For school-aged children on the coast of Ecuador, it’s vacation time for the next two months. On the other hand, my dear friend, Sofia, who has taken super good care of me over the years, works six days a week regardless of school breaks. She’s a dentist in high demand and doesn’t take nearly enough time off for herself. With this in mind, I offered to bring her ten-year-old son to Mompiche with me so he could spend some time on the beach. Stian has been begging to come and visit for months.
We arranged it for a Sunday. Instead of me going to Esmeraldas to pick him up, Sofia decided to drive down with her two kids, her sister and her two kids, and her mother. A rowdy tribe showed up at my gate and we spent the day together on the beach and in the sea, splashing, playing, laughing, talking, eating, drinking, and having great fun. At the end of the day, everyone went home except Stian. With the family chaos out of the way, I made him a bed upstairs, threw a small mattress on the reading net for him, and then took him out for dinner. He wanted to eat junk food. We ate junk food.
Stian has Asperger Syndrome. It can be challenging to communicate with him and he struggles to express emotions and say what he wants or needs. Nevertheless, we had a lovely four days together. I played hookey from all responsibilities (writing, cooking, cleaning, etc.) and spent hours on the beach while Stian practiced body-boarding and considered fish farts. We played and laughed and later I let him eat whatever he wanted. At home, he is given healthy food but his tastes are extremely limited. All the different foods need to be on separate plates. It bothers him if the colors aren’t right. He mostly likes foods that start with the letter P (in Spanish) like pollo, pepino, piña, papas fritas, pan, and pizza (chicken, cucumber, pineapple, chips, bread and pizza.)
Each day, before we went out to collect cat food, we made a simple breakfast. He liked my pineapple jam on fresh bread. I made fruit shakes for us with pineapple, banana, and passionfruit from the garden. For lunch, he liked a fried egg with a runny yolk. He won’t eat it if the yolk is too hard. On a separate plate, there were thin slices of peeled cucumber slightly salted, and on a third plate, there was a small handful of corn chips. If he said he was hungry between meals, I told him to eat a banana from the branch hanging in the dining room. Right now, we have some delicious purple bananas that came from the garden. Dinners were either pizza or salchipapa, a junk food combo of French fries and fried hotdog slathered with tomato sauce and mayonnaise. To hell with the usual rules, Aunt Roni just let him party. Isn’t that exactly what aunts are for? When we got home after dinner each night, I made us each a cannoli that was left over from the Mediterranean buffet night. There were enough for three nights. Turns out, Stian LOVES cannoli.
During the day, Stian played a game on his tablet while I did laundry one day and the next day made all the jam orders; pineapple, mango, strawberry, and blackberry, and the last day I worked on an art piece. After I was done, we went to the beach for a few hours, then stopped for homemade ice cream at Carlos’ shack on the way home. Stian likes the Oreo ice cream. I got the coconut. Before dinner, we’d go back to the beach to watch the sunset. Stian loved the Mompiche sunsets. He never sees sundown at home. His running commentary on the changing colors was impressive for a kid who barely communicates. He described everything he could see. We ate somewhere different every night, always running into my friends as we walked around the village. I introduced Stian as my nephew whenever we met someone.
On the last day, Stian tried to call his father. Kindar didn’t answer. I was making cat food and could see him sitting in the swing-chair using my phone. I thought he was “supervised” since we were in the same part of the house. Normally, I leave my phone at home when I go out, so I didn’t notice until the next morning that it had been totally destroyed. The apps didn’t work. I couldn’t type messages. Weird things happened when I touched the screen. I was furious. How could this happen? Apart from this one terrible glitch, we hadn’t had any other problems at all. He’d been well-behaved and respectful. He did everything I told him to do. But then, out of nowhere, bam, my phone was garbage. Ironically, the last photo on my old phone is of the kid who broke it… Of course, I told Sofia. Of course, she immediately promised to buy a new phone to be delivered when I dropped off her child.
After this discovery, I took a moment to breathe, had a cold shower, calmed myself down, and got ready to go out, then hugged Stian, told him I loved him and said I wasn’t mad at him, and took him to the beach to find fish for the cats. When the cat food was ready, we went to the beach and had a good day playing in the surf and watching the fish jump around us. I didn’t mention the phone for the rest of the day. Later, I figured out that he had pounded the sensitive touch-screen in frustration after his father didn’t answer his calls. What was done, was done. Stian’s mother would make up for all the yelling I didn’t do. I’d just have to wait until the following day to get a new phone. Not particularly tech-savvy, I knew it would take several hours for me to figure out how to set it up.
Somehow, I managed to pack up a chaotic ten-year-old boy and get him on the bus on time to meet his mother in Atacames, the town before Esmeraldas. I had to run a few errands there, so it was convenient. She asked me if I would like to take him again some other time. I’d already thought long and hard about this and I said yes. However, I also said I would never let him touch my phone again. She would have to set up WhatsApp on his tablet so he could call his father whenever he liked, and then he could inadvertently destroy his own device by pounding on the screen if there was no answer. Apart from the tragic phone incident, we actually had a great time together. Now it’s time for me to jump back into the real world and get some work done. Right after I set up this new phone…