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Bismark Palm, spectacular fan
I was recently in my birthplace of Panama. Over ten days it was a visit to some of the prettiest landscapes of my dynamic homeland as well as a return to family.
We had culinary experiences too. In Boquete, a coffee-growing mountain town in the distant province of Chiriqui, we shared a couple of meals with Charlie Collins one of Panama's premier chefs and author of T'ACH: Panamanian Native Cuisine,
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I will be the mama cat in a week (in addition to being a hotelier for three live-in cats). Sons, daughters-in-law, grand girls, grand boys, grandpa.
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Carmelish Carrasco after graduating with a Master’s in Social Work.
During Covid, not seeing my family, I felt a sense of isolation. I lost my grandmother in Florida during Covid. This grandmother, my dad's mother, lived in Providence when I was 7 or 8. She was bougie in what she wore. Coach from head to toe. "Don't bother to learn to cook," she'd tell me. "Study and you'll be just fine. Do new things."
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Elizabeth Lara, Poet. Photograph by Juan Armando Rojas.
Elizabeth spoke to me of grief and a sense of loss. “I had to find a way to hold on to the original me.”
I’d traveled in Europe by myself after college, unfazed by what might make others hesitate. A summer in France introduced me to being a foreigner, how to sink or swim in a society that was not mine. I had no reservations about moving to another country, but I was afraid of marriage. Erasmo talked me into it.
Photo by Angele Camp on Unsplash
Please forgive me while I clear my throat…
petulant petals pity party
Are we in purgatory?
I met with my besties on Zoom yesterday. Friends of many years, some living at significant distances. They’re listless, unfocused, cranky. Our world has shrunk again. O M I C R O N. It sounds like the plague.
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On the street we pass an aged pickup truck. The driver holding a loudspeaker to his mouth causes a rhythmic drone: “Scrap metals, chatarras, bronze, cobre, hierro viejo, lavadoras, secadoras, aires acondicionados dañados. Two young men ride in the open back to accommodate the scrap air conditioners, washers, dryers, and miscellany. This is the only music I hear on this visit. These sounds, too, are home.
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How do families try to “solve” the problem? How do we not lose sight of the fullness and wholeness of the person affected by mental illness or trauma?
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Until I wrote At the Narrow Waist of the World I did not understand the still-raw wound that I carried. I began the book by serendipity, with a scene I’d held in my memory full of texture and detail. I saw myself at the age of 5 or 6 carrying a white tray with hinged sides, hot milk in a Noritake cup, taking dinner to Mami who was very troubled at the time and was in bed.
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Newly vaccinated (all but the children) we visited our son and his beautiful family three hours north of us. It’d been a long year since we’d stayed overnight at their house; five months since we met masked and distanced at a midpoint town in Connecticut on a blustery day in the fall.
Read moreHere’s a “Postcard from Paris,” a new mini adventure on my blog.
Sara Somers is an American in Paris—looking out her window into the city she now calls home. You could say I’m a Panameña en Nueva York. We each bring an outsider’s perspective, and we both love having our feet in different worlds.
Sara recently shared my Aqueduct story about vaccines in New York. Below is a glimpse into what is happening around Covid19 in France. Here are notes from Sara’s blog, Out My Window:
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