Cry Me an Ocean

The person that cannot go outside without sunglasses during daylight hours no matter the weather forgot theirs and now has a pair of the airport’s finest. What percentage of deet do we need? I cannot believe I’m abandoning a garden full of plants less than twenty four hours after getting them in the ground. I grew 175 plants from seed this year, can you believe it? How many cans of 100% deet do you need? Is five bottles of sunscreen enough? The answer to that is just barely. I miss the kids already and I wish they were coming— kind of. Make a note for seed potatoes for when we return. Is there fertilizer in the shed? I wipe the condensation from the table with the corner of my oversized black satin blouse mistaking it for my (also black) cloth napkin. We howl. The woman next to us orders her third cosmopolitan and picks at her mac and cheese and we take the train to our gate. The person watching Boo while we’re away tells me it’s like a luxury stay in our house, what with the bath salts and sugar scrub. The fresh flowers and the portioned out cookie dough in the freezer. The very least I can do and absolutely my intention and pleasure.

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The sun rises and sets within twelve hours of each other in Costa Rica. By five the light reaches into the house that sits on the vista before I watch as it makes its way over the mountains to the east and I’m lucky enough to watch it fall back into the ocean come five again. One night during dinner Anaya had excused himself to the bathroom and I watched as the crabs crept closer to our table when the beginnings of a blaze caught the corner of my eye. I looked up and over into the west and made a sound that I imagine sounded more of a scoff than wonder. The sun was making its final descent back into the sea and perched to its left hand an actual sailboat. The sound I made was two things— meant to be amazement and disbelief chortled out as though I was pish-poshing the sight. But the sailboat, really? The dog running along the coast chasing the waves? It was borderline corny had I read it (sorry?) and not witnessed it. What in the name of Elin Hilderbrand novel had I been placed in? I could hardly believe it, I still can’t. But whatever that noise was enough to call over the other patrons and even the staff who had stopped taking orders and set aside their drinks and abandoned their ceviche long enough to stand there, most with their phones out as I had done, and staying there awhile after they had tucked them away to take it all in. I was glad when others begin to remark at the sight— “unreal, even for here.” It was, in every sense of the word, perfect.

It all lasted less than 3 minutes and by the time Anaya returned to the table everyone had returned to their places as well. You missed the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. “Nonsense”, he said, boring his eyes into mine. “I’m looking right at her.”

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Make a note to bring home as much salsa lizano as we can. Research local fincas, farms, to visit while we’re here. Email the catamaran folks to no avail. Assess the number of mosquito bites and discover fewer than anticipated. Can frogs live in a pool? Do both male and female iguanas have that sticky-uppy thing, a frill(!?), along their backs? Converting colones to usd and vice versa makes my (nonexistent math) brain hurt. $20 bucks for the best haircut and shave Anaya has ever had— he held a straight razor between his pointer and thumb, no handle to be found and I am in awe. Sit in the ocean that outstretches to the most secluded beach and be grateful for the lack of people when you start crying enough that the tears are as cleansing for the salt on your face as it is for the spirit. All of this and we either destroy it or conjure up new ways to do so. Visit the same beach three days later and cry as you watch two twins no older than eighteen months toddle about the shoreline with their parents and grandparents and miss your own babies terribly. Drink an ice cold beer on said beach, licking the salt from your lips and wondering, is this how the michelada was born? Salt and beer? Surely I’m not the first person to think of this. Eat as much ceviche as humanely possible. Procure as many variations of patacones and plantain chips you can find. Lose count the number of times you hungrily or sleepily make love to your husband. Cry in a farm while marveling at the oregano leaves, some the size of quarters, and eat guanabana straight from the tree. Miracle fruit is wild. Find yourself most interested in what the abuelita of the farm has to say and what she does and stay there. Burn the sweet Jesus out of your lips from the Panamanian chile she serves pickled alongside the empanadas. Don’t bat an eye even if you want to.

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The Costa Rican rise and fall of the sun suits me well. Early to bed and rise, most night I was asleep come seven or eight and awake again come five. I crept out of the bedroom to make coffee and set out on making my rounds about the house— discovering new creatures that had made their way into the house overnight, assessing the quantity of frog eggs that bloomed across the pool’s surface, checked on the ground’s iguana that lived inside a long stretch of pipe before finally going back inside again to collect my coffee, my water, my book, and settle into the chair closet to the east to drink in the moisture-soaked air and fix my gaze on a sight for the sorest of eyes. I stayed there for several hours— reading and ritual. Sometimes absolutely nothing aside from looking and listening. I can’t think of another place I have been that was so quietly loud. Nothing but the ocean and the birds and the bugs. Once the sun had found its mostly fixed point, Anaya would tumble out the door half-asleep and usually half-naked to tend to the pool after I had done the first leg. Frog eggs, as it turns out, are not easy to remove from a pool and each time I felt a surge of grief in doing so until Anaya smoothed my edges with reassurance that they wouldn’t last due to the chlorine anyways. Tender hearts.

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What kind of moth is this? Do iguanas eat fruit? How do you describe what cas tastes like? Read 836 pages. Pull the blankets back every night to check for various bugs. Carry a giant red ant on the laminated sheet of recommendations outside. Drop him twice. Apologize for doing so. Revel in only one out of so many meals being disastrous. Fall asleep before seven. Watch your husband’s face turn fifty shades of red when he discovers his surf and turf will also be accompanied by the scorching lava rock, drawing the attention from other tables he desperately tried to avoid. Fuck an entire day off in the pool in various stages of (un)dress, talking and laughing and laughing and laughing and talking for hours before realizing you ought to do something about your level of pure famish before the sun goes down. Fall in love all over again. Why aren’t we eating more rice and beans for breakfast? Promise your husband you’ll cook with plantains more once you’re home and mean it.

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Since jet-lag wasn’t an issue this go— there was no time difference from Denver, we settled in quickly and well, developing a natural rhythm to our days. The start of my day looked as I had mentioned and since we were staying in a house I made us a breakfast most mornings of yogurt, fresh fruit, and corn tamal that we ate overlooking the ocean before swimming in the pool and deciding where to swim next. We luxuriated in the stillness of time and had the type and frequency of sex often found during those long stretches of time with nowhere to be and warm, barely clothed skin that magnetized towards one another. Pool sex, as I recently learned, isn’t unpleasant after all. Not even when the groundsmen with their long machetes for slicing through various flora peer dumbfounded down at you and your mate. We were told they wouldn’t be around until the next day and all I can say is whoops.

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I tell Anaya that I feel like I’m going to see someone I know. Laugh hysterically with your husband when you’re caught off guard by a wave while kneeling in the sand then thrusted, literally upended, legs-over-head-over-ass, a complete backwards somersault, back into the sea. How much sand in your ear is too much sand? How old is the land here? I can’t remember the word for “ear” in Spanish. Ask your favorite server where he goes to eat, always. Can the camera see us showering outside? Never mind. Spend your last day at your favorite beach where there’s very few people and zero cell service. Shove your face into various types of grasses and greenery to seer the scent into your brain. The road, already crater laden, seems extra bumpy but Celine is playing and you can’t be bothered. Touch pavement and within 90 seconds realize you do in fact have a (very, very) flat tire and approximately 6 fraud notifications. Discover the cards from your wallet gone save your drivers license and an angel card given to you by your mother fifteen years ago. Laugh with the insurance guy who is shocked by Anaya getting on the ground and changing the tire himself. Let it be known that it’s okay to think Americans are mostly terrible because we are. Drive past a truck that is the come-up for a long string of horses and their riders. Recognize the face. Tell your husband to stop. Realize it’s a kid, now a man, you went to high school with, graduated with, a class size of 64. Do you remember me? He did. “I can’t believe you recognized me just from that pass.”

I can.

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Like most of our travels we don’t keep an itinerary and simply acknowledge a handful of things we would like to do while visiting some place and watch where the wind blows us. Him- a massage, various beaches, perhaps snorkeling. Me— various beaches, I could go for a massage, a farm. Aside from snorkeling we checked everything off our list while we were there, checking the weather, our hearts and stamina for adventure that would compass the rest of the day. We steer clear of the common touristy spaces (always), going there for the grocery store and the bank and checking out their apothecary (me) and the farmacia for ear drops (also me) delighted to discover a restaurant along the way that we came back to several times. The food we reveled in is my favorite kind— simple and seasonal. I would be curious to know the number of literal pounds of ceviche we consumed and same for the fruit— papaya cut right from the tree that sat perched above the pool, pineapples and mangoes acquired from the local store and uchuva; a slightly savory-meets-grape flavor resembling a gooseberry. We kept the fridge stocked with cas, guava and mango juices that Anaya blended with the vodka we kept in the most efficient freezer I have ever seen— literally freezing the booze, for the afternoon cocktail we would have after venturing home from the beach. We rinsed off in the outdoor shower, settled into the second (sometimes third) body of water of the day, and discussed our intentions (eating, but where?) for the evening. Rinse, literally, and repeat.

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I am happy to be home with several pounds of rice, beans, and bottles of salsa lizano in addition to the treasures acquired for the children, four packs of the coconut Oreo-type cookies, coffee from the farm and a cacao eye cream the matron of the farm makes. The kids come home this morning and in typical form my mind and heart and body are more than ready for their return. Our garden, loved on by generous community and blessed by an unseasonal coolness and wetness while we were gone, is absolutely stunning and thriving. Decidedly we need a firmer mattress, Anaya is grateful to be in a house with working wifi and a television again, and true to his word, made me spaghetti our first dinner home. I’m looking forward to settling into summer, into Evocative (writing workshop, free!), writing here, getting back to my manuscript (!!) and having Little home with me while his sister traipses off to summer camp with her best friends. As promised for paid subscribers I will be releasing the recipes + stories of my micro-bakery, Butter Moon Bake Co, the business I built in 2020 off postpartum adrenaline and a generous loan amidst the ending of my first marriage, starting at the end of the month. Mostly I’m feeling full of just about every single thing. Luck, is it? I’ve just realized I haven’t taken a bath in two weeks. I must remedy that.

Biggest love,

AR

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Currently Reading: We Had To Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

Currently Listening To: Boo snoring and the wind chime

Currently Cooking/Eating: I’m soaking black beans to make gallo pinto and plantains tomorrow, as promised