's commitment and not mine that was causing me to fall short in handling things gracefully? 

I did have great weaknesses where this part of my life was concerned. I loved home and all the beauty it held beyond the physical charm, as the emotional loveliness of familiar things and friends mattered so much. I was flooded when I thought of them, inundated as if I were being swept up by a heaving tide. This engulfment was always followed by feelings of loneliness and homesickness as the water rushed back out to sea, leaving the sand drenched and barren. I missed reading and writing but there was so little time given my duties as hostess to the female volunteers. I'd only managed to skim the latest copy of Byline since we'd arrived. In it Kathryn Fanning wrote, "The Past is unalterable; the future, beyond our control. All we have is now, and all we can work with is our present attitude and behavior."

The days I had time to read over the drafts of poems I had logged in my writer's notebook improved my attitude, as this was one of the few things that soothed me. I had been working on one that I'd titled "Cellophane Dancer," which was inspired by shyness and the idea that as I drove my car—feeling too bashful to move with abandon to the music blaring from the speakers—I asked my shadow, or a cellophane dancer that lurked within me, to move for me. I thought it the perfect poem to revise given how the street dance had moved me.

My notes were about hypnotic beats, flowing verse and the premise that the protagonist was the part of me celebrating music, the piece of my self that loved to move. I achieved some okay moments—"You won't see her driving my car; she's hiding in the music"—but the overall poem never gelled. I was studying it one afternoon when Jim disdainfully asked me whether I was going to help the group move forward or sit and read the afternoon away. I snapped my notebook closed and trudged to where Tobie and Christy were sifting sand for the end-of-the-day cement mixture, my heart heavy with guilt and anger.

As I held my third of the grate that allowed the grains of sand to slip through while keeping the small pebbles in place, I unleashed the dancer inside, imagining the music she would enjoy. I closed my eyes as she rose slowly, moving to the tongue of my heartbeat. I let her hold me captive with her urges and watched as she turned up the volume, abandoning propriety and all that it implied. She pulsated—her knees flexing, her hips swaying—as I rhythmically swished the grate side to side. I tried to make a beat that would draw her out even further. She responded, setting the rhythm free, and in that moment I felt her blood sing, joining with mine—my pulse quickening as she twirled. 

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The Gates of Hell

Jim gave everyone the day off to go to the beach so we loaded into the truck, most of us sitting in the bed with the sun beating down on the crowns of our heads. I felt extremely happy for the wind rustling my hair as we sped toward Puerto Viejo in the heavy late morning air. Once we reached the road that skirted the coast, I noticed how each beach had a different personality. While one had jet-black sand, another—only a few hundred feet away—was blanketed in velvety beige. 

In the scattered villages along the ocean's edge, dugout canoes littered the shore, each a perfect piece of artistry made whole by hours upon hours of work and many thrusts of a blade. One spot near the ocean held the poorest shack I'd ever seen—the façade looking so tired that it seemed to be straining with all its might to hold together. The ragged boards, uneven on top and bottom with gaps in between, were topped with a rusted zinc roof that skewed precariously due to the jaggedness of these supporting planks. Laundry hung from a drooping line in the yard, and on the crumbling cement steps a half dozen small children, bodies covered with thick mud and hair matted with the same dark ooze, played games.

When they heard our engine droning, they stopped and looked our way. A dog ran under the house as we drove by—skin and bones and pleading eyes. I winced, convinced that if he ran into one of the boards that served as a support for the house, it would tumble into a pile not unlike a scattering of thick pickup sticks. It was obvious that a major tropical storm had not blown through in quite some time since this tenuous structure was still standing in this incredibly wild setting at the edge of the sea.

The sun stayed with us when we arrived—unlike the previous trip when the heavens opened and we were forced to have the beach mass surrounded by a handful of stoned Rastafarians. The Caribbean was fierce, pounding the shore and infusing the already damp air with its salty spray. We decided to put in an encore appearance at Sanford's, the dubious scene of our impromptu communion before. As Tobie and I walked in ahead of the others, the stoners looked us over with a mixture of lust and hate. There was a peculiar difference in these men that set them apart from any other group I'd seen. They didn't even try to disguise their feelings: you knew, without a doubt, how they felt about you the minute your gaze met theirs. Lust and hate would seem to me to be a dangerous combination, and I'd never thought of it before, but wouldn't being regarded with these emotions rather than adoration explain the difference between being made love to and being fucked? 

The word fuck had come up in conversation with one of the volunteers the day before. He had mentioned how much he'd enjoyed a recent trip to Belize and I was reminded of Ellen Gilchrist's short story "Belize," which I'd just finished. 

"You might enjoy it, although it's a bit trashy," I said.

"What's trashy about it?" he asked. 

"Her abundant use of the word fuck in the story," I replied. 

"You say fuck all the time, so why wouldn't you write it?"

"Touché!" I said; "maybe I will."

I admired Gilchrist's courage, especially since this story, as well as others as brazenly honest, were published in Drunk With Love in 1986, well before most women writers, especially those from the south, had had the courage to use profanity in their writing. In "Belize" her protagonist takes no prisoners: 

"'What do the rest of them do?'" I say. I am sick of Whit. He's so goddamn jolly all the time. So goddamn gung ho. Davie had fucked me that morning while I thought about the orange peels. I feel like I've gained ten pounds. It's hot as the gates of hell."

It would be a very long time before I'd have the courage to put the word in a piece of my writing, and it's a strange coincidence to me now that Gilchrist had mentioned George Gabb, the Belizian woodcarver who had inspired my poem "Adam's Perspective," though not by name: 

"Whit's been out exploring. 'They have two industries,' he says. 'A man who carves sharks from mahogany and a man and woman team who make herons from the horns of cows.'"

When we had visited Gabb in Belize City, I had had the same impression Gilchrist's protagonist had had of the town:

"The capital city is like a little town in the Delta, only dirtier; dirtier than anything in the world. The bays that cut into the land from the Atlantic are filthy. Things float on them. Paper cartons, shoes, orange peels…"

I would have added the broken partial ribcages of cows and scraps of fish skin, especially near the central market in town where sea turtles were turned upside down and slid under a shelf on rough concrete, their flippers slowly pulsing as if they were dreaming of water. When I read that their shells are so sensitive, they can feel a blade of sea grass as it brushes across them in the water, I was horrified at the treatment they received, though the fisherman who snagged them did not handle them with mal intent as they were simply seen as food to be sold and consumed.

That day on the beach in Costa Rica, I looked around our long table at everyone, settling on the face of the volunteer who'd called me on my resistance to writing profanity, and thought how strange life was that it had brought us to the same table. Everyone was laughing because there was no way to be heard over the pulsating music, though it didn't stop anyone from trying to talk. The waiter brought beers for everyone and we toasted the fact that we'd landed in such an incredibly amazing spot for an afternoon of exploring. I felt grateful that I'd been given the opportunity to see several of my friends in this odd world. They certainly didn't seem to be depressed about the experiences they were having—in fact, they seemed as if they were having the times of their lives. I was left asking, yet again, Why can't I?

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! 

 

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The Constant Companion

We had begun what would be one of our longer trips during our new "regime" and we were hosting a group of volunteers, several of which were friends. Jim and Tobie had heard us talk of Costa Rica and they had finally joined us along with a handful of other volunteers, including a couple named Rick and Christy from another parish in Chattanooga. Tobie, Christy and I were the female contingent, and it felt strange but nice to have feminine company in the peculiar world that was made so much more surreal given the ease of life and technology to which we'd grown accustomed in our homes in the U.S. While the men worked on the jobsite the first day, Tobie, Christy and I went to the supermercado so we could cook an elaborate meal that night. After finding most of the ingredients, we returned to the center and padded gingerly into the hulking dining room on our way to the industrial-strength kitchen. Groceries deposited on the large, dented stainless steel island, we began opening cabinets and peeking into crevices. 

Tobie was the first to scream. I turned to see her frozen, a large lizard staring back at her from inside the dark refrigerator, its tongue flickering like there was no tomorrow. She quietly and ever so slowly closed the door, turned and leaned against it, her face as white as her tee shirt. Just as the refrigerator door closed, Christy let out a yelp. When she'd removed the lid from the coffee pot on the stove, a swarm of roach bugs had streamed out and scurried beneath the stovetop. (So much for the Kahlúa and coffee we'd planed to have for nightcaps!) I raised a dirty rag that had formed a large dollop of dry cloth in the sink after being left there wet, tossing it across the room in a knee-jerk reaction when a centipede crawled onto my hand. The three of us stood in the center of that gigantic kitchen and gave in to our collective overwhelm, breaking into fits of laughter so long and raucous we were bent of the island hoping to give our sore stomachs some relief. There was no way the place would ever come clean enough for us to eat anything we'd prepare there. It was just as well because what we couldn't have guessed that day was that we'd come in from the jobsite so exhausted each night we wouldn't have had the energy to cook a meal from that point on anyway.

Our work began the next day when we were ordered to Zent to tie rebar for the project. When Jim jokingly promised us a makeshift shelter to shield us from the sun, we said it would be a must or the rod buster's union would shut the project down! Having friends along gave everything a new perspective for me. The jobsite seemed even more primitive as I saw things through their eyes—the uneven piles of ballast littering the muddy lot and fingers of rebar sprouting from rough grey cement columns that reached toward the sky as if trying to escape the crushing grip of the earthbound blocks. Looking almost glamorous and out of place, snap-ties, which we shuttled from the U.S. in our LL Bean duffle bags, ornamented the columns with their colorful flat heads. Rebar tied in windowpane patterns sagged between the columns over the dirty cement footings. Rocks of every color, shape and size composed the ballast that filled the insides of the spindly, weight-bearing appendages. This cacophony of gray and brown was surrounded by a riotous bounty of lush green: the contrast striking but somehow in sync. 

As the guys drove cut and cleaned saplings into the ground to serve as the posts for our leaf-covered tent, I remembered how I'd heard that these stripped trunks would sprout green in no time because the soil was so fertile in Costa Rica. Evidence of this was everywhere, as the country's lines of fencerows that began as bare saplings now consisted of orderly rows of bushy trees. We felt lucky to have the covering above us as a gray sky deepened all afternoon, building layers of clouds that piled one upon the other while we twisted wire under our tent. The men worked on a concrete form, improvising their tools and materials as they went, and it was just as they finished when the moisture that refused to hold sent them skittering from their makeshift wooden scaffolding and the tops of rusty metal barrels on which they'd been teetering. As the rain intensified, I caught a whiff of smoke and a sensory memory floated across my mind. I lowered myself onto a piece of plywood near a palm tree and pulled my slicker over my head, remembering the feel of autumn in Tennessee. That scent reminded me of a day Jim and I had driven to a football game in Knoxville when a similar smoky smell filled the crisp air. We hadn't been dating long, and life seemed so grand and full of promise at the time. I let the memory hold for a moment, soothing ever so slightly the ache that had been my constant companion of late. 

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! 

 

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On Another's Sorrow

As we drove through the mountains on our way to Limon, I thought about how it always took me around three days to get past the resistance I felt when returning to this verdant country. That's the amount of time I needed to ease back into the fierce caring the people brought out in me. As we passed through Cartago, I noticed how the town's partially ornate cathedral looked a bit like a half-eaten bonbon against the backdrop of dank clouds. People made arduous pilgrimages to the holy site and I felt I was on a crusade of my own as I braced myself for the impact of stopping in Germania to say hello to all of the friends we had made there two years earlier. 

I had brought the woman who took my tennis shoes and scrubbed them clean a new pair of bright pink ones. She came rushing out of her concrete-block house in the pouring rain with those same tennis shoes on—no strings in them, the tongue flopping about and the crushed heel that she had flattened with her foot clip-clopping in the mud. The look of gratitude I received from her obliterated the protection I'd subconsciously put in place and once again I stood on Costa Rican soil choking back tears, speechless in the face of such gratitude for so little. 

The episode dogged me as I tried to settle in to the normal mission-field routine, which wasn't exactly normal thanks to a strange soundtrack of military helicopters that buzzed above Limón so incessantly it felt as if we were under a state of siege. Gus explained that heavy rains had caused the mountain to gush water and the Sixola River had swept away about 300 people near the Panamanian border. The choppers were looking for survivors, and I wondered if John the Baptist was among the unfortunate victims. 

Gus and I were sitting on the porch of the center listening to the blades pulsate in the air, which was once again pregnant with moisture, when he spotted a girl with ebony legs sashaying down the street. What caught his attention were her shoes—she wore a pair of white pumps that achieved a chiaroscuro effect against her dark skin. The visual trickery made it seem as if there was a pair of glowing heels walking down the street completely detached from human control! 

She was one of the teens I had seen hanging around the streets in groups. I wondered what they dreamed about surrounded by peeling paint and rusting tin as they were. I wondered how their world would be shaped by the television that leaked into their living rooms aided by the antennas that left their sinewy imprints against the sky. They were all so enamored with the snippets of what Americans considered the "real world." If they only knew that their world was so much more authentic than what they saw on the scraps of television programming that made it into their crackling, black-and-white stream of programming.

Gus' giggling grew quiet and I heard rather than saw him lean back in his rickety chair that squeaked each time he shifted his short frame from my spot on the cement porch against the brick wall. I was trying to absorb as much heat as I could from the sun-warmed wall as I watched a skinny palm swaying, its graceful neck bent like a swan's from the wind's agitation. Suddenly my reverie was halted by that "real world" when someone in the house across the street turned up the volume on the Miami Sound Machine and Gloria Estefan's husky voice oozed into the sultry air as she sang the opening lines of "Prisoner of Love." "I've gotta run away from you/ if I wanna save myself," she sang, the drums pulsing in the rhythmic beat that had made her so popular. 

Given the lyrics, this was definitely one of the most ironic moments I'd experienced in the mission field, but I had little time to think about it because the sky scowled yet again and spat its liquid to earth. I scurried for cover like an insect fearing being washed away, watching from inside our room as the giant palms billowed, the wind whisking through their fronds like it would have the serrated banners tied to the fences that ringed used car lots. 

The street was a sea of color—bright umbrellas floating along in an endless array of hues and patterns. There were those who had no protection from the deluge. As they slogged along, water dripping from their hair into their eyes, they swiped good-naturedly at the liquid, obviously welcoming the torrent even though they were soaked to the bone because it trumped the afternoon heat they would normally have been navigating through. Mothers held their babies to their chests, many of them wrapped in towels. The ones who had umbrellas shielded their children, letting the water drip down their backs as they struggled to hold bags, babies and umbrellas all at once. 

When a stronger wave of water was urged along by a driving wind, everyone simultaneoulys tried to duck under anything they could find, including the makeshift metal canopies of stores and restaurants—the lucky ones snagging a tiny patch of shelter. Their eyes showed no impatience, only resignation; and many of them struck up conversations with others who shared the spontaneous protection; laughing and smiling as they saw the moment for what it was—a chance to visit or simply to do nothing. 

I spotted Eggland Smith, the bell-ringer at St. Mark's, who reminded me of an organ grinder's monkey—his jerky movements always exacerbated in perpetual motion. He was talking to an elderly woman who had inadvertently become his captive audience as curtains of water pouring from the corrugated tin framed them. He was jumping from one spot to another, illustrating his words with flailing arms—a dicey situation given the tiny dry spot they occupied. I'd never seen such a persistently mobile and expressive face as his, and the fact that not even a dousing in a rainstorm could dampen his spirits was no surprise.

I retreated to the bed, away from the lightening flashing alarmingly bright through the window—the sizzle of its electricity setting my teeth on edge. The book on poetic forms had inspired me to delve into what I thought of as my poetic ancestry, though I realized that was quite arrogant of me given my fledgling status and the mess my poetry was in. I'd picked up William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience," and decided it would be a good companion to weather the storm. Much to my surprise, my dilemma was being reflected back to me even from the mid 18th-century: 

On Another's Sorrow

 

Can I see another's woe,

And not be in sorrow too? 

Can I see another's grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

 

Can I see a falling tear,

And not feel my sorrow's share?

…

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Time Trusts No One

We had been home for four days and I found myself boiling full yet as dry as ashes. I was fuming about how Jim kept asking me to be me, while it was me who said the words he didn't want to hear. The "me" he wanted me to be was the one he was trying to create so I was left sitting in exile while his cold, steely stare judged me. Do I cave under the pressure or fight for myself? I wondered, as his declaration that my love for him was too conditional reverberated through my aching head and vexed heart. 

Knowing my stubbornness, we were in for a lengthy campaign as he said he could admit when he'd made a mistake. The meaning, of course, was that I was the mistake! On the night we celebrated his birthday, we dined across from each other staring at different points across the room with feigned interest in nothing, eating in complete silence. This was likely to go on until I began to be the "me" he wanted me to be, accepting that the work for the church would continue to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future. It wasn't just the mission field that was ravaging me; my hectic "other" life left me no time to make sense of anything and I was beginning to doubt my sanity. I truly wanted to "get it all together" as he was asking me to do, but what did that even mean? And why did I become more ineffective the harder I tried? It was as if everything I did, including therapy, only left me more befuddled.

It struck me that night at dinner that I had practiced this scene all my life; that learning the quiet game when I was a child had come in so handy in my relationship. The barrier of silence that took over felt as deafening as angry screams but somehow more sinister. At least a scream was something, a tear was something, but silence killed every chance of making things right. It was my fault, of course—that's what I'd been taught and that's what I was being told. I wasn't measuring up as a wife; I was making too many mistakes. Though I'd barely been reading and writing, I had managed to submit a poem to Byline, hoping to be able to break the barrier that had prevented me from being a published writer. Eyeing the calendar each morning as I journaled, I counted down the days until we returned to Limon—eight, seven, six, five…

I had found a book by the poet Yvonne Sapia entitled Valentino's Hair. My goal was to read a poem every time I had a few minutes to spare. My favorite was about her father, who had been a New York barber and had once cut Rudolph Valentino's hair—a story he loved to repeat anytime anyone would listen. I thought it was terrific that she'd chosen to commemorate one of his proudest moments in a soulfully crafted poem. The epigraph reads "1960—my father cannot help but tell," and the first stanza sets the scene:

It's been almost thirty-five years.

I can scarcely believe it, niña. 

Time trusts no one and so it disappears 

before us like the smoke from my cigarette.

In 1925 I was young. I was a part

of a world eating at its own edges

without being satisfied.

The Roaring Twenties didn't roar. 

They swelled with passions.

They danced, and I danced with them.

My world was eating at its own edges without bringing itself or me the least bit of satisfaction and I was trying to behave, trying to acquiesce so that I could manage what was being asked of me. In order to do so I picked up the habit of figuratively wiring my jaws shut but the binding simply wouldn't hold. When would I learn to go with the flow? I wondered. Was it even in me to do so? Would I ever dance again and feel the abandon of the act rather than always feeling guilt or remorse?

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! 

 

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