home
bio
babypage
academic work
personal stories
archive
contact me
In no particular order...
Humidifier Parts
Enjoy your visit and come again soon...
I'm still trying to take in the news about Sunday's tsunami and the tens of thousands who have died from it. When I first saw the headline Sunday I didn't really believe it. It seemed like a joke - "Monster wave kills thousands." Well, what can you expect from USA Today.
So I've been reading the news a little at a time online, trying to make sense of the fact that what should only happen in sci-fi has happened in real life. And it's funny that it's never as messy in the movies as now in real life. Or maybe just because it's made up, we don't care as much.
When we do care, it's because the movies have scaled things down for our consumption. Instead of trying to take in the total destruction of villages, the loss of complete generations and families and the bereavement of countless more survivors, we see the story of one couple: he lives, she dies, or vice versa. They clasp hands a final time and cry out in voices ragged from emotion, "I love you!"
Women cry, men pretend they've got something in their eye, 11-year-old boys get uncomfortable.
It's all a question of scale. One couple torn apart, we can feel. In the movies the lost child is always recovered. Only adults really die, and even then it comes across as heroic. But it is impossible to conceive of the kind of loss, heartache, tragedy that started on Sunday and won't be over for weeks or years.
Here in Chicago it's the holidays. Our tree is still up, I haven't finished putting away the numerous cute little outfits that Paula got for Christmas, and last night we did our darndest to finish off the gallon or two of leftover ponche from Saturday. We are safe in our warm, sound house, worried only about how much the double-whammy of Christmas and Paula's upcoming birthday is going to affect us financially. How can it be so mundane here and so awful there?
Yesterday morning I called my baby brother in Atlanta. It was probably 8:00 his time, and I said, "Wow, you're up early!" After I thought better of it, I realized he probably wasn't up before I called.
We talked about his studies, mostly. He's in the materials science PhD program at Georgia Tech, and told me he and some fellow students got funded to do some research on making paper do funny things in the presence of certain gasses. I know there's a more technical way to describe it, but you'll have to ask Kit if you want to hear it.
When he explained it to me it did make sense, though, and I felt so proud of that little squirt I first held as a wet newborn. I witnessed his birth at home when I was ten, and as I held him shortly afterward he opened his eyes for the first time. I still get a little choked up when I think about it. That powerful moment - lost to him in the haze of his first moments ex-utero - happened in my arms.
Yesterday as we talked about his ideas for new materials and how they could be used, I thought about my father and uncles and their inventiveness and interest in materials. My autodidact uncle Don, for one, made a career of designing amazing robotics for NASA, among others. For his part my father designed and built solar water heaters when we lived in the highlands of Guatemala. I found myself telling Kit a story Avoa, my grandma, told me about another uncle, Gary.
My father's older brother Gary died before I was born, in a car accident on a twisting mountain road in Colorado. Although I never met him, I learned about him as I spent happy hours with my Avoa. He was a clever kid, she told me, though never very good in school. In her house I would find beautiful paperweights and little sculptures he had made out of plastic when it was first developed. One I remember particularly well was a delicate rose, painstakingly carved in the center of a solid block of clear plastic.
Avoa told me that once when Gary got in trouble at school he was given detention and told to write an essay on the topic of his choice. Of course he chose plastics. His essay, according to my Avoa, went something like this:
Plastics can be dyed any color. Whatever color dye you use, you will get the same color plastic. If you use red dye, you will get red plastic. If you use blue dye, you will get blue plastic. If you use yellow dye, you will get yellow plastic. Plastics can also be molded into any shape. If you use a mold in the shape of a heart, you will get heart-shaped plastic. If you use a mold in the shape of a car, you will get car-shaped plastic. And so on.
My Avoa thought this was hilarious. She was a highly literate woman, a talented writer and poet, and I know at least that her surviving sons inherited her gift for words. I don't know if Gary wrote such an awful essay on purpose, but my grandmother implied that he did. She said that teacher never assigned him another.
As I told Kit this story, I was struck by the realization that I was telling him a family story about someone I'd never met. I was telling it as though I had witnessed it myself and knew it to be God's truth. As though my Avoa had reported it with total accuracy and I hadn't changed a word.
My Avoa told lots of stories, and I loved them. Even though she passed on more than 20 years ago, I can still hear her voice and feel the connection to her and to history that her stories gave me. I don't tell her stories that often, and I fear I've already forgotten most of them. Maybe that feeling, that they are hers, not mine, is what keeps me from telling them, but only telling them will keep them alive.
Unfortunately, though, the writing is not going to happen right now.
I continue to try, but the interruptions don't stop. Paula turns 11 months tomorrow and she is a handful and a half. We're having fun, though. Yesterday I bought Brian Wilson's "Smile" and we danced around the living room to it - I recommend the cd, if you can get it. It's a great bunch of songs and they come with real liner notes. So retro. Anyway, Paula's gone back to napping twice a day, but in the sling only, and goes to bed around 7:30. Things change, but she remains a very, very fun and demanding handful.
Since that last entry about spending hours trying to get Paula to sleep, I have basically spent most of every day trying to get her to sleep. Some good has come out of my effort: I've gotten a lot of laundry put away and housework done with her in the sling. That works sometimes. And I'm sure my health will reap some benefit from the walks to the park and up to 40 minutes of pacing the dining room that her naps sometimes require. That's 40 minutes of pacing for a 1-hour nap. Don't do the math.
They say sleep is vital for a baby's developing brain, that without adequate sleep she won't be able to get into that "quiet alert" state that is so conducive to learning and cognitive wheel-turning. Well, in spite of all my efforts of late, I'm starting to feel that if Paula is in any kind of alert state, it's not a quiet one. I think it must be a combination of her basic temperament and the sleep deprivation she has come to accept as normal (or is that me?), but the singing and talking just get louder in volume and higher in pitch as the day goes by. Sometimes when she does sleep I wonder if I've gone deaf.
But today Paula actually napped in the morning, kind of a big deal around here, and I was able to fire up the old computer and do some writing while she slept in the sling on my chest. You'd think with all that time pacing and rocking and doing housework I would have mentally composed many and brilliant writings by now. Well, despite what you'd think - or maybe right in line with it - this is what I wrote today. Enjoy.
Last January when Joel went to New York for a Latin music festival, he brought back a cd by a singer called Perla Batalla. She's a Mexi-Cubana from California who sings some standards, some originals. One song on there always gets me right in the throat.
Quisiera ser un ave / y volar para mi tierra / descansar en sus volcanes / en sus lagos y praderas
I wish I were a bird / and could fly to my country / take my rest on her volcanoes / In her lakes and meadows
It's about Mexico. I play it on the cd player in the kitchen, hold Paula close and dance around, singing at the top of my lungs.
And the refrain says,
Mexico / yo te llevo en mi sangre / esta sangre que arde con tu tequila / y el sabor de tu comida
Mexico / estas siempre en mi alma / este alma que canta con tu mariachi / recordandote con nostalgia / y amor
Mexico / I carry you in my blood / this blood that burns with your tequila / and the flavors of your food,
Mexico / you are always in my soul / this soul that sings along with your mariachi / remembering you with nostalgia / and love
The part that chokes me up is that last line: remembering you with nostalgia and love.
That is how I remember Mexico. In 1998 we moved to Celaya, Guanajuato in central Mexico after four difficult years in Guatemala. Whereas in Guatemala people were reserved and solemn, in Celaya people were warm and spontaneous. In Guatemala people were formal and slow to accept new arrivals, in Celaya people were gregarious, welcoming and warmly familiar. It was fresh water after years in the desert.
The night after we arrived in Celaya a group of local Baha'is came to the house of the friends who we were staying with. They brought a flower arrangement the likes of which I have only ever seen at weddings and funerals - it was big. And they brought a couple of guitars. We ate, we talked, we got to know one another, and everyone introduced us to Mexico's wealth of regional and immortal folk songs. I'll never forget "Caminos de Guanajuato," or "Cielito Lindo" - the well-known song that says "Ay yai yai yai, canta y no llores/ porque cantando se alegran cielito lindo/ los corazones". We must have sung that refrain fifty times at the end of that night. I felt welcomed, and happy.
That night our new friends learned we had arrived just three days before my little brother's seventh birthday. Of course we only knew our Baha'i friends, so we expected to have a little party for him, a little cake, a couple of gifts. After the social drought we had known in Guatemala, we didn't expect more, but this was a source of great consternation to our new friends.
The next day the plan went into motion: One family went door to door in our new neighborhood inviting people to Kit's party. I think they pitched it something like, "This poor little boy just moved here from Guatemala and he doesn't have any friends to come to his birthday party." Another family donated cases of sodas from their store. Others signed on to bring food, and someone else volunteered their house for the party.
Well, people came. They brought food and gifts, a pinata and best of all new friends for my brother. One family who we met at that party became our close friends and would come take us out on picnics every Saturday. "We have the food, you bring the drinks. We leave in one half hour."
The seven months I spent in Mexico are all tinged with the golden light of the friendliness and hospitality that I encountered there. When I remember it, it is with great nostalgia and love.
When I sing that song with Paula in my arms, I hope she will grow up proud of her Mexican culture in spite of being a light-skinned girl born in Oak Park, Illinois. More than that I hope Joel and I can transmit the highest values of that culture, as well as my own. But the refrain that tries to distill the essence of Mexican culture has always sounded a little flat to me. Tequila and food? Not to knock Mexican food, but in my opinion tequila causes more problems than it solves. And mariachi music is a revered art form in this house, but I don't consider that the essence of Mexicanismo either. Huapango would be closer, but still not good enough for me.
I think the essence of Mexican-ness is the virtues that make up the best of Mexican culture. That warmth, openness, hospitality, spontaneity. But today I found an even better summary. It's in a book called "It's All in the Frijoles," by Yolanda Nava. It's a collection of stories, sayings, folktales and collected wisdom from, as the cover puts it, 100 famous Latinos.
At the end of Nava's acknowledgments, she thanks her gente, the Mexican people from whom she comes.
"I respectfully acknowledge mi gente trabajadora, respetuosa y humilde, que tiene tanta fe y que viven con responsabilidad, lealtad, integridad, valentia, prudencia, fortaleza, moderacion, castidad y que siempre busca la justicia."
My hard-working, respectful and humble people, who are full of faith, who live with responsibility, loyalty, integrity, valor, prudence, strength, moderation, chastity; and who always seek justice.
This site hosted by DreamHost.com and powered by Blog.Thank you for being visitor number
