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...)

Lent, a study in time

Time has been my nemesis since birth.

In fact, I almost arrived late to that event, the doctor having assured Mom I would make my appearance that particular day and me complying by a mere 15 minutes before the calendar would have proven him wrong.

My regular seat at the back of the church is due mostly to my tendency to arrive after the opening prayer. My family chooses to forgive my predictable delays, and I am grateful. Friends have learned that I honestly mean no disrespect. It's just that Time and I don't see things eye-to-eye, and I take the blame for that.

You see, in some deep corner of my psyche I am convinced that Time is elastic.

Not that it can be shifted like Daylight Savings (a gripe for a different day.) I mean that it can stretch like a suitcase and if I bounce on it just a little bit, more will fit inside.

- Over to my parents' house in 20 minutes: no problem! Rush-hour traffic will part like the Red Sea for me, right?

- Christmas shopping in one afternoon: why, of course! Surely, packages will jump off shelves and into my cart.

- Jobs for three different clients, my professional association's newsletter, a 30-minute mentoring phone call and five emails, in six hours: I can do it! And later as I clear three plates, five spoons, two empty yogurt cups, a fork and a half-dozen glasses off my desk, trying to remember the last time I ate an actual meal, I realize – no, I can't.

I still believe that Time is elastic. Why else did it stand gaping and still in the hour of my greatest loss, but whoosh dizzily past when my children grew up? What I've come to (grudgingly) acknowledge, instead, is that I don't have the power to stretch it.

And so we come to Lent. Unlike other times in the church calendar when we celebrate Occasions, Lent is all about facing myself. It shines an unblinking spotlight on the one person over whose choices and attitudes I have God-given control. And it reminds me that the privilege of control is matched by the responsibility to be accountable.

So while it may seem silly, my Lenten sacrifice this year is electronic games. Be they on my phone, my computer or otherwise, they're off limits for 40 days. The sacrifice isn't really about the games, of course. It's about the Time they represent. A few more moments to read a truly good book. Or clean out that cupboard under the sink - the one I don't open because stuff will fall out. It's a pocket of Time in which to stop on my walk and watch the pair of redbirds near the pond.

After Easter - if my Angry Birds haven't destroyed Farmville and scrambled the Word Jumble while I'm gone - I'll take a little Time to play again.

 

,

Magic and Snow Angels

When I was little, my father had a magic sucre*.

He would send me out of the room for a while to "talk the sucre into playing," and when he called me back in (with the happy news that the sucre was willing), I would sit in excited anticipation. Dad would hold the coin up to his ear and listen intently. "It wants to go hide in the potted plant," he would say. Then he would cup the sucre in his hands, blow softly and – voilá! When he opened his hands, the coin was magically gone. I would run to the potted plant. There was the sucre, just waiting to be found.

The sucre flew to all sorts of places, of course. Into my mother's shoes, under the telephone, on top of the bookcase. Every time, I would be thrilled to find the coin exactly where Dad had said it would be.

As I got older, my faith in the magic of life took a few hits – like when I learned that Mom and Dad were the tooth fairy. Or found out that my letter from Queen Elizabeth was just a form letter (I had written her to express my thanks to Great Britain for creating Paddington Bear. To my parents' great credit, they actually mailed the letter.)

Around eight years old, I finally thought to check the year on the "magic sucre" after its first hiding place. When the second hiding place yielded a coin with a different year, the jig was up and magic took another hit.

When I was nine, we came to the States for a year. I was excited about winter in northern Indiana. Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey twins had all made snow angels, and now I would get to as well.

No one told me that making snow angels is cold, wet business. Still, as I lay on my back, feeling that delicious chill start to seep through my jacket while I stared up at the bright, blue winter sky, there was a moment when I felt the magic of life surround me again.

I never thought I'd forget, but the years have a way of eroding such moments.
Today, as I came back from the grocery store, I parked in the back of my house in order to unload my purchases more easily. Picking my way carefully across frozen patches, I got the first load to the door without any trouble, and congratulated myself. (Never a smart move for me. Never.) It was with the second load that I got a little hurried. The icy driveway, the snow on the grass, the chill in the air – I just wanted to get inside. That was when my left foot flew out from under me, my right leg started to head north, and my rear-end did a little impromptu hip-hop dance all its own.

I slid to a stop on the driveway, flat on my back in classic snow angel position, and found myself staring up at the bright, blue winter sky.

Mindful of maybe being spotted by neighbors and of the need to get my 50-year-old body inside and take some ibuprofen, I chose instead to lie there for a little while. White clouds drifted serenely overhead. That delicious chill began to seep through my jacket.

And for a few brief moments, it was magical again.


-------------------
*The sucre coin was the base unit of currency in Ecuador at that time.

Unwarranted

An arrest warrant just wouldn’t look good on my resume as a court interpreter.

That’s reason enough to make sure I take care of any and all traffic tickets promptly. Not that there have been that many tickets over the years, or to imply I wouldn’t take care of them anyway; but as often as I have to stand before judges, there is a little added incentive. So I can be excused if my sweat glands went into overdrive the other day when my cell phone rang and an electronic voice announced, “This is a message for Shaw...Carol...EEE; this is the City of Rolt...We have a warrant...”

The voice, with that unmistakable authority of the disembodied, went on to inform me that I had failed to pay a traffic ticket and was therefore a Very Bad Person.

First, where in the world was the “City of Rolt”? A reverse phone look-up helped translate that into the City of Rowlett. That made more sense. I actually did get a ticket in Rowlett a couple of years ago, but defensive driving had removed the offense from my record. Hadn’t it?

I pondered whether to call the court for clarification. It was either a mistake or the result of an out-of-body experience: either way, the situation needed to be addressed post-haste. I opted for the anonymity of their online system. The robocaller had provided a case number. I entered it into the appropriate field and was informed “Case Not Found.”

I tried substituting the “A” for an “8” (considering the Rolt vs. Rowlett confusion, that seemed reasonable.) “Case Not Found”, it said again.

Maybe it was case sensitive - no pun intended? I tried playing with upper and lower-case letters and was told repeatedly “Case Not Found”. Eventually, I gave in to the obvious. I would have to call the court. Maybe whoever answered wouldn’t know me.

Murphy, of course, had other plans. The clerk on the other end was cheerful, efficient – and definitely familiar. Not only had she been around for years, but she had once been a student of mine. I launched into an awkward explanation for my call.

Before it got too painful, the clerk interrupted me. “And you got a call saying there’s a warrant?” she prompted. I could hear the grin in her voice.

Then she explained. The court had just installed a new automated calling system. The program was supposed to recognize and ignore closed cases based on their coding. Apparently, one of those codes got missed on implementation, generating a backlog of cases that now appeared to be delinquent - and the court was being flooded with calls from people suddenly haunted by the automated ghosts of old transgressions.

As I hung up the phone, I couldn’t help thinking that the past is never really dead. And that the vast electronic conspiracy through which their computer could call my mobile device and mess with my adrenaline makes anyone’s mistakes everyone’s problem.

To paraphrase the late, great John Donne, ask not for whom the cell phone rings. It rings for me.

Riding the rails

A few challenges met, a resolution or two kept; some sorrows and loss and more than a few frustrations. One more year behind me, a fresh one in the wings.

And instead of sitting home like I usually do, mulling over what shoulda, woulda, coulda been, I decided to finish the year with an exclamation point.

My granddaughters and I started out at IHOP where we had eggs, bacon and strawberry cheesecake pancakes.

Then we rode the train into downtown Dallas. There were few other passengers – in fact, our car was empty except for us. But this was an Adventure. For the entire ride into town, the girls chose to stand, holding onto the straps and poles. Every time the train took a curve, they swayed and giggled and held on for dear life. As we stepped off the train at our stop, I noticed a passenger in the car behind us grinning. It was impossible not to.

A few short blocks away, we came to the Dallas World Aquarium. A street musician danced in the street near the entrance, jazz pouring from his saxophone. We put some money in his tip jar and he stopped long enough to call out "Happy New Year!"

Middle Son joined us at the DWA. It's a pretty amazing place. We wandered around enjoying penguins, sharks, manatees, turtles, a good assortment of birds ("aquarium" seems to be merely the starting point), a sloth, frogs, snakes, lizards, and more. Elder granddaughter stopped for several minutes by the jaguar, waiting to take the perfect picture. Younger granddaughter rode on her uncle's back

We had lunch: younger granddaughter ordered pizza in the shape of a fish. Elder granddaughter tried to look offended when the waiter flirted with her. A stop by the gift shop, a visit with family members who were passing through, and it was back to the train station. The girls once again chose to stand and hold the straps. As they giggled and swayed with every turn we took, I noticed a young woman watching us. Disapproval was written all over her face. Her three young children sat meekly in their seats.

And it occurred to me how grateful I am for my middle-age. A few grey hairs, more than a few too many pounds, a touch of arthritis here and there... what a small price to pay to learn that sometimes cheesecake goes well with bacon. Sometimes you just have to go in search of Adventure. And sometimes the best way to experience life is to stand up straight, hang on tight and enjoy every twist and turn you take.

Happy 2011, everyone! If you see my train go by, I'll be the one hanging onto the strap.