Hey! Look at Us!

I'm not the kind of person who likes to be in wacky photos. If you see me in a picture where all around me attention-grabbing poses are being struck, you can immediately pick me out as the one who is standing stock-still, mortified and motionless.

But look! That's me up there on the escalator, third up on the left side, waving so extravagantly that my right hand is a Bionic Woman-ish blur. Also, I'm wearing an enormous fabric sunflower and a shirt with a design that includes embroidered ruby slippers. Now I'm not a shrinking violet, but this kind of exuberant extroversion is not usually in my roundhouse.

Apparently it takes being with 6,000 of my closest friends to put me in that kind of mood.

For the past five days I've been at the international convention of P.E.O., a philanthropic organization that supports educational opportunities for women of all ages. We raise and give away (or loan) money to women who are new high school graduates, women who need more education to reach their career goals, women who are earning advanced graduate degrees, and women from other countries who are studying for doctoral degrees in the United States. And if that isn't enough, we also own a women's college that attracts great undergraduates from all over the world.

P.E.O. has distributed more than $344 million worth of educational assistance to over 109,000 women, and last week I attended its 150th birthday party.

Now it may have been just the sugar rush from all the desserts they were feeding us (Birthday cake for thousands! Yes, please!) but I'm convinced my uncharacteristic joie de vivre was generated by the knowledge that this group does such great things. You can't help but be impressed by one of our assisted students who has used a P.E.O. scholarship as a springboard to attend medical school and plans to go back to her poverty-stricken hometown to practice. Or a doctoral student from a England who points to a personal tragedy as the impetus for her study of women's issues.

This group is a sisterhood, and I'm not going to deny that there are occasional sibling squabbles (although, oddly, the fact that the entire Kansas delegation dressed alike one day didn't provoke any "you're always wearing my clothes" outbursts). But I feel completely confident in saying that we left the convention feeling upbeat about the work we're doing, and determined to do more.

Beyonce may claim that girls run the world, but they are going to need education to do it right. And  having just watched that video for the first time I would also say that they're going to need more a more thoughtfully selected wardrobe. Obviously she should be wearing a black knit jumpsuit as she rides that rearing steed; white is completely impractical in this situation. Of course, that is  coming from someone who just showed the internet a picture of herself wearing a ruby-slipper-encrusted shirt.

Okay, ignore the fashion advice. Just watch me waving wildly and appreciate the organization that prompted that enthusiasm.

Women deserve no less.

Pura Vida

Volcano Arenal in 1979.

I almost didn't see this.

Back in 1978, I was a young college graduate. I loved the small town where for two years I had been a cub reporter on the county-wide newspaper. I loved my job, which was entirely made up of talking to interesting people and writing stories about those interesting people. I loved my friends and my church and my Army-green Ford Maverick. I was renting a cute house and had my own piano and furniture. If I'd been married, or even had a dog, I probably would have stayed there forever. 

I was 24 years old, though, and something inside me wanted an adventure. One day I was agonizing over this dilemma to a friend who was married (with kids, and a dog).

"So let me get this straight," she said to me. "You're going to live your life, and get to be old, and you're going to tell your grandkids 'I really wanted to do something cool, but I had a house full of second-hand furniture'?"

Within a few weeks I had quit my job and stored the few pieces of furniture I wanted to keep in the back of my grandmother's garage.  A couple of months later I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in Costa Rica at the base of the volcano you see above.

That sounds much more primitive than it actually was: I was renting a room with a family in a medium-sized town, and that family took me in as if I was one of their own four kids. I was the same age as the oldest daughter, and although I could not have been more different from them in looks (I was taller, wider, and blonder than any of them) I felt like one of the family.

It was the perfect adventure for someone of my timid nature and fear of creepy-crawlies, and I fell in love with that family and that country and that time of life.

Costa Ricans have a phrase they use at any opportunity: Pura vida. It means "pure life," and can be used to respond to almost any question, as long as the answer gives you pleasure.

How are you today? Pura vida. How was that fresh pineapple? Pura vida. What's the outlook for the future? Pura vida.

My Peace Corps experience was pure life, with the usual ups and downs of life accentuated in an unfamiliar environment that soon became home. I loved the musical accents of Tico Spanish as much as I loved the beaches and friendly Ticos and fresh fruit and well, so many things I can't list them.

When I left Costa Rica in 1982 I assumed I'd be back yearly for the rest of my life. Instead I've been back only twice--once with the whole family in 2001, and again with Husband for a long weekend in 2004. That second visit was so brief that I couldn't even visit "my" family.

Then a few weeks ago Boy#2 and his Lovely Girl decided to celebrate their first anniversary with a trip, and invited us to celebrate along with them. Their destination? Costa Rica. I managed to keep from shrieking out loud at the invitation.

Husband and I will spend a few days with my other family there, then join Two, LG#2, and Boy#4 for several more days in the country I adopted decades ago.

Next month we'll be at the foot of the volcano again.

Pura vida.