On Home

Kate waits at the bus stop with her hood pulled tight, slim silhouette with a brown coat and blue leg warmers. Everything else is white, or at least grey – we are in the eye of a shaken snow globe, and Ottawa disappears in the whirl. Two layers of gloves, furry boots just liberated from storage, long underwear, woolen socks, and a scarf I looped around her face myself: This is Ottawa at thirty below, the 10^th of February; the wind keens around the chimney smoke then slips up your sleeve.  

          

A few days ago she was in Nicaragua, sipping a Tona in a hammock in our fairy godmother’s garden. A black puppy yapped at first but she soothed it to sleep by stroking his ears. Thirty-five degrees but cooler in the shade and that Tona may be watery but it certainly quenches. Sunscreen. Bug repellant. An umbrella for the sun. The wind is cooling but it shakes the mangoes from the tree; they squelch and startle the dog. Kate has fallen asleep with her laptop on her stomach. She wakes an hour later with butterflies in her hair.

Now she has arrived home in Ottawa after five months in Managua, a thirteen-hour delay in Chicago, the endless hoops of customs and security, a few hours unsatisfying sleep on an airport bench in Houston, and a sixty-degree drop in temperature. I met her at the airport with her coat and mitts; we hugged and sniffled at each other as people shuffled past with their luggage – it was like a movie. The delight of coming home. When mundane things become exciting, like Timmy’s coffee, or cheesy pretzels, or even the orderly way the traffic moves without careening or honking, despite the slush-sprayed windows and patches of murder-ice. Looking around at the city Kate asks, “Where are all the people? Why is it so quiet?” The bus, for which we’ve been shivering, arrives with a squeal of metal and douses our boots with slush. Onboard, I lean in to Kate, “Do you hear that? I’m the only one talking on the entire bus!”

We are staying at a friend’s place where books line the walls and the smell of coffee permeates. Getting in the door we fling away the boots, toques, scarves, gloves, jackets, leg warmers, and second layer of socks. There is a soft blanket; I mummify us. Ah yes, how could I forget those icy feet of the grave nibbling at my warmth! She says, “I can’t believe we only have a week together before you go to China.” I say, “It will move so fast, you could blink and miss it.” She curls a little closer.  

On the drive from Ottawa to Toronto to visit Kate’s family the snow falls relentlessly on our rental car. A five-hour trip grows to an eleven-hour odyssey when we realize we forgot a passport necessary for our endless visa administration; I stop the car and pick up coffee, gas and Red Bull. When I return, Kate is wielding pen and paper: “Let’s brainstorm for our last blog post.” In Nicaragua the blog was our demonic overlord, pushing a camera into our hands, demanding its weekly tribute: a slice of brains. Now it is an old friend who makes us sad when we visit because she keeps staring off into a vacant corner and talking about "the good old days.” We keep ourselves so busy we don’t notice the ticking clock: Captain Hook’s crocodilian nemesis. The ride is long enough for us to run out of paper and words; Kate begins to drift off (“I did not drift off!” she protests) and I slip my hand into hers. Our fingers tangle.  

In Toronto we slip away to grab a moment together and a coffee. She sips from a mug the size of her head; I snap photos to remember her by. Looking back, I wish there was more Kate in the photos, and less mug. In this moment we are feeling particularly adrift; we have grown confused by the idea of home. Is it Canada, Nicaragua, France, China? It has become a moving target. It used to be wherever my books were, but then I bought an e-reader. Now I think it has something to do with Kate and a fuzzy blanket.

It’s our last night together before I fly to China; I must have blinked. The hockey bag and the duffel bag and the gym bag are all lying in a heap in the hall. I’ve arranged tomorrow’s socks and underwear – my passport and tickets are in the binder on the desk. Kate scans the preparations and for a long minute doesn’t say anything, just stares at her hands from where she sits cross-legged on the bed. I sit next to her and rub her back softly. Her lip quivers. She says, “Matt, I don’t want you to go. You’re my favourite person” and I cry.

The next day there is too much snow on the ground for the cabbie to make it down the street. I heave the hockey bag on my back and Kate shoulders the rest. I will remember her overladen, snow-pelted, icicles of tears. I will remember her strong, skipping up the side of Maderas as I panted in the heat. I will remember her mermaiding in the Corn Islands, shrieking at a cockroach in Managua, leaping from the rocks at Somoto. I am picturing her with butterflies in her hair. I am trying not to blink.

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Built for Extroverts

Sundown in Managua is greeted by loud explosions.  These outbursts do not spew shrapnel, or destroy anything, or even produce colour or light; instead, their sole purpose is to make noise.  Indeed, daily life in Managua is punctuated by all kinds of competing honks, shrills, hisses, and quakes.  As an introvert from the quiet streets of Ottawa, Managua’s daily cacophony rattles and fascinates me.  

When Matt was here, it didn’t fluster me as much.  Maybe it was because when he walked beside me, fewer cars honked at us, or maybe I was too busy laughing at something he said to notice. Sharing tales of bizarre incidents from our day softened their punch: the sad puppies for sale on the highway; the live lizards on display for lunch at the market; the cold stares we'd receive from shop owners who had no patience for our mediocre Spanish skills.  Matt provided a refuge that helped me to process the chaos of daily life in Managua.

Walking to work, I lose track of the number of times drivers honk their horns at me.  Most often it’s a taxi driver who wants to let me know his services are available.  But it could also be an aggressive driver who wants to let me know he has no plans to slow down.  Yesterday I was honked at eight times by a giant dump truck, the man in the passenger seat hanging out the window to jeer at me.  Later while eating lunch, I’m roused by the muffled sounds of a loudspeaker. Further investigation reveals a pair of teens riding a horse-drawn buggy piled high with rusty metal, loudly advertising their willingness to buy scrap.  On the bus home, lively Nicaraguan music is played at top volume, sometimes competing with individual passengers’ personal radios.  The music is only interrupted by salesmen who take advantage of the captive audience to hawk miracle vitamins.  When I finally get home, a car alarm across the street goes off for an hour, as it has done several nights this week.  Drained, I consider wearing ear plugs full time.

The cacophony reaches new heights during fiestas.  Back in December, Matt and I traveled to Leon for the annual Griteria festival.   The whole thing kicks off outside of the cathedral, where the bishop cries out “Quién causa tanta alegria?” (Who causes so much joy?)  The crowd erupts with “La Concepción de Maria!” (The conception of Mary) and thus begins several hours of fireworks and noisemaking.  The first few hours were exciting and I got caught up in the merriment.  Amidst the light and explosions, families scrambled door-to-door collecting handouts: candy and chocolate as well as household items like toilet paper, toothbrushes, and mops.  We joined in the celebration, visiting the various shrines to Mary and trying not to get elbowed in the mad rush for loot.  Stunning 10-foot tall women puppets in traditional attire paraded through the crowds, adding to the spectacle.  By about 10pm I was ready for the noise to end; it sounded as if the city were under siege.  At midnight there was a cavalcade of explosions - a final opportunity to blow up whatever combustibles you had left.  When things finally quieted down, I fell asleep in relief.  The next morning, to my horror, the explosions started up again.  Why?  WHY?! 

What fascinates me is that locals do not appear distressed by, or even aware of, the racket.  A cab driver asked me last week what I think of Managua.  Replying honestly, I told him I find it loud and chaotic.  He looked surprised and shared that he chose to return to Managua after several years abroad in Panama.  “Es mas tranquilo” (it’s calmer), he said.  Sometimes I muse that maybe Managuans require a higher level of sound stimulation to feel at ease, as extroverts do.  Maybe they would feel agitated in sleepy Ottawa.  Are all Managuans extroverts?  Or do introverts just learn to develop excellent coping strategies? Maybe they've all moved north, shunning human contact, living on the edges of volcanoes.

When Matt was still in Nicaragua, we’d come home from the heat and clamour and turn on the AC.  Sometimes we’d share a couple Tonas with a giant ice cube and a spritz of lemon.  With Matt gone, I usually retreat to the backyard when I get home.  Aware of the lizard scampering about on the roof above me, the chatter from my next-door neighbour’s Spanish soap operas, and the persistent howl of the car alarm, I curl up in a hammock and insert my ear plugs.

On Loneliness

At five in the morning tomorrow a cab will arrive at the little apartment in which Kate and I have shared these last few months. The cabbie will be yawning, likely surly, as I stuff my bags into the trunk – why did I bring so many sweaters? I am leaving Nicaragua for Canada to prep for the next big thing; Kate and I embrace, then she will wave goodbye through the bars.

Today I am flipping through a photo album of the mind. After dinner, I squash the plantains and fry them twice, and serve the tostones with ice cream. We are walking the Managuan streets, sunburnt and pasty-mouthed, tumbleweeds of garbage rolling past our ankles; she slips her hand into mine. She is lounging in the hammock in the gazebo; I appear with a plate of cheese and crackers. I write down the strange things she says while asleep and read them to her in the morning. As we reached the dregs of my movie collection, Kate agreed to watch the following Arnold Schwarzenegger movies: Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Junior, Terminator 2, Conan the Barbarian, Running Man, Total Recall, and Conan the Destroyer. She rubs aloe vera on my sunburnt neck. I withdraw a splinter from her finger – she kisses me and calls me doctor. In the morning she extracts snuggles from me while I mumble, zoning in and out. Rare nights she gets cold her toes – frosty as the grave – cross the bed’s median, and vampire my heat. Sometimes I sing her sea ditties.

We fight, but our super-power is talking things out. She wishes I was more athletic. I wish she was zanier. She loves nature and hates animals. (I don’t hate animals!! I’m just a bit indifferent, she says) I love animals and hate nature. We have lived in a shoebox together for two years now – I feather-step around her for five hours after she falls asleep; she is sensitive to the slightest noise. In the morning she clangs the pots making breakfast and my snore continues unabated. She calls me Guapo and I call her Ladybug. She turns off the air conditioner, I turn it back on. We have cheese and I get flatulent; she retreats to the garden. I think she is naïve about people; she thinks I am naïve about money. When she was training for interviews she asked me to help coach: “Stressed in the interview? Just pretend the panel is naked.”  I said, wearing only a clipboard. Her career is flourishing, mine is a madman’s gamble. After Nicaragua she is going to France; I am going to China. After this period of remarkable closeness, we will be apart for almost a year. I will miss her terribly.

I remember loneliness – once we were as close as Kate and I are now. He has been lurking outside the front door of our apartment, often in the scorching heat, sometimes in the rain, like today. He is a man – portly, in a too-tight jacket. He keeps his gaze downcast, mumbling to himself; he lacks the local tongue. See his eyes, that spark of intelligence and sensitivity: those double-edged gifts and their price tag of pain. It was he, when my parents were fighting, who lifted the curtain and said, “Hide in here.” After I skipped grade three I would have been friendless but for him. He waited for me on the playground, sat next to me as I drew shapes in the sand with a stick. After that, he taught me to wear a clown’s mask. I remember moving to a new town in the middle of high school – all the cliques fully evolved. I was an automaton; got rides from the football coach after practice straight to the boxing gym. Loneliness and I would nap for half an hour on a pillow of handwraps before the next workout started – my body a shame and a pride, but always a wall.

He was there in the crowd when I read my Dad’s eulogy. This time, I hid behind a booze curtain. Emerging, I went to sea with the Navy, where you wake up at work and sleep at work, too – we were all turning into ships. I would see him, sometimes, sitting on the focsle, throwing stones into the water. In port, his reflection in the emptiness of bottles. In Afghanistan men and women were not allowed to touch; fraternization was forbidden. But it was fine to reach out to your enemies, so long as your fingers were missiles. For the first time I felt completely empty – no love, no infatuation, no crush – just my old friend. I came home and went back to school, older, jaded, brain-bucket overflowing with memories of people being blown apart. I couldn’t identify with my fellow students around me and they couldn’t identify with me: I was too big, too strange, too much, too severe, too critical, too hard. Or this is how I saw myself.

Remembering his kindnesses I let Mr. Lonely in from the rain. For it was he who taught me to string words and held my hands as I learned the piano – I have already set the chessboard for a game. Behind the curtain he opened books, at the gym he loaded another weight on the rack. He sits down across from me, taking off his sopping cap in front of the chessboard. He moves a pawn.

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Searching for Nicaragua

Kate flings herself off the cliff into the narrow river below with a growl; I am standing up to my chest in the Rio Coco – one of two rivers that carved the Somoto Canyon from the stone. Here in the far north of Nicaragua, in the shadow of Honduras, the Contra war grew bloody and tangled. We trace the shore for two hours before our river mingles with a second one snaking its way south from Honduras.

From here the river will wind east to the Atlantic, erratic and looping, like Kate and I in our explorations of the last few months. We have searched for new experiences but also authentic ones. Deep down, though, we know we are outsiders, invited to the party but only to the threshold. We can hear the raucous music and see the shadows of dancers. An insider has to be born here, I think, has lived through Nicaragua’s tumult: her revolutions, violent overthrows and civil war. An insider has to have been shaped by a land of bold leaps, of taking that big breath before the dive, the war-whoop that echoes off the mountains.

But surely this is Nicaraguan beauty; we think, as we follow the curve of the river, sometimes floating downstream, other times hopping from rock to rock. The water is low now but a few months a year it rises twenty feet and carves the cliffs. As these wear down, boulders drop into the river; diverting it. But of course the river has nowhere to go, so it slices into the cliffs, boring holes, caves and gullies. Overhead we have outcrops and overhangs and promontories. There is a story here, written in stone; I am floating through a poem.

Luís, our guide: half-mad, irreverent, courageous and strong – he is Nicaragua too. Passing by herd of cows resting on the banks of the river, he rests heavy stones on the sides of two of them. The cows moo and swish the rock with their tails, but can’t be bothered to stand. Twenty-five metres above the water, so high we could hardly see him, Luís waves tourists out of the way then leaps – hanging in the air for a second – before landing with a terrific splash. He bobs to the surface, grinning. After the conflux of the rivers we encounter other tourists, some slow and frail, who clog the pipes of the canyon and slow us down. This annoys Luís tremendously; he vents by hurling stones at the canyon walls.

Floating past an outcrop, I’m startled by the flight of dozens of bats winging benignly past my head. Moments later, Luís fishes a crab from the river and holds it for a photo op – it pinches the air. There is life here, tremendous and shifting. A swarm of bees have filled a cliff-rift with a honeycomb that must be ten feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds. As Kate emerges from the water back onto the shore she disturbs a cyclone of butterflies or, if you prefer the lovelier Spanish, mariposas. They twist around her fluttering their yellow wings. I am particularly fascinated by one cliff face, moth-eaten, it seems, and worn away in rugged crags. On the sheer surface, plants have twisted their roots in crevices and managed to flourish. As I point, a dragonfly lands on my finger.

This cliff reminds me of Nicaragua, too. How the people have put down roots and thrived often without resources, fertile soil, and buffeted by storms. These clingers are the poor, the unfortunate by birth, those who can’t afford to build high walls of gleaming spears, behind which the rich and middle class ensconce. Turning from the cliff Luís indicates the last leg of our journey will be by rowboat. A sketchy affair – the oarsman bails continuously with a sponge. Hiking back to the hostel we bid farewell to Luís and turn for one last look at the canyon.

On the bus that afternoon, I fail to grab a seat in the press of bodies, human hive, and am forced to stand. I grumble inwardly until a young mother squeezes in front of me with an infant in her arms and a toddler wrapped around her leg. Her arms are so full of child she can’t reach the support strap; her eyes are expressionless, unreadable. As an elderly lady nears her stop, she gestures for the mother to take her place. I lean towards Kate, “Maybe that was it, the authentic Nicaraguan experience. Both the suffering and the kindness.”

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