One Way to Meet the Neighbors
My first day in our new Trinidad apartment. I promised myself to take it easy, lay low, just hang out and get acclimated. It has been six weeks since I’d left Jakarta, since I’d fully unpacked and been on my own. I had no intention of meeting anyone, or even leaving the apartment…none.
Last night, Curtis picked me and my mound of luggage up at the airport in our new rental car. It was his first long drive on the wrong side of the road, in an unfamiliar city (and only got lost once.)
I turned on the music, opened the drapes and doors so I could look out at the ocean and enjoy the non-existent breeze. it was muggy and hot. And began puttering. A few hours later, a sudden tropical storm validated my decision to stay inside. So I pressed on with the unpacking and checking email.
An advantage to living higher up is I could see out, but no one could see in and I could feel easy about leaving the doors open. A disadvantage is not being able to step outside to shake a rug or, in my case, shake out my suitcase. Undaunted, I hoisted the bag over the balcony and began shaking.
I should have checked the bag better. Along with the crumbs and grit I tossed out the lock. I heard it clink against the ground.
I considered just leaving the lock there. No one would know it was mine, would then? It could have been from any of the many stories above me, couldn’t it? Or fallen from someone’s pocket. After all, doesn’t everyone walk around with luggage locks in their pockets?
That lock glinted up at me like a guilty secret, niggling & nudging. I finally gave in, pulled on clothes, wet down my hair, found my shoes and the ring of keys Curtis had made a point of showing me last night and set out on my first foray into La Rivera.
I made my way down the hall, down the stairs and into the lobby. There was a woman at the front desk and a worker in the front hall, which smelled strongly of vinegar. I skittered past them with my face averted, pretending I knew exactly where I was going and was in a big hurry to get there. I stepped out the front door and marched off. But to where?
Our balcony, as do all the others, faces the water. The entry and parking lot faced the opposite direction. I walked a bit in one direction, then the other, hoping to find an entry to the water-side of the building. But there didn’t appear to be one. So I did an about face, returned to the entry and pulled the door…
Locked.
I tried one key, then another, and the other. None fit.
Now what? Had Curtis forgotten to tell me how to get back into the building once the door clicked closed during his key lecture? Or had I forgotten to listen?
I could walk to the store and go shopping for a few hours—4 or 5 or however long it would be before Curtis came home…
However there were a few flaws in that plan: I didn’t have any money.
Or a phone.
I was dressed in scruffies (at least I’d thought twice about slipping downstairs in my nightgown) and hadn’t even bothered to brush my teeth.
And the lock was still outside on the patio beneath ours.
So I took a deep breath and knocked. And knocked. And jiggled the door handle. And peered in through the glass like a homeless waif seeking shelter.
Finally a woman took pity on me and opened the door a crack. There was no way she was letting me in without an explanation. So I introduced myself and explained my situation. The woman gave me a tight-lipped smile and explained how the key pad worked, then pulled the door closed without letting me through.
She stood on the inside watching through the glass while I tried it myself. She as watching for that green “approved” light to come on. (I have no doubt she would have left me standing out there all day, all night, all tomorrow if that green “approved” light hadn’t come on.)
Fortunately, I passed the test and pushed open the door. Her smile widened and she introduced herself as “Marilyn” then graciously showed me through the foyer to the pool door and explained how those locks worked, too.
After that, all I had to do was make my way around to the back side of the building, counting balconies—which all looked the same—until I came to mine (I recognized it because the door was open).
The door to the apartment directly below ours was open, too. A man was hunched over pulling weeds in the yard—a few feet from the lock which was feet from the open door. I smiled, mumbled “hello” and skittered past him to scoop up the lock. Suitcase crumbs, like confetti, littered the patio around the lock. It wouldn’t have been so noticeable if the rest of the patio hadn’t been conspicuously debris-free. Had the man been out here when I dumped the suitcase? Had he seen the crumbs rain down like Chicken Little’s sky falling?
I now know 2 people in the building: One who may forever refer to me as the loony lady in 2c with questionable breath, and the other who may never go through his door again without an umbrella to protect him from falling litter.
How's that for the 1st day.
Hard At Work, Waiting
What Inspires: Kindred Spirits"Oftentimes writing can feel overwhelmingly lonely, a fool's errand," Daniel Alarcon wrote in THE SECRET MIRACLE; THE NOVELIST'S HANDBOOK. (Alarcon was one of the writers included in The New Yorker's "20 under 40" list).
"It's gratifying to be reminded that at any given moment, there are thousands of others, working in hundreds of languages all over the world, engaged in much the same pursuit. They, like all of us, have good days, bad days, and days where it is more useful to sit quietly and read, let the writing wait."
Superman is onto Something...
What Inspires: Random Reading Opportunities Phone booths are all but obsolete...Page turners are being replaced by electronic scroll bars...Libraries are being cut as callously as carbs from the At kin's Diet. Still, book lovers find a way...
A while back I read how the kitsch red British phone booths were being tossed into the Public Works refuse lots and left to rot. Until, that is, book starved folks in rural areas began turning them into lending libraries. I wondered how it came about: Did someone desperate to make a call, maybe in need of roadside assistance, race into a phone booth, dial and dash. And in his/her haste leave behind a pocket novel, which was picked up some days later by a passer-bye who picked it up and read it. Then, a good read later, returned it, along with a few of his/her pre-read selections, to the phone booth. Maybe even called a friend to tell them of this brilliant deposit/depository and thus the phone-booth turned honor-system lending library--a "free" library in the truest sense--was born. No matter how it started, the craze caught on and now red British phone booths are being refurbished and redeposited as libraries.
Folks in Clinton, New York caught onto the Phone Booth-turned-Library trend with "America's Littlest Library" http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891988-264/town_of_clinton_ny_opens.html.csp
I've noticed how phone booths in the U.S are similarly disappearing; In other countries, too. They are disappearing so quickly that at the brand-new Jakarta airport terminal they installed the phone stations but never even bothered with the phones...instead the kiosks are and seem destined to remain un-phoned. Sad how phone booths in the UK become libraries while U.S. phone booths have become toilets... what's that say? (I digress...)
But not all of them! NYC Architect, John Locke, is refurbishing phone booths for use as libraries. He's designed a shelving unit that fits inside the phone booth casing easily.
Then a note about the newest wave in libraries flew across my screen and bouyed my spirits: Birdhouse Libraries. These lending libraries mounted on poles look more like marten houses. But they are definitely not for the birds. A not-for-profit organization called "Little Free Library" http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/ has taken it upon itself :
- To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.
- To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations.
- To build more than 2,510 libraries around the world--more than Andrew Carnegie!
By setting up these road-sized lending libraries all over the place. The website shares lots of examples of these Book Houses. There are even directions how to build your own. Why not build one and mount it in your own front yard.
Phone Booths . Birdhouse Libraries.Say, maybe--with the state of the postal service--mailbox libraries are next?
Marilyn Rang the Bell! and NED is My New Favorite Name
There are few things as satisfying as reaching the best ending to a story. There's that awe moment followed by a smile...and the smile lingers! As those of you who have been following my blog know, my sis-in-law Marilyn was diagnosed with breast cancer last September. (Read Nov. 11 blog posting, "Helping Hearts.") I could use up all my words describing what "treatment" entailed (and still not get it right) nor do I want to. That's not what this is about.
This day is for rejoicing, for celebrating, for breathing a long-overdue awe and for smiling.
I'll let Marilyn tell you her news, her way! (excerpted from e-mail note, Mar. 13, 2012 entitled "10 Days After")
Hi Everyone!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your love, support, humor, and so very much more. I've made it through my last chemo treatment and the hardest days that follow chemo. I feel good, am able to get out, drive, swim, take restorative yoga classes, and then rest as needed. My mind has more energy than my body so I have to watch what I think I can do versus what I actually should/can do.
I've never been a big fan of "losing" an hour each spring, but this year the gaining light matches my coming out from under the cloud of the last 6 months of cancer treatment. Like the light, the dawning that the chemo is behind is coming slowly as I absorb the reality. I saw one of the oncologists this morning, not my primary one, to get the needed results of blood work at the 10 day mark after Taxotere chemotherapy. It's the point when the blood counts can be at their lowest. All were in great shape. The way any meeting with an oncologist starts is with side effect: "Is it normal that all my teeth feel like they have cavities?" "What should I do about this red rash on the top of my hand?" "Still have tingling in fingertips and some pain." I forgot to ask, "Do you think these fingernails are going to fall off?" (Losing fingernails sometimes occurs with Taxol and Taxotere.) Not that any of these side effects are big concerns, the tingly/numb fingers are the worst of them. It's kind of interesting to see what happens.
When I happened to review the list, the brutal mental/emotional testing made more sense. By this last treatment, the emotional part was much, much better. I think it being the last treatment helped in a couple of ways that I wasn't aware of before. First, I wasn't having to unconsciously conserve my energy for the treatments coming. There was a certain amount of steeling myself for the long run that I wasn't aware of. Second, again unconsciously, I was always wondering how long the various side effects were going to last, if they would increase in intensity or be long standing: sores in mouth, nausea, diarrhea, fever, pain, numbness, etc. (I list these here for a look into the experience of chemo.) There is a term "the new normal" that is batted around a lot, meaning there will be side effects that will stay with you after treatment that weren't there before. One new normal is the numbness on my underarm after surgery on my lymph nodes. It feels like I'm putting deodorant on over clothing. I'm very fortunate. There are many, many side effects that I don't have.
I asked the doctor today what I should call my present state --post cancer, cured, what? He said that I was "no evidence of disease" (NED) and that my breast cancer has been "treated."
"NED" is what I think I'll throw around at cocktail parties. The drugs that I'm taking now, one he called a heat seeking missile, significantly reduce the chance of cancer returning.
At the cancer center, when a patient finishes the final chemo treatment, she/he gets to ring a bell. I was a little shy about doing it, but it was very satisfying once I did.
NED...the name has a lovely ring to it!
World Read Aloud Day
Today, March 7th is World Read Aloud Day!
World Read Aloud Day is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another, and creates a community of readers advocating for every child’s right to a safe education and access to books and technology.Lit World is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the written word! (According to LitWorld's website, there are 793 million illiterate people in the world. ) Find out more about LitWorld, register to be part of the worldwide read aloud, donate, get involved--and most importantly READ and spread the written word!
What better way to celebrate World Read Aloud Day than by Buddy Reading...and, it just so happens some wonderful reader posted a read-aloud of NOT NORMAN, A GOLDFISH STORY on U-Tube. So, get cozy, grab a buddy and READ!
NOT NORMAN, A GOLDFISH STORY, Buddy Read-Aloud: If the hyperlink doesn't click, cut and paste this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE_bId4fr28
And here's a little ditty to celebrate the day (Get ready to channel Karen Carpenter's version of Sing!):
Read/Read a Book/Read out loud/Read out looooong/
Don't worry that you're not good enough for anyone else to hear/
Just read/Read a Book!
Sampai Jumpa, Nanti, Jakarta
Last Jakarta News Note March 1, 2012
Seven years ago today I arrived in Jakarta to begin my Indonesian adventure. Curtis was already here, having arrived mid-January to begin his new position on the “BP Indonesia New Wells Delivery” Team. The next day we were handed the keys to our freshly painted, curtained, empty new house. Having signed up for a 3-year assignment (which morphed into 4 years seconds after Curtis said yes), we’d chosen a house quickly on our look-see trip in December. We weren’t buying it so what did it really matter we told ourselves. Settling into a new country, new customs, new people and language was an experience I wanted to capture and share, so I began writing Jakarta News that 1st day. As happens, different became familiar; unusual, customary; awkward, comfortable; Jl Pejaten Barat 1, No. 11, Kavling 5 became HOME. So, it’s been a while since my next-to-the-last Jakarta News posting.
Yesterday, a day shy of seven years later, I turned the keys back to the landlord, pulled the door closed and said goodbye to our Jakarta home.
Along with the house came staff: a housekeeper, Rusnati and her husband, Rohemon. “Try them out,” the HR rep told us. “At least while you get settled anyway.” There were several people in our garage that day, all brown, quiet, shy… some older, some in uniform, one hugely pregnant young woman. I recall wondering if she was, in fact, our maid, and if so, if she was going to expect to have her baby in our house and what I’d think about it…
Rusnati (not the pregnant one) stayed when the others left and so identified herself as our housekeeper. She didn’t speak much, nor did I, as I assumed she couldn’t speak English. Speaking wasn’t much of an issue at that point as the house was empty but for our suitcases, a rented bed, borrowed lamp and boxes for tables.
Every time I wandering into the garage or out those first few days, Rohemon was sitting in the garage. I’d smile; he’d smile. But we didn’t exchange words and I was clueless as to exactly what he was going to do, or when he’d begin doing in. After a few days later, our company-assigned driver, Aan, who did speak English (extremely well) set me straight. "Rohemon would," Aan explained, "clean up the garden—if he had scissors and a broom..."
Clean Rohemon did, and plant and prune and nurture. Having won the battle for ownership, Rohemon’ s pond now gurgles pleasantly as water tumbles down the waterfall where the fat rat drank. The orange and white pond fish, which replaced the monster ikan lele, which replaced the bobble headed goldfish, and the soap suds-poisoned fish and saltwater-suffocated fish before them are plump and fluttery. We’ve hatch a few batches of babies. And the few remaining ikan lele, descendants of the nasty, spotty monster fish that once lurked in the shadows, only darting out to terrorize their pond mates, are as tame and friendly as the rest. (Proof that it is nurture vs nature?) At last report, Chris’s blue-tongued lizard family was still romping about—even the one Joy’s dalmatian, Cale,mangled. And Andrea’s turtle still takes the occasional dip in the pond.
After the packers pulled away, while Rohemon swept the grass one last time, Rusnati, Curtis and I wandered through the rooms, straighten the curtains, checking cupboards, turning on fans and off lights.
Even empty, the once white-washed rooms, pulse with color, life, memories of parties and people, visitors, adventures, achievements. Rusnati’s two older daughters graduated college, as did Max and Lexi; Rusnati’s younger daughter, naughty Andrea, who it was feared wouldn’t be allowed into middle school because she wasn’t doing well, is now a computer ace with a paid high-school internship; Aan’s oldest son also graduated from Uni and is now a videographer traveling throughout Indonesia (including filming SBY, Indonesia’s President); Aan’s daughter is in her last semester in Uni, and his youngest son, Izwan, is top student in a multilingual honor school. Izwan is going to Singapore with his school this spring—the first in his family to hold a passport and travel out of the country!
When we first moved in, our voices echoed in the high-ceiling-ed rooms. I’d tilted back my head and yodeled once and Rusnati had come running, fearing the worst. Over the years, I yodeled many more times. Curtis hollered back, which always made Rusnati shake her head and laugh. Earlier today, when I was gone for a bit, Rusnati let out a yodel. She told me about it later, laughing about how the packers ran in from the garage to see what was wrong.
Last evening, after turning over the keys, Rusnati and I sat on the front steps as we have grown to work together, side-by-side, with a plant between us. The street cats, Ochie, Aan's pet, and a new younger one who looks like Ochie and is also learning to yowl for attention, lounged on the porch steps, taking turns nibbling snacks. (We left several full containers of food. Warjo, our pool man and relief gardener--the only one of us who'd return tomorrow--had promised to feed the cats, and the fish, and water the plants, too, until the new tenants moved in.) The sun was low, the call-to-prayer a low background chorus. Rusnati and I didn't say much, but not because we couldn't communicate; we speak the same language now, our own Pigeon Indo-English-Sign blend, a language of like minds, common goals, kindred spirits.
We’ll be in Jakarta a few more weeks, while Curtis wraps up his job. Then we’ll say farewell to our Jakarta Life. We’ll say it the Indonesian way: not “goodbye” but “sampai jumpa, nanti!, Until then…”
First Love!
What Inspires: First Love! And they ask: "Are you ever going to try writing a 'real' book" . . .
“The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.”
Notable children’s books by Roald Dahl include: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches, The Twits, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, The BFG, The Gremlins, The Enormous Crocodile, Esio Trot, Fantastic Mr Fox, George's Marvellous Medicine, and Danny, the Champion of the World.
I’m reading a collection of Dahl's adult short stories now—beautiful writing at its most irreverent, racy, scary, creepy, often horrific. No crock: pure gold!
DUCK, ALL YOU NORMANS!
What inspires: True Life Adventure! Nothing so fun as watching a classroom of toddlers romp! For them, life filled with wonder, so exciting & fresh! Every moment is a new adventure--
But, life in a pre-school classroom holds danger, too. . . Especially if you're the new fish in the classroom . . .
A few weeks back, my friend Sherri shared how one day her grandson George's preschool teacher asked the class what their empty fishtank needed. George hollered out "A Fish!"
I knew right then what they really needed-first and fast: Not Norman, A Goldfish Story!
Today I recieved a note from Sherri. She had good news and bad news: The good news was George likes my book (yes!)
The bad news:
"They had to replace their fish at school because a little girl threw a toy in the tank and conked the fish on the head. The next day he was belly up."
