In Atlanta I sought out a Delta help desk after missing my flight to Managua. They routed me to Miami via American Airlines, which was at least in the right general direction. Later that evening I land at Miami International Airport, and soon find myself walking in many of the same spaces I walked in just a few months earlier enroute to Havana. Concourse J, for example, and the same downstairs area where I waited (and waited and waited) for that hotel van that never came. During my second interaction with a Delta help desk -- the first in Atlanta, the second in Miami -- I was given vouchers that covered dinner, breakfast, and lunch, and which had a collective value of $18.00. At least my hotel room that night was paid entirely by someone else.
Earlier that evening I'd had my first notable moment, one that lasted 2.5 hours. It was a refresher course on the value of serendipity. Sitting next to me on the flight was a woman named Paula (not her real name). We struck up a conversation. She was a delight to chat with. I soon learned that the parallels between her life and mine were, to me at least, striking. I call them the three S's:
Shit. Until that evening I had never met anyone who, like me, had had human shit thrown at them. Paula had shit thrown on her by a disgruntled hospital patient at her first nursing job. I had shit thrown on me as a weapon of total discombobulation by would-be thieves in Barcelona, Spain. There is a special bond that only members of the Sisterhood and Brotherhood of Those Shat Upon can truly understand. While I wouldn't wish this awful experience on anybody, even the most miserable, humiliating experience can be a lesson in strength and endurance. The would-be thieves failed, and I learned some valuable lessons on protecting myself in and around big city subways.
Suicide. When Paula was 14 she attempted suicide. She did not succeed, she reassured me, but did acknowledge subsequently spending two months in a psyche ward. When I was 14 -- having by then already endured years of psychological (and more than a little physical) abuse from my mentally unstable father, compounded by my enabling mother -- I gave the final exit option serious consideration, serious enough to think through the means and, on the appointed day, attend to the public relations aspect of the project. The "means" was my father's sleeping pills, and the PR part was the suicide note. (Even then I enjoyed writing.) It could have worked if only I'd put the pen down and started swallowing.
Insanity. Both her father and my father had serious mental health issues. Well, I know mine did, and Paula was convincing that her's did. Both her father and my father were psychologically damaged souls -- mine, as far as my mother and siblings could determine, by a positively awful childhood. Her's by Vietnam-era Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
My conversation with Paula erased any irritation I might have felt over missing my flight. It was pure serendipity, a lesson in spontaneity.
More serendipities and synchronicities awaited in the coming days: The young man from Argentina with relatives in Lexington, the college professor who was with our Cuba tour group just a few months previously in February who, it turned out, was in Nicaragua the same time as I, and the man I met on Little Corn Island who grew up in the same Louisville neighborhood as I. But none of them would affect me as deeply as the conversation with Paula. It was the matter-of-fact way she told her story, not just about the suicide attempt but about other chapters in her family history that I've chosen not to mention here. It was as if she had completely freed herself of shame. I, with my Catholic upbringing next to my wildly dysfunctional parenting, have spent much of my life trying to unravel the vestiges of shame, as well as of abuse. I all but envied her lack of shame, which made me feel, well, ashamed. (Just kidding.)
Then there are the "notable moments" in which you are merely an observer. This one, involving a Delta help desk attendant and a passerby with a question, was from the Déjà vu all-over-again bin. A rather elderly Haitian woman walked up as the Delta rep was doing the voucher paperwork and, with confused demeanor asked where to go to meet disdembarking flights from Port-au-Prince. The rep told her that she needed to go to the international flights section on the upstairs floor. The Haitian woman walked off only to return a few minutes later, seeming more discombobulated and asking the same question. The rep again explained where she needed to go, this time adding in a few hand gestures and a few more details.
The exchange made me think of my mother, who died from the cumulative effects of dementia. Part of me wanted to "do" something to "help" her, for her behavior was suffiiently similar to my mom's that I had little doubt schronic cognitive impairment was at work. I could just picture myself with a clipboard and white coat interviewing her next to the Delta help desk. Do you smoke? Have you been diagnosed with diabetes, or as pre-diabetic? Do you exercise regularly? On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your intake of saturated fat? Have you ever had a C-Reactive Protein test? How's your SED rate?
I did nothing of the sort, of course, for I have learned -- as most of us do -- that people are gonna do what they're gonna do. Mom continued smoking even after several heart attacks. Indeed, her right to smoke was one of the few things she would get really assertive about. She never exercised a minute in her life. Bacon and eggs continued to be her breakfast-of-choice even after being diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. She continued eating sugar laden deserts even after being diagnosed with insulin dependent diabetes. Even as her body started crashing in on itself and her mental confusion became life-in-hell, she never seemed to draw any connection between her choices and her consequences.
Why am I being so sanctimonious and judgmental about my mother? After all, I was working hard to get into a country where I could easily contract Giardia or some other intestinal parasite, and where an encounter with potentially deadly malaria, or a bone-grinding renderzvous with Dengue fever, were not out of the question.
Believe it or not, I am in the process of making a point. Tenga paciencia. It will come, but just not today.
Before closing, I would like to describe another kind of notable moment. It is the least noticed by those around you, though sometimes it is, to your inner world, akin to an earthquake. It is -- at least in my experience -- the most likely to be a truly transcendent, or transformative, moment. And for that reason there is a touch of madness about it.
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| Sarooning at the Managua bus station. |
I read years ago that such thoughts and emotions hold similarities to the mental universe of a schizophrenic. I don't know if that is true, though it seems plausible.
