How Many Sons-In-Law Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

More than one, evidently, but in a pinch one can do the job, just barely.

My mother-in-law's hall light burned out and it's a dark, dark hallway, so light is essential. I climb the ladder and unscrew the decorative globe and remove the bulb. It goes into the trash and I rob a one-way bulb from a three-way lamp, replacing it with the right kind of bulb.

Meanwhile I wash the globe to rid it of the dessicated roach bodies. Yuck!

Up the ladder again and in goes the bulb. I test it, and, yes, it shines nice and bright! So down the ladder to fetch the now-dry globe.

Another trip up the ladder and discover the replacement bulb is too long for the globe. I unscrew the bulb and dismount. (I'm not sure one really dismounts a ladder, but remember, I'm a cowboy so any chore I can even remotely relate to horses I will so relate!) I scrounge around in the hall closet among a true plethora (check the dictionary meaning) of light bulbs and find a short-enough one.

Up the ladder I go, in goes the bulb, flick goes the light switch...and the bulb doesn't work. For some reason she's saved a burned-out light bulb. Off the ladder again and the spent bulb joins the first one in the trash. I stick my head into the closet once more and find another short-enough bulb. Correct wattage and all.

I re-mount the ladder again (cowboy, remember, I'm a cowboy) and install the third Bulb Of the Day. Does it work? YES! There is light!

The sparkling clean, roach-free globe is secured into place and there is now beautiful diffused light in the hallway.

Dang...with the light on now everyone can see how badly that hall carpet needs to be vacuumed!

But that's a job for a cowgirl.

Evelina

She stands tall and fair and impossible to overlook in the airport's duty free shop. Her ash-blond hair and heaven-blue eyes cause more than one head to turn for a second, a third glance in her direction.

Evelina is her name. She's 18 and Nicaraguan, but carries only latent genes from her tropics-born mother. Instead her features bespeak the memory of her East German father, long-returned to his homeland. Perhaps her delicate cheek bones and milky complexion are the only memories her mother has of her lover, one of hundreds of military advisors whose tours of duty brought them to this hot and dreary outpost. Her hair is pulled back and fastened with a black bow, exposing her ears and throat, emphasizing her whiteness next to her light bronze coworkers. She is tall and slim, nearly a head taller than her latin companions, like an especially beautiful flower standing a bit more lovely than the others in their little garden. Her movements are slow and graceful, as graceful as willows in a gentle summer breeze. Evelina sells watches and perfumes and T-shirts and American liquors to departing international travelers. I sit and watch from the chairs in front of her shop, John Grisham momentarily forgotten. She shares a joke with Marvina, their laughter mingling on its way to where I sit. Marvina's laugh is like thick, sweet honey, Evelina's like water bubbling from a cold spring.

During a lull between departing flights Evelina sits on a stool behind the perfume counter, a barely-perceptible look of tiredness crossing her face. It's not a tiredness of body that she feels but a tiredness of spirit. It's a tiredness that comes from growing up being always different from her classmates, her friends, her two half-sisters. Some of them may not have known their fathers either, but their café con leche complexions hid the fact better than Evelina's. Even as her lips grace her admirers with a smile, there is a distant look in her eyes. I wonder how much of her heart leaves with each departing customer. Does she ever dream of a country where she does not stand out so emphatically as being a child born of a brief union between a soldier chilled by loneliness and a woman burning with a desire to escape a nation destroyed by war? How cold is the loneliness of her own heart every time she looks in the mirror and thinks of a father she rarely ever saw? What are the passions that burn inside her as she works in a menial job, earning barely enough to pay her tuition as she seeks to escape the same desperation that entrapped her mother?

I watch and try not to be noticed, hoping that by observing quietly I might capture a thought or an emotion. Marvina notices me and we exchange smiles, hers curious and mine slightly embarrassed. I return to my Evelina vigil. I consider shopping for some perfume, knowing they'll not have the fragrance I'd be expected to buy, which would give me a few extra moments of conversation. But now the clock becomes a player in the game. She glances at her watch. Her left foot plays idly with her shoe, dangling it from her toes. She grows impatient in the shop with no customers to occupy her, only thoughts of the minutes creeping slowly towards quitting time. When the day's last flight leaves Managua she'll be leaving, too, but her departure will take her only as far as a neighborhood where unpaved streets wind around drab concrete-block houses. I've seen houses like Evelina's. I've been in some of them. Memories of their still and dusty heat make me feel another part of her tiredness, that which comes from a slowly fading hope for anything better. Will that hope linger long enough to blossom? Or will it fade and wither, finally falling to the ground before it fully matures?

I'll likely never know, for now my flight is being announced. I pack my pad and pen into my carry-on, gather my belongings, and rise to head for the gate. I look once more towards the perfume counter but don't see Evelina. I step forward almost to the entrance looking for her, but she's gone. The line at the gate is forming. It is time for me to go. I head for my plane, hoping I'll return soon, while Evelina still works here. I walk across the hot tarmac towards the boarding ramp and hope she will walk this way herself, one day. I seat myself and wish she were on the same flight, closing a door to the past, heading to her own home were someone waits for her with a smile and an embrace of acceptance. I feel the plane break free from the earth, and I think a brief prayer for Evelina - that she too will one day be free from a past she didn't make, free to build a future with those who see beyond the differences that have haunted her for so long.

Good-bye, Evelina...until we meet again...