We Sing

“Abide with me tis even tide the day has past and gone.” My Papi’s voice strong and clear rises above the noise of the jungle around us. Cicadas so loud they can cause permanent damage to your hearing, crickets, the click, click, click of lighting bugs and the rustling of animals not seen in the impenetrable underbrush the surrounds us. The stars are so bright above us that you could almost read by their light, but even in full daylight in the jungle visibility is a matter of feet in either direction. We sing to keep fear away.

“Dare to do right, dare to be true, you have a work that no other can do.” My Mamita sings in my doorway as my brothers and I fall asleep in our bunk bed. I always thought the song was written just about Porters. We were somehow inherently better. Not in a snobby way, we just were expected to do more for people than anyone else. The wind is picking up outside like it does every night making the tin roof rattle and shake. Air pours in though the windows, there’s no glass in the jungle, and through the cracks in the walls. Warm moist air, and I know that the rain will come soon pounding on the roof so loud that all other sound is drowned out. I pull the blankets up over my ears to keep them warm and fall asleep just as the first raindrops begin to fall down on the tin. We sing to know who we are.

“Why does she stay? I don’t know is it my face, or is it my stature? It’s not the money I don’t have! Yeah I’m a lucky man to catch her.” Papi strums on the guitar and I smile as we hear for the first time the song he wrote. Mamita cries and we smile knowing that we will be together forever. Never mind the arguments, and the lack of money. Never mind everything. We sing because we love each other.
“Freight train freight train going’ so fast” The sun has gone down and the Jungle sounds are all around the house as a tourist I cannot remember teaches my papi another folk song to play on his guitar. The tourists always shake their heads and wonder how we can live like this so close to the wild. I wonder how anyone can live any other way. We sing to connect with people.

“I’m a cowboy in the Amazon it’s the range home of my dreams, and I won’t go away till my dying day from this ocean made of trees.” Papi sings as the never ending cars zoom past outside of my aunts beautiful home at the foot of the mountains. Tears fall from my eyes, and I promise myself I will never leave our finca in the jungle. It’s so good to hear his voice again. It took to long to get all of us here together. I hear my siblings snuffling too. The guitar stops. “I shouldn’t sing that one it makes you all sad.” “Please sing it again” I say quietly. We sing to remember.

“Following upward we go toward the light.” We sit at the funeral for my grandpa. Mamita cries beside me on the bench and I cry to. I only knew my grandpa for a little more than a year, but I lay beside him on his hospital bed just a week ago watching TV Land. Secure in the knowledge that I was his favorite grandchild. He took me on my first four wheeler ride. I lived with him for three months while we waited for the rest of the family to leave Ecuador. Every morning we ate fresh peaches with half and half on them. We sing to keep away the sadness.

“Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee.” I sing it under my breath as I try to keep up with my companion. I don’t know what is wrong with my knee, but I can no longer lift my foot from the ground when I walk. I drag it along painfully and sing. We go from door to door, from shack to shack preaching what we know. I am back home again. We sing to not give up.

“Hay mi bella niña tiene algún misterio que me vuelve loco y besarla quiero.” I sing silently as I look at a beautiful girl in a picture sent from home. Mamita is afraid I will never come back to Utah now that I have gone back home. “I’m going to marry that girl.” I tell my companion. “Do you know her?” I shake my head no. I marry her six months later. We sing to fall in love.