ESTA ES SU CASA--JUNE 2012

ESTA ES SU CASA--JUNE 2012

I’m sending this a little early because I’m making an unscheduled “family visit” to St. Louis May 28-June 12. And then comes Chemo’s operation when I return to Honduras. Your kind thoughts and prayers are much appreciated.

A MONTH OF SUNDAYS

The Beacon graced my last report with its special look:
https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/24803/dulick_chemo_heart_050212

The month of May began with Las Vegas’ annual celebration of our patron “saint,” the Holy Cross. For the first time, thanks to Padre Manuel, a distinction was made between FIESTA (‘feast’)--three days of religious services, the vigil, the processions, two Masses, etc.--and another three days of FERIA (‘fair’)--a parade, contests, dances, the crowning of the “Queen” and her court, the “carnival” grand finale. There was some overlap, with lots of fireworks for both modes, thanks to the fearless Pedro Cruz, who lights the rockets right in his hand. And remarkably few drunks.

With crosses dressed, as it were, in flowers, our little church becomes a jewel. I encourage the kids as much as I can, but those who have become teens barely have enough interest even to look on, much less participate. Every time Chemo does something, I thank him sincerely, you know, without losing my cool. And when, as happens more often, he’s missing in action, I try just as sincerely to re-invite him, without overdoing the guilt trip. But it really is sweet when he’s “there.” The Masses were filled to overflowing.

“Las cintas” is probably everyone’s favorite contest--running a horse at full speed to pluck a tiny ring on a ribbon (a ‘cinta’) off a wire, with only a ballpoint pen. I can’t believe anyone could do it even once, but the winner is the one with the most sashes (also called ‘cintas’) for each ring they snatch. A young wizard from Yorito was the champion with five cintas, but the crowd favorite was old Manuel, who finally got a ring after twenty tries on the very last ride of the afternoon. Of course, by that time, his exhausted horse had slowed down so much that it was just a little easier to aim that pen!

A beauty pageant seems a contradiction to the way the Romans paraded Jesus around before they crucified him, but any excuse for dress-up can not be denied. And this year, crowning the Queen of the Fair seemed to have some special meaning, not totally unrelated to Jesus, the “suffering servant” crowned with thorns. María Josefa, 14, had to drop out of school this year after a series of seizures; for someone always in the mix of things, it’s hard to recede into repose. But her friends did not forget her, and she was their choice for the fanciest title of the week.

Threading through the fiesta/feria was the novenario following the death of Doña Sofía, 103 years old. As I remarked, when it was my turn to lead the prayer, this lovely old lady perfectly timed her passing to keep us all focused on what mattered most, the love that makes our faith real and creates one family of us all. Oh, there were tears, of course, but one of her grandsons, at the burial, said, “We were so blessed to have her with us so long.” A great-great grandson could have given the same speech! I don’t have a picture of Doña Sofía (she moved to Tegucigalpa some years ago, though she did help her daughter Juana feed me meals when I was coming to Las Vegas back in the 80s), so I thought I’d include a photo of one of her “boyfriends,” Chaguito, 105 years old! “We grew up together--we had some fun!” I pass his house a couple times a week, and he’s always sitting out on the porch. You think he’s blind, you think he’s deaf, but nope. “Come on in and visit!” You really can’t say no, thinking he could leave us, too, any day. He loves to sing--and dance! which he does at the annual Seniors Ball during the fiesta.

May brings Mother’s Day, too; here, that becomes a whole month of “las flores” (flowers) for the Virgin Mary. This is especially for the little kids, and they seem to love to put their tiny bouquets at Mary’s statue, “walking” up the short aisle every afternoon on their knees, not really grasping what they’re even doing, but shining in their innocence.

The rainy season began with a bang, a thunderclap, actually, on Saturday, May 12. Chemo and I were eating supper at Alba’s when the huge storm broke like a dam, the rain flying sideways and the winds flattening the outhouse in back like a cardboard box. We all huddled in the kitchen to await our fate. But, as suddenly as it attacked, the storm slunk away. Another just like it burst out at noon Sunday, just as Mass was ending (too bad if you left early!). Since then, the rains have been gentler, daily, sometimes in the morning, or in the afternoon, or evening, or overnight. The soccer field greened up so fast it looked as if it had been painted. This regularity, they say, results from La Niña’s cycling off at last, the weather phenomenon that, in contrast to its more famous “cousin” El Niño, caused droughts in the Latin Americas with warm Pacific winds. (Last year, sporadic rains didn’t start till the end of June.) Now folks are scrambling to start planting--not even waiting for the right Moon (which you can’t see these cloudy nights, anyway) or Pentecost, the luckiest day to sow, some say. Maybe you noticed we’ve already had the first hurricane, Albert, two weeks before the official start of the season; a weak thing, it came and went, just teasing the coast off the Carolinas, nowhere near Honduras. Hopes are that other storms will be similarly even-tempered this year. (And now Beryl is flitting along the same area.)

Speaking of Mass, we have taken a big step toward becoming a whole parish. We now have Mass every Sunday. (It used to be once a month.) Padre Manuel keeps things lively, but he’s got a definite agenda. “Las Vegas is a wonderful faith community, but it lacks one thing: we’ve got to organize!” He’s the one to help us do it, too, because he manages the most efficient meetings you ever saw; no one gets to complain, accuse, or excuse. A problem is identified, a concrete solution proposed, personnel committed, a date set for completion and evaluation. Bang bang bang, not yadda yadda yadda. He’s trying to extinguish the constant phrase, “Si Dios quiere” (‘God willing’). “Don’t worry about God, God will come along if we just get going!”

Well, OK, but I did pray like crazy that Chemo would pass his first big test this past Saturday with Maestro en Casa. And he passed! (Of course, we did study like crazy, too.) I was in Tegucigalpa, ready for my trip to St. Louis, but I kept in close touch. Somehow Chemo recently acquired a cell phone (all I know is, he didn’t steal it!). So I called in the morning, and before the test, and right before the test, and called his teacher David just before the test, and then waited an agonizing hour till Chemo called me with the good news. But David said there’d be another test next Saturday. Well, David has to pass Chemo when he’s the only student in the class, doesn’t he? I mean, God willing! (Chemo looks so scholarly in his new glasses!) Oh, and what was the test? Mostly on accents, aguda, grave, and esdrújula. I had to bite my tongue, you know, lest Chemo question the value of such trivia.

Pastor Dennis Lindberg certainly passed his biggest test. Last month I wrote about his heart attack and miraculous recovery. Six weeks later, he’s now back home, with visits from therapists and such, and making great progress on dancing the foxtrot with his remarkable wife Jane!

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--MAY 2012

ESTA ES SU CASA--MAY 2012


ON THE ROAD AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN

Enjoy last month’s newsletter the way it was meant to be, thanks to The Beacon: https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/23933/honduras_knockout_death_in_stlouis_too

Chemo needs another operation. My Facebook “FRIENDS” have already been alerted to this news, but let me fill in the details. 

Four years after the open-heart surgery that saved his life, Chemo needs a touch-up. They say it’s a simple thing, placing a tiny stopper up in a valve in the heart by way of catheretization through a vein in the groin. Chemo has something called PDA. When Dr. Manuel Acuna, who had come all the way from Venezuela to join the latest Helping Hands for Honduras brigade (handsforhonduras.org), repeated this a couple times after examining Chemo with an echocardiogram, he finally wrote it down. I guess I had a pretty dumb look on my face. PDA? Public Display of Affection? No, PDA is Patent Ductus Arteriosus. “Let’s talk in English, so the boy won’t get scared.” Too late for that! And, heck, Chemo wasn’t the nervous one--I was scared to death, though doing my best to disguise it. Another problem is myiocardiopathy (who invents these names, Scrabble?), which is treated with medication. Pills the rest of his life, I guess. 

We had gone to Tegucigalpa to pick up my new passport, waiting for me at the U.S. embassy. (Have you seen one of these things? It’s like a little laptop, no doubt embedded with a GPS to track you to Timbuktu.) But we knew the latest brigade was in town, so I wanted to say hi and show off Chemo again to Ron Roll, who loves him like his own kid and regards him as one of their greatest success stories. “Look at you! You’ve got a mustache!” Then he launches into stories about how desperate Chemo’s situation was, his little friends carrying him around on a branch, and how I’m a saint because I rescued him when he had no one, and on and on. 

It was at that point that Brian Smith, one of the volunteers, said, “Well, let’s check him out.” So they wheeled in the ultra-sound machine, and Dr. Manuel made his diagnosis. Ron says, “OK, Chemo, you’ll be first in line in June,” when the brigade returns. Can you keep him in your thoughts and prayers till then? There’s actually a narrowing window of opportunity, since Chemo turns 18 in September, when he no longer qualifies for “pediatric” care. We also snuck in a quick visit to the dentist; despite a year-and-a-half gap since his last check-up, Chemo had no new cavities, a tribute, perhaps, to the whole milk he drinks every day with his breakfast. (It can’t be our brushing regimen, which neither of us is faithful to!) A cleaning sufficed, from a boy doctor who looked to be younger than Chemo! I did not even mention the shard in my own mouth from when I cracked a tooth on...oatmeal (I swear!). It doesn’t hurt--yet--so let’s just ignore it. Age. 

Two weeks earlier, I had an appointment at the embassy to APPLY for my new passport. I imagined it as routine, but it turned into a three-ring circus--namely, Chemo, Joel, and Dionis, his cousins. They begged to go along, and at first I was determined to dash their hopes since Joel and Dionis had both just dropped out of seventh grade. You shouldn’t reward failure, right? But neither should you be a hard-ass. My cap says “PERDON”--FORGIVE--and there’s never enough of that, so I relented. Of course, every expense was tripled, gouging my budget, but what can ya do? They ate and played (mostly Dodge ‘em cars), then they played and ate, and played and played, and ate and ate. Everybody got one shirt and one short, and another item or two. 

And there was still time for Elio to give us a tour of a wind farm near Tegucigalpa. Seems a little too cutting edge for a country like Honduras, where any kind of electricity is still at a premium, but if you got it, flaunt it! 

In between the two Tegus excursions, Chemo and I went to Morazan to see Fermin for some extra help with his Maestro en Casa homework. I knew Fermin would be too busy, with two teaching jobs (high school in the morning, grade school in the afternoon), but Plan B was, in fact, even better. Fermin’s son, Eduard, same age as Chemo, except he’s got a teacher-college degree, also teaches with Maestro en Casa. So they sat down and worked together all afternoon one day, and all morning the next, and Chemo loved it! I wanted to “observe,” but I was obviously a distraction, so I stayed inside. When I did try to snap a picture, Chemo grabbed Eduard’s motorcycle helmet, to remain anonymous.... 

Fermin’s daughter Arlin, also a teacher, is very pregnant with a boy that they’re already calling Fredi, Jr., for daddy. She looks ready to pop any minute, but her due date isn’t until July. How time does pass! First time I ever saw Arlin, she was a new-born herself, covered with flea bites, in Nombre de Dios (go figure!), the remotest, poorest, scruffiest village in the department, where her daddy Fermin had just gotten his first teaching job, at age 19. It was a four-hour walk from Morazan, but I got there--once--and little Arlin cried all night long, all day long, too. The townsfolk loved Fermin, insisted on called him “Profesor,” but he looked me in the eye: “Miguel, we will NOT stay here next year.” True to his word, he got a nice position in the heart of Morazan. 

Any time we go to Morazan, we include a side-step to Progreso, where we celebrate the latest birthdays in Santa’s family, my “girlfriend” (she says). This time it was her daughter Karla, 17, who has a baby boy of her own. On-again, off-again with Jimi’s father, she’s finally dumped him now, she says, “for good.” But the really scary news was Catalina, Santa’s sister-in-law, who is suddenly incapacitated. “She has a brain tumor,” Santa whispered to me. In Honduras, that’s a very general diagnosis, often simply meaning a stroke, which is the case here, I think. Her whole right side is affected. She’s never been as wild as Santa, but they made a great tag-team on “running the numbers” for the daily lotteries. Strokes, including fatal ones, are not uncommon in young women in Honduras. I blame it on the coffee, or maybe the lead-painted coffee cups. I wish I could hope for recovery. 

The month of April began with Holy Week. As we were planning Masses and celebraciones, Padre Manuel suggested we get a real donkey for the Palm Sunday procession commemorating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. But I don’t think even he imagined that the youth group would have “Jesus” ride the little burro all the way up to the church! That was just one of the neat moments during the week, highlighted, literally, by the candlelight vigil on Holy Saturday, awaiting the Resurrection. 

Meanwhile, down at the river it was Spring Break. I went a couple times, but when about a dozen drunken fights broke out at once, I escaped back to “religion.” 

Resurrection might not be too extreme a word for Rev. Dennis Lindberg’s recovery from a heart attack April 12. A pastor dear to many in the Parkway schools, Dennis seemed about to leave us when his extraordinary family gathered, they feared, to say good-bye. But this is a family long dedicated to service, including my “mission” in Honduras, so they know how God hears the cry of the poor. Led by Dennis’ wife Jane, no less a pastor than her husband, the children Mark and Jon (who have visited Honduras) and Laura and Luke poured out their hearts in prayer. One tiny miracle at a time, Dennis edged back from the brink. The turning point might have been when Luke and his wife Jill showed Dennis the newest ultrasound of their baby: it’s a girl, “Lillian Jane”! Dennis’ spontaneous blessing filled everyone with hope. There’s still a long way to go, but your own blanket of blessings should warm all hearts. 

God bless your heart-for-Honduras! 

Love, Miguel