Pixie in Paradise

(OR, “3 Ho’s and a Mo” OR, “Ho, Ho, Ho and Mo”)

There are so many great titles for this one!

I was having such a wonderful time the few days leading up to Christmas and the days after that, honestly, there was no time to write. I didn’t dedicate any time to it anyway, and for good reasons, I think. I felt so much peace and love and friendship and all the great feels while living on Playa Negra near Puerto Viejo, that I just wanted to close the computer and live a little. And I lived. A lot.

Update: There WERE indeed oranges given to me for Christmas, as Christine pointed out after reading that last post! If you’ll recall from the previous one, oranges were one of the items in my stocking as a child that I didn’t appreciate as much as I should have. While I was cooking food for our holiday feast I asked Christine to bring back some sour citrus for me when she got back from the grocery store. There aren’t any lemons in Central America, I learned that living in Belize months ago, hence my request for “sour citrus.” There are only various shapes and sizes of round citrus, ranging from green to a sort of orange color, and they all look like limes and oranges and it’s hard to tell sometimes what will be sweet and which ones are actually sour. It’s always the little round ones that are the most sour and they can be all green to green with a tiny bit of light orange on them. They pack an awesome sour punch and are phenomenal in guacamole. In fact that’s how I ask for them in a store. I lift one up and ask if this is the one that is good in guacamole and judging by their reaction I know I’ve hit the Sour Patch Kids jackpot.

When Christine returned from the store and handed them to me I knew right away they weren’t going to be sour. I could tell by the size, mainly, but we work hard to find food – not as hard as I worked in Caye Caulker – on foot, biking, back alley fruit stands, the right grocery store, etc., but we still “forage” (“first world” forage) so I was so grateful to have her bring them to me and that’s exactly the attitude of gratitude I should have had towards my mom when I discovered my Christmas stocking fruits. Enough waxing poetic about that frickin’ stocking.

I was so excited when Christine and I agreed to make Christmas dinner with each other. It is so hard as a grown woman to meet other female friends that have similar interests and have the time to spend enjoying those pastimes with each other – and finding relatively well-adjusted humans that are self-aware, healing, working on their own traumas and triggers, don’t project and aren’t flaky. You know, basics. (I don’t know if there’s laughter in the audience right now, but I’m sure giggling at that construct…(“She said with an eye roll.”).

I officially met Christine when she locked herself out of our property and rang the bell at the gate. Despite living farthest from the front entrance, high-pitched loud noises make my skin crawl, so I often answered the bell in a hurry, not only to help whoever was on the other side but to get the ringing to stop. We both lived in sweet casitas with our Pura Vida Vikings, and I had seen her a lot out by the pool. We only smiled at each other in passing. She looked like she was writing on a notebook or laptop most of the time. Besides, I didn’t have the emotional capacity to interact with too many humans the first month I was back in Costa Rica either, so I stayed to myself, with the exception of Mo. 

Mo the cat was the exception to that rule. When not walking the beach or going for weekly runs to Puerto Viejo for vegetables, I spent a lot of my day at home, writing, resting or cooking. I was so comfortable there, the property was gorgeous with vegetation and I left my huge glass door open so Mo could come and go as he pleased. He stayed most days for at least five hours to nap and supervise the rest of my activities before leaving and returning in the evening for his dinner. I could hear as many tropical birds as I wanted, howler monkeys every day and I watched little lizards climb the walls inside and outside my house. I even watched a couple big green iguanas while in the hammock one day.

I stayed to myself as much as you think I probably did – I meet people everywhere, and that’s how I met Amanda, our third. I was still living in the rental nightmare in Puerto Viejo, not quite full of peace and harmony on Playa Negra yet, when I walked down a street I hadn’t been down before. It wound around to a beach and sitting on that beach was the coolest restaurant and bar. It was vegan and had all kinds of delicious wholesome, healthy dishes and drinks. It was dirty hippie hipster heaven and since we all looked like dirty hippies living in this tropical place, we were all pretty jazzed to be there. (In case Ruth and her adorable French husband, Thibaud, read this I mean all of the above descriptions with so much love! And I miss you). 

I stepped into this tranquil, light-colored, open air space just thirty feet from the beach, and saw a very pretty smiling woman in the perfect sundress. It was white and beige-gray, tie dyed with thin stripes of the gray color. She had a glass of rose’ on a low table in front of her and her skin was glowy. I could tell she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all and even her real eyelashes were stunning. Her skin was bright and her hair was curly and perfect. Unbelievable. I haven’t been able to get a comb through my hair since before I got to Belize. I almost have locs going most days. Most women would have thought, “What a bitch. She looks flawless.” I just thought, “Wow, she has great energy AND she looks flawless and I really need to learn what she promised the devil to get her hair that way because I’m not above doing it too.”

We started talking because I told Amanda I loved her dress and was looking for one too and for some reason I sat down and started talking to her. I think she invited me, Amanda is just very friendly and welcoming. It wasn’t five minutes into the conversation when I told her a short version of the last six months of my life and that I was writing about my adventures, and she told me she also writes and had written and published books! She then casually mentioned she owns a small publishing house. Did I just rub a lamp with a genie in it?! I haven’t been speechless in a very long time but having just sat down in front of someone who was so easy to talk to, with great energy and now has this huge shared aspiration with me? Speechless, for maybe a few more minutes then we ended up talking for three hours over two glasses of wine each.

That is how Christine and I became Christine, Amanda and I for Christmas dinner. But if I’m being honest with you, I had one Christmas wish: I wished that my stray outdoor cat (Mo, of course) would stay healthy and live to see another day so that he could be part of my Christmas. I assumed a few weeks ago that Christmas was just going to be me and him and that thought made me gloriously happy. I love Christine and Amanda and looked forward to their food and companionship (not in that order), but I know they won’t take offense when I say, I just really wanted my tico cat to be there with all of us too. And he was, and so it was the best Christmas ever. Not just because Mo was there but because the three of us – who sat at the table – enjoyed each other’s food and company and talked and laughed and polished off a humongous bottle of white wine and had to go get more.