Pocket of Peace: 8/18/09

Yesterday I found a new calm (at least for a little...). I’d been stressed out about school starting in a week and frustrated by my own inefficiencies and the inefficiencies of small town life when I rushed over to pick up tortillas from the “Super Baleada” lady. It was 5:30pm and my dinner group had to serve dinner at 6:00pm so I was cutting it close, as it took 15 minutes to get to the tortilla lady’s house on the wet hillside of loose gravel. Two teachers in my dinner group had made the order about 3 hours before and she’d confirmed that the 25 extra-large flour tortillas would be ready for pick up after 5:00pm but when I arrived, she hadn’t yet started any. I stood there in front of the three surprisingly young women with my obvious impatience and the entire day’s worries straining my face. 5 minutes pass. They give me a chair and tell me to sit. I do. 5 more minutes pass. I stare out at the muddy street and lush greenery near the polluted trickle of river from under the dining porch area covered by soggy banana leaves and a thin leaky plastic sheet of yellow. 5 minutes pass. My face finally relaxes and I feel a weight lifted off. Maybe I’d passed it onto the tortilla lady who now seemed like she was sprinting to fill my new request of just 10 tortillas. One by one. Hand rolled and hand stretched. More likely it was just having time to sit still without guilt. Not feeling like I should have been doing something productive for planning my class or exercising or reading a book or anything else. I had to sit there and wait and it was peaceful. As I sat there and chatted with Carla, the tortilla magician, I learned that they hadn’t started my tortillas before because they’d been busy all day. They’d gotten many orders and their usual day begins at 6am and they don’t close shop until 9 or 10pm. Right then I realized that working so much is a blessing in disguise. They can only work so much because they can find work. So many people here are chronically unemployed, recently laid off, or just have unreliable jobs. And then I thought about me. Remembered that I’m busy all day because I’m not only employed but its a challenging job that I find deeply meaningful. Being busy, having a lot on your plate, is just part of living a full life. Exhale. Then it was dinnertime and I remembered how to enjoy my company, my food, my night.