Elisha's picture from his end of the table

I never cease to be amazed by the thousands of miles we travel, to points completely unknown, only to find ourselves, inexplicably, at home.

San Marcos has about three roads that you would recognize as streets. The main road that runs through town and is cobbled intermittently and the one that runs parallel to it, behind the school.  Then there are two others that turn off of the main road and run sharply up hill into barrio tres.

Everything else, is footpaths. They are neither named, nor labeled.  There are no formal addresses.  “You take the dirt path just before the concrete light pole,” to get to Jeff & Wendy’s.

You take the path by the river, where the roads meet to get to Ito’s.  It’s a five minute hike up into the valley, past the Caracol preschool, and the Cambulacha “Art for Everyone” center.  You’d walk past his gate if you didn’t know it was there, a few slates of 1×2” with a crisscross of barbed wire, standing haphazardly ajar.  From the outside, it doesn’t look much like home.

Ito was my massage class teacher. He’s tiny, as most of the men here are, no bigger than Gabe in height and breadth, but he’s one solid twist of wiry muscle with snapping black eyes, and wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from his ever ready smile.  His hair is a curly tangle of black and silver tied at the back of his neck that hangs to his shoulder blades. He’s 48 and from Costa Rica originally, although he’s lived all across the US and Central America.  He’s an engineer by schooling, a massage therapist by passion, a gardener and builder by choice and a Daddy by calling.

It wasn’t a question so much as an acknowledgment of what was already set in stone, “You will join us for Shabbat!  Friday, at six, I think, but you can come earlier if you like.”

What can I bring?  “The bread!  Two loaves, Mariana didn’t leave me any challah this time.”  Mariana is his partner.  She’s Jewish but she’s gone at the moment, so Ito carries on their weekly Shabbat, even though he’s not Jewish in the least.  I don’t have my challah recipe with me, so I warn him that it will be “just bread.”  He smiles.  “It doesn’t matter!  Bread is bread.  You come.”

And so, we come. Hiking the footpaths of San Marcos at twilight requires a little extra care.

You should not imagine them as well worn, flat paths that have been tended to make them sensible for villagers to traverse day in and day out for centuries.  No.  They are well worn, that’s certain, but there is no rhyme or reason to them.  They veer off suddenly around someone’s two coffee plants, and then lead straight over a pile of rubble that’s been moved by some fellows who are sifting for sand.  They are littered with rocks from the size of a fist to the size of a five year old and they’re sprinkled liberally with dog feces, and worse.

With paths no wider than my husband’s shoulders, there is a careful, and cheerful etiquette for passing:

• The guy carrying the feed sack full of rocks and dirt has the right of way.
• But the young mama with a baby strapped to her back and a basket full of tamales will always be given preference.
• The tiny granny, barefoot with with a bundle of banana leaves on her head is always deferred to.
• Everyone, and I mean everyone, is greeted and smiled at.

Even if you are a parade of obvious foreigners led by a man of frightening proportions to the children here, hiking up the valley solidly off the “beaten track.”  Perhaps especially then.

Ito built his house with his own hands, of bamboo and adobe. It has a woven bamboo roof and is build backed up to the river bed, which is empty now, but which rages, more than twenty feet deep with water pouring out of the highlands during the rainy season.

He’s terraced the sides of the riverbed with rocks and is growing lettuces, kale and chard alongside his avocado, mandarin, anoni and papaya trees. It is one of those idyllic places that defies description and is not as special as a result of it’s building as it is as a result of the hearts that inhabit it.

As darkness fell over the valley we picked our way up the path toward the light and laughter emanating from the house and were met at the door with the international welcome of a hug and kisses on both cheeks.

I didn’t count, but there must have been thirty people there.  Some expats, some locals.  Folks from Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, the USA, Costa Rica, Argentina, England, Israel, Australia and Guatemala. Spanish was spoken by everyone and English by most.

Ito took Tony around his home, pointing out the dry toilet and the box of pine shavings next to it, and discussing the gratefulness he had to a friend who suggested reinforcing the bamboo uprights with metal rods just an hour before he set them into place.

I dove into the kitchen and tasted the pot of boiling quinoa and veggies, fried papaya with corn and cilantro, and toasted pumpkin seeds.  “Those AREN’T pumpkin seeds,” Ezra stage whispered to me.  “Not our kind, anyway.”

We stood, a silent group, hands extended to the light of candles, the only light in the house that night, each giving thanks to God in his own way.

Ito tore the bread and tossed it.

Wine was poured to overflowing by a Frenchman and the prayers offered in Hebrew by those who knew them before the cup was passed back and forth, up and down the long table that filled Ito’s entire room from oldest to youngest.

We clapped and sang… “Shabbat Shalom a Ito, Shabbat shalom a Vale, Shabbat Shalom a Judah, Shabbat, Shabbat Shalom….” all around the table.  And then, we ate.

Over and under, above and around, throughout the entire evening was passed a tiny three and a half year old child with cinnamon ringlets and eyes as black as her Daddy’s.  Obviously loved and raised by the community, little Mia was the princess of the evening and shared her besos equally among the guests.

Her Mama died within 24 hours of her birth.  She spent a month in a hospital in Guatemala City clinging desperately to life and trying to overcome the lack of oxygen she suffered.

She doesn’t speak yet, but she makes herself known and she absolutely basks in the love and attention and devotion of her Daddy and the amazing folks he shares life with.

She helped me set the cups on the table, one at a time, concentrating hard to bring them from their bamboo basket beneath the hobb stove and lay them gently in my open hand.  When we were finished, she smiled brightly and reached for me to pick her up.

While Ito put his daughter to sleep and she cried long about being made to leave the party for her bed on the other side of the half wall that divides his cabin, the party continued.

A djembe drum emerged from one bag, another bottle of wine from another and dessert: two leathery green looking fruits about the size of two large apples stuck together, ceremoniously placed on a plate.  The guests oohed and ahhed.  We didn’t know what they were.

The Argentinian journalist who lives in the  A frame cottage on Ito’s property dug in with her thumbs and popped through the thick skin to tear each fruit in half.  Inside, they were the color of banana and a cross between the texture of a banana and a pineapple.  They tasted… like heaven.  It’s hard to describe.  There were hints of banana, papaya, peach, pineapple and cream, punctuated with big black seeds the size and shape of an almond, only slimy.  Anoni. I practiced the name in my head over and over so that I can ask for it in the mercado next week.

I did dishes with Christian, an American expat who has been here off and on for eleven years.  He’s a teacher of Chinese medicine and he practices and teaches in the surrounding community.  He lives further up the valley than Ito.  He reminds me strongly of someone, but I can’t put my finger on it.

While I dried the dishes Tony stacked them, clean, on the long wooden table as he told our story to the other guests.  We’re always the anomaly in a group like that, as usual, the only ones traveling with children, let alone FOUR of them.  We’re always asked WHAT we’re doing, WHY we’re doing it and HOW we can make it happen with such a “large” family.  This always makes us giggle.  Large family; they don’t know our friends.

It was nearly nine thirty when dinner finally came to a close.  Ito emerged from his daughter’s little corner, victorious.  She was asleep.  He bounced on the balls of his feet like he does while he ran his hand through his disheveled curls, “Kids, you know… you guys remember how it is.  She doesn’t want miss the party.  She cries.  But she must sleep.  I think she will sleep good now after all that cry.”  He’s smiling.

We picked our way back down the valley by the light of the moon.  “It’s almost a full moon, Daddy!” Elisha noted.  Next week it will be, and a full moon here is unlike a full moon anywhere we’ve been.  No need for a head lamp.

We wandered into town before we headed back out the road to Tzunana toward our place.  There was music and the sound of basketballs hitting concrete.  There was a game going on in the basketball arena in the center of the puebla and some of the Shabbat guests seemed to be coaching.

Even thought completely full, Tony looked longingly in the direction of the pollo dorado vendor as we left the last electric light behind and wandered out of town.  Volcan San Pedro stood watch over the lago, a large purple hulking shadow in the darkness, as lights winked at us from the other pueblas around the lake.  Even in the darkness, the view never gets old.

The boys were asleep before they hit their pillows, feet still dusty from the long walk home.  Tony and I sat up a while, marveling over the ways in which lives are woven together over dinner tables and the many crazy places we’ve shown up, seemingly by appointment, to share a meal and life with family we never knew we had.