A diffuse light teases the sheer bedroom curtains. Rooster
greets the dawn. Charlie’s wet nose nuzzles my ear. After three weeks here I no
longer need to look at my watch to know it is 5:10 a.m. The day has started. A
little too early for Paul, but when he hears me rustling in the kitchen, making
our coffee, he’ll be up too.
I make the coffee with the Melita – a plastic cone that fits
a filter and makes one mug at a time. While the water heats on the stove, I set
the Melita on my travel mug. Whenever possible, I’ll use my travel mug; it
makes drinking my coffee a leisurely activity – no matter how long it takes me,
the coffee will still be piping hot.
Now that we’ve unpacked, though, Paul prefers what he calls
his “Cindy mug.” Years ago my sister Cindy gave Paul a handmade mug for
Christmas. It’s square on the bottom and round on top decorated with a moon and
stars. He wrapped it carefully in bubble wrap and was delighted when it emerged
unscathed from one of the “miscellaneous kitchen” boxes.
Paul wanders into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of fresh
coffee. As we embrace, we murmur “I’m so happy here.” “Me too.” The dogs will
have none of it, and fuss at our ankles, anxious to check out, with the 5
million scent cells in their noses, what enemy dog might have dared enter our
property while they slept.
Until yesterday, we had to drag two dining room chairs out
onto the patio every morning and drag them back in at night. But now, Jenny and
Tim have given us two white plastic deck chairs – Christmas in October. Sitting
outside each morning at six we marvel at the scene unfolded below us. Each day
dawns slightly differently but we always look out on lush green fields and rows
of coffee plants. Here and there a blanket of black shade cloth protects what
will become the fabulous Costa Rican brew. Red-roofed houses dot the landscape.
In the distance we can see our town, Grecia, the prominent steeples of the
church looking expectantly to the west, as is every church steeple on every
town square in the country.
As the dogs romp on the front lawn or sun themselves on the
patio, we breathe deeply. Each breath of clean mountain air feels healing,
cleansing, life-giving. Some mornings, before my second mug of coffee, I need
to stop my reverie to hang out the laundry that I’ve washed the night before.
It’s important to get it on the line as early as possible, ever hopeful that
morning sun will win out over driving afternoon rains and I’ll be able to pluck
dry laundry off the line on the same day I’ve hung it out.
This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I miscalculate the
speed of the clouds filling in the valley below or hiding behind the eastern
hills. Then the rains come, and my laundry gets a second rainwater rinse, and I
wait another day to let it dry. It was frustrating that for the eight years I
lived in the Valley of the Sun (Phoenix), I never hung out any laundry except
for our bathing suits and towels. Probably my job and volunteer work and
hobbies got in the way, but also, there was the ever-present dust. So I used
the clothes dryer, just like about 90 percent of the other desert dwellers.
Here, I have no choice. There is only a washing machine in
the laundry room. Paul has offered to help me hang the laundry, but I’m a
little obsessive about the how of it, so I decline his assistance. Going back
to my childhood days on Augustine Street, I had to hang the laundry in very
specific order. Never would a facecloth be hung amongst the underpants. And if
you were a t-shirt – you would get hung in a neat row with the rest of the
t-shirts – in color-coded order, from the hem, all facing the same direction.
And so the sunny morning goes. After laundry and a second
cup of coffee, there’s maybe some writing or art, sometimes a Spanish lesson,
but first the daily sweeping and mopping. Again, I am loathe to share these
chores with my more-than-willing spouse. He is master of the dish washing, and
that is fine by me.
I might add flour to my sourdough starter or start a soup
for the evening’s meal. I have time now to indulge all my joys of cooking. But
mornings are also the time to do anything related to the internet. As we’ve
learned firsthand, when the rains come, often with them comes lightning, and
all of our technical equipment has to get unplugged. Just the other morning,
Paul was screwing in a light bulb when lightning struck – fiercely. It burned
his finger and, possibly unrelatedly, caused Lily to throw up. The sound was something
like a Mac truck crashing into a moving freight train, if you were in between
the truck and the train – only louder.
So even though all of the outlets look like they’re
grounded, they’re probably not, and we have no internet now to prove the point
even further.
Once the rains come – and this could be anywhere as early as
noon or as late as 6 p.m. – the mood changes. Grey skies darken all of our
large windows and the sound is deafening. I might need to throw on a sweatshirt
and some socks. It’s in this damp chill that I remember why I’d decided to make
soup for supper. The afternoon darkness is the perfect excuse for a nap, and
the dogs have usually beat us to the bed.
When I awaken, there might be a break in the rain and I let
the dogs back out to run off steam, chasing each other. Charlie patrols the
perimeter of the property, re-marking all the bushes that the rain may have
rinsed clean of his earlier manifestations. Sacha pops out from the little
house we’ve made for her on the porch and politely requests “up” into my lap.
As I nuzzle her, she makes tiny little growling noises – if dogs purred, this
would be purring.
Lily lets me know
it’s “ball time” and I retrieve her big orange ball from its hiding place in
the laundry room. She had gotten fat and lazy in Phoenix, where it was too hot
to go for proper walks. Outside for her meant finding a good sleeping spot, so
she could continue the nap that she’d started inside. Now, she’ll run up and
down the hill playing catch for as long as we’ll play with her. All of this
exercise is trimming her up, but sadly, there’s probably nothing that can be
done with the excess skin that now flaps from her belly. I don’t think they
make Spanx® for dogs.
Before the next rain, Paul gets out the binoculars and we
watch the buzzards on their daily mouse hunt. They glide gracefully over the
valley, swooping and soaring. With their long necks tucked in, they resemble
hawks. It’s not until they rest high in the dead tree at the edge of our
property that their ugly heads emerge. It’s as if the tree and the buzzards are
one, waiting for Edgar Allen Poe to wax poetic about them.
When the rains come again, I go into the kitchen to finish
making supper. Now that all of my kitchen equipment and supplies have arrived
safely, I feel I can be my creative best. I’d packed all of my spices in a
shipping box and they are now safely stored in a kitchen cabinet. I don’t know
if it was legal to do that or not, but I was bereft without them in the two
weeks before the boxes arrived.
We eat supper in the glow of one of the three lamps we
shipped. All the Gringos we met or read warned that lamps are in short supply
in Costa Rica. One of the three didn’t have a good ocean crossing – it broke in
several places. Rather than toss it, Paul is rebuilding it. It’s one of my
treasures from my Crafts Report days,
so I’m glad it will live to see a new day.
After supper, we either download a Netflix movie or play a
game. We shipped Scrabble and Power Yahtzee, which are good for the times when
the internet is down and we can’t get to Netflix. On clear nights, we can see
the lights of Grecia from our windows. We haven’t seen many stars yet – or the
moon for that matter – they will have to wait, I guess, for the dry season that
starts at the end of November.
In this time of no furniture, of 85 boxes in various stages
of unpacking, projects yet to be done, we are healing. We are healing from the
stress of the last year of working – for me it was largely physically
challenging; for Paul, more emotionally draining. We are healing from planning
the move, packing and, finally, moving – an overwhelming experience which I’ll
write about eventually – there are many lessons-learned in our process.
After the evening’s entertainment, we have reached maybe
7:30 or 8 p.m. I turn in to the bedroom to read – we only have two options for
sitting right now – the bed or the dining room chairs (oh, I forgot that we now
have the plastic patio chairs). Paul has constructed both a desk and a keyboard
stand from shipping boxes – his office now looks like a giant Lego-land site.
He’ll either write at his computer, play his keyboard or, if the internet is
working – watch old comedy shows. My favorite way of drifting off to sleep is
listening to Paul play the piano. He always played when we had the piano in
Wilmington, and now that his keyboard is in the room next to the bedroom, I
love having him play me to sleep. When I was a little girl, my dad played the
piano every night after the news and I have that same warm, safe feeling now.
So are our daily rhythms, with minor changes from day to
day, as we settle in to our new life here on our mountain. As we begin
unpacking our art supplies, as Paul moves his workshop to the Tico house (behind
our house) and I plant my garden, get chickens and a horse and maybe goats,
these rhythms will change. We may find opportunities to volunteer in the barrio
of El Cajon where we live; we may want to connect regularly with expats nearby.
But that’s still in front of us. For now, these are our days, and we are happy.
