“La vida es tremenda.”
Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, 2011.
Doña Lesbia, my host mother, and I are sitting on plastic chairs on the front porch, reading newspapers, and eating cubes of watermelon from a bowl.
At some point Doña Lesbia says to me, “mira” and points across the street. At the other side of the street a strange looking animal, dark, bone skinny, and with a head that seemed too large. It’s a stray pig, which, it should be noted, is a highly unusual thing. Most people would be happy to have a pig to feed and raise to be nice and big to sell or to slaughter. A pig’s a good investment. How this pig came to be the only stray and starving pig in Ciudad Sandino is a mystery.
Doña Lesbia is watching him intently. “Pobrecito, anda buscando comida,” she says quietly. (“Poor guy, he’s looking for food.” I’m translating “pobrecito” as “poor guy” which is more or less the idea, but there’s no translation for how it sounds when it’s used by a middle-aged Nicaraguan women to refer to a stray pig that she’s concerned about.) She goes to the kitchen and comes back with the rinds of the watermelon that we have been eating. She unlatches the gate between us and the street, steps out and throws the rinds in the general direction of the pig. The pig quickly approaches the rind and begins eat them hungrily.
As Doña Lesbia watches the pig eat she bursts in to laughter.
About Doña Lesbia’s laughter: It’s a force. It’s overwhelming and beautiful. It makes other people laugh even when they don’t think what she’s laughing at is funny. And she laughs all the time. It’s awesome. I can’t properly explain. You would have to meet her.
As she makes her way back to her chair she talks through her laughter about how most people want to feed their pigs well to fatten them up, but since this pig doesn’t belong to anyone, no one wants to feed it. She thinks it’s hysterical. She sits down and laughs some more. As her laughter passes she sighs and says, “Ay, Owencito, la vida es tremenda.”
La vida es tremenda. In my head I like to just translate it as “life is big.”
To be honest, when I first saw that the theme for the class this past weekend was gratitude, I was just annoyed. I haven’t felt very grateful recently. I’ve felt frustrated with where I work. I’ve felt lonely. I’ve felt stuck. I’ve felt enraged as read more and more names of black people killed by police. So when I tried to write about gratitude, I couldn’t find a way in, and I gave up. Then, earlier today I thought of this story. I don’t know why. It happened almost four years ago now. It’s one of my favorite stories that ever happened to me, but I don’t think I’ve thought about it in about a year.
La vida es tremenda. It isn’t even a statement of gratitude. The word “tremenda” as I’ve heard it used can have a connotation ranging from neutral to really negative. A bad storm can be tremenda or even a mischievous child. But I don’t think Doña Lesbia meant it in that way, not with how she was laughing. I think she was making a statement of awe. La vida es tremenda. Life is big.
I think, even when I find it hard to exercise gratitude, this sense of awe rings true. La vida es tremenda. Maybe it is a way into gratitude.
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