Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Every morning I ascend the spiral stairs, coffee cup in left hand, right hand on the railing, counting each step slowly, mindfully – to greet the morning and the town from the rooftop terrace, chat out loud, in Spanish, to the neighboring dogs neurotic in their too-small rooftop spaces, gaze back and forth across the sea of colors that awaken, stretch, reveal themselves in their daily sun salutation.

Few know my name here – my arrival and departure will barely ripple the air waves in a town whose sights and sounds and smells and habits and inhabitants have shaken something loose in me. Granted, I was untethered before I arrived – having loosened, changed, or cut the ties to every rope that had previously formed my identity. I am a mother in name and by fact, but one who is needed very seldom for acts of mothering. I no longer possess – well, just about anything: car, home, most of my belongings, reliable cell or internet service, lover, mailing address, work schedule, friends I will spend time with face to face, wine glass clinked to wine glass, shared language, understanding of the way things are done here, sense of clear purpose (or at least the delusion that I had one), to-do list, salt shaker, the ability to remember to place used toilet paper in the waste basket.

We do better when we are known, named. I have named the dogs who live below me on this craggy hill. The black and white Staffordshire is Eduardo. The walls of his terrace are too high for him to see anything. He is strong, stocky, resigned to a few deep barks while he stretches his head straight up to the sky, wags his tail at the morning apparition of the gringa floating out of reach, above the broken glass spikes deterring rodents, pigeons, dreams from taking roost.

The small white-haired terrier, long fur and little paws promenading in circles around the inner circle of poop pellets, is Lola. Lola looks at me when I sing-song her name, stops briefly to put front paws on the ledges and survey just a bit of what might be visible from there, then returns to the tiny orbit, maybe even lifting a leg to urinate near the edge. I have perhaps done Lola a disservice with my Pacific Northwest gender-bending disregard in this land where machismo still reigns, but what can you do? The name, even if I change it now, has been destined.

Of course, plenty remains despite all that has been shaken loose from my sense of self: the way I claim to know things even when I don’t, the way I put fingers to keyboard in an attempt to grasp ephemeral moments, the “oooh-gross” face I make when I encounter the creatures who live in this house with me, the groan in my glutes and hips in downward dog, the fear of tripping on uneven stone paths, the way I wrap myself in story to make sense of things.

Like the story about the meant-to-be fortuitiveness of the 18 spiral steps between my front door and the rooftop landing – 18 in Hebrew means, “Chai” – life, aliveness. It is an auspicious sign, confirming I am meant to be here. It restores to me my name, Chaya, the one that even fewer know or speak out loud, the name I am called only in the holiest of ceremonies, stripped of western culture and modernity, tied to a history and people for whom I am the next ripple, the next one alive until not, so that maybe one day the name will be passed on to someone else.

The little white terrier will remain Lola. Eduardo will do just fine. In this place where only a handful of people know my face, I have been stripped to essence: aliveness. Names become destiny. Mine has been restored.