I love hardware stores

It's therapeutic for me to write these true stories down: hard luck tales where I make my own hard luck, tales of coping with adversity, or bumbling through adversity. The story of buying fruit with Asa in Guatemala was another example. (That one was a better story, because it had Asa in it.) Oh, the other reason I'm writing this particular one is that I like saying “wing nut”.

The other day Tesi asked me if we by any chance have some sort of liquid for clearing drains. I said I didn’t think so, and I asked her which sink was having a problem. She told me which one, and she said that she had been trying all the tricks she knew, but that it was still being slow to drain. I said I was pretty sure that I could open the U-shaped trap underneath and deal with the problem that way. I did that once before.

So later that day I took a crack at it. I looked under the bathroom sink, noting that the plumbing down there is all plastic and therefore not likely to be corroded into immobility. I removed some of the clutter, put a basin under the trap, unscrewed the white plastic nut at the bottom of the white plastic U, and watched eagerly as the water come out. I was hoping for a great mass of hair, or at least a little clump of beard trimmings, or maybe some kind of greasy or soapy blob. I wanted to see the cause of the problem and to see that it was gone. Disappointingly, what came out was just a mostly clear and only slightly smelly liquid. I probed the pipe from below with a finger, but there was nothing. I flushed the pipes with water for a while. I closed it up again, thinking "Oh well, it’s probably a little better now."

It seemed to be dripping a little, so I tightened the nut some more. And some more. There was a bad sound. The plastic nut had sheared right off. I said a bad word.

My next task was to retrieve the hollow fragment that was still screwed into the plumbing. This went surprisingly well. A sort of reverse application of a small pointy pair of pliers got the job done. (I could tell you about my large collection of small pliers, but that’s a different boring hardware story.) Then I had to think about replacing what I had broken.

Well I just about always enjoy a trip to the hardware store, but I wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t in a good mood at all. For one thing, I wanted to get back to doing mathematics; this was supposed to be a brief break in my work day. Besides, I was extremely annoyed with myself for breaking the part. Still, I had a task to do.

Now, fortunately, in addition to the several hardware stores within a mile or two of our home there is also Watertown Supply, a plumbing supply house. I’ve been there a few times before. It’s not quite as much fun as a hardware store, because all the wares are kept out of sight behind a counter. Also, it primarily caters to tradespeople, and we ordinary folks are made to feel like second-class customers. We stand at a separate counter, and there is a sign explaining that tradespeople get served first. But it seemed like the right place to go.

I found my way there (making almost no wrong turns), and in fact I did not have to wait long at the counter. The man heard my story and looked at my broken part and explained that he would have to sell me a whole new U-trap. My heart sank at the thought of the expense of that, and at the increased opportunities for breaking things, until he explained that he just meant that I could buy a new trap for $6.99 and take the nut out of it to use. But as it turned out, this was not to be. The one that he found did not have the right size nut.

His suggestion at that point was to buy a one-size-fits-all stopper intended for temporary use, a rubbery thing with a bolt through its center and a wing nut on one end of the bolt. You stick it in the hole, and when you turn the wing nut it expands to fit snugly. Well, I really shouldn’t say “one-size-fits-all”, because the only ones he had were really small. But he said that any hardware store would have what I needed.

As I said, I normally love any excuse to go to any hardware store. I like all of them, though not all in precisely the same way. There are some that are funny, some that are very welcoming, some that have a no-nonsense feel but also inspire great confidence. Some have more stuff than others, or more of one kind of stuff. Other things being equal, I usually go to Winters Hardware. It's the one closest to home and the one that I feel the most loyal to, and it is staffed by enjoyable quirky characters. But this time I picked Coolidge Hardware, the one that was right on my way home.

I walked in and immediately encountered a nice eager young man who wanted to know how he could help me. When I started to explain what I needed, he got a nervous, lost look in his eyes and quickly took me to his boss. The boss knew exactly what I was talking about and told me exactly where to find it. There are two sizes, he said.

Actually there were three kinds to choose from, all of the same brand but in three sizes. They were displayed in a charming old-fashioned hardware-store way: mounted on a vertical surface was a stout piece of cardboard holding about twelve of these items, each one threaded through a hole in the card, plug in front and wing nut in back. They had come from the factory like that. The card bore faded words in a bygone style of lettering, naming the manufacturer and identifying the product and praising its virtues in a mild way. I would like to say that there was a cartoon involved, but probably not. It just feels like there was. Neatly penciled on the card was the price. Three sizes, three cards, three prices.

The plugs were not quite what I expected. They were cylindrical — the one at Watertown Supply had been tapered — but I figured they would do the job. The question was which size to get. I took the broken part out of my pocket for comparison. The smallest plugs were too small. The biggest were too big. The middle ones seemed just right. I took one and paid for it: $2.29 plus tax. The cashier was the same young man who had first met me. I declined his offer of a receipt. As I drove home I mused: Why would I want a receipt? Well, what if I need to return the plug because it doesn’t fit? Hey, maybe I should have bought two of different sizes and returned the one that didn’t fit! Yeah, but that’s an extra trip. I don’t like going to the hardware store that much. Anyway, I’d probably just never get around to returning the other one. It would end up in the basement, in that horrible jumble of  things we'll never need and would have trouble finding if we did.

I got home. I tried to put the plug in. It was way too small.

Heaving a great sigh, I got back in the car and drove back to the store. I laughingly told the nice young man that, believe it or not, I had bought the wrong size. I screwed my plug back into its card and unscrewed another plug from another card and told the man that I owed him 20 cents plus tax. As I walked to where I had parked the car, I began thinking about making this story into a blog post, or at least a Facebook post. I thought maybe I would declare that, although I love hardware stores, I have a dysfunctional relationship with them. Also that one reason I love them is that they remind me of my father. As I drove, I realized that I would not be the first person who has ever made all three of these statements: "I love X." "X reminds me of my father." "I have a troubled relationship with X."

I tried to put the plug in. It seemed way too big. I got it in by jamming it hard, but it wasn’t very straight. I started over. I got it a little straighter this time, but it didn’t seem right. I turned the wing nut. I opened the tap. Water leaked a little at the plug.

That’s when Tesi got home. I told her my sad tale and my two alternative theories: (1) the first plug that I bought, the middle-sized one, really would have fit if I had only given it a chance and turned the wing nut enough to make it expand all the way, (2) those tapered ones that I saw at the plumbing supply place really are better. If I believed (1), then I should go back to the store a third time to get the plug I bought the first time. If I believed (2), then I should go somewhere else, probably Winters.

I decided to go to Winters. I reasoned (cravenly) that, even if they only had the same kind of plug that I had found at Coolidge, at least I would be spared the embarrassment of having to face that nice young man again. I even briefly considered going there on foot; I thought that some fresh air and exercise might improve my mood. But I discarded this idea when I thought about what it would do to my mood if I found nothing like what I needed there and had to walk back empty-handed.

The proprietor, Wanda, was minding the store. She knew exactly what I meant, and she also knew that she didn’t have any of them. She led me to a side room and pointed to one of those old-fashioned cards with the holes: just holes this time, no plugs. It wasn’t even the same brand as the ones at the other store, but still it had a card with holes. As I was leaving, another customer entered, an older woman. Well, come to think of it, maybe about my age. I was briefly taken aback when she asked me "Wander around, do you know?" But then I got it, and said "She's in that other room. She was just helping me." As I drove back to Coolidge for the third time, I wondered, idly, if the plugs Wanda was sold out of were the tapered kind.

That's it, really. I was helped by the same nice young man again. He did not laugh at me, but he did not laugh with me, either. I took a middle-sized plug, but I did not return the plug that was too large, because at that point I was not sure of anything. However, theory (1) was proved correct.

I suppose I might return the large plug some day. 

Guatemala, Part Twelve: The Duck of the Lake

I've already posted this on FaceBook, but I'd like to make a more permanent record of it, so here it is:

On our first evening in Pana, Tesi looked out at beautiful Lake Atitlan and said that there was supposed to be some special duck that lives there. I was not surprised to hear Asa speaking my own thoughts in reply: "You mean a special _species_ of duck, or a special _individual_ duck?" Then I heard myself slowly exclaiming, in a weird creaky old voice, "Ah, yes, my grandfather used to feed that very same duck so many years ago. Old Quaxolotl!"

Guatemala, Part Eleven: My Hat -- Really

(continued from Part Ten)

As I said, I have more to say about the hat.

Getting back to the beginning of that outing:  I was definitely on the lookout for some kind of hat when we went into town.  The tropical sun was merciless, and I don't have nearly as much hair on top as I used to.  We hadn't gone far from the car when my eye was caught by piles and piles of hats at the entrance of a shop -- neatly nested stacks of cheap-looking local-style straw hats for tourists -- straw hats with colored bands.  They pulled me like a magnet.  I didn't even pause to make sure that somebody in the family knew where I was going.

I had to pick a good one.  My vacation hat was not going to have a black band, for example.  I needed something bright, ideally multicolored.  The hats with rainbow bands all seemed to be too small.  I began shifting hats from stack to stack, peering inside them one after another.  Just as I was beginning to get discouraged, a sales lady came and helped me.  In no time I had what I needed -- a big enough hat with a mostly red band -- and I happily hurried away to find the family.

I don't want to make too much of this hat.  It's just a hat.  For the rest of the trip I wore it a lot, because, well, I needed protection from the sun.  Also because it was my hat.  I started calling it "my silly tourist hat."

During our first visit with Amadi's birthmother and her kids, I omitted the hat even when we went out for a walk on the sunny streets.  I was self-conscious about looking like a foreigner who foolishly tries to dress up like a local.  Also, I wore shiny black dress shoes that day.  We had the idea that, although we are in the habit of going barefoot indoors at home, it might be offensive to do so when receiving guests in a strange country; and I took this principle one step further and put on my good shiny shoes instead of my shabby tattered sneakers that day.

When packing for the trip, I had stuck those "grownup Daddy shoes" in the suitcase.  At the time, that choice on my part had struck me as odd.  I had tentatively classified it as one of those irrational things that people do when preparing for a trip, as they try to fend off the anxiety that goes with heading into the unknown.  On the other hand, I also thought that it might have been a perfectly sensible choice, in which case maybe my having doubts about it could be classified as one of those irrational things people do when preparing for a trip ...   When Tesi saw me unpacking the shoes in Antigua, it became clear that she also found it an odd choice.  But I think my reasoning was sound:  (a) even a person like me who always packs light for a trip should probably take more than one pair of shoes along, (b) it's true that I don't wear these shoes much at home, but it's also true that they are very comfortable, (c) if I want to dress up just a little better than usual at any point (for example when meeting the birth family), these shoes will help, and (d) while the sight of me in shoes like these might startle those who know me well, it is a completely unremarkable sight for the rest of the world.

(I call them "grownup Daddy shoes" because that's what they feel like.  I suppose the right term is "dress shoes."  They are extremely plain, but shiny.  When I put them on, or when I put any dress shoes on, it almost feels as if I'm putting on a coat and tie.  And putting on a coat and tie feels like putting on a costume, like I'm trying to disguise myself as a grownup.  For many men these would be everyday shoes.  Certainly in my father's day they would have been. )

I was glad that I wore them that day in the house in Antigua; it did not feel odd at all.  On the other hand, when the same visitors came back the next day I felt relaxed enough to revert to my everyday scruffy black sneakers, and also to wear the silly tourist hat when we went out in the sun for another walk around the neighborhood.

I don't know the language of hats any better than I know the language of ties or dress shoes or sports jackets.  Sport jackets?  (Sport jackets!  Those casual things that you wear -- with a tie! -- when you're not dressing up in a suit or something!  Is a tweed jacket a sport jacket?)  Since our trip I've been trying to learn a little bit about hats, not so much because of my straw hat, but more because a Facebook friend, Polly's husband Andrew, started reporting on the comments he gets from strangers when he goes out on the streets of New York in 2014 in a fedora.  After some internet research, now I at least know roughly what a fedora looks like.  I think maybe I could distinguish a fedora from a stodgy old homburg, for example, but the finer distinctions are beyond my reach.  I think of Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase, looking at the murder victim's hat:

"Last year's hat, reblocked, with new ribbon.  Shape, a little more emphatic than is quite necessary.  Deduction:  not wealthy, but keen on his personal appearance."

I'm pretty sure that back in, say, the early 60's, my father wore a hat when he went to work. I see him in a dark suit (or maybe just dark pants and a dark sports jacket), with a white shirt and a tie and grownup Daddy shoes and a hat.  A fedora, I suppose?  At the end of the day he would walk into the house and hang up his hat.  Also he would whistle a happy little tune that signaled "I'm home!" Six rapid notes that ran together, hi-lo-hi-lo-hi-loooo.  Sol-mi-sol-mi-sol-mi.  Such a familiar and welcome sound!

By the late 60's the world was changing.  I think he started dressing a little more casually for the office.  When I try to picture him coming home from work in those days, the scene is in color rather than black and white.  I have to ask my sisters what they remember about his hats and shoes and jackets.

I believe that my silly tourist hat is of the type that is called a "Panama hat".  I understand that Panama hats originated in Ecuador, and that the very best ones are so fine that they are waterproof and can be rolled up small for packing without doing them any harm.  Mine is the other extreme:  probably such a bad cheap imitation of a Panama hat that as far as a real hat person is concerned it doesn't deserve the name.  Anyway, I wasn't about to pack it in a bag when we left Guatemala.  It was either wear it or leave it behind.

I could have left it in the house in Antigua.  Come to think of it, there were some straw hats already there.  Quite likely they were meant for our use, left there by the landlord or by previous visitors.  Why did I even buy a hat?  It's true that there was one hat in the house that we didn't think we should touch.  It graced the head of a piece of found art in the living room: a big piece of a tree with raised arms.  But I think I could have borrowed one of the others.  Still, I wanted my very own vacation hat.  And, although I didn't know if I would ever wear it again, I wanted to take it with me when we left for home.

On airplanes there was no problem tucking the hat into an overhead compartment, but in airports I wore it on my head.  It was just one more thing to juggle when going through security.

We flew from Guatemala City to Boston by way of Miami, just like that other time when we were bringing baby Amadi home.  Somehow we had forgotten about the tedious part where you have to recover your checked bags, lug them through immigration and customs, and check them again for the next flight.

Back in the year 2000 our experience in Miami was nightmarish:  we had a narrow window of time between flights, we were slowed down at immigration by having to show adoption papers, and after customs we had to get ourselves, our two-month-old baby, and all of our luggage to the other end of the huge airport in a big hurry using muscle power alone.

This time it was much better:  we had more time, there was now a shuttle train from one end of the terminal to the other, and our baby had become a big thirteen-year-old who could walk on her feet.  Also, we got some streamlined service because 86-year-old Gerry cleverly requested a wheelchair.  But it's still a pretty horrible airport.

(At the baggage carousel:  Asa and I are waiting, waiting, waiting for the bags.  A chatty man next to us:  "Where are you guys from?"  "Boston"  "Oh.  Well, at least you have good sports teams there.  Hey, you have a game this weekend."  [Think.  What is he talking about?  Let's see, what time of year is it?  It's January.  Oh, I bet he's talking about football playoffs.  Wow, I didn't even know the Patriots were in the playoffs this year. ]  "I don't really pay much attention to any sport except baseball. Sometimes not even that.  Where are you from?"  "Chicago.  Miami airport is the worst airport in the world.  I've been coming through here every six months for years.  Once they stole all my Christmas presents.  Oh, they weren't worth much, but still, they were Christmas presents ..." )

Besides the shuttle train, the other nice surprise was the fancy machine for processing your passport.  I think these are very new.  I don't know if all the US points of entry have them yet.  You stand in front of one of a number of big kiosk thingies, and you hold your passport face down on a screen so it can be scanned.  Then the machine tells you to look it in the eye, and it amazingly adjusts itself to your height (even if you are in a wheelchair!), and it takes your picture and prints it out with other data on a slip of paper, which you take to the human agent at the booth on your way out of the hall.  I was the first of the five of us to undergo this process, so I was not exactly ready when the shutter clicked.  I didn't think to take off my reading glasses, which I had put on to study the fascinating gadget and to read the directions it was giving me.  I didn't think to take the hat off, either.  But I did manage to look right into the lens, and to keep my eyes open.  I came off looking like some kind of inept but cheerful spy.  I was really really hoping that we would end up with a copy of the picture to take home, but no:  it stayed with the human agent at the booth.  I would have liked to use it as my new Facebook profile. 

It wasn't until after the trip that it dawned on me how much my hat had to do with my father. In my youth the annual family vacation was a high point of the year for my parents, my sisters, and me.  Every August we would head for the woods and go camping:  either at drive-in campgrounds, or on islands, or in later years on a sort of houseboat.  (We sometimes kept a journal, writing down some memories together each day as we went along.  One of my sisters recently came across the home-made Ship's Log that I made for my father one year.  It was made of an actual log, cut in half, hinged, and filled with blank pages. )  And, now that I think of it, he always had a vacation hat.  He might use the same one two years in a row, but it seems to me that he would often just pick one up on our travels when the mood struck, or when the right hat appeared.  It served to keep the sun off his bald spot, and it was also an emblem of family fun and Daddy in vacation mode.  The one I remember best was the type of striped cloth cap that is associated with locomotive engineers.

Guatemala, Part Ten: My Hat

This post is out of chronological order, as usual. It begins on our third full day in Guatemala, when I bought myself a hat.

On New Years Day we five went into the center of Antigua to see things and do things. Up to that point some of us had been out on an errand or two, while others had not strayed far from the house. The affair of the empty cistern and the overheated pump had run its course. It seemed like time to start behaving like tourists.

It was almost noon. We piled into the Jeep. (I don't think we had yet figured out how to get into the back seat without contortions. That would come later.) Tesi drove. We parked near a pedestrians-only street that looked like a good place to start. The mid-day sun was beating down, and I bought a hat. We entered an old church, with its shrines and chapels and elaborate Nativity scene, trying not to intrude on the believers. (I took my hat off.) We bought two wooden flutes (one for Gerry, one for Asa) from a man who showed them off by playing old Simon and Garfunkel hits, including "El Condor Pasa" of course but also "Sounds of Silence" and I forget what else. We wandered through a big store full of lovely woven fabrics, oddities, and tacky tourist things, but we were not yet ready to buy much more than postcards.

Then it was time to make our way, hot and tired and hungry, on cobblestoned streets (Ha! Now I'm thinking of another S+G song, "For Emily Whenever I May Find Her", because it has cobblestones in it. Except that it doesn't have any explicit cobblestones in it -- I just looked up the lyrics -- isn't that funny?-- in my mind that song is set in cobblestoned streets) toward the square, the Parque, in the center of town, beyond which was the place we had chosen to have lunch. Actually, the heat and the cobbled bumpiness were such that, on second thought, we decided to travel those few blocks by car rather than on foot.

Let's look at the restaurant's website: "Cafe Flor is a beautiful Thai restaurant and piano bar located only 1/2 block from Antigua's Central Park. Our delicious menu, friendly service, and our unmistakably warm and intimate atmosphere are what makes us famous." That was all true, except no piano at lunch. I half-expected to see our faces at the site when I went there just now, because the owner snapped a few publicity pictures with our permission, but we don't seem to be in their current slideshow. I wonder if we ever were. Oh! Asa has found us on the restaurant's Facebook page!

After a brief encounter with an ATM, we split up, Tesi and Asa walking to La Bodegona while Gerry, Amadi, and I waited at the Park. We watched people and stray dogs, and I got at least five shoe-shine offers in 15 minutes. I wasn't even wearing the kind of shoes that you're supposed to use shoe polish on. They're sort of sneakers. They're really old and beat up. They used to be shiny. Hey, what do I know about shoes, maybe I should have been shining them all those years.

Then the food shoppers returned and we piled into the Jeep and went home, to nap or do crossword puzzles or walk around the neighborhood as the spirit moved us.

I have a lot more to say about the hat.

Guatemala, Part Nine: Singer-songwriter

(continued from Part Eight)

In a corner was some equipment -- stools, microphones, and so forth -- and it was clear that there was going be some kind of performance. Eventually a scruffy lanky man of the Anglo type, neither young nor old, started tuning his guitar and making other adjustments. Then it began.

I'm not sure of the sequence. I think he started right in with a song, and the stage patter didn't come in until later. The first song was an unfamiliar one. It might have been the one about Minnesota girls, or women. There may have been trains in it, too. I think the song expressed admiration for the tough people of that cold northern region. I'm afraid I wasn't listening closely to the words. I didn't have a high opinion of his guitar playing, or of his singing either, but I remember thinking that strictly speaking, by some standards, his singing wasn't really worse than Bob Dylan's. I later learned that Asa (who, unlike me, has a very low tolerance for Dylan's singing) also thought of Dylan right away.

My best guess is that this song was one of his own, because fairly soon he did tell us that he is a songwriter. He told us a number of things about himself. He said that he was from Texas. He explained that he is a "I'm a, um, I'm a [pause], um, I'm a [longer pause], what do you call it? a songwriter." It's not clear whether he was pretending that he had never described himself that way before, or pretending that he'd been living in Guatemala so long that he was starting to forget his English, or really losing his word-finding ability through some natural or unnatural process, or what.

The second or third song that he sang was an actual Dylan song: "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues".

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, and it's Easter time, too ...

I thought it was an interesting choice of song for a US expatriate to sing to tourists in Latin America.

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of doom ...

He sang "doom". I think some people sing "gloom". I think maybe Judy Collins sang "gloom" in the version we had at home when I was growing up.

I'm goin' back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough!

His stage patter also included some almost completely incomprehensible (to me) remarks about Texas statewide politics. And he let us know that he runs a music school for children. I couldn't help thinking of the scene at the end of "School of Rock" when Ned Schneebly is teaching the beginning guitar class ("all right, your fingers are almost in the right place ...")

His wife was there with him: mostly for moral support, but she did join him for one number. She stood in front of a mike (do I have to spell it "mic"? I mean, a bicycle isn't a bic), and while he sang a song about a train she made train sounds. Not whistle sounds, but "choo choo" sounds, or I should say "ch ch" -- and in a rhythm that neither Asa nor I could really get a handle on.

I looked up the Dylan song later, on Wikipedia, because I couldn't remember the name of it or some of the lyrics and it was running through my head. I learned that "Tom Thumb" is a reference to something by Rimbeau, and also that some critic called the song a comic tour de force. I always thought of it as more sad and dreary than funny, but maybe that's because Judy Collins sang it that way. Now it's running through my head again.

Guatemala, Part Eight: Out on the Town in Pana

After the long drive to Panajachel on Friday the five of us checked into our hotel, had lunch outdoors overlooking the lake, and spent the rest of the afternoon in various combinations napping, trying out the hotel pool, or exploring the neighborhood a little.

Amadi and I began with the pool. It had a water slide -- not a very long one, but you did have to climb quite a few stairs to get to the launch point. When I first went up there, I was disappointed to find that the water was not flowing. (I don't think we can count this as one more example of our family's bad plumbing karma.) It seemed like an admission of defeat to climb back down the stairs, so I took the slide down -- not so much sliding as inching. This got the attention of a hotel employee, who rushed outside, leaped over a narrow strait in the pool, disappeared into an underground chamber, and turned on the works. (If the works had then exploded, that would have counted as an example of our bad plumbing karma.) Later on, Tesi and Gerry both joined us at the pool. There were also a few other families around, including a youngish couple from California with a lively and loud baby. He stared at me, as babies often do, and he was definitely amused when I made weird sputtering and trumpeting noises for him by exhaling through puckered lips at the surface of the pool.

At some point Tesi and Asa began to explore the central touristy street of the town, the Calle Santander. Their main goal was to identify a place to have dinner later: a restaurant serving decent food in pleasant surroundings, with some good vegan options for Asa, preferably cheaper than the hotel restaurant.

The place that they chose, Las Chinitas, offered mixed Asian cuisine. It had an indoor-outdoor feel, with big hanging plants and tasteful strings of lights. One booth had a stuffed-animal-strewn bed around it instead of benches, but we passed on that and took a table in the corner.

The food was just fine, and I'm not saying we didn't have a good time, but there were a few things about the ambiance that could not have been predicted.

One, the steady stream of vendors. Women selling woven bracelets and such would come right up to the table, and their response to a polite refusal would be either to try again with a different member of the party, or to tell us that they hadn't sold anything all day, or just to stand silent in hopes of being paid to go away. Sad and disturbing.

Two, that loud baby again. The California couple showed up, and their kid yelled a lot during dinner. (We would have a third chance to hear him again later on, in the middle of the night, since their hotel room was right next to ours.) Tesi actually took a turn quieting him at dinner, carrying him around the room and pointing things out to him. She is a keen observer of human beings, and especially babies, both by nature and by training, and she was pretty sure that the parents needed a break and that the baby would tolerate being entertained by a stranger for a few minutes.

Three, there was the live music. This gets a post of its own.

Guatemala, Part Seven: Tom and Asa Finish Shopping

(continued from Parts Five and Six)

We headed east in search of bread. The idea had been to go to either (a) Organica or (b) Sabe Rico, but I had a third idea: (c) the Italian bakery that Tesi and I had discovered a week earlier, when we were having trouble finding Organica and Sabe Rico. (Tesi and I had had trouble trouble finding them because, although I marked them on a map before we left the house, the map that I marked them on was not the map we took with us in the Jeep.) We were closer to (c) than to (a) or (b), and (c) had really great bread. I thought I knew what block it was on, but I was wrong. We could have asked someone, but I didn't know the name of the bakery. We bought bread at (b).

It had become clear by this point that we were not going to be home by 5:30. When we spoke with Tesi on the phone it also became clear that it really did matter when we got home, because Nancy was waiting to serve this meal to us. So Tesi grabbed the keys to the Jeep and headed downtown to rescue us from the consequences of our folly. In hindsight I would say that, in addition to underestimating how much time it would take to walk to La Bodegona and overlooking the fact that it takes longer to go to two stores than to one, we had also failed to allow some leeway for how long it might take a couple of people like us to choose some fruit.

In spite of some guilty feelings about how much trouble we had caused, I was perfectly prepared to rattle away about the fun we had had, until Tesi stopped us in our tracks when she heard what we had bought:

"Now don't flip out, guys, but you know Mum and I can't eat grapefruit."

Well, I used to know that about Tesi. Grapefruit (and no other citrus!) interferes with some prescription medication that she takes. And Gerry takes the same one, it seems. I could have said "Hang on, we're not absolutely sure they're grapefruit -- let's look up 'toronja' when we get back to the house", but I didn't think of it. Another thing I didn't think of until later is that if we had only been watching the time -- if we had only known while still in La Bodegona that we were going to be getting a ride home -- the melon decision would have been a no-brainer.

I should also mention that the next day, when Tesi finally happened to look at the bananas we had bought, she kindly pointed out that they were not banana bananas but plantains -- those starchy ones for cooking. Well, as soon as she said it I could see it. I mean, I've seen plantains before: they tend to be not just larger but angular -- very much like the ones we bought. No excuses. Though, you know, it's not like there are only two kinds of bananas in the world: I mean, given that there are grapefruit here that don't look like the grapefruit at home, why shouldn't there also be bananas here that don't look like the bananas at home? But no excuses. Though I am still wondering why anybody would put cooking bananas in the stand-alone fruit section of the store!!! Okay, maybe I did flip out a little.

Somebody also pointed out that when La Bodegona didn't have a lot to offer in the way of fruit we could have gone to the mercado. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I had heard of that place, but I never knew where it was. Too bad. Yeah, too bad we didn't go get our fruit at the place where everybody says don't ever eat any of the fruit or vegetables from that place no matter what!

Sorry about that outburst.

The grapefruit were actually quite good. Amadi loved them. I liked them. Asa tried them, but the verdict was no, he really doesn't care for grapefruit.

Guatemala, Part Six: Tom and Asa Buy Fruit

(continued from Part Five)

We headed into town by the western route, on the busy road that runs past the building supply places. This would take us straight to La Bodegona, and afterward we could go east in search of good bread and then continue in the same direction to Fifth Avenida, the other main way back to our neighborhood. I had a nostalgic urge to walk Fifth Ave, the road full of surprises that Tesi and I had traveled by Jeep a week earlier, on the first morning, still disoriented and excited by the newness of it all. It was a little longer and dustier than the western route, but also freer of heavy traffic and the horrible fumes of trucks and buses.

As we went along, we talked of this and that.

Tom: There’s a Spanish word I keep running into. One of those connective words that doesn’t add a lot of meaning to a sentence. Sort of a signpost word.

Asa: Are you going to tell me what it is?

Tom: I keep not quite figuring out what it means, and I keep not getting around to looking it up or asking someone.

Asa: Are you going to tell me what it is?

Tom: It’s pretty long for one of those little words.

Asa: Are you going to tell me what it is?

Tom: entonces

Asa: I wondered if it might be entonces.

He told me that it functions much like “so” or “then” at the beginning of a sentence. Then he went on to muse about the nuances of the word, to explore his own understanding of it. Is it more like “then” in a chronological sense, or like “then” in a logical sense, or is it both? He drew parallels with some words in English. It was a nice glimpse of a thoughtful mind at work.

He went on to talk about a song they sang in Mads. That’s the Amherst College Madrigal Singers, a huge part of his life. They don’t just sing madrigals; they sing a cappella music from the Olden Days, the Renaissance give or take. One of the songs they learned last year was from Catalonia, and it had a three-word phrase in it that had given him the idea that the Spanish word entonces might have been formed by smooshing together essentially those same three words. I forget the details, but maybe he’ll remind me and I’ll edit this. [Or maybe not. See his comment below.]

We kept walking. His phone rang. It was Tesi, saying “and a small bottle of olive oil, please”. We kept walking.

When we got to La Bodegona, Asa initially took the lead, because he knew some things. He had been there before. He knew where the dairy section was, and that it was organized oddly. I chose a large plastic shopping basket, of the kind that converts into a wheeled vehicle with a long handle. The handle was a little short for me, so I picked the basket up. This made for a certain amount of tricky maneuvering, lifting it over people’s heads and so on, where the aisles were narrow. At one point Asa looked up from his search for milk and yogurt and thought he saw me dancing with the basket to the piped-in music, but I wasn’t dancing exactly. I wasn’t exactly not dancing, either. We explored the most relevant-looking dairy case until we had what we wanted, though many things were not quite what we expected and some things were not quite what they seemed. Asa took his time with one plastic jug, reading the fine print several times over. “I just wanted to be sure," he said "that it was whole milk and not whole something else.”

Then on to the fruit.

There was a gleaming array of neatly stacked bright red apples. Well, apple is a fruit. But, hey, we can get apples at home. Besides, these look like a kind of apple that we would turn up our noses at at home: probably all shine and no flavor. And anyway we’re not supposed to eat the fruit here without either peeling it or soaking it in a bleach solution for a good long time. Do we really want to buy apples if we can’t eat them like apples?

What else is there? Aha: right here, a sort of little table divided into three bins, full of various fruits.

The first bin held melons, nice-looking big melons, sort of like what we call honeydews at home. And big. I wonder what they’re called. Did you know that there is no Spanish word for melons in general? There’s a word for watermelon. Yes, I know. There’s got to be a word for this kind. Is there a word “cantalopa” or something? Wait, who cares what they’re called? They’re melons. They look big. They might even be ripe. Yeah, but they’re big. Do we really want to carry them all the way back? I’ll carry the melon if you carry everything else, ha-ha. No, listen, last week we got a melon when people were coming over, and we couldn’t finish it even with all that help. Forget it. We’re flying out of here in like 36 hours. No, I think we could finish it. Remember: we had a pineapple, too, that other day.

Yeah, but it’s so big. Do we really want to carry it?

The second bin held bananas. Some were green. Some had too many brown spots. Some looked good. I guess we’ll take a couple of bananas.

The third bin held several round things which suggested grapefruit. They were citrus, and they were the right size, but on the other they were lumpy and blotchy. Also, on top of the pile there was something else, one unidentified oblong fruit.

We looked around for more options. We looked all over the store. Nope. We asked an employee: is there any more fruit elsewhere in the store? Nope. We postponed the fruit decision and went looking for other things.

Here are some onions. They're not red, but they'll do.

Tom: I was guessing the sugar would be somewhere near the salt.

Asa: Yes, but it’s not.

Asa got a text from Tesi suggesting we pick up a bottle of red wine. Unnecessary: I had already had the same thought. Asa found paper napkins. I found red wine. I pointed at a giant bag of Froot Loops. This was good for a laugh. Thirteen and a half years ago, when we went to Guatemala to adopt baby Amadi, six-year-old Asa discovered Froot Loops at the hotel’s breakfast buffet and ate them every day for a week. There are pictures of this. He had never heard of them before that week, and he has never had the urge to eat them at any time since.

Tom: Hey, I found the sugar. It was near the salt.

Asa: Oh, I thought you meant really near the salt.

The fruit question. Right. We’ll get back to that.

Ice packs? We were looking for either the reusable ones that go in the freezer or else the chemical ones that you activate by hitting them. We had a little  fantasy about the hilarious conversation that might ensue if we asked about things that get cold when you hit them. That sounds pretty funny in English, and we didn’t even know the Spanish for “ice pack”. But Asa got a few sentences lined up in his head and summoned the nerve to politely bother a busy-looking employees with our question. She informed him that the phrase he was looking for was “bolsa de hielo”, and she got on her walkie-talkie. While we waited for the answer, we wondered aloud whether this was going to end with somebody showing us a nice bag full of ice cubes.

No, no ice packs. On to the kitchen towels. We found them, but none were distinctively Guatemalan.

There was no more avoiding it: it was time to face up once and for all to the fruit decision. We went back to the three-part bin and considered our options. It seemed to me that we could use a little more information. Of course Asa, as the Spanish speaker, was going to be the one asking the questions; my role was mainly to goad him into bothering somebody. At this point my increasingly heavy basket was on the floor, on wheels, handle extended, never mind if it was a little short.

After some slight hesitation, he managed to flag down an employee and ask her about the things that looked sort of like grapefruit. We knew the word for “orange”; in fact, I believe Asa had used it in his question. We did not know the word for “grapefruit”. As she answered, we were pretty sure that we were now hearing the word for “grapefruit”. “TOR-onja”, she said, coming down very slowly and heavily on the first syllable as if to make it clear to the meanest intelligence that this was not the same word as “naranja”, and repeating herself several times for further emphasis. She let us know that they were not as sweet as oranges, that they had a bitterness. Although she was being quite friendly and helpful, we could not help feeling just a little bit condescended to. Anyway, we figured they were grapefruit.

Asa remarked that he doesn’t really like grapefruit. I remarked that in that case he could eat bananas. We seemed to be getting close to a decision, but I had a sudden curiosity about the oblong thing.

After some further hesitation Asa found someone — the same person, actually — to ask about this. “Papaya” was the answer, delivered with a certain look. (Well, to tell the truth, papaya would have been my first guess.) At this point she was fairly close to openly laughing at us — not in a mean way but in a “what planet are you people from?” way.

I happened to know that Tesi cannot eat papaya: it does something bad to her. So we chose three of the probable grapefruit and three of the biggest bananas and stepped toward the checkout.

“Wait!” said Asa. He had remembered the one thing on the list that we never wrote down — the thing Tesi had called him about. But when I say “remembered” I don't mean that either of us could remember what item it was. We stood there staring, thinking, muttering for a minute. It was Asa who got it (oh, for a young brain!): olive oil. And there it was, right in front of us! (No, Asa, we are buying the smallest bottle. We are not buying the second smallest even if it’s cheaper by the liter. You need not bother with that computation.)

Our business at La Bodegona was done.

Guatemala, Part Five: Tom and Asa Decide To Go Shopping

Our departure for Pana was supposed to mark the beginning of the "true vacation" part of the trip. Up till then we had been renting a house and fending for ourselves: buying groceries, cooking meals, washing dishes, doing laundry -- and when I say "we" I mean above all Tesi. Add to that the water/plumbing fiasco and a somewhat busy social schedule, including emotionally laden meetings with Amadi's birth family, and you have a week that was long on satisfaction but short on relaxation.

I have to say about the grocery shopping that, although it was different from home in some respects (bumpy roads, hard to park, hard to find things in the store), it was just like home in one way: in spite of our best efforts to plan ahead there was always at least one more thing we needed, and I don't think a day ever went by without a trip to La Bodegona, the supermarket.

The next 48+ hours were to be different. On Saturday we were to be driven to Pana, where we had rooms reserved at a very good hotel. On Sunday we were to have a private tour of Lake Atitlan by motorboat (lancha). On Monday we would be driven back to Antigua. In between, we would be free to choose between swimming in the hotel pool, napping in a hammock or in the room, doing a little gift shopping -- whatever. We would have meals in the hotel or in some nearby restaurant. In short, it was time to take it easy. Furthermore, Tesi had arranged for someone else to prepare dinner for us when we got back to the house Antigua on Monday: Nancy, who cleans the house twice a week. Tesi even had a plan for Tuesday dinner, which was to save us from another trip to La Bodegona before leaving for home on Wednesday.

And that's basically how the weekend went, except for a couple of us getting a pretty severe case of the kind of gastro-intestinal trouble that sometimes affects visitors to that part of the world.

When we got back to Antigua on Monday, Gerry mentioned that she was at a stage where she would very much like to have some fruit to eat -- the one thing we didn't have! Asa and I volunteered to go to the store, and in no time there was a shopping list: as long as you're going there, how about a couple of big red onions? And some yogurt. And a thing of whole milk, but not too big. Sugar. Paper napkins. And we could probably use another loaf of bread. You could even, instead of supermarket bread, get something good from one of those other places: Organico or Sabe Rico. And we might as well see if they have an ice pack for Gerry's back. Oh, and just see if they have any brightly colored kitchen towels to take home, with pictures of something Guatemalan on them.

It was Asa's idea to make this expedition on foot rather than by Jeep. I thought it was a great idea: a little exercise, a little adventure, a little special time together. I did stop and raise the question of timing -- I didn't want to delay dinner, especially if Nancy was sticking around to serve it to us -- but after a brief discussion it was agreed that dinner would not be until 5:30 anyway, and off we went.

Guatemala, Part Four: Outline

It's been over a week since the last installment, and we're home now -- out of the delightfully mild "tropics" and back in the bitter cold of the "temperate" zone.

This travelogue was never meant to be a complete or balanced thing, but I would like to write down a few more stories. Before doing so, here is a bare outline, to assist the memory of those who were there and the understanding of those who were not.

12/29  Travel day.

12/30  Settling in in Antigua, getting to know the house, the neighborhood, the Jeep, the roads, and La Bodegona supermarket. Visit from Luvia's family. The convite.  

12/31  Meeting with Susi. Lunch by Nancy. Tom and Amadi walk halfway to town. Water/plumbing crisis. Fireworks.

1/1      Resolution of plumbing crisis. All go downtown together (hat, church, flutes, postcards, Thai lunch).

1/2      First meeting with Jacky and kids. 

1/3      Second meeting with Jacky and kids. Lunch at Luvia's house.

1/4      Water crisis continues. Long ride to Panajachel by shuttle van. Dinner at Las Chinitas.

1/5      Lake Atitlan by boat. Dinner with friends.

1/6      Breakfast at the Deli. Long ride back to Antigua by shuttle van. Tom and Asa walk to La Bodegona. Dinner by Nancy.

1/7      A fairly quiet last day, with just a touch of water crisis. Tom, Asa, and Amadi walk to the post office.

1/8      Home.

Some stories that should be told, and maybe will be:

Tesi and Tom's first somewhat dazed trip into town in the Jeep.

The convite in San Miguel Duenas: parade floats and dance troupes.

Tesi and Asa's alarming ride with the plumber on New Years Eve.

Lost in the rain in Juarez in a Chinese restaurant in Panajachel. [done]

Lake Atitlan: geology, the grandfather statue, the Romeo and Juliet of the lake, an herb garden, and natural dyes.

Asa and Tom walk the long dusty road in quest of fruit and other things and largely fail with regard to fruit. [done]

Asa, Amadi, and Tom walk the long dusty road just to mail a few postcards.