Dear Friends: Although we left Cañar at the beginning of July, I want to write one more chronicle this season to report on our brief two months there, as we made decisions that will determine our future in Cañar and that of the Cañar Chronicles. (Spoiler: we will continue to live in Cañar half-years and I will continue to write.)
But to go back. As many of our friends know, Michael has Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative condition that affects movement and other physical functions. In Michael’s case, the onset was late (about 4 years ago) and progression is slow. Nevertheless, at 86 years (this month), he shows more signs of the disease in his posture, walking, and energy levels. There is no cure, but symptoms are controlled with a standard drug taken three times a day. Last fall, when Michael ended up in the hospital for two weeks with a complicated type of pneumonia, we realized that the dependable body he has enjoyed up to his 80s will never be the same. This wonderful body that built two houses – one inside out, the other outside-in – renovated three houses for resale, and did countless kitchen and bathroom remodels around Portland in the 30 years he was a contractor. (He painted our front porch the week before he went into the hospital). He recovered slowly, and once we got the OK from his doctor that his lungs were clear, we made plans to go back to Cañar for two months as a sort of trial run. First, we wanted to see how he would do with the rigors of travel – from Portland to Cañar is a two-day, tiring trip through at least three airports – and second, how he would do in our hilly town at 10,000 feet without a car and few of the immediate luxuries we enjoy in Portland.
It went well for the most part. We were welcomed back by the taxi/truck drivers available on five-minute notice to take us anywhere in the area for $2.00. Over the years they’ve become friends and sources of information, as well as dependable transportation. When I developed a bad flu in May, a driver took us into town to a doctor whose name we’d be given (our previous one retired). When we rang the bell, we could hear the doctor clomping down the stairs from the family house upstairs. He sat at the desk in his tiny office crowded with photos and artwork by kids and grandkids, then checked me out, gave me a shot and an Rx, and charged $20. When Michael developed something similar he did the same for him. So just like that, we have a doctor in Cañar. (Later, someone said, “You didn’t know that most of our doctors come to your house?”)
And of course, Michael’s famous woodman Chirote showed up immediately, plaintively yelling “Mikito” from the road – “I’ve been crying and missing you!” – his usual routine. One of Michael’s great pleasures in Cañar is building a fire at around 3:00 every day, when he sits with a tall beer and “muses” until it’s time to make dinner. For that, he needs a constant source of wood and Chirote is his man. But when Chirote made the next delivery without telling Michael how much wood he was bringing and how much he would charge, Michael refused to pay and they broke up. I was there to capture the moment…
…and again for the make-up a few weeks later.
We also had the good fortune to meet gardener Marco Verdugo last year when we hired him to mow the lawn and tend the garden once a month while we were In Portland. He would send beautiful videos of our garden and his work on Facebook Messenger. So when Annie Tucker and I went to Cañar in February this year for a relampago visit. I messaged Marco and asked him to help take down the shutters. I saw then how efficient he was. So before we arrived in May I asked him to help Michael take down the front shutters that require a ladder, and to wash the windows… …then to help me with the gardening and heavy pruning……and again to cut and stack the woodpile. You get the picture: we now have found a dependable person to help us with the heavy work around the house.
But perhaps the most significant moment came the day I was due to go into Cuenca for a press-check of the Navas photo book – the last possible moment to make any changes before a final printing – in this case, 500 copies. At 3:00 that afternoon I was to meet the designer, the printers, the project team, and the Navas family to see the first sample book. But Michael had not bounced back from his flu, and that morning he was so light-headed he could not get out of bed. I was reluctant to leave him alone all day, but he insisted I go, saying I should lock the gate and he would stay in bed. I worried and dithered, and finally left a couple of hours late, but before that, I’d run through several scenarios – some shared with Michael – that contributed to my thinking about our future. IF I needed someone to come stay with Michael, I could call Patricia who cleans our house and works nearby (F-no! says Michael). IF he needed a ride to town to see a doctor he could call one of our taxi-truck friends who would even help him from house to taxi, taxi to office, and home again. (“Never!” says Michael.) IF he needed a doctor urgently, he could call one to come to the house. (“Won’t happen!” says Michael).
Still, I left the padlock on the gate open and checked with our neighbor next door who was out in his garden if he would look in on Michael should I need him. I did call Michael several times while I was gone, and when I got home early evening he was sitting by the fire with a beer, as though it had been an ordinary day. On June 28 – the day before we left Cañar, I presented the Navas book at the Centro Civico with the Cañar mayor beside me, along with the Navas family, the Catholic University team who had published the book, and an audience of townsfolk and friends. Everyone who came was given a book. (The law in Ecuador says public institutions cannot sell books but must give them away.) And so I’m happy to give you all a digital copy of Desde de Mirada de Rigoberto Navas: 1940-1960 here. _LibroNavas
We left the next morning for Guayaquil-Miami-Portland. Our travel worries? Who needs Global Entry when you can breeze through immigration, customs, and TSA with a wheelchair (and a partner who trots alongside pulling a carry-on)? We plan to go back to Cañar on November 1 for six months. If anyone is interested in renting our house in Portland, please get in touch! And, of course, you are always welcome to visit us in Cañar.
The Cañar Book Club
I’ve been reading promiscuously this summer, as I tend to do when I’m in Portland and have access to many sources of books. Following the recommendation of a member who described her “Tóibín-fest,” I went back and read Colm Tóibín’s first novel, The South, which I liked very much as it is about art and artists in post-Civil War Spain and in Ireland. Then I moved on to Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, which put me off a bit when I realized novel was about Mary he mother of Jesus in the last years of her life. I let it expire from the library, but rather regretted it when I read this review comment: “The Testament of Mary is a reminder that Jesus indeed had a mother, and she was nobody’s fool.” Now I’m on safer ground with his The Blackwater Lightship, set in Ireland in the early days of AIDS, with flashbacks that I see from reading Toibin’s Wikipedia site, cover the ground of his own lonely childhood in Ireland. (I’ve also read many of Tóibín’s later travel and fiction books, so I’m a certified fan.)
Beyond that, I’m immersed in a memoir about a world I knew nothing about: How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair is the extraordinary story of a young woman growing up in a Rastafari family in Jamaica in the 1980s. I first read her in a New Yorker excerpt and kept the book on my list. I’m about halfway through and find it fascinating.
I won’t bore you with the books I put down without finishing, or finished with the thought, that I’d wasted my time. But hey, it’s summer and hot, and I have a hammock, and I’m entitled to some rubbish reading.
Let’s hear what you all have been reading, rubbish or not!