Patience

Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

A week ago, this admission would have seemed almost irrelevant—a mere cliché. But a week ago was before last Monday. A week ago was before I learned that patience is hard, harder than waiting through a dull class, or out-lasting the mischief of bothersome younger siblings, or any number of other things I mistook for patience during some twenty-or-so odd years.

A week ago, that is, I lost my patience.  A week ago I brought an activity for the children at Fundación Ñeque that I knew would be challenging—perhaps, even, I precipitated its certain failure—but I went for it anyway. It was a game, after all … it seemed fun. Furthermore, I had played Memory with my five-year-old host brother just months before and thought perhaps the children at the foundation (although somewhat less well-behaved) would understand and enjoy it. I had no illusions, really, but even the small expectation that it wouldn’t end in complete disaster was, apparently, a little too much.

Everything went wrong. I spent $7.30 printing the game in color. (Apparently color copies cost 1100 percent the cost of ordinary black-and-white.) And later, after I had already arrived at the foundation and was helping a student with her homework, the teacher interrupted our work and ordered—yes ordered, not asked—me to begin the English lesson. Which means that before I even found myself in front of their many expectant faces I was already feeling extraordinarily out-of-sorts. (Teaching while grumpy is something that, with my limited experience in the classroom, I have not yet mastered. Few teachers, I would add—even with lots of experience—ever master that one.)

And then, then: the children. Some ten or twenty kindergarten and first-graders and all wonderfully affectionate; unfortunately, they match their degree of affection with an equal degree of disrespect, disobedience, and an impressive ability to defy instruction. Needless to say, the game was a royal fracaso.  The children couldn’t sit still, couldn’t wait their turn, couldn’t listen to my explanation without touching the Memory cards, couldn’t wait for me to give instruction without interrupting with something totally irrevelant, needed constant contact … in short, the children just couldn’t do it.

And that’s when I lost my patience. That’s when I yelled, and clapped my hands, and my voice became oddly metallic, and I didn’t like the hard-water taste of it in my mouth. That’s when I frightened myself a little bit, and I nearly walked out of the foundation crying.

And frankly, I’m still not sure whether I was in the wrong, or oddly in-the-right. (I did apologize to the students the next time I came in.) But I wonder, when is patience passivity? When is patience merely enabling their disrespect? (Because frankly, that’s what it is). When is caring gentle, and when is caring firm? And how, how do I get through to them?

In the three or so months that I spend here, is it even worth it? (Because it's certainly not viable...)

Or is that merely giving up? 

Muisne

We lingered on the wooden benches, absently pressing sticky grains of rice—unintentional leftovers—onto our fingers and eating them slowly … rubbing itchy arms, and failing to notice the red welts of fresh mosquito bites blooming like so many morning flowers on trellis-arms. We talked beneath the thatch roof of the restaurant-cabaña, and, surely-unnoticed, night descended on us thickly; however unspoken, we delayed the necessary exodus. 

But we did, eventually. We left the patio-restaurant and, still animated, there was hardly a hiccup in our conversation as we parted the seamless night.

We didn’t remember that no one knew the way.

We didn’t realize, even, that we were following.

We didn’t notice, in fact, the two slender figures that preceded us, walking us back to our primitive Island lodging.

 One of the figures, I was soon to learn, was named Mateo, the other Achli. In the four or so days that I spent in their community, they became friends. Probably their mother, or an aunt, or perhaps merely a neighbor was one of our cooks, so they spent a lot of time at the restaurant. In any case, every time I walked back to where we ate that first night (and where we would continue to eat for the next four days), I encountered them, sometimes buried in a hammock underneath the fountain-foliage of a low-hanging tree and rising to follow our group to its next meal, or hanging on the wooden rails of the restaurant as we entered. I encountered them, and others, nearly every time I ate, and I fell in love with their shy smiles and timid greetings.

Some memorable moments:

• After breakfast one morning, a group of youngsters sat down with us at our table and, as we smiled along, dipped dirty fingers into the jelly-jar, taking turns, faces and laughter alight
• Another night, the tide rose to the raised beams of the restaurant, such that a boat had managed to enter the once-dry stream-bed and was moored to the rail on one side of our restaurant. The kids climbed in, then I climbed in with them, and we briefly played at “sailors”—my first time in a long time!
• On our last evening in Muisne, some of the townspeople prepared a traditional dance. We all sat in a group in the middle of the cement court to enjoy the spectacle; the kids from the community also came, dragging plastic chairs from home or sitting, like us, on the hard cement. I fear their appreciation was far more evident than our own: their laughter was raucous and infectious, and I think many of us didn’t know whether to watch the dancers or the children watching the dancers.

I fell in love with Muisne because I fell in the love with the people of Muisne, its ragtag children. Really, I can’t imagine a more perfect childhood—albeit shadowed by poverty or want or uncertainty at times.

 It was evident, it was obvious, that the children in this community were loved—by parents and neighbors and the microcosm of their tiny barrio—and that’s what I wanted. It’s what I want for the rest of my life: these people, this place, this pace … Tranquilo, they call it.

The word, oddly, has no English counterpart: tranquilo, regrettably, doesn’t translate.

thirty americans licking ice cream cones

 We were thirty, weary Americans ill-dressed for the slate wind that collided with our bare legs, the rain that collected in the spaces between our toes; thirty Americans in shorts and chacos, shivering in restless groups of three and four as we waited for the bus that would take us back to Quito. Thirty Americans, we marveled at how quickly one can grow accustomed to a good thing, and only hours before had been sticky with ocean salt and our own sweat, strolling the sandy, unpaved streets of the Galapagos.

We were thirty Americans going home. Or not “home,” exactly, but to what we thought of as “home” when we were away. And though thirty, sun-scorched Americans had all expressed reluctance to leave the islands, to re-enter the inevitable obligations of the day-to-day, we were also thirty Americans who, looking out through the bus windows at the familiar mountains that loomed on either side and the dark clouds that shielded their volcanic peaks, felt oddly relieved to be going “home” again.

And so it was with great surprise that—subdued, quiet, and buried in our seats—we thirty Americans noticed that our bus had stopped abruptly on the edge of a narrow thoroughfare.

“Okay. Chicos,” Martha announced from the head of the bus. “The bus-driver is treating us to ice cream.”

We looked at each other in bewilderment, startled from our wearied stupors but failing, still, to register Martha’s words.

“The bus driver is the owner of this ice cream shop,” Martha explained, “and he wants to treat you all to ice cream.” Still no one moved. “Vamos, chicos!” She said decisively, and, obediently, we all began to move, re-fastening our shoes and zipping our windbreakers and shuffling out of the bus.

Really, it wasn’t a great day for ice cream—it was cold, it was rainy, we were travel worn and ready to be home—but regardless, we found ourselves almost giddy with this unprecedented surprise, this final “hurrah” to a week spent snorkeling, and peeling salmon-colored shrimp, and coating ourselves in sunblock on the Islands.

The bus driver gave us the option of two flavors; I asked him for his favorites. “Taxo and chocolate,” he said without hesitation. I repeated the same line to the employee scooping ice cream.

Licking our cones, we milled in the small parlor and waited for the last stragglers, asking each other about our flavor selections and ultimately boarding the bus with our cones only half-eaten. We thanked the bus driver effusively and wondered what compelled him to such generosity. Not long after, we stepped off the bus, hauled up our heavy-backpacks, and, thirty weary Americans, trudged home.

After the excitement of the Galapagos, the extraordinary privilege of the Galapagos, the simplicity of this moment was nevertheless indelible. I wonder what compelled a bus driver to treat us, thirty Americans just returned from a trip to the Galapagos, to such a generous gesture. Why? Being a bus driver and the dueño of a small ice cream parlor, I can’t imagine the man was drowning in excess. What compelled him, then, to treat us to such excess?

Ultimately, I cannot think of any feasible reason for his gesture. Unwarranted generosity, I suppose, is the only explanation. I guess I’ll just have to leave it at that, then: at the mystery. (And perhaps allow myself marvel, at odd moments when it inevitably resurfaces, at the memory.)

wet

Friday, February 14 -- Running in the Parque Metropolitano with my host siblings at 6 a.m.

i’m wet.

wet on the thumbprint of my back and where my lower back joins my backside. wet as though i’d just done forty sit-ups in a mud puddle.  

            i’m wet like sweating, tossing through a fitful night, glancing at odd intervals at the alarm on bedside table.wet like rising in the fog of Quito’s pre-dawn darkness, where Pichincha’s white night-robe rolls down from the peak to the west, yet to dissolve with the morning.

i’m wet like the tinkling of the ornament that hangs on our front door, alerting my host mother to our entrances and sounding like so many latent raindrops falling from the eaves.

            i’m wet like the fingers of the trees in the shadows of the park, hands and arms that reached silently for us as we ran in the darkness, stroking and slapping our shoulders, and hips and the curved muscles of our calves.

            wet like the sweat that dripped from my forehead and tangled in my hair, curling the strays around my face. wet like the squealing of mud beneath our bounding feet, slipping and nearly falling, arms grasping at nothing to keep us upright.

i’m wet like my sneakers now resting on the windowsill, and my socks, drenched from the forest’s run-off that entered the porous fabric of my running shoes and wrinkled my feet.

            i’m wet like the baptismal waters that blanket-wrap runners at this godly hour each morning, wet with the breaking dawn, tearing the womb of darkness , entering the wet world singing – glory, glory, glory!

Bella

She said the night was lovely. Bella, bella, she said, leaning deep into the word, cupping it like water, licking it from tiny, transparent reservoirs.

You aren’t sure if it’s rhetorical, merely commentative, or invitational. Come, she says, pulling you by the hand from the kitchen and out onto the terrace in front. Not rhetorical, apparently.

The door to the terrace is already open. (The door is always open.) Fresh air at the expense of a warm home, you've often mused. On cloudy days the breeze whistles through the hallways of the fourth-floor apartment like an arctic Passover.

Look, she says, sweeping her arm across the night sky like its proud artisan. See?

You step across the threshold onto the terrace and look up into the familiar, blinking star canopy. Eyes illumined, you blink, brightly, back at them.

Exhaling, you repeat your host mom’s favorite phrase. Bella, bella, you say, trying to lean into the word like water, like she does.

You point to Orion’s belt only question your observation. But we’re in the southern hemisphere, you point out.

No, no, no, they assure you. Your host father has joined too. We’re on the equator, they say.

Ahh. You pause. So you see everything.

Your host mom tries to point out Venus, twice, but your host father repudiates each time. You and your host mom look at each other and laugh.

Your host sister, Ana Maria, and her boyfriend also join you on the terrace. Practially the whole family, you think. In the city’s cool dusk, Ana María hugs the should of her boyfriend from behind, pressing her chin and mouth into his sweater. You half-smile, enjoying watching them together.

On the street four stories below, Emilia, your younger host sister, waits in the car with her boyfriend. Your host mom notices the two sitting in the running vehicle and waves, gesturing—smiling—to you to do the same. So you do. Then your host father, then Ana María and her boyfriend catch on. Finally, spontaneously, Ana María plucks up the dog, Thea, from the tiled floor of the terrace and she waves too. You look around at the others, all smiling foolishly. 

Emilia, below, waves back, twisting her neck and body in uncomfortable ways to peer out of the car’s windshield and up at the six of you on the terrace (including dog). She has big teeth and a slightly crooked smile. Her teeth glint through the windshield of the car like ground stars, bottom dwellers.

You look away, up again into bottomless well of the sky, and don’t see any difference.

Pan

Saturday, January 4. Quito, Ecuador

Perhaps it is customary to buy your bread the night before. Perhaps Ecuadorian bakeries respect the Catholic day-of-rest (a some four-hundred year habit?) and remain closed on Sundays. Perhaps breakfast bread is scarce if not absent from the kitchen table when it isn't bought beforehand. 

            Regardless, I was surprised by the line of perhaps twenty people that brushed the finger-stained glass of the panadería's bakery case in Quito's north district at dusk on a Saturday night.

While my host mother and I were being served by the employee behind  the chin-level counter, I noticed a couple sitting at a booth, a mess of  shapely coke bottles, fancy coffees in the hummingbird dishes that old, American diners serve ice cream in, and crumbly pastries littering their round table. Actually, it was the child I noticed first, the couple sitting nearby only as a product of the child's gaze.

Of course, I couldn't see the child's face, but I could tell from the skin at the nape of his neck and the slight shadows that licked his small jawline that he was dark. Dark like the rain-stained bark of a Michigan pine after an August storm. Dark hair, too, which covered his head like a child playing at pirates or buccaneers, slinging his mother's mixing bowls over his head and covering his eyes. 

His clothes were disheveled, loose, dirty even, and he stood alone. His parents weren't the fashionable couple sitting steps away at the table, nor the few other seated clients in the bakery. In fact, his parents weren't clients at all.

My gaze suddenly sought the two indigenous women standing at the shop's entrance, hawking strawberries and cherries to the unwilling and entirely unreceptive Ecuadorian middle class. These people obviously didn't buy their fruit from street venders; the women's strawberry mountains resembled the western Pichincha, the volcano that towers over the city like Sapo Inca, their mountains undiminished despite the Saturday traffic. 

The child, apparently, accompanied his mother. Perhaps he entered the bakery out of restless, three-year-old energy, out of curiosity. Maybe he was accustomed to the compassion of dining guests. 

Either way, the woman sitting at the table steps away noticed his gaze. She lifted her hand in the upside-down beckon of the Latino cultures—al reves—and handed the child the remains of a sticky-bun. The child was cautious to approach the stranger, cautious to take the pilled napkin-wrapped pastry, cautious to nibble the treat. Even at three, the child sensed the rigid class divisions that separate Quito's privileged from its largely indigenous poor.

I turned away then. I turned back to the counter, where my host mom was paying for some fourteen rolls. I turned away from the women, who was smiling, and the child, who was hungry, or restless, or merely bored. I turned away, and was glad the women didn't need to verify some abject justification—glad boredom was, for a moment, undistinguished from poverty, as good a reason as any to give a child bread.