A Beautiful Day

Wake up. A beautiful day is. Is it a beautiful day? What is a beautiful day? Today was a beautiful. Here it is. All of the day and what lies therein which made it a beautiful one. There was that sense of dirty accomplishment as you dove into the cool, cleansing Rio Mula to wash the mud off. The mud came from the house and the fresh smell of wet mud was not far at all. Because do you know how the muddy walls of a freshly muddied house smells? Smells like dirt. Dirty like all our friends working with us, our friends and our teachers because here in San Juanito they are often the same people. Our teachers are actually teachers but also kids and their smiles, laughs, and games. Our teachers have boots that squish tarantulas. All this they do for us because they have that deep kindness, that kindness that wakes up with our campesino friends in the morning and goes to bed with them at night. But you had better wake up early because it takes a long time to mud a house, even just the inside, which was all we did. The kindness is also given as a drink. Cane coffee cut with machete and served with a smile. All the time watching Nena with her perico and how happy that little green bird made her and how it laid on her lap as she laid on the lap of her smiling father as he laid in the hammock held together by a thin, thin, thin cord that won't ever break... ever. But you've gotta be SO careful. Oh so careful. Should you dare someone to collect the oranges you need to be prepared and well-prepared to help them down after they have collected you more than you can carry. When oranges are eaten here, they are peeled in one swift chop, sometimes victims of machetes, and then the juice is sucked out from a pool, deftly formed atop the orange. It's good. Trust us. We won't ever go back. Just like we can never go back from what we are experiencing second to day to second that we would never trade for anything in the money world. I can never understand Baukti's accent. Love it all the same. It hit me as I was walking down the road and carrying the oranges down the hill in my sombrero and I was having a conversation with them in Spanish and they were laughing and the sun was shining and it was just one of those weird moments. Yeah it itches! Hell yeah it itches! Sometimes so much that I can't stand my skin and no matter how much alcohol I spritz upon the bites they just don't subside. And then there is the wisdom of our current Panamanian mom and her slow careful assessment of just about everything. What pain she takes to put our lives right with chica. It got ironic at that point because we listened to the “Everybody in the Club Getting Tipsy” song in the deep campo jungle. But that will fade. What remains is the beauty of the day. A beautiful day. Go sleep.