People All Around Us

But very little intimacy.  I am beginning to understand the loneliness and isolation of immigrants. While we have the unique experience of getting to spend each and every day together as a family from sun-up to sun-down, I am beginning to miss the voices of others.  

Language barrier, it is called-- and rightly so because the inability to talk with anyone beyond casual greetings and simple chatter creates an invisible yet tangible wall between their lives and yours.  There are thousands and thousands of people around us every day.  We look down into their houses and yards and streets, we see their cars and motorbikes and children as we walk past daily; we encounter boys buying meat for their mothers at the shop down the road, we hear the owner bid them "tell your mami hello" but we are locked out of the intimacy, of the knowing, of the sending a greeting to a relation.  And it is lonely, in a strange way, to be around so many people and know no one.  There is a constant feeling of being conspicuously invisible: conspicuous because we look different than the locals and invisible because we are not part of their world but only passing through.

The strangest interactions create familiarity when humans cannot connect through words.  

A man on a horse pats my head three times.  

A prostitute beside us on the bus bonds with Annika.  Annika, being enamored with the black netting on the woman's arm and kept reaching out and stroking it so gently, saying "hmm," and "mmmm" empathetically (I don't know if she thought it was some kind of bandage or what?).   After the initial awkwardness of my child insisting on touching this woman's arm wore off, the woman took Annika's foot in her hand and tickled it softly while Annika relaxed and laid her head down on my chest. 

After the woman had gotten off at her stop Annika fussed and pointed to her foot, saying "more."

A gracious man at the farmer's market slowly and carefully explains how to eat the mysterious fruits at his stand and then compliments my Spanish (which is terrible, I feel, by now)

And Rigo, the landscaper here plays endlessly with Annika and the dogs, both shouting with joy in their own languages at each other and the dogs while laughing and running around.

There are so many things I want to know about life here.  What do the children do during the day?  Do most women stay home or do a lot of women work?  What do people eat for dinner at night and what time do they like to go to bed?  How many people go to church and what is the divorce rate?  What are their pet-peeves with their government and politicians? What organizations and causes do people here support? Who travels and where? 

But I am locked into my usual "which way is the bus stop?" or "do you sell aspirin?" 

I am learning a lot about what it means to be an outsider-- sometimes it means being unable to find out what you want to know at all.