Somber in his thoughtfulness, I felt a connection with him
immediately. The ability to open up to his soft and probing eyes, the eagerness
with which he absorbed a new idea. His lack of defensiveness; I believe they
call it humility. His ears and nose are prominent traits from his father and
mother, respectively, and he could never be as handsome with any other feature.
He has skin that you can fall into, his hands obviously accustomed to hard
work, lacking the near delicate nature of the rest of his physical body. Named
for his father, the diminutive “ito” is to distinguish between the two men in
conversation and in yelling for either of them in the house.
He is a father himself. Three girls. A husband, too. He
would never leave his wife, loves her as much as he did when they married at the age
of 15, but there is trouble in paradise. Not to be glib. The situation is
complex. They depend on one another and face the same troubles most
marriages come to face after 17 years and 3 children. Divorce is not the status
quo.
The angst of the universe overcomes him sometimes, and when
he was unemployed due to his political affiliations it was the worst. He
stopped eating, “por la tristeza”, he said. His only joy came from his youngest
child, Camila, who was learning to walk.
They laughed, played, snuggled together, were permanently attached at
the literal hip.
I tried to motivate him to create his own work – he is
incredibly skilled in a variety of things - and for brief moments after our
talks he seemed to liven up with inspiration…but he was in a mindset where
nothing could be created. Only that which already existed vied for legitimacy.
So, he left. To Costa Rica he went and not for the first time, I would later find
out. His only brother lives there with his wife and their two children. The worst part was that Jaimito and Camila
were apart. She was starting to talk and would say a few words into the phone
when he called to check in over those months.
When he finally, finally came back, I was asleep. I woke up
to the sound of his voice and people joyfully calling his name mixed in with stories
about the trip back home. He was leaner than he had been when he left which was
quite a feat. Seeing him again was as wonderful as seeing my biological
brother. Everyone was beaming that night.
Luck found him upon his return. He started working in the
health center as an assistant in the laboratory, and moved on to driving one of
the ambulances. The ambulance job
has no set hours – often he has deep, dark lines under his eyes from lack of
sleep– but he loves the hard work.
When he was 11 they moved to Rancho Grande. Before that they
lived, and he studied, in Mataglapa. He says as children he and his 3 siblings
never fought, not really, and only a little once they were teenagers. It is
hard to picture him fighting with anyone if you only know his sensitive side,
which is an overwhelming part of his personality, but I have seen him smack his
middle child, ignore his eldest daughter for days when she became pregnant at
15, and refuse to go home due to issues with his wife. I have heard from his own mouth that he
wished his wife didn’t work, and that he feels justified in having an “other
woman”; pieces of the machismo culture that have clung to him. He listens very intently and
respectfully to me when I half-berate him for his infidelity and common or narrow perspective while at the same time not judging him as an evil person. We are all victims
of our culture.
There is honesty between us that is a precious commodity in
any relationship. “You can trust me,” he says to me one recent evening, sensing
a sadness within me. I was
thinking much about death – it was near the time of my grandfather’s departure from life.
You want what he says about trusting him to be true, and for all the trust that he
has put in you, you, with a sense of relief that you had almost forgotten
exists, talk about how you feel, thus strengthening the ties of this new
friendship.
When I first got to Rancho, he asked me why I was so quiet. Nobody had really asked me anything up until that point. He made an effort to sit with me and understand me a bit more. I told him that I was faced with a new culture, a new language, new food, new climate, a new job, far from my family and friends... I began to weep a little, and he, slightly embarrassed, surely, said, "I understand you now. I understand". In that response I gleaned his gentleness, his curiosity, his polite nature, but more than that his empathy, which is a characteristic that I find comforting and rare. To find that in such a new situation had a similar effect as pulling a blanket over yourself in the middle of the night when it has gotten cold.
