I’m sitting in Steve’s new office. And this is what I see outside: Trees and bushes that look like they’re juiced up on steriods. Palms, wild flowers usually seen only in the tropical section of the garden centre. Mango, lime, lemon and avocado trees, still too small to bear fruit, but not for long. Only planted 2 months ago, already they’ve grown a foot and a half. Flitting in and out of my view are butterfies of all colors, rivaling the beauty of the land. Cartoon clouds in the sky. Sometimes those puffs are stretched like white candy floss. My eyes, wide with beauty, are also soaking up the Pacific Ocean. I can see the ripples from here and the varying shades of blues and greens and frothy white where the waves are crashing onto the rocky shore.
The sounds? The ocean rumbles like rush hour traffic, without the aggression. A symphony of crickets. Strange bird calls, and from deeper in the jungle I hear the gutteral moans of Howler monkeys. To me it sounds like the noise a man might make if he were able to give birth. Testosterone driven labor. I haven’t found anyone, yet, who agrees with my analogy, but it’s the best I can do to put the sound into words.
If I look up, inside the structure where I’m sitting I see a cluster of bats clinging together like shrivelled prunes, sleeping off last nights adventues . And almost right above my head a honeycomb, dangling precariously from the ceiling and teeming with bees. On the floor beside me, a snake skin, much smaller than the one Steve found earlier that belonged to a boa. The desk is made of tree stumps and a piece of of plywood. The only thing adorning it is an empty Heiniken bottle with a candle stuck in, just in case the power goes out, as it often does here.
No, I’m not in Toronto anymore. Steve’s three week mission to Mal Pais to clear some of the land, meet with contractors and find us a place to live while our house is being built, now includes me. I love the fact that he asked me to come here for a week to help make decisions. Even though I know it’s partly so I will shoulder some of the blame if mistakes are made!
The drive from the beach, up the mountain and onto our property is like a rollercoaster ride. An old wooden roller coaster, like the one they used to have at the Ex. A very slow old wooden roller coaster, because it’s so steep you can’t go any faster than first gear. Chugging up, up up, through tarzan vines, under canopies of trees so thick you feel enveloped by nature. My abs hurt from bracing for the bumps. My arm aches from white knuckling the passenger handle.
And then you’re here. 6 acres of the most incredible combination of jungle and ocean views. The land came with a house. And a nickname: The Bat House.The people who owned it before wanted to be at one with nature. So none of the openings have doors. Or windows. Hence the bats, bees, snakes and other wildlife that call this home.
We were up here last night with Nat and Frederico, two lovely men who are helping us turn this into a home we can live in. The four of us get caught up with eachothers great ideas. Figuring out what will go where, what materials to use, how to re-configure it and make it safe so the kids can’t tumble off the cliff and into the valley before.
Then we all stop and watch as a storm moves in over the ocean. In no time there is pounding rain. Thunder that drowns out all other sounds. Flashes of lighting competing with the setting sun. Because we are so high up, we actually see some of the storm clouds rolling in below us, obscuring the view below. Steve and I are in awe. And so are Nat and Frederico, despite the fact they’ve lived here all their lives. I am amazed that it hasn’t gotten old for them, this beauty. I remember a three month exchange to Switzerland when I was in highschool and how quickly the majestic alps lost their intensity for me. How I was dumbstruck at first and then rarely even noticed the postcard beauty.
(I just used my computer thesaurus to try and find another word for beauty or beautiful since it’s a word that I need so much to describe this place. One of the words that popped up was “toast” the other “pulchritudiness” . Writers should not use the thesaurus.).
The storm passes and the four of us get back to business. Because of time constraints and the difficulty finding a place to rent, we decide to do a quick reno on this house. We’ll live in it when we get here and then turn it into a guest house after Steve has finished building the big house nearby. But can it be done in time? Our one way tickets have been booked for January 10th. The kids school starts on the 15th and our house in Toronto closes on the same day.
My heart sinks and races at the same time when Nat tells us there’s no way it’ll be ready by January. The month of October is a write off, because supplies won’t make it up our rollercoaster road during the rainy season. Little gets done in December because of Christmas. It’ll be February at the earliest, but mostly likely March before we can move in.
Now I question our planning. It’s high season here in January. Trying to rent a place, competting with tourists who will spend thousands for a week, is impossible. And besides, everything is booked up solid. Sensing my panic, Frederico says not to worry. Without thinking twice, he tells me our family can stay at his house until the job here is done. He’ll stay with a friend. His two bedroom home is right next to the school, a walk to the beach. In that moment the spirit of the people of Costa Rica has already found a place into my heart. Their national saying is Pura Vida. The good life. And already I have found out, through one man’s extreme generosity, just how much Pura Vida there is. And how much I want to rename this town. Mal Pais means bad country, a title it doesn’t deserve. it should be called Beuno Pais,which it clearly is.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Clothesline
By now my neighbours must think I’ve completely cracked. Gone off the deep end. Getting rid of the car. Giving up the career.Leaving an amazing neighbourhood and selling a home we’ve spent years perfecting. All of that I think they could wrap their heads around, just for the sheer adventure. But the clothes line in the backyard might be the tipping point.
I’m sure they believe now that they are living next to eco-guerilla girl--former tv host, who in a single bound has rejected her car for a crazy red bike and now refuses even to use a clothes dryer. The truth, which I haven’t yet spilled, , is that my high priced, fancy shmancy Fisher and Paykel dryer stopped doing just that. Drying. It moves round and round but no matter how long it’s left on, it doesn’t dry. There’’s no heat. Friends have offered to let me use their dryers. There’s also a laundromat not so far away that will even wash and dry and fold, for a fee. But instead, because I have just a little too much pride to bag up my wet clothes and cart them around the neighbourhood, I enlist the help of my 5 year old daughter Eva. We grab some twine and string it from the play fort to the swimming pool slide, a distance that spans the length of our downtown backyard.
Together we haul the clothes out of the washer, up from the basement and take them outside. Eva didn’t know there was actually a time before dryers. She was oblivious to the real scent of the outdoors on her clothes, a smell so different from the deceptive “morning rain”, and “summer breeze” promised by the soap companies.
Clothes lines are before my time too, but I do have some vague childhood memory of being disgusted by bird poop on one of my shirts. I also just now remember that when I was in highschool in Fenelon Falls our dryer was broken. For years. And a family without a dryer is just about the shadiest thing possible in a small town. I know the sight of my mum, lugging garbage bags of wet clothes to the laundromat must have triggered a whole new round of gossip, further shaking our already tenuous position in the community.
We had after all, committed many unwritten--and to us at the time, unknown--social sins of small town living. My mum probably bore the brunt of it. My dad’s insane knowledge of music and sense of humour protected him from the usual nightmare of being a highschool french teacher. But my mum refused to wear the title of upstanding wife, mother and substitute teacher. She instead wore crazy tights (years ahead of vogue) and far out clothes from India. She started up a drama school for kids where all sorts of “weird” stuff went on. Petitioned to have streetlights installed at the corner where we lived. Got right in there to try and wake up the United Church to embrace gay people. And then there was the Peace Project she started up, holding meetings, marches and selling t-shirts she designed with a logo of a duck in the crosshairs. Get it? Sitting ducks. (Believe it or not, activism was probably the biggest small town sin of all, at least then, in the 1980’s.) And on top of all of that, there were the feasts with crazy music in the backyard. And not at 5pm either, but sometimes even as late as 7 or 8! Yes, the Haines family provided the gossips with hours of entertainment.
I don’t know how much of this is family lore, but I do remember my mum , by now giving up any attempt at fitting in, telling a nosy neighbour that she was outside sweeping at 6 in the evening to gather up leaves. For our dinner. The same woman was caught red-handed standing at the backdoor of our house, with her ear actually pressed against the door trying to listen in on our raucus family meals!
There was also a rumour that we had orgies at our house. A word I still crack up over, because the guy spreading the gossip didn’t know that orgy has a soft “g”.. He called it an or-ghee. A pronounciation error that has forever messed me up in the rare occasions when I need to use the word. Orgy? Orghee? I go back and forth like Dave Letterman’s unfortunate Uma/Oprah bit at the Oscars years ago.
You’d have to ask my mum if this stuff was malicious. I don’t remember it being so, but I was only a kid at the time. I think it was just boredom talking more than anything else. And the older I get the more I realize that all those crazy things that go on in small towns-, happen in the big cities too. We’re just so disconnected from eachother, so private and closed off in the city that the gossip rarely gets back to us.
And here I am, years later, abruptly ending my love affair with the city. Moving to a town smaller than the one I so quickly left as a teenager.
I think I’ll have an easier time of it than my mum did. Partially because the town of Mal Pais, the littleI know of it so far anyway, is made up of so many different people and cultures that one more oddball family won’t make a difference. More than anything though I think we’ll fit in just fine because we live near the top of a jungle mountain, with no one to hear our loud music, rowdy “leaf” dinners or our or-GHEES.
I’m sure they believe now that they are living next to eco-guerilla girl--former tv host, who in a single bound has rejected her car for a crazy red bike and now refuses even to use a clothes dryer. The truth, which I haven’t yet spilled, , is that my high priced, fancy shmancy Fisher and Paykel dryer stopped doing just that. Drying. It moves round and round but no matter how long it’s left on, it doesn’t dry. There’’s no heat. Friends have offered to let me use their dryers. There’s also a laundromat not so far away that will even wash and dry and fold, for a fee. But instead, because I have just a little too much pride to bag up my wet clothes and cart them around the neighbourhood, I enlist the help of my 5 year old daughter Eva. We grab some twine and string it from the play fort to the swimming pool slide, a distance that spans the length of our downtown backyard.
Together we haul the clothes out of the washer, up from the basement and take them outside. Eva didn’t know there was actually a time before dryers. She was oblivious to the real scent of the outdoors on her clothes, a smell so different from the deceptive “morning rain”, and “summer breeze” promised by the soap companies.
Clothes lines are before my time too, but I do have some vague childhood memory of being disgusted by bird poop on one of my shirts. I also just now remember that when I was in highschool in Fenelon Falls our dryer was broken. For years. And a family without a dryer is just about the shadiest thing possible in a small town. I know the sight of my mum, lugging garbage bags of wet clothes to the laundromat must have triggered a whole new round of gossip, further shaking our already tenuous position in the community.
We had after all, committed many unwritten--and to us at the time, unknown--social sins of small town living. My mum probably bore the brunt of it. My dad’s insane knowledge of music and sense of humour protected him from the usual nightmare of being a highschool french teacher. But my mum refused to wear the title of upstanding wife, mother and substitute teacher. She instead wore crazy tights (years ahead of vogue) and far out clothes from India. She started up a drama school for kids where all sorts of “weird” stuff went on. Petitioned to have streetlights installed at the corner where we lived. Got right in there to try and wake up the United Church to embrace gay people. And then there was the Peace Project she started up, holding meetings, marches and selling t-shirts she designed with a logo of a duck in the crosshairs. Get it? Sitting ducks. (Believe it or not, activism was probably the biggest small town sin of all, at least then, in the 1980’s.) And on top of all of that, there were the feasts with crazy music in the backyard. And not at 5pm either, but sometimes even as late as 7 or 8! Yes, the Haines family provided the gossips with hours of entertainment.
I don’t know how much of this is family lore, but I do remember my mum , by now giving up any attempt at fitting in, telling a nosy neighbour that she was outside sweeping at 6 in the evening to gather up leaves. For our dinner. The same woman was caught red-handed standing at the backdoor of our house, with her ear actually pressed against the door trying to listen in on our raucus family meals!
There was also a rumour that we had orgies at our house. A word I still crack up over, because the guy spreading the gossip didn’t know that orgy has a soft “g”.. He called it an or-ghee. A pronounciation error that has forever messed me up in the rare occasions when I need to use the word. Orgy? Orghee? I go back and forth like Dave Letterman’s unfortunate Uma/Oprah bit at the Oscars years ago.
You’d have to ask my mum if this stuff was malicious. I don’t remember it being so, but I was only a kid at the time. I think it was just boredom talking more than anything else. And the older I get the more I realize that all those crazy things that go on in small towns-, happen in the big cities too. We’re just so disconnected from eachother, so private and closed off in the city that the gossip rarely gets back to us.
And here I am, years later, abruptly ending my love affair with the city. Moving to a town smaller than the one I so quickly left as a teenager.
I think I’ll have an easier time of it than my mum did. Partially because the town of Mal Pais, the littleI know of it so far anyway, is made up of so many different people and cultures that one more oddball family won’t make a difference. More than anything though I think we’ll fit in just fine because we live near the top of a jungle mountain, with no one to hear our loud music, rowdy “leaf” dinners or our or-GHEES.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
The New Pornography
In case you haven't heard, in my neighbourhood at least, real estate is the new porn. It’s more salacious than the cheating wife. The husband who bailed. The naughty child.. Multiple offers are better these days than multiple orgasms. And it’’s the real estate agents, with their fingers on the pulse of the throbbing market who are basking in their 15 minutes of fame. Peppered with questions: What’s for sale. What sold. For how much. And by the way, what do you think MY place is worth?
Sometimes even before the “for sale” sign gets hammered into the lawn the whispers begin. Can you believe they’re asking that much? Did you see the basement ? Not even a parking space! The throngs line up for open houses with a frenzy that was once reserved for blockbuster movie premiers. Sit down for a coffee and someone is bound to bring up how much that dump down the street went for. Head to the playground and the gossip is often about the bidding wars, or the bubble bursting. Can prices really go any higher?
Trolling through the MLS listings is a hobby for those who hide their addictions. And for those who are “out of the closet” :The weekend open houses are a bonanza . There’s something exciting and so intimate about wandering though a strangers life. A home on display. Primped, primed and plumped up like a beauty queen vying for first prize. Instead of a crown and flowers, the winner gets a quick SOLD sign.
Real estate agents, capitalising on the social aspect of all of this, are turning open houses into afternoon socials.. There’’s food and drinks and neighbourhood friends to catch up with. In the states, as usual, it’s a little more extreme. I recently read about agents hiring actors to play the part of the happy family.. A charming 12 year old will offer to show you “his” room, while the dad throws something on the bbq for you and the “wife” fixes you a drink.
And so, for all those reasons, Steve and I tried to sell our house quietly. Without the hoopla. No sign. No open houses. No fake family. In the dead of August, when even the most die-hard real estate fanatics are taking a break, we let our agents know about our decision. We tell them a sign can go up in September, but if anyone is interested before them, we’d forfeit a potential bidding war and accept offers. Just days later our agents show our house to a woman at 10 in the morning. Her husband got a tour in the afternoon and by that evening we were signing the papers. The price was right. They were okay with a long closing and --like true urbanites--they actually liked the fact that we didn’t have parking.
Then we panicked because it all worked a little too well. And that’s when the doubt set in. Should we have rented it out instead. One agency found a family willing to pay 10 thousand bucks a month for one year minimum lease. But the thought of having worries at this home, while trying to make a new life thousands of miles away made selling the obvious option. There was also the fear of a market crash and being stuck with a home in Toronto and Costa Rica, unable to unload either.
And then those practical fears turned emotional. How could we leave this house. Our home for the last 14 years Say good-bye to the backyard where Steve and I got married. So long to the bedroom where our first child was born, a home birth that ended with the three of us snuggled in bed. Warm and safe, with no idea of how our lives would change. 5 years later we turned the guest room into a nursery for Eva...and then just two years ago welcoming yet another beast into the den. In the midst of all that ? Seemlingly endless renovations and additions.
And if we as grown ups were struggling with these feelings, how would our kids react. I worried most about Riley. At the age of 10 he has the most to gain, but also the most to lose from this adventure. Eva and Paulie are young enough to adapt, but Riley might find everything a little harder. The language, the new friends, the new culture.
We told our two youngest while Riley was away at a 2 week overnight camp. Our five year old Eva cried., But, when she learned she could bring her dolls and the little chandelier that hangs in her bedroom, she carried on as before. Paulie’s too little to get it and just keeps repeating to everyone: “we’re goin’a coshta rica. we’’re goin’a coshta rica”
And then the biggie: breaking it to Riley. The usual joy of picking him up from camp was tempered by the fact that I had to give what he might well see as very bad news. I rehearsed what I would say and how I would handle the reaction. I role played with my friend Larissa, a psychologist, as she offered great advice on not making it too big of a deal. Letting him decide if it was something good or bad. And just hearing out the fears and anger he may express.
And then, on the 2 hour drive back from camp, my heart beating, I finally spit it out in probably the most clumsy of all ways: :”Oh,. Riley, by the way, we sold the house.”. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his body slump against the seat. And then a breath.And a question that convinces me the real estate fixation transcends generations. The first words out of his mouth, upon hearing that the only home he’s ever known, the home where he took his first breath, has been sold? Not: “How could you!”. Not: “I hate you and you’re ruining my life”. Instead he asks: “How much did we get for it?”. And when I tell him, he pumps his fist in the air, smiles and says: “that’s goooood!”. I think, at least for now, everything will be all right.
Sometimes even before the “for sale” sign gets hammered into the lawn the whispers begin. Can you believe they’re asking that much? Did you see the basement ? Not even a parking space! The throngs line up for open houses with a frenzy that was once reserved for blockbuster movie premiers. Sit down for a coffee and someone is bound to bring up how much that dump down the street went for. Head to the playground and the gossip is often about the bidding wars, or the bubble bursting. Can prices really go any higher?
Trolling through the MLS listings is a hobby for those who hide their addictions. And for those who are “out of the closet” :The weekend open houses are a bonanza . There’s something exciting and so intimate about wandering though a strangers life. A home on display. Primped, primed and plumped up like a beauty queen vying for first prize. Instead of a crown and flowers, the winner gets a quick SOLD sign.
Real estate agents, capitalising on the social aspect of all of this, are turning open houses into afternoon socials.. There’’s food and drinks and neighbourhood friends to catch up with. In the states, as usual, it’s a little more extreme. I recently read about agents hiring actors to play the part of the happy family.. A charming 12 year old will offer to show you “his” room, while the dad throws something on the bbq for you and the “wife” fixes you a drink.
And so, for all those reasons, Steve and I tried to sell our house quietly. Without the hoopla. No sign. No open houses. No fake family. In the dead of August, when even the most die-hard real estate fanatics are taking a break, we let our agents know about our decision. We tell them a sign can go up in September, but if anyone is interested before them, we’d forfeit a potential bidding war and accept offers. Just days later our agents show our house to a woman at 10 in the morning. Her husband got a tour in the afternoon and by that evening we were signing the papers. The price was right. They were okay with a long closing and --like true urbanites--they actually liked the fact that we didn’t have parking.
Then we panicked because it all worked a little too well. And that’s when the doubt set in. Should we have rented it out instead. One agency found a family willing to pay 10 thousand bucks a month for one year minimum lease. But the thought of having worries at this home, while trying to make a new life thousands of miles away made selling the obvious option. There was also the fear of a market crash and being stuck with a home in Toronto and Costa Rica, unable to unload either.
And then those practical fears turned emotional. How could we leave this house. Our home for the last 14 years Say good-bye to the backyard where Steve and I got married. So long to the bedroom where our first child was born, a home birth that ended with the three of us snuggled in bed. Warm and safe, with no idea of how our lives would change. 5 years later we turned the guest room into a nursery for Eva...and then just two years ago welcoming yet another beast into the den. In the midst of all that ? Seemlingly endless renovations and additions.
And if we as grown ups were struggling with these feelings, how would our kids react. I worried most about Riley. At the age of 10 he has the most to gain, but also the most to lose from this adventure. Eva and Paulie are young enough to adapt, but Riley might find everything a little harder. The language, the new friends, the new culture.
We told our two youngest while Riley was away at a 2 week overnight camp. Our five year old Eva cried., But, when she learned she could bring her dolls and the little chandelier that hangs in her bedroom, she carried on as before. Paulie’s too little to get it and just keeps repeating to everyone: “we’re goin’a coshta rica. we’’re goin’a coshta rica”
And then the biggie: breaking it to Riley. The usual joy of picking him up from camp was tempered by the fact that I had to give what he might well see as very bad news. I rehearsed what I would say and how I would handle the reaction. I role played with my friend Larissa, a psychologist, as she offered great advice on not making it too big of a deal. Letting him decide if it was something good or bad. And just hearing out the fears and anger he may express.
And then, on the 2 hour drive back from camp, my heart beating, I finally spit it out in probably the most clumsy of all ways: :”Oh,. Riley, by the way, we sold the house.”. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his body slump against the seat. And then a breath.And a question that convinces me the real estate fixation transcends generations. The first words out of his mouth, upon hearing that the only home he’s ever known, the home where he took his first breath, has been sold? Not: “How could you!”. Not: “I hate you and you’re ruining my life”. Instead he asks: “How much did we get for it?”. And when I tell him, he pumps his fist in the air, smiles and says: “that’s goooood!”. I think, at least for now, everything will be all right.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Learning Spanish
How many times have you thought about the fact that when you put two verbs back to back, you don’t conjugate the second verb? Like: I want to go. I want is conjugated and“To go” is the 2nd verb so it’s left alone. These are the thoughts that rumble through my brain five months before we pick up and move our family from Toronto to Mal Pais Costa Rica.
Welcome to the glamourous world of leaving it all behind and starting over.
The things that worry me can change from one breath to another these days. But at this moment there are two: we don't have a place to live and we don’t speak spanish,. Steve is leaving again for Mal Pais in a couple of days for three weeks to try and resolve the living issue. And I’ve begun Spanish lessons. My brain hurts. It has been years, too many to even think about, since I’ve been in a classroom setting. I signed up for a Think in Spanish beginner course. It meets once a week in the dreary basement of a church about as far away from Costa Rica as you can get. I only make it through one session. Barely. Just a few minutes into the class and it all comes back. I feel like the naughty kid I was in grade 9. And 10 and 11. I want to giggle. I want to say “Dos cervecas, por favor. or Donde esta el bano because that’’s all I know. I want to scream at the knob beside me who asks questions just for the sake of it. (What is it about the classroom that brings out the Eddie Haskell in some people? The scratch of chalk on the blackboard. The fluorescent lights. The fear of public humiliation. It all hangs over me like a dark cloud.
And so I skip next weeks lesson and am ashamed for feeling so good about it. Like I got away with something. Chuckling inside about what sort of excuse I’ll give the next week. I don’t do my homework. I ignore an email from Mark, the co-ordinator wondering what’s happened to me. And then it hits me. This isn’t learning for a grade, or learning to please someone else. It’s about survival. About knowing how to buy my groceries and make friends and order food. Even with that motivation I know I can’t go back into a classroom. Instead I convince Mark to credit me for the lost classes and use them towards one on one sessions. Two hours, three times a week.
I meet Leyte in a sunny room in the west end offices of Oise. I squeak out an embarrassed “hola” and spend the next two hours trying to impress the queen of cuba, a lovely reserved young woman who I desperately want to please. I am now on lesson 8. I try to navigate the language, racking my brain for each word. I sound like some lunatic spewing out staccato sentences. And, in the midst of this brain storm, one english phrase keeps popping into my mind. “I pity the fool”. Mr T’s wisdom is stuck on a loop each time I think about poor Steve trying to learn this. Unlike me he doesn’t have french to rely on and most people who only speak one language don’t think about HOW they put together sentences, they just do it. Steve’s wrapped up in trying to design our house and co-ordinate the construction from here. So far he’s made very little progress with the language tapes we have.
My apologies to all spanish speaking folks but here goes: Estoy muy contente parque puedo hablar y entiender un poco de espanol. I have learned the basic verbs: to be (there are two, ser and estar), to want, to like, to need. I know how to say: I don’t understand. (no entiendo). I am crazy (Soy loco). I have three kids and we are hungry. Tengo tres hijos y tenemos hambre. I pretend to understand why the word for morning and tomorrow are the same (manana) and that tomorrow morning is manana por la manana. The word for wife and handcuffs is essentially the same (esposa and esposas).
But what I have learned most is appreciation. And utter admiration and respect for the 2 year old set. I now understand the exhaustion my 2 year old fees at the end of the day. We are both struggling to figure out sentence structure, verb tenses , pronouns and nouns. Me go park sounds cute out of the mouth of a two year old. Not so much out of the mouth of THIS babe. And I also know that Paulie and Eva and Riley --their fresh, absorbent brains will soon be exercising their patience with me when I beg them to help me understand how to say something en espanol.
Welcome to the glamourous world of leaving it all behind and starting over.
The things that worry me can change from one breath to another these days. But at this moment there are two: we don't have a place to live and we don’t speak spanish,. Steve is leaving again for Mal Pais in a couple of days for three weeks to try and resolve the living issue. And I’ve begun Spanish lessons. My brain hurts. It has been years, too many to even think about, since I’ve been in a classroom setting. I signed up for a Think in Spanish beginner course. It meets once a week in the dreary basement of a church about as far away from Costa Rica as you can get. I only make it through one session. Barely. Just a few minutes into the class and it all comes back. I feel like the naughty kid I was in grade 9. And 10 and 11. I want to giggle. I want to say “Dos cervecas, por favor. or Donde esta el bano because that’’s all I know. I want to scream at the knob beside me who asks questions just for the sake of it. (What is it about the classroom that brings out the Eddie Haskell in some people? The scratch of chalk on the blackboard. The fluorescent lights. The fear of public humiliation. It all hangs over me like a dark cloud.
And so I skip next weeks lesson and am ashamed for feeling so good about it. Like I got away with something. Chuckling inside about what sort of excuse I’ll give the next week. I don’t do my homework. I ignore an email from Mark, the co-ordinator wondering what’s happened to me. And then it hits me. This isn’t learning for a grade, or learning to please someone else. It’s about survival. About knowing how to buy my groceries and make friends and order food. Even with that motivation I know I can’t go back into a classroom. Instead I convince Mark to credit me for the lost classes and use them towards one on one sessions. Two hours, three times a week.
I meet Leyte in a sunny room in the west end offices of Oise. I squeak out an embarrassed “hola” and spend the next two hours trying to impress the queen of cuba, a lovely reserved young woman who I desperately want to please. I am now on lesson 8. I try to navigate the language, racking my brain for each word. I sound like some lunatic spewing out staccato sentences. And, in the midst of this brain storm, one english phrase keeps popping into my mind. “I pity the fool”. Mr T’s wisdom is stuck on a loop each time I think about poor Steve trying to learn this. Unlike me he doesn’t have french to rely on and most people who only speak one language don’t think about HOW they put together sentences, they just do it. Steve’s wrapped up in trying to design our house and co-ordinate the construction from here. So far he’s made very little progress with the language tapes we have.
My apologies to all spanish speaking folks but here goes: Estoy muy contente parque puedo hablar y entiender un poco de espanol. I have learned the basic verbs: to be (there are two, ser and estar), to want, to like, to need. I know how to say: I don’t understand. (no entiendo). I am crazy (Soy loco). I have three kids and we are hungry. Tengo tres hijos y tenemos hambre. I pretend to understand why the word for morning and tomorrow are the same (manana) and that tomorrow morning is manana por la manana. The word for wife and handcuffs is essentially the same (esposa and esposas).
But what I have learned most is appreciation. And utter admiration and respect for the 2 year old set. I now understand the exhaustion my 2 year old fees at the end of the day. We are both struggling to figure out sentence structure, verb tenses , pronouns and nouns. Me go park sounds cute out of the mouth of a two year old. Not so much out of the mouth of THIS babe. And I also know that Paulie and Eva and Riley --their fresh, absorbent brains will soon be exercising their patience with me when I beg them to help me understand how to say something en espanol.
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