Jody and I are the parents that you hate. Your children might come home from school
Crystel, six-years-old. First four teeth pulled.
one day and ask you why the tooth fairy doesn’t give them a treasure hunt like she or he does for Antonio and Crystel (our tooth fairy is a boy or girl, depending on the tooth).
Oh yes, the kids also get the dollar under the pillow. That comes with a letter. And depending on the circumstances, the tooth fairy might use the opportunity to gently remind them to be nice to their sibling or to thank them for a job well done. The fairy often goes on to explain what the tooth is going to be used for. It could be a doorbell (teeth clanging together make just the right sound), a decoration in a flower garden, or it may join other teeth and line the walkway up to the tiny fairy house. The tooth fairy doesn’t stop there with the toothless child. Before flying to the next house the fairy drops a box of candy – like Sour Patch or Mike and Ike’s – under the sibling’s pillow. I know … candy … right?
Crystel often has her teeth pulled out in groups of four by the dentist. The first time it happened, the tooth fairy felt so bad that at the end of Crystel’s treasure hunt, there was an American Girl Doll that looked like her. Well, not quite. The fairy brought home an Indian American Girl doll that the tooth fairy thought matched Crystel’s complexion but the tooth fairy helper said No way, and the fairy trudged back to the Mall of America and got Josephina, the Latin American girl.
Fortunately, getting teeth pulled is like scheduling a Cesarean. You know when it has to come out.
When the kids started asking me if there actually was a tooth fairy, I asked them whether they really wanted to know. By then, they had a relationship with the fairy. They might leave a letter for her or him under the pillow, asking questions and stating that they wanted to come to the fairy’s castle.
Antonio and Crystel hesitated. The stories that accompanied a lost tooth were so magical. Would the magic disappear?
After the age of awakening (at seven-years-old) when Crystel was in the dentist chair getting her next four teeth out, the dentist asked her what she thought the tooth fairy was going to bring her. “A hamster,” Crystel said. The dentist looked at me. I nodded. A hamster.
Yesterday, eating pasta, nine-year-old Antonio said he lost a tooth. There it was in his hand. I looked up at his frothy bloody mouth. My kids are not known for toying with their teeth. Teeth have fallen out while drinking water.
By now the tooth fairy has gotten old and tired and a bit lazy. I asked Antonio if he minded if the fairy just left him money. “I don’t care,” he said, “As long as it’s a twenty.”
Antonio, 7-years-old.
Parents warned us that whatever the first tooth cost the tooth fairy, the ante would always have to be matched. Jody and I never worried about that. I sometimes feel as if I am experimenting with what love will do for a child. I know that giving presents doesn’t equate to love and you risk having spoiled children. So far, I feel as if we have escaped that. Antonio and Crystel are polite, kind, and giving.
Every morning I took a photo from our patio of what the novelist, Aldous Huxley, described as, “…really too much of a good thing.” Lake Atitlan takes its name from the Mayan word, “atitlan,” which translates to, “the place where the rainbow gets it’s colors.”
Volcano and lake, height and depth, pointed and vast, cradled me for five nights and six days. I felt taken care of regardless of what was or what would be. 2,895.3 miles from Minnesota, my family and I were home. Jody, Antonio, and Crystel were perceptibly at peace as well.
Antonio and Elizabeth waiting for launch
Across the lake from our suite at Los Elementos, Volcano Toliman rose up with Volcano Atitlan behind it. Owners, Lee Beal and his wife, Elaine, reinvented their lives in Guatemala. They have been full-time residents of Santa Cruz la Laguna on Lake Atitlan for the past five years. They came to Guatemala looking for a simpler and more fulfilling life and found it on Lake Atitlan. They originally started working with a local nonprofit Amigo de Santa Cruz. Lee now serves on the board of directors. As he and others learned more about the people of Santa Cruz, they realized there was a need for jobs. The CECAP vocational training center run by Amigos helps fulfill that need.
Dock at San Marcos–homemade signs telling us where to go
Lee’s background as an entrepreneur in the horticultural field gave him the experience and basis to introduce a new cash crop to the area. He has developed a Vetiver Grass program, which is a good fit with the agricultural culture of the local people. This is a multi-year program that will not yield profits for 3-5 years, but will make an impact in the long-term. Lee and Elaine wanted to expand on the idea of creating new jobs, and from this idea grew Los Elementos Day Spa and Los Elementos Adventure Center.
Classes available on San Marcos
Elaine has trained over a dozen local women to do manicures and pedicures and has trained three women as massage therapists. Each of these training programs offers the women employment opportunities that would not have been available to them otherwise.
Lee developed a series of tours, hikes, kayak excursions, rock climbing, and cultural sharing opportunities through Los Elementos Adventure Center. He has been employing two local guides trained through INGUAT on some of the tours and have been training a dozen local youth to develop the skill sets needed to be a guide.
Medicinal and curative garden
Accompanying us to San Marcos la Laguna was Zach, a 14-year-old adventure “guide in training” who was staying with Lee and Elaine. Zach’s personal story is similar to Antonio and Crystel’s. He was born in and adopted from Guatemala, he met his birth family for the first time last year, and he returned to Lake Atitlan and Los Elementos as an intern. It was our good fortune that Zach would be our guide for much of our stay. Antonio and Crystel had someone ‘just like them’ to hang with.
Lee had arranged our day for us. We were picked up at his dock and ferried twenty minutes to San Marcos. The waters were calm on Lake Atitlan as they usually are in the morning. They don’t kick up until noon. This surprising turn-around is known as the Xocomil winds.
Medicinal and curative garden
Stepping onto the shores of San Marcos is walking into New Age. Signs greeted us touting Astral Traveling, Metaphysics, Kabbalah, Tarot reading, Reiki and more. The village has several meditation, yoga, and massage centers. Walking up the foot path to the main center, Lee pointed out medicinal and curative plants and elaborated on their use and origin. Banana, coffee, and avocado trees blended with the landscape.
Mayan calendar
Next to the walkway was a wall with beautiful colorful paintings including a Mayan calendar.
We came to a wall on our right made of plastic bottles. Project Pura Vida or what I call the bottle project finally made sense to me. The evening before in their home, Elaine had shown me how she was putting plastic trash in a bottle. She had a stick she used to compress the waste. But it was the moment that I saw the wall in San Marcos that I understood what she was doing.
The bottle project – Pura Vida
The bottle of trash would be joined with other bottles and become a wall for a home. In more technical terms, the construction technique consists of stacking thousands of bottles between a shelter’s wooden supports, holding them in place with chicken wire, then applying concrete to create what looks like a typical concrete wall.
Close-up of construction
The walls are cheaper than those built with cement blocks, which is the material typically used in low-cost construction in Guatemala. The plastic core also makes the walls more flexible—and thus less dangerous—than block walls in the event of an earthquake.
Pura Vida began in January 2004 as a pilot project in San Marcos to solve the local problems of garbage.
Walking towards path that will lead us to cliff jumping
One of Lake Atitlan’s greatest attractions is the cliffs of San Marcos. Our group headed towards a dirt path that led up the side of the mountain when a very large sack fell out of the sky and hit me on my head. After I straightened up and shook off the shock, Lee explained that the locals unloading a truck were looking at me and not where they were throwing. I have often told people I need to be hit on the head to get the message, so it was kind of funny in a spiritual sort of way. Still, I missed the esoteric message that was divined for me.
Zach, preparing to jump
The sack incident was not on anyone’s mind a short while later when we were standing on a diving platform three stories above the cool waters of Lake Atitlan. We quickly determined that Zach should be first to jump.
Sometimes all it takes is one. If that first person can make it safely through an adventure, then we figure it will be okay for the rest of us. I wasn’t any stranger to cliff jumping, having jumped and dived off the cliff at Spring Valley dam in Wisconsin when I was a teenager. Still, it was frightening. My heart went up, my body went down and that feeling didn’t dissipate on any of my next jumps. The kids kept telling me to do a pencil dive. I screamed and waved my arms crazily instead. Lee pointed out a tree that hung out over the water to Antonio. Without hesitation, just like at home, Antonio scampered up the trunk, inched out on a limb, and swung off into the water. He did this over and over and over.
Elizabeth not doing a pencil dive
Later, I asked Antonio and Crystel which was scarier, meeting their birth moms, or jumping three stories off of a cliff. In unison, they said, meeting their birth moms. The bar was set. Their world had opened up. From the moment they met their greatest fear, they leaped beyond their nine years.
It occurred to me on my drive to work that this was going to be Jody’s 50th birthday. I hadn’t come up with an idea for a present but I was happy that I realized it was her 50th. The significance of her birthday suddenly hit me. Her 50th birthday!
I was grateful that the significance of this milestone occurred to me, because often significance could hit me on the head and I still might not get it. I have a very good friend that knows this about me and she checks up on me around Jody’s birthday and our wedding anniversary.
I was pleased with myself. I had thought of the significance all by myself and I still had a few weeks to come up with a SIGNIFICANT present.
Jody’s birthday is around Mother’s day. Maybe that is where I got the idea that a bracelet or necklace with all of our birthstones would be nice.
Crystel, our nine-year-old daughter, was with me at Jared’s. Antonio, our other nine-year-old was across the parking lot at SchmItt’s for his drum lesson. Crystel and I only had a short amount of time to make a decision before Antonio’s lesson would be over. While I was looking at bracelets with the personal attendant, Crystel was examining rings. She called me over and pointed out a ring that she liked. I thought about it. The ring could have the number of stones we needed and Jody was more apt to wear the ring all of the time.
I changed course and had the gal price a ring for me with an emerald, ruby, and two sapphires. When it came time to decide the order of the stones I asked Crystel. She said the emerald, two sapphires, and then the ruby. I thought her order would be good. Jody being a sapphire would be next to each child depending on what sapphire the kids decided Jody was.
But … the next few days I puzzled over the order of the stones. I had an unsettling feeling. Jody was Emerald, not Sapphire. Antonio was Ruby. Crystel and I were Sapphire. Crystel’s order put Sapphire next to Emerald. Now on the face of things this is no big deal. But, symbolism is very important to nine-year-olds. The stones would be Jody, Crystel, Beth, Antonio. Antonio would be next to me if the first Sapphire was Crystel and not next to the birthday mama.
I checked online and the ring hadn’t yet shipped. I stopped into the jewelry store to check on the possibility of changing the order of the rings to sapphire, emerald, ruby, sapphire. This would put Jody next to each child.
This time Antonio was with me at Jared’s. He said that he thought the stones should match the order of the birthdays, emerald, ruby, sapphire, sapphire. I raised my eyebrows. The stones would be Antonio, Jody, Crystel, Beth. His order would place Ruby next to Emerald.
I was told that the ring had already shipped but that they could change the order of the stones for a price. I thought about it, and economically, this didn’t make sense. I told the gal that the order of the stones was perfect and explained to Antonio on the way out of the store how the ring was round, never-ending, inclusive, just like our family. I put my arm around him and said, “Each stone is important, a representation of us all.”
Jody’s birthday has since passed. Antonio thinks the ruby stone representing him is pretty, Crystel proudly announced that she chose the order of the stones, and I talked about the SIGNIFICANCE of the ring.
