Creamed Olives and Rice

I can see it in a thousand little ways, how living among a foreign people has changed me. I cling to the change, the way I have lived with the rich and the poor, the strangers that became friends, the foreign and the familiar. The way we have read together and cooked together and spoken for hours about everything and nothing at all. The experience of living with families in different countries is one of my greatest treasures.

My family in Spain still writes and we keep in touch through postcards and Facebook messages. I remember how I sat with my Spanish Madre and helped her iron the clothes on her kitchen table. She did it every day, corners folded neatly, bread fresh from the little store on the corner, meals prepared with love. I remember the day she brought the rosary out that her Grandma had given her and told me she had never been a very religious person but thought that the necklace was lovely. She used to hang our underwear out on the line at the top of the building for the world to see, and we laughed at the audacity. She probably laughed at us too, the way we would stay up all night whispering and rise before the sun. The way we lived in her house and tried to speak to her daughters, the Spanish words awkward and heavy on our tongues. How we marveled at the food and the sky and the words we tried to speak.

The first family Chris & I lived with in Peru were already our friends. We lived with them for a few weeks and ate creamed olives on toast for breakfast. There was always pineapple juice on the table and I thought it was curious how they mopped the floor every day. Everything was different, the way they cooked rice and the way they served food and the way they fixed coffee.

The second family we lived with in Peru was peculiar. They didn’t speak to us very much and they would always come in without knocking. I wonder if they thought we were peculiar too with our foreign food and the way we sat around in the living room and played cards at night. They gave us gifts of chocolate from the jungle and we gave them trinkets that we brought back from the states. We shared a house with them when our daughter was born and somewhere along the way, the peculiar became familiar and normal.

I’ve spent so many afternoons with my friends in the marketplace, haggling and bargaining with the locals to save a few cents. They taught me to cast my eyes down and take a step back so that I could get the best deal on purses and scarves. Now I know that 3 soles is too much to pay for Q-tips and a drink should never cost more than 2. I’ve spent so many afternoons being changed.

I’ve heard it said that our experiences don’t define us. But I think that in a thousand little ways, they do. Every experience that we have can shape and mold us, or it can be learned from, or it can be overcome. When I’m back in the states, I see foreigners with new eyes, knowing all too well the sting of living so far from home. I meet the gaze of the Hispanic mother in the grocery store, scowling at the hard mangoes and avocados on the shelves, picking up one after another and putting them back. I know the sweet taste of both picked fresh from the tree.

My heart lives in so many different places and with so many different people. I miss buying bread from the baker on the corner and hanging clothes to dry on the 6^th story balcony in Spain. I remember the familiar clink and clank of the rosaries for sale, hanging in the booth on the corner. I cook rice in a rice cooker with chopped garlic and olive oil, just like the Peruvians do. And when I’m finished cooking our meals with all the love, I mop the floor in my small Peruvian kitchen every day.