My Ecua-mom speaks truth to me over instant coffee and pineapple marmalade. I don’t know if it’s her frankness, sincerity or because of the fact that life tends to re-awaken when one travels that makes her words effective, but something is different. Or maybe it is because she is speaking to me in a different language and I have to carefully pay attention and process consciously what she is saying and end up actually listening. In any case she speaks truth and this truth sticks.
My Ecua-mom knows I am a planner. Out of nowhere she starts to talk about how sometimes God’s plans are better than ours and that I should get used to the fact that things don’t always work out the way I want them to. In her words A veces las cosas duras de la vida te tocan a ti y hay que vivirlas nada más. Hay que aceptarlas y pedirle a Dios comprensión (Sometimes there comes a time in life when it is your turn to experience hard times and one just has to get through them. One should just try and accept them and ask God for understanding). These words are spoken to me while I am politely attempting to navigate away from the veringena (eggplant) spread for my tostadas in favor of frutilla (strawberry).
This is the second of wise monologues directed to me over some type of Ecuadorian dish. The first occurred when I came home for lunch one day worried about the details of someone coming to visit and she could tell something was on my mind. She placed a steaming bowl of locro (potato soup) in front of me and drops in fresh slices of aguacate (avocado) and queso (cheese) from across the table. Without even asking what I am worried about, she gives me the breakdown of the word in Spanish. The word in Spanish for ‘to worry’ is preocuparse, which literally means to occupy yourself with something before it happens. My Ecua-mom advises me that this is a complete waste of time because one of two things happens: either you worry about something that does not come to pass and you have worried in vain or you worry about something that does come to pass and thus have had to experience the pain twice.
A similar situation happened to me when I was living with a family in Chile. For some reason I can clearly remember what my madre chilena said and why she said it. It was during the second week of residing in Santiago and I had been out drinking (uncustomary for me at the time) with a group of girls who were not the kind of girls I would normally be friends with. But in a study abroad program, the pecking order is quickly established and if one hesitates in making friends it seems like the opportunities to do so quickly slip away. But my Chilean mom could tell this group was not right for me. The next morning before breakfast she held me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye and said Sarah, Dios te puso en tu camino, no en el camino de otros (God put you in your own road in life, not in anyone else’s). That next weekend I went camping with a completely different group of friends which turned out to be one of the closest groups of friends I’ve had while traveling.
They say that one of the great ironies of Ecuador is that while it produces some of the best coffee in the world it is impossible to get a decent cup of coffee. However, if I have a choice between genuine conversation with mi señora and granulated instant coffee or a cup of the finest expresso, I choose to stir in my powdered NesCafé, listen to mi señora and her Spanish adages and wait for my tostadas to pop out of the toaster so I can slather them with pineapple marmalade.
