Happy 20th Birthday Hannah Amelia!

See Hannah!
See Hannah Row!
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This photo was taken during practice on a rare warm day last November when I had the pleasure of spending my 47th birthday with my oldest child in DC watching the beautiful synchronicity of her strokes on the Potomac from a rowboat with her coach yelling orders with a megaphone behind me. I wish I could do it again on Sunday for her 20th birthday. Boo hoo. We will be diving at the Catalina Islands to complete our certification while Hannah turns 20 without us at Georgetown where she is finishing up her sophmore year, majoring in Physics with a concentration in Pre-Med and a minor in Portuguese. In a few months she will be landing in the wilds of Rio to Fala Portuguese until Christmas, hopefully perfecting her minor so she can concentrate on classes like Relativity and Quantum Physics or Multivariable Calculus! Yummy!
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Hannah was born in San Francisco, our only California girl, looking calmly at us with her brown eyes. She entered this world on the day Lucille Ball exited, leaving us all with laughter dying on our faces. Hannah knit our smiles right back together. She was a great baby to cut our teeth on with her calm demeanor and happy grin, waiting patiently for us to catch on to the art of parenting. In no hurry to challenge us by moving around, Hannah was content to sit and smile while her friends crawled around her. She paved the way nicely for her siblings to follow in her path, literally, as she broke my tailbone to get it out of the way during delivery. Ouch. Hannah was always the voice of my conscience growing up, telling me things like, "Mom, you can't park here!" The firstborn, the rule follower; Tuesday's child, full of grace.
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We moved to Oregon when she was one, time for her to come out of the closet, the only space for her crib in our third floor Sunset apartment with a view of the Pacific. There she was joined by her confident sister, Christiana, and her cute brother Micah who followed their every lead, even when he found himself dressed in red velvet with a bow in his hair. Hannah waited, quiet and observant by my side, as her second brother, Noah, was delivered into her world of 7 years which she welcomed him to with wisdom and love. They shared an instant bond as if each were the one the other had been waiting for. Noah learned to climb quickly with the added incentive of Hannah's hidden candy stash on her bed which he secretly ravaged when she was at school. She bravely sang Counting Sheep, a beautiful lullaby, for the crowd at Noah's funeral 15 short months later. She held her brother Jonah gently and added her 8 year old tears to the growing puddle on his sweet little lifeless face. We moved to RI when she was 10 and she joyfully welcomed Isaiah and Bella Grace to her collection of siblings in the years that followed! She has been an excellent role model for them all! "Goody, goody, Hannah!" as her Grandma Kittel named her when she learned to go potty like a big girl.
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Hannah began her love affair with Portuguese when we lived in the Algarve for a year where she distinguished herself as always with her intelligence and had her onstage debut as a beauty school dropout in Grease. She returned to Portsmouth High and proudly drove the sand van to graduate with a fistful of honors and a happy invitation to become a Hoya. Clearly, she had mastered the art of crawling and had, indeed, learned to run. She took on the challenge of crew in her typical quietly confident way and has been rowing and studying in our nation's capital ever since, mastering the art of city living while honing her award-winning shelving abilities in the science reference library. She came here to Costa Rica for Christmas vacation with her friend, Alicia, and we had a great time swimming and playing together as a family for a short 10 days. (Photo below) We miss her! But we are very proud of her as she continues to excel in her endeavors and grow into a capable and lovely young lady. Our hats are off and our feet are jiggling to our Hannah Banana, Banana Skittle and she has 20 times 5 spankings waiting for her when next we gather!
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Parabens a Voce, Nesta Data Querida, Muitas Felizidadas, Muitos Anos de Vida, Hoje e Dia de festa, Cantam as Nossas Almas, Para menina Hannah, Uma Salva de Palmas!
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Feliz Cumpleanos a Ti!
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Con Mucho Gusto Y Mucho Amor,
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Mom (K3)

The Black Panther, Part One - In the Beginning

In the beginning was the word and the word was idea. And the idea was good. Or so it seemed. Perhaps it was not all good as many ideas are often found to be. And it came to pass and the idea became reality....

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When we conceived and implemented the idea of moving to Costa Rica, it had been for some time already that Andy and Micah had been discussing a father/son motorcycle trip across country. Since we needed a way to get Duncan here as well as some of the stuff we thought we needed, the idea of them driving here morphed into reality and the panther, a Ford F350 with a crew cab, entered our lives and replaced the Harley of their dreams. As the trip grew into reality the truck gave birth to a trailer and the trailer was filled with supplies for the Nicaraguan mission work done by the Methodist conference of churches. And off they went from this photo taken above on July 18, '08, Micah and Andy and Duncan, on their great adventure driving to our new home here and causing too many geographically challenged folks to scratch their heads with wonder at how you can drive to an island. And what an adventure it was! For 6 days they drove across our fair land listening to tales of pre-election woe and discontent with the economy and leadership of our country, stopping at an endless array of "business closed" signs and entertained by fluctuating fuel prices which declined with latitude.

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They arrived in post-hurricane Dolly Texas to find no room at the inns, which were overflowing with evacuees. It took three days to convince the friendly Mexican customs officials to let them pass into the land of tacos and federales. Here they began their affair with border crossings and armed lovers who stopped them over 20 times in 3 days to fully enjoy their caresses and attempt to extract the sweet kisses of pesos to their extended hands. They had hoped to worship at the crumbling feet of its ancient temples but were only given a 5-day, $500 Visa so had to rush right past the ancient Gods to the begging arms of the colorful Guatemalan keepers of the border. There they managed to cross for half the price and were granted a 3 month stay in that land of bargains waiting to fill their trailer with beautiful embroidered cloth and cheap trinkets which they did not desire even from the pleading round eyes of beautiful black haired five year old girls with piles of rainbow colored scarves on their heads.

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It was raining and they rushed through in a day to El Salvador, which lie before them previously unconsidered with perhaps a negative connotation. The border crossing cost only $10 and became the surprised sleeping favorite country and day of the trip with a beautiful coastal highway overlooking basalt bluffs and tunnels opening to the rugged shoreline below and quenching breezes of the Pacific on their steaming skin. El Salvador swept the "best of" award categories, winning for the easiest and most civilized border crossings as well.

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The next day they crossed into Honduras which should have been only a one or two hour trip across its 60 miles of highway but, like many such places, tried to make the most of what little it had. It ended up taking a full day and $450 split between the two borders with a Honduran official escort who shall not be named and was given the seat of honor, in the back next to a drooling Duncan, demanding his own payment of $40 for the ride with no discounts, thank you very much. Arriving at night in the no-man's land that lays between countries they were forced to sleep in the cab of the truck, swatting mosquitoes all night until the customs officials had their morning coffee and fill of gallo pinto and opened up for business. This night won the award for the worst night of the trip as they were awakened continuously to the sounds of busses emptying their passengers into the parking lot around them. These travellers, in turn, unabashedly emptied their bowels and bladders on the pavement around them as well.

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The next day they drove to Managua and were relieved to see the joyful faces of the Methodist mission workers who emptied the trailer of its supplies with many smiles and gave them a bed and bowl of water for the night. There they had their most hauntingly educational day when they were given a tour of selected highlights of the city, including the vast, teeming dump built on the remains of old Managua which was leveled by the earthquake of 1972 and bulldozed towards the lake, filling in the wetlands with the palpable spoils of its memories where once egrets and herons nested to the distant disco beat. Here over 10,000 citizens lean on their flimsy hold on life together in zinc and cardboard houses, squabbling for the first fetid spoils to fall off the overflowing regurgitation of their daily bread, the abundance that floweth from the garbage trucks. This was not the first sighting of such abject poverty for Andy, but it was an eye and awareness opener for Micah. But even for Andy, what set this "one man's trash" neighborhood apart was the sheer size of its desperation and the fact that it was recognized as an acceptable suburb by the government who provided electricity and water for a fee to its garbage filled streets where babies crawled through ankle-deep refuse, flies fighting for prime nesting spots on their faces, while their ancient older siblings searched through broken glass and putrid smells for a tiny reusable piece of wire or metal and their fathers struggled under their light-weight burdens of oversized clear plastic bags filled with recyclable everlasting plastic from our transplanted consumer economy which has allowed their neighborhood to flourish and grow.

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Built back into a high hill overlooking this shame of civilization sits a shiny new US Embassy, recently completed for hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars, strategically situated for its perception of safety. Safe, perhaps, from the wrath of the trash town citizens who are temporarily blinded below by the reflection of the sun off its shiny white facade with tinted one-way windows in their dismal downturned eyes. There our ambassador sits high and secure on his hill in his clean office overlooking the putrid pea green polluted waters of Lake Managua and the smoking volcanoes in the distance, his view sullied only by the humanitarian recycling project which lies in the space between, praying the sun is never darkened long enough for their searching eyes to turn upwards towards the heavens or him.

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The next day they left for the welcome sight of the Costa Rican border with an empty trailer and welcome addition of Miguel onboard to help smooth out their last border love affair. They had the haunting memory of those dump dwellers in their brains but also the vision of the sewing projects and school and health supplies left behind in the helping hands of the mission workers. The crossing was smooth and cost $25 of actual fees. Andy had no idea how much time he was destined to devote to this border place called Penas Blanca. For now they were content to look only as far as the heaping plates of filet mignon and fish which lie within a fork's reach before them at the Happy Snapper, offering a burnt cigar offering to the Gods of the Pan American Highway left behind them. They happily pulled into the clean linens awaiting them at Hotel Sugar Beach and put the Panther in park, jumping into the pool and washing off the 9 days of Central American dust that had accumulated on their skin. Each floated under the wisdom of the stars above with memories of too many guns and tortillas tucked safely behind them.

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The word was idea and the idea became history.

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K3

Hopping and Flopping Around in the Heat!

I know you don't want to hear it, but lately it has been 95 degrees and warmer around our casa. Our clay tile floors feel like they have built-in radiated heat underneath as they warm up with the day. Not that we have a thermometer or anything, but when I sit at my keyboard with sweat running down my fingers I sometimes click on the Tamarindo Tide Chart and check out the weather. Sunny and hot, emphasis on the latter. As much as we have cursed the winds that lifted the roof and rained bug larvae and dirt on the floor, they did keep the air moving. Now, alas, we may have to resort to using that precious commodity, electricity, to move the sweat in different directions.

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So as Easter rolled around it seemed highly improbable that a fur-covered oversized rabbit would be found hopping around delivering, of all things in this heat, chocolate! As usual, it is blissfully easy to remain unaware of holidays, with the blaring lack of commercialism and we might have overlooked the event entirely for the lack of advertising circular reminders if it were not for a few other hints - like church, Spring Break, and the monthly flipping of the calendar. Plus the fact that three of my kids faithfully observed the abstinence of Lent this year and were eagerly awaiting the resurrection of not only Jesus but french fries, chips, and ice cream into their hungry young lives.

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Saturday rolled around and found us cleaning our house after our friends with "their three sons" departed for colder climates, namely California. As I mopped the floor on Easter Eve Bella happened to mention that her friend Katie at school told her that the Easter Bunny does, indeed, come to Costa Rica! We had planned to attend church and have a family dinner with grilled chicken but had not contemplated the possibility of a visit from the big bunny. But Bella was correct! The Easter Bunny did somehow enter our casa and hide a bunch of little chocolate soccer balls as well as some chocolate crunchy eggs and some kind of pastel colored candy eggs that only the hormigas enjoyed. So the kids had their traditional egg hunt before breakfast using plastic bags instead of cute wicker baskets and off to church we went with chocolate on our breath!

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The Beach Community Church is an over-sized, open-air palapa with one sunny yellow wall behind the altar. The parrots fly by with their own squawking chorus and the breezes blow through the surrounding hibiscus and beauganvillia blooming around it in a permanent hug of pink, orange, and red, a lovely alternative arrangement of altar flowers. The service is slightly evangelical in nature but the surfing pastor (see photo) with his bright white infectious smile and entertaining lessons make it very easy to listen to. There is a new mix of talented singers and instrumentalists every week. Everyone wears shorts and flip flops or little dresses and it is the healthiest and most beautiful congregation I have ever admired. I think God himself must be very pleased when he lifts up the edge of that palm roof and peeks in on all the happiness and beauty and warmth worshiping him from under its shelter.

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On Easter Sunday everyone greeted each other warmly with salty kisses - all tropical kisses taste like the salt of the earth and sea in this heat. There is a Costa Rican superstition that cautions against swimming on Good Friday lest you turn into a fish! The beaches around here were packed all Semana Santa and many of the Chipenos frolicking in the sea were apparently eager to risk this transformation instead of heading back to San Jose with their feet still intact. I, myself, water lover that I am, had to think twice about whether or not I might not mind being a fish... Depends what kind, I guess, definitely not a tasty minnow, even though I do like big families. Maybe a stunning rooster fish. The pastor gave a lovely message interspersed with several funny jokes, one of which Andy had been telling all week himself! He reminded us of Jesus' last words as he hung on the cross, "It is finished." Those three simple words hold so much meaning and gave me pause to ponder. So simple, yet so profound. What you might say to yourself, for instance, upon glancing down and discovering you were the proud new owner of both fins and a tail.

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During communion it is the custom of this church to flip flop up the center aisle and take a little square of bread, the body of Christ, and a little cup of grape juice, the blood. Everyone carefully carries these symbolic elements back to their folding chairs while the offertory music concludes. On this Easter morning we were blessed with the beautiful singing voice and keyboard playing of our school's new music teacher to keep the procession moving. She is the Mom of 3 of my kid's fellow students and the wife of a devout Christian locksmith named Darwin. No kidding. I actually thought we were listening to a recording before I stood up and noticed her on the altar, playing and singing so professionally. As her last note echoed around the wooden poles of the palapa and through the palm fronds into the eavesdropping ears of God himself, naturally we were all moved to applaud our appreciation of her talents. This is not a church that is afraid to clap, unlike other more reserved and steeped-in-tradition types I have belonged to which shall remain nameless, where they actually instituted a clapping policy to alleviate the angst and rigidity of the proper shoe-wearing parishioners... But there we sat on this hot and sunny Sunday, sweating with the body and blood of Christ in our hands, unhibited by an overabundance of either cloth or leather and eager to make some noise of our own! And that was when our smiling pastor verbalized what everyone present was suddenly realizing, "It is hard to clap with the blood of Christ in your hand!" Indeed!

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Amen!

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K3

Hooray for Juan Santamaria Day!

And the sun sets on the end of Spring break...

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Today is Juan Santamaria Day, also known as Easter Monday, and a nice extension to the busy holiday. According to Wikipedia the holiday is held every year on April 11, and today is the 13th, but here we are. The old "if the holiday falls on fin de semana we celebrate on Lunes thing..." And who was Juan, you might be wondering along with the rest of us gringos? Well, read on to your ultimate enlightenment...
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Young Juan is one of only two bonafide national heroes of Costa Rica and his holiday is held on the day of his death in 1856. As the story goes, there once was this guy named William Walker, the self-proclaimed grey-eyed man of destiny, who put the F in Filibuster. I have spent the morning surfing the internet but can not verify the rumor that he is the ancestral "W" our own illustrious past Prez was named for but it is fun to think about their similarities. William was hanging around San Francisco in the mid-1800's when he had this brilliant idea to turn Central America into a private English speaking slave colony and subsequently began his quest for glory by taking over Nicaragua and declaring himself the 6th President, killing all who opposed him or called him bad names. So you can see some potential genetic traits emerging with our own 43rd Prez...
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With one banana republic neatly tucked under his belt he set his sights on his new neighbor to the south, our own Costa Rica, never known for its ferocious military might. He and his welcome wagon of mercenaries headed off to the land of Pura Vida, thinking the Ticos would line up neatly and speak English, damn it! Instead he met with armed resisitance thanks in part to the financial assistance CR received from Cornelius Vanderbilt, whom Walker had pissed off. In those pre-Panama canal days the tycoons fought over access and control of a shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific thru this fair isthmus - no, we do not live on an island - and Nicaragua was the place to flex your big cojones as boats could sail up the San Jaun River and into Lake Nicaragua, offloading there for a short jaunt by oxcart to the Pacific. These were the heady days of the goldrush and the building of vast fortunes and economic battles between giants like the V's and the Morgans, the latter having backed young master Will in his endeavors for control of the banana republics.

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Meanwhile, back in Guanacaste, the grey-eyed Will was routed out of Santa Rosa just north of us here and pushed back to Rivas in Nicaragua with some hot Ticos in pursuit, taking strategic refuge in a fort. Enter Juan stage left, the poor boy born of a single mother who heeded his President's call to arms, volunteering to march his country's army to the beat of his drum. After several failed attempts to burn Walker and his men out, Juan traded his drum sticks for a flaming torch, asking that his country take care of his mother as he successfully set the fort on fire, his last dying act before meeting his own destiny. He was named a national hero for freeing his people from the threat of shackles and the audacity of saying "Hello" instead of "Hola." Walker's name is the nasty equivalent of a different four letter word in this part of the world and the reason most Nicos still distrust fast talking gringos. And Ollie North didn't help matters any...
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The little drummer boy, Juan, was only 24 years old when he beat out a Latino rhythm on the world's oldest instrument for the last time. Now we all fly into the national airport in San Jose named for him and give thanks for this extra beach day before heading back to the school routine. Walker, on the other hand, was sent home by the US Navy to an unlikely NYC hero's welcome where he sat down and wrote his memoir. He then made the ill-fated decision to go on a book tour to Honduras, this being the glory days of publishing before you needed the expert advice and services of a literary agent, who might have wisely advised him on a different marketing strategy while convincing him to drop all adverbs and exclamation points. The Hondurans gave him a clear consumer response, executing him by firing squad before he could write anything more about his big idea to hear them all cry, "Yes, Master!" In the end, slavery never held much in the way of popular appeal, regardless of what language spoke its name.

Tortugas

Last night on the beach was pure magic. Another one of the 99 reasons we moved to Costa Rica was so our kids could observe the wildlife here before it is all gone. Sound gloomy? Sadly, it is a fact. Most of the wildlife here is, indeed, endangered and it could disappear in their lifetime. Andy and I actually beat the bush at Monteverde in 1987, our first Pura Vida visit, until we found the Golden Toad, a fluorescent orange beauty endemic to that cloud forest and never seen again in the years that followed. So we take no creature for granted, taking advantage of our time here while we can, and try not to hasten the decline. We have spent many, many magical moonlit nights on one gorgeous beach nearby watching the turtles lay their eggs under the stars and praying the US owners of the property never develop it. Some months have been busier than others, but every night there is evidence of turtle activity on this beach. Olive ridleys were abundant in the fall and now there are one or two black turtles, tortuga negra, as they are locally known lumbering up the beach nightly to ensure the survival of their species like this one from last night's adventure.

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We have seen the wide tracks of giant leatherbacks twice on our beach but have not been lucky enough to see them heaving themselves across the slippery sands. We did, however, pay $50 to see one 500 pound sheila on Playa Grande in December during their nesting season. She was a small one for her kind. Playa Grande is a national park for las baulas, the leatherbacks, and the park rangers do a good job of patrolling and keeping people off the beach at night. It is one of the most important nesting sites for these behemoths of the turtle world and controversy rages as the government allowed lots to be purchased and houses built within the park boundaries. Artificial light is one of the biggest enemies of sea turtles and the houses create illumination problems. Where thousands used to arrive, now they are lucky to see one hundred.

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On our beach there are one or two guards and sometimes people camping at holiday times like now, Semana Santa, Holy Week. Otherwise we are usually the only ones enjoying the warm nights walking in the shallow waters along the tideline, our feet kicking cascades of phosphorescent creatures sparkling like a tiny bioluminescent light show before our happy feet. Last night we brought our friends and watched this black turtle throwing sand on everyone, digging herself in deeper and deeper. You have not lived until a sea turtle has flung sand on you with her powerful flippers perfectly proportioned for both swimming and digging in the sand. We have found this type of tortuguero to be quite skittish and sure enough, after captivating everyone's attention for an hour she ultimately decided not to deposit her clutch of about 100 eggs and headed back for her saltwater home instead. (The photo above is an olive ridley laying in September) Perhaps she returned later when the smoke from the campfires did not assail her sense of smell and the onlookers were dreaming in their tents. Perhaps she will wait for another night. It was a rare opportunity nevertheless for our friends to witness this spectacular creature toiling away so earnestly out of her natural liquid environment.

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While they observed, I spread a large cool cotton sheet out on the sand and Bella, Isaiah, and I had a moonbath. The moon was nearly full and the stars were dull in its light but we could pick out the big dipper anyway. Usually the constellations are numerous and the milky way an easily discernible band of densely packed lights. But any night on the beach is special. And laying on a white sheet in the moonlight with the sounds of the surf and a sea turtle flinging sand nearby and the warm bodies and questions of my children next to me is pure magic. They have each watched so many sea turtles do their thing on the beach in the past 8 months they could easily lead guided tours and answer any questions that might arise.

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The only stage of the process we are still hoping to witness is the hatching out of the chicas, the perfect tiny replicas of their moms, all of the same sex depending on the temperature of their sandy womb. We have seen the evidence they leave behind, the dry leathery egg shells and the many little tracks radiating out from one small spot in the sand and we have followed their sometimes misguided attempts to reach the sea, picking one track and observing its meanderings with a sigh of relief when it evidently reached its new saltwater home. We lay on our sheet and the world fell away around us. The moon was bright, the night was sweet and warm, and we were content, needing nothing more.

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I should mention that we joke that the guard job at this beach includes all the turtle eggs you can eat, but it is not funny. The guards and some of our neighbors do, indeed, wait on the beach for these mamas to do their thing, waving goodbye to them as they head back to sea with salty tears running from their eyes, leaving their offspring to meet their fate. Then the hungry onlookers simply follow the telltale road map left behind by flippers and shell which leads them straight to the nest where they neatly dig up the ping-pong ball-like eggs still warm and covered in the liquidy lubrication from their mother's bodies. They eat these eggs raw and rubbery before the shells begin to form, selling them to the local bars where they are served in shot glasses with tomato juice for a serving of protein and "Mas Fuerte" with the flowing beer and guaro. Mas Fuerte means more strong, and of course they view these reptilian delights as powerful aphrodisiacs like the body parts or products of so many other endangered species around the world. Think bear gall bladder, tiger pee, rhino horn... sea turtle eggs, all of which leave me with one giant vote for Viagra as the most unlikely solution to saving these species! As if our world needs Mas Fuerte. What other species on the planet has been more successful in their efforts to reproduce and fulfill their biological purpose than homo sapiens?

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I lay on my tropical cotton island with two of my own five living children, gazing up at the heavens where perhaps the rest of my children who have gone before us were swinging on the stars. I thought of the Native American saying, "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." I sent up a silent prayer to the twinkling stars that my fears never come to pass and that the two children snoring gently beside me in the warm night air can some day bring their own offspring to that same spot, spread out a sheet of their own choosing and listen to the same sounds gently ushering them off to the land of their dreams - the warm waves gently kissing the shore and a mother sea turtle sighing softly with the effort laying her eggs.

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K3