Impressions: Home Hazards (or Eaten Alive)

One sound you would expect to hear all the time on a farm, but which is actually rare here (at least so far) is the drone of a fly.  No one likes the sound, especially in the kitchen, but its surprising rarity is what sharpened Suzy's attention, and she half-watched, more curiously than calculatingly, its maker wander from the dining room, across the table, over the kitchen counter, and against the window to her right (--she was cleaning her dish in the sink), from which it fell into the bottom sill.  Suddenly, the buzz turned frantic, desperate, and it drew Suzy's entire focus, the water running uselessly beside her soapy hands.  And then two long black legs, like hinged needles, appeared on either side of the flailing, screaming insect.  A terrible intensification of ZZZ, followed by the exclamation point of abrupt silence, then the fly dropped as quickly out of sight, and the two legs tucked themselves methodically away.

 The transitions I was consciously undertaking moving my family from a suburb of Denver to San Jose, Costa Rica were enough to crowd out imagination, and especially with a watchful eye always on the three little ones, who, as you might suspect, seemed to define in such a moment all of responsibility.  New home, new people, new language and customs, new school--I watched and watched, and carefully constructed my every reaction, even  in anticipation, even while we were still in Colorado waiting to begin this adventure.  What little was left was trained on work and finances.  As a result, I was almost completely caught off guard by the set of hazards that comes with living on a farm in the tropics.  Those first couple of weeks, yes, after waking with my ankles and wrists and fingers all itching like mad, I did indeed begin to fear that, like Suzy's fly, I had somehow landed the whole lot of us in the exact wrong place.

Within days, Martha and Katy can testify to this, my conversations with the kids started to sound like some morbid parody of Mary Poppins:

Now gather children, and listen,
This blue pellet will kill you in an instant--
It's rat poison, and not for your mouth, nor for your hand.
And don't touch the barbed wire,
Or the electric fence beyond--
It's charged for a horse, so, of course--
Well, you can guess what it would do to a man--
Especially one of your sizes.
And those large leafy bushes, you should never bother--
For a coral snake killed Oscar's father,
And is the main reason we wear our boots.
And, anyway, it's ancient wisdom that advises
We are not meant for the seeds of certain fruits;
Nor for the parasite in the broccoli--
And the one in the lettuce is worse still--
Yes, my dears, isn't living here a thrill.

(And here comes the chorus:)

Oh, do not fuss, or ask your parents why.
The good news is
The dead can no longer die...

Big spiders that move like cats, a dead one on my pillow in the morning, a raccoon (I think--I hope) across the roof, termites in the wall, here, there, and over there as well, mice, ants, three frogs to date, Suzy walking out of the rain forest one day with her legs covered with bites, from each one of which a literal drop of literal blood literally dripping (--she was the only one who wore shorts that day, zip-lining with her mother and sister--she didn't even use bug spray), my senseless fear of bedbugs, of which I already told you, an occasional cricket, an infrequent roach, the choral crying of coyotes in the night, all of it compounded by Oscar's early tour of the farm, and his culminating lesson about snakes (--the coral snake and two pit vipers are indigenous to the hills of our very farm--though the pit vipers are rare enough as to hardly warrant mention), and the description of fruit we should not eat (--no I wasn't embellishing, not even a little, in the song above)--indeed, it's a wonder that it all seems normal now, either negligible or just simply cool.  This morning, in fact, we stopped the car halfway down our driveway to admire a beehive more than three times the size of my own furry head, and all abuzz with industry--might be wasps, actually.  Even Charlie stared excitedly.

Oh, Charlie, poor guy (--I might have told you this already), a few months ago, he sat right on an ant farm, a little one squeezed between the trimmed grass and the brick ledge of our friend's front yard.  I was sitting there, and Charlie, after having picked some lemons in the back with his sister and brother, came and sat down next to me on the ledge.  I put my arm around him, and he looked up to me, smiled, and said, "I love you, Dad."  I looked to Suzy, and said, "Did you hear that?!"  I wanted her to help me make note of it.  But then she furrowed her brow, squinted, and said, "Charlie, I think you might be sitting on an ant pile."  He wasn't especially worried at first--I mean, what did he know of ants, really?  And these were so small--little red ones, and Mom's voice was so matter of fact.  Then they started biting him. Yikes, did he scream--and with terror, as though he were being eaten alive. We brushed the ants off best we could, and then hurriedly took off all his clothes, and there he stood before virtual strangers, naked, whimpering, horrified, each bite still radiating through and tumbling his sweet naivete.  Trauma.  Just a few days ago, in Panama, feeling something crawl over his leg in the dark, he looked down, relatively calmly to see what it was, and then realized, of all possible things in God's great creation, it was an ant, and again, he howled.  This one didn't bite--and wouldn't--it wasn't that kind, big though it was, but Charlie was instantly hysterical.  Poor guy.

All that said, living is living, and these new conditions have faded into the background, are taken for granted anymore, and appear as nothing really different from the hundred and one dangers we all learn to accept anywhere, even in Littleton.  Even the earthquakes (--have experienced five already--the fifth last night--the biggest one was more than a month ago, and measured 4.5 with it's epicenter pretty much under our house--sent Suzy and I out of bed in the middle of the night only to find our three all sound asleep--they still don't know what one is), even Suzy's latest bout with sickness, preceded by the boys' seemingly endless colds--a cough still lingers--it is all just part of the necessary adjustment we are confidently making, and it can cast no shadow of irony upon our excitement for all your plans to visit.  We truly want to see you, want you to see this world, to share the fruits of our experience, not to accompany us in our misery.  No, we are not caught in the clasps of some giant critter's legs while attending to more mundane matters.  And you won't be either.

You see, the shock of any new experience--the impression first formed is not more of the experience than of its newness--of all the apprehensiveness we, ourselves, bring to it.  This particular "impression" is a picture of who I was, and of who our earned equanimity will keep you from being.  As with a newborn's first breath, thresholds, even great ones, are crossed quickly, and are quickly forgotten, and miraculous life begins, rolls, runs and sometimes bumbles forward, and becomes just living--simple and perfect.  Don't believe me?  Come see for yourself.

But bring bug spray with you, and cortisone cream--oh, and some ant killer that works...