Better to Have Loved and Lost
A Tutorial by the Abuela of Finca La Bella
“It’s not good to be alone.”
Odilie Mora, known to all as Lila, tells me this after I explain that my parents travel together on my father’s work trips to keep one another company. Everything I’ve learned about her points to her belief in the importance of companionship: Lila praises the large size of my family and insists that I bring my boyfriend to see her.
Saturday, May 20th.
I’m on my second hour of dinner now, as I work through the four plates Lila filled to overflowing. I apologize for eating so slowly. She hushes me. “It’s lovely talking with you.”
I had arrived a few hours earlier with 27 photos to show of my family and travels and a stomach full of butterflies. (Mariposas, I correct myself. Lila and I are practicing the names of bugs in each other’s languages.) Seeing my nervousness, this tiny bespectacled lady had ushered me into her home like I was her own grandchild. She squeezed my anxieties from me with a tight hug, and we began a seemingly endless conversation. Cooking me a meal from scratch big enough to feed my whole family, she maintained throughout that she was almost done, with no need of my help.
She had insisted that I start eating without her, fixing herself a modest plate in comparison to my platters of chicken, salad, rice and beans, and pecadillo. As we talk, she holds her ginger cat, Saturno, like a baby. His wiry frame, big as it’ll get at a year old, curls against her hand as she pets him. His eyes remain closed contentedly for several minutes until he suddenly wriggles. Lila opens her grip, and the tomcat leaps to the ground, disappearing in an instant. It is just us again.
Lila, after seven years working as a cook in the UGA Costa Rica campus kitchen, retired to a quiet life in an “in-law suite” by her daughter Annabelli’s house. She pronounces her former employer as “Oo-ga” nostalgically, visibly excited when I recognize the names of her old friends. She has sheltered university students in her home for the past 25 years, housing bodies and feeding bellies from around the world. I sheepishly admit that I’m not yet 20 years old, and she teases me for my youthfulness.
When her husband Hugo was alive, he worked the property’s farm or finca, which produces primarily coffee and sugar. Lila takes the time to explain the difference between finca (a small piece of farmland), granja (a farm that includes a homestead), and hacienda (a large ranch like the ones my parents grew up on). Annabelli’s husband Mario carries out the work of the family’s share of Finca La Bella, as Lila’s other two daughters live in Santa Elena and Alajuela working more technical jobs. For the duration of my stay in her home, she makes me coffee in the mornings from outdoor’s beans, sweetened by the farm’s own sugar. I can taste how rich it is, and as she asserts the importance of freshness, I feel better about my age and naivete.
The home of my short-term abuela, a combined living room/eating area interrupted by two small bedrooms and a bathroom, hosts a menagerie of knick-knacks. A blue highlighter rests in front of the TV, cap firmly in place. A red ribbon weaves through the pages of a couple of different books. An Uno card covers half the body of a smiling blond, cradled between the wooden picture frame and glass. This man’s full identity is lost to time, a mystery beyond his grin and American paleness. Now, Lila knows him only as David, “a sweet boy, a handsome boy” who once made her acquaintance and came back for the second half of his program, a month later.
A wooden Northern cardinal, with red-painted plumage, now perches on her kitchen counter. I worried about the adequacy of my gift to her, but she took it proudly and placed it in the center of her culinary fray for Annabelli to later see and fuss over. When she has a spare moment, Lila takes out a denim bag filled with felt birds (and the occasional sloth) that she assembles in her free time. We review the Spanish names of the birds and the terms for their anatomy, and she smiles with pleasure when I recount the baby Quetzal I saw the week before. Birds, we agree, are one of the best gifts that nature has given us.
The night sky darkens as we talk. We discuss my love affair with her country and how my boyfriend and traveling companion, Peter, has formally requested we return as soon as possible. I ask her how many of her students have come back to visit her. She pauses.
One, she says. She means David, the student whose home-stay was split between two months. I promise her that I will double this number by coming back when I can.
Less than fifty feet away, the main house features a far busier scene. Annabelli, or Anna, and Mario live there with teenage daughter Cristel. While I spend time with the family matriarch, two of my classmates —Abbey and Abbigayle — get to know the younger generations. When I stop by to say hello and “check that the girls are behaving,” the scene looks so much like a typical American sleepover that I laugh: Cristel sings along to pop songs with legs kicking in the air while Abbey and Abbigayle vegetate and talk about their day.
Anna invites me to stay and watch a movie with them if I want. I have already caught a glimpse of Chris Evans’ familiar face as Capitán América on the television. I contemplate staying, speaking English with my friends and letting my brain rest, but I think of Lila alone under the heavy Costa Rican downpour. I thank her for the invitation, but since my friends “se comportan bien,” I’ll spend the evening with her mother.
Sitting on a plush, rust-colored loveseat, Lila and I watch news that we can’t hear over the pounding of the rain. We comment on how friendly the local spiders and the beetles are as they scurry around us, Saturno purring (ronroneando, she informs me, pawing at her face like a cat) beside me.
When translated to English, lila refers to either the flower or the delicate purple color, lilac. This secret identity for Lila immediately strikes me as reasonable: I think the world of her, and despite my tendency to ignore traditionally feminine things, I have always adored flowers. In fact, I spent about a year of my teenagedom learning the hidden meanings of flowers, from the implied reverie of pansies to the disdain of yellow carnations.
Lilacs, in their namesake color, delighted me with their significance in the history of courtship: they designate the emergent feelings of first love, flourishing like the blossom itself. I search Lila’s home for examples of lilacs or even traces of flowers in general, and find only the many mementos of her life and those who have made an appearance. I wonder how many times she has watched students fall in love with her country.
Sunday, May 21st.
Thinking that I’m going to catch up on sleep by going to bed at 9:00PM, I’m sorely disappointed when the roosters start screaming at four in the morning and outdoor dogs Gudi (the mean brown one), Belos (the friendly dappled one), and Pela (the docile black one) answer back. I remain in bed, cocooned, until I hear the footsteps of Lila on the wooden floor planks moving through the house at about six. Realizing she’s tiptoeing to avoid waking me, I gather the motivation to get up and flip on my lights. The rest of the lights of the house flicker on in response.
After cherishing the wonder of a hot shower on a cold morning, I arrive at the table to find I’m too late to even help with breakfast, which I had joked about making. We talk, I eat significantly more than her, and soon it’s time for me to leave for classes. A hug, a fuss about my jacket and shoes, and an escort by Anna to Peter’s home-stay later, I’m on way to class, hoping I return sooner rather than later.
Throughout my day on campus, I think of Lila, sewing her creatures at home to keep her company while Saturno spends the day outdoors. For whatever reason, I think of my parents, who are also empty-nesters but unlike my temporary guardian, have had their children spread out across the country. For the first time since I landed in Costa Rica, I call my mom and dad.
It turns out that it will not be my luck to return early. Detained on campus only minutes after the schedule released us, we leave to find the night dimming quicker than we expected. The light leaks from the sky, and soon we’re lucky to be able see a few feet in front of us. A moment I spend planted in mud separates Peter and me from the rest of the group, and the unforeseen death of his flashlight keeps us circling, lost in a pitch-black labyrinth.
At last, armed with directions from locals that took pity on us, I make it back to Lila’s some forty minutes after I was supposed to arrive. She waits at the doorstep for me, and her anxiety transforms to pity at my drenched, muddied clothes. She asks me where Peter is, and when I explain that he’s stopping his family from reporting a missing student to UGA, she laughs and clicks her tongue at our misfortune.
“Tomorrow will be better, you will know the way,” she says. I use my dictionary at dinner to translate the tougher points of conversation, and show her more pictures of my life. I make her promise to find her own photos to show me, and she makes me promise that Peter will visit tomorrow when we’re hopefully not lost. We fall asleep on the couch watching celebrity impersonators on TV, already comfortable with a familiar silence between us.
“You don’t need an alarm clock if you live with roosters and hens.”
Monday, May 22nd
I realize that I forgot to set an alarm in my exhaustion when I staggered from the couch to my room the night before, but the sounds of shrieking at about five in the morning still wake me. I stumble out of bed an hour later when the sounds of footsteps and a sizzling breakfast lure me out, noticing that my jacket’s still soaking from the evening before’s adventures. When I tell Lila I forgot to set my alarm clock and gesture outside, she understands immediately. As we sit down to eat, Saturno meows between the legs of the table, begging for food and attention with his squeaky voice.
“He’d sit at the table with us if he could,” Lila laughs.
I wonder if she ever lets him when I’m not taking the seat beside her; he makes a proper gentleman, sitting with an upright posture on the floor beneath us. The relationship between cat and master here seems one of exasperation punctuated by intense affection. I learn that while she’s had many cats, the rest of them inevitably stop coming home, eaten by a bigger predator. She’s unsure how Saturno avoids this fate.
“It’s because he’s so likable, he’s friends with the coyotes and pumas,” I theorize before I set off for the day, gently reminding Lila to look for photos.
That evening, Saturno meets his match in charisma and affability: Peter at last stops by for dinner.
The atmosphere changes from pleasant to lively while all three of us chat together, recounting how small puppy Kira followed us all the way to campus and was confiscated there by guards and joking about how I walk so slowly that Peter could lap me on the way there. I proudly show off Lila’s felt animals, and we celebrate that she’s found her scrapbook of photos. Together, Lila and I tease Peter for leaving after dinner.
“You’re going to miss out on all the pictures and the telenovelas,” we say with faux despair. He gets a hug and a kiss from both of us before he leaves, as well as firm instructions to return in the morning with his own pictures to share.
As soon as he’s out the door, I settle on the couch with Lila’s photo album while she tells me how much she likes my boyfriend, “a sweet, kind boy, so tall and handsome.” Once she’s joined me on the loveseat and asked me how long we’ve been dating (3 years), how we met (funny story), and so forth, I open the scrapbook and begin my own line of questioning:
Who is this?
Where was this taken?
How many siblings do you have??
Lila answers my page-by-page inquiries patiently. Her responses are peppered with life and death, as she comments on birthdays and funerals alike with the same deliberation. She pauses only when she mentions her late husband, Hugo, who most often appears either working the farm or standing beside her. I learn that the two of them shared 50 years together before his passing.
What Lila’s most excited to show me, besides her nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, are the 25 years of students that have spent time in her home. “Otro estudiante,” she sings every time a white face appears in the midst of the many brown ones. These guests pose beside her grandchildren at confirmations, hold babies at neighborhood get-togethers, and work in the farm alongside the menfolk with angry sunburns.
David makes the most appearances throughout the scrapbook, apparently the best at documenting his time in Costa Rica, but each student brings a look of fondness to Lila’s face. When I have flipped through every page of the scrapbook, including many blank ones, she takes it from my hands and hands me a notebook.
“Before students leave, I have them write in here,” she says proudly as I flip through page after page of scribbled messages. “I had already been doing this for years when I got this, and I haven’t had every student do it, but when I have time, I look through them.”
Stopping to translate the messages in English that I know Lila hasn’t been able to appreciate, I skim through years of heartfelt notes. They begin in the year 2000 with love and gratitude expressed to “Don Hugo and Doña Lila” for their kindness, for their warmth, for their card games (Hugo?) and food (definitely Lila). When the year 2012 comes, the Dear Hugo’s trail off. The students — and their gushing, diary-like entries — do not. Her roles as loving host, language tutor, and temporary abuela never stop.
After thumbing through at least a hundred stories, I find the empty space where I will write my letter to Lila. I turn the page to the next blank, the lines another student will fill. Like Saturno manages to return just before dinner every night, estudiantes will keep talking, joking, and eating alongside Lila as long as she reigns supreme as the darling, bustling matriarch of Finca La Bella.
Tuesday, May 23rd
I’m amazed at how quickly I have fallen into a routine: somehow managing to sleep through the roosters, I roll out of bed at 6:06AM. I’m uneasy to be the first one up, and I pace quietly through the house waiting for Lila’s familiar presence in the kitchen. She rises only a few minutes after me. I breathe a sigh of relief, and we start our morning rituals of breakfast conversation and teasing Saturno.
Today marks the halfway point of my home-stay, which erupts a mixture of feelings inside me. I’m glad to feel as comfortable as I already do with Lila, but sad to be moving so quickly through my time with her. Part of me worries about her interim alone once I leave; the rest of me knows she will be just fine.
To our surprise, Peter arrives early, and we find him already at the house when we return from the mountain view from the other side of the finca. He shows us photos of his family: the cycle is complete. We talk until the last possible minute before setting off for campus, spurred on by Abbey and Abbigayle.
Lila sends Peter and me off with a hug and a kiss, wishing us a good day and to return again safely. I look back and wave as she steps back into her house. Her door, as always, is left open.
