Caminante, no hay camino

Cool Nights

Fall is arriving with its cool nights and I broke down this morning and put the chamarra back on the bed. It's a beautiful Guatemalan blanket I bought in Chichicastenango in 1987, when Guatemala was somewhat tranquil. Its wonderful quetzal sitting on a tree branch has provided, over the years, a fun background for taking photographs of the cats. They sometimes look as though they are sitting right on the branch.

Getting that blanket and a two other blankets back from Guatemala was an interesting feat because they couldn't possibly fit into my suitcase, so I bought a canasta (big basket), and my Guatemalan hosts found me a rope net that we tied around the canasta. I checked the ensemble (flying on Eastern, remember them?) and remember being horrified when we landed in Miami (an airport I assiduously try to avoid) because it was pouring rain and they weren't protected by any plastic baggies. Somehow I managed to lug all of that through customs and onto the train back home.

I have little throw pillows that are Guatemalan, cat-shaped pillows that are Panamanian molas as is a hibiscus one, and hand-embroidered 'Sweet Dreams' pillows come from a woman prisoner in El Salvador. I don't know if she is well or not; she is HIV-positive and has been in and out of the hospital recently. These last pillows serve as a prayer reminder for her and the other women in the Salvadoran jail whom I have met in the past two years.

Just because I live in the frozen north doesn't mean that I can't have colourful things to keep myself warm.