Temuco

If joy were a color it would be purple pastel pretty. Like old women and young children both wear on Easter, smiling while having deviled eggs and drinking kool-aid, chasing blown bubbles in the backyard. - Bradley Hathaway

I am sitting at the table, sipping mate with Miriam, when their little round faces appear in the window. Daniela, Fernanda, Mati, Diego and Hernando. They beckon me to come and play. I go out the back door, pulling on my knit hat because even though it’s technically summer, the air still hangs chill and misty here in the south. My friends come darting around the corner of the house, their hands hidden behind their backs. I hold out my arms and they fill them flowers. Empty-handed, they are beaming and I am laughing out of pure joy.

I sort of feel as if this is all like that. Like my arms have been filled with this unexpected, simple, beautiful gift. There are limits to this place, but everything that I experience here in this house is so full and I am undeserving but so grateful.

Tossing petals 

My mind keeps returning to the morning not so long ago when the rest were here too – and we gathered around a campfire to share the things we learned here. And those too were gifts.

How Ali talked about how she could measure the hours by the arrival of the bus that comes to bring the country to the city. Now, in the mornings I board that bus, and the driver greets me in English and it makes the other passengers laugh. I watch them greet each other, reaching down from the aisle to kiss cheeks.

I arrive in Temuco and spend my mornings at the university. And then I catch the bus again with the mothers returning with their shopping bags and the students in their uniforms. An old woman with gray hair pulled elegantly back from her wrinkles says, “Parece que va a llover,” and it strikes me as an universal sentiment. Yes, I think so too. It looks like it’s going to rain. 

The nights when we play outside with all those neighborhood kids, I remember how Lane saw that family here is something different. And children are raised by the village, given work and responsibility but loved and cared for, precious to everyone. I think it must be lovely to grow up here, where it is still safe to run free.

Inside we watch telenovelas and Roshard’s words cross my mind. How here the life we are living is not the same as what we see on TV. So we do not try to reproduce that image. We just live. He spoke too about how we must learn to value the things we have been given.

So often, when we go somewhere new, and meet people who are happy with so much less than we have, I hear the response of surprise and discomfort. And I think it’s easy to turn that knowledge into bitterness. But I don’t think that’s the right response. Soon, I will go back to a world of constant internet access and hot running water and a car to take myself to whatever I need whenever I need it.

And that’s where I live. It’s where I learned to play and to work, where I watch TV and look for flowers and where it rains too. And back there is the family I am counting down the days until I see again.

So instead of bitter, I think I’ll choose grateful. So when this place and these days become memories, they will be flowers still.

What to do with all those flowers? Stick them in my hat, of course.