On Sunday morning, my plan is to go to work at the orphanage and then head to a clown show being held at the parish. (A day of festivity sponsored by a political party who emblazons toys with their stickers--in Mexico there is not much separation of church and state.)
It occurs to me that small children and clowns are things that should be combined so before leaving around eleven, I ask Sister for permission to take Carolina (An autistic 5 year-old who rarely gets to leave the house) to the show.
``What time will you be back?`` Sister asks.
``Whenever you want. I was thinking around one.``
``No, not one.``
``Okay, maybe twelve.``
``No, not twelve.... You can bring her back at three. Three is good.`` (The convent is closed to visitors between 12 and 3.)
This is more of a commitment than I was planning on, but if it is the only way to spring her, I`m game. I gather up spare diapers and clothing and we take off.
When we arrive at the parish, clowns are dancing on a stage that has been set up and the yard is full of spectators and food and toy vendors. We sit with Isaac and Lisa, and for a while Isaac keeps Carolina entertained with his keys.
But she gets bored and we go near the stage where she is attracted by the colorful, glittery costumes of the clowns. She reaches out to them and is passed around by several clowns until she ends up on stage. They all dance while I hover nervously nearby answering questions about her. The head clown announces, ``we`re going to give Carolina some gifts but let her mother hold on to them now now,`` and she hands me a board game and rubber ball.
Since I now have a maternal image to uphold, I head onto stage with the group because Carolina is prone to sporadically squirming away from people or having tantrums. A clown tells me to dance along, and although both public performing and dancing are two things I would be happy never doing, I clap to the music until Carolina returns to me and we head off the stage.
We wander around the yard, with Carolina grabbing at toys she likes, lunging into the arms of grown-ups who look appealing, and taking food and candy from the bags of strangers. Like me, Carolina is on the pale side and since many people are unfamiliar with the symptoms of autism, she comes across as a misbehaved child. Thus I come across as a bad mother.
So it goes. We take a walk to my house where I give Carolina a snack. Melissa laughs at my mistaken identity stories and watches Carolina when I go upstairs to change my clothes.
``Mama,`` Carolina says and Melissa calls ``she`s asking for you.``
We head back to the parish and settle in for Mass. I have Carolina on my lap and she busies herself by going through a People magazine that she snagged from the house. She literally tears through it by ripping out pages as she looks at it. Though I`d prefer to just leave the discards on the floor until the end of Mass, helpful seatmates keep picking up the pages and handing them to me. The service basically goes okay, though I have to shush Carolina often, let her stand up on my lap to see things, and clutch her hand to prevent her from wandering the through aisles. Several times, an older lady looks at her and points to the door but I keep Carolina at bay until Communion.
There are a few moments in Mass when Carolina is quiet with her head rested against me and everything feels peaceful. My mother used to tell me that I was born in the wrong era and that I should have been a 60`s flower child or activist. However, being in church with Carolina makes me think that maybe I should have been born 100 years earlier, when all that would have been expected of me is that I take care of babies and go to service every Sunday, because watching over Carolina gives me a sense of purpose and happiness.
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Dreams of homemaking aside, I am very excited that I`ll be entering graduate school at Catholic University this August in order to study social work. Some of the things that appeal to me about the school are that I want to learn more about Catholic social justice teaching and that the university is located in a poorer area of Washington, DC that I hope to contribute to.
I show Padre my application materials when we are sitting around the parish table one night. He reads through them, picking out parts that he can understand.
``This $200,`` he says. ``Is that a one-time fee or will you have to pay it every semester?``
``No Padre, that`s just the entrance fee,`` I tell him. He is quite taken aback when I give him a ballpark estimate of how much it will cost every semester but he recovers in order to make me feel better.
``So you`ll have loans,`` he says. ``You`ll be able to pay that back easily. We``ll take up a collection outside the parish with a sign saying Saint Caro pray for us.``
He laughs, ``maybe we would get a $1,000.`` He says that the Iberio, a private university up the street, is much more expensive, though I have doubts about this.
His surprise over the price speaks to something I have been pondering: is it necessary to spend thousands of dollars on education when what I mostly want to do is give love and acceptance to others?
This is something I thought about a few months ago after a frustrating afternoon of calling universities and checking up on my school and loan application statuses. When I arrived at work, the older girls were already in bed, but many squealed with happiness when I entered. I realized that it really wouldn`t matter where I went to school, as long as I stay focused on helping the needy and keeping my heart with them.
Nevertheless, there have been many times here that I have felt that I could do more with further education and thus I look forward to entering school. I also realize that social work is a field that can feel draining, so I look forward to learning coping techniques and to the opportunity for mobility that a graduate degree will give me.
As for paying for tuition--there`s got to be a clown show somewhere in DC looking for backup dancers.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Chalma
I`ll never turn down an invitation is what the gist of this blog has been of late, and in this spirit, I agree to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday, don a crown of flowers and dance in front of a statue in a valley.
It sounds rather pagan, but all of these acts are part of the experience of making a pilgrimage to Chalma, a town in Malinalco, Mexico State where an image of Christ miraculously appeared in the 1600s. A popular religious site, many people take this trip walking (which can take hours or days depending on the starting point.) However, upon hearing that Gallo is going up with a busload of parishioners from his old parish, I decide to tag along.
At 6 in the morning, Gallo, Martha and Martha`s brother and mother (Arturo and Martha) and I take a taxi ride to the nearby pueblo of Jalapa and meet up with the rest of the participants. Jalapa is where Padre Salvador served as a priest for ten years prior to Santa Fe and the place where he and Gallo met. (Gallo still has a house in Jalapa but lives on parish grounds in Santa Fe helping with carpentry, cooking and shaman-like curing.)
We drive a few hours out city of the city to Agua de Vida, which is a prelude Chalma. Like others making their first pilgrimage there, I put on a corona of flowers and dance to salsa music in front of a small chapel. (Apparently the dancing is said to cleanse sins.) Gallo takes delight in spinning the Marthas and I out onto the dance floor. I share an awkward dance with Arturo--as he is a 17 year-old boy and I am an American who doesn`t like dancing, we both sort of stumble through the steps. From their we dunk our heads beneath pipes that pour out into a river. (I take it this water is sacred as plastic buckets are sold in order to collect it and bring it home.)
After a breakfast of tacos and broth (though I opt for fruit,) we pile back onto the bus and drive for less than an hour into Chalma. We go through a huge, long marketplace where sweets, food, sandals and religious relics are sold. Like the Shrine of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, it is very much catered toward tourists. (Tourists who aren`t too concerned about food safety as bees swarm over the candy and buckets of caramel sauce for sale.)
After walking through the market (on foot, although many make this part of the trek on their knees,) we arrive in front of the church where we wait outside for a while with the Chalmito Christ that parishioners have taken along from Jalapa. It is Christ represented as a carpenter, apparently because the Chalma Christ is supposed to be the working man`s Christ. The current priest who serves in Jalapa says Mass. Both outside and in the parish, pilgrims are sprawled about in various states of rest, exhausted from their voyages.
After Mass, we go to a river in front of the church. Though I brought along a bathing suit for this occasion, I am not sure of the Mexican etiquette for swimming in front of a parish as everyone else is dressed in shorts and t-shirts. (I have seen people dressed in this garb to swim before, but in this case I don`t know if people aren`t wearing bathing suits because they don`t have them or because it`s considered inappropriate to wear them on religious.) I opt to wear shorts over my bathing suit. Though I think the river is intended to be cleansing, ironically it smells a bit like sewage and I notice bugs stuck to me after getting out. Still, the icy cold water feels good after a hot morning in the sun.
From there we head to the marketplace to buy lunch supplies and we are surrounded by vendors trying to force samples of pork skin, cheese, pulque, and tortillas on us. Gallo lives up to his nickname of the Rooster by immediately agreeing to buy from the prettiest, young girls and insisting on buying me several bags of vegetarian products. We settle by at a table in the sun and have tacos and beer and listen to mariachi and other band players. Before heading out, we look at a wall of thanks for miracles granted by the Chalma Christ and the Marthas do some market shopping. Though the bus is scheduled to take off at five, it doesn`t leave until 6:30. In the meantime, I make small talk while waiting for everyone else to arrive. Like everyone else on the bus, I fall asleep soon after take-off and pretty much stay that way until arriving back in Santa Fe around 10. What adventure awaits me next?--only the Christ of Chalma knows.
It sounds rather pagan, but all of these acts are part of the experience of making a pilgrimage to Chalma, a town in Malinalco, Mexico State where an image of Christ miraculously appeared in the 1600s. A popular religious site, many people take this trip walking (which can take hours or days depending on the starting point.) However, upon hearing that Gallo is going up with a busload of parishioners from his old parish, I decide to tag along.
At 6 in the morning, Gallo, Martha and Martha`s brother and mother (Arturo and Martha) and I take a taxi ride to the nearby pueblo of Jalapa and meet up with the rest of the participants. Jalapa is where Padre Salvador served as a priest for ten years prior to Santa Fe and the place where he and Gallo met. (Gallo still has a house in Jalapa but lives on parish grounds in Santa Fe helping with carpentry, cooking and shaman-like curing.)
We drive a few hours out city of the city to Agua de Vida, which is a prelude Chalma. Like others making their first pilgrimage there, I put on a corona of flowers and dance to salsa music in front of a small chapel. (Apparently the dancing is said to cleanse sins.) Gallo takes delight in spinning the Marthas and I out onto the dance floor. I share an awkward dance with Arturo--as he is a 17 year-old boy and I am an American who doesn`t like dancing, we both sort of stumble through the steps. From their we dunk our heads beneath pipes that pour out into a river. (I take it this water is sacred as plastic buckets are sold in order to collect it and bring it home.)
After a breakfast of tacos and broth (though I opt for fruit,) we pile back onto the bus and drive for less than an hour into Chalma. We go through a huge, long marketplace where sweets, food, sandals and religious relics are sold. Like the Shrine of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, it is very much catered toward tourists. (Tourists who aren`t too concerned about food safety as bees swarm over the candy and buckets of caramel sauce for sale.)
After walking through the market (on foot, although many make this part of the trek on their knees,) we arrive in front of the church where we wait outside for a while with the Chalmito Christ that parishioners have taken along from Jalapa. It is Christ represented as a carpenter, apparently because the Chalma Christ is supposed to be the working man`s Christ. The current priest who serves in Jalapa says Mass. Both outside and in the parish, pilgrims are sprawled about in various states of rest, exhausted from their voyages.
After Mass, we go to a river in front of the church. Though I brought along a bathing suit for this occasion, I am not sure of the Mexican etiquette for swimming in front of a parish as everyone else is dressed in shorts and t-shirts. (I have seen people dressed in this garb to swim before, but in this case I don`t know if people aren`t wearing bathing suits because they don`t have them or because it`s considered inappropriate to wear them on religious.) I opt to wear shorts over my bathing suit. Though I think the river is intended to be cleansing, ironically it smells a bit like sewage and I notice bugs stuck to me after getting out. Still, the icy cold water feels good after a hot morning in the sun.
From there we head to the marketplace to buy lunch supplies and we are surrounded by vendors trying to force samples of pork skin, cheese, pulque, and tortillas on us. Gallo lives up to his nickname of the Rooster by immediately agreeing to buy from the prettiest, young girls and insisting on buying me several bags of vegetarian products. We settle by at a table in the sun and have tacos and beer and listen to mariachi and other band players. Before heading out, we look at a wall of thanks for miracles granted by the Chalma Christ and the Marthas do some market shopping. Though the bus is scheduled to take off at five, it doesn`t leave until 6:30. In the meantime, I make small talk while waiting for everyone else to arrive. Like everyone else on the bus, I fall asleep soon after take-off and pretty much stay that way until arriving back in Santa Fe around 10. What adventure awaits me next?--only the Christ of Chalma knows.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Treating and Trying
I don´t really get along with the women who work in the orphanage of the house of the Missionaries of Charity. I don´t agree with some of their actions toward the children and and they still view me as an outsider who can´t speak the language. Generally when I try to talk to them, they don´t bother with understanding me and they won´t take the time to listen to me stumble through Spanish. As is their relationship with most visitors, we don´t talk much.
On Wednesday afternoon, one employee, Senora Anna, asks me to stay past visiting hours until the night worker arrives, so that she can leave. I agree, particularly because I am hesitant to put down a child who won´t stop crying. (Marcos, a 3-year old boy born a drug addict, whose body is so stiff is so stiff that it is hard for anyone to move his limbs.)
Several of the older children had been shut in a bedroom with the door locked and after Senora Anna leaves, I unlock the door and try to attend to crying babies. Within minutes, the girls take a bag of hard candy and containers of icing from the kitchen and begin devouring them. As they had already placed mattresses and bedsheets onto the floor, the food wrappers add to the clutter of the rooms. I worry about the girls choking on candy but am too involved with others to take the sweets away. After I lug Vicky to the bathroom to change her diaper, one of the nuns enters and is angry that the girls are out and the rooms are messy.
Everything seems overwhelming and I control what I can--I take half-eaten candy from the girls, pick up trash off the floor, and I rearrange blankets and beds. While washing dishes, I try to block out the kids who are crying and I am realize that I am doing exactly the orphanage workers do that bothers me: putting chores over giving attention to the children.
Yet, messiness adds to a feeling of unease, and housework is something that can be completed while suffering is ceaseless. My focus on tasks over children may be wrong but the feelings that drive me to it gives me more understanding and empathy for the women who work at the orphanage. They have a hard job that they were n´t trained for and that they get little credit for doing.
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A change to unwind comes at night during an impromptu party for Padre´s 20th anniversary as a priest. When I ask Padre if the last 20 years have been as he expected, he replies that he has learned a little bit more about how to treat people better. He wasn´t expecting to have so many parties or dinners or be with people so much, but he has learned that the most important thing is how you treat people and that you are with them.
¨When you go to heaven´s door, St. Peter will ask you how much time you spent with people. And if you were busy with other things, he´ll say, ´then what were you there for?´´ Padre says.
Theoretically, I love Padre´s words because my life is about striving to be there for and with people . While this is still challenging and frustrating, I have gotten better at being there for people who are disenfranchised and destitute. However, his words point to a different actions--how do you offer love and acceptance toward people if if you don´t agree with their actions and if they don´t respect you?
During our community spiritual night, I offer a prayer intention for the orphanage employees. The next day, I make small talk with Senora Anna and ask what can be done about Marcos´ crying and she holds and him rubs his back in a manner that quells his tears. Later on, she sits on the mat and tickles and teases a group of children while they jump on her back. It is one of the only times that I have ever seen her play with the kids. This moment tells me to try to understand others better no matter who they are and what my past experiences with them have been.
On Wednesday afternoon, one employee, Senora Anna, asks me to stay past visiting hours until the night worker arrives, so that she can leave. I agree, particularly because I am hesitant to put down a child who won´t stop crying. (Marcos, a 3-year old boy born a drug addict, whose body is so stiff is so stiff that it is hard for anyone to move his limbs.)
Several of the older children had been shut in a bedroom with the door locked and after Senora Anna leaves, I unlock the door and try to attend to crying babies. Within minutes, the girls take a bag of hard candy and containers of icing from the kitchen and begin devouring them. As they had already placed mattresses and bedsheets onto the floor, the food wrappers add to the clutter of the rooms. I worry about the girls choking on candy but am too involved with others to take the sweets away. After I lug Vicky to the bathroom to change her diaper, one of the nuns enters and is angry that the girls are out and the rooms are messy.
Everything seems overwhelming and I control what I can--I take half-eaten candy from the girls, pick up trash off the floor, and I rearrange blankets and beds. While washing dishes, I try to block out the kids who are crying and I am realize that I am doing exactly the orphanage workers do that bothers me: putting chores over giving attention to the children.
Yet, messiness adds to a feeling of unease, and housework is something that can be completed while suffering is ceaseless. My focus on tasks over children may be wrong but the feelings that drive me to it gives me more understanding and empathy for the women who work at the orphanage. They have a hard job that they were n´t trained for and that they get little credit for doing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A change to unwind comes at night during an impromptu party for Padre´s 20th anniversary as a priest. When I ask Padre if the last 20 years have been as he expected, he replies that he has learned a little bit more about how to treat people better. He wasn´t expecting to have so many parties or dinners or be with people so much, but he has learned that the most important thing is how you treat people and that you are with them.
¨When you go to heaven´s door, St. Peter will ask you how much time you spent with people. And if you were busy with other things, he´ll say, ´then what were you there for?´´ Padre says.
Theoretically, I love Padre´s words because my life is about striving to be there for and with people . While this is still challenging and frustrating, I have gotten better at being there for people who are disenfranchised and destitute. However, his words point to a different actions--how do you offer love and acceptance toward people if if you don´t agree with their actions and if they don´t respect you?
During our community spiritual night, I offer a prayer intention for the orphanage employees. The next day, I make small talk with Senora Anna and ask what can be done about Marcos´ crying and she holds and him rubs his back in a manner that quells his tears. Later on, she sits on the mat and tickles and teases a group of children while they jump on her back. It is one of the only times that I have ever seen her play with the kids. This moment tells me to try to understand others better no matter who they are and what my past experiences with them have been.
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