Turrialba
Turrialba is a smallish town southwest of San Jose. Here, Emma is staying with what the Spanish school calls a “mama tica,” a Costa Rican mother, but since Emma and Iria are almost the same age, Emma prefers “hermana tica,” Costa Rican sister. Iria’s house is much bigger than Emma imagined it would be. It is the same size as Emma’s, and Iria cleans as if she were an American woman of the 1950s. Everyday she sweeps, and the tile and hardwood floors gleam. Few people in Costa Rica have washing machines. Iria’s daughter has one, but it is tiny, as if it could hold only three pairs of underwear. Every other day, Iria washes the clothes by hand, and every other day, she brings Emma a pile of her clothes: hand-scrubbed, hung on the line out on the veranda, and neatly folded. She cooks tican meals of rice, beans, and bread, with a few vegetables mixed with lots of mayonnaise. Although Iria rarely eats with Emma, she sits with her at every meal, and they struggle along in Emma’s bad espanol. Emma learns that Iria has bad health problems—diabetes, allergies, heart--for which she takes numerous gigantic pills. She learns that Iria’s husband ran off with a younger woman and now lives in San Jose.
Out on a small porch, a parrot and a small dog named Whitney bark at each other through most of the night. Nights are noisy in Turrialba. There are many small brown dogs that all look alike and who keep up a constant barking. The houses are open and airy and the sound of television and opera and salsa and meringue and Latino pop rises from them, all blended together with the locusts, the crickets, the dogs to make white noise.
From the veranda, Emma sometimes watches the neighborhood. The metal roofs all look dilapidated and rusty except for newer looking patches. But the colors of the houses are warm tangerines, lime greens and lemon yellows. The tile floors at the entrances are clean and shiny. The high metal gates are all neatly painted. Iria’s house is on a dead end, at the edge of the town center. Men stand outside discussing a newish 4x4. An old woman across the way sits on the front porch mending socks. One day a week, trucks converge on the recycling center two doors away. Down the street, people collect at the tailor’s—a small shop with a few sewing machines--which for some reason seems to be a social center.
One of the adventure guides told Emma that Costa Rica is known as the “Switzerland of Central America.”
In the summer, it rains every day in Turrialba. Usually, the mornings are sunny, but then the dark clouds roll over the hills and settle on the pueblo. The rain hits the metal roof, drowning out all other sounds. Water dripping in pans. Everyone goes to bed early and rises early. The lights are always dim at night, with no light bulb above 40 watts. The shower is cold, but there is a rumor that the water in Costa Rican houses is heated just enough to take the edge off. Emma is not sure she believes it. She can’t stand directly in the shower, but splashes herself with cold water from the edge.
Sometimes, Iria gestures to Emma and says “vamos” and Emma understands that they are going out. Emma never quite knows where they are going, but so far they have gone on errands to the supermercado or to take her grandson Rolando home. Babysitting Rolando is one of Iria’s other jobs. She also sells housewares and lingerie from catalogues.
The room where Emma stays was once a child’s room, and is full of old textbooks. Emma reads the geography books to learn Spanish because they have enough cognates that she can easily understand. They always begin with the universe and the stars and the planets and the volcanoes before getting down to human groups. “Estrella,” “mundo,” “volcan,” “sol,” “via leche.”
today
Not to amazingly, in this most recent age of globalization, Emma has computer access at the Internet cafe on the second floor of a building in downtown Turrialba, Costa Rica. There is too much to tell for today, but she will say that it is a world of breezy porches, sunshine and thunderstorms, a small town pace, and lots of hugging and kissing. And now she must find a telephone card.
Ems is off to Costa Rica tomorrow, and wishing everyone a wonderful summer.
the extreme Mom makeover
Emma's son is referrring to it as the "extreme Mom makeover." First, it was the new house, with its miles of hardwood floors and funky, but cool colors and awesome four season sunporch and swathes of clematis over the decorative fence. You must understand that Emma has lived a rather spare life in terms of material possessions, so acquiring an actual house surrounded by trees that make a canopy over the street with the sound of lawnmowers and the small of grass and all the middle-class comforts. .. . well. . . .this is just, to put it simply, YUMMY.
And in order to actually *see* this property, Emma has gone now and gotten LASIK, clear-sighted now after 40 years of glasses. To open one's eyes and see right away without fumbling, to make out the leaves on the trees outside the bedroom window, the flowering whatever-it-is-tree. Yes, of course, a metaphor, too.
The people who lived in this house kept all their windows closed, and Emma has thrown them all open now to life. The hardwood floors without carpets make all the laughter and shouting ring through the house.
The made-over Mom--well, who knows what will happen next!
