Photographs

A time capsule

Color photographs fade; memories do not.

North Sumatra is a wildly cosmopolitan place, but when I was twelve the road from Medan to Brastagi was bordered by jungle.  There were tigers in the woods and, though I knew better, I pressed my nose against the window hoping for a glimpse of sleek whiskered stripes.  When we stopped for a break monkeys rushed out begging for food like squirrels, and an unseen chorus of siamangs burst into song; it was like being in the front row of a rock concert without earplugs.  Suddenly the veteran missionary guiding us pointed up a tree.  Even from a distance the shining black ape looked huge, and when it began to descend he panicked.  "Hurry, get in the car! He is going to get us! Roll up the windows!"  The ape had better things to do than to climb through our windows, I thought sadly, but if he wanted to abduct me from the stupid grown-ups I wouldn't resist at all.

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Borobudor is a massive 8th century stone mountain in Central Java that towers 400 feet into the sapphire sky containing more than 2,000 stone reliefs depicting the life of Buddha and more than 70 life-sized Buddhas meditating beneath perforated stupas.  The out of shape missionaries were unimpressed.  All this glory in honor of Buddha was disturbing, and their pudgy bodies were unaccustomed to the shimmering heat.  I was only three, but it was easy to keep up.  The most ill-tempered of the group looked down at me and growled, "What a waste of time to bring her along.  She will never remember this."  My eyes narrowed and I mentally photographed a relief depicting Buddha's birth, and captured the blazing heat searing ancient stone.  I will never forget.

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When I was 10 Kuta Beach, Bali was an endless mother-of-pearl curve lapped by a tranquil turquoise sea fanned by graceful coconut palms.  My mother and I built castles, sank our toes into shining sand, and watched the sunlight encrust the wavelets with diamonds.   We were entirely alone except for small children offering shell necklaces to sell. A young mother pushed her little girl towards us.  "Will you take her to America?  I have no money.  She will have a better life with you."  My mother was raising two Indonesian girls already and she was tempted, but she could only give the woman what money she had and walked away.  

Today Kuta Beach is encrusted with luxury hotels, and it's trendy beyond belief.  It is hard to find a scrap of beach without a tourist on it.  David Bowie and Mick Jagger married there (not to each other) and resorts like Sandals and Club Med abound.  But just beneath my eyelids the ghost of Kuta remains.

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I don't need a vacation.  I have a time capsule, and when I close my eyes I am there still.

Santa Claus

I was six when I learned that the American Santa didn't deliver.  That December I sat on his lap and requested a toy I'd seen advertised on TV, a giant doll that came with its own desk.  I didn't care for dolls but the desk looked intriguing, and I wanted a toy for once so it was worth a shot.  Every Christmas Eve I would expectantly squeeze my presents and they invariably squished.  On Christmas and birthdays I received nothing but clothes, with the occasional stuffed animal thrown in (these squished too).  That Christmas my neighbor received the doll and I unwrapped a dress.  I hated dresses. The American Santa was a sham.

The Dutch Santa was different matter entirely; Sinterklaas was all business.  He added menace to the mix.  Accompanying him was a trusty black sidekick, Swarte Piet, who scooped evil children into his sack and carted them away.  In Ambon we learned that Swarte Piet tossed his sack into the ocean and drowned children like cats.   There is nothing like the threat of death to keep a kid on the straight and narrow.  I was very, very good in December.

One year another missonary decided to dress like Santa and surprise the children.  As his two kids and I peeked out at Santa waiting expectantly on the couch we noticed nothing but the bulging sack at his feet; it could only be a fur-lined body bag.  His children hid beneath the bed and refused to come out, and I was the only one brave enough to flirt with death by sitting on Santa's lap.

Years later I told my kids about Sinterklaas, Father Christmas and Santa, and how they divided up the duties on different feast days.  It wasn't difficult for the Santas to cover their territory with so many versions doing the job, especially since Santa didn't really bother with huge parts of the globe anyway.  Of all the Santa varieties, Sinterklaas was always my favorite.  He provided light and shadow, life and death, and there was nothing like the spark of menace to produce compliant children. 

When I was small December 26 was both a let-down and a relief.  On the one hand, Santa brought me nothing but clothes.   On the other, he allowed me to live for another year.

The Lucky One

The mark on my face is so tiny, you can hardly tell it's there. At its worst it was a small pink thing that might adorn the face of an adolescent. The only hint of danger may have been the sharp pain when it was touched, like a tiny angry demon that roared when my finger got too close and occasionally shed tiny tears of blood. It's nearly invisible after the biopsy's beheading, asleep just below my right eye. I don't want to disturb it. I want to leave it alone, but I know it will come back. They always come back.

I know about the puffy scars scalpels leave in their wake, and can already envision the crooked centipede stitch tracks that will meander awkwardly from my puffy black eye around my nose down to the jawbone. I can already see the large gauze pad glued to my cheek with blood and held on with crisscrosses of tape. I can see the shocked stares when I walk by as people wonder what happened to me. And I can feel the slow tickle of pain as the incision comes to life, dulled slightly by ibuprofen and sleep. I miss my mom's fjord blue eyes. I miss her prayers.

An old schoolmate's baby grandson is fighting leukemia; that is infinitely worse. And in the scheme of things, this is nothing. The tiny demon has politely remained on the outside - at least I hope he has. And as far as cancers go this is the little brother, the small bully who just might be knocked out with a single punch.

Sometimes it is not easy to remember how very, very lucky I am.

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Costa Rica, Part II

I leaned back in the seat and watched Costa Rica pass by in a blur of real estate signs. Even the bathroom stalls were colorfully wallpapered with them. Landscape elves perched on ladders like hairdressers grooming each bush and tendril to supermodel perfection. Meanwhile the treacherous highway chuckled with death on its mind. The left lane became a bottomless pit and a forlorn semi lay on its side like a beached whale. Distracted, Crystal veered off into a ditch and manfully shouldered the car back onto the road. We laughed in relief and remembered the men we’d watched earlier attempting success with some women at an outdoor cafe. They sauntered off in a beer-soaked blaze of glory and backed their van deep into a ditch. Despite heroic pushing and pulling, their van crossed its arms and refused to budge. We stopped at a restaurant intriguingly named “Los Crocodillos” overlooking a pride of giant crocodiles floating like bath mats or extras from a Tarzan movie. Crystal ate one of their brothers in a burger. Back on the road the rain forest submitted to coffee plantations and then we reached the sea. At Jaco beach Crystal parked by a busy beachfront cafe and tugged her beach shoes out of the backpack. Near-naked women wearing dental floss thongs lolled beside our car and we ran down to the water. The sand was cloud-soft and the waves caressed my toes. Crystal waded to her knees. “Let’s put on bathing suits!” she suggested. I followed her to the car, wondering how I could change into the suit without being noticed, when she unlocked the door and exclaimed “What did you do with the backpacks?”The beautiful new backpacks had vanished, taking with them my cell phone, our clothes, Crystal's shoes, toiletries, medicines; sunglasses, binoculars, everything was gone except a little backpack containing our travel papers, and a top I’d hand-washed earlier and left on the seat to dry. We disconsolately listened to the thong women tell the police they had watched three men break into our car, and in the police station we saw a man with a gun type our losses in triplicate. They did everything but dust for fingerprints. It could have been been a murder investigation. "We will try to get your belongings back to you," the detective said optimistically. We slumped. Would the thief enjoy my new bathing suit? Was he even my size? We climbed sadly into our violated car to consider our options. Although we had planned to visit Manuel Antonio National Park, it now seemed safer to return the car instead. At least all was not lost. We had our precious passports and our cameras. The drive back to San Jose was a pinball game with high stakes. The road would suddenly come to an end or split in the center without notice. It became suddenly one way with cars aiming for us like bullets. The highway narrowed, shot down a hill and ended on a cliff. We crept in the dark through a village crying "Where is San Jose?" in abysmal Spanish, and a grandmother said "San Jose? Oh, grande, grande!" and waved expansively in the opposite direction.It was very late before we found Dollar Rent A Car in San Jose and said farewell to our sorry steed. A cheerful driver offered to find a hotel room for us. "Are you willing to spend $150 for a safe room?" He eyed us and lowered the price to $50.00. Starving, we walked through dark shuttered streets to a pizza hut where we watched Barcelona defeat Costa Rica for a championship. At the cheerless hotel we rang the bell endlessly before the clerk unlocked the door and let us in. In the middle of the night I heard something slide into the lock and the jiggle of the doorknob; I shouted and the disappointed intruder went away. At least the hotel had a computer, and in the morning I wrote asking my son to disconnect my cell phone. The thieves might enjoy the backpack, bathing suit and shoes, but if they were phoning their mothers I did not want to pay the bill.

Don't Cry for Me Costa Rica

I will travel anywhere, and I am a good travel companion. I have to be. I do not travel well alone, for I have the sense of direction of a hamster in a salad spinner. I agonize in airports and endlessly recheck my ticket just in case the flight number changed when I wasn’t looking. With a companion I can relax and become a golden retriever with the wind in my fur. Just do not ask me to read a map unless you have an axe or a gun.

On other trips I always packed too much, and unnecessary clothes and shoes became boulders in my bag. Now the sturdy backpack Crystal sent contained only summery clothes and my first bathing suit in years. My chalk-white legs would strike everyone snow blind anyway, so my looks didn’t matter. I even brought medicine, though I had once lived in Indonesia and my blood contains a tiny Statue of Liberty announcing “Give me your parasites and amoebas longing to be free.” Costa Rica is tame in comparison but I obtained the typhoid, tetanus and malaria medicines because Crystal suggested it. I stuffed my passport into a pouch, shrugged on the backpack and became turtle woman, a snail, a trailer with legs. I was ready to go.

I spent an entire night at the SeaTac Aiport using my backpack as a pillow, and the flights did not end. I arrived in Costa Rica three and a half hours before my daughter and knew I would not find her outside in the dark, so I planted myself at the entrance like a barnacle. “What does she look like?” a kind security officer wanted to know. Small, I said, with black hair. “You described everyone here,” he said sadly. Humans swarmed like ants, but I finally spotted my offspring and pounced in for a hug.

We spent the first night at a luxurious Marriott hotel, and I ate my way through the breakfast buffet like a mouse in a cheese factory. We then found Dollar Rent a Car and greeted a quirky four-wheel-drive Suzuki Jimney that was to be our steed for the week. Crystal is a magnificent and fearless driver, but it was hellish getting out of San Jose. There are no road signs and the map lied. Crystal yelled at the road, the traffic and me. She dodged semis and scooters as I, the golden retriever, unhappily balanced a compass on my kneecaps and waited to die.

We finally emerged into brilliant jungles and coffee plantations and sailed gratefully into La Fortuna, where Hotel Pura Vida stood stoutly in the shadow of a purple volcano puffing smoke like a cigar. We joined a tour to Cano Negro National Park near Nicaragua, delighted to allow someone else to drive especially after viewing the unhappy aftermath of a collision between a semi and a horse. We sailed past monkeys and birds. Emerald caimans said cheese for our cameras, and we even saw a bit of a sloth. At least the guide said it was a sloth. It looked like lint to me.

We bade farewell to La Fortuna and drove into the dark through suicidal rabbits and neon frogs that bounced like poisonous marbles. The road narrowed, filled with boulders and seemed to end and we crept back to Los Heroes, an enormous Swiss Chalet that perched incongruously overlooking the jungle. I stood in the dark on the balcony awash in the love calls of monkeys, insects and birds, and we were awakened the next morning by noisy bird feet dancing on the roof. After a glorious breakfast we mounted our steed for the drive to the coast.

Where Am I?

A new blog. I've absolutely no clue what I'm doing - but what else is new? It's the story of my life.
More later.