the time is gone, the memories are there.

June 21, 2010

365 days make a year.

A year ago.

It’s hard to believe that I was sitting there, alone in that airport a year ago.

But I was.

It seems like eons and yesterday all at once.  I can still conjure up the smell of rich, Colombian coffee with ease and although my Spanish has more gaps in it than I remember, I’m still able to speak up to help the Hispanic man in line at the post office who asked for stamps and keeps getting an envelope.

Inevitably, one of those things happens– the man in the post office, a picture of the mountains stuck in a book, the Spanish word in the middle of yesterday’s conversation, the synchopated step I sneak into The Swing.

And I am taken back there.

To that town in the Andes where morning fog is magical.  To the one room apartment with a wall of windows.  To a bar on the avenida with mis amigos, a band, and bottles of rum.  To the fruit stand on the corner and the man that knows my name.

To that horrific bus that wound down the mountain that took me to that school on the hill with the bright yellow doors and bright brown faces.

I am taken back there.

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