When grief calls me back

February 16, 2015 Longboard Lady 0 Comments


It looks so white and fluffy, like friendly cotton balls, but I know it is a lie. It is more like a darksome and unsteady gateway to the harsh and ugly reality down there. A slap in my face again, too soon and too cruel. We leave the blue sky and shining sun above the clouds and descend to a less beautiful world. The world where I'm back in Sweden to grieve another family member. This time I have to stay for a while.

I still want to tell you about the time before I went back. About the small Costa Rican town Orosí, and how I changed my mind about San José. It wasn't even two weeks ago and still, another life. A life where my longboard finally arrived and I was about to start skating again, towards Nicaragua. Beautiful beaches and cone shaped volcanoes. I saw it in my mind but couldn't reach it.

Orosí was too cold for me but I ignored it and wished for the sun to shine the next morning every time I went to bed. I could handle it because I liked everything else so much and when the clouds rolled in at the same time every afternoon it was quite stunning. They talked about the weather, the locals. It was supposed to be warm and sunny in January.

I went there to escape the hassle of San José and to attend a Spanish school for a week while I was waiting for the post office to get in touch with me. Unfortunately the "school way" to learn a language didn't suite me. I learned more from Maria, the sweet student whom my friend Kari introduced me to. The three of us took walks in the small town, spoke English half time and Spanish half. She invited us to her family's house one evening and all of a sudden the dad in the family had organized a barbecue. We spent the evening with a lot of meat, sweet wine and many stories of each other's countries. We left the house with memories of laughter, full stomachs, hand-drawn world maps on plywood boards and a lot of new local words. The perfect way to learn Spanish.

Orosí isn't the place to visit if you want lively evenings at bars and I surprised myself with early nights every day and even more interesting was that I liked it. Me, known as a night owl since I was a child. I slept a lot and the cold mountain air made me sleep good to. Maybe I needed it for the future.

Kari and I spent the weekend together. We did some excellent hiking in the close by cloud forest in Tapani National Park. We had stunning views, saw a spider big enough to serve as a hairy pet, took pictures of the waterfall far away while we ate the food we had brought and then, she took a swim in the cold and clear river. She became an appreciated company and we took scenic bus rides and drank beers in the favorite bar, looked at old church ruins together and talked a lot.

I left Orosí and went back to San José again when I received a notification from the post office about my longboard. Several weeks delayed I could feel it getting closer, and so did my plans for Nicaragua. I decided to stay in a nice area called San Pedro this time. Strangely, the busy and in some way aggressive city, changed to something interesting and the, sometimes threatening, atmosphere was totally gone. I know the area was different but maybe I was too. I took walks and tried restaurants, lent a bench in a park for reading and spent hours and hours trying to get my board out from the custom and post office. Then, finally I walked out of there with a smile on my face. I saw future.


Unfortunately plans had to change. I still look forward to skate in Nicaragua but right now I need to be in Sweden. The snow prevents me from trying my new longboard too and I long for the spring when life is coming back to nature and the sun allows me to stay outdoors longer. I know it will come.

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