The clouds hang low and I think of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, replete with references to nature, love, and loneliness. This place readily offers all three of those elements, and I am quite at home with dark skies overhead, anticipating the sun here as he did, trusting that it exists, and will return. And anyway, while it slants its rays elsewhere and clouds are heavy, it is somehow easier to be pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts. Murky thoughts that reflect the nebulous heavens. The streets of Valparaíso, Chile. How many works have begun with those words, been inspired by that image, or been moved by the spirit of the place? My footfalls hit the cobblestones in rhythm with my breath, giving a measured, evenly punctuated characteristic to steep streets that are otherwise happily chaotic, twining around buildings with the eagerness of new lovers, an evermore frenetic tangle as they reach lower, following the bustle of humanity downhill until the land is overtaken by the waters of the sea.
The narrow passageways cave in on themselves, giving way to buildings that are short but mighty because they emanate emotions, like living beings…they have seen much, and are age-old. Their open windows with tattered curtains look on passerby with knowing and wisdom. The city, its art, and its people are all steeped in sadness and joy, love and moonlight, and the entire place reeks of a decrepitude, but has been given new life through an artist’s loving touch. I notice my eyes becoming dry and realize that I have been reluctant to blink, so as not to miss a single thing. Steps are uneven but I trip without caring. From three directions, there is music floating in the air and words wash over me, a pleasant bath of lilting syllables accented here and there with the sounds characteristic of the Chilean accent.
Following a leisurely dinner at a local eatery, I shifted my gaze from the gently darkening sky outside the window to the owner, whose aging form momentarily melded with the bar as he stretched long towards its corners to remove tiny pieces of stubborn debris left by the day’s patrons.
“How long have you been in Valparaíso?” I suddenly asked, curious about the elderly man who was both wiry and frail. He fit in well with this place that bridged slow decay and vigor so gracefully.
“Me?” His bright eyes shifted from the counter to look at me, surprised. “I have lived here for all of my life.”
“Oh wow,” I said. He straightened and leaned his elbows on the bar, cleaning duties momentarily traded for the softness of fond memories and random conversation with me, a traveler who was suddenly interested in listening. I watched this man as he spoke, enjoying the slightly unpredictable quirk of one eyebrow, and the crevices in his forehead and cheeks that deepened when he emphasized certain points in his story. He told me tales of when he was a boy, when Pablo Neruda actually lived there, and all of the interesting friends and creatives that had crossed his threshold over the years.
“Yes,” he said. “I used to dream of traveling. I did it, for a while. But on one of my trips home, I met a woman, and you know how that goes,” he said, suddenly restless. He began shaking out the cloth and flipping it, which sent droplets of vinegar and water flying in my direction. I wrinkled my nose and laughed, saying teasingly,
“Well, and so she asked you to stay?”
“No. She told me to go. But that is how I knew I would stay.” His close-set blue eyes took on a dreamy, otherworldly expression and he stood, suddenly motionless. The hand that clutched the rag was frozen, squeezing water onto his shoes and the meticulously polished floor. He didn’t notice and simply said, fluttering his other hand dismissively and shaking his head slowly, “but, that ended. That time was too short and she is gone.”
The grin that had playfully stretched itself across my face disappeared as I felt his mood shift from happily nostalgic to sorrowful. He glanced furtively over in my direction and said, in a voice tinged with dark amusement, “I suppose now I should tell you why.” Not waiting for my response, he set the rag down and walked to the window that had captured my attention earlier. “What I have left of her is out there.” I shoved my chair back and went to stand next to him. “See, muchacha?” he whispered, “she is there.” He pointed in the direction of a large tree. His voice was soft, wistful. “We were married. We had a daughter. Ana. And six days later, she and our daughter died within minutes of each other. Her parents came to take her to be buried in their family plot because they never wanted her to be with someone like me, a poor restaurant owner. But the baby, mi hija, she is there. I don’t know why, but they let me keep her.”
He stood very still, staring hard at the spot where a tiny form slumbered beneath the tree, below the layers of grief, dirt, and rocks that had covered her many years before. I looked harder too, struggling to see past the tears that had gathered in my eyes, and in the soft blue of twilight, my eyes came to rest on a tiny headstone. The tree’s roots had grown off to either side, curving around the stone in a way that was cradle-like, motherly. Its remaining roots were busily engaged with clinging precariously to the steep hillside adjacent to the restaurant. I felt rooted to the spot myself.
At the man’s admission of his own tragedy, I had felt both deeply compassionate and sickened. My thoughts pulled me away from his pain to memories of my own. I closed my eyes and my body trembled as I experienced anew the shock and fear that gripped me when the tiny being briefly nurtured by my own body was suddenly and violently dispelled. Miscarriage. I knew I was pregnant for four days and I will never know what prompted the abrupt rejection of the tiny life, but on the fifth day of my awareness of myself as a mother, an unwitting giver of life, it was released back to the Earth.
For me, the loss of a child that I never knew was strange and subject to both imagined grandeur and fearful projection. What if it had turned out like my uncle, who we all know is crazy? What if she had been the next great female leader? What would it have been like to be a mother? Was it my fault? The memory of my own helplessness brought me back to the present moment. I still hadn’t responded to this tremendously vulnerable thing this man had shared with me, a stranger. He stood silently, as if he knew that his words had projected me elsewhere. The whisper started deep in my chest, vibrating and then exiting in a gently inquisitive purr.
“What happened?”
He paused before responding, and then said sharply, “Infection.” He stood rod-straight now. “I didn’t realize it and she kept saying she was fine. I should have taken her earlier, but…”
“But you listened to your wife who you loved and you did the best you could with the information you had at the time.” I shouldn’t have interrupted him, but I did, urgently, and in the same low whisper.
“Yes.” He ducked his head, grimacing. “And even though I know I could probably not have saved either one of them, and my efforts would have been pointless, I regret not insisting, even so.”
I couldn’t find the words to articulate my feelings, and swayed slightly with the effort to stay present in a moment that triggered so much of my own pain. I finally forced myself to say what I never expected to say aloud; as I heard my own words, they seemed to come from somewhere else.
“I have also lost a child. Like you, there was nothing I could do about it, and I will never know how life would have been different if it had lived.” My voice broke and I felt the courage I had summoned to share falter. “So…I get it, sort of.”
Something in his posture melted then, and his shoulders curled forward. “So amiga, maybe you understand a little.” For the first time in the entire conversation, he turned to face me head on and I could feel his eyes watching me closely, concerned and paternal. I couldn’t look up. He stretched out one hand and placed a rough palm on the top of my bowed head. My eyes closed, as if in a moment of baptism. “Sometimes, just saying the words helps. We are generations apart but we feel the same things.” I nodded, and felt one solitary tear drop from the tip of my nose into the depths of the plush rug below.
Then, abruptly, the moment was over. I heard him walk across the room to the bar and resume cleaning. I gathered my things and went to him and stood, smiling shyly and feeling strangely eager.
“Can I go out to the tree?” I wasn’t sure how he would receive my question but felt like I should ask permission.
“Of course. It has been waiting for you. Like me, maybe.” He smiled then, a real smile, and reached his hand across the bar towards me. We clasped hands briefly and his blue eyes glowed. “Safe travels to you, eh? I am glad to know you.” I was still having trouble speaking, so simply nodded and stepped backwards, walking towards the door of the side yard and anticipating my meeting with the tree and her tiny charge.
Once outside, I mistakenly assumed that my legs would follow the instructions provided by my brain. I don’t know which of the two rebelled, but my legs buckled before I reached the tree. I knelt, pressing my knees into the soft earth, and looked up, craning my neck towards its top and moving my eyes downwards, willing the tree to tell me what it knew. I felt like perhaps it was studying me as well and imagined that we encountered a familiar vulnerability in each other. Its delicate roots were exposed in places, and limbs stretched precariously towards the sky. It was unclear whether it was rising up to shake its branches in fury at a world that had placed it in such a tenuous position, or seeking to embrace it out of gratitude for its role of inadvertent caretaker and an existence that was a perpetual dare.
I looked more closely at the rocks to which the tree clung, which reinforced the point that it is crucial to choose carefully the quality of one’s anchor. Then again, there is no such thing as certitude. I may never have closure on the loss of my tiny child. There is no way to know how I “should” feel. It just is, and I know that. Still, the self-imposed isolation to which I had subjected myself in the six months since it happened, and what led me to impulsively purchase a plane ticket to “somewhere else” was no kind of life. I looked up at the tree and bowed my head to examine my own hands and fingers, now outstretched with palms facing up, as if in silent entreaty. The tree knows. Even as it cradled evidence of the demise of the most innocent of beings, it is better to live in the open…stretching, reaching, exposed, and grateful to merely remain upright while also establishing an intimacy with the concept of living intentionally, in a way that matters, and being at peace with the potential consequences.
I shrugged and suddenly realized that my knees hurt, in their respective nests of rocks, twigs, and grass. I shook myself free of the grip of one of life’s sternest realities and realized that I desperately wanted to go write, draw, sing, or dance, to allow my body, mind, and heart to contribute something beautiful to this context that had unexpectedly given me a significant gift. I can only conclude that others before me were afflicted with a similar sentiment, which is why the streets of Valparaiso are bedecked in murals. Whatever one makes, whatever art form or medium one uses…upon setting foot in this place, there is suddenly a creative immediacy that won’t be quelled, and you must make that thing right then. If you are a painter, you adorn the building in front of you, apparently, a fact for which I am grateful because the effect is stunning. I am satisfied with my decision to come here. I am envious of the street artists for their abandon…for their courage to lay claim in the most public way to the work they have left behind on every surface of this place in brilliant hues. I am also grateful. Here, people and things are beautiful despite, or maybe even because of, their damage.
That following day, on the long bus ride back to the airport, I closed my eyes and rested my head on the rough cushion, musing. Planting seeds for healing and hope or discovering those that have been planted by others in a world that is both beautiful and cruel…why else does one travel, really? I closed my eyes and the sun landed dappled kisses of light spooned by shadow on my eyelids. In contented assent, I lifted my face towards its warmth. Wind from the open bus window washed the hair off my forehead and my fingertips grazed the soft cloth of the t-shirt covering my abdomen. This is a healing place perhaps. Or, perhaps when I am here, I am willing to be healed. Despite the strangeness of my surroundings, I felt no need to protect myself and instead, all I saw from my bus window to the world seemed to be an act of love and tenderness. On a nearby corner, a small family waited to cross the street. The mother leaned over to kiss the forehead of her baby, who was strapped to her father’s chest. I shifted my eyes towards the park, where a happy couple held hands and smiled tenderly at each other amidst a backdrop of lush green space and blurred faces, a happy tangle of humanity.
When we stopped at the next parada, I glanced through the windows of the hotel across the street, which were haphazardly flung open to welcome the sun, and saw an old woman smiling across her open-air balcony at a neighbor, her hands busily folding faded laundry in a familiar, unconscious movement, while she occupied her mind and the open space of the courtyard with her pleasant words and laughter. The world Valparaiso introduced me back into is full of love and kind acts that occur in both dark days and moments of brilliant light. Perhaps I traveled there at just the right time. Perhaps I had been waiting too. I am indeed glad to have tripped along its corridors and will forever remember my time there with wonder and humility.
