Costa Rica
“Are you okay?” she asked as I stood to wipe the dirt from my dress. I found the stairs extra slippery from the last 12 hours of non-stop rain. I reached to pick up the two pieces of broken glass from the stair light, feeling lucky it didn’t shatter.
“I’ll have to tell Louis about the light.”
“Oh it’s okay, ” she responds, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen these lights working anyway.” Her voice was shallow and raspy though she spoke with strong words. I gazed up past the smoke drifting from her cigarette held down low by her thigh, other arm crossed against her chest. Her face held kind eyes, smooth skin with cheek bones that were rounded and full with tissue from smiling. Her long grey hair held a soft braid to the front of her shoulder and her voice rasped again, “It must be the new moon.”
I mention I had noticed the sliver in the sky the night before and then we got lost in conversation; life, family, yoga, Ayurveda, of how her guru brought her back to balance, of how she used quantum healing to pull her out of cancer, of fleeing from her home country as a child because of war, her never drawing the cigarette up to take a pull. She mentioned she will be building an Ashram atop a hill outside of Tamarindo. She said she hoped I would visit one day.
We exchanged names and she pulled me in for a hug. She stayed for a long embrace; truth, authenticity, presence. As she pulled away she spoke, “Its been so nice to finally see you again.”
I smile in her reflection.
“I will see you soon,” I respond as I carefully step my way back up the stairs, finding it odd that not one ounce of my body was in pain from my fall.
Three days has passed and I have yet to see my sweet neighbor out in the courtyard, not even with her cigarette…
