I've been wondering: where in our bodies does long-stored joy live?
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Over the years, I've read a lot of research about how trauma is storied on our bodies, reshaping them, and rewiring our minds.
Perhaps you've read "The Body Keeps the Score," or watched a video of Gabor Mate speaking about how trauma is stored in your body. How trauma isolates you, how it keeps your body in fight or flight mode, triggers you. How trauma leads to mental and physical illness.
So much of my effort, over the years, has been focused on trauma.
And this post is about the opposite.
It's about connections forged decades ago. It's about laughter, love, and joy.
I've come to believe that just as trauma lives in our bodies, so does joy. So do feelings of friendship, safety, support, and connection. All of which have their roots in love.
I hadn't, until last week, thought about how our bodies might store past joy and deep connections and love for others.
We have happiness triggers, too. We just have to be in a space to activate them.
The weekend before last, a big group of Peace Corps friends converged for a reunion, hosted by our friends Cathy and Tim, who live on a beautiful lake in Michigan.Cathy and Tim are the most gracious, generous, kind, and fun hosts. They opened their house, their yard, their boat, their hearts to all of us.
In the group photo at the top, it's the Saturday of the reunion weekend, and everyone who could attend is there.
Some of us have just been swimming in the
lake. Tim has just returned from hosting a themed car parade in Fort
Wayne, IN, which he organized with the sole purpose of putting more
happiness into the world. I'm not kidding. He's still in the Ferris
Bueller vest from the parade.
On Friday, Cathy took those of us who were already in town on a tour of
Ann Arbor. I didn't know that JFK announced the creation of the Peace
Corps at the University of Michigan in 1960!
Carissa, who was organized the reunion, proffered out a "high-level agenda," with bingo and a Yankee swap, and a yoga class Saturday morning.
This isn't the best photo, but here we are, wearing our hard-won shigras (which we used in Ecuador market bags) as hats, laughing, laughing as always.
But the yoga: I said yes, of course, but was initially nervous when Carissa asked me, as I wasn't sure what kind of class my friends would want. And as it turned out, it was such a delight, yoga with friends lakeside on a perfect Michigan summer day.
Summer in the Midwest is spectacular, particularly if you have access to a lake. It's magical, with warm but not hot sunny days lasting till late late.
Our group first met in Miami in 1993, now 31 years ago. Multiple lifetimes. Many of us have grown children. Some have grandchildren.
We've lost friends since our Peace Corps days. Alfonso, Blanche. Maggie. And since the last reunion, Alto Ron, nicknamed such because he was so tall. Lovely Bonnie, so young and so beautiful.
There were friends who couldn't join, and I bet their ears were burning all weekend, as we spoke of them so fondly.
In 2015, I joined a number of people in Austin for Rhonda's 50th birthday. This was my first time reconnecting with a group. And then in 2017, friends hosted a reunion on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Seattle.
The reunion in Michigan was the largest gathering I've been to. Some of us brought spouses and kids.
For this gathering, Janet, our artist, made coasters. Lovely recuerdos of our time together.
We were in different groups—engineering and health—with sites far apart. We hadn't spent much time together ever.
And still, we'd had a shared and very intense experience, now so long ago. I was excited to see him, to meet his wife, to hear about his life.
This time, Nick accompanied me, and I was so happy for him to meet everyone.
Health volunteers:
I hadn't seen Jaime or Eric, both of whom lived near me, since 1995.
They, along with Ralph and Juan Carlos, were my closest friends, my
constant source of friendship, laughter, adventure.
Back then, you'd bring a sleeping bags, and crash at each other's sites. This was back when I could sleep anywhere. I envy my past self for that.
Eric lived an hour by bus up the mountain (not far in miles, but the road wasn't great), in a convent with Padre Antonio, a young, handsome, charming priest. Not much older than us, and so full of life.
Padre Antonio had a truck, and he'd take us on picnics, hikes to hot springs, exploring the area. His parents lived in San Blas, just a short walk from my village. They were lovely. We visited them regularly.
And then, sometime after I left, I heard there'd been a scandal. A woman was pregnant. Padre Antonio had left the priesthood.
But I never knew what happened.
And so, 30 years later, Eric told me the story. They'd kept in touch after Eric left, and thankfully, it worked out well. Antonio, Padre no more (but eventually a padre of five) left the priesthood. He had a family. He started an ecotourism company. He's since passed away.
I'd wondered about him, all these decades. He was kind, positive, generous. The type of person you'd want representing your organization, particularly if your organization was truly dedicated to serving those in need.
The priest in my village was always asking me to translate letters requesting things from American and European organizations. A car. Funding for personal projects.
The Catholic church had so much power in these villages. Our village priest shamed women during Mass for not having children.
We weren't gallivanting about the countryside with him.
Volunteers in our area rented mailboxes at the post office in Ibarra, 30 minutes by local bus from my site. You'd ride with farmers toting grain bags, holding live chickens, everything.
I visited Ibarra and the post office regularly, to send and check for mail. I lived far from one of my besties, Neeta, and we wrote to each other several times a week.
Our sites varied so much. I had water and electricity. Neeta had to have water delivered by a truck. She used it for food, then washing, then plants. There was a hierarchy of need when you have a limited water supply.
Eric would come down the mountain and we would make a trip into the city. There was a bakery we found in Ibarra that had amazing bread and alfajores. We'd chat and write letters and just spend time.
It's weird to think about, that trips to the post office were an event around which we would plan our day. Now when we all have instant communication at our fingertips, and complain about not wanting to receive phone calls, or the burden of texting back.
But our lives were like that. We worked hard to maintain connection.
We circulated books. Peace Corps is where I read "Seeking John Galt," "The Fountainhead," and a massive book on Frida Kahlo, the title of which escapes me. We all read them.
We shared tapes. I listened to Liz Phair's "Exile In Guyville," "Rites of Passage" by the Indigo Girls, and Maná's "¿Dónde jugarán los niños?" approximately a million times.
The last time I had seen my friend Jeff, who also lived far from me, was in Quito. We went out for drinks and I poured my heart out about a complicated boyfriend. This past weekend, we talked about our lives now, our spouses and kids.
These were connections dormant for 30 years, and still we have such hope for the happiness of each other.
Like how one of the communities I worked in was only accessible by hitching a ride on a passing truck. The bus took you to a certain point, and then you had to wait for a truck that was heading into the valley. You had to do the reverse to get home.
Eventually Eric and I started an income-generation project there.
A woman from his community made these adorable little ornaments, fake flowers and such, out of very simple ingredients. People would use them for decoration for weddings, quinceañera, etc. So we brought her down there to teach a group of women who were interested.
We did things like that. It was so different, after the structure of college and then an office job.
I was untethered. So insecure, sure that everyone else was doing things right, and I was just faking it.
We regularly rode in the back of pickup trucks, or sometimes in the cab of a big truck driven by a person willing to take us. We paid for these rides. It was just normal, if schedule-wise unreliable, transport.
At the reunion, Eric called me "Lisacita," which nobody has done since Peace Corps. In our part of the sierra, anyway, everything was made diminutive.
Cariñito, amorcito, lindito. Our Spanish, or Castellano, as it was called, was infused with Quichua (or Kichwa) words and phrasing.
Our villages had Quichua speakers. And how nice it was to say, "Quichua," and not have someone who'd spent time in other parts of South America correct me and say, "Actually, it's Quechua." Because in Ecuador, actually, it's Quichua.
The Castellano we learned was formal, and maybe the coastal volunteers acquired it, but I never learned the informal plural "you" because we were taught Ustedes. The sierra, anyway, was very formal. The Spanish we learned was infused with Quichua words and grammar. Like, "guagua" for baby. "Dame traendo..." for "Bring me..."
I don't know if "siga no más" is particular to Ecuador, but I haven't heard my Spanish friends use it. You'd hold the door open for someone and say, "siga no más." Go ahead.
Eric, Ralph, and I worked with a woman who always prefaced everything with, "No sea malita/o..." It was a softening before asking a favor, but literally translates to, "Don't be a little bad one."
We'd joke about it in English. "Don't be a little bad one. Hand me a pencil."
The names of the villages and towns our sites were in were names I hadn't said in three decades—Pablo Arenas (Eric's site, which he reminded me we liked to call Paul Sands), Atuntaqui, Jaime's site, and where he'd been biking from to my site when he had his terrible accident and had to be Medevaced to the US.
It felt good to talk about Urcuquí, my site, which back then had no street names or streetlights, but is now big and rather urban. This I know now because Jaime's wife is from Pablo Arenas, and she goes home regularly.
We talked about the bus rides we took then, ones we'd never allow our kids to take now. Us women, we would often limit their water intake ahead of time, and eat salty snacks. Because you didn't know if drivers would be willing to take a bathroom stop.
You were at the whim of the driver, always.
They might stop for you if you had your hand out on the side of the road. They might make a million small stops to pick up passengers, livestock. They might not stop if you were begging, absolutely begging, for them to stop so you could pee.
Everything was arbitrary.
These were buses where you were happy for squealing brakes that were audible over the music, because at least this reminded you the brakes were working.
Buses where the driver and his assistant, because there was always a ticket taker, would be drinking, or the driver would be flirting with his girlfriend.
Andean roads at 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 feet in altitude, roads hugging the mountain with no shoulder on either side. Roads with blind curves, and sometimes you'd encounter a bus coming the other direction, and each driver would have to slowly slowly inch backwards and forwards until you could both pass.
It always felt best to be the inside bus, in that situation.
Roads where you looked out your window and saw the massive drop you'd take if the bus went over. Roads with crosses on the side, for those who'd died.
I think it was Rich who said he was on a bus near Cuenca when one of the wheels fell of. The entire wheel just fell off and rolled away. They had to wait for trucks to hitch rides on.
Another friend told us that at some point, there were mudslides near their site, so until they were cleared, they'd take a bus to the point of the mudslide, walk around, and then get on another bus on the other side.
Juan Carlos and I talked about visiting Suzy at the coast, hours and hours of bus rides from where we were, high in the sierra.
We had to be back at our sites on Monday, and were lucky to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup from Suzy's site to Guayaquil, because there were no buses. The traffic was bad, and if our truck were in an accident, we'd have been flung out.
I was used to being in little pickups on low-traffic roads. This was a highway.
Someone reminded us this weekend that Juan Carlos had deemed Ecuador a "run with scissors" kind of country, and I don't know what it's like now, but that was a perfect description for what we were doing then.
The beach weekend, it was glorious. We swam, we ran around in the sand, we ate fish and patacones, which my god are so delicious. We laughed, because we always laughed.
We all have these very particular memories, connected to stories, connected to feelings. They live inside us, just waiting for the opportunity to bubble up, to blossom.
Jeff, I think, brought bank slips to the swap. I'd forgotten that we used to have to fill out these slips, and we'd get our monthly salary in sucres, which was then the currency of Ecuador.
I can't even remember how much we got paid each month. Maybe $130? But in sucres, that meant mountains of 1,000 sucre bills.
We'd get massive stacks. While still inside the bank, I'd divide them, putting some in my waist belt, some in my bra, some in each shoe.
Eric and I would also make a day of that, going on the bus to Ibarra, to the bank to get our wads of cash. Surely we also went to the post office, to the bakery, and to visit Ralph, if he wasn't already with us.
It was hard to organize things ahead of time without phones. We'd just drop in on each other, and then hang out waiting if their neighbor said they were out.
You'd be walking in your village and run into someone, and then you'd go to the market or stand in a line for something together.
I wonder if people still have this time and spend it together.
It was the blessing and the hardship of being in a little village. There was no anonymity. I'd meet someone who was visiting, and they'd immediately tell me that I was the gringa who went running.
I am not an early bird, but in my village, it was dark at 6:00 pm, and I was in bed exhausted by 9:00. I'd get up at 5:45 am to run.
I'd put a massive kettle on my burner to heat water, so I could use it to bathe when I got back. In retrospect, I suppose I could've burned down my place, but luckily I never did.
I went early so there'd be as few people out as possible, as I already stuck out. But I'd run past farmers from my communities. And in Ecuador, you had to greet everyone individually. So I'd be huffing and puffing along at 7,500 feet altitude saying, "Buenos días señora, buenos días señor..."
I've just realized I don't remember the name of the sister of my landlord. Doña...I can't believe I can't remember her name, but recall she got a poodle she named Mercedes, Michi for short. She owned the bodega next to me. I spent a lot of time with her.
People used to laugh, because I referred to my landlord as, "mi dueño," when I should've been saying, "el dueño de mi vivienda"—because he was not, in fact, my owner, but rather the owner of my apartment.
As Yankee swap prizes, Cathy gave away blue soap, the hard blue cakes of soap that we would use to wash our clothing in the courtyard of my building. I had a bedroom and a kitchen, and shared a bathroom and a courtyard.
I'd forgotten about the blue soap, and the cold, cold water from the mountain.
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A group of us spent a Thanksgiving with friends in Azogues with a shower that shocked you whenever you turned it on, which in retrospect is terrifying.
When I think about how we would take buses for hours and hours, all day, buses we were afraid would fall off the side of the mountain, just to be together. We'd line up sleeping bags on the floor and just crash.
I threw a big party for my 25th birthday. So many friends came for the weekend, brought sleeping bags, lined up on the floor to sleep. Maude was visiting, for a whole month, and was there over my birthday.
I love when people I love from different areas of my life connect.
The proprietor of the bodega, my neighbor whose name escapes me, sold us so much beer that weekend.
Among my neighbors with whom I shared the courtyard and the bathroom, was a married couple. The husband was a bus driver. The lovely wife was my birthday twin. And on our birthday, she was quite pregnant.
We were exactly the same age. On that birthday, I wondered if she was who I'd be, born to different parents in a different place.
There's something about shared experience, shared memories, that's so powerful. I don't believe this is particular to my high school group, or my Peace Corps group. It is not location or time specific.
For us, in this group, it was Ecuador in the mid '90s.
What's rare, I think, is to be seen, to be heard, to be valued for who you have been, and who you are.
We dip the Proustian madeleine into the tisane—or maybe in our case, drink the trago, eat the patacones, listen to Maná—and let affection and connection drive the bus.
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