one day in the life

by Alanna

My husband is cooking crepes and loudly singing along to Bob Marley. So I’m sitting down to write a small blog of our day. This morning we took the laundry down to the courtyard to wash it in the pila. (The pila is an area with cement washing boards, a drain, and a basin for water. We hand wash everything there). My husband wisely wore mosquito spray, and I smugly didn’t. I was promptly bitten 9 times on my ankle and leg within the first 10 minutes of washing clothes, and so I humbly retreated back upstairs to get mosquito spray as well.

After the laundry, we walked to the bank. There you get asked by the security guards at the door if you have a cell phone, as they are not allowed in the bank. From what I’ve seen, if you are a man you also get waved with a metal detector. Yonas had looked up the word for withdrawal, so we could get Lempiras out of our account here.

From there we walked to the grocery store, La Dispensa. It’s the cheapest one in town for most things. They have loud music playing outside every day, and today the music was inside too. It was hard to think about what Honduran baking powder might look like, when those Honduran pop songs were blaring so loudly next to me. I forgot to be thankful and to rejoice that we have a grocery store and money to use there.

Just as we were paying at the register, we heard the rain come. It was a downpour, and the gutters fast became rivers. We waited at the entrance to the store, along with all the Hondurans, for the rain to let up a little. Then we walked home through muddy puddles with light rain coming down. I laughed because I love puddles, but Yonas was not thrilled because he does not like the rain. This afternoon we had lunch (PBJ again), and washed the floors in our apartment by hand.

Afterward I checked e-mails, and Yonas took a nap in our room. While I was typing, suddenly the wide open bedroom door slammed shut. It was so loud that I jumped right out of my seat. It had been the wind, and right away the rain started pouring down. I thought it would be a hurricane. I ran into our room and jumped right into my husband’s arms, like a little scared child.  I’m so thankful that I have this man to be strong. Thankful that he thinks about things like mosquito spray, that he speaks Spanish, that he leads me by the hand across these crazy streets. I’m thankful that we get to hand wash clothes together, clean floors, grocery shop. I’m thankful that we get to live life together, that I don’t have to be alone here. I’m thankful for his kindness and the way he notices the bathroom needs to be cleaned and just does it.

I don’t want to ever forget what we have been given. These other things- a whisk, a washing machine, a mop, aren’t so important. Even baking powder and paprika I can live without. But I’m thankful that today, I have my husband.