What strangers, silence, and a cave in Belize revealed about presence, suffering, and the beauty that follows
Here is a gem from a memoir I am reading and one I recommend for a dozen reasons. First, because it resonates so strongly for me and, I suspect, for many women of my age. Those of us who are not quite “long in the tooth” yet but who are certainly inching toward it with our dry vaginas, sagging asses, vitamin regimens, and newfound inability to metabolize alcohol. But I digress.
The book is You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith. Her prologue alone, just the fact that I read it, is noteworthy. Usually I find prologues tedious. Annoying, even. I used to have to read them for academic purposes, but these days my inner monologue goes something like: “yada, yada, yada…bullshit…not interested…where the hell is the real book?” Apologies to authors everywhere. I understand prologues are important. I also understand I am not lazy. I am finally reading the way I want to read.
Dude, you have to read this book.
Still, in Maggie’s prologue I came across a line that stopped me cold:
“I’m trying to get to the truth, and I can get there only by looking at the whole, even the parts I don’t want to see. Maybe especially those parts. I’ve had to move into and through the darkness to find the beauty.”
Page one. Well, Maggie, may I call you Maggie? I feel like I know you now, so I hope this is okay. You and me both, girl. I swear I was dropped on earth with something like this as my tag line or bumper sticker or mantra depending on my mood, my playlist, or who has pissed me off that day.
There is so much I could write from here, perhaps its own memoir or story inside a story of my experience, my undoing, my remaking. But one moment in particular rises up now.
Years ago, while traveling in Belize with my husband, we found ourselves on a trip that was not a honeymoon but something else, a test, a reprieve, a chance to see what we had left. We had been separated, and this was an experiment in “friendship,” in seeing if anything remained.
We traveled for twenty-one days with day packs, doing what worked. One day we arrived in San Ignacio after a harrowing bus ride that ended in a hitchhiking adventure we were not sure we would survive. That day, we planned to canoe into the caves.
Many tourists go cave tubing there, but we had been told by a local Belizean man that the cave systems are fragile and that the oils from human skin can damage them. I do not know if that is scientifically true, but it felt like the most respectful choice. So our guide, Dave, took us on a different adventure. At one point, he and my husband tinkered with two car batteries to get the equipment running.
On the road, we stopped when Dave spotted a couple carrying large water jugs. They were American expatriates who had retired to Belize. He pulled over to chat, and what began as twenty minutes of idle talk became a window into another life. At first I was annoyed, convinced we were wasting time. But then I remembered my yoga practice back in Vermont, that reminder that the present is all we ever truly have. I quieted my impatience and listened.
The couple told us about their decision to leave the United States behind, how the pace of Belizean life drew them in with its rhythms and its costs, both financial and emotional. They spoke about their daily routines, how even getting clean water was part of the texture of living there. They shared stories of neighbors who made their living through farming or small businesses. They told us about the marijuana trade and the way it both sustained and troubled local communities. They laughed as they described a restaurant owner known across town for being insufferable, but who made the best curry on the planet.
By the time they walked on, I had been drawn into a conversation I did not want to leave. The annoyance I began with felt foolish. My American habit of rushing, of demanding efficiency and deliverables, had been disarmed by two strangers with heavy jugs of water and an easy generosity of time.
Eventually, we made our way to the cave system. Dave lifted his massive traveling spotlight, and the darkness split open like a curtain. He showed us burial places tucked into hidden alcoves, bones and shards of pottery, the remains of ceremonies left in that fragile underworld. His voice echoed through the cavern as he explained the geology, the myths, the layers of history and ritual written into stone. I felt small inside that cathedral of limestone and water, as though the cave itself was both tomb and womb, holding the dead and gestating the living.
When it was time to turn back, Dave did something unexpected. He shut off the spotlight and all the smaller lights that had guided us.
“There are few moments that mirror the experience of reshaping darkness into light,” he said softly, “other than birth and the act of emerging from this cave. I want to share this with you. But this is deeply personal to me. It requires all of us to be spiritually and wholly present.”
I rolled my eyes. I am embarrassed about that now.
Then I took a breath and settled into my own discomfort, wondering what was happening in the chatter of my mind that doubted what he said. He sat behind me, and at a perfectly timed moment placed a hand on my shoulder. Not in a threatening way, but like a midwife taking a pulse. “Honey,” he said quietly, “you need to breathe. This is here for you.”
I have never told anyone he gifted me that message. It feels almost like a violation of something two people shared, a silent moment of physical connection without any sexual connotation but with the kind of power such touch can carry.
He was not wrong.
I waited. Around the corner, a sliver of light appeared. It grew into the shape of an almond, then a football, and then suddenly we were thrust into the opening, coming into the world again.
Confession: Not Belize. I couldn’t dig up the right picture, so this stand-in will have to do.
I turned to my husband and said, “I feel like I was just born.”
He looked at me with a tear in his eye and whispered, “Me too.”
What was the truth of that moment? Darkness can be calm. For me, it felt frightening, unknown and silent. My mind did not like silence at that time. Yet in that silence another human being felt what I needed, took a risk, reached out, and became a midwife to my opening.
Something shifted when his hand touched my shoulder. The light became brighter, more palpable, more glorious simply because I had been without it.
Since that day, I try, especially when I am suffering, to remember: without suffering, I cannot know the peace of living without it, or with different kinds of suffering. With love there is loss. With light there is darkness. With fear there can be peace.
I went on that trip as a tourist wanting adventure. Because someone slowed down and reached out, I left having had an awakening.
May we all know that after darkness, there can be great beauty.