Coming home

I have been very lucky these past few months because I have had only good stories to tell. Most of what I have written here is about doing a job I love and exploring the beautiful country that was my home this fall. I have left nothing out, because I think the less-glamorous parts of my adventure, like sitting on the floor of a bus or having my shoes walk off in the middle of the night, are what make it memorable and, I hope, entertaining.

What turned out to be the most glamorous part of my trip so far also happened to be the worst part, which led to my early departure. My parents came to visit me last week, after months of planning which involved my mother finally getting her passport in preparation for her first trip outside the US. They had an eventful flight into San Jose, in which the pilot twice tried and failed to land the plane in a dense fog. After the second attempt, the plane was too low on fuel to try again, and they had to fly to Managua, Nicaragua to refuel before the third and, luckily, successful landing. A van took them from the capital to La Fortuna, and I'm sure they felt very much like I did when I made the same harrowing drive almost three months ago. The exhilaration of careening through the foggy mountains at night is only rivaled by the same trip experienced in the daylight-- at night you don't know how very close you are to the mountainside, but during the day you can see every sheer cliff face.

The next morning, they went to Fortuna waterfall, which topped my mom's list of things to see in the Fortuna area. I met them at their hotel that afternoon, and right away things felt different. The hotel was cushy, way outside the traveler's budget I had been living on, and the English-speaking staff and hot showers were a strange but welcome sight. Going into that Americanized place made it clear how long I had really been gone, I was no longer used to starting conversations in English or being able to flush toilet paper (Costa Rica, like many countries, has a wastebasket-only kind of plumbing system). Because they hadn't seen me since I left, my parents could see what I couldn't, how tan I was and how long and light my hair had grown. The 10 weeks I had been there felt like no time at all, but Costa Rica had certainly left its mark on me.

Many buildings in Costa Rica don't have an address. If you want to tell someone where you live or even mail a letter, you have to give them directions from a landmark. Instead of 15 Main St or 123 Drury Lane, your address is 150 meters north of the church or 300 meters south of the park. Our hotel had an address, which made it easier to find. But it also made it easier for bad news to find us.

It's never good when the phone rings in the middle of the night. When the phone in our room started ringing, I thought it must be a wake-up call-- I was used to getting up before the sun was even fully up. But when I heard my dad's sleepy voice grow serious, and saw that it was only 2 a.m., I knew that something was wrong. My cousin was calling from 2,000 miles away to tell us that my uncle had died of a massive heart attack several hours before. Everything that came after the phone call was like a bad dream, even though no one slept that night.

When my dad asked me the next day what I wanted to do, my answer was out of my mouth before my brain even decided: I wanted to go home. If it had happened while my parents weren't with me, I probably would have decided to stay and finish my last two weeks. But as it was, with all of us already together and feeling so much grief, I couldn't imagine having my family leave me and going the next two weeks alone. I wanted to be home to feel security for myself, but mostly I wanted to be there for my mom who had lost her brother, and for the rest our family. Everyone I worked with understood completely. Costa Rica, like the rest of Latin America, is centered around family. They all acknowledged that the work I was doing was important, but it was more important for me to be with my family right now. It is sad but true that things like this bring everyone together; when I went to Pennsylvania for the funeral, I saw people in my family who I hadn't seen in years. It was comforting to know that everyone felt the same way about the importance of being there and being together--now matter how far they had to come or what plans they had to change to do it.

The first few days of being back in the States were strange. It still is, really. The weather was freezing compared to the sunny, humid days I was used to. I left the States in the heat of summer, and the usual cold days of fall never came. I think I expected it to still be summer when I came home, but there was no mistaking the season, if only because of the leaves. I had left a world of green for a world of reds, oranges and yellows. Because there were no crunchy brown leaves on the ground in San Carlos, every time I see one skitter across the ground here, I mistake it for a toad or a lizard, because in Costa Rica, that's what it would be.

Driving on highways, waking up after 6a.m., talking on a cell phone, wearing a sweater--all these things felt odd. I had been torn so suddenly from what I felt was my home, that for my first few days back it seemed like I had never really been there at all. The sight of steeple from the Catholic church in San Carlos, which for the past three months had meant I was home, was gone now, and I felt like I was nowhere. For the first few days I didn't want to see anyone except my family, because they were the reason I was home--really, the reason that I was in this strange limbo that was neither here nor there.

But now that I have been home for 10 days and started to resume some of my routines, the memories of my trip are coming back to me. I feel like I really was there, and I left my indelible mark on Costa Rica just as it left a mark on me. More than my tan, which will fade, and my hair which has already been cut, I am marked by the people I met, the children I taught and adored, the places I saw and feelings I had there, both bad and good. Feelings of being both small and alone in a giant world, but also of being a part of something lasting and intimate. I am home now, but I know I have also left a home behind.