For Dad

Esteban can’t stop smiling. His teeth, a sequence of odd numbers, gleam in the tropical sun. We heave the last pole of freshly cut bamboo onto our shoulders. The short hairs sprouting from the stalk prick my neck, unpleasantly entwining with the neurons. In a blink of a thought, the sensation vanishes, distracted by a memory of my father’s day-old stubble – my tiny hand brushes against the sharp edge of his lower jaw. The jaw transforms into the coarse tongue of a cat tirelessly cleansing the space between my fingers. The fingers grasp the bamboo stalk just before my nose.

Looking at one’s own hands was not advisable during my classical guitar studies. When I finally could look, I donned laboratory gloves. Only now I realize that the hand before me, relentlessly illuminated by the sun, is not my own. Caricatured by size, sculpted by labor, swollen by time, it belongs to my father. 

A voice fishes me out from the stream of consciousness.

“Pura vida,” calls a local hippie from beneath a broken banana tree, his mouth clenched on a joint, fingers on a guitar’s neck.

“Pura vida,” we reply in unison, Esteban and I.

“Pura vida, pure life, happy life,” I think.

I become aware that we are being observed by many pairs of black, curious eyes – the only windows in the nearby houses with no walls. Without walls, there are no doors. Without doors, there are no locks. Without locks, the world is always wide open. Pura vida. Esteban’s smile widens, and with that the world opens even more. In the void where teeth once were, my today’s satori sprouts.

We toss the last pole onto the truck. Esteban pulls out a thin rope from his pocket and starts tying the bamboo. In broken Spanish, I suggest using a strap.

“It’s a good rope,” he says, with the distinctly soft Costa Rican r in cuerda. “My father hanged himself with one like this.”

Esteban’s smile reaches its zenith with the sun. I stare at the hand before me. My satori completes itself. It blossoms and then withers. Pura vida. Without doubts.