Plop (Dish in the dirty water)
Squirt (Soap on dish)
Ch ch ch (Scrubbing dish)
Plop (Dish in clean water)
Plop, squirt, ch ch ch, plop
Plop, squirt, ch ch ch, plop
Plop squirt, ch…..
Everyday life routines without the electrical convinces have a way of creating their own unique rhythms.
Scrubbing clothes on the pila and hanging them to dry in the sun moves to the beat of soap and water running over the hands moving “la ropa” back and forth on the texture. The sun sizzles down as the wind invites the clothes to dance along the line.
Making coffee is like a refraction of light as the clear water falls into the cloth full of beans and pours out on the other side rich and velvet brown.
There are no shortcuts in this world apart from my home in the United States where all of this is done by the press of a button.
As I am hand washing these dishes, I think about the fact that in a short twenty days, I will be back in my country. I think of how I will do the dishes there- merely stacking them into a machine which washes them for me. For some reason beyond me, this simple concept is unbelievably overwhelming. I haven’t seen a dishwasher in a year, which leads to all of these other things I haven’t seen in so long.
The idea of returning home feels like standing in the middle of a Super Bowl stadium with no protective gear on. The fast-paced American culture is the offense charging at me full-force and squishing me like a flattened bug on the ground. The crowds in the stands are yelling in English, and I want to answer each person, but there is so much happening at once. Flashing lights are everywhere advertising hundreds of products- beer, shaving cream, the newest phones, and I can’t hear my own thoughts anymore.
I return back to my hands in the warm dishwater, and breathe deeply as I decide to stay present. An elephant can only be eaten one bite at a time.
Late last night, I finally arrived at my grandmother’s house after days of travel. We rode the bus for 24 hours through Argentina, flew into Bolivia, spent the night in that airport, waited as our flight was delayed (Latino time), finally boarded and began our 7-hour flight into Miami.
Karissa and I have an hour to get to our connecting flight as we spring through the airport. We get to check-in, and everything is done by machine. I want to ask it questions, but it can’t answer. We keep moving through the process, we arrive at desks with real people who are speaking in English. Out of habit, we keep answering in Spanish.
As we bump into people, “Ay perdon” or “Ay, permisso.”
As people allow us to pass them, “Gracias.”
When I want to know the price of the juice I’m buying, “¿Cuánto cuesta esto?”
English is overly familiar, and suddenly, it is no longer my default when speaking to strangers.
This morning, I wake up in the United States for the first time. My squad mates are gone. I wait for my grandparents to wake up to have cereal and coffee when it hits me that my grandpa who passed away a month before is really gone.
There’s a large, flat television screen. Magazines on the end table are in English. For some sense of normalcy, I fix myself a cup of yerba mate. As I look around for matches to light the stove, I realize that I no longer need them. I look for the sugar, and feel overwhelmed with the never-ending number of drawers and cabinets and appliances for a million different things.
As my water is boiling, I do a 180 through the kitchen. There are some months where my living was nicer than others, but it was never this American. The feeling is ineffable. Suddenly, I glance at the television, then all of the leftover food, then at the microwave, and I am in tears.
I call my mother on my grandma’s home phone and sob to her how I don’t deserve her, or my brother or my dad or any of my other relatives and friends. There are so many people so alone in the world and so many children on the streets with only the clothes on their backs.
Then I have this family and these friends so eager to see me, but I don’t know that I want to see them. I am so excited to reunite with everyone with butterflies in my stomach but still am in a place where I feel so undeserving of all of the excitement and affection towards me. By all of these people, I feel elevated as if my work in other countries was more valuable than what they did on U.S. soil.
It’s not.
As each tear releases a piece of what I am feeling, I fall back asleep, preparing for the day ahead of me- Thanksgiving with an abundance of food and a family with questions.
(To be continued)
