Lucky in Love

That’s a strong statement from someone who has spent much of her life alone. It’s not what you’d normally think about love coming from the lips of a woman. Coming from an age where most of us who have; have only just barely escaped the bondage of traditional marriages and motherhood. Not to say there aren’t benefits to any bond. These two particularly demanding and still mostly accepted as normal, healthy development in the civilized world. The intrepid bar raiser gets an education in between and maybe even a successful career choosing to wait until it’s almost too late to make deliberate families and live in planned communities. And there are the ones who deliberately choose not to. We the deserters; the abandoners of family; the ones who got away – the ones who are accused of escaping, hiding, running.  I think I speak for all of us when I say you can stop worrying because there’s nothing wrong with us. Really. We’re fine. And we still love you.

I’ve heard it said, the reason you choose a thing eg. A mate, a place to live, a lifestyle, a flavor; is the reason you’ll ultimately unchoose it.  That anything with a motive behind it that doesn’t come from a genuine place – you can say a true heart or sound reasoning or insert your favorite idiom here—will eventually come to an end. I say every relationship comes to an end. The success is in knowing when it does.

In many ways it’s like reading a book. You go through the interactions of the characters in the story as you turn the pages. This is the getting to know you stage. You become enamored, interested and maybe even gain some compassion for a few of the more developed players. Now you’re seriously dating. You have reached the point you can’t wait to be together again. You are excited by the possibilities and want to find out what happens next. You’re turning the pages faster, devouring every line maybe two three at a time.

Or maybe you’re like me and you like to play at being disciplined, only allowing yourself the pleasure of reading one chapter per night to make it last. However we do it, eventually we’re going to get to the last page.  I chose to read THIS book and now that it is over, I will pick another just like it or I will find a completely different genre. I do hope you are following the analogy.

With flavors it goes like this: You get your first taste. You wonder if you really liked it or if you were just in the mood for it that day. Your curiosity lures you back. You encounter an option to choose another. You don’t. Now you’re hooked. You buy some to take home. You eat it all or savor it day by day. It runs out. You go back for more and either A. choose the same flavor or pick a new one based on the experience of the first; but the relationship you had with that first flavor is still over. You with me?

Endings are the point where things begin to get really interesting for a person like me. Here I am writing this story from a place I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams–living as a house-sitter in Costa Rica going on three years. The ocean breeze is gently blowing the white mesh curtains into whispers of salty air around my toes inviting my skirt to dance. When I look away from the screen to rest my eyes, the lush green of the forest canopy calls to me to pick up the ‘nocs and find out who is making that sound. There are creatures of all manner just roaming about as if they own the place. One of the reasons I was so attracted to this country? I love snakes. Will that be the reason I eventually leave?

Uno nunca sabe. “One never knows.”

I say I’ve been lucky in love but with the proper monitoring equipment, science may one day prove that I was only lucky because I was in love – with many things all through-out my life.

Speaking of speaking in Spanish, here is a poem I memorized to impress people and make new friends, it has been attributed to Vincent Van Gogh (in English):

Ama muchas cosas

Pues ahí yace la verdadera fuerza

Quienquiera que ama mucho, hace mucho y puede lograr mucho

Porque lo que se hace en el amor se hace bien.

“Love many things for therein lies the true strength. For whosoever loves much, does much and can accomplish much for what is done in love is done well.”

There are many things to love about Costa Rica. I suppose I will be telling you more about those since I’m here and I have the time. There are also many ways to love. I guess that’s the part where we’ll get into the gory details of death, divorce and disillusionment. How experiencing enough makes a person wonder if the end really is. How finding out the love of your life gets even better than you can imagine every single time. How much freedom really costs.

Meanwhile, you should know I’m just your average 40-something making it happen out here in the wilds of the bottom of Central America. In other words, there’s nothing special about me. In fact, I’m pretty boring on a day to day basis. I would say I’m just like you, but the fact is your life is probably WAY more exciting and book worthy than the one I’ve chosen.

In the interest of progress, you should know one thing. While it is a fact I live in paradise; that doesn’t mean you don’t.

Ama muchas cosas/Love many things,

Costacalle