ESTA ES SU CASA--APRIL 2014
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
I know I wrote it myself, but somehow this version of my last report, as it appeared in THE BEACON / ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO NEWS, touched me even more. Chemo finding his footing.
But it will be my last published report. Donna Korando, my editor from The Beacon, fought to keep me on the “staff,” but the merger with St. Louis Public Radio News decided to drop my “Letter from Honduras,” preferring commentary of more “local” relevance. Well, the idea that stories of the Honduran poor have no local appeal will come as a surprise to the 10,000 or 20,000 Hondurans who live in St. Louis. Maybe one of you could tell the stories of Hondurans in St. Louis. Either that, or back to the shadows, amigos!
Lent has taught me some very harsh truths; or maybe it’s Adam Smith. All I know is, I’m underwater. I’m in debt more than I make in a year, including $15,000 just in credit cards. Losing the $75 stipend from The Beacon may not seem like much, but it feels like the tipping point, along with losing Chemo as a boost on my income taxes. I could sell my house, which is worth about that much (but who could buy it??), and then I guess I’d sneak back into St. Louis, ashamed and longing for a job at McDonald’s. Imagine!
So I ask for any more help you can give me. So many need so much.
We’re still carrying Erlinda, who just observed the six-month anniversary of her husband Guillermo’s death. The date fell on a Sunday, so she asked Padre Manuel for a special mention at the evening Mass, and she had prepared some little “recuerdos” that I helped her with, bookmarks featuring a photo and a prayer. Her own health problems, with diabetes, and her daughter Maricela with the same problem, and Maricela’s daughter Marite with kidney issues, are always a priority in my attempts at budgeting. Regular clinic visits in Tegucigalpa and El Progreso turn maintenance into a major expense, especially when the government runs out of pills. And now Alba, Chemo’s aunt where we eat supper, is having recurring heart issues. Santos, her husband, is trying to hit up a politico for help. Yeah, that’ll work. Manuel continues his daily visits from Terrero Blanco, hungry for the specialty of the house, spaghetti bolognesa, and other kids are crowding into the circle, too, as I dish it up. You know, everybody’s hungry here! (I snapped a great picture of Manuel hugging his grandpa Pilo on Father’s Day.)
But you already know those stories. Here’s some more, that give me--and you, I hope--a cause for sharing.
A girl’s 15th birthday--the Quinceañera--is her debut as a woman, according to tradition. Mayde, the daughter of Luisa, one of the most popular, not to say glamorous, teachers at our school, got the royal treatment. The back yard was strung with lights and decorated in princess style, including a special entrance at the back stairs, her friends and classmates in their showiest fashions, two cartloads of presents, enormous plates of food loaded with three dishes in one--a beef kebob, a lettuce taco, a mound of fried rice--not to mention a 5-tiered cake and bottles of Welch’s grape juice “champagne,” lots of music and dancing, and constant photos. Included were Mayde’s father, who departed the scene some years ago for another woman in El Progreso, and other relatives of that “side” of the family.
Alberto, the “new man” in Luisa’s life, looked over the whole scene with generous--and, I should say--humble approval, appreciating Mayde as his own. At some quieter time of the evening, Alberto and I could talk. He and Luisa find themselves in a Catch-22: they want to get married “in the Church,” but Alberto has never been baptized. Someone told him, he says, we can’t get married until I’m baptized, and he can’t get baptized while they’re “living in sin.” I told him, “That’s why we have Pope Francis!” According to “The Joy of the Gospel,” a copy of which Francis gave to President Obama last week at the Vatican, the Church opens doors, not closes them. And indeed, Padre Manuel is already on the case.
The huge expense of Mayde’s party was painful, of course, to my self-righteousness. I don’t begrudge a celebration of your children, but it seemed so excessive in our poor town. So it made me cry to see Chemo’s cousin Damaris celebrate her Quinceañera a couple days later with nothing much more than the 5-pound chicken I bought for the family at Abel’s store, the biggest bird in the freezer. Damaris, every bit as pretty as Mayde, even without the hours of hairstyling and make-up, was abandoned by both her parents, and will never be a debutante, so shy and shadowed in her poverty is she that even school proved too much of an exposure; she celebrated her day helping with the little family “business” of washing other people’s clothes. (And sometimes she has to go back two or three times to collect, a challenging foray.)
Damaris had just returned from three months of coffee-picking in El Transito, the last of the family, along with Natalia’s daughter Estela and sons Dionis and Marcos and his wife Dania and their three kids, Beatriz, Lindolfito, and Daguito. Now Dania is pregnant with their fourth child. We waited for them all morning, and I made sure we had coffee and rolls all ready as soon as they arrived, and then, as they settled in and relaxed a bit, the fixin’s for a typical and tasty breakfast of eggs and refried beans with sides of cheese and mantequilla, and hot fresh tortillas, and for this special day, ice-cold Pepsi. It marked a red-letter day for me, since it was the first time I dared to indulge in the same meal that almost killed me a month ago. I was very glad to be back in the saddle instead of riding the porcelain donkey!
Again, a quiet moment, as I was about to leave. Marcos called me aside, into the house. “Hermano, I have this for you, what you loaned me.” And he handed me two lavender 500-Lempira bills, the equivalent of $50. This represented literally days of coffee picking, and I felt like a Scrooge accepting it, but it was the end of the month and this would tide me over. “Marcos, I want to cry,” so grateful and so desperate was I for this poor man’s money. But I already knew what I would do; a couple days later when I went to Yoro to squeeze more blood from the stone of my bank, I used most of the money to buy Marcos a cell phone, to replace the one he sweated to death in El Transito. And then HE was so grateful! “Hermano, you always take good care of us.” Please! As I told him, a man with a pregnant wife needs to be able to communicate. And they both know I’m here with other “loans” along the way, such as Dania’s ultrasound at Dr. Wilmer’s office in Victoria coming up this week.
Chemo and I began the month of March with a trip to Tegucigalpa (which is how I blew the whole month’s budget in one week!). The Brigada was in town again. As usual Ron Roll and his wife Alba were thrilled to see Chemo; Ron grabbed Shaun, a young volunteer who was doing stories on the kids for the BabyHeart newsletter in Memphis, and had him interview me and Chemo for a future feature. I loved telling Chemo’s story all over again, and I had to choke back some tears along the way, it still overwhelms me so. I emailed Shaun some pictures of Chemo’s operation; it seems so long ago, September 2008. Then Dr. Mark Gillette, a first-timer with the Brigada, did a quick echocardiogram of Chemo, so quick I barely had time to snap a picture. I thought, Hey, this guy’s sharp! He pronounced Chemo fit as a fiddle. That’s something.
Also in Tegucigalpa, we saw Chemo’s little brother Marcos. He’s just 16, but ol’ Marcos has got himself a “wife,” Jessica, who is 19. Ever since we heard about this hook-up some months ago, I had my doubts that anything good would come of it. Well, turns out they are actually happy together! Marcos is even more laid back than before, if that’s possible, and Jessica is sort of mothering him as well wife-ing him. We took them out three times in three days, once to the mall, where I was sure they would ask for everything in sight. Not at all! In fact, get this. We stopped in a bookstore, my idea, but I noticed Jessica was looking around, and looking around; when I saw her near the children’s books, I thought, Oh God, they’re pregnant! But then she kept circling back to “Matar a un Ruisenor.” You know it as “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “We read some of this in high school,” she said. Marcos never got past second grade. “Then you must read this to him,” I said, and I bought it for her! I swear, this is first time anyone ever wanted a book in my time in Honduras. That’s something. So I am hopeful for their relationship, after all. Besides, she is the niece of Marcos’ boss, so he’s being “watched.”
I assumed term limits applied to my presidency of the Parents Association at the school, one and done, so when Profe Flor the principal announced at the first big meeting of the year, “Of course, you can always elect the same officers again,” I panicked. Then I heard whispers of “Miguel” this and “Miguel” that in the room. “Who seconds Miguel?” Flor asked, following proper procedures, you know. She turned to the board and began to write, “Presidente Miguel,” my heart was in my throat, then she finished, “Cruz.” Yes! Yes! He’s a wonderful, guy! Of course, I’d gush over anyone taking my place, but I’ve known him so many years, ever since I heard him give a little sermon in his home village up in the mountains before he moved to Las Vegas, warning us not to accept a “cheap Jesus” that we could manipulate for our own benefit. And he said more in his first ten minutes after his election than I said all year.
For Father’s Day--here celebrated March 19, Feast of St. Joseph--the students at the school performed songs and poems and skits and dances for the dads. Even though Chemo is not at the school anymore, I was invited and gladly accepted. Just like my time at Parkway North, I love to see the kids at their best.
The same day, a new dad, Javier, was desperately trying to save his little baby Brittany’s life, fighting pneumonia at the hospital in Yoro, where an ambulance from Victoria had taken her. (The “ambulance” is a white pick-up, not exactly EMT, don’t you know!) Mommy Yolanny went, too, of course, and just when they thought the tiny child was on the mend, and had actually checked out of the hospital, she fell limp in their arms again on the bus home, and they immediately headed back to Yoro, I don’t even know how. Finally, a couple more days of “intensive care” (these are all very relative terms here in Honduras, in case your image of a hospital is Mercy or St. Luke’s) and Brittany came home, for good, for very good! I snapped a picture, and you never saw a happier little family. The help I could give them made the whole emergency a little easier.
The month ended with a “retreat” last Sunday in the church. Padre Manuel had delegated each portion of the day to a different volunteer, and at first I thought, Oh, boy, this is gonna be a long day. But from the very first word, they exceeded all my expectations. Maybe it helped that, against all odds, I decided I would do my best to stay out of God’s way, discard my doubts, and let my heart empty out. So I was amazed all day, filled to overflowing. The theme of the day was “light” and the blindness that keeps us from appreciating it. Most touching for me was when we dramatized a popular video that maybe you’ve seen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKvvSLC29Ws) where a blind panhandler has his sign--”I’m blind”--changed by a Good Samaritan to, “It’s a beautiful day.” Padre Manuel remembered it a little differently, “La vida es bella“ (“Life is beautiful”), but it’s the same idea, changing a self-pitying message to a prophetic one. But what really got to me was that Don Fausto, the only rich man in town humble enough to, as Martin Luther King put it, “recognize his dependence on God,” played the beggar. He’s such a simple soul, how can I ever thank him for opening MY eyes? I’ll mention it when I give him a copy of the photo....
And do you know you bless me, too, beyond measure! It is ironic that, having slogged and slid through your horrible winter, you see spring greening up everything again (and Go Cards!), while here we are in full summer, the driest, hottest, dustiest time of the year. Our greening comes later in May. But that’s...OK. Oh yes, life is beautiful!
Love, Miguel
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