The lack of them

The dog’s scent can’t get any more perceptible. Inside a 8-seat van with only two sliding windows on the front seats, I am under the expectation that the trip I’ve been planning for a year is about to be nothing but an odorous mess.

As if paying £109 for a van service to bring us down to the infernal flatness of Colombia from an above-the-sea city can make up for my dog’s natural scent, I try to ignore the possibility that the driver could be fuming for the next 3 hours or dump us halfway this road trip to Girardot. 

Perhaps it’s not the first time the driver comes across a family with an anxious german shepherd -I decided I’d believe myself that-. So I focus on whatever is factual here and now. On the worn-out wrinkles from my mom’s palms, feeling them against those of my own. I look at her while she takes a nap. I touch her palms again, to ensure she’s still here, with me. Yes, she is. She is a reality. When I remember how cancer was about to take her away from me, I realise her existence is a gift. 

I had forgot how easy Colombians can fall asleep everywhere. We haven’t even managed to leave the surroundings of Bogotá, and the driver and myself are the only ones awake. Thankfully. My mom: gone. My grandparents: long gone. My brother: he’s probably in another universe. The smelly Viggo must be enjoying his nap too. 

It took me decades to get to this stage of gratefulness, safety and happiness, where I am physically present around the people I love, and a genuine lack of worries and concerns. Touch wood though, I haven’t cohabitated with my emotionally dependable Latin family under the same roof for ages. 

As we descend from the mountains and the sky slowly paves the way to a burning sun, I continue to look around my family. Acknowledging a nostalgia that I am yet to understand, combined with a premeditated fear of yet another trip, where everyone’s unresolved traumas could join forces for a dramatic, unforgettable time.

The wrinkles, the surgeries, the injuries that emanated from them while I’ve been absent were now facing me in a very intimidating way. I feel sorry for the time I lost seeing them age. But I’ve learnt how that is not necessarily a bad thing: at least I feel something. 

London is a bubble filled with egos, so feeling sorry for leaving my family behind makes me realise I am still far from being an asshole. Mind my language -it might be the heat across a narrow road, indicating we’re shortly arriving at the villa. 

The network is down, but the speaker is up. In a matter of seconds the sleeping beauties are hit by the golden hour, a desperately hot air, and the sound of three crickets mixed with a tedious Carranga playlist. We had asked the driver to play it for 3 hours, just to please my grandfather, Nacho. It’s his first time travelling without driving himself since he was 18, so having a lack of control on the trip -or on his family- was already too much for him. 

In a family like mine, choice is a privilege. Past your thirties, you can make two or three choices by yourself, and so on. I was finally allowed to take my grandfather out of his comfort, which translates into giving his body some rest from driving. With surprise I took his unbothered response when I told him far in advance that he wouldn’t drive. How many other things have I missed?

My nose gets congested, my heart curls up, my eyes feel heavy: I can’t help but wonder about the other things he has abdicated to. I really hope fighting his illness isn’t one of them. No one in my extended family asks or talks about the treatment for his prostate cancer anymore. 

With Nacho, you become an expert at interpreting the lack of words: I’m confident then that this type of silence, the one where he chooses smiles instead of words, means he’s doing fine and under regular treatment. What his silence does mean, no doubt, is that I should avoid checking on him, or else I can trigger an war unnecessary to the ones already present. 

"We arrived". 

Said the driver, as he was finding the best spot to park the van so that we wouldn’t just walk in without first paying the service.

"Look, Harold, how beautiful are our natural landscapes".

Though I am not sure if my grandparents meant the landscape they made up while they were sleeping for three hours, or the one the driver and I actually saw. Either way, it’s sweet how they forget I am as Colombian as they are. And it’s sad how in their excitement there’s a perceived belief that I’m no longer from here, they perceive a lack of me, even if I gave it all to be here. I guess it’s fine. 

When planning this week, I gave them the implicit authority to hurt me in every opportunity they had to express their feelings. I thought to myself that if I wanted to enjoy them in their essence, in the present moment with no phones facilitating the relationship, I needed to sacrifice the comfortable silence and solitude that I left back in Islington. 

It’s easy saying it than doing it. A few minutes after unpacking suitcases, my grandma, Yoya, was grabbing her face with her hands as if she just received shocking life-or-death news. Soon I learnt it  was just life-or-death for her: I -as if it was my presumed responsibility- had forgotten to buy ground coffee back in the capital, Bogotá. I didn’t work out yet how severe the lack of coffee was, as I desperately looked at every single drawer in the kitchen, the cupboard, everything. 

Before daring to look Yoya’s eyes, I checked on my phone how far was the nearest grocery store in the middle of nature, at 8PM. There was one town 30 minutes by walking, so if I speeded up, I could be back by 9PM before her anxiety consumes the entire Amazon rainforest.

"I’ll be back in 20." Numbers are subjective in Latin America. "Going to get some coffee."

Another unspoken family rule is that the older people are, the less confrontation you want to bring to them. As they didn’t resist the idea of me walking out on my own after an exhausting day I had planned for a year, I assumed -another family tradition: assuming- that it was merely right to do whatever it takes to find coffee for someone who could scientifically live without it for life. That lack of response also meant Yoya was fuming, and the rest of the crew avoiding the smoke. 

The premonition of chaos that I had on the way to Girardot was finally unveiled in the ground coffee I didn’t buy before leaving the city. As I embarked into a journey of an abandoned road that no one with survival instincts and an uncharged phone would walk, I had the companionship of darkness, trees and insects reminding me that what I was doing was for love. 

Love for the people that never questioned raising me. They never questioned sacrificing it all to be able to guarantee a dinner meal at the end of every day. So it’s nice to feel like doing something I hate for someone I love.

At this stage when I know more about the fragility of life, it’s worth walking in the open with the hope that Google Maps is right, the phone battery doesn’t go below 10%, and that the remote shop is still open. Oh, and coffee stock. After 30 minutes, I can see some lights and cars passing by with more frequency than before, signalling a hope for amnesty in my family.

Dreams came true, to some extent. The coffee they have is samples of instant coffee, the ones you’d find next to a kettle in a standard hotel room. Surely Yoya would be fine with those while we book a cab and go to a decent supermarket the day after -said the optimistic me. I popped back into the villa with 7 tiny samples that could not be any smaller.

"Thanks. Did you not find any ground coffee?"

That was her welcome back message. I wasn’t sure if it was the unbearable heat of the night, the useless fans around the kitchen table, a surprising lack of empathy, or all of these combined; anyway, with some resistance I learnt that the grandmother I left 8 years ago was no longer the one I had left 8 years ago. 

I had seen some flags here and there, every time I came over to visit, but my forgiving heart (see? I’ve got one) was blind enough to notice. In this visit I got to cohabitate with her new self. From a people-pleasing, overly-worried and hyper sensitive grandmother I was now facing a firm, defensive woman with a bitter sight carrying wounds caused by people-peasing, over-worrying and over-caring for other people’s feelings before prioritising those of her own. 

Days passed by and her annoyance with almost any trigger would become more evident. She didn’t want dessert because of sugar concerns; yet at coffee time she would add three tablespoons of brown sugar -and steal two or three bites from the Tiramisu my grandpa would be having. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, walks, in any setting there was always something wrong and Yoya wouldn’t hesitate to speak out and flag whatever she was lacking. 

The roles of my grandparents, as I perceived them since childhood, were swapped at some point of my remoteness.Seeing how Nacho would depend on the will of his wife is new. She’d be the decision maker and he’d just follow her advice -not following it remains an option, but allow me to add that they raised two generations of people-pleasers-.

My brother and sister couldn’t be more unbothered by them, so it just confirms this has been going on for years, and I’ve been absent for quite a while. I thought I’d be relaxing with the family I am familiar with.

Instead, I was living the present  with a family I didn’t know that much. A family who lacked direct communication, and rejoiced in acts of love. Feeling like a foreigner in your home country is humiliating. I let it be felt. I welcome the weirdness of not feeling home, at home. Been there; done that: just as when I arrived in London, but instead of having constructive conversations to fix whatever wasn’t working with my roomies, I honoured the family tradition of not questioning the unspoken.

Ironically, I got to enjoy the existence of my aged grandparents by living the memory of what they meant in my past, and the genuine love and gratitude I’ve held for them. The last day in the villa marks also the beginning of the agony, an agony of going back to Bogotá to then take a flight back to London while seeing your family stay behind the Immigration queue.

I could feel it all. The pain of leaving was all over my eyes, the minute the suitcases were ready and Nacho commissioned my mother to ask if I could be in a picture with him and Yoya. I don’t know what was more overwhelming, the illusion of choice? Or trying to understand if the picture was more for me than for him? or that he and I speak the same language?

The answer is none of them. As if that wasn’t enough, my grandmother pulled me over away, close to the swimming pool. A sporadic move that wasn’t too spontaneous: I can now understand it took an actual while for her to think about that move.

"Thank you for this trip, Haritold.  

I know in a couple of days you’ll be back in London.

This might be the last time I get to say goodbye to you.

I love you a lot."

It was the first time I heard Yoya verbalise love for me. It was also the first time seeing Nacho capturing what really matters in life.

From all the things we've lacked so far, the lack of them is the one I will take with me.

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