Will

If you ever happen to travel to Cochabamba, Bolivia, you will collect so many fragmented adventures. The adventures will accumulate and thrive and challenge you until inevitably, you arrive at your last day. And if you happen to have a last day like mine, this is how it will go:

You will wake up wrapped in five fuzzy layers. You will reach for your glasses and pull your hair into yet another messy bun; the layers of day 3 grease will hold your bangs in place. You will walk in the rain to the main house of the farm to find the bread already cut into thick slices for you. You will slather deep purple marmalade to the edges of thin crust barriers while you let the warmth of tea awaken you to another huddled morning.

You will walk the field, the dew tossing flecks of mud on your sandaled feet. You will harvest the reddest tomatoes you can find and you will gather the darkest blackberries amongst the thorned bushes. You will pause for a moment to sit on your favorite swing in your favorite part of the field just as the sun breaks through those mountain-hugging clouds.

You will attempt to speak quechua with Don Paulino and he will laugh at all your mispronunciations. You will try to get him back by saying he should try to say the names of facial features in English, but he will suddenly become very serious about getting back to work and he will leave you in all your mispronunciated shame on the side of the hill. You will try to crack another joke to make him smile and he will laugh, but in that pitying way in which you will never really know if the laugh is a compliment or an insult. He will eventually come back to give you more branches to cut into compost, and he will start telling you of stories of condors attacking and killing horses. You will not believe him and will say that you don’t believe him with an incredulous face. He will just stare at you before sharing all of his knowledge about natural medicines. Apparently, drinking bull’s milk can ease an upset stomach. You will be secretly envious of this knowledge. It seems so human, so much more central to who we are than all the theories you could spew out if asked what you knew.

You will finish your work at the farm for the last time. You will leave down the dirt path, and nature will lend you that special kind of quiet only it can lend.

You will wait on the corner of the street for the 127. Eventually a woman will hail down this unmarked car, say a few hurried words to the driver, and announce in a bellowing voice that he can take us down Montecillo. People from all four corners of the street will converge at the same time to try to make it into this car; you will run for your life to get a seat. You will pull the door shut behind you, and some poor boy will come to the window desperate for the last seat. His face will fall as the car drives away from the town’s lights. You will get off at the corner of Avenue Reducto to hail trufi 120.

You will be squished in the last row, watching too many neon lights and grills set up on sides of street corners. You will blink in that sunset rocked air. Eventually, you’ll get off at the cross section of Avenue Santa Cruz and Avenue America. You will cross the roundabout (narrowly avoiding death) to hail the 121 back to home. You will get off at the fruit stand. You will climb those five staircases to the floor of your apartment, and you will come home to your host mom watching TV in her bedroom. You will collapse onto the bed; you will tell your host mom every pain, laugh, stupidity, joke, insight, feeling you have had since you last saw her at lunch a few days before.

Like always, she will sip her coffee and mutter, “Oh, Aly.”

You will leave to have some final French fries with Evelyn. She is and always will be wonderful. As you fade in and out of the melody of the conversation, you will wish that you could tell her how much she saved you. Actually scratch that: you don’t believe people can be saved. You will say your final goodbye and the tears will begin to fall, and you will realize that these are the first tears you have shed since that ragged tearing back in November. You were not saved back then because you were not rid of anything- rather you were too full of a whirling truth that stretched and built and thwarted you into something bigger than yourself. These new tears are happy tears, and you will see Evelyn waving for the last time in that criss-crossed splinter of fading sunlight.

You will go back home to that 5^th floor apartment for the last time. You will make a cup of coffee, feeling safe in that rounded reflection. You will save your goodbye with your host mom until the next morning. She will just say a simple good night for now. You will smile under drooped eyelids. You will pause a moment at the kitchen table, thinking.

You will be hit with this thought: am I brave enough to do what’s next?

You will not be able to answer this, and time will just propel you forward. It always propels you so so forward. You will walk down the hallway. You will close your door. You will take out the messy bun and you will slide you glasses on the side table. You will curl back under five fuzzy layers as you shut your eyes.

As always, you will go home to a million different places.