A Landmine Turned Atomic Bomb

January 15, 2011

Sr. Wantabee and husband have a simple room for their teenage kids, a boy and a girl. To play on the weekend, we expect a decent attempt at school and a decent attempt to keep your bedroom striaght. A respectful please and thanks are always welcome in exchange for the transport we supply. Friday afternoon her son, who had been down with a migraine headache for two days, perked up to do some homework and one load of wash before dancing out to be with “his crew.” He’d be home by 10 pm. The daughter on the other hand, had attended school, had play practice that went late so went via lightrail to her babysitting job, being retreived by her father at 1 am! But, a messy room. When the son returned, he found the garbage removed from his room and some furniture moved around to get to all the trash. Realizing he would be upset, we did not anticipate the atom bomb that exploded. “It is MY space!!!” “I was going to do it!!!!” The daughter is in bed by 2 a.m. and up at 9 a.m. for a concert performance. On the way, Sr. Wantabee pointed out that the room was not straight, she was tired and so going out priviledges were suspended. Another atom bomb exploded. “That is MY room!!” “I plan to clean it!!!” “My friends and I need to spend an evening unwinding together as we have had a VERY stressful week, MOM!!!!” How did these landmines turn into atom bombs?

As I pondered this and Sr. Wantabee realized she had never had her own room after age 2. She had always shared with her sister or a roommate. She was not adopted and did not realize the importance of a designated voice. Likewise she had been raised by a mother who was a stay-at-home mom, spending her life cleaning and cooking while Sr. WAntabee’s job was to do well at school. As a young adult, she was a professional and had roommates who enjoyed nesting and considered Sr. Wantabee inept. In Kenya, she had maids and supervised housework. Now, back in the States, she has her own home for the first time in her life and at ae 64 is trying to be a professional and feels the responsibility for the home. Even though she may not be a good housewife, she knows it is her realm as she seeks to be professional.

Sr. Wantabee’s husband is an only child who never had to compete for space and who was raised in Africa with maids at home and when at school, everyone had one job in the door. He just does not understand the fuss.

The kids, born in Africa, are the real Americans, greatly gifted far beyond the mother of the 50-60s or the father raised in the bush of Africa. They have not shared space since age 7 ie 11 years and as teenagers feel they have inherited bedrooms from their now 28+ siblings and deserve the same respect and total trust at age 15!

The result, a cultural atom bomb as the three cultures in one family collided over, “Pick up your room if you want to go out.” The blessing of diversity and the tension exploded. Relationships are repaired but… where is the next landmine?

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A Forgotten Sheroe, Dorothy Haas

January 14, 2011

Yesterday Sr. Wantabee had lunch and a former boss was there, the chaplain of a retirement center where Sr. Wantabee did part of her internship. One of the residents was a woman over 100 years old. She had outlived almost all known relatives. In her day she was a trend setter, a world wide teacher and advocate for women in ministry, even in the pulpit. She was probably one of the first Christian Ed. leaders. She was one of the greats.

When Sr. Wantabee met, though, she was trapped in a mind with symptoms of Alzheimers, living in a memory care unit. She sat in her chair without the strength to walk. Parts of her mind were gone so that she had gone through a stage of being mean to everyone so could not be predictable in social company. Sr. Wantabee would visit and sometimes just watch her caress a doll. Other times she played with a kleenex. On occassion she would become lucid and launch into a monologue that was very logical, giving Sr. Wantabee a definite treatise on a subject. Most of the time she just was. Her favorite topic was children. She loved to hear, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me…” and would follow the Psalm and it would calm her.

She died and my friend only knew the Home had not handled the funeral and that there was probably no-one alive that particularly knew her. Sr. Wantabee wondered, “Is it possible to live too long?” How odd that people pay thousands of dollars to live just one more day while others outlive their lives. It is good she has gone to a place where she is known, appreciated, and can communicate. Maybe death is not the biggest enemy!

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La Americana

January 13, 2011

Sr. Wantabee’s payin job is working in ESL. She has a “life time California credential” but Minnesota does not recognize two states in the union – California and Texas because they teach weird things like ESL! Duh. She returned to the U of MN at a ripe old age of 58 and got an additional liscensure in ABE, Adult Basic Education, to make her legitimate in teaching. The U of MN accepted her years of teaching bilingually in Kenya and so the Board of Education accepts the U of MN stamp of approval – but only for 5 years. Sr. Wantabee now must earn 125 CEUs (continuing education units) before June 2012 to maintain her liscense. It’s time to get serious. So…

Wednesday she attended a movie discussion group on the movie “La Americana,” led by an immigration lawyer. Sr. Wantabee did not consider herself oh so knowledgeable on the subject so thought she’d check out this 3 CEU credit.

“La America” is about a woman in Bolivia who has a daughter she must provide for and decides to enter the USA illegally and works in cleaning work. After she gets across the border, her daughter is hit by the school bus and ends up in a wheel chair. The mother meets a man who loves her and they send funds to Bolivia for the girl’s medical expenses. What does the daughter want for her 15th birthday but the return of the mother. The mother returns to be reunited with the daughter who she discovers has a fractured hip and a frozen leg that can only be dealt with through high medical expenses. Eat or help the girl. The movie ends with the opening scene of the woman leaving her compound again to try to return to the States again to get the money for the treatment of her daughter. “I wanted to be a good mother but…”

It was a very gripping human tragedy story, highlighting the reality of people living in poor countries. In fact, how many similar stories has Sr. Wantabee heard except that Kenya does not border on the USA. She was deeply touched.

Sr. Wantabee did not consider herself an knowledgeable about immigration and Latinos but in fact, she has a British husband and gone through the whole immigration lawyer process with him loosing his green card and becoming naturalized. She has two adopted Kenya children who also live in the reality that a policeman can stop the card for some reason known to them, ask for ID, look at the face, ask if they were born in the USA and take them to the police station for a whole check.

In the discussion room, Sr. Wantabee sat there, married to a Brit and with two Kenyan children. The teacher to her left is third generation American of Hispanic descent married to a Frenchman. A teacher to Sr. Wantabee’s right has a Costa Rican son-in-law. The presenter is an American married to a Scotsman. We all realized the precariousness of their living situations, in the midst of the paranoia of the “alien” but they are so integrated into our identity.

At age 64 will Sr. Wantabee get those 125 CEUs to prove to “the system” that after teaching for 40 years, she is qualified to continue part time in to retirement? It remains to be seen.

At a deep level, Sr. Wantabee understood “La Americana.” “She too wanted to be a good mother….” “She wants to be a good teacher…” “She wants to …”

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Freedom

January 11, 2011

As I reflect on 2010, one of the highlights was teaching about the origins of the American Thanksgiving tradition. The essay in simple English talked about the flight of the Pilgrims from England, Europe, in search of freedom. I was not convinced my students understood.

A Hmong refugee woman in the front row began to comment. Slowly she began to talk. I remember when I was five years old hiding in the jungles of Laos and eating the leaves off the trees. We were always hungry. We had to walk ten days in the rain to a big river that would carry us to a port and to America.

I asked another young 25ish woman who is married to a 50 year old man. What brought you to America and to marry an older man who is divorced. She easily replied, “How else could I come and live near my mother? A younger man would tire of me and leave me.”

Those immigrants understood the story of Thanksgiving in ways many Americans never even dream about. They work minimal wage jobs and come to evening classes so their children will have a hope and a future.

Last week a young man shot 19? people and a congress woman because ??? Perhaps we have lessons to learn about freedom from the immigrants.

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Memories

December 26, 2010

One of the blessings and problems of Christmas is all the memories – of Christmas past with family and friends that have passed on, of Christmas present without significant people, and Christmas future and it’s vision of what might be by next year. This Christmas, Sr. Wantabee could not help but think of the two little ones, the infant demises, that did not live to see Christmas day and the dashed hopes of their parents. So close and still so far.

The parents were inconsolable. The grief in the hospital room so thick. There were no memories to fall back on, only dashed hopes of twins that would play soccer with their father, of babies to be carried on the mother’s hip, of a life that would not be lived with the parents on earth.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of Christmas is that it provides us with a memory, a memory of a savior who was born into a world about as chaotic as ours. Foreign powers and economic problems. Unfair rules displacing people. Where is a person’s home? In a stable? Into that world the Christ child arrived, seemingly as impotent as we are to resolve the issues of his day.

But memories bring comfort and joy because they somehow give us incidents that we can tie our thoughts into. The Christ child survived the horror of the “slaughter of the innocents.” He too experienced a foreign culture. He too lived with a questionable past. And he grew to adult hood, to Easter.

Sr. Wantabee looks at his story finds hope. Not the happy ever after hope that somehow God will wave a majic wand over our world and correct all the problems and suddenly people will love each other and life will be fair. It is the hope of Emmanuel, God with us, in the midst of struggles. God gave us a memory to carry us into the future, he holds. Thank you!

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Sadness

December 21, 2010

Sr. Wantabee thought she understood sadness until the last two weeks when she has sat with young couples at the death of their unborn babies.

One couple the baby was perfectly formed but infection took her before she met the parents. They held that little baby all day and had a naming ceremony before the body had to be given up. The grief in the room left my chest constricted and coughing.

Yesterday it was a 32 week hope that stopped moving and the C-section was done. The baby did not survive. The parents held the little malformed being to their chest and sobbed.

Both couples were from Africa, as was Sr. Wantbee and a deep connection was made. They talked of their dreams. For the father, he was going to play soccer with his twins. For the mother, she was pondering how to carry them across borders. Smashed dreams for the father and mother. The next couple had experienced several miscarriages early but this one they had so hoped would fulfill their dreams. They were from Kenya and we went to the Lord in Swahili.

I could not help but think of the song stanza, “The hopes and dreams of all the world are met in thee tonight.” there are no words for the sadness of the child who does not see light. Thank God it will not always be so.

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Houston, We Have a Problem!

December 20, 2010

Sunday was Sr. Wantabee’s last 24 hr. on call at the hospital. She had the priviledge of preaching on Matthew 1:18-25, the barebones Christmas text. It’s not the cute Luke text with shepherds and angels and inn keepers but straight to the point.
Matthew starts with the lineage. These are the “good guys” but Mary has to go to Joseph and have the DTR (define the relationship) talk. Or perhaps Joseph went to Mary with his and everyone else’s observations. Mary was pregnant and not by him. Houston, we have a problem!
It’s a common story we can identify with. Not the pregnancy out of wedlock perhaps but the DTR discussion. The doctor comes in and says, we need to talk. The boss invites us into the office for a talk. We open our bank statement and realize there has been identity theft. We get our savings statement and realize our retirement is gone and we will still need to work. Houston we have a problem. It’s not just Joseph and Mary this Christmas time but it is all of us. It is over in Afghanistan but it is also in our homes. Things do not always turn out the way we planned or wanted or dreamed of. Sr. Wantabee met with a couple at the hospital who had to have a C-section. Something was wrong with the 32 week pregnancy. In fact the child, the dream, the hope, the first child died. We are devastated. What to do?

Joseph had three options. He could just have Mary stoned. Anger is always a choice but does it resolve the sense of betrayal? Does it create relationship or destroy it? Problems can be hid in the closet but they will still creep out as the most inconvenient time.
Rather Joseph decided on option two. As a “righteous” man, he decided to dismiss Mary quietly. Denial! As Sr. Wantabee thought about this, she pondered, since when is dismissal in small time America a quiet thing or a kind action. Mary was labeled and would live her life as a prostetute! Denial does not solve a problem but only ignors it. It is not “righteous” but makes a person think he is “righteous.” God does not deny our problems and we continue to scream, “Houston, we have a problem!”

Third option is the angel who whispers in our dreams, “This is of the Lord. Do not be afraid.” God does have a plan for salvation and the name is Jesus. But we want the solution now. We want the happy ever after now. We want things resolved now. We want the job now. We want peace now. We want love now. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want to lean into our plights, trusting that somehow God is working for our good. that’s hard.

Joseph decides to lean into his situation and names the Christ child, “Emmanuel, God with us.” God is with us, not above us, not below us, not pushing us, not pulling us, but walking with us as He works out Salvation.

Which way are you leaning?

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Farewells

September 6, 2010

Saturday, Sr. Wantabee had a mornin cup of coffee with her daughter overlooking “the mighty Mississippi.” She thought both were sad as they tenderly sipped some last moments together and watched the boats float by, dredging up memories. Was she there when….? Did she remember…? In the back of their minds was the realization that Monday morning the daughter would climb on a plane to fly across country to her new job.
“Mother! You make it sound like I’ll never return. It feels like death. I’ll be back in two weeks, having rented an apartment and gotten a feel for my new job and then I’ll take my stuff but really, I’m only a short flight away and I’ll be back. This is not forever!”
How beautiful thought Sr. Wantabee. In the transition experience chart she has taught for years, her daughter is exactly stage appropriate. She remembered back to saying farewell to her mother when she had gone to Africa. “We’ll write, AND I’ll be back in four years. If you need me, I can come!” Denial is the process. The person is not really leaving because they are stil emotionally connected. They are not dying. They are just accepting the adventure. “We’ll meet again soon.”
Sr. Wantabee’s mother did not write for eight weeks. When she did she shared how she had experienced it as a death and had to grieve for awhile. Now, Sr. Wantabee was on the being-left-behind end of the emotions.
Sr. Wantabee had been taught fresh out of college and working for the Probation Dept. that kids in lock-up who are released have three ways of saying goodbye to their friends they are leaving behind. Some pick fights to justify moving on cause they didn’t like those friends anyway. Some sob and cry and take drugs and wallow in the separation. The healthy way is somewhere inbetween where grief is acknowledged, appreciations are said, and blessings are counted as each releases the other to their spot in life.
Sr. Wantabee explained to her daughter that she had just been in a group meeting where one of the younger participants shared that she had left her home to come, realizing that her mother would not approve and knowing that their family did not talk about emotions, by sending her mother an email. The woman had burst into tears and run from the room, sensing her mother’s disapproval. Inwardly, Sr. Wantabee had gasped. That mother had never had a chance to say farewell to her daughter, nor try to talk out their differences!
Sr. Wantabee affirmed her daughter’s stage appropriateness and explained that she too was trying to say those things that we often wait until death to say, to affirm relationship and memories and confidence in the loved one, not because she believed she would never return, but to try and do a healthy farewell on her side, realizing that each day is a gift.
Sr. Wantabee knew the daughter was returning in two weeks, only to leave again, but the leaving was the growth into her future and an express of her talents that Sr. Wantabee believed in. But likewise it is an end to a phase of life for which Sr. Wantabee is deeply appreciative and that appreciation needed to be shared.
How can so much sadness contain so much blessing?

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Tacos

September 2, 2010

Last night Sr. Wantabee was teaching ESL. She had been teaching a unit on food and nutrition to a group of level 2, fairly low level speakers and it was just hard going. The unit is just soooo American. The food pyramid would not work where she came from in Africa where people lived on meat, milk and blood and had never seen a vegetable or fruit. Reading a recipe rather than watch your mom and how she proportioned ingredients seemed strange also. then in the middle of the recipe lesson, the students asked, “What’s that?” A fraction. They had never seen or understood fractions much less 1/2 teaspoon.
Sr. Wantabee decided a hands on recipe was needed and decided to try “microwave tacos”. When she pulled the onion out of her basket, their eyes lit up and they recognized it immediately. They quickly learned “to grate” the cheese. No problem “slicing the watermelon” for desert or “chopping the tomato.” We crowded around a table and ate a bite together. The lesson was a success. But what touched Sr. Wantabee was the comradery and all the young women joining in and helping just as it would have been in Africa. they may have enjoyed the lesson but she enjoyed the memory of a joy gone by.

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Salmon

August 31, 2010

Sr. Wantabee was given a trip to Alaska. It was a dream come true. She left on Friday the 13th from gate F 13. Others felt that was the explanation for the 4 hour wait while the engine was repaired! But a plane load of midwesterns, mostly men with their cold boxes arrived in Anchorage to transfer to points more remote.
Sr. Wantabee had missed her connected little put-put plane so sat in the airport and chatted with a man from Bosnia who had not run from the war, but had run from the death of his mother and hopped boats all over the globe. They shared what is the best part of the goat to eat in different cultures and what is the best part of the fish to eat also. He had eventually settled in LA and married late in life and had two youngsters but had to come North for a couple weeks to fish. He and his friend hopped a their Cesna and Sr. Wantabee marveled that in the middle of the Anchorage airport she had met a man who understood her past and the fun of comparing cultural differences.
Unpon arriving at her destination she was driven on a dirt road to a small fishing town that is alive with tourists in the summer and has an active fish processing plant. She, in fact slept on a fishing boat made into an excursion boat to carry scientists around the area. As she walked down the ramp to the pier area where perhaps a hundred boats were anchored, she gasped. Close to a hundred salmon were swimming in circles like the beginning of a giant funnel. The leader occassionally leaped into the air, right there between the shore and the pier, almost within her reach. At that moment she knew she wanted to fish just as bad as those men on the airlines.
As a young adult Sr. Wantabee had fished for salmon with her cousins off Vancouver Island. The family story goes that her cousin caught a huge 18 pound fish while Sr. Wantabee, with all delight yelled, “It’s a whale!” Sr. Wantabee snagged the next fish which sank to bottom and ran the other way. By the time the boat was turned the truth was evident. The line was not secured to the pole and gone. The big one got away!
Outside this little fishing town, there were streams and salmon filled them, spawning, within 10 yards of her! Sr. Wantabee got a liscense for a day and began her hunt for the elusive “big one.” The fish jumped to the right of the skiff, to the left, in front, behind but her line caught 25 rocks, 3 jelly fish and 5 hand fulls of seaweed.
Sr. Wantabee began to loose spirit and had to self reflect. Why was she sad? Did she think her family woud never believe her tale of so many fish so close? Did she really want to brag to the men at work who fished all the time? Was she trying to catch the one that got away? Or was she trying to catch the past, catch an image, and impress? Certainly she was not hungry!
Yet again the fish got away. Yet again Sr. Wantabee tried to explain to her family the thrills of her youth. Yet again Sr. Wantabee felt like the little old lady at work. But in her heart, she knew the fish was still out there and she had had another adventure trying to catch it!

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