WEATHER OR NOT
When did March get so long? Maybe when it decided to cycle through a whole year’s worth of weather in one month. Just when the dust was as thick as chalk, it rained again; just when it seemed we had been reserved “a special place in hell,” another cold front had us grabbing for our blankets. I slept a whole day!
Chemo is faithful to his classes, in season and out of season. My favorite part is how he gets to and from Santa Cruz every Saturday on his own. I’m learning the hardest lesson of all, not to baby him so much. Of course, I give him enough money to obviate any possible “emergency.” And he looks pretty sharp in his official Maestro en Casa polo shirt.
Chemo’s schedule makes it impossible to get to Honduras-Progreso soccer games, which are always on a weekend day; but when a game was re-scheduled for a Wednesday, we jumped on it. Not real enthusiastically, mind you, since it was an “away” game in San Pedro Sula, against last season’s worst team, which had just suffered a humiliating loss to Olimpia that involved gunplay outside the stadium before the game and fans tossing a head of a pig onto the field. Shows you what life in Honduras is like, everyone assumed it was a HUMAN head at first!
This season, Honduras-Progreso is the worst team, and they proved it by playing to a 0-0 tie. The team pays for a bus to get the fans (a dwindling base) to away games, so we were with most of the family of just about the only player who is still playing up to his potential, Nangui. Despite the “loss,” he was gracious in posing with Chemo once we all got back to Progreso to enjoy baleadas at his wife’s street-corner stand in Progreso.
Since the game was not much, I was checking out the stadium, because I would be back in a week or so for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Delegados de la Palabra, lay men and women who serve as pastors in poor and rural communities. The event was a ‘vigilia,’ a 12-hour vigil, from 5 in the afternoon of Saturday to 5 in the morning of Sunday. Longest night of my life, sitting on the rough cement of the stadium, and no place to stretch out, since the stadium was full to the brim! Also not taking any food or drink from the many vendors, lest I find myself needing a bathroom in the middle of the night. In the distance, I could see lights that by 1 a.m. had all gone out. I did doze off some times here and there, but I tried not to check my watch too often.
And my “Plantar Faciaitis” was killing me! I think I had only ever heard of the ailment in connection with Albert Pujols, but that was the diagnosis of three friends when I complained in last month’s CASA about excruciating pain in my left heel. They recognized it, because they’d had it themselves! Of course, I was just sitting there all night in the stadium, but it felt as if someone had taken my foot and hammered it on the cement every 15 minutes.
And yet. The night turned out to be glorious. Hondurans, to speak culturally, love vigilias. And this one made the long trips from all over the country and the sacrifices that many had made, all worthwhile. The field was decorated beautifully, you’d never think it had hosted a bad soccer game, much less a pig’s head, so recently. The program was planned to the minute, all night long, testimonials and readings and of course tons of songs and music, a big dramatization of sin and redemption with about a hundred teens performing, a launching of dozens of illuminated balloons.
As the final liturgy began about 3 a.m., I awoke from a final, fitful snooze to the sound of an almost transcendental music, rhythmic and repetitive like a Philip Glass piece but actually provided by the drums and winds of members of the Garifuna, originally Africans rounded up for slavery 300 years ago who escaped captivity when their ship sank off the Honduran coast. Like many African-Americans in the United States, the Garifuna became some of the most fervent Christians of anybody. The lateness of the hour and my weakened condition rendered me totally subservient to the hypnotic power of the music and the moment, and I actually thought I was in heaven, even with the gift of tears.
As I found my way out of the stadium afterwards, I hobbled a couple blocks looking for our bus among the hundreds that had come, and there suddenly appeared a Denny’s! “Open 24 Hours,” baby! I crawled in, and ordered every drink I could think of, chocolate milk-shake, orange juice, Coke with free re-fills. And of course, a Grand Slam. I washed up in the bathroom and even shaved. When I left, the buses were still loading.
Back in Las Vegas, another bunch of kids had returned with their parents from coffee-picking, finally ready to start classes. I helped a few more of Chemo’s little cousins with school supplies. They’re on their way, I hope, to a bright future!
I jumped back to Progreso next week just for a night, to catch a performance of one of Teatro La Fragua’s masterpieces, “El Asesinato de Jesus.” I invited along as many of Nangui’s family that wanted to go. Somehow the piece moved me more than ever. Chito, who has played Jesus since they created the work in 1985, seemed to draw deeper than ever from within, to BE Jesus. You totally forget he’s almost twice Jesus’ age by now!
And then, Holy Week. I guess it’s fitting that we just celebrated the Delegados de la Palabra, because this year we were pretty much on our own, our priest Padre Chepito overwhelmed with his duties in Victoria. So it was “poor,” but you might say Pope-Francis-poor, simple, humble, unadorned, just us and Jesus! Well, you know, at least four of our delegados—Godo, Chepe, Julio, Popo—have served about 45 of those 50 years we just celebrated. And a new element lent a freshness and spirit to the services: we have acolytes! In my day, we were just called “servers,” but this little group of four girls and a boy received literally months of training and preparation, and then they were “invested” about a month ago with their special albs and sashes.
“He is risen!” “He is risen indeed!” is a happy Easter greeting among Christians. And I got a very special version of it myself when I returned from San Pedro and Chemo’s relatives greeted me with, “Chato’s in the Grupo!” Meaning, Chato, 30, married father of three, the last drunk among Chemo’s Las Vegas relatives, a seemingly hopeless case, had joined our local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. I turned to Chato, who was standing right there, grinning from ear to ear. “Is it true?” “Oh, yes!” and he raised his arms like Superman, or maybe like Batman. A few days later, when I shared a little biblical meditation with the Group, Chato participated with his own comments as if he’d been there all along—which is exactly the “ethos” of AA, everybody’s equal.
I’ve had a little resurrection of my own; since I have followed the careful instructions of my Plantar Faciaitis friends, my condition is much improved! The pain is still sharp sometimes, but now it mostly just feels numb. Thank you, indeed!
Love, Miguel
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