El Caballero

The last time I was in Santiago was in March. I had been there since a couple of days before New Years 2008, and for the 2 and a half months or so, I stayed with my boyfriend and his family. Not a huge place, but it was good enough for me! They live in Ñuñoa, pretty near the Estadio Nacional, in a little group of gated apartments. I always felt really safe there, and was very glad it in fact was a gated community, with someone at the gate 24-7. One guy in particular was our favorite. I'm not sure exactly how old he was, but he was getting up there in years. He was the sweetest guy ever, though. Always incredibly polite to us, and he would always open the gate for us and call Diego "caballero." A couple of times he didn't get back to the gate quick enough to open it for us, and he always apologized. Just a genuinely nice guy. Not everyone that worked at the gate was like that - not all of them would even speak to us, let alone with a smile and a kind word. I always told D, "One day I want to make a cake or something for that guy, he's just so nice."
Sadly, I never got to do that... I didn't do it before I left Chile, and now I can't. Last night, when talking to D on the phone, he told me that this guy had apparently been sick for awhile and had passed away yesterday. I have to admit that I was shocked, and saddened, by the news. This guy may not have played a huge role in my life, but he still did make an impact. He reminded me that the world still has room for kind people like him. I find myself wondering if he had family or many friends there. I find myself missing Chile more and more each day, and missing my day-to-day life there that I experienced, that this guy was a part of. I miss simple things like walking to Lider with D to get a snack for that night, or the time we rode ONE bike there, and I thought I might die.
Now I'm kind of off on a tangent of random memories in Chile, but while we're on that, I'll share one more before I head out. To set the stage for this, I have to tell you that in 1996, when I was 13 years old, Hurricane Fran blew through North Carolina. I was living in Wake Forest at the time, and though Fran was NOTHING compared to Hurricane Katrina, it was still frightening to my little 13-year-old self, especially since my dad was out of town on business that week. Hearing trees fall on my house wasn't my ideal way to spend a night. Anyway, one of those trees happened to fall on our shed in the backyard, totally mangling my pink bicycle. That made me sad, as I had spent many happy hours riding that bike up and down the hills in my neighborhood. And for whatever reason, I didn't get another bike after that. In fact, I never rode a bike again.
Until... flash forward to 11 years later. City: Santiago, Chile. Date: February 2008. Yep, that's right. This February was the first time in 11 years that I had ridden a bike. And let me tell you, I was scared out of my wits that I wouldn't remember how to ride one. That I'd fall on my face and make an idiot out of myself, or, worse, break something! But that old saying, "it's like riding a bike..." is true. I got on tentatively, my heart pounding in my chest... I started pedaling... and there was no going back. And miraculously, I didn't fall. It was the greatest feeling in the world, pedaling as hard as I could, with the Andes looming in front of me, the wind in my face, and D pedaling right beside me. So yeah, I miss those moments a lot. But, as my mom says, "Lord willing and the creek don't rise", I'll be back in Santiago soon.