Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue - 8*
When I awoke the next day, Richard had already gotten up, according to his habit. He likes to arise early when everything’s quiet, read a newspaper in his bathrobe, and drink a couple of cups of coffee before interacting with anyone. I like to sleep in as long as I can, spend a little time remembering my dreams (which are often spectacular and a terrific source of entertainment—if not, unfortunately, keen insights into my psychology, as hard as I try to puzzle them out) and then get dressed and get going. This morning, however, I felt groggy from traveling the day before and a tad strange about being in such a new, foreign environment, not as a tourist, but as a resident.
Richard and I sleep in the buff as we like to snuggle—not to mention the fact that when I have donned sleepwear in the past, it ends up very, very tightly wound around my torso, like a giant tourniquet, which, obviously, could be needlessly life-threatening. Our land in northern California lay in a remote stretch where we had no neighbors within view whatsoever, so we could walk around naked and no one ever saw us.
I should also mention that because I had never lived with servants, I didn’t think about the fact that they might be cruising around. Besides, if they were, I figured they would be in the main part of the house. Our little apartment wing occupied the most out-of-the-way part of the compound.
And so, even though one entire wall of the apartment was glass that looked out onto a grassy garden area, I didn’t think anything at all about sleepily padding into the kitchen without a stitch on, grabbing up the water kettle, filling it with water, and then walking over to the stove to put it on to boil. As I headed over to the stove, who should I come face-to-face with, through the floor-to-ceiling window, but the startled young carpenter who had come to build a deck around the swimming pool.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t budge for a couple of minutes, my eyes feeling bigger and buggier than they’d ever felt. Finally, I managed to drop the kettle and run into the bedroom, where heavy curtains were drawn. Terrific. I’d just been spotted nude in a part of the country where women didn’t even wear shorts.
Now, for some people, getting seen naked is no big deal. Richard, for instance, is a born nudist. When he was a hippie in college, he felt comfortable in the summertime sitting around naked with a group of friends who were all clothed, happily oblivious to whatever discomfort they might be feeling (if any; times were different then). But I grew up in a Midwestern family in which no one even ate breakfast in their pajamas. We were all fully dressed before anyone saw us in the morning, and when I attended skinny-dipping parties in California, it was like those nightmares I used to have where I’m back in high school, except I’m in my underwear and my Aunt Annie and Aunt Cay are there and all I can find is a tiny little handkerchief to augment my wardrobe, and I try to crawl under my desk so that no one can see me, but of course, this offers no protection whatsoever.
Suffice it to say, I was mortified. I got dressed and then cowered in the apartment until Richard came to get me, saying it was time to head over to the language school. I wasn’t especially looking forward to it, as my last experience with languages had been taking an advanced French class at the women’s college I attended back East, taught by Parisians. I had won the French award at my public high school and I even thought that I might like to minor in French; but it turned out that my language background was a piffling trifle compared to the prep schools that my classmates had attended. I and another young woman, a tall, sweet, pretty girl who had attended public high school in Minnesota, ended up the dunces in the class and we earned the withering, expressive scorn of our professors. Once, the professor decided to take the entire class to talk about why the paper I handed in was totally and utterly execrable.
Again, some people might not find this so devastating. People with more resilience would shrug it off as mere bitchiness, switch their minor to Ancient Greek, and boycott Roquefort cheese and muscadet. (Let me hasten to add that the times I’ve visited France, the people there have been friendly, helpful, and charming.) But I feel upset for days when I watch a documentary and find out, for example, that a hippo has been exiled from its group. My family had a children’s book that we read as youngsters, Big Dog, Little Dog, that followed two dogs on a jaunt about town, and the one comic relief panel—which was a mustachioed man slipping on a banana peel with his bag of groceries flying up into the air—made me feel just awful for the poor man, so sad that I could hardly bear it. I sobbed all the way through Mel Brooks’ comedy about homelessness, Life Stinks. I am, shall we say, a bit of a softie. So I had avoided languages ever since I escaped my French class. I felt apprehensive about taking Spanish. I didn’t want anyone to yell at me or be mean to me while I struggled with learning the language. It didn’t help, of course, that I had accidentally tricked Paul into asking for a small estate at a restaurant.
So Paul and Richard and I piled into our Toyota jeep, named “Ruby” for her deep carnelian color, and took off over the back roads to attend classes in an old converted horse farm that lay perched atop one of the ridges outside of a nearby town. I mused as we drove how the terrain of central Costa Rica wasn’t what I had expected when I conjured up a vision of the tropics: It wasn’t covered in jungle. Like most places where humans live, the majority of the trees had been cut down long ago, and as one of the country’s most important exports was beef, they grazed lot of cattle—Brahmas, to be exact—which effectively kept trees from growing back. Flame trees and mango trees and papaya trees and Jacaranda trees were scattered here and there in gorgeous orange, purple, and yellow profusion, especially around people’s dwellings, but the effect was more park-like than jungly. We also passed a great deal of coffee farms, or fincas, as they’re called. Coffee is a pretty plant, with glossy dark green leaves, and the flowers smell sweet in a fragrant, non-cloying sort of a way, almost like orange blossoms.
In addition, we drove past a large number of scrawny, ugly, yellow dogs that found great sport in hurling themselves at the tires of the jeep. The Ticos loved and prized their animals, however, so you were in big trouble if you squashed one of these snarling, chicken-playing canines possessed of a feral, Cujo-like countenance not any less intimidating because they weighed only two pounds. And they really did like to come darting out of nowhere just when it was almost too late to slam on the brakes. Combine this with chickens playing chicken, scurrying out onto the road in that crazy, manic, zig-zagging way described as running around like a chicken with its head cut off, unerringly darting to the exact spot you would turn the wheel to avoid them, and it made for quite an exciting trip. Then we came to the unbelievably steep road that went to the language school. I was afraid that we weren’t going to make it without repelling ropes for the car. It seemed that we might just fall off the side of the mountain before we got to the top. This is not hyperbole.
We arrived safely, however, and were treated to a spectacular view of the entire central valley below ringed with its sleepy volcanoes. The classrooms were converted horse stalls, with metal roofs and tin walls that only came up half-way, to about waist-level, so it was pretty much like studying outside. A central courtyard was set up with a volleyball net, and there was a shaded spot where several hammocks were strung up. The Ticos clearly honored the needs of the human body to rest. It seemed to me that if an overpowering urge to nap came upon me, no matter where I was, no matter what time of day, I could probably find a hammock without too much trouble, climb in, and snooze away. The main building, which housed the administration, kitchen, and dining room had a living tree that erupted out from the roof, which gave a wonderfully exotic and charming effect. This is where Richard said I should go, where I was to meet with the director who would assess my Spanish skills while everyone else met in their classes.
As I entered the building, I could feel my nervousness rising. So, when the director appeared, a slight, dark-haired man with Elvis Costello-style glasses and a cute snaggle-tooth, I felt better. He absolutely exuded friendliness. He had a wonderful smile, a lovely, soothing voice, and giggled as much as a teen-aged girl.
“So, Celeste—that is your name, correct? Celeste?” He gave it the Spanish pronunciation in three syllables.
“That’s right.”
He laughed. “That is a wonderful name! Do you know, in Spanish it means ‘Sky blue?’”
Ah, that explained some of the amused reactions I’d received when I told people my name—especially when they found out my last name was White, or “Blanco” in Spanish. Celeste Blanco meant “Sky Blue White.” They probably thought my parents had a very strange sense of humor giving me such a peculiar name. “Hmm, no, I didn’t know that,” I told him.
He laughed again. “Bueno, my name is Otto.” He extended his hand to give mine a little shake. “So tell me, how much Spanish have you had?”
I gave a self-conscious cough. “Well, none, I’m afraid.”
“None at all?” he responded disbelievingly.
I shook my head, feeling embarrassed. “I studied French.”
“Oh, that is good!” he exclaimed, inflecting his melodious voice over a remarkable range, it seemed to me, of at least two octaves. “So you have had some experience with a foreign language.”
“Um, right.”
“Well, I will give you a little test for you to fill out so that I can see how much Spanish you know, and then I can decide which class you should take. Okay?”
“Okay, but the thing is, I really haven’t had any Spanish at all,” I blurted anxiously. “I can tell you before I even look at it that I probably won’t be able to answer any questions on the test.”
“That is fine,” he reassured me, giving me a friendly squeeze on the wrist. Then he handed me a sheet of paper on a clipboard and a pen. “Just call me when you’re finished, okay?”
I looked over the test and to my surprise, I realized that I was able to answer one of the questions. I knew that “hola” meant “hello.” I couldn’t answer any of the rest, though. I knew it didn’t matter, but this performance anxiety thing was bringing up all kinds of painful academic trauma residue; there was something horrible about taking a test where I simply couldn’t answer any of the questions except for one, even if it was just a placement test and there was no problem at all with my being a beginner. I stood up uncertainly and called for Otto, not sure where he had disappeared to. He popped his head out of a small office on the upper level.
“Sí?” he inquired, clearly thinking I must have some point of verification about the test I wanted to discuss.
“I’m, uh, done.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He trotted down the steps, took my test from me while giving me a big smile, and then glanced down at it. His smile froze. “Oh, you are right!” he declared, astonished. “You really don’t know any Spanish!”
“Well, I do know that ‘la quinta’ means ‘small estate,’ but that wasn’t on the test,” I explained apologetically.
“Well, that is something!” he replied, very encouragingly. I could tell that the style of teaching here was going to be very different from the French professors from hell.
He put me in a class with an elderly couple taught by a breathtakingly beautiful, playful young Costa Rican woman named Nuria, and the morning went well enough. Actually, it went terrifically well. In fact, it went so well that I ended up pissing off the elderly couple who apparently had no gift for languages whatsoever and accused me of showing off. What they didn’t realize was that I was living in a household where the majority of the residents didn’t speak a word of English and I desperately wanted to communicate. Chastened by their discomfort, however, I decided to cool my jets.
At lunch, I met up with Richard and Paul. The rest of the staff was eager to meet Richard’s wife as he had talked about me constantly before I arrived and he was a popular student. His mother was an anthropologist and he had inherited her fascination with people, in addition to her ability to charm just about anyone. I couldn’t have had a better ambassador precede me, especially since I tend to be shy; everyone was predisposed to thinking I was wonderful and I didn’t have to do or say a thing.
When everyone was getting ready to return to classes after lunch—simple but tasty fare that included rice and beans, empanadas, pickled beets and shredded cabbage—Otto came up to me and asked if I would mind accompanying him. I followed, wondering if I’d done something wrong.
“I am sorry, Celeste,” he told me with an impish grin. “I am not so beautiful as Nuria, but I’m afraid you will have to put up with me as your teacher.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised.
“Nuria told me that you didn’t belong in her class. She told me, ‘Otto, those other people are old and they don’t want to learn. But Celeste is pura vida!’”
“Well, how nice!” I responded. At least, it sounded like it, but then I realized I wasn’t sure. “So … What does ‘pura vida’ mean?”
“Oh, you don’t know that expression? It is very Costa Rican. It means … I suppose you would say, ‘pure life,’ or perhaps, ‘full of life.’”
Ooh, that was nice. I liked being called pura vida. And as we entered the classroom where Otto was leading me, I realized that I was going to get my own private class, which was going to make learning Spanish all that much easier. By the end of the day, I had made heartening progress and Otto was making me feel like I was a genius with languages. The people here were very kind, very sweet. And when Paul and Richard and I met up with some other students in a bar in town after classes and we quaffed a few ice cold beers, I realized that pura vida was, in fact, Costa Rica’s slogan. You could even buy T-shirts that said “¡Costa Rica! ¡Pura vida!” I would subsequently learn that Ticos used the expression in all kinds of contexts, taking on various meanings such as, “Yippee!” and “Right on!” and “How’s it hangin’?”
You know how, when something horrific happens out of the blue, you can get Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Well, I was experiencing whatever the opposite of that was. Post Fantabuloso Boosting Syndrome? (Yeah, that doesn’t have the same ring as PTSD. But, I don’t know … PFBS kinda works, especially if you pronounce it like the sound you can make flapping your lips together.) Everything seemed great, the future bright. All my senses were heightened. I felt like giggling for no reason, just like the Costa Ricans. I was full of energy, and, evidently, full of life.
So I know what this feels like; I know that this state exists. And I knew that this all came about because of the kindness and generosity of Richard’s fairy godmother. Granted, she was in a position to have a far more powerful effect on our lives than most people have in their friends’ and families’ lives. But I still believe that every kind act we perform, however modest, gets cast into the galactic ether where it ripples out into infinity. And it makes the Cosmos just a little friendlier with each kind act … tilts the probabilities that our consciousness experiences just a little more into the benevolent spectrum.
Not that I didn’t feel apprehensive about living in a foreign country for the first time in my life, where I didn’t speak the language and didn’t know the customs. I already missed our friends and my hexagon and the house we had just built, but this was like winning some kind of crazy lottery. So I drifted around in my delightedly dazed state and thanked every single entity I could imagine had anything at all to do with our change in fortune. And things just kept getting better.
Above: Santa Ana, where Conversa, our language school, was/is located.
*Intro:
At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next.
This is chapter 8 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.
This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.
So once a week, I’ll be excerpting a chapter from Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue until I’ve told the whole tale. I hope you enjoy these stories!
**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years, which I’ll write about one of these days. In the meantime, feel free to Google “Caelum Moor” and see what turns up. It’s fascinating.
Thursday, April 23, 2009