Angels at the Gator Stop

Easter lunch alone at a roadside Church’s Chicken: not exactly what I had in mind when I got up at 6:45 this Easter Sunday morning.

My brother had suggested that I take our parents down to his church in Killeen for Easter services. Since my car is running on a spare tire at the moment (long story), we decided I would drive my parents’ car. A perfect Easter Sunday plan – it seemed.

About 75 miles into our trip, we pulled into a truck stop to use the facilities. We had been making good time and it looked like for once I wouldn’t be late. It’s a little embarrassing to be late when your brother’s the priest.

Ready to get back on the road, I slid behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Not that the engine was dead - the key would not turn. I jiggled the steering wheel. Nothing. Dad got up front and tried. No results. Out came my trusty iPhone to look up possible solutions to the problem. “Dad,” I called out, “this site says to turn the steering wheel hard to the right while you’re turning the key.” He obeyed. The steering wheel promptly locked in place and the key still refused to budge.

The round-faced gentleman behind the cash register saw us through the window and came out. In heavily accented English, he said he was a shade-tree mechanic and would be happy to try. Dad got out and our would-be rescuer took his place behind the wheel. Jiggle... turn... pump the pedals... He got the steering wheel unstuck, but the key still would not turn.

A scholarly-looking man with the same accent came out. “Why don’t I try?” he asked, and took the spot behind the wheel. Jiggle... turn... nothing.

Pretty soon, another gas station customer came over. “Why don’t I try?” he asked, and the drill was repeated. People stopped by to give advice. Dad and I took turns helpfully holding the door open against the wind. Mom sat in the car watching as one person and then another "gave it a try".

A family walked by and asked “Anything we can do?” Half-joking, I answered, “Yeah – know anyone who can hotwire a car?” The adults shook their heads. The teenage son said “Well...no, I guess not, he doesn’t live around here anymore.” His parents gave him a look that meant a Conversation would soon occur in the family car.

The largest red pickup truck I’ve ever seen had been idling nearby. After observing the failed attempts, a young man got out and identified himself as a licensed mechanic. Our hopes rose as he slid behind the steering wheel; finally, an expert!

Jiggle...turn...pump the pedals...

Nothing. Nothing, that is, except that now the key wouldn’t turn, the steering wheel was locked again and the hand-brake was stuck.

The driver of the red pickup got out. He was about 6’ 2”, dressed in a long-sleeved camo shirt, shorts and hiking boots, with a fishing cap on his head. He was a man on a mission, and his buddy’s good deed of the day was wasting daylight. While the mechanic tried working on the ignition with a screwdriver, the young man in hiking boots began pushing my parents’ car back and forth. We could see my mother’s hair gently swaying as she was rocked.

Somewhere around then, I bowed to the inevitable and text-messaged my brother and sister-in-law to let them know we would not be in church (since the service was already well underway, it was an announcement of the obvious.) Then, I called roadside assistance. The conversation went a little like this:

“What’s wrong with your car?”
“We can’t get the key to turn in the ignition.”
“You mean the car won’t start?”
“No, the key won’t turn.”
“Is your battery dead?”
“No, the key won’t turn.”
“Have you tried jiggling the steering wheel...?”

Eventually, we established that The Key Wouldn’t Turn and a tow truck was sent to pick us up. Meanwhile, our helpful gas station owners – from their patterns of speech, they were possibly from India – came out to offer my parents the use of the lounge to rest in while we waited.

I peeked into the lounge. A lone trucker lay on the couch and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. On the coffee table, beside whatever it was he was smoking, was an open soda can and a half-dozen flies. We thanked our willing hosts and chose to wait in the car.

My mother sang a couple of Easter hymns. Dad and I idly discussed theology. Then, the tow truck arrived. The driver had not been informed that there were three passengers and, despite the dispatcher’s assurances to the contrary, he only had room for two. We got my arthritic mother into the cab of the tow truck (a process that involved creating a series of extra steps using a wooden chock) and my parents took off for Dallas. I called the nearest son to come rescue me.

Hungry, I walked over to the fast food joint attached to the truck stop. The young woman behind the counter also appeared to be from India. A weather-beaten farmer slowly nursed his iced tea across the room from me. A few minutes later, a family came in. The parents told their teenage daughter in Spanish what they wanted. The girl relayed it to the young Indian woman in English, who then turned and called the order back to the kitchen in her own language.

I sat in my corner eating my Easter lunch, listening to the polyglot tones of Church’s Chicken and waiting for my ride.

It was a perfect Easter Sunday with the well-intentioned angels at the Gator Stop.

The Foolishness of God

They said, “Hate or be hated”,
and he loved.

They said, “Fear and be feared”,
but he loved.

They said,
“Label,
judge,
ignore- “
and he saw our
common breath of
God
and loved us
more.

They said, “Die or draw your sword.”
And he died -
that we might love.


-cs ©042211

Reconnection - Part 3 of 3

(Ecuador trip, March 2011 - part 3)

Sunday dawned crisp and fresh in Quito and Arline, Teresa and I were headed to the Chillos valley for lunch with Marta, another of my brother-in-law Germán’s sisters. The others would meet us there later in the day. Ever the mother hen, Teresa lectured us on picking a safe taxi in Quito and the perils of getting into a “pirate” cab.

Just then, two taxis pulled up to the curb in front of us. One was yellow: an officially sanctioned service. The white car had a “Taxi” sign propped up precariously against the windshield.

Mindful of our instructions, Arline and I started toward the yellow cab. “No!” called Teresa. “This one!” Confused (but obedient), we got into the pirate taxi while the other driver made gestures at his rival that a nice girl isn’t supposed to understand. A bit of judicious eavesdropping cleared things up. Teresa had recognized the driver. (Sometimes it seemed like Teresa knew half the population of Quito.)

There’s nothing quite like being around people who knew you when you were fourteen years old: that age when you have two left feet, your hair has no good days and this week’s unrequited crush is on the new drummer in the church band; when acne is a technical term for misery and it seems like no one, ever, anywhere, will take you seriously. When they do, you never forget.

Our driver took off east, easily zigzagging through neighborhoods (“just a little shortcut here...”) and speeding across roundabouts, all the while keeping up a lively game of do-you-remembers and did-you-knows with Teresa that I tried to interpret for Arline while at the same time pointing out landmarks or inserting my own comments. Given that most of my comments were of the “oh, this is new!” variety, I could probably have just said “ditto” after the first exclamation or two.

Soon we were rolling through Cumbayá and down a side road to Lumbisi. Marta and Jorge have a wonderful little – no, tiny – one bedroom, one bathroom house surrounded by a luxury of flowers and fruit-bearing trees.

The brief afternoon rain wasn’t even a disturbance as we sat under the patio roof, surrounded by family and friends, and feasted on caldo de pollo, fritada with mote and maduros, fruit and cake, and told stories and laughed. Then we drove back to Quito and sat up late with Teresa and her daughters and laughed some more before going to bed.

After Becky and Germán first married, they moved to Australia for 5 years. During their absence, my parents regularly visited Germán’s widowed mother. Mamá María, as everyone called her, lived with Teresa and Teresa’s three daughters. When I was fourteen, they invited me to stay for a weekend. At that time they lived in a colonial-era building in old Quito. After Mamá María went to bed, Teresa and the girls and I sat up giggling and talking into the night. It was nice to do that again: especially without the adolescent angst.

Monday morning, we called our “unofficial taxi” friend from the day before. First stop, Panecillo, the hill that used to sit toward the south of Quito before the southern end decided to move even further south. A million pictures later, we got back in the taxi and rode to the Basilica. Our “pirate” friend said his goodbyes and we walked up the stone steps, through the enormous doors of bronze and into the never-completed church that I love.

I used to escape to the Basilica in high school and college. The strength and simplicity of the stone, the delicacy of the stained glass windows so very far above me – the church draws the spirit upwards and stirs lethargic dreams. Tradition says that the day the Basilica is completed, the world will end: and so it, like me, remains unfinished but always in work.

We walked from the Basilica down to the Plaza Grande, Teresa herding Arline and me like a nanny with her charges. We maneuvered around a city bus that got stuck trying to turn the corner on streets built for a horse and carriage. Teresa stopped to greet people she knew. I recognized streets and buildings. There was a band playing near the Plaza Grande; something presidential was going on at the Palacio de Carondelet. Our destination, however, was the Palacio Arzobispal, specifically the restored wing that houses a number of little cafés. It was lunchtime and I still had a couple of foods on my list of “gotta haves”.

As we made our way back to a table overlooking the courtyard, Arline burst out laughing, “And now I recognize someone, too!” as a man we’d met on La Ronda two nights before strolled past.

After a lunch of fanesca followed by figs and cheese, there was only one item left on my “gotta have” list. We paid our bill and walked back out to the Plaza Grande. Two little shoe-shine boys swarmed us; we decided our shoes needed shining and let them work while practicing their English (such as it was) on us.

Crossing the square, our attention was caught by a dog taking itself for a walk. Holding the business end of the leash in his mouth, the diminutive pooch trotted just behind his owner who periodically turned to make sure all was well.

The Cathedral doors were closed. No matter, we went across the street to La Compañía, one of the most visually stunning churches in Quito. A small fee is charged for tourists; on our way out, we were amused to see that Teresa had been lumped in with us as a “Foreign Visitor”.

We rode the trolley back from the San Francisco plaza. As we stood, bracing against the tilt and sway of the car making its way through the streets of Quito, Teresa pointed to a street and then stopped, temporarily forgetting its name. “Mariana de Jesús”, I prompted, no longer having to search my memory. At the end of the line, we got off and Teresa guided us to a bakery inside the terminal. The milhojas (also known as a “napoleon”) was every bit as good as I expected. My list was complete.

The night my brother-in-law Chuck died, his son hugged me tight and told me, “I want pictures of your trip; I want a picture of you at the Middle of the Earth.” So Germán picked us up at the trolley station and drove us out to the Mitad del Mundo. I stood by the line that marks the equator and squinted into the western sun for my nephew.
.........................

The officer checking my passport scrutinized my US customs form, then my passport, and finally me. Not sure what the problem was, I waited. “How did you get from Oklahoma to Texas through Ecuador?” he asked, noting my places of birth and residence. I launched into an explanation: missionary parents, multicultural, visiting sister... his skepticism seemed to grow. It was hard not to babble. After an eternity, he grinned, gave me a “just kidding” look and waved me through, saying "Welcome home!" Curious, I glanced down at my form. I had filled it out in Spanish.

Ah, it's good to be home in no-man's land again.

Recognition - Part 2 of 3

(Ecuador trip, March 2011)
Part 2

I awoke from a deep sleep. My knee was stiff and sore. Days of walking hospital corridors during my brother-in-law Chuck’s brief battle with cancer had left my back and right leg spasming. Sometimes I could barely straighten my leg and resembled a round, middle-aged flamingo. Arline was already awake. I sat up, grabbed my folding cane and hobbled into the bathroom to shower in the dark. I’m sure that switch in the shower was grounded, but it still freaked me out a little.

Back in Texas, my boys and all of my husband John’s family would be getting dressed for the funeral. My heart ached for them and I said a prayer.

After breakfast, we made our way back to Quito, stopping again in Nanegalito to buy some guavas. Real guavas, the long pods that you twist open to dig out the fruit inside (Arline called them pea pods on steroids). A quick stop at Pululahua to gaze down at the farms on the floor of the long-dormant crater, and we got back to Quito in time for our dental appointments.

Self-employment makes it hard to get health insurance, let alone dental. But working for myself was a lifelong dream. I couldn’t have done it without John’s encouragement. He insisted I reach for the stars, always convinced I could... When my mother-in-law and nephew insisted I come on my dream trip even it meant missing Chuck’s funeral, I heard echoes of John in them.

The dentist, Dr. Moscoso, is a distant relative of my brother-in-law Germán. That makes him shirt-tail kin to me if the shirt has a very long tail. After the gentlest cleaning and fillings I’ve ever received, he sent me to the building next door for x-rays.

Despite Dr. M’s careful instructions on finding the x-ray office, I promptly got lost. It seems I had entered on the mezzanine rather than the ground floor. Eventually, I stumbled on the right office. They had me fill out some forms and soon a young, white-clad x-ray technician came out, holding my chart. “Señora Sha-u... Señora Sha-a... Señora Sha-i-u...” she called, petering off into resigned silence. Spanish has no words ending in “w”. Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “Señora Carol!” To her relief, I obediently stood up.

I’ve had a number of names throughout my life: last names, nicknames, special names like “mom”. Somehow it seemed appropriate that on this trip, I became just “Carol” again.

Meanwhile, Germán and Arline had been looking for me (apparently they had also searched the mezzanine) and were now slightly convinced I had disappeared into the thin Andean air. While Arline waited in the car and presumably pondered her own adventures – ask her sometime about the doctor, the cop, the nurse, three cleaning ladies, two brooms, two mops, a bucket on wheels and a Swiffer – Germán went looking for me.

Blissfully unaware that my dear brother-in-law’s blood pressure was on the rise, I wandered leisurely back to Dr. Moscoso’s building. When I saw Germán coming toward me I thought, “Wow, what timing!” He was probably thinking something rather different.

Everyone said I wouldn’t recognize my town. But on the drive to the dentist’s office, I easily found the English Fellowship church, now almost hidden by new buildings – new to me, but old enough to show the wear and tear of time. And there was where I fell on my bike and passed out, when I was seven. And there was Villalengua Street, where I once lived. Small school children passed me on the street and I realized that their parents might not have been born before I left. The sharp cutoff to my memories made me a woman from the past, catapulted into the twenty-first century and greedy to recognize, under more than a quarter-century of brick and mortar, the city I called my own.

On Friday, after brunch at my sister’s of humitas and quimbolitos and naranjilla juice, we hopped in the car and Germán drove us north (Becky wasn’t well and stayed home.) When I left Ecuador, Carcelén wasn’t in the sticks - it was the sticks. Now, we drove through Carcelén and Calderón and it wasn’t until Guayllabamba that we left the bustle of city behind. Patchwork farms began dotting the mountainsides. We passed a goat tethered to the edge of the road. Little homesteads perched on ridges far above us.

The mountains hadn’t changed. The shaggy hillsides have long memories and it was all incredibly more comfortable than I’d feared. Germán commented, “The mountains recognize you.” The wind in the eucalyptus leaves agreed.

We stopped in Cayambe for bizcochos with manjar de leche and queso de hoja. Yes, I had a mental checklist of all the foods I had to have. Arline described it as “eating our way through Ecuador.” I call it “sense memory” (it somehow sounds less fattening.)

As dusk fell, we drove into Cotacachi, that lovely little town famous for its leather goods. As it turned out, none of us was in the mood to shop yet. Still, the drive was worthwhile. The town is beautiful, we had a delicious supper and I was accosted on the street.

At first I wasn’t sure I was being accosted. Then a weathered old hand reached out and grabbed mine. I looked around – and down at an ancient Otavaleña. Her face was so wrinkled that it wore a permanent smile. She asked again, “De dónde es, lady?” Where are you from? “De los Estados Unidos”, I told her. From the United States. Both hands flew together, clasped at her aged breast. She broke into a beatific smile. All five teeth flashed as she exclaimed, “Ay, de Nueva York!”

No, I gently corrected her, from Texas. Her smile got bigger. “Junto a Nueva York!” and I didn’t have the heart to argue as she rearranged American geography to make Texas and New York neighbors.

Leaving Cotacachi, we returned to Otavalo to spend the night. I had made reservations at the Hotel Otavalo, where my family always used to stay. We pulled up in front of the wrought-iron gates. The lights were on, but the gates were padlocked shut. There was a bell to ring, but it was more than 10 feet inside the locked gates. The reception area was well-lit, but there was no one there. I shook the gates lightly and called out a tentative hello. A slight rustling answered me, deep inside the building.

From around the corner popped a small, wizened guard. “There’s no one here,” he told me kindly. Rather than point out that he was someone, and was indeed there, I asked “Where are they?” “They’re gone,” was the disheartening reply.

“Where?”
“Away. There are no guests.”
“Why are there no guests?”
“Because they took the rugs out.”
“Why can’t there be guests if the rugs are out?”
“Because they took the beds out with the rugs.”

And in the face of that irrefutable argument, I went back to the car and we opted for Hotel Indio Inn, owned by an acquaintance of Germán’s. As it turned out, the Indio was a wonderful hotel. The two atria were peaceful and airy, the rooms were nice and there were fantastic chairs, each carved from a single tree trunk.

Reclaiming my home between worlds is about reconnecting all facets of myself - not recovering a perception of who I was. Those gates are also long-since closed and the padlock is in place - as it should be.

The next morning – oh, what fun! Otavalo is home to one of the best artisan markets in the world (in my unscientific opinion.) Arline showed me a rather large tote bag she’d brought and announced, “I’m going to take this, just in case I get something.” I expected to buy just a few things, myself. Not much. Germán walked us to the market and then took off to visit friends in the area. We dove into row after row of stalls.

A couple of hours later, Germán came back and offered to take our purchases to the car while we continued exploring the market. It took no urging for us to hand over the five or six large bags of goodies each of us carried. We had accumulated a few more by the time we stopped for lunch. I don’t think Arline ever did use that tote bag in Otavalo; it was just too small.

The road back to Quito was no longer rediscovery. It was recognition. The world I left was there, unchanged by my absence and unaltered by my return.

After resting up, we had one more outing planned for Saturday. It wasn’t on my list –something Germán wanted us to see. Taking Teresa with us, we made our way south to downtown Quito. As soon as we passed Naciones Unidas Avenue, the memories flooded in. Germán left the main thoroughfare and entered a neighborhood. It looked intensely familiar. We passed a street sign... “Asunción!” I yelled, “Two blocks over, and about six blocks down... on Caracas... I used to live there!”

We passed the Plaza Grande and pulled into a parking lot halfway up La Ronda. Germán explained to Arline that La Ronda was one of Quito’s oldest streets. Narrow, steep and cobblestoned, it winds down the hillside, lined by beautifully restored Spanish colonial buildings. There were crowds of people. And wandering musicians. And street theater troupes. Every restaurant was open. Stalls sold steaming cups of canelazo, potent and delicious. My cane in one hand and Germán on the other side for good measure, I made my way down to the bottom of the hill. Arline walked ahead, arm in arm with Teresa. At the bottom, we found folklore dancers performing and sat down to watch.

I glanced around. Down there was Cumandá, where my high school friend Gwen and I- no, I’d better not tell that story, to protect the guilty. The Angel of Quito stood tall above us on nearby Panecillo. The dancers finished and we went to find a restaurant. When the singers came by, I asked them to sing “El Chullita Quiteño” for me.

We made our way back up La Ronda, stopping to enjoy the performances. Families, groups of teens, lovers young and old strolled, stopped, laughed, walked on. The life of the city – my city, ancient and yet new – pulsed around me and I recognized myself.

By the top of the hill, I was no longer using my cane.

(to be continued)

Return - Part 1 of 3

(Ecuador trip, March 2011: Part 1)

The officer checking my passport looked at the computer screen, at my passport, and then back at me with an odd look in his eye. Not sure if I had popped up in the system because my old resident ID card was long expired or because my passport picture would make anyone suspicious of my moral fiber, I tried a feeble joke: “Yeah, I know... I left for 3 years and came back 27 years later – I’m on Ecuadorian time.”

He rolled his eyes slightly, chuckled and stamped the page, allowing me entry to the country I grew up in and left a lifetime ago.

“Ecuadorian time”: one of the many benefits of being raised abroad is that you have an automatic set of excuses for doing things differently than those around you. When I lived in Ecuador, I hid the fact that I’m a lousy soup-maker by blithely serving meals “American style” – i.e., without the soup that customarily precedes the “plato seco” or entrée. In the USA, my habitual inability to properly gauge the amount of time any given activity will occupy gets merrily swept into the catch-all “Ecuadorian time” excuse. (Honesty prompts me to admit that the only one doing so merrily has been me. Most other people are generally less than amused.)

I should know better than to make jokes at airports. When leaving DFW, I was picked for the body scan. As I stepped out of the scanner, I joked to the young lady scrutinizing my image, “So... how much weight do I need to lose?” A look of concern rushed over her face and she stammered, “Oh, no, ma’am, you look just fine to me!”

My brother-in-law, Germán, picked my friend Arline and me up at the Quito airport. The city’s energy hit me in the chest. I wasn’t sure if I was huffing and puffing more from nostalgia or from the fact that I’m 50 and out of shape and not used to the altitude anymore. A few minutes later, we pulled up in my sister’s driveway; they have two houses, one where they live and the other where Germán’s sister, 75-year-old Teresa, lives. Teresa rushed out and hugged me ecstatically, glanced at my years of accumulated baby fat (mine, my kids’, my grandkids’...) and scolded, “What did you go and do that to yourself for?” Then she pulled me in for another bear hug. Political correctness has not yet run amok there and it felt good.

I like living in the slight disfocus that makes the lines between worlds become permeable. Does it get lonely in no-man’s land, where divisions of geography, culture and language are blurred? For some, perhaps. But for me, it’s Home. With a capital H.

We drove down to the cloud forest hamlet of Mindo the next day, Germán, my sister Becky, Arline and me. I cracked open the window, took a deep breath and announced, “It smells right!” I don’t know what I was expecting. It was just nice that all the old smells of tangled forests and tiny towns were so familiar. We stopped in Nanegalito – even the name is fun to say – and had huge, delicious cheese empanadas with fritada. As I bit into my first Ecuadorian empanada in more than a quarter century, I thought, “These are real empanadas - no wonder no one ate the ones I took to the Christmas party last year...”

When I moved to the USA in my twenties, I expected to return within 3 or 4 years. My brothers lived in the USA; my sister lived in Ecuador and so would I. That was my plan: always a foot (or a sibling with a spare bedroom) in the country where I didn’t reside.

In Mindo, Germán pointed down the street and asked, “Want one?” Ripe plantains, being grilled by a street vendor. Yes! I dashed (hobbled) across the main drag in Mindo and plopped myself onto a chair. As we ate, Arline was fascinated by the canine population. Almost without exception, the dogs are contented, well-fed and semi-comatose, only waking from their naps in the street to eat or grudgingly move out of the way of oncoming traffic. If I believed in reincarnation, I could do a lot worse than come back as a dog in Mindo.

After our snack, we went out to the butterfly farm. The walkway to the main building is lined with hummingbird feeders. Arline stood a little too close to a flight path and got dive-bombed by a hummingbird on a mission. I took pictures like a tourist. Then it struck me that I was a tourist and for some reason that was hilarious.

When I had children, divorced and spent years as a single mom, returning to Quito seemed to slip out of reach. Then I married the love of my life. He saw the ache in me and we started planning to visit Ecuador together. He learned to make Ecuadorian foods and listened to my stories with his heart. He died before we could ever make that trip.

Becky, Germán, Arline and I ended the evening by literally walking around the town and then stopping at a little restaurant on the main street for dinner. We all ordered churrasco. A moment later, the kitchen help ran out the door toward the center of town two blocks away. She returned in a few minutes with the eggs needed for Ecuador’s version of churrasco. That’s when we all remembered the chickens that freely roam the town square – and wondered exactly where she’d gone.

By the time supper was over, it was long dark in Mindo, and the sidewalks were nearly empty. Becky and Germán went to their room. The B&B was charming, with beautiful tile and lovely plants in the courtyard. (It was all pretty enough to distract us from the fact that the light switches in the bathroom were in – not by - the shower.) Arline and I got ready for bed and turned out the lights. I lay there, wide awake. Instead of the frogs I expected to hear singing, I could hear the happy drunks in the hotel bar. All of a sudden, Arline’s voice came from the other side of the room: “I can’t sleep. What time is it, anyway?” I pulled out my phone and looked. “Nine o’clock.” The lights came back on and we sat up to chat until the more believable bedtime of 10 o’clock.

Sometimes it seemed I would never get to return. I felt disconnected, restless. Even as we boarded in DFW, part of me expected something to go wrong. And now it was more than 24 hours since our plane swung up through the southern end of the valley, flying low over Quito; since I held my breath until we flew past an old familiar landmark and I squealed, “My old school!” Since the wheels touched down and my throat tightened and I whispered, “I’m back!”

When I did fall asleep, I slept soundly.

(to be continued...)