Nema

A few months have passed since I left Panama. My memories of my experiences there, of Luis' family, of the colors, the people, and animals are still very much with me. For a while I was still dreaming of Luis' parent's house. I keep in touch once in a while with Alessandra on facebook and even spoke to her on the phone a few days ago. She's taking her English class while I am improving my Spanish. I am still basking in the glow of the time I shared with Alex, Joy, and Luis and his family and how magical it seemed to be able to spend those days together.
Strangely enough I find it difficult to write about my experiences since returning to North America. Although I see lots of interesting things going on and plenty of humor, in a way things seem more complex here.
I still remember relatively clearly a few of the stories from Panama that I never got to writing.
Luis' great aunt Nema who shares the same January birthday as Joy although she was born 60+ years earlier, lives in the house next to Luis' parents. Although I had been in Panama for weeks both the previous year and the current one, I had somehow failed to ever enter the house of Luis' Aunt Nema. Nema was one of the first family members I encountered in Panama and perhaps the reason I never made it into her home was because she was so often at Luis' house. It would be a rare day that passed in which Nema wouldn't stop by for a visit or at least press her face to the window overlooking the dining table from outside during meal times to exchange a few words and to check in on Luis' family before swinging the little metal gate that linked her yard to theirs and slowly steadily making her way back under the wide porch to her side door. I became accustomed to the sound of Nema sweeping in her back yard with her various chickens or the image of her in one of her light, loose sleeveless dresses carefully pinning her underthings out to dry or pinning up a men's shirt from one of the long term guest relatives who frequently took up residence in her enormous house.
Nema has lovely caramel colored skin which is still in great condition. It always glows a little bit. Rosalina told me that she is rather fond of fine perfumes and lotions. Perhaps that's part of her secret. She wears her hair cropped short. There's something sort of off center about her mischievous smile. A product of another time, Nema's sense of humor, full of teasing, took me some time to get used to.
Shortly before my scheduled trip back to the States, on a lazy hot afternoon, I made up my mind to go visit Nema. Rosalina agreed and we headed for Nema's wide roof patio with a brief overhead glance at the quickly darkening clouds. Nema looked pleased and a little bit surprised that we had come to visit her. Chairs were arranged in a circle and she invited us to sit down. After a little while it began to rain hard and Rosalina suggested we take a tour of the house. We first saw the spacious kitchen where I imagined Nema making her pulpy banana drinks and other special foods. The house was larger on the inside even than it appeared from outside. There were several lived in looking bedrooms, blankets cast aside as if someone had slept in them the night before, and finally a simple living room area with a few glamour shot style photos of family members and places to sit. We sat there a while wondering when the rain was going to stop, watching it drip and listening to it through the open doorway. There's something so comforting about rain, especially this hard kind. There is relief in the idea that you simply can't really go anywhere. You have to wait until this kind of rain finishes.