The Other Shoe

Four sages entered the Pardes, the orchard:

Ben Azzai.

Ben Zoma.

Acher.

And Rabbi Akiva.

One gazed and died.

One gazed and was harmed.

One rebelled.

Only Rabbi Akiva

entered in peace

and left in peace.

I rarely enter or leave any place in peace. I am in two places at once, with one shoe running ahead of me.

It’s not only my circadian rhythm that’s jet-lagged; it’s my whole being. One shoe has already arrived; the other is still trying to leave.

Except when I’m in nature. There, finally, I land with both feet, for a while.

I came to Costa Rica to exhale. On the drive to Tenorio Volcano National Park, we barely had internet. The hum of the road, the wind pressing against the windows, and our own unspoken thoughts became the soundtrack.

I rolled down the windows and inhaled the scent of wet earth, crushed leaves and river air. Horses grazed without urgency. Roosters crowed, stirring forgotten childhood memories.

Cows of every size and color stood along the roadside. I couldn’t shake the absurd urge to pull over and have coffee with those white cows and borrow their unhurried calm.

Along the way, locals sat on their porches, as if doing nothing was the doing, and the doing was sacred.

A tractor fluffed the red clay soil. I wanted to sink my bare feet into it and take in every leaf, every flicker of light, even the horse scratching his back on the grass. A woman with a pink umbrella walked the roadside, a baby on her hip, grocery bags swinging. My camera was ready, but we were driving too fast to hold stillness.

When we arrived at the rainforest, before stepping in, I texted my sister: “Entering rainforest. No connection. Oncologist said to take Daddy to his cardiologist. Please make an appointment.”

We came for Río Celeste, the turquoise river where legend says God washed His brush after painting the sky. The waterfall was still seven kilometers away, and I was already eager. This wasn’t the first time I had traveled far just to see a color.

But even before the waterfall, the moment we stepped under the canopy, this place felt sacred. If my feet knew how to endure rough ground, I would have taken my shoes off.

I dissolved into the green. Green had a hundred shades: moss, emerald, lime, frog green. It layered itself, moss over bark, vine over trunk, shadow inside shadow. Rays of light played hide-and-seek through the roof of leaves.

I stood there in awe, my eyes blurring with tears, listening to the hush and experiencing the unnamed. I couldn’t tell which was stranger: feeling the rainforest in me, or me in the rainforest.

And then my phone rang.

I didn’t want to answer, but it was my sister.

“How urgent is it to see the cardiologist?” Her angry voice jolted me out of my calm.

“The doctor said as soon as possible.”

Silence.

I wanted to ask, “What do you want me to do from here?” but I didn’t want to make her more worried than she already was. His last CT scan showed signs of infection and some fluid in his lungs. I was carrying information she was not ready to hear.

“The only appointment he has is today.”

“Will you take him?”

“How urgent is it?”

And then the call dropped.

Silence.

Distance collapsed.

The night before, our conversation about quantum entanglement replayed itself.

But it no longer felt like theory. I became a connected particle, vibrating in two places at once.

“Attention changes everything,” my husband, my One, had said.

Mine was pulled in two directions.

Motherhood had taught me this truth long before quantum physics named it: distance does not separate what is bound.

I was standing under Costa Rican leaves, yet I was also in the cardiologist’s office thousands of miles away.

I tried to look for the animals that belonged here — frogs, birds, monkeys — but the red elephant of worry followed me through the green.

The waterfall was waiting.

We continued walking.

A guide pointed to a tiny venomous snake camouflaged against bark. I lifted my phone to take a picture while wondering if my sister would take my father to the doctor. I touched pale green moss growing from dead bark and remembered my father saying his mucus had turned that same color.

The trail went on and on, humid and crowded in parts, narrow and slippery in others. It forked, and we reached the turn for the waterfall.

We slowed down because of traffic on the stairs. We overheard a guide telling a group of rowdy tourists, “Two clean streams meet here, one acidic, the other rich in dissolved minerals. When they mix, a chemical reaction creates microscopic particles that scatter the blue wavelength of light, making the water appear impossible turquoise.”

The roar of the waterfall echoed up the stairs as we began descending. I could feel the climb back waiting in my legs. Halfway down, instead of feeling excited, I changed my mind and asked my One to turn around.

“Do you want to sit?” he suggested. After all the snakes we had nearly missed, sitting didn’t seem like the best option.

“Why don’t you give yourself this moment?”

And just like that, something volcanic in me erupted.

A voice inside me said:

I can’t do this anymore.

I am exhausted.

What’s going to happen?

Then, quieter and harder:

I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.

I will stop caring.

Not now.

Not when we go back.

Not ever.

We are all going to die anyway.

I looked at my One, hoping he didn’t see how much of me was still elsewhere.

I felt defeated, choosing to turn back from the waterfall.

“We can still see the turquoise color at the lagoon.”

He rarely loses his footing. We had come such a long way. I didn’t want to ruin this place for us.

It was a sin to worry here.

I drank the last gulp of water, retied my shoes, and started walking toward Laguna Azul before my mind knotted itself again in family ties.

When we arrived at the lagoon, I thought, Was that it? The turquoise water was striking, yes, but also less than I imagined. Maybe it was the crowd, the weight of anticipation, or the sharp, rotten-egg smell of sulfur rising from the water.

In the middle of the lagoon, a half-submerged tree rose from the water. One of its branches stretched out, thick and dark against the turquoise surface. At first, I thought it was just another branch, until I noticed the slow curve of its body. A large black snake rested there in the open, sunning itself on top of the water.

This one wasn’t hiding. It lay there in full view, scales warming in the light. People gathered along the edge, mesmerized, phones lifted, whispering and pointing.

Most eyes were on the snake, while two large turtles rested quietly along the shore, almost unnoticed.

While everyone else took pictures, I moved farther down and sat on a shaded, wet rock.

A breeze danced through the leaves and cooled me. The thick, humid air, like a child clinging to a mother’s leg, finally loosened its grip, and for a moment, despite the sulfur smell, the mosquito bites, and the stubborn mud, it was worth it.

A guide passed by, his voice trailing behind a group of hikers: “Some trees here are 100 to 400 years old … the forest regenerates after destruction; it grows because of what burns beneath.”

What burned beneath me was fear wrestling with whatever peace I had left.

After I finished being angry at the call, I became angrier with myself. Why do I bring the other shoe with me into places that beg me to take it off? If I were anything like this forest, if I were an extension of it, I would know better.

The truth is that I don’t know how to enter or leave in peace when life itself is not peaceful. I keep hoping outer peace will rearrange my inner world. I accept only a certain kind of peace, the one where I am in control and ahead of what might come.

I want the hush without the phone call. I want the rainforest without the climb.

But here it is, the climb.

The one I thought I could avoid by skipping the waterfall.

From the bottom of the lagoon, the stairs seemed endless, steep and uneven. Exposed roots, like naked veins, forced my attention downward.

Sweat dripped down my back. I was thirsty, and my legs were burning, but I kept going, faster than usual. My frustration at skipping the waterfall fueled me upward.

Until my leg cramped and I ran out of breath.

I had to stop.

I am here. The forest is here. My pulse repeated it in my ear like a mantra.

From behind, a seven-year-old girl passed me as if the climb were nothing. Her mother warned her to slow down because the steps were slippery.

Two elderly hikers made their way down, one with a cane.

Now I couldn’t break.

Not in front of the seven-year-old.

Not in front of the one with the cane.

Besides, the climb was the only way out.

With an aching body and a worried heart, I continued the climb.

At the top, I recognized a woman from our flight. She had stood out even on the plane, across the aisle, because of her turquoise eyes. How strange to meet her here again.

Her eyes brought me back to why we had come.

We had come here to see beauty.

Beauty, it turns out, doesn’t ask whether you arrive in pieces or peace.

I began to see the forest again, not as a postcard or a destination, but for what it is:

Peace and chaos.

Danger and hush.

Mud and green.

This is the forest I wish to be.

But I am not.

The forest does not offer peace by removing danger.

It offers peace by containing it.

I used to think peace meant arriving whole.

Somewhere along the climb, I began to question whether being in pieces is the opposite of peace.

The mystics teach that a blessing requires a vessel.

Maybe being in pieces is my blessing in disguise, the vessel I never wanted.

I am green with envy toward Rabbi Akiva, who entered in peace and left in peace.

I don’t know if I will ever enter or leave in peace.

At my best, in pieces,

I climb, one shoe at a time,

toward peace. 

Hilla Gohary Kerendian is an Israeli-Iranian American essayist and storyteller whose work blends lived experience and imagination to explore identity, memory, and the human heart. She writes Change of Heart Stories on Substack.