Tourist

It's different when you're a tourist. When you're a tourist the place welcomes you with open arms. "Hola, bienviendos chica, ah linda". When you are a tourist the young men beckon with abandon, there are no consequences or responsibilities. The warm wind blowing off the land leads you to the ocean, to the swaying of the palms, planted just for your pleasure. The tourists gather at the beach stripped of their clothing and inhibitions covered in sun-block and sand. The sea promises to hold them in it's gentle embrace to wash away their worries. The touristas are beautiful, admired, happy. Sun burns away their worries, browns their skins and covers the ashes of their former lives with it's brown stain, behind their sunglasses they are superstars.

Or so it should be. Or so it appears. And for many it is true. They've left their former selves behind, they are going to have fun damn it, they paid for it, and if the sun and sand can't create joy there is always alcohol or drugs. But when they go home they will have had a good time. And whatever they did it doesn't matter because they did it on vacation, it was separate from their real lives, no one will know if they fucked the short but cute bartender on the beach in front of the hotel, or took some free coke from the taxi driver on the way to the hotel and can't remember the details of the next day or so.

Perhaps Costa Rican think that all gringos are essentially sex maniac drug fiends because they only judge from the tourists and from the surfers who moved here because they can stay stoned between catching waves.

It's different when you live here. It's different when you have kids here, when everywhere you go you see someone you know. Any action you do can and will be known by everyone minutes after it happens, and your kids will hear. And maybe if you really admitted it, if I really admitted it, it's different for me because I just can't let go. I don't want to lose control, the idea of being out of control scares me - consequences if only those I inflict upon myself haunt me.

My ex is outside my office singing in the restaurant. Dock of the Bay "Sittin' here resting my bones And this loneliness won't leave me alone, It's two thousand miles I roamed Just to make this dock my home" I understand. The loneliness of being so far from my friends and so close to so many other people I don't care about doesn't leave me. Ah he's finally stopped singing that one. Now it's Margaritaville "some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I think perhaps it's my own damn fault." It could have been, it should have been better than this. I have the perfect temperament for fidelity and loyalty. I would have stayed with him no matter what. I didn't realise that the crashing of the waves doesn't just seduce the tourists. It seduced him too, he went into vacation mode, he was going to do better than me, one of the beautiful bikinis would be his. And they were.

In the lush green light I don't feel more beautiful. I feel inadequate and unworthy. And in the practised compliments of the young men I feel only the shallow emptiness of my own longing.

My ex made me cry again. Shit I swore he would never make me do that again. I walked to the bar. I wanted a drink. I wanted to drink until I was smiling like an idiot. I don't have to drive home, my mom is going to pick me up. I stand at the bar. Donald says "Quiere tomar?" Do you want a drink? I want to drink. I want to be drunk. I want to be alone in a room crying. I want to laugh, smile. I want to block out the sound of my ex singing sad songs in a sad voice. I had some tequila 2 weeks ago, two shots at the hotel. The first free by the owner who wanted to see me drunk, everyone wants to see me drunk as if I will become some other person a happy tourist instead of the sad frustrated owner of a business which I care about less than I've ever cared about a business I've owned. A business that is run not by me but by my manager who won't quit, even when I fired her. She just pretended I'd said nothing. And thus I had.

I start to order, start to point at a drink and then I stop. I stop because I know. Because tomorrow my kids will be told their mom is drinking at work now,because I'm not a tourist, because I'm me. Because when it comes down to it I want my privacy more than I want fun. I want to maintain my dignity more than I want to make a fool out of myself.

I want to go somewhere else, somewhere as a tourist. I want to be serenaded by the sound of the waves, I want to listen to a lounge singer I wasn't married to sing songs about love and longing. I want to order a drink from the bar without starting a reputation as an alcoholic.

 

Silent tears

She said she'd only seen me cry 3 times.  Then she counted and it was 4.  Four times.  She'd only seen me cry four times.

That's what she told me, she told me she'd only seen me cry 4 times and I needed to stop.  That I needed to stop because I was scaring her and she was going to start crying too.  My daughter needed me to stop crying but I couldn't.  I just couldn't.

It was a mere 3 months after the earthquake, the 7.6 earthquake that had changed our lives and moved us out of our home of seven years.  I'd packed up everything, talked to builders, gotten quotes.  "I'll give you a quote for the insurance $110,000 for repairs but I think I could do it for about half that", I'd gotten other quotes "Don't fix the house lady, tear it down, you need a new house."  And I'd had engineers from the insurance company out twice.

See the thing is I'd expected more. I thought I'd gotten lucky.  Six weeks before the quake I bought earthquake insurance.  $150,000 if my house was totally destroyed.

It sure seemed totally destroyed to me.  $150,000 would get us a new house. I felt like I'd finally caught a break, I'd get $150,000 build a new house for $100,000, a tiny new house and spend the other $50,000 to start pulling me out of debt.

$50,000 would get the kid's school paid, would get the money I'd put on my dad's credit cards paid off, I'd get ahead for the first time since the recession hit.

I called, I waited, I walked the engineers through the house. 

When the earthquake hit I'd run, stood outside waiting for the house to fall down but it didn't. It just broke into different sections, each part of the house pulling away from the other parts, each part moving away from it's point of origin. And then I was pulled from my point of origin, forced to move until the house was repaired or replaced. Now here I was waiting for the news, how much would the insurance pay me?

$8000

They told me they would give me $8000.

I started to cry.  I couldn't stop.  My daughter kept pulling on my sleve.  "Stop crying mommy, stop crying, please stop crying."  The man in front of me looked embarrased for me, I was in a room full of people and I couldn't stop.

All the silent tears I'd been holding since the earthquake all needed to come out at the same time.  My home was destroyed, it's spine broken and they were offering me almost enough money to give it a manicure.

A Day in the Life

I sit at my desk most days and look over the ocean.  From my desk I can see my Quicken spreadsheets and schools of fish breaking through the waves while pelicans dive for their dinner.

 

“You got room? Tonight you got room?”

“Yes” I say jumping up. “Yes, we got room.” I break out in broken English or broken Spanish while Italians, Francophones or Germans ask for lodging.

 

“Your English good”, they say “where you learn it?” I didn’t learn it, it’s my language I want to yell – I just can’t speak it anymore I spend my days talking in gibberish, hand signals and Engspanglish.  I understand most conversations I overhear in Spanish, Italian, French and German yet at the same time I feel like most everything I say in English or Spanish I say only for myself.  My employees and children just pretending they didn’t hear if it’s not something they want to hear.

 

Of course sometimes I have to pretend I don’t hear.  On day a couple watched the sunset into the ocean and came to my desk asking what time the sunrise was.  “The sunrise?”  “Yeah, what time do we have to get up to watch the sunrise over the ocean.” Well obviously the sun will rise, go to the center of the sky, change its mind and set in the same spot.  So I answered “Well if you start driving now you’ll be able to see it rise on the Caribbean Coast.”

But the thing I hear the most is, “You must love it here.” Every American tourist says the same thing.  The other nationalities don’t.  It’s only the Americans who only have 7 days vacation who dream about living in the tropics forever. It will be perfect.

 

“I love it most of the time” I say because I’m horribly honest.

 

“What do you mean?  Most of the time?”   Only a tourist wouldn’t understand, can’t understand. 

 

So I answer, “Things are different when you live here, but it’s a great place for a vacation.”

I don’t say “I’m trying to balance the books and this year is 20% down on last year and last year sucked, tourism has been wrecked by the economic slowdown you moron and you’d know that if you watched the news. It wasn’t’ just the US that was affected, your little crisis is still crippling the rest of the world.” I don’t say “The municipality is a bunch of bureaucratic criminals; they just raised the price of my liquor license 6000% and are insisting I put in handicapped facilities that are costing me in excess of $4000.” I don’t say “I’d love to sell because but I can’t because the municipality hasn’t renewed my concession on the land.  And because I can’t sell I am missing the last years of life my parents have.”

 

I can’t say any of this, so I turn and point at the ocean, the fisherman is on his way back through the waves with his small boat and the sun is dropping down to kiss the sea and I say “What’s not to love?  What more could one want?”

 

Facing Forty

There’s a new trend to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of horrible events. We just had the 9/11 ten year memorial and now tomorrow, this Thursday, we will be celebrating the 10^th anniversary of my 30^th birthday.

 I’ve been told the 40s are better. Compared to the 30’s they’d better be but I really don’t believe it.  Not on a deep cellular level.  I’m hitting this birthday the way a bug hits the windshield. I’m bracing for the impact with my life flashing in front of my eyes and my internal organs ceasing in anticipation knowing that this is it, from now on decay is all they can look forward to.  My best girlfriends both have babies and all I can think is – it’s too late, I’m too old – that part of my life is over.  Over and what have I done with it?  Where have the years gone?

I realized I was 29 years old when I first spoke at Story Salon.  29 seems a lifetime away from 40.  And it is – the lifetimes of my children have filled this time and they are finally and too quickly not needing me anymore.  I read a study that says people get happier the older they become.  They concluded in the study that happiness is due to lowered expectations.  That we expect less from life as we age and are more contented with what we have.

When do my expectations lower – will this ever happen to a Virgo, or will I always have expectations of myself that are too high?  When am I going to be content with the life I have – with a life which many people would dream of, the dreams of my childhood – when do I realize that I will never be a wealthy novelist, when do I give up on trying?  Or when do my dreams come true?  And when will I be ok with it either way?  And my other dreams?  I realized the other day that I’ve never been loved.  I told this to my mother and she said to me “Your dad and I have always loved you.”

And they have – my children love me too – but that wasn’t what I meant and she knew it.  But it had to be about her.

The  29^th anniversary of my mother’s 40^th birthday is on Friday the day after mine.  On the weekend of my 21^st birthday she turned 50.  And when I said I wanted to do something fun for this birthday, she said “Well I didn’t get to do anything fun for my 40^th birthday  - and what are we going to do for my birthday Friday?”

My mother is the glass in the windshield I am hitting reflecting back what a lifetime of bitter unfulfilled expectations can give you – what a lifetime of being a Virgo creates.

 

And I try to breath while my lungs cease waiting for the impact because after tomorrow there will be many more days, days which could bring joy and contentment  - if I let them.

 

 

mommy

My mom has just been diagnosed with a malignant tumor in her abdomen the size of a melon. They say it's over 20 cm in diameter and growing. They say it's a liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer where your fat cells become cancerous. I know they are wrong.

I know what is inside her, filling her. Twenty years of anger, twenty years or more of disappointment all pushed down, all swallowed. Twenty plus years of rage at the world. I say twenty years because I remember when she wasn't that woman. I remember when she was a happy person, everybody's instant best friend, the charming beauty with no obvious attributes but the power to attract and please none the less.

My father remembers her to, that's what has kept him married all these years, those glimpses of sunlight, those moments of joy when the angry bitch subsides for a moment and the sweet woman he married reappears.

My brother has hated her for so many years now. He's lived off her, used her, abused her, treated her like she was dirt. She's been his servant, his housekeeper, his cook, his slave, hating him, resenting him while he hates and resents her.

I don't know who's fault it is. My father who loved her well, then hated her with equal force, or my brother who never respected her and has treated her like an idiot his whole life or my sister who left and did not return, the ultimate betrayal of a mother's love. Or it is mine, the one she has always fought with the one who never stood up for her enough, the one who always sided with daddy from the moment she was born. I don't know who changed her, in order to breath I must believe ultimately she changed herself and although we all probably had a hand this was her choice, her decision to transition into the beast, her option to hold on to all the rage, to hold on to all disappointment, to hold it all deep inside herself festering, mutating into something that would kill her.

And now she is the sweet woman again. My father's crying every day because he will miss her, after threatening to divorce her for 20 years he can't stop crying about how he doesn't want to lose her. After years of telling her to cover her fat guts because it's sticking out, after years of not touching her with enough love to notice a growth the size of a child within her after years of taunting her about her weight her weight that was this thing, this thing growing inside her, this toxic ball of hate growing. Now he loves her, now he is going to miss her. My brother's angry, it's the emotion he knows best, for in his heart he is her child. He's angry that she's sick, he's angry that she doesn't want the operation.

The operation. My grandmother died of cancer. I don't remember her, my only memory that is about her is playing in front of the hospital on the lawn with my siblings because my mother had to go into the hospital to see her mother and I wasn't allowed to go in. I was four. My mother lost her mother when she was so young. I never realised that before. When I was little my mother was old, the most oldest, a grownup. And now I think, she's too young to die. 70 is too young to die. Now I think I'm too young to lose my mommy.

My mother thought she'd dodged the bullet, when she turned 65 she relaxed. No one in her family had gotten to 65, no one except her grandmother. Her grandmother had lived till she was in her 90s. Everyone else had died young, her mother, father, brother, cousins, uncle, aunt. She'd lived past 65 so that was it, she could live forever, at least as long as her grandmother. Sometimes life is not cruel, sometimes it is just ironic and sad.

I was the first one to ask if the operation was a good idea. It just didn't sound like her. I'd heard her talk enough times about it, about how the best thing about her mother's death was that at least the butchers didn't hack her into pieces before she went. When I look back now I've had so many conversations over the years about cancer with my mother. I realise now it's always been on her mind. So many conversations where she talked about how you shouldn't cut into tumors they would just spread, and conversations about how chemotherapy was worse than dying. So many conversations over so many years, conversations I wasn't really interested in having, conversations I never really listened to.

She is scheduled for the operation on the 21^st of this month. I talked to the doctor after I read online about the disease. I asked the questions I could remember to ask with call waiting beeping in my ear destroying my every thought, “Doctor what are the beep beep chances it regrows?” beep, beep “50%” “And then you beep beep operate again?” “I don't know beep beep if we'll be able to beep beep operate again.” “Why” “Too much scar tissue.” “And if it regrows beep beep” “It regrows agressively” beep beep “So if she doesn't have the operation beep beep how long until she dies?” beep beep “We don't know the growth beep beep rate so we can't predict the progression of the beep beep disease” “And if she waits beep beep for the operation beep beep” “We don't know how fast the tumor is growing but it beep beep is larger than when the scan was taken beep beep.” “The scan was taken two weeks ago” “Yes, it's a current scan beep beep I would think that the tumor will be inoperable in three to six months.” “So what are the chances that you open beep beep her up and the tumor is too large to operate on now.” “Beep beep, that is a possibility”.

After the call I was in favor of her having the operation, 50/50 didn't sound so bad. Online I'm seeing there is about a 30 percent survival rate for this after five years, less after 10 but young people don't get this disease. Young people haven't swallowed enough rage for this illness.

My first instincts were to go to her. To fly home, to be with her. And I am going, but in two weeks, not the day I wanted to leave, not the minute I wanted to fly but in a time frame that is practical logical. I don't feel practical or logical. I want to fly to her side and hold her around her fat belly, hold the tumor close to me and tell it that I love it, that I love her.

She says she's going to be fine. I know she wants to believe that. And it's possible. I know that. But I also know that this is the end. That my mother's life is at it's end. Whether she lives another 6 months or beats the cancer and has another 10 years this is the homestretch, this is all that is left. I want her to live this end as well as she can, I want her to spend her last days knowing she is loved, doing things she loves to do. I want her to fill the void with love, not hate, to exercise the anger and resentment and disappointment. I want her to die being proud of me. I want for her to live the rest of her days and die bathed in love.