Ca-caw! Ca-caw!

I'm trying to make some crow friends.

Several people I know are trying to do this. Nicole has been actively working at it in Texas.

Apparently, when crows like you, they start bringing you little gifts, like pebbles and sparkly things.

Obviously, I don't need little gifts, but I love the idea. Also, I feel like I'm kind of like that. If I like you, I'll send you memes and videos and shiny little random stuff. 

Or very dark things. One of my friends and I exchange Goodbye Earl-type memes and videos regularly.

This is love.

Anyway, I didn't know till recently that magpies were in the corvid family along with crows and ravens.

Ever since that magpie stole Bianca Castafiore's emerald, I've been a fan.

Before my newfound interest in corvids in general and crows in particular became a New Topic in our household, I said the following to Nick:

"I really want to make some crow friends."

And he was like, "That's an oddly specific and frankly racist way to try to diversify your friend group."

I was all, crows the birds! Not First Nation. 

Jeez. Who would even think that?

Honk if you love cheese sauce.

Since then, Nick's been trying to help me. He saw a group of crows screaming over a sandwich and called me to come out on the deck. One of them dropped the sandwich and another stole it and the others were outraged.

I went inside and got a couple handfuls of wild rice and spread it on our wall.

Those crows, they were zero percent interested. Clearly these are American crows. I need to try enticing them with Doritos.

And then I had to clean up the uneaten rice because DC has a rat problem. I'm not kidding you. We live near restaurants, and the rats in our neighborhood amble around in broad daylight smoking cigars.

They are not scared and they do not care. And they're too overfed to move very fast.

You don't want to poison them, because then you're poisoning hawks and other birds of prey. It moves up the food chain.

What I want are a group of rat terriers to decimate our rat population. Apparently they run around grabbing rats and snapping their necks and moving on to the next one.

I cannot maintain a rat terrier pack, however. I can barely manage one hound.

I wish crows were ratters.

Also, related but tangential, there is this song that I cannot find and the only word I know is "murder" in the chorus. It's sung like, "muh-huh-huh-huh-erder" and there are lots of murder songs when you google and it is driving me crazy. I think it's 80s with an upbeat tune.

Very superstitious/Writing's on the wall

Are you superstitious?

I have no idea where I fall on the continuum of most to least superstitious.

Here's the genesis of this.

I'd been waiting for a third terrible thing. The first was my mom dying. The second was breast cancer.

As bad luck comes in threes, I figured there would be a third.

And then I got pneumonia. And I was like, OK, this was the third terrible. It's happened. Now the slate is clean.

This is super woo-woo, but yesterday I saw my chiropractor, who is also an energy healer. 

Have I told you about her? She was a medical doctor in Russia, and then became a chiropractor and energy healer when she moved here.

I've never met anyone like her.

Over the last 5-6 months, she's realigned my spine and helped me release childhood trauma.

I started seeing her because I had severe jaw pain after having fillings replaced. And I've had chronic lower back pain. No matter how much yoga I did, no matter how much stretching, I couldn't get rid of it.

But the crisis was my jaw.

My dentist is originally Russian, and she was trying to help me, she did this painful but effective jaw massage technique that she said she learned from her chiropractor. So I was all, I need to go to her!

And she said that she's amazing but you should know she's not a normal chiropractor.

She's not. She's extraordinary.

At my assessment, she showed me the model of the spine and pelvis and explained that my pelvis was tilted ever so slightly. And over years, all my muscles had worked to accommodate. You can go on this way for decades. Your muscles can work and work and work and hold and hold and hold, until finally, they just can't do it anymore.

I had arrived at this point.

She said reason I couldn't take really deep breaths was because my pelvic muscles were in spasm and wouldn't let me.

I knew I couldn't breathe deeply enough but I didn't know why. My yoga teacher was always telling me I was taking two breaths when I should be taking one. I could see this. I could hear it in the final OM, when I would run out of air much faster than others.

But no matter how hard I worked, I couldn't pull the air in deeper. 

She said in the beginning I'd have to see her quite intensely. Because both your muscles and your brain are used to everything in your body being in a certain position, even if it's wrong.

So for a while you have to continuously readjust, because every time, your body tries to go back to what it thinks is normal.

Kind of like growing up in a dysfunctional household and then finding partners who fit your dysfunction. It's not healthy but it feels right.

So.

She does the chiropractic adjustment, and then works with tuning forks. When I'm face down, she has the end of the tuning fork against my spine for the vibration. Face up, she is realigning the vibration of my cells with the pitch.

Nick thinks all of this is bananas. You can, too. It's OK.

And then she started asking me questions about my family. It was like my answers confirmed what she knew.

One day during treatment an image of my brother as a kid, one of his school photos, popped into my mind. And literally one second later she asked if I had a sibling.

She asked about my dad, how he died. About his personality.

Sometimes she would do an adjustment, and I would just start to cry. I once had this sensation, not imagery but intense feeling, of little kid vulnerability and fear.

She gave me homework, specific things to say to offer forgiveness to each member of my family. And then to offer forgiveness to myself. She said she thought this would release some of the muscles that were holding.

It did. 

My back pain decreased until much of the time it was completely gone. My back is completely locked up after being so sick, and I knew it's going to take some time to open up and get back to where I was in August.

I can inhale (OK, not in this moment but in general) as deeply as I want.

I've had to practice deep breathing, because my body was not used to it.

Anyway, yesterday she said that she thinks the pneumonia is the final piece of my body processing trauma and letting go. I couldn't completely let go emotionally, and I had all this toxic stuff I was holding. 

So I got really sick, and my body finally purged it. High fever, night sweats, lots of coughing.

Out out out.

I told you all this was very woo-woo. But it totally makes sense to me. 

Maybe it wasn't the third thing. But I think it was, and since I'm a multidimensional human in the multiverse, I can believe both of these things and so much more.

Then I started thinking about other superstitions.

When I was a kid, if we spilled salt, we'd throw it over our shoulder for the devil.

I hadn't thought about that in decades.

We used to have our salt in little bowls with little spoons. So I think we spilled salt a lot. I don't think I've spilled salt in years. 

But there are others.

Like, I knock wood for luck.

I love the number 13, so for me that's good rather than bad luck. But clearly I still attach luck to it.

I also think that might be it for superstitions.

Because while I don't walk under ladders, that just seems like common sense rather than luck.

I don't believe black cats or broken mirrors bring bad luck.

I don't look in mirrors at night, but that's about me being a chicken and the possibility of Bloody Mary appearing behind me rather than luck. 

I don't know of any others.

What do you believe?

Pneu pneumonia (to the tune of Ophelia)

Until recently, I think if asked, I'd probably put pneumonia in the same bucket as arson or Nazis: categorically terrible, but not something I spent much time thinking about on a regular basis.

And then. Then I got pneumonia.

Pneumonia, you all. Pneumonia is insane. I've never been so sick. For so long!

The above photo was at one of my lowest points. I also got a cold sore for good measure. 

While I did feel tremendously sorry for myself, this is not a post to garner sympathy. I'm now dramatically better.

What I want to say is if you start getting really sick, go to your doctor! Or urgent care, or the ER. Do not wait. There are some terrible viruses going around. 

And if stuff sticks in your lungs, it can turn into bronchitis, or pneumonia.

And then you might feel like you are going to live in bed for the rest of your born days.

On August 26—three full weeks ago—I got in bed with fever and body aches. I practically did not get out of bed for two weeks.

After four days in bed Nick took me to urgent care and they were all, it's not COVID or Flu. There is this terrible virus going around and you should feel better in 10-14 days and come back if you get worse.

So I was just waiting. I wasn't really getting worse, but I wasn't getting better. 

Although when I think about it, I was getting worse, but it was like being the frog in the pot starting with cold water.

So by the time I had to put two feet on each stair and pause to breathe with each step, I wasn't really noticing how much worse that was. Because mostly I had stopped going downstairs and was spending the entire day in bed.

Nothing helped. Not the rescue inhaler. Not the daily steroid inhaler. 

I woke up every morning in a violent coughing fit. It was scary. 

One time I set my alarm sound to The Devil Went Down to Georgia, thinking it would really wake me up, but this is not a way I would recommend anyone start their day unless you like being jolted into sudden and inexplicable terror.

Anyway, last weekend I woke up in a coughing fit, and when I could finally inhale, my lungs were making this weird crackle sound.

Nick had to help me walk. I was panting, taking very shallow breaths, and still barely getting anything. Also, I was crying. Because I was very scared and felt very terrible.

So we went to the ER, where when they asked me what was wrong I said I couldn't breathe and started to cry again.

When you can't breathe, they take you back very quickly.

And once in a room, we ran into our dear family friend Shannon, whose dad was two doors down from me.

Nick went into the corridor to use the bathroom or find snacks or some such, and I heard, "Are you kidding me?" And there Shannon. So we got to catch up over a long number of hours.

And on a side bar, Nick is always disgruntled by the lack of food options at hospitals. It annoys the crap out of me. Every time we've been at any hospital—and over the years this has been many times—he is upset about the lack of food.

This time at the ER I snapped, "Nobody comes to the fucking hospital for the food. You'll survive."

He still tells the story of making a big bag of gorp to take to the hospital when I was going to give birth to India. Like we were embarking on a trek in the Himalayas.

He's still disgruntled by the fact that our doula ate most of it. Once they were like, this might be another C-section, I wasn't allowed to eat anything. 

And then when they put me on an epidural, Nick left to shower and have breakfast.

He announced this proudly upon his return. He was in clean clothes and had had a meal. Like he was going to need his strength.

I was like, if I could feel my legs, I'd kick him right now.

Nick hates these stories because why, he wonders, why are my thoughts towards him so violent? Why so much anger? And I am like, you don't know the half of it.

But back to the matter at hand.

The doctor said I had pneumonia, and gave me IV antibiotics and sent me home with two more oral antibiotics.

For much of last week, I was pretty despondent. I was just going to languish like a consumptive Victorian until I faded away. My face was pale and my hair was pale and my pillowcases were pale, and at some point, we would all just blend.

Although I think consumption was TB?

Now that I can walk several blocks, have the energy and breath for chit-chat, and am confident I'll survive this, pneumonia one of my new topics.

Also, as I understand it, fixating on topics is neurodivergent behavior. The more you know!

This is how it started. I said, "Nick, pneumonia is a really big deal!" 

He was all, "Yes. George Washington DIED of pneumonia."

Whoa.

Then I started looking up famous people who died of pneumonia. And let me tell you, there are a lot lot  lot of them.

I started reading him a list. And he was like, yes, many, many people die of pneumonia. And I was like, wait, but did you know about this person?

Lawrence Whelk!

At a certain point with any New Topic, I think Nick just tunes me out.

But actually, what I'd really like to talk about is what I learned on the internet in the last few weeks.

I spent so much time in bed without much stamina or the ability to focus for long periods of time.

So I watched a lot of Instagram reels. Which I've learned are videos of what people posted on TikTok. But I am old and don't watch TikTok.

I learned that there are many young women who call themselves "tradwives" and are very proud of being in "traditional" relationships where the man has an outside job and the woman has babies and does all of the work in the home.

There is this couple in Texas, both models in their 20s. They're apparently Mormon. The wife is the more beautiful, and the husband, while good looking, has the kind of pale no real smile eyes that make me nervous. 

But they could well both be very nice people. What do I know?

They have three kids, and the wife narrates her professional quality videos with this bedtime-story kind of voice. She makes the craziest things, like Froot Loops from scratch, or if they're going to have grilled cheese sandwiches, she first makes the bread and the cheese. I don't know if she also makes the butter but it seems likely.

She does this while wearing full makeup and designer gowns.

The children, apparently, are with their nanny. I'm not saying this to be snarky. This is what I've learned.

As I said, I spent a lot of time in bed.

There are myriad iterations of this woman, young women who are not models, who are all about their role being that of babymaker, homemaker, foodmaker. In these videos, they are joyful and defiant.

Then there's this group of Mormon women who apparently now have their own show. There were part of a bunch of couples who would hook up with each other's spouses, in what they called "soft swinging" and everything was OK as long as they were all in the same room and there was no penetration.

And then one of them had full on sex with someone else's husband without everyone present, and that exploded everything.

I genuinely think people should live their lives in whatever way they want, as long as they're not hurting anyone. Lots of stuff goes on in the world that I would never have imagined.

And still, I am apparently easily surprised. Not shocked, just surprised.

These people are popular, and because they're popular, they make money from their content. Some of them make lots of money.

And then you know when you watch something, you get served more of the same. So then Instagram kept offering up videos of these ostensibly happy homemakers and Mormons.

I had to make a concerted effort to veer back to yoga and nutritious food makers and holistic health accounts.

I'm not saying these influencers are bad people, though I certainly don't want my children influenced by them. I'm not lumping them in with arson and Nazis. Mainly, I don't understand them.

And I know they're not new to the world or to the internet.

They're just new to me, like pneumonia.

Labor day/birthday year two

Dear Mama,

Today is your birthday. You said you were born on Labor Day, which your parents rather enjoyed because ha. 

September 2 is always your birthday, but it is not always Labor Day. Like that expression all Singhs are Sikh but not all Sikhs are Singh. Or maybe it is the other way around?

I remember how you used to always ask people like cab drivers where they were from, and I would be all, oh my god, just let people drive.

But this one time we had a Sikh driving us and you said, "Are you from Jalandhar?"

And he was all, "Yes! I AM from Jalandhar!" Delighted.

You'd do random things like that and instead of people being like, just because I'm a person with an accent does not mean I want to talk to you about my homeland, they'd be delighted that you'd taught at a school in Kabul and could still speak Farsi. 

I saw our neighbor Marie the other day, and she said she was just thinking about how much she loved sitting on her porch chatting with you. She said you were so interesting, and had so many great stories.

I should've asked you for more stories. I should've recorded them when I had you.

This is your second birthday not here with me, and I miss you.

I've been sick, like flattened in bed sick, for an entire week. At some point last week I called Nick sobbing because everything hurt so much I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't walk the dog.

Urgent care said that what I have is a terrible virus that is going around, and that I should begin to feel better on day 10-14. I'm at day 7 and it is taking its damn time.

It's been brutal. I cannot remember being this sick for this long. Not even with Covid. Which I do not have.

I used to have a lot of versions of the loneliest me imaginable.

This past week I realized that the loneliest I could be was sick, really sick, without my mama.

You would pour me a glass of ginger ale, mostly ice, and leave it on my bedside table. I was dying for ginger ale. I was too sick to go buy any. I kept forgetting to ask the kids.

You'd come in and put your cool hand on my hot forehead.

Even if that didn't do anything, in the same way that throwing your arm across me when you braked the car hard wouldn't have done anything in a crash, what it did was make me feel loved.

You'd be in and out of my room quietly, which was perfect, because all I was doing was sleeping anyway. But I would know you were there.

I know you are fine, wherever you are, and this idea comforts me. I know that what hurts is all the ways that you are not here for me.

Being motherless for me is somehow being less protected in this world. It didn't matter that I'd gotten bigger and stronger than you.

That's not the point.

I wouldn't hesitate to give my life for either of my kids, and I think Jordan would believe it if I told him so, but our girl India, she knows.

She knows she is my heart in the same way that I knew that I was yours. She is forehead to forehead emotion meld.

You know this. When I tell her I love her, she says, "I love you more." And she got that from you.

The other day I had a quick vision of you laughing and saying, "Oh, Lisa, how I do love you."

When people ask how old you were, and I say 85, I know what they are thinking, and so before they can say anything I tell them that I knew you had a big, big life. Because you did.

But that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, but what about me?

When I first saw Nicole after you died, I hadn't seen her in years. She disappeared into a hole after her mom died. She hugged me and said that as it turns out, it doesn't even matter if you have a difficult  relationship with your mom. When she's gone, you're flattened, she said.

It's changed my relationship with the world in a way I cannot yet quite describe.

I know ahead of time these days will be difficult, and still, I'm never prepared for how sad I'll be. Birthdays and anniversaries, they really fuck with you.

Anyway, we're all still here, and you're somewhere not here, somewhere I hope is really, really good, with all of our beloveds who also aren't here.

I miss you with my whole heart.

Love,

Lisa

Vuela, vuela/No te hace falta equipaje

I've been wondering: where in our bodies does long-stored joy live? 

Do scientists even know?

The memory of connection, of happiness, of safety, those feelings that make you delightedly embrace a friend from 30 years ago in your past—where do they live?

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.

Cathy took us on so many gorgeous boat rides.

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.

Our friend Neal, who hadn't seen anyone from Peace Corps years since 1995, wrote ahead of time, "I have been describing to my now college age kids the nuances of evolution of relationships and significance of mutual connections, even if transitional and seemingly fleeting in the scale of a lifetime." 

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:

Water engineering volunteers:

Special education volunteers:

Business 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.

There are so many things I hadn't talked about, or really even thought about, in 30 years.

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.

Eventually I bought an electric shower head for our shared bathroom. The shower head had an immersion heater, so as long as you didn't turn the pressure up high, you could have a hot shower.

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. 

So when I ask myself where joy lives, I think the answer is: everywhere. I believe it resides in each and every cell of our beings.

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.