Regret « Piecemeal

To borrow from Sharon Olds, I go back. I go back to my last night in Colombia and think what I would do again, or differently. That night remains such a sorrow to me because when brought right against the hour I had to leave, I knew it was wrong to leave, that we made a mistake in going away from Cali, and I still believe we left too soon. But I cannot go back. I have written about this night many times in a decade of journaling since, and yesterday this night came to me again when I was having coffee with friends and we were talking about why we are here in Korea, what for, what can we see, what can we not see.

There are decisions I would change but then I would not be here. Or I would be here, but differently. This is a tricky, useless regret, but I sat at the edge of my bed and felt that last night in Colombia again. And then I wrote.

We went for dinner with friends, my last night in Colombia. All of us sat at a long table outside at Las Palmas in Ciudad Jardin. Justin and I were the first to leave, and after I said goodbyes the length of the table and turned to walk to our waiting cab, I did not look back. I remember thinking to not look back. I remember walking like I was learning to walk, having to consider the movement of first one leg, then the other. The weeks before that last day were full of the logistics of moving from one country to another: closing accounts, selling or giving away goods, ticking through our favorites in Cali. And then the last day in Colombia was that day, the last night that night. Leaving our dinner, my body moved toward something I did not want.

I would go back to that year and decide to stay another, even if we would choose to move the following year. I would stay for the green on green, mountains, insect noise, the language and music, empanadas, rain that made our street a river. I would tell the desert to wait one more year.

At our apartment the cab waited while we went inside to tell Patricia, our daughter’s nanny, and her two daughters goodbye. Claire was asleep in her crib. Early in the morning she and I would fly out and Justin would stay another week for paperwork, and to help Patricia organize and clean the apartment we were leaving. Patricia and her girls stood when we entered and we helped them carry the things I’d set aside to give them. Kitchen items, a throw rug, couch pillows, a lamp. We carried these to the cab whose driver popped the trunk and helped. Then Patricia and I said goodbye.

I would go back to this moment too because when we parted from our hug, her crying was so distraught I understood again how she cared for my baby, and that her day would look so different tomorrow without a snuggle from Claire, or a walk around the big yard, or time sitting together on the swing. Patricia took two steps toward our apartment. I thought she would run and wake the baby. I should have told her to run and wake the baby, to hold Claire close once more, kiss those fat cheeks and breathe her and lay her down again. I didn’t have the Spanish and Patricia didn’t have the English so we were left with our faces and tears. Patricia pushed against whatever kept her from running up the driveway, but then turned to her daughters who took her hands and helped her into the cab.

That night I did not sleep. For the first part I held Patricia’s parting in my body. I wanted then to go back and give her Claire to hold one more last time.

I replayed when Patricia and her daughters arrived that last night, as they had arrived one or two other nights that spring when Justin and I went for dinner together, and Patricia said to me, Que linda! and I smiled, a little embarrassed. Her daughters showed me what they brought for Claire. A book, inscribed with a note from them to Claire, and a small pink My Little Pony in its plastic packaging with a 3+ label. I set the My Little Pony aside, in a suitcase in the bedroom, imagining gifting the tiny horse with its shiny tail to Claire when she turned three and telling her it was from her first nanny, Patricia, and her daughters. I would go back and not take the My Little Pony from the daughters. I must have seemed ridiculous to those daughters then, dumb about what baby girls like to play with, dumb about the daughters who played with my daughter. Because why in the moment we were about to walk out the door was I suddenly concerned about age appropriate toys? Or worried what Claire would put in her mouth? Why, when we let her jam a capped Pony Malta bottle in her mouth to gnaw relief for her swollen gums. I was hot and weak that I’d spoiled a gift.

For the second part I held Colombia in my body and wept.

This was the country I moved to first, after years of wanting far away. I was relieved when the plane departed from Miami. My breath caught when the plane banked to descend and I saw Cali, her lights like gold glitter flung in the valley, over the foothills. I learned this country, and not as well as I would have liked. But I learned the words I needed, and the roads up and down to the places I went, the fruits and flowers. I hiked to ruins. I hiked through Tayrona. I saw blocks of plastic wrapped cocaine. I saw a man shot dead, slouched in the front seat of his car, the door open, on my walk to La14. I cut plantain, staining my hands, and fried the plantain, flattened the softened disks with a rock before refrying. I ate the best eggs with orange yolks. I ate pan de bono if it was offered. I took a bus to Salento, a bus to Medellin, a bus to Barricharra, a bus to Villa de Leyva. I stood under a small waterfall. I took outdoor showers. I ignored the cockroaches in my bookshelf. I obeyed soldiers with guns who asked to see my cedula. I walked rows of coffee plants and leaned back to see the top of wax palms. I got chased by dogs when I ran. I jumped in a pool after a long, hot run, or bought an ice cold Coke to guzzle. I biked up a long hill. I sweat my days and nights. I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the English daily papers. I learned stories of Colombia. The scars on the land and people taught me to hope for a place that was mine only for a time. I reckoned my way to motherhood in the perpetual autumn/spring of winter in Cali. I slept the afternoon rains that brought a curtain of quiet. I gave birth in this country, and did not know much but enough to delight in our infant, and wonder. I supposed we would return.

Our marriage became more our own in Colombia, but I walked through the desert to know it.

While I did not sleep that last night, my daughter slept. My husband slept. I touched the mosquito netting. I got up to drink water and look at the dark rooms of our apartment. I begged for sleep but my body held its grief awake.

At the last part of night when it was near time I would dress and dress Claire, and go to the airport, I cried because we did not know anything. We thought we were doing right, to leave. I cried because in front of leaving I knew it was not right. I would go back for one more year, or two. I would go back but that would undo the desert time. Maybe I would undo the desert time to keep the green on green, but then I might undo my son, or my marriage. I might undo my breath. I cried so my body was worn at the start of its journey away.

Eleven of thirty-nine. 1242 words.

There was frost on the ground this morning. The grass made silver green, the wooden bridge a slip underfoot. It is autumn – my first in a decade – and the days pull between two seasons with cold nights and colder mornings, crisp afternoons. I ran this morning. I could see my breath but feel my toes. This year I am running all the seasons. I am warned winter is very cold. I am told winter isn’t so bad. I will know winter in another month or two. Now though, the wild green I drank in August, the wild green I’d missed out the desert window, the wild green is going. Tall grasses along the river wave gold and the leaves of trees growing either side of the river and up the hills are the color of campfire. This morning I noticed the pointy elbows and knobby fingers of bare branches. Soon all the trees will be angles and lines against sky.

Today I am thirty-seven. I thought about this while running. I thought I should feel something about thirty-seven. What I feel is okay and okay is peak compared to the inappropriate, hidden emotions of my last decade of birthdays and anniversaries when, instead of remaining buoyantly thankful/ exuberant/ #blessed, I’d often sink in melancholy at to-date regrets. Then at some point late in the day, Justin would see my disappointment and apologize for not getting a gift of messing up dinner plans. I’d sigh, be held, and think I couldn’t explain my sorrow was not a missed dinner out but the whole course of my life. It was much easier to imagine I was pouty about baking my own cake.

Growing up, birthdays were a big deal. Mom asked what we wanted for our birthday dinner. I remember choosing tacos or fettuccini alfredo. From first waking to right before bed, we’d get songs and hugs and kisses. We were celebrated. We were enjoyed. I don’t remember my siblings or myself feeling jealous of one another’s birthdays because each of us had a turn at choosing our day’s activities and menu. I remember making cards or putting together small gifts for Nate and Joanna and opening their gifts to me.

When I turned seven in second grade, my parents gave me a Lisa Frank watch with a set of bright, interchangeable bands that I wore for two or three years. When I turned eleven in sixth grade, I walked hand in hand with Mom at dusk to a blood drive and watched her donate a pint. I ended up resting with my feet up while my sister ate cookies and drank all the offered juice. When I turned sixteen my junior year, my family showed up during second period choir, dressed as clowns and singing happy birthday before Mom pinned a corsage on my sweater. When I turned twenty-one as a senior in college, my roommates and I drove out of town on a quiet country road and watched the Northern lights.

After college I chose a direction I hadn’t quite meant to choose and there I was in the middle of something good I didn’t want, married and teaching in rural Wisconsin. So each year marked another year deeper in this something good I couldn’t see, another year removed from the direction I didn’t take.

I turned twenty-seven in Colombia, celebrated with a party of new friends, celebrated an age I’d long thought a good number to really do something. The something I did was have a baby, so I celebrated twenty-eight waking with my one-month old daughter. I was bleary and hopeful this would work out okay.

At some point, we let go. I do not mourn growing older. I tell friends I want my forties. But I want my forties because I think then I will do whatever it is I imagine doing well: writing a book you read, sending creative and kind children to the world, falling into enviable late marriage comfort.

Years ago my dad wrote “Be there” on the dedication page of my new Bible, my full name stamped in italic gold at the bottom right of the maroon leather cover. And since then I’ve returned to that exhortation to find its fit for many situations as a quiet command to hold steady in the present, with no rush to the next task or conversation, no rush to the next year or season. How can I explain why this birthday – opened with a cold morning run, closed in a warm bed with my husband – was the birthday I was just there for, not sinking in melancholy, not counting misses and ifs. And this birthday: returning from my run to my son singing the first two lines of happy birthday before telling me to come see what they got for me, opening my eyes to find a tiny cactus spiked with purple blooms at my feet, resting against my husband who is just so good to hold, kissing my daughter’s smooth forehead and thinking some birthday soon we’ll be an even height. And this birthday: a hot shower, good coffee, a catch up with a friend, an hour to write, an hour to read. So much in one day. Errands and chores before we woke up to Monday. A late afternoon snit by my daughter who proclaimed that I am no fun, that I ruin all the fun, that I don’t want her to have any fun. Hodge podge dinner. The last flurry of bedtime. Then the day was over and I was that much into my thirty-eighth year, warm in bed next to my husband and glad for okay.

Maybe even better than okay. I want to know why contentment feels a fight. Why for a decade, more, I couldn’t fully ease into the good I had. Why during those years I pinched at the thought of a parallel track where I lived in a drafty walk up, wearing an old wool sweater through the entire winter, forgetting to eat because I consumed stories instead and emerging in spring with a book of my own.

I am okay and occasionally terrified.

I am thirty-seven and finally thank you Jesus at last glad for marriage and children. But I am also thirty seven and keenly aware what I waste. So now I learn a narrow walk of contentment and pursuit. Now I learn a narrow walk of trust. Now I learn do I reap the years of practice, do I reap the years of choosing to stay, do I reap the years of fighting to yield, do I reap the years of sorrow and fear, do I reap the years of tentative joy, do I reap the years of quiet obedience, do I reap the years of defiance, do I reap. At night, I curl into my husband’s warm body, breathe against his skin. This is comfort, to be near and warm, to tell my mind to be here between the sheets and nowhere else, no parallel Sarah untethered, no shadow fright, no ache for what I am not. At night I may lay awake in terror or I may rest.