Los caminos de la vida

As I was driving up to campus to pick up my Professional Responsibility exam (leave it to a 4-day take-home final to get me back on the blog), I was blasting some old CDs I'd re-discovered in the side pocket of T's car. There was this vallenato CD, a bootleg mix that I'd bought at a flea market back in North Carolina. So I'm driving up to school, blasting this accordeon pop and thinking about Colombia and the first time I heard vallenato, 20 years old sitting on the stoop of the guard station while my new friend Jose, the watchman at my uncle's neighborhood, stood sweating in the equatorial heat as he told me about growing up on la Costa.

Mis padres fallecieron, he said. My parents fallecieron.

Que quiere decir "fallecer"? I asked. What does fallecer mean?

Fallecieron. Se murieron. They died. They're dead.

I'll never forget the word fallecer. To pass away.

After that first trip to Colombia, we wrote a couple of times. He sent me a bracelet in a package I picked up from the post office on my way out of town over the Fall Break of my senior year of college, as I was driving to the home of my new friend and major crush, T. I was picking up T so we could take a road trip to Canada. I remember that package and that letter sitting there on the passenger seat. I showed it to T, but I couldn't really explain what it meant to me. How profoundly that visit to Colombia had affected me, what it was like to sit in the heat with that young man that my uncle clearly saw as beneath my friendship, as if I were the princess in some fairy tale. I couldn't convey the story I'd heard about the violence he'd witnessed on the coast, and why he joined the army, and how he hoped to become a computer technician one day.

So I put the package aside. By the time we got back from Canada, I was head over heels in love with T. I never got around to writing back Jose. Life moved on.

Then, two years later, I was back in Colombia, and my uncle was driving me back to his home in the valley. I was giddy with excitement. We pulled up, and the man in the dark blue uniform with long polyester pants in the perpetual sun stepped up the car and greeted my uncle, "Buenos, Don Federico."

Joseeee I shouted. And his eyes grew wide as saucers.

That visit, we chatted again, and he showed me pictures of his little baby girl. A little baby daughter who lived in the capital with her mom. He told me how he'd go visit them sometimes, but he still worked the 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week, and I didn't really ask questions about it because I didn't want to pry. He told me how he'd pissed off one of my uncle's friends, who drove up in his military car for one of my uncle's parties, practically ran Jose over and swore at him to be more careful. Something like that. And Jose made some smart ass comment, the kind that a poor kid from the coast shouldn't make to a military man trained in the U.S.A. His eyes grew dark when he told that story. But light again when I commented on one of the Vallenato songs on the radio, told him I could sing it word for word.

At the end of that trip, I went home to start my life after college in earnest. I didn't go back to Colombia again for another two and a half years, at a moment of crisis after T had graduated and we were living together for the first time. My uncle had moved to a different town. I was sad I wouldn't get to go to the old place, but by that time I knew Jose was up in the capital and a lot had changed anyway. I was resentful that I had to share my uncle with all his new wife's family over the holidays. I wanted him and his wife to myself, and instead I got lessons from one of his new nieces, a teenager, about how to cut chicken off the bone properly with a knife and fork. They all went out dancing one night, and I stayed in. I wish I'd gone.

Before that trip was over, as I was staying in the capital with my dad's cousins, an older couple, Jose called me. We agreed to meet up for a drink, and he came by my aunt's house to pick me up right after work. He was dressed in a suit and tie, part of his new job as head of security personnel at a company in the city. I'd told my uncle about this new development in Jose's life while I was visiting him. "Pumpkin," he said, "Don't be naive. People like Jose don't get management-level jobs. He's just pulling your leg." I was so mad at him for saying that, even though I knew it was just part of the mentality of his culture. When Jose came and met my aunt and uncle, and they were charmed, I felt vindicated. We went out for a drink and he invited me to come to his part of the city to meet his family - he and his wife had recently had another baby, a boy, Diego. Despite my genuine interest and affection for him and his family, I heard my uncle's words in my head, felt nervous and decided against leaving for an unfamiliar part of the city. He dropped me off, we all posed for pictures, and I flew out the next day.

I've been back to Colombia once since then. It was last summer. I was blogging on here by then. My uncle died suddenly, completely out of the blue. He had, in fact, passed away while I was on my flight to see him in the hospital where he was being treated in the capital. Fallecio. My new internship was just starting, and I didn't have time to stay for anything but the funeral. I didn't see Jose, or even let him know I was coming into the city.

Recently, though, I was on Facebook and he chatted me to say hello. We caught up a bit. He said he was sad, something to do with love. He told me he's been thinking of trying to get up to Canada. Asked me what I knew about it. He's heard there are fewer people there than in the U.S. and that they are more welcoming to immigrants there. He wants to make a better life for his kids. We joked about how we're both getting older. His daughter, he said, counts his gray hairs every morning. I told him I still listen to vallenato.

I was driving to school the other day to pick up my take-home exam, listening to this excellent bootleg vallenato mix CD, remembering Jose, Colombia, my uncle, who I used to be 8 years ago... 6, 3, 1 year ago. Life flies by, doesn't it?