Something Real

In time travel experiments at McGill University in the mid-seventies, I was once asked to recall and focus on my earliest memory in order to establish a marker. I remembered being in car accident in San Salvador.  I remembered being in the cotton pleated lap of my mother in the front seat of a red and white car.  The year must have been 1958 and cars then were all large dense metal objects. Cars were a hard cold two toned metal with no plastic parts to speak of.  Also in the car was my uncle Mario through a marriage to my mother's sister Mabel .

Mario, a government press secretary with a pencil thin moustache, was driving and laughing, driving and laughing and the chrome laden AM radio was playing quite loudly. My father and aunt in the back seat also laughed about things that my young mind could not understand as we sped down the dusty road in wild abandon in those reckless days before the advent of standardized safety features. Seatbelts were a luxurious option that would not appear until many years later.

We were a lone vehicle speeding down a road lined with white washed low adobe buildings. The white wash shimmered as it reflected the brilliant morning sun. All moved as in a dream and the only element  missing was a giant melting pocket watch just below the horizon. Up ahead my two year old eyes saw an empty plaza with a dry dust covered fountain.

All of a sudden a large dark green dump truck pulled across the plaza moving at great speed and shrouded in a veil of dust.  It pulled in front of us and my laughing uncle could not brake in time.....
My little head hit the edge of the dashboard and all went black....

Now I am back again after 47 years. I have been here for two weeks and will be here for two more. It started with a mobile tooth and is ending here amidst volcanoes in a valley of hammocks.

A few nights ago there was an earthquake here that registered 6 on the Richter scale. No one was hurt and moments later everyone went back to bed.

In the mornings I rise, drink exotic fruit juices and die ever so slowly in the glorious beauty of this mysterious and conflicted eden.

I spent my afternoon wandering through the Mayan ruins and relaxing on the steps of a pyramid while talking with my uncle Rene about the state of things. He is an engineer and a devout evangelist. As we meditated on the Mayans and their mathematics, young Indian children flew their colorful kites on the lush green mounds surrounding the pyramids. A warm breeze made the palm trees sway and I thought about the circumstances that brought me here.

Over the summer of 2005 I was diagnosed with periodontal disease. I was told that my condition was severe and would need surgery or rather surgeries. One doctor talked to me about reconstructing my upper jaw almost entirely. The diagnosis was one shock but when the estimated cost was presented to me I had another shock. They wanted 40 - 70.000 to repair me. I am insured but not to that degree. And so I became a bit depressed, uneasy and even frightened. I know it is ridiculous but it is true.

In the spectrum of things happening to unfortunate people in this chaotic world I am truly blessed. However, I still became confused and experienced some inwardly directed anger. I blamed myself, yes I did, but, I also was angry at the lousy healthcare in the USA . Eventually the doctors in NYC came up with a 45.000 plan, but I was investigating options.

I had shared my dilemma with my partner in Tucson and he invited me to consider coming to Arizona and have the work done in a town on the Mexican border called Nogales . I considered it and spoke with one or two doctors there in a mixture of English and Spanish. I had very good impression of the doctors I spoke to there. In NY the doctors were pressuring me to make a decision and to take some action soon. However, my mind was now open to idea of going south of the border.

Unexpectedly, I received a call from my aunt Mabel in El Salvador . El Salvador was a place that I had lost touch with. I knew that I had some family here but really did not know any of them. She told me that another aunt had recently married a macular surgeon who teaches at the local university and who specializes in facial trauma. As he explained it to me in broken English, "Trauma like car accidents and gun shot wounds to the head". I sent this stranger my x-rays and once he viewed them he implored me to consider coming to El Salvador to get the work done. He was newly married and I suppose I am now sort of a nephew to him. I also think that he was eager to do a service for his new family.

And so two weeks ago in early November at 5am I boarded a Continental airlines flight to San Salvador with a 2 hour stopover in Houston . In the past two weeks I have gone through various assessments and had most of the required surgeries. I have yet another tomorrow morning. I have sat in various waitng rooms thumbing through dated issues of Hola magazine. I have watched the armed guards wander tensely through the parking lots with their fingers ever close to their triggers. I have spent weekends on the most beautiful beaches and met an industrialist uncle who was the target of an attempted kidnapping. I wandered through a greenhouse containing an aunts prize collection of orchids. I shared a smoke and discussed American foreign policy with a long lost first cousin and bodysurfed with his pal Ralphie in the Pacific sunset. I have sailed into cypress lagoons in the dark of night and seen millions of stars perfectly reflected in the mirror of still water. I dragged my foot in the water and left a glowing wake of blue phospherecent algae. I have swum in volcanic lakes and shared paella dinners with coffee barons and ex-atomic scientists from Lawrence Livermore laboratories. I have sipped fine Chilean red wines while watching private slideshows featuring image after image of macular trauma. So far everything is going well. I am impressed with the quality of care here. The quality of the work is very good and at a fraction of the USA prices, but each night I hear gunfire in the distance.

There are many guns in the streets here. All private security guards wander their perimeters with shotguns slung over their shoulders. However, while I have been here, I have encountered a large and wonderful family who seem to love me by default. Each day I meet new cousins, uncles and aunts who go out of their way to come, meet, feed and entertain their blood relative from the north. Perhaps they are just curious, but they have been very hospitable and have managed to distract me from the tri-weekly assaults on my upper and lower jaw ...although... I did wake up one recent morning...with a hell of a hangover, the sweet and sour taste of day old salsa and novacaine in my mouth...groggy, disoriented...in a bathtub filled with ice... and missing a kidney.