A MONTH OF SUNDAYS
I just made reservations for St. Louis, September 17 to October 15, 2014. See you!!
Time to thank more of you, even more gratefully if that’s possible, for donations that you will find laced throughout this report. If anyone else “has my back,” I can do still more good things.
The rains came early this year, April 30 to be exact, after several days of some weak rumbles in the sky, a mammoth storm burst forth with the pent-up fury of a six-month wait. A “hurricane” we call it. The next day, May 1, the same thing at the same time, 3:30 p.m., just a little less scary. The next day, the weather had reached its balance, a nice, long, soaking rain, calling the campesinos to start their planting. Virtually overnight, everything greened up, and we could see our mountain again La Peña, shrouded in the dry season by a heavy haze of dust and smoke.
Chemo and I went “into the fields,” too, you might say. We went to Morazan, to see how we could help Maria in her recovery from the surgery I mentioned at the tail end of last month’s CASA. I just wanted to spend a couple days, just enough to help with expenses and some yard work or whatever. I didn’t want us to be a bother, you know. Well, Maria and Fermin’s kids were already on the job, Eduard, 20, now teaching sixth graders, Esly, 17, about to graduate 9th grade, and Arlin, 26, principal at a little school just outside of Morazan, living apart with her own family (husband and baby boy)--they all pitched in. I did clean up some dead banana branches and such and other trash, and I gave Maria money to pay the “trabajadora” Cristina for a month, and with the grandkids, Gladis and Michelle, we followed Maria’s shopping list at the Supermercado on the main street, where I paid the tab.
But we kept extending our visit, when Fermin invited us to a song festival at his grade school, and another festival at his high school, plus yet another festival for Mother’s Day. I had to sort of pry it out of him, but in fact he had organized all three of the events. So we couldn’t say no!
Let me tell you what I told Fermin and Maria. Last year, Fermin was very sick, almost to the point of death, and I knew nothing about it. Somehow I had dropped communication, and I felt terrible when I eventually found out what had been going on. So I said, “I’m not going to make the same mistake twice!” Thus, Project Maria. We’d be helping as long as it took.
The festivals were a lot of fun, and, in Fermin’s hands, practically professional. It was raining pretty hard for the first one, so they set up a tent to try to cover the performers, and stationed students at each corner to keep it from flying away in the wind. Finally, one kid, Jose Luis, an 8th grader, realized the rain had stopped, so he sauntered out among the crowd, just as casual as Sinatra, singing his ballad and timing it perfectly to end right back at the tent. Did I mention this was a competition? Over Fermin’s objections, I should add, because while Jose Luis was the obvious winner, he didn’t even place; the principal’s earnest but, shall we say, talent-challenged daughter got the prize.
The next festival featured Fermin’s own adaptation of “Don Quijote,” and the major success here was the ease with which he had rehearsed the teens to lose their self-consciousness and enjoy the nonsense, as Sancho Panza wooed a wind-aided (some balloons in her bosom) Dulcinea for his master the Don.
The Mother’s Day program had Fermin’s daughter Esly as the M.C. Already an experienced host from her time at the local radio station, she was better than the little band the principal had hired, which kept interrupting at just the wrong moments.
One afternoon, while Maria was resting, Miguel (my namesake!) talked his cousin Gladis, both 11, into trying the moto-cross run laid out for the upcoming fair--on their bikes! Gladis, who is a little clumsy anyway--slightly pigeon-toed, awkward--went tumbling off her bike end-over-end at full speed downhill, scraping and gouging knees, shoulders, elbows, her back, her front, and chin like she’d spent 10 minutes in a cement mixer. Somehow she escaped with her teeth and head intact, no broken bones. (Not like 13-year-old Jairo here in Las Vegas who landed smack on his face off his bike; he needed 16 stitches INSIDE HIS MOUTH!) Just cleaning Gladis up sent screams into the air, while Miguel observed nervously from a distance. I could not even think about taking a photo, not even for “historical” purposes. Fermin remained calm when he got home, probably for Maria’s sake: “Son, you have to take care of Gladis, not get her hurt.”
Back in Las Vegas, Chemo passed a test for Maestro en Casa, I helped a stricken gentleman Isaias get to the doctor when was sure he was having a heart attack, we celebrated a feast of the Virgin Mary under her Islamic title Our Lady of Fatima, I had another vomiting fit (you know, I thought the mayonnaise tasted funny I was making the tuna salad with, but, in my 66 years that is my accumulated knowledge: if the mayo tastes funny, eat it anyway!). Tragic was the miscarriage of my neighbors Angela and Manuel’s baby in the seventh month, the son “Manuelito” they had longed for to join their 3 daughters. Elvis made a tiny casket for the tiny grave that a friend had dug, and I, at a loss for anything helpful to say or do, slipped them some cash to help pay for the rolls and coffee at the “funeral.”
Then Chemo and I headed back to Morazan.
Again intending just a “touch-up,” we got caught up this time in the annual feast and fair that was now underway, honoring the Virgin Mary under yet another title, Maria Nuestra Senora de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Helpless), a celebration inherited from Spain. Maybe the timing was not coincidental, because our Maria made her first outing since the operation, to the Super Market, my wallet at the ready, the little girls (Gladis has improved remarkably already from her wounds) happily pushing the cart and tossing in the Honduran version of Hostess’ chocolate cupcakes and other goodies; and then we celebrated Maria’s recovery in general, piling everyone into Fermin’s pick-up for a trip to El Progreso and Pizza Hut.
Las Vegas’ own annual feast of the Holy Cross was celebrated May 1-5. We dedicated a 20-foot steel cross, complete with lights, that Mauricio (“Picho” to his friends) had made, a work of art, you might say, our version of the Gateway Arch. (Or is it too HOLLYWOOD?) And there’s a new shrine to Mary, a grotto carved into the side of the hill. Title: Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, patron of the Legion of Mary, the most active group here for good works.
Everybody’s favorite non-religious activity for the fair is the “cintas,” or ribbons, riding a pony at full gallop and plucking a tiny ring off a wire, with a ball-point pen! The one with the most ribbons wins, though I can hardly imagine ever even getting one.
Now, please don’t laugh too hard at us Catholics that we seemingly can’t walk two steps without grabbing for Mary’s hand. She’s Jesus’ mother, so it all comes down to that. Her brave and peasant story is re-played here in the poor on a daily basis.
For example, Santos, 43, mother of 12, from Nueva Palmira (think: poverty, squared). I was hoping this CASA would be Sunday every day (and it still will have two happy endings!), until Santos’ first-born, Juan Carlos, 26, was shot in Lajas, a distant destination for people looking for work, coffee picking in the winter, farmwork in the spring. First word was, Juan Carlos is dead, then that changed to “inconsiente” on life-support, at the hospital in Comayagua, four hours from Lajas.
Santos’ blessed smile graces the cover with three of her children of my photobook “Recuerdos” from a couple years ago, but when I hurried to Nueva Palmira, a short hike from Las Vegas, her face was gutted with grief and fear.
Fortunately, Santos has a sister, Olga, in Comayagua who could check on Juan Carlos herself. Imagine my astonishment when I called her and she handed the phone to him! Turns out his boss had recently murdered his own wife for “fooling around,” and her family was out for revenge. Juan Carlos got caught in the crossfire, a single bullet lodging right below his left collarbone. So he was alive, but a full recovery would take months.
Santos, of course, was frantic to be by his side; she did not know the area, so another sister, Bernarda, familiar with it all, would accompany her. I gave them all the cash I had on hand, 3000 Lempiras (about $150); the last thing anyone needs is to run short in the “wild west” of Honduras!
Since he can’t work now, Juan Carlos and his wife and two kids won’t be able to stay in the “apartment” his boss provided for them on the farm (and the badly wounded boss might die anyway), so they’ll return to Nueva Palmira, where Juan Carlos has been sending money for a while now to build his a little house, mostly the work of his father Digno, even though he only has one hand. I saw it! It’s shaping up nicely, but how will they finish it now? They married at age 15, and I swore (and swore at them!) that it would never last, and yet there they were, responsibly planning their future--till a stray bullet threatens to take it all away. But he’s alive, and I’m counting that as a happy ending....
But now I had to scramble, for the “emergency” that I was actually saving the money for, namely, the birth of Marcos and Dania’s baby, Chemo’s cousins, due May 27. When the baby did not come, and Dania’s hands and feet swelled alarmingly, this was a sign of trouble. At the tiny Maternity Ward in Victoria, they are unprepared for any “problem” pregnancy, so they sent Dania and her mother-in-law Natalia off to the Yoro Hospital, three hours away.
I thought the baby had died, and I was telling people so, till Marcos called me up in tears: “Miguel! What happened to my baby?” I fumbled around and Chemo and I ran over to the house about 10:00 at night; by then, Marcos had managed to talk to Dania. The baby was not “lost”; he just hadn’t been born yet. So Marcos and I went up to Yoro the next day on the earliest bus we could get. Well, I HAD to go, I had to get to an ATM, to throw the bucket down the well once more, see what I could dredge up. Soon after we got there, the doctor said we can’t wait any longer, has to be Caesarian. Ouch! Then the electricity went off, in the whole town. The only part of the hospital that has a back-up generator is the operating room, but who knew when they’d get to Dania? In this World, you’re always Third.
But I slipped off for no more than a half hour, to the ATM, and when I got back, Marcos greets me, “He’s here!” That fast? Yes! And we fell into each other’s arms, crying; someone says, “Oh my God, did your baby DIE?” “NO! We’re happy! these are tears of joy!”
But like Juan Carlos, Dania is in for a long recovery. Natalia was telling me how all her children were born right in the house, up in the mountains in those days; she’d cut the umbilical cord herself with a pair of sewing shears. But she made the perfect nurse for Dania, at her side 24/7 for four days, and Marcos, too. They’re naming the baby for his grandfather, Elio, Natalia’s husband. “Now we’ll have a big one and a little one,” she says. So that’s a happy ending, OK? Or maybe a happy beginning, because now the hard part starts: the rest of his life.
Another happy ending, you can see for yourself. I just talked to my sister Barb, whose house burned up a week before Christmas. She’s been slowly getting things back together, and when I told her the dates I’ll be in town (September 17-October 15), she bursts out, “Great! We’ll have the Open House right here!” Bring a snack, and some wallpaper.
The whole month of May is the Month of Mary, featuring the tradition of children bringing flowers in her honor every day up to the church. We sing a song so old, Mary may have sung it to Jesus; I’m sure the kids don’t understand some of the words, but let me try to translate one verse:
Jamás tu amor consienta Your love never will allow
Que en este triste mundo That in this sad old world
Fiero cual mar profundo The fierce waves to overwhelm us
Sufran algún revés. And we be lost.
You are my “bucket list”! Thank you for keeping me afloat!
Love, Miguel
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