Epilogue

Cape Coral, FL

May 2015

In a couple of months we will have been back from Ecuador for two years, yet I doubt a day goes by that I don’t think of Otavalo and Papi Imbabura and the great friends we left there.  By the time we got back to Otavalo from the beach, however, I was bugging out and couldn’t wait to leave.  I wanted my land, my tools, my shop, my chainsaw!  

Of all of the things I felt in Ecuador I had this growing sense of uselessness.  Call it my Protestant work ethic or my intense dislike of laziness and sloth, but I had a hard time not working hard around so many hard-working people.  We define ourselves in the US -- maybe too often -- by work.  And by work, I mean all kinds: professions and avocations alike.  In Ecuador, as you may have gleaned, you define yourself by your family.

After we got back, I went so crazy working, gardening, painting (I paint houses in summers) that I got a repetitive stress injury in my right wrist and forearm.  After a year off real physical labor, the hours of weed-whacking, hoeing, whipping paint on clapboard, and bucking up firewood had done me in.  Fortunately we’d go back to school at the end of August.

Fortunately, the district took our verbal consent in lieu of the signatures, and Kerry and I came back to the same teaching jobs we’d left.  Minus the fact that my son and I had grown our hair out, we were the same people on the outside.  We went back to our jobs, the kids resumed school, and life returned to normal -- at least it seemed that way.

But the year back was funky and rife with issues -- few of which were a direct result of coming back to life in the USA.  But it seemed that, in some way, we had to reassemble every aspect of our lives, which frankly ain’t easy.   Everything had a strange tinge or flavor, a trail from South America.  

First and foremost: I’d dismissed completely -- either that or willfully ignored -- the whole idea of culture shock.  I’d assumed it only went one way, but coming home was infinitely harder than the going away.  In short, I was off kilter for a whole year -- and I know that Kerry was, too.  I’m not sure the moment the shock washed off completely, but it was gradual as … a glacier.

It started with Kerry and I sitting on a bench in the lobby of the US Customs office on the border between VT and Quebec.  Glancing around the room, I noticed cynically that -- aside from the customs agents -- we were the only light-skinned people in the joint.  I whispered to Kerry, “should we tell them about the 75 pirated DVDs in our bags?”

We’d declared the guitars, the leather jacket, sweaters, the beads, and a few other small things, ignoring the illegal.  I never figured my goodie-two-shoes wife for an international smuggler.  My mother-in-law waited in the parking lot with the sleeping kids, over 16 hours of travel under their belts, and a couple more to go.  

“I’ve got a good feeling about you two,” the customs agent said.  “I’m not going to go through your bags.  Welcome home.”  Ah white privilege -- good to be back in ‘Merica!  We tried not to skip or run to the car.  

It was July 3rd, and it had been raining non-stop in VT for weeks.  After taxis, planes, and cars -- our lives packed into bags -- we’d finally made it back to Richmond, VT, almost home.  But when we got to Dugway road, there was an emergency vehicle blocking traffic and a man in an orange vest waved us to a stop.  

Culture shock stop number one: in a year of speaking Spanish publicly, I’d developed the habit of going over initial conversations in my head, almost obsessively -- so that outside of my family, any public foray required this inner stream-of-Spanish-conscious.  So as I rolled down my window I’d automatically been formulating what I was going to say in Spanish.

“Huntington Center is flooded.  Ya have to go around another way,” the man said with his VT accent.  Duh.  It took us another hour or more to drive what normally takes ten minutes.  It was a long hour.

I also remember walking into the Richmond Market for the first time.  There are plenty of big, modern supermarkets in Otavalo; it wasn’t that.  But it was one of the trippiest, most surreal things I’ve ever experienced, hallucinogens included!  The colors, the sounds, the AC -- I don’t know why other than that it felt like I’d just stepped out of a sensory deprivation tank and into a world of full-blown sound, smell, and color explosion.  

The harshest realization I made in the first couple of weeks is that nobody cares that you were gone for a year.  After all, a year isn’t that long.  But the thing is, it felt like we’d stepped off the moving sidewalk, let it run for a year, and then stepped back on.  Everyone we knew had gone ahead a year, and we’d missed it.

It’s not that nobody cares, of course -- your friends and family do.  It’s just that they have their own lives and concerns.  I’ve confirmed this with other people who’ve lived away for extended periods of time.  You get a few minutes to catch up, maybe show some pictures, and after that, you watch them tune out.  Your time is up.  They don’t quite get it.

I’m normally a pretty laconic fellow, orally at least.  I remember stopping by my friend Adam’s house and talking his ear of manically for an hour.  Apparently he’d warned other friends to watch out for me.  Mania was symptom one, but it faded quickly enough.

The rest of the year back for me was marked by a vague and dull sadness, a malaise.  I’ve always had a little bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder -- a lite, non-debilitating variety -- which is why I ski obsessively whenever I can to counteract it with endorphins and adrenaline.  But that first year back I might have been depressed, maybe the clinical variety.   

I’m sure Kerry’s near-death emergency hysterectomy and Sylvia’s major digestive, learning, and social issues added to the situation.  (Spanish seemed to mess up her English, at least spelling.)  Oakes is the only one who seemed normal.  I spent the year gunshy of what my brain was doing to me.  Mostly, if I could, I just went skiing.  It wasn’t until summer break that I realized it had finally worn off.  In all, it wasn’t the best of years.  

And yet, there were many blessings to count:  for one, Kerry came through OK.  Two Sylvia made big gains with health and education.  Three: Oakes, just Oakes as usual.  Four: friends.  Five: Vermont seasons.  Oh, how we missed the changing seasons on the equator!  The list goes on.

 

I’ve tried to write this essay a dozen times, and until now, every time had been a premature misfire.  I feel like I finally have enough distance on the experience to be able to do it.  Still, other than the tired and trite summaries: journey changes you, experiencing other cultures is good, stepping out of your comfort zone helps you grow -- I do not have any grand conclusions.  Truth be told we spent somewhere between 10 and 15 thousand dollars for that year -- a year of the kids’ college fund.  It’s amazing what we did for that money.  We lived in another culture, and we travelled -- not widely, but frequently.  

Our children may not be fluent in Spanish, though I believe that Sylvia was just about the time we left -- and I know it wouldn’t take long for them to get it back.  They may still want too many “things” for my taste, but they know how to put their lives in a bag and ramble.  They know what it feels like to be the only white person in the room.  They have incredible ears for sounds.  They have developed empathy.  

We’ll be paying off that year for several years to come, but it was one worth paying for in money, yes.  But in time, and frustration, occasional misunderstanding, and occasional disappointment.  From that we’ve gained so much as a family, as small price to pay to test the old cliche: the best things aren’t things.  Of course they’re not.  The best things are experiences shared with the people you love the most.  Had it been my choice, I’d have stayed in Vermont -- I’m a home-boy -- and so I thank Kerry, and Sylvia, and Oakes for getting me out there.  I think we’ll have to do it again in a few years if we can.