It always starts on the approach. Looking out over that country pulls on something that I still don’t know how to name. Try as I might, I can’t remember what it was like the first time we approached. It definitely wasn’t what it has become. I think it was lighter, maybe even happier, I guess expectant, but void of meaning. Since then, it has changed. I gaze wearily out at the low houses. They seem bunched together on purpose, to help hold each other up. Roofs of corrugated steel that surprisingly stay in place. There is nothing bright or flashy at all. Everything one level. The shades of brown and orange and a bit of green are all subtle and unassuming. Like a Polaroid taken years ago and uncovered in an attic years later. The original sepia. Quiet. Simple. Indescribably like home. I always watch the approach and more often feel closer to tears than smiles.
This time I’ve come alone. It was just how it had to be but it was also just time. They’ll join me next month, and I can’t wait. I started missing them the moment we made the decision. I do hope though a month is long enough to empty the cobwebs and start the process. As I step off the plane the familiar cushion of heat hits. It requires a few deeper inhalations and longer exhalations. I almost feel my body respond and understand what will now be demanded of it. My mind relaxes and understands rest is near. Though I’m nervous to do all the next steps myself, I know it will be okay. A few smiles later, I’m in the Toyota heading towards the ocean.
The drive isn’t that complicated; nothing here can be. Things can’t be complicated in this heat. The usual sights keep me entertained. Garbage lines the road as it always does. Occasionally someone will be trying to burn its plastic shreds and shards in a small pile on their stoop. If you didn’t know better you’d sigh about how unfortunate it was ‘they’ had garbage everywhere. When you knew better you just understood that we all had garbage everywhere, some of us just try to hide it, but it’s still there, everywhere. Again, that’s complicated. Nicaragua doesn’t do complicated. As the houses slowly separate and change into fields, those big trees start to line the road. You could imagine what it looked like here before the fields were created with those majestic trees in their forest. But the fields are okay too. Most of them have an emaciated horse or two tied up out in front of them, I suppose someone’s ride home or some thing’s ride somewhere. Some of them have herds wandering them. Some of them have rundown shacks on them that, if you didn’t know better, you’d think had been abandoned years ago. Of course, that is wrong too, they are still someone’s palace.
As I’ve started to recover and re-calibrate, I roll down the window. The heat swirls in again and I relax a little more and smile unconsciously. Can temperature inhabit you? The houses bunch together again and each one of them has someone tending to them if you look hard enough. I love that. Floors of dirt are neatly raked. Entrances are lined by perfectly placed stones. Shanty towns with wild hibiscus bushes perfectly blooming between each house. If you run by a house during laundry time you wonder why your laundry never smells like that and why your children’s clothes are never that clean. Of course this is just a romantic outsider’s view. Sleeping on dirt. Living in dust. Having your house flood each night for six months of the year isn’t something to be yearned for in the name of simplicity. It’s a little trite to desire anything at all about the situation, but I do love how the houses are tended to.
I roll on, thankfully almost on autopilot as I’m tired, and I finally I get to the house. I’m thirsty and have a headache from not eating properly for the past twenty four hours. It’s four o’clock. Four o’clock it the most beautiful time of day here. The heat has start to lift, the sun is little lower, they day’s work is over, and the country invites you to sit down and take notice before it provides its final gift of the day. I grab a beer and wander down to sit in the chair outside our bedroom. I see our bed and smirk. God, I love that bed.