Diaspora

We came from all points on the compass: North, West, South, and even East (by less than 25 miles, but it still counts). Our hair was a little more grey or a little more absent; we had a few hitches in our getalongs. Most of our children came as well, some with their own children. A few couldn't make it: we missed them. We came together to celebrate our parents and each other and all that came to be because 60 years ago, our parents embarked on the great adventure of "I Do". And it occurred to me that no one truly knows what they agree to when they say those two little words.

My parents had already decided on four children, and Dad even predicted our birth order correctly. But that's about all. They didn't know, standing there in that church, that Dad would someday impress our tribal hosts by improvising a fishing "net" out of his t-shirt (long story). Or that Mom would learn to make mashed plantains as good as any made by the local Tsáchila women. They could not have foreseen our menagerie of pets that included a monkey, a parrot, a sloth and a kinkajou. (Actually, the sloth was terribly boring; I'm not sure he counts as a pet.)

I'm positive they had no clue how many ways a boy could need stitches: in one summer, Paul fell out of a tree against a barbed-wire fence, split his finger with a rusty wheelbarrow handle and caught a fishhook in his thumb. They didn't know that Steve would elevate practical jokes to a fine art (ask him sometime about a certain statue.) Or that Becky – the quietest of us all – would venture furthest from home, moving to Australia for several years.

I know for a fact that they never imagined their youngest would want a pet tarantula. But they let me keep him anyway.

In fact, they said "I do" to a lot of things, including our childhood. We dug caves in the hillside, swam in jungle rivers, made little "huts" in the tall weeds that grew in the pasture next to us. When I wanted to be a ballerina, Daddy built a practice barre in my room – even though we were miles from any school and I had absolutely no talent. When Paul burst into the house ecstatic over his "friends", Mom went out and knelt in the dirt beside him for an introduction to his new-found buddies, the leaf-cutter ants.

They said "I do" to things they didn't want to, like sending their children away to school. By the time I was six, correspondence school was available and I stayed home to study. After sixth grade, Mom and Dad gave in to my pleas to send me to boarding school with my siblings; I didn't realize the pain they felt because I was the last one, and they deeply missed my brothers and sister, and if I left also, the house would be too empty too soon.

But this weekend, we all came back to fill their house again. We swapped stories, and it was good to see that nothing essential has changed over the years. We still find the same word plays funny. We can finish most of each other's memories. When I was little, I loved C.S. Lewis' Narnia series (still do.) I used to compare us to the Pevensie children, except that my siblings were Steve the Wise, Becky the Calm, and Paul the Intrepid. They still are, but they have more layers and dimensions than I could have known back then. (Considering how often I tattled on them, it seems the better part of wisdom not to ask what name they would have given me.)

Every so often, we even told a story that our children hadn't already heard.

The grandchildren added their own stories. As I sat and listened to my nephews and nieces, it occurred to me that when my parents slid those rings onto each other's finger, they also said "I do" to the physical therapist, the nurse, the engineer, theater director, wildlife conservationist, anthropologist, musicians, and who knows what else over the years.

And later, as I watched their children play - the fourth generation - I found myself wondering where their paths would lead. What will they reflect upon when their own family diaspora gathers someday, when they're a little grey, a little worn?

I don't know. All I know is that wonderful things happen when someone has the guts to take Mystery in hand and say, "I do!"

Standing on Dignity, Resting on Laurels

I work with words. I also teach other people to work with words. Twice a year, I hold an 8-week (Saturday mornings only) introductory class for people interested in spoken-language interpretation. Along with the basic modes and techniques of interpreting, I stress ad nauseum the idea that language is always in flux, making it impossible for interpreters and translators to rest on their laurels and say, to quote George Lopez, "I got this."

Just think: in the past couple of decades "sweet" has come to mean "cool", but not the kind that is the opposite of hot. One can conceivably be both hot and cool and not even be talking about menopause.

"Bad" can be good but not virtuous, prompting some to say that it's "bad to be bad." Which would mean good. "Pimp" has become a verb and not necessarily a negative one; "sick" isn't; women can be foxes and cougars simultaneously, and few recall that once upon a time "making love" "pitching woo" and "courting" were all synonymous with flirting.

Along with changing language, court interpreters must recognize nuanced speech – lawyers use it heavily, especially with juries. Sometimes, I assign my students to pick a current event, and then read the stories published by opposing ends of the media spectrum. Their task is to de-spin the work of spin doctors, until they come up with non-nuanced texts. (The resulting stories are usually quite short.) And if my class contains individuals who are particularly inclined toward one political extreme or the other, this exercise often provides a good segue into the lesson on controlling emotions and bias while interpreting.

We must be prepared to follow changing developments smoothly. Unflappably, one might say. No words are morally bad. They may simply convey morally reprehensible or perhaps vulgar ideas. Screams, shouts, political incorrectness: nothing should shake the professional interpreter. A colleague once told me of a case he'd served on where the defendant, upon losing, chose to launch a series of invectives at the judge. The (very good) interpreter promptly let loose with the corresponding energetic string of profanity in English. After the courtroom was almost empty, the judge looked at my acquaintance and commented, "I know you were just doing your job – but you didn't have to enjoy it!"

At any rate, this is what I do. Whether translating at my desk or interpreting in a courtroom or deposition, words are my stock in trade and it is my job to keep up with changes in that stock. Calmly, smoothly, efficiently.

Life, on the other hand, delights in upending my smooth, efficient calm. There are times outside the courtroom when the subtle changes in language ambush me, and it's never pretty. When I was first dating John, we agreed to meet his mother for a quick bite to eat at Braums. (Besides the best milk around, Braums makes a pretty mean hamburger. Mean as in good, not average, stingy or heartless. Sorry, it's a word thing.)

I had only met his mother briefly once before and very much wanted to her to like me. As John and I stood in the parking lot, waiting for her to arrive, we snuck a few kisses, hugged, and laughed together – a lot. The moment her car pulled into the parking lot, though, I begged for a little decorum. John and decorum were not generally compatible. Still, for my sake, he tried.

One thing about conversation between John and his mother: they used a slightly different English than what I was used to. Some words seemed to preserve older meanings, unchanged in this little pocket of Texas. It was fascinating for a word person like me. So I listened with decorum and interest and tried hard to make a good impression.

It was all going so well. Then a sweet-faced elderly woman approached our table. Handing John a little card about friendship, she said, "I just had to come over to give you this and tell you that I so enjoyed watching the two of you making love in the parking lot..."

The noise suddenly got sucked out of the restaurant. Horrified, I glanced at John's mother. And at John. And at the smiling, elderly woman. My composure slid under the table and I wanted to follow.

Eventually, it registered that the other three were still chatting comfortably. My future mother-in-law was fully aware of the old meaning of the phrase. The only sign that anyone knew of my inner melt-down was the occasional twitch in John's shoulders as he held back his laughter.

I still have that little card. It's a good reminder that laurels and dignity are no match for real life.

Nickels and Pie

Sometimes my mouth opens up and makes promises all by itself while the rest of me listens, astounded. It then falls to said "rest of me" to figure out how to make good or else to plan a strategic retreat.

Last December, my granddaughters and two of their cousins came for what has become a tradition: the annual slumber party with Oma (aka me.) The discussion turned to cooking. Someone said wouldn't it be nice to have a visit where all they did was cook, and someone said they'd like to create their own recipes and someone said, sure, let's plan on doing that when school's out.

Since that last someone was me, my brain has been trying to figure out a) when, and b) what in the world made me think I could teach four girls to cook. My own children had mixed reactions: Adrian burst out laughing and Patrick asked me if I planned on teaching the girls how to remove food from the stove before it gets to the stage where I say, "Just scrape off the burnt part, it's fine underneath..."

They were being merciful. They could have brought up the Infamous Clam Chowder Incident, the one where Goofy Pooch took a sniff of the chowder and backed away in panic.

With school starting up again soon, time was running out. We made plans. Yesterday morning, two sets of parents delivered four eager young ladies to my door. My granddaughters, M (12) and S (8), along with their cousins, H (14) and B (12), dropped their bags to the floor and asked, "Where do we start?"

We started at a local farmers' market (M announced to her parents afterward, "I have now experienced a Farmers' Market, and they – are – not – air-conditioned!") It was fun watching the girls pick out fruits and vegetables. I found myself passing on produce selection sniffing-and-thumping tricks my mother taught me.

The evening's cooking session surprised the girls by yielding a very good beef stew. After supper, we made our regular trek to Half Price Books, where I gave the girls a small budget and set them loose in the store. They were so worn out when we got home that they fell asleep almost instantly.

This morning, they learned to make pancakes. They even learned how to improvise when you suddenly run out of flour because you haven't baked anything in so long that you'd forgotten you own a flour bin, much less that it needed restocking.

After pancakes, it was time for another favorite: Nickelrama, an arcade where every game runs on nickels and the machines are generous with tickets. I bought the girls each a cup of nickels and sat down to watch the fun. Kids of all sizes, ages, colors and shapes ran every which way. Game bells and alien ray guns rang through the air. Adults followed their respective kids around, sometimes in a slight daze. I watched a grandmother pump nearly $20 into a game, methodically winning tickets for her grandson to redeem for a $1.75 toy. One woman had brought her little one to the arcade for what appeared to be the first time: the girl (about 3 years old) stared around in wonder, threw her hands into the air and exclaimed, "I just don't... I just don't...I just don't KNOW!" I later saw them at the Sponge Bob game, so apparently she figured it out.

We had pineapple-glazed chicken for lunch and talked about the girls' upcoming school year and boys and hair styles. And somewhere around the time I figured out that the Great Cooking Weekend was really about strengthening ties soon to be tested by adolescence, it was time to make supper.

At 5:30, two sets of parents arrived to find signs on the door announcing, "Welcome" and "Parents, Come In". They were served lasagna, green salad, fresh fruit, garlic bread, "smores pie" and beaming smiles by four young ladies.

Maybe next time, I'll get to teach them the art of disguising slightly-charred biscuits. It can be done – I promise.

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A Little Cracked by 50

I’ve been thinking about my friend Susie. When we started working for the same law firm in Quito many years ago, I was 21 and she was 46. Still, we became the best of friends and I couldn’t say if she was more of a mentor, a mother confessor or a second sister to me.

At the time we met, Susie had already survived the loss of her husband and twin sons, spent six months in a wheelchair, and undergone seven (yes, seven!) breast cancer surgeries, not to mention a host of “lesser” disasters in life. But at the slightest hint that an occasional bout of self-pity might be condoned, Susie would dismiss it with flick of her fingers and say, “It’s just stuff.” She had no time to wallow; there was life to be embraced.

The night before I left Ecuador, I went over to Susie’s for supper. She gave me a small plastic box shaped like a peanut and said, “Here – this won’t take up much room in your suitcase. But don’t open it until you get to where you’re going.”

Naturally, I opened it that night, in the car on my way home. Inside the plastic peanut was a little bean-filled baby doll with a note that read, “Friends always.”

The following year, Susie had an eighth breast cancer operation and shortly afterward, the cancer filled her stomach. She and her daughter, Carmen, flew up to M. D. Anderson in Houston for a second opinion. The doctors there confirmed the prognosis: 6 months at the very most. Susie was told to go home and prepare to die. Instead, she and Carmen came to spend a week of vacation with me.

Ignoring the medical timetable completely, Susie lived another 14 months. In September of 1985, I called to wish her a happy birthday; Carmen answered the phone instead and told me that her mother had died that morning. It was Susie’s 50th birthday.

I remember thinking that in 25 years I would be the same age. I hoped that by then I would have that kind of strength, that unshakeable faith in God, that dependable sense of perspective and absurdity. I wanted to give off that same aura of wisdom.

Well, Susie, here I am. I made it to 50 and, I must say, I’m a little disappointed.

When I look in the mirror, there is no mantle of elder-hood ready to descend around my shoulders, a physical manifestation of deep inner wisdom. There’s just some gray hair, artfully hidden by my friend Garnier.

Not that I haven’t learned a few things along the way. A few weeks after you died, Carmen gave birth to her second daughter and I found out I was expecting my first son. So I’ve learned the fierce joy and absolute confusion of being a parent and helplessly loving the children you want to invest with wings and ground for life.

I’ve had a bad marriage and a wonderful marriage, and learned the difference between the two.

I’ve learned about losing the person you want to grow old with, before you finish being young together.

I’ve learned that I will not die of embarrassment, work or frustration. And that some things, like chocolate, are both bad and good for me and I have to choose which price to pay.

I’ve learned that dreams don’t go away just because other things are more urgent.

I’ve learned that no matter how much I learn, it’s still just a drop in the bucket.

Last night, I was going through some old poems of mine, and came across one written at the ripe old age of 14. It ended with the line, “Memories are a friend and a bag of peanuts.”

I still have the little plastic peanut Susie gave me, although the shell is cracked. It should be – after all these years, I’m a little cracked in places, too. But I’m blessed with friends who are friends always, and maybe it’s alright that my mantle of elder wisdom has yet to come. Maybe I need to embrace my inner nut.

Or maybe I just haven’t yet gotten to where I’m going.

Requiem for a Goofy Pooch

Way back when Patrick and Adrian were little, we lived in an apartment. The boys wanted a dog. They begged, cajoled, whined and bargained for a dog. I conceded to hamsters instead, and promised, "We'll get a dog when we have a house." (We went through several hamsters, actually, before we moved into a house. They kept escaping, but that's a story for a different time and place: preferably, a confessional.)

Then, when the boys were seven and nine years old, we moved into the long-awaited house. The first day after the move, the requests for a dog began again. This time, I put them off with a vague, "When we find the right one."

About a week later, Arline called to say, "I have the right dog for you." Mind you, I hadn't told her the boys were holding my feet to the fire. But at the time, Arline fostered rescued dogs. And, unlike my boys, my friend knew my secret: I was afraid of any dog that stood much higher than my ankle.

"Is it very big?" I asked. "Not that big" wasn't the most convincing of answers, but Arline insisted I at least meet her, and the boys begged, and what's a girl to do when she's caught in a conspiracy of kids, friends and promises made? I went over to meet Charlene.

She seemed big to me. She was pretty: an unusual mix of Sharpei and Golden Retriever. She was also unmistakably afraid of me and almost anyone else over four feet tall. Somehow, that seemed less intimidating. A little while later, I left with my newly acquired pooch on the end of a leash. Charlene spent that first night trembling under my dining room table while I sat in the living room and talked to her. We each felt safer, in separate rooms with a forest of chair legs between us.

By the third day, we were both convinced that the other was harmless, and Charlene abandoned the safety of the dining room table. She was still terrified of grown men, though. If my dad or brothers came into the house, my silly dawg would make a beeline for my bedroom closet.

She was also afraid of storms, anything with a motor, and hamsters. One night, as Adrian lay on his stomach doing homework, Charlene spied the hamster ball rolling down the hall toward her. She did the most sensible thing she could think of: move to higher ground. In a split second, my 50-lb dog was perched, all four paws scrunched together, on my seven-year-old's posterior.

She loved our menagerie of animals, only threatening to drown the hapless critters in doggy slobber. When John came into our lives, Charlene threw her fear of men to the winds and fell in love with him. The first Thanksgiving after we married, Char snuck out of our yard and found a treasure fit for a king... the half-eaten turkey from a neighbor's garbage can. She dragged the carcass home and proudly laid it at her hero's feet. John made a fuss over her, then placed the gobbler remains in a double plastic bag and put it in our garbage. Charlene found it, stripped off the plastic bags, and returned it to John.

In fact, she was an accomplished escape artist. On my way back from work, it was not unusual to see a brown blur dash across yards and down alleys as she raced me home. The goofy pooch would hide beside the garage until I hit the garage door opener. Then she would run into the garage, turn around to face me, and pretend she had been there all along. About twice a year, she would escape for a day or two. This involved, at different times, chewing through a closed cedar gate, unraveling a chain link fence, and squeezing through impossibly small spaces. John called them her "walkabouts". We never knew where she went on walkabout, but she always came home looking very pleased.

When John moved in, so did Ginger. Charlene was fascinated. The little Jack Russell had energy to spare, barked at everything, but couldn't figure out how to get outside on her own. Eventually, they worked out a system: when Ginger wanted to go out, she'd bark; Charlene would get up, slap the sliding glass door open, and go back to what she was doing. (We never could get her to close the door.) The problem of Ginger's squeaky toys was less amicably resolved. Charlene very much disliked noisy toys. One day, she gathered them up and sat on them while she watched Ginger work herself into a tizzy of frustration. Years later, when we lost Ginger, Char mourned for a week. Then she dug up all of the doggy treats that Ginger had buried around the yard.

When John died, Charlene mourned for months. Every time my nephew drove John's old truck up to the house, her ears would perk up and she'd do her happy dance.

Of late, Charlene's daily walks have been shorter, her naps much longer. At 16 years old, her ailments finally gained the upper hand. So today - because we love her - Patrick, Adrian and I took our dear Goofy Pooch to the vet and said goodbye. As she slipped away on her final walkabout, I thought of how she let go of her fears in order to love life. I thought about how incredibly gentle she was.

And I thought that if one believes, as I do, that God's breath of life flows through all creation, then Charlene came from the breath that He caught in the midst of laughter.

 

 

 

Party Labels

Last night, I went to a party.

It started out as a summer social for my professional organization, but ended up as a Jody Party - a different level of guaranteed fun. Jody has a permanent love affair with humanity and a rather awe-inspiring zest for life, and as we drove up to Jody and Jorge's home, Arline, Jane, and I knew to expect three things: a warm welcome, great food, and interesting people.

Jorge had made his deservedly famous fajitas and guacamole and the rest of us were to bring desserts and side-dishes. I was assigned a dessert. "A fruit bowl," I thought. "Everyone else will bring exotic desserts, but I'll bring fruit."

Our hosts welcomed us warmly (see Expectation No. 1), and I added my fruit bowl to the table that held brownies and a pistachio cake. The fresh strawberries, blueberries and grapes looked rather virtuous, sitting there next to decadence.

The other table held a variety of intriguing salads, casseroles and, of course, there were the aforementioned fajitas and guacamole (check Expectation No. 2)

People began arriving. And as per Expectation No. 3, they fit no uniform mold. There was 84-year-old Marilyn, who just finished her sophomore year at SMU on scholarship. Sam, who took over the open microphone to belt out Spanish love songs to his wife. Mike, a translator and artist, whose version of a "side dish" was one of his paintings.

There were translators and interpreters from the USA, half of Europe and all points of the Spanish-speaking world. There was a county judge. There were a bevy of school teachers, the gardener who built the phenomenal new deck, neighbors and friends. We filled the house, spilled out onto both decks, and down into the beautiful garden. There was laughter and conversation in every corner.

I hate labels as much as my granddaughter does; only she dislikes the kind that come in your clothing and scratch the back of your neck. The labels guaranteed to turn me off are phrases like "their kind", "right-wing nuts", "lunatic liberals", and "those people". And that's one of the reasons I dearly love Jody Parties. Everyone's label gets left at the door and we mix and mingle as individuals, as unique and interesting as the foods and gifts we bring: each one different, each one adding their own special flavor and perspective.

However, in the interest of honesty I should also mention that sometime during the evening, on my way to sample the decadence on the dessert table, I ran into the judge. "Good desserts," he said, his plate piled high. "Of course, I just brought a fruit bowl..."

And there behind him stood the dessert table, now filled to overflowing. There were Brazilian flan, French cream puffs, cookies, oreo pie - and a total of eight fruit bowls.

Mine was the only one with grapes, though.

PB in the Gears

The difference between my childhood and that of my granddaughters is more a matter of alternate realities, than of simple time:

For them, televisions have always been in color; I didn't watch my first episode of Scooby-Doo until I was nearly ten, and that was only because we were on furlough in the USA.

My granddaughters don't remember a world without cell phones; until I was in boarding school, the closest telephone was at our neighbor's house. He kept a lock on the dial to discourage unauthorized use.

The girls each have an entire town of Barbies and friends; my first Barbie was a gift from my sister, when I was nine. I promptly renamed her Jean the Lone Rangerette and used an indelible marker to paint a mask on her face.

On the other hand, my granddaughters have never swung out on a vine over a banana patch nor had a pet tarantula.

Even our childhood foods are different. For my granddaughters, the jury is still out on natural peanut butter. For me, that's the only "real" kind - like what I would eat as a child. It was a family affair: Dad would bring the enormous bag of peanuts home, Mom toasted them, and then we kids would sit on the back porch, blowing away the chaff to leave little bare toasted peanuts, and then pouring them carefully into the hopper of the grinder. I was the littlest and therefore usually exempt from grinding duty.

All of this is of great fascination to the girls. On Earth Day, they love turning out all the lights, helping me set up candles, and playing card games in the dark. In this age of ever-present technology, it's as close as to my childhood as I can take them for an hour.

This past Earth Day, I was reminded that technology is more pervasive than ever. A die rolled off the table and under a bookshelf. The candle light didn't reach, and I commented, "If we had a flashlight, I could see it" - to which both girls immediately pointed to my iPhone and said, "Don't you have an app for that?"

It isn’t that I bear a grudge against technology. It's just that sometimes I miss the softer rhythms of life. Usually, all I hear is the manic whir of my personal hamster wheel.

The other day, I made myself a folded peanut butter sandwich. It was a moment of rebellion: work was piled up, there was no time to stop for lunch, but I could and would have an extra-stuffed peanut butter sandwich. As I finished each page of the medical report I was translating, I put the sheet of paper in a pile for the shredder and took a bite of my sandwich.

When the job was finally done, my foggy brain remembered - standard operating procedure: always shred medical reports as soon as I'm done with them. I turned the shredder on and began to feed it. The whine rose and fell as metal teeth chewed noisily.

All of a sudden, the whine got louder and a little desperate. Instead of "wah-wah-wah", it was more like "Wowarowa-wowarowa". The paper was through, but the poor shredder kept howling. I turned it off and peered into its teeth like a piranha dentist. Peanut butter. There was peanut butter on the teeth and in the gears. I looked back at the rest of the papers waiting to be shredded: a tell-tale blob of ground peanuts still clung to one of the pages. It seems I had laid my fat little sandwich on the stack of papers to be shredded, and it lost some of its stuffing.

This is a good time to thank everyone for their helpful suggestions on de-peanut-buttering my shredder. In the end, I simply called it a day. As I walked outside laughing, it occurred to me that my siblings and I would have seen great possibilities in that shredder. Imagine how many pounds of peanuts those little metal teeth could turn into paste, all without kid-powered grinding!

The shredder recovered. I did not; I was left hungry to hop off the hamster wheel more often and listen to the elemental sounds of life. I may even may pack a peanut butter sandwich for the road.