Digital Rabbit Hole

Down The Pan Am
(in memory of my mother)

Cruising down the Pan Am highway
feeling the freedom
she didn’t feel
in the land of the free…
For she was anti – war,
anti – tyrant in her day,
a leftist revolutionary….
persecuted for her beliefs,
who had a small file,
and was under surveillance
for her subversive activities.
The FBI parked across her street,
and the judge she worked for and adored
was labeled a Communist.
In a big white pick up truck,
she chose to leave her homeland,
because she couldn’t thrive inside…
to leave the sleepless nights
and paranoia behind,
moving South down the Pan Am
looking for a better life,
taking a dog and a baby girl
with her on this very long ride.

The truck bed
packed-up to the hilt
with essentials from her past,
clothes, books in English,
photo albums and wind chimes,
she dropped down through Baja California
made it through Mexico at last.
People said she was crazy, to make that trip
all by herself in the early 1970’s
almost 4000 miles
with a dog and a kid,
to give up electricity,
The Hollywood Bowl,
the glitz and hum of civilization
and leave it all in the rear view mirror.

She was a young dreamer
who finally began to see
her dreams come true,
who wanted a better life for herself
and her child,
so she kept pushing her way through.
At every border crossing, playing
the game of immigration,
“Papers for the dog please
and your cards of vaccination!”
“Now your papers for the car,
your passports, and what’s in the truck?”
Loading and unloading
at every border crossing
the guards smiling,
not lifting a finger, wishing her good luck
pulling off the highways,
sleeping where they stopped
counting the stars,
the dog staying awake on guard.

Two months later,
flat tires and delays for parts,
she finally turned her car off,
at the end of a dirt road,
and watched the breakers.
In the middle of nowhere,
on Costa Rica’s Pacific shores.
A town of sixty people
and only two cars,
was to be her destination
and her destiny.
She made it to the simple life,
more like going back
150 years in time
a welcoming community
of country hospitality,
beans and rice,
tortillas and black coffee,
the ocean breaking waves on the pilings
right out their back door.
* * * * *
My mother passed away,
before she reached old age
but a family legacy lives on today,
in the country
where she stopped her engine,
and stayed,
in the country she loved
as her very own,
and where I still live,
that little girl,
staring out the window,
holding her doll so tight,
singing songs in Spanish
the tires eating up the miles
of Central America,
on their way to a brand new life.

Karima Hoisan
February 6, 2022 (Election Day)
Costa Rica