My Inner Guadalupe Is Getting to Work

This is to let subscribers to this Welcome to Virgin Territory blog know what I’m doing. Or at least as I’m trying to figure it out, I thought I’d let you in on my process.  A new blog of mine, “Clothed With the Sun, Feet on the Ground,” is where I’m starting to get back to doing what I used to be pretty good at — before I turned into a reactionary, screaming angry harridan who internalized all those feelings, moved to Mexico, got embroiled with countless health issues and almost checked out. What I was pretty good at back before I got sidetracked by all that was finding a spiritual perspective on daily life.

Although the recent craziness in the U.S. capital has nudged me back toward the angry harridan position, I am refusing to go. I insist, dang it, that I will draw on those Inner Guadalupe virgin qualities, take refuge in virginity — innate wholeness, sanity, and steadfast presence of Mind. (OK, I’m repeating this to myself, reminding myself. It’s a constant process.) My true treasure — my ability to love life and live love — remains pure and intact. No one in Washington can touch that.

I’m not quite up to loving my fellow beings on the political scene. Maybe because I’m still American and they’re like, well, family. You expect a lot more from your family, and it hurts more when they hurt you.

I’m reminded of a story I heard as a jail chaplain. Two inmates shared a cell. Each felt they were in jail because of betrayal and false charges by someone close to them, one by an employer, the other by a brother-in-law. After “getting religion” they each knew that love and forgiveness were key elements toward winning their freedom — freedom on so many levels. But each felt incapable of loving or forgiving the person close to them.

“So, why don’t I take on sending love and light to your brother-in-law, and you send love and light to my @#$%* boss?” one asked the other one day.

“Agreed,” came the reply. “I don’t know your @#$% boss, but he can’t be as bad as my @#$%. brother-in-law. I’ll be happy to send him love and light.” So they did. And it wasn’t long before both the @#$%s had rethought their stories and all charges were dropped against the two cellmates.

I’m wondering if that can’t work on an international level. Maybe I should ask my Canadian friends to send a little love and light to our U.S. Congress and President. I, in the meantime, will take on the drug violence in Mexico. And that’s where “Clothed with the Sun, Feet on the Ground” is headed. I’m making that blog a frequent practice in sending love and light to that particular situation. I invite you to join me there, and on the corresponding Facebook page put up by my friend Chris Raymond, Corazon a Corazon – A Spiritual Defense of Mexico. That’s an open page, which means if you have a little love and light to lend you can post it yourself. Heart to heart, we’ll get through all this.

* Did you catch the * after the @#$%? I decided to use @#$% because all profanity is either sexist, racist, unintelligible or unimaginative.  This way you can create your own.

‘Round Yon Virgin — A Time Warp

I’m writing this piece under the solemn gaze of a four-year-old girl who is waiting to show me the killer dance moves she has learned from watching Shakira. “Espérate,” I tell Valeria. Wait a while. Like about eleven more years, please.

Quincianeras are celebrated in Mexico when a young girl reaches fifteen years old. They mark an official passage into womanhood. For one day of her life she changes costumes more times than Cher, gets the kind of attention Miley Cyrus takes for granted, and her parents hire a band to play sentimental songs like “Turnaround” from the Kodak commercial.  Larry and I were invited to a big quincianera this past weekend.

I think we scored tickets because the proud papa at first considered staging it in our RV park. There have been parties there before because it’s pretty, paved, and has plenty of bathrooms and electrical outlets. It’s also private and easily secured, a major consideration these days when Mexicans throw a big party. It was available because with travel advisories against driving in Mexico, we’re not getting a whole lot of business.

But Papa’s guest list grew and grew, and our little RV park was not big enough for a sit-down dinner for five hundred, a VIP lounge area, a dance floor and a twelve-piece band from Guadalajara. Papa eventually rented Hacienda La Peñita, a square city block studded with towering palms, and enclosed by high stonewalls. It’s dreamy beautiful, but in the whole place there is only one outside electric outlet and not one easily accessible bathroom. No problema.  There’s not a lot you can’t accomplish in Mexico if you’ve got pesos. Papa hired a semi-truck with fancy built-in restrooms, and a substantial “gratuity” insured a direct hook-up to a nearby power pole. Within hours the Hacienda was transformed.

The invitation said a partir de las ocho. “If it begins at eight o’clock,” I thought,” leaving at nine will make us fashionably on time — according to Latin standards.” I am married to a man whose lights go dim before the evening news, so leaving for a party around nine in the evening was a major challenge for him, let alone putting on a tie. But just after nine, we approached the Hacienda slowly, very slowly, cruising for a parking place, subjecting our open, honest faces to the scrutiny of armed guards who were posted on all four sides of the party place. Papa greeted us, seemed overjoyed that we’d come, and led us to a table with the four other gringos in attendance. We were obviously early.

We also thought we’d scrubbed up pretty well, but we didn’t hold a candle to the glamour that surrounded us.  My Mexican neighbor had counseled me about quincianera protocol. She told me to expect elegance — una noche de largas mantelas – literally, a night of long tablecloths. Party after party of the most beautiful and stylish people gradually populated the tables around us. Languidly, guests staked claim to white-shrouded tables —  and stayed there.  Maybe it’s just hard to mingle on a soft lawn when you’re wearing four-inch heels. It was honored-daughter, with her attendant court of young men and women, who promenaded from table to table, greeting guests, allowing plenty of time to take in the details of each others’ dress. The young men were seamless in their manners, their partners accepting their attentions with a grace engrained since kindergarten.

There were also lots of waiters, bearing lots of wine, lots of tequila, and eventually – wait for it, because we did — dinner rolls. I’d fed us a little something before going, but the combination of soft dinner music and growing hunger pangs were putting a glaze in Larry’s eyes.  Soup was finally served about ten thirty, cream of corn with a hint of curry, but Larry gave up around eleven and took a cab home. The entrees arrived about twenty minutes later, a variety of coconut shrimp, filet mignon, and garlic-laced dorado with side salads of baby lettuces and blackberries. Just before midnight, an MC took the stage and announced that honored daughter had una sorpresita for us – a little surprise. Serve Larry right for leaving early. Not only did he miss the meal. He missed her belly dance, complete with appropriate drapery.

It was after midnight before the live band struck up with Latin rhythms that finally pried guests away from the long tablecloths and out onto the dance floor. There were trumpets, drums, choreography and vocals that rocked the neighborhood. The teen-age queen had yet another costume change, and when I left just before one, the lively part of the evening was just getting started.

Are the rhythms of Mexican life really that much different than those of their northern neighbors? Concerning party times, manners, and table service, yep, they are. But some things move at the same pace north or south of the border – like waiting forever for a grown up to finish what she’s doing, or watching a young girl grow up in the blink of an eye.  I’m almost finished, Valeria. I’ll watch you dance. It will only be a moment, and then it will be — gone.

Dad and the Inner Virgin

It’s the day after my father’s funeral in Lubbock, Texas. I’ve been awake for hours, even went out for a walk before daybreak, drawn by a full moon and the thought that exercise might dissipate pent up emotions. I crept out the door, not wanting to disturb sleeping relatives scattered through the house. I almost fell into the flowerbed. Weird stairs. This is not the house I grew up in. Everything seems strange right now. The moonlight turned out to be mostly from streetlights, the full moon itself unspectacular above the orangey artificial glow.  A wind, dry and dusty, sapped moisture from my nose and lips, and left my skin feeling scratchy. Cranky, I crossed the street, turned around and came back in.

I miss my home in Mexico. The full moon there is shining on Centennial festivities. Yesterday was Revolution Day in La Peñita.  My dad would have loved the fireworks, music, and little kids dressed up in costumes. I miss Daddy. I had breakfast in Santa Monica last week with a Facebook friend who had read Virgin Territory and identified with my memories of being raised on the High Plains of Texas. Blocks from the Pacific, we unconsciously lapsed into our native drawl, laughing when we both noticed. Neither of us talk that way now, but there are a few tell tale signs that give us away as Texans. One of them is the phrase, “my daddy.” Another is funeral food: pots of beans, home made potato salad, Jell-o concoctions, casseroles, glazed ham, pounds of smoked brisket, and acres of dessert. Do they mourn this way in Santa Monica? I don’t think so. Arugula is not a comfort food. They do mourn this way in Mexico, only with tamales.

Dad would have delighted in my Mexican experience. There are Sam Jackson Humidaire units and drying systems at work in cotton gins all over the world, many in Mexico. I talked last night with a company engineer who had just returned from servicing some of them installed forty-five miles south of the border towns of Presidio/Ojinaga, a peaceful area where Mennonites grow cotton, not drug crops. It is Dad’s machinery that helps make growing cotton profitable in places as diverse and widespread as Tajikistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Greece, Turkey, Australia, Egypt, Central and South America, South Africa, Israel, and yes, Afghanistan. If you wear cotton, the fiber in your garment has probably passed through a system designed or inspired by the man I called Daddy. He was brilliant.

But that daddy disappeared sometime during these last eight years. I can’t say exactly when his pensiveness and dry humor turned unresponsive, or his thoughtful reflection ceased to take concrete form in vibrant conversation and repartee. Even this past year he’d come out with plays on words that would make our jaws drop they were so funny. Did his departure begin under the guise of apathy and indifference, a sense of resignation generally identified with growing older? Did I mistake his waning passion for mellowing, instead of recognizing the black hole where there was no there there? I have no question about one thing: Alzheimer’s sucks.

We opened a time capsule last night, after well-fed guests left and the house had cleared of all but family. It was a caramel corn container that Boy Scouts sell, filled with letters written by family members and then sealed shut with duct tape. The label on the lid read “Christmas Day, 1999. Do not open until Christmas, 2009.” OK, we’re a little late. But this is the first time the family has been together since 1999. So almost a year later than planned, we took turns reading our individual thoughts about the new millennium. Ashton, now a self-possessed college freshman, was surprised at the tight little wad of paper she’d scribbled as an angry eight-year old in a post-Christmas snit. “Mean Kindahl. Rude Savannah,” she’d described her sisters. “I’m sorry,” she said to them last night, all of the sisters sitting together, laughing uproariously at the image of that ranting little girl who had stapled her letter to the future shut.

That was the beautiful thing. We were laughing, all of us. Sweet Ashton was before us, her true image intact, untouched by the past. And, now that the sun is up, I realize that with yesterday’s memorial, the true image of my dad was restored as well. The silent and distant resident of Grace House was no more Daddy than that angry eight-year old is Ashton.  Sam Jackson’s friends and family were there to share their stories and memories, to bring him to life – his identity intact, sweet, solid, unbroken, and whole. Hah! My dad with virgin qualities! Perhaps there’s an Inner Guadalupe in us all.

Mother matters, because mothers matter

I just returned from a visit with my Mom in Lubbock.  One thing women in my age group seem to have in common is that we often have “issues” with her from whose loins we have sprung.  This recent visit was harmonious, mainly because a lot of prayer went before it, I’ve learned the value of responding rather than reacting,  and my husband consciously and valiantly ran interference while we were at ground zero.

It appears though, just from my personal observation, that women younger than the boomer generation have better relationships with their mothers, to the point that teenagers and women in their twenties seem to positively be best friends with their Moms, never far from cell phone contact or texting check-ins. Wahoo! I count this cultural progress.

But cultures vary across the globe, and finding the universal symbol for “the perfect mother” is an idea that doesn’t always translate easily.  I heard of a man teaching English to Japanese students, trying to demonstrate the word “mother” by cradling a baby in his arms. The students didn’t get it. Then a bi-lingual colleague suggested another gesture — a fierce look and shaking index finger. Ah! So! Mother!

That certainly wouldn’t be the case in Mexico. Have a look at this article by Marilyn Davis, originally printed in 1999 in El Ojo del  Lago.  The article was recently re-printed in the sister publication here on the west coast, El Ojo del Mar. Again, from personal observation, I see Mexican mothers emulating that Guadalupe presence. It’s one of those things that makes Virgin Territory special.

PS — Bob Brock — thanks for the great image!

“YAY!” Connie Pierce’s New Book

I just finished reading my friend Connie’s new book My Journey of Real Life Weight Loss: How I lost over 180 Pounds. It’s a quick and easy read, but, boy, does it pack a punch! I read it the same day I attended a local kindergarten graduation here in Mexico. Both events brought home to me the importance families play in forming the concepts we carry of ourselves. Now that’s a field fertile for discussion. Don’t we all have stories?! I shared some of mine in the last chapter of Virgin Territory. The responses I received ranged from “Yay!” to “Yikes!” When we start speaking from that Inner Guadalupe place, it is bound to make some people uncomfortable.

In her book Connie has raised a Guadalupe cry of pure honesty She tells a personal saga so many can relate to – the constant self-condemnation, self-depreciation, and heartbreak that comes when we judge ourselves by what others think – or even what we think others may be thinking. How she broke free of that imposition is the most important part of this book. Her sense of self-esteem came first. It wasn’t a reward for losing weight. For those who are ready to change their thought as well as their bodies, Connie offers a whole different mirror for self-examination. I for one want to give her a resounding, “YAY!”