Holy Week in Coyote, Costa Rica, April 1999
New York City, October 1997
From my journal: Saturday, April 3, 1999 (Holy Saturday), Coyote, Nandayure, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica
I just finished reading a book entitled One True Thing by Anna Quindlen. It is about a young woman who leaves the comfort of her Manhattan job as a journalist and goes home to her small town to take care of her mother who is dying of cancer.
At one point, she describes her feelings about New York with her mother’s nurse. Her words almost brought tears to my eyes as I could relate to them one hundred percent. She says:
“I love the city. When I slept in the city for the first time in my apartment, I remember feeling as if I was at home for the first time in my entire life. Sometimes people say, oh, how can you sleep, all the noise? I listen to the horns and ambulances, and it’s like, life. Real life, right outside.” (p. 208)
I love her description of the woman’s return to New York after her mother’s death. As I read the words, I could actually picture the scene. Quindlen writes:
“[My brother] accelerated [the car] and we came over a rise in the highway and there, poking into the air like a quiver full of arrows, was the island of Manhattan, the Emerald City, a glorious mirage. . . [My friend] turned around and smiled at me. ‘Click your heels together three times and say there's no place like home,’ she said. . . . ‘Yeah, and if I do where will I wind up?’ I said. And over the ramp and through the tunnel all of us were silent, until on the other side we came into the center of it, came out next to a hotdog cart with a yellow‑and‑blue umbrella and steam rising from the square hole in its center, to a young black man with a squeegee, the skin tight on his facial bones, who jumped back and yelled, ‘Hey, motherfucker!’ when [my brother] turned on the wipers, shifted gears, and took off down Ninth Avenue. . . . ‘I'm not sure where I am,’ I said. . . ‘I know, honey,’ said [my friend]. ‘Welcome to the island of lost souls.’ . . . ‘There is no place like home,’ I said. ‘There is no place like home.’ . . . ‘We're not in Kansas anymore," [my friend] said. . . ‘There's no place like home,’ I said again as we headed south to the Village.” (pp. 361‑2)
I finished reading the book during Holy Week while I was out in “the country” in a very small village named Coyote, located in the canton of Nandayure, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica. The author’s words almost made me melt. After this sojourn of mine in a foreign land, I don’t know if I will be able to live in any place other than New York. It is now part of my soul. There is no place like home!
If you are interested in reading a review of the book One True Thing, see the following link:
