As the eleventh month of 2020 begins, I found myself drawn to a map. See, I had this partially formed idea of a story that could be fun to write for NaNoWriMo this year. Unfortunately, I don't know if that's really something I should commit to, what with my wife's recent breast cancer diagnosis. While the treatment looks, at this point, pretty straightforward, I don't know if NaNoWriMo is right (write?) for me this year. If I choose not to participate, it'll be the first time since 2015 that I haven't been a part of the writing challenge. I'm the kind of guy who, when he's experienced a positive thing once, believes he must always experience that positive thing again. This is one of the reasons that I return to It every summer since 2017, why I look forward to October and my teaching of Paradise Lost, and even the fact that I really like commencement ceremonies at the end of the school year. These--and many others--seem to make up the repetitious threads of my life's fabric. Omitting them can be almost painful sometimes.
But if COVID-19 has taught me one thing only, it's that we can let go of the barnacles of tradition. After all, yesterday's Halloween celebration was decidedly less-than-familiar: We barricaded our porch with decorations and pumpkins. My younglings, dressed in cobbled-together costumes, dropped the Halloween candy through a six foot tube from our porch and out the mouth of a pumpkin carved to look like it was puking. A handful of trick-or-treaters showed up; a couple of them laughed at my middle child's costume (dressed as the Orange One from Among Us). I stayed inside where I played zombie video games. By 8:30, the boys were cold, no one had come to the door, and so we settled in to watch Ghostbusters. Pretty tame Halloween, to be honest. This morning, I awoke at what felt the normal time, only to be surprise that it was only 7:30am. It took a bit to realize that the clocks had done their biannual treason and I was again in Mountain Standard Time. I normally don't mind the "fall back" part of clock transition, though this time--Ahaha ha--it did take me by surprise. After filtering into consciousness via social media doomscrolling, I got up and got ready for the day. With the boon of an extra hour, I sat down and started a tentative first chapter of the ghost of a story that's in my mind. May as well try, I figured to myself, since you've the extra time. Two hundred words later, I wasn't about to return to the page. See, I'd set the story in the dimly familiar locale of southern Florida. I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Miami back in '02 through '04. I still have a lot of fond memories of those two years--and a lot of bad ones, too, as all important experiences bring with them--and that was the primary motivation for me choosing to have this NaNoWriMo idea take place there. After all, I'd spent a couple of years really traversing the area (albeit behind the wheel of a car) and learning a lot about the Latin community that inhabits it. What better way to add a dash of verisimilitude to my story's stew than with a revisit to my old tracting-grounds? My story involves a middle school student, so my first order of business was to dig around and see what middle- or junior high schools were in my favorite area of Hammocks. Despite knowing, even as a barely-even-twenty-year-old missionary, that I wanted to one day be a teacher, I didn't put a lot of time in learning about the school system of Florida. Sure, I probably asked more questions about school than most missionaries did, but I remember really only learning that they started--and got out of--the school year later than I was used to, and that they didn't like the statewide test. Some things don't change, regardless of where you are. I had some faded memories of noting that there seemed to be more external hallways, as well as a tendency to have multiple floors (which was odd to me: My high school's design is a sprawling single-story affair, though I've come to learn that my experience is hardly the norm). But what else was I missing? I hadn't asked kids what it was like to go to school near the turn of the millennium back when I had the chance. I could maybe ask some of my social media contacts--though I don't know if I'm going to put enough effort into this story to make it worth soaking up someone else's time. At any rate, I started poking around, trying to find schools that I maybe biked past during my final few weeks in the sweltering suburb of The Hammocks. It didn't take long before I found the old Little Caesars Pizza where my roommates and I would frequent--usually once a week--to buy ourselves (each, no less) a Hot-N-Ready pie. Shoving past the fog of years, I used Google Maps' Street View feature to plop myself in the middle of Hammocks Boulevard. Off to one side was the familiar-yet-forgotten archway leading into the Blossoms subdivision. A member family--an older couple, if I remember rightly--lived at the far end of that street (which is pictured at the top of this post). Seeing it gave me a jolt. Not surprising that it was the same place I had passed so many times, but that I had actually found a piece of my memory on my little computer screen. I slid down the digital road for a bit, noting Hammocks Middle School to my right (as I was trying to retrace my decade-and-a-half old bike path home, I immediately headed north). I had never noticed it before; or if I had, I'd forgotten. I tried to find my old apartment; no luck, though I think I may have come close to finding it. (Didn't I use to live just off of SW 154th Ave? If so, what was the lane, if it was indeed on a lane?) The then-familiar turns are now lost, to say nothing of the difference of tapping my way through the streets as opposed to cruising on my bright yellow 15-speed bike, right-pantleg tucked into a sock to keep it from being eaten by the gears, tie flapping in the humid breeze. I hunted down the chapel where I attended services, where I helped baptize the last family on my mission in May of 2004, a couple of weeks before I returned home. I smiled in fond remembrance at seeing the Publix nearby, marked on the Google Map with the white grocery cart on a blue field. Seeing that reminds me of the Miamian habit to abscond from the grocery store with the cart (many of the people lived close enough that they didn't need to drive or they were carless), resulting in occasional graveyards of abandoned wire carts on the side of the road. My companion and I, biking past them, would do an impromptu joust where we would give a nearby shopping cart a swift kick as we cruised past. If we could knock it over, we won. I only won once, though it nearly sent me toppling over, too. (As a 130 pound--maybe 150 counting the bike--elder with a poor grasp of Newton's Third Law of Motion, I didn't realize how solid a wire cart really is; I understand that better now.) I tried to find other familiar landmarks, with the occasional, "Wait, I think I remember that!" mumbled as I zoomed in and out on the map. I cruised to other areas where I'd live, including Hollywood (we're still in Florida, mind you) and stared at the bizarre-yet-endearing semicircle roads that spiral off of some of the traffic circles there. I looked over Bayside, where we missionaries would sometimes spend our preparation days. I gave a fond sigh as I looked at the grid-like (and completely out of sync address system) of Hialeah. Memories of October 2003 came, when the Marlins won the World Series and bedlam brought us out of our apartment. (Missionaries for the Church aren't allowed TVs or to listen to the radio at that time, so while we knew that the World Series was going on, we didn't know any details. I, personally, don't think there's a way for me to care less about baseball, but I was still happy that the entire city, it seemed, was happy.) Cars honked, people shouted, and it sounded almost like we were being invaded. But, no. Just baseball. Other recollections slip in and out of my mind, not only as I fiddled with the map but also as I write this essay. I don't consider my mission often--or, more accurately, I don't dwell on my mission often. Every time I speak Spanish, it comes with it a whiff of humidity and too-sharp sunlight. Whenever my "second state" does something newsworthy (which is now memetic, even), I think about some of those places that I took for granted, took for constant. It's natural to do so. Yet locations are Horcruxes of memories: They're places where parts of our souls are shaved off and stored, personal snapshots in the photo albums of our minds. Revisiting your elementary school, saying goodbye to your grandparents' home, driving past the turn to your first apartment as a married couple…these nostalgic particles drift around, undisturbed until some excuse puts you back in the place where you once were. Not all of these memories are fond ones--the waiting rooms in children hospitals, the intersection where you almost died--but they're part of the wheres of what makes up our whos. Looking over the maps that I used to pore over in the evening while trying to determine where I would go to work the next day reminded me that it was one thing to see the world this way--removed and above, complete and broad--and quite another to live it. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick has a line that has long stood out to me, and I think that he's pointing at what I'm trying to say. "It is not drawn down on any map; true places never are." I'm working through another Mark Edmundson title. This one is Why Teach? and it's really good. I'll write up my thoughts about it later, so suffice to say that I'm enjoying it a lot and I am excited to also push through his slim volume Why Read? as soon as I can.
A couple of days ago, I came across one particular quote that stood out to me. He was talking about the two different types of college--the corporate one and the scholarly oasis one--and said that the leadership that's generated by the corporate one tends to be less of actual leadership and one more of enthusiastic regurgitation. He says, "What people usually mean by a leader now is someone who, in a very energetic, upbeat way, shares all of the values of the people who are in charge." That got me thinking. In education, we have some Twitter personalities that are sometimes called "thought leaders" and they'll be people who tweet faux-profound messages like, "Grades indicate an end of learning" or (and this one falls into Edmundson's quote quite aptly), "Principals, the likelihood of anyone else in your building having principal experience is slim to none. Be confident in your decisions, your process, and your shortcomings. Most recognize that they don’t fully understand your role and want to support you." The ideas typically aren't bad, per se, but they're an energetic, upbeat way of sharing the values of the people in charge. And isn't that very much what we want in a leader? My bosses are all on my wavelength--or I'm on theirs, perhaps?--and so I'm happy to go along with them. Though we bump into conflicts every once in a while, it is, for the most part, a pretty smooth experience going from one day to the next. So what about in my religion? This one is trickier, because there's an implicit (and sometimes not-so-implicit) gag order on criticisms, critiques, or questions about leadership decisions. I think back to my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Back then (early 2000s), the missionary program asked missionaries to memorize six different discussions about core principles of the gospel. By memorize, I mean to literally memorize, word for word, what was written in the discussion pamphlet. This was something that I saw some value in, as it helped me to gain a stronger (admittedly, gospel-centric) vocabulary in Spanish. But I rarely recited the charlas (the Spanish word for discussions) verbatim, despite having a couple of them fully committed to memory. Though there was personal benefit to the memorization process, it wasn't useful outside of the confines of my apartment. Despite it not being something that I utilized "correctly", my mission president*, a man whom I love and respect now as I did then, was constantly pushing the memorization process. He testified to its importance and explained why we, as missionaries, would only be remiss by letting the memorization process slacken. Part way through--not even a full year after I began, if I remember correctly--the Church reversed course on the memorization process. Instead, we were to use the charlas as a guide to outlining a custom-made discussion for our investigators. (The new thrust ended up being a stop-gap between the old discussions and the next phase, which is currently being used and is called Preach My Gospel.) As soon as the new outline-only format, with no more need to memorize, happened, my mission president immediately began testifying to the importance of outlines. He used personal experiences--just as he had with the memorization format--to explain and expound the value of such a teaching tool. From then on, in my mission, we outlined, feeling the support and leadership of my mission president. In the years since then, I've have cause to reflect on that. I don't say this to in any way diminish my mission president's leadership calling, his role, or his effectiveness. He led me through the very difficult process of a two year mission, far away from home. He helped shore me up and encourage me when I needed that support. So I'm not trying to say that he wasn't a leader, despite my quote by Edmundson at the top. What I can't quite get out of my mind is his firm resolve to say what the Church asked him to say. And maybe that's it: Maybe what's important here is to see my mission president's commitment to the Church, rather than any program or procedure. In a rapidly changing church environment**, trusting the leaders is to not trust the policies. The thinking, I suppose, is that the policies can change…but our leaders change, too. Widescale shifts in Church policies (how long we attend services on Sundays, how we minister to one another) are all welcome and interesting--but they didn't start happening until President Monson died. So obviously the leader does matter…and the leader also changes. Our ward was split last week--our first Sunday services under a new bishop (a new leader) is today. It will be interesting to see how my new leadership differs from the old…and whether I feel an Edmundsonian vibe coming from the new bishopric, or a sense of leadership in a less jaded, less cynical way. --- * If you're unfamiliar with how missions are set up in the Church, there's a man who serves for a number of years as the president of the mission. He's the one who decides who serves with whom and where, as well as other important decisions for how missionary work unfolds in the section of the world to which he's been assigned. He acts as a surrogate father for a lot of the missionaries, and though some people have really negative experiences with their mission presidents, mine were nothing but pleasures. ** I spoke about my own experiences in the field, but the Church recently made a large change in how often missionaries can talk to their families. Only a month ago, missionaries could only call home on Mother's Day and Christmas morning. Now, they can text and Facetime and communicate with parents on their preparation days--meaning weekly. Going from four times in a mission to weekly is a massive change. (It makes sense to me, as parents can be a great source of help and support to their missionaries, and there's little reason, I think, that a 21st century missionary needs to rely on 20th century policies.) There were good reasons for the old policy, and good reasons for the new. That it's changing so much is indicative of how much policy is being upended by the new First Presidency. How ought politics interact with religion?
Growing up in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meant that I grew up with the assumption that conservatism was the Lord's politics and that evil men like Bill Clinton were going to bring the absolute economic ruin of us all and likely help usher in the final moments of the last days. I remember, in fact, hearing on the radio that Clinton had approved some sort of military action and thinking to myself, Well, I can tell my kids that, no thanks to President Clinton, I was sweeping the kitchen floor when World War III broke out. I assumed that, because Bill Clinton was involved, it was inherently and fundamentally wrong. When I got to vote for president for the first time in my life, it was in 2004 and I voted Republican straight down the ticket. When I hit college, I was taking a course on ethics and values by Dr. Bulger, who challenged a lot of my thinking simply by discussing important philosophical issues. It was in that class, really, that my love of philosophy was kindled (though listening to Dr. Truman G. Madsen's lectures on philosophy also provided a bedrock, of sorts, which I had with me throughout my missionary service). I think his approach worked for me because it wasn't confrontational, necessarily, but neither was it interested in shoring up the students' worldview. While I didn't study philosophy in school, I learned how others thought, felt, and responded to some of the things that I took for granted. There's nothing new or surprising about this experience: Most people, I think, have a time when they stop thinking theirs is the only way and there's no more room for learning and instead pursue other epistemological conceits. In my case, it wasn't Dr. Bulger alone who made me start considering other possibilities for viewing the world, including my politics: It was my LDS mission. I've talked about my mission before. It was a Dickensian moment for my life, in part because I didn't understand that I had dysthymia, and in part because I kept expecting something more profound to happen to me. So, yes, it was the best and worst of times for me, and I don't regret it or think that it's a problem. However, one of the things that living in South Florida taught me was the great expanse of humanity that exists outside of my miniscule pocket of the universe. Most notably, I learned a lot about the suffering and sacrifices of the immigrant population there. Because I had been called as a Spanish-speaking missionary, I sought out people who spoke Spanish, and the vast majority of those people were immigrants (though some were second generation, so technically they were American-born citizens). Learning about what was required for them to come to America--legally or not, it didn't matter--showed me that there is a lot of value in the opportunities that the United States provides. That helped me appreciate my country in a way that was much more tangible and important than the occasional flag I'd wave during a too-hot Fourth of July parade. I still remember, back in 2007, sitting in my in-laws' basement, feeling upset because of something that I'd read online. I can't remember what was being discussed specifically, but it had to do with immigration. One of the people on the forum I was flipping through had the BYU logo for his profile picture* and his was the one in which the most hateful and racist things about immigrants were being said. That's when I realized that I really wasn't a Republican. Now, there are plenty of semantic differences between Republicans** and conservatives, and there are a lot of people within the party who don't see themselves in the ways that Republicans usually market their politics. I recognize that. But by being a part of a group, you assume a lot of the inherent identity of that group. On individual cases, you can maybe extract some variation, but in terms of lump sum, that's the whole point: There's power in plurality, and Republicanism is filled with all sorts of people. And the lump sum of Republicanism is--currently, but I would contend, has been for a long time--pretty rotten. There were other experiences--including exploitation of workers at the hands of burgeoning bourgeoisie bosses--that further pushed me from any sort of identification with conservative positions. As I grew up and became more politically aware, I realized that any sense of solidarity I could have with the right-wing of American politics was impossible. Not that I found much comfort in "the other side" (as if there are two choices here, but so long as it makes easy copy, we're effectively in a two-party country). Don't assume that I'm a Democrat, either. Libertarianism is a sick joke that's two parts egoism and the rest callousness. I'm not liberal, since there's too much love of money within the neo-liberal scene (and that's the only scene that liberals are actually in) and that's absolutely part of the reason that we have so many supposedly intractable problems. If I had to pick a label, left-leaning independent is probably the best--lots of socialism and materialist readings in my neck of the woods--but that still misses what I'm after, and labels fail too often for it to be useful to me. In short, I view politics the way I do and there are precious few politicians--especially in Utah--who reflect what I think. But there was something else that happened to me whilst I was turning away from Republicanism: I found myself struggling more with my understanding of my religious culture. Despite being dyed-in-the-wool Mormon, a rejection of the politics still felt like a rejection of Mormonism. As I mentioned above, I'm not conservative. I don't agree with hardly a sliver of any plank that the GOP puts forward. In fact, the idea that I'm lumped together with the group of Mormons--and therefore am (understandably) considered part of conservative politics--turns my stomach. Though I can't say for absolute certain, I don't think there's anything that could be demonstrated to me that makes me feel other than the fact that President Trump is the GOP norm, conservativism par excellence, not an aberration or perversion of its policies and mindset. It's open to debate if Mormonism is doctrinally conservatively minded (I don't think it is) or if the culture, in large part because of the Cold War and the trash that people like Cleon Skousen peddled, has married itself into a presumed political preference. It's clear that Democrats can be Mormons (Harry Reid is easily the most visible of that breed), and there are a few others who view their Mormonism as pushing them in a different political vein. Yet those are certainly exceptions--they hardly speak for all of political Mormonism any more than Mitt Romney does. The theological issues with this are thorny: If what we value religiously is uniform, then shouldn't there be uniform behaviors and, in this case, political theories? What kind of responsibility do religious institutions*** have when they align themselves with political causes that cause trauma, damage, or pain? And if there's a religion like mine, one that claims divine guidance (as many do), and the politics goes against the doctrines of that religion, what happens then? I don't know. I haven't been able to figure out how to divorce politics from religion. I…just don't know. --- * Sure, the possibility exists that there was a person using the massive Y who was actually not a fan of BYU and was only doing that in order to throw off the rest of the posters. People do weird things. It's rather irrelevant--and impossible to learn the truth of--to what I'm trying to say here, though. ** Can we let this footnote be the acknowledgement that Democrats and liberal identities can be considered the same way and not let that observation derail the point or even pretend that it matters to what's being said? Thank you. *** As institutions aren't people, they shouldn't be allowed into politics. But the problem with that is, upon dissolving any party or lobby, there is an impulse that people who are like-minded ought to be allowed to work together. That's all a party is, in its most essential terms. Nevertheless, I'm against lobbies, parties, and special interests groups. If people of an institution wish to push forward a political agenda, that's fine: Rights reside in people (not corporations or institutions). In an effort to better document what I've been reading, I thought I would try harder to write something about whatever book I've most recently finished. Since I jotted down some things about Pride and Prejudice already, I figured I'd write about Good or God? by John Bevere. If you want the short version, it's this: It made me think, but not being Evangelical, I took issue with some of it, as it is not written for someone outside of the "saved" circle of Evangelical Christianity. It was not particularly well written, though there were some spots of insight that I hadn't considered before. I don't really recommend it unless you want to read a book that reads like a conference at a megachurch. That's about it.
Okay, so the book itself isn't terribly impressive. Bevere talks about how he was a terrible writer all through school, but, through the grace of God, he's now written many books that have been purchased by millions of people in over fifty languages. From a writing standpoint, it's perfectly serviceable prose that fails to do much save push forward the man's message (he would argue God's message) in a conversational style. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing interesting about it, either. There's a lot of repetition and unnecessary detail that doesn't really build toward a payoff, but I could be faulting his book for something it isn't designed to be. Having read only a handful of tracts and Evangelical comics--and those many years ago--the tone sounded familiar. Maybe that's just how these types of books are? I don't know, but its actual writing did what it was supposed to do and that's about it*. Of course, I didn't pick the book because I thought it would be well written. I picked it for two reasons: One, I'm trying to read books that are out of my normal reading pool. Near the end of last year, I read 10 Books That Screwed Up The World, which is by a Roman Catholic apologist/ethicist. His specific thesis was that the books he selected were poisonous to the world because they were written by atheists (predominantly) and so everything they said was, on some level or another wrong. He's read the texts that he's discussing much more fully than I have, and though I didn't agree with all of his conclusions--and it wasn't a book I particularly liked--it was an indication to me that I can and ought to listen to differing opinions more often. The second reason I picked it out is because I honestly thought that it would be a philosophical and theological exploration. Instead, it was a seven-hour sermon (yeah, I listened to the book on my phone). The format of it being a seven-hour sermon made listening to it reminiscent of the one time I visited an Evangelical Church whilst living in Miami. As missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of the investigators we were working with agreed to attend our church services, provided we come to theirs. We eagerly accepted, not only because this would build goodwill among us, but we were curious. We'd seen the marquee for El Rey Jesús church for, well, the whole time we'd lived there, and we were curious. Unsurprisingly, much of our contacting of the people in the community involved talking to the parishioners of El Rey Jesús, so our interest was piqued. The Sunday arrived and the four of us (two companionships of two elders, all of whom lived in the same apartment in Hammocks, Florida) showed up for the evening sermon. We were there early, so we got some good seats near the front. The investigators sat by us. I imagine it was a bit of a shock for the preacher to look out at the amphitheater (which was about as big as a high school's auditorium) and saw the familiar brown faces of the congregation and then a streak of four gringos sitting all in a group, their white-shirt-black-badge combo easily marking them as los mormones. In fact, one of the speakers stood up to welcome the congregation as the scheduled hour crept closer. She spoke to them in a rapid, clear Spanish, welcoming them. She then announced that, if anyone needed headphones for a translation of the services, they were available. As she said this, she looked straight at us. Then it dawned on her: She'd made the announcement in Spanish. Quickly, she switched to English, still looking at us. "If you need translation, we have audiophones to help you." All four of us--each within the final six months of service and about as fluent in Spanish as we'd likely ever get--maintained the same pleased, placid expressions that we'd had on when she'd said the same thing in Spanish. Perhaps discomfited, perhaps content that we'd be okay, she walked to another part of the stage and repeated her welcomes, again in Spanish. No one bothered speaking in English for the rest of the service. On the whole, it was a pretty good time. All four of us enjoyed the pastor's sermon (I'm assuming that they're called pastors. I don't really know.) and felt that he was preaching things that we truly could say "Amen" to. There was some electric guitar and drums that were played--a far cry from the somber, reverential Mormon services we were used to--where people did sway in the aisles, but I don't remember too much exaggeration on anyone's part. The only time that we felt uncomfortable was when the pastor said, in whatever context it was, that the gift of tongues could come upon the congregation. Then he demonstrated by releasing a string of nonsense syllables. In the Mormon tradition, the gift of tongues was something that we always prayed--and worked--for. To Mormon missionaries, the gift of tongues is the way in which they learn their mission language, and it's only given to those who study and strive to get it. So we view this gift as something practical. Seeing someone spout off nonsense (and I'm really not trying to be judgmental here, but he basically said "Tatatatatdetatat!" or something similar to it) wasn't really what I understood the gift of tongues to be. After the services, we filed out with the rest of the congregation. The sweating minister (for he really was putting a lot of effort into his sermon) was there, mingling and talking to his flock. We happened by him and, in English, he thanked us for coming. We thanked him back, then said that we'd understood the Spanish in the sermon and thought it was great. He smiled and invited us back. I appreciated the gesture, but that particular day was the last Sunday of my mission; by the time they met again, I was back in Utah, feeling cold and dehydrated. Reading Good or God? was like that day, except in English, and a lot longer. Also, less music. The thing that's difficult for me to get my head around is a fairly complicated one, though, and since I'm already at my stopping point, I think I may have to pick this up later. So, um…stay tuned? I guess. --- * For me, it was a bit strange when he said, "Now, let's pray." Then he wrote out a prayer, as if he were there with me. Again, maybe that's the style of these types of books, but I found them…not for me. I'm trying to be delicate here, because this is how he worships and frames the world, but I don't know how much I buy into the idea of buying a book that has a prayer in it and then think that it's efficacious. Cheese Grater
One of the hard lessons of becoming an adult is reconciling the many ways in which I was wrong about what it's like to become an adult. Most adults, I'd wager, have a similar pool from which to draw: "I thought that having a job would mean that I could buy whatever I want. I assumed my parents just had bad taste in stuff and that's why we used a VHS player until 2005." Okay, well, maybe that's a little too specific. Instead, it's more like, "I assumed that, once I was an adult, I would understand better how to navigate the world." Or, the inverse realization: "I can't believe that being an adult just means you make it up as you go." A specific instance of my naivete? Parenting. I went on my LDS mission to Miami, Florida. There, I learned Spanish and worked with the Hispanic population. In the locker-room-of-a-rec-center-swimming-pool-type-of-humidity, I met a lot of people. In between worrying about passing out from heat stroke and trying to figure out how to keep business cards from clumping together in my pocket when they'd absorbed too much sweat/humidity/there's no palpable difference, I spent plenty of time in people's homes. The majority of those homes were members'; they'd invite us over on a regular basis for dinner. Most nights we had a DA (dinner appointment, which we'd also call a cita, meaning (creatively) "appointment" in Spanish, because we were just effortlessly cool like that, y'know?) and that would involve showing up, fumbling through some rough Spanish, eating the meals (many of which were great), and then delivering a spiritual thought/message before heading into the inky post-shower-humidity to get some more work done ere we went to bed. Whilst at these member homes, we would get a chance to interact with their kids. Almost all of them were second-generation immigrants, their parents having come from Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Cuba, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and basically every other Spanish-speaking country. I did, actually, meet a couple of Mexicans, too, but they tended to live in the deeper south than where I served, so my knowledge of Mexican culture and accents is sparse. Anyway, the kids were almost always bilingual, knowing English from school and friends and Spanish from parents. The parents almost always understood English, but preferred to speak in Spanish. For me, that was wonderful, as I felt I needed to expand my understanding of the language and become a better speaker before I left. Nevertheless, speaking Spanish (or any new language) is hard, and I appreciated having the kids to chat with in English more often than not. It was a nice reprieve. Regardless of their linguistic lineages, these wonderful members always carried a beautiful commitment to the cultures they'd had to leave behind when they came to America. Some of the people I got to know were political refugees, while others wanted to pursue different lives than what they had at home. But just because they left their countries didn't mean that their countries had left them. Their national varieties were a wonderful contribution to the texture of Miami, broadly speaking, and within the comparatively-insular culture of the Church. And, because of these differences, I was exposed to different philosophies of parenting--an unexpected aspect of my twenty-four month voluntary religious excursion for the denomination in which I'd been raised. One night--sometime near the Christmas season of 2002--I was at a member's home. I can't remember their name (we only ate there once, I think), so we'll call them la familia Casca. The Casca family had a handful of kids--probably at least three, though I may be misremembering. As we sat about the table, my missionary companion and I talking with the parents, the two younger children ran about the family room, which adjoined the dining/kitchen area. Much like there's a filter that you can put on your phone's photos in order to ditch red-eye, become sepia-toned (like it's old-fashioned!), or incorporate a dog's ears onto your head, Mormons have a noise-filter that they almost always use. Particularly when religious stuff is being discussed--one of the fastest ways to get a child below the age of five into an incoherent ball of fussy energy is to bring up spiritual concepts; they're allergic to it--kids tend to get louder. While the filter isn't perfect, and a certain level of child-generated chaos will eventually break through, it's of a separate quality from the typical parent-of-a-screaming-child filter that most parents have installed. I say this so that you understand that the kids in the family room began to scream. That is, we finally heard them screaming. Before, I said that the dining area and the kitchen and the family room all sort of blended together. The two younglings--I'd guess ages five and three--had drifted from the family room into the kitchen. Their laughter and shrieks were all part of the background, as unremarkable as, say, the color of the paint on the walls (white) or the material of the floor (tile--I say this not because I have a specific memory of the material of the floor, but because that's simply what it was; South Florida has no understanding of the concept of carpet in their homes, as if the collective dictionary by which the entirety of Miami-Dade County consults is bereft of the word). In short, we had completely tuned them, and their location out. That meant that when the shriek that broke through our filters was recognized for what it was, there was a possible danger to the shriek. I looked up in time to see the five year old sprint past me, his round face panicked and his eyes wide. I imagine he was running to his bedroom, the hallway being on my right-hand side, and I seem to recall having a brief thought of, "I wonder why he is running so fast." These are the kinds of mysteries that a non-parent-adult has the luxury to ponder. A non-parent can look at a particular behavior and mull it over, trying to figure out the ramifications of the choices being made. "I see that little Jimmy is intent on determining the flammability of the cat. This is likely to end in Jimmy learning a lot about the natural world, specifically the ways in which cats dislike being combusted. I shall mentally document the results of my observations and compare them to my hypothesis. The scientific method is wonderful." Parents don't have that opportunity. It's given up, along with their insurance information, at the moment they go into the hospital for their first delivery. (It's in the fine-print.) Parent-adults see a problem, intervene, then, post-hoc, justify their behavior. "Well, of course I took away your dart gun. You…maybe…might have shot…at this fragile mug of cold tea that I, as a responsible adult, have left on the counter for the last six days!" So I had the chance to really puzzle at what this five year old could be fleeing from. After all, this flight-of-fight response was something I recognized based upon the occasional encounter with an angry dog on the other side of the fence or a Jehovah's Witness. But this kid was five! He won't be harangued for "selling Jesus!" or given the Cuban finger at his knock on the door for another thirteen years! How could he know what it takes to be scared and running for his life? Okay, so maybe I didn't contemplate all of that at the time. To be really honest, I likely thought something significantly less impressive, like, "Huh. Weird." And the really galling thing is, I probably didn't even think it in Spanish. As the five year old peeled past me, I became aware of a high-pitched, demoniacal cackle that I have since learned is not an environmentally-bequeathed sound, but is instead an innate sound that all children who can't yet formulate complete sentences can muster. It is the sound of joy at the misery of another. The basest human impulses--the laughing-when-someone-falls-down impulse, the shut-the-door-on-someone-running-to-catch-the-elevator impulse, the smash-the-bug-because-it's-there-not-because-it's-poisonous-I-mean-it's-just-an-ant-for-crying-out-loud impulse. It's the laughter of someone doing something mean just to be mean. It's the sound of a child who knows that he can't possibly be blamed for this because he's just a kid, Mom, so he doesn't understand, not really. But that's the part of the laughter that he has, the part that's lurking right beneath the surface--the Pennywise part of the laugh, if you will. Because he knows he shouldn't, and he knows he won't get blamed. That's what he's laughing at. In Mormon scripture, Alma claims that "wickedness never was happiness". Alma, I submit, had not encountered a three year old who had uttered that laugh. Because that's a kid who is ecstatic in his wickedness. The three year old rounded into view, his laughter peeling through the filter even better than his brother's scream. A joyous light was in his eyes. A grin that put the smiles of every Christmas morning to shame stretched across his face. Above his head, one pudgy fist clutching the handle with all the ferocity of possession, he held a cheese grater. Not one of those wimpy, flat-and-unimpressive types that seem to come from the store with tarnish on them. No, this was one of the gleaming kinds--the type that Shredder would look at and say, "Steady on, that's a bit much." Gaps, grooves, edges, holes--everything shimmered with a devilish glint, each a mouth eager to take a gleeful chunk out of whatever it was close to. In this case, it was the five year old brother. And here's the thing: I didn't get up to stop the kid. At least, not at first. No, instead I luxuriated in that precious non-parent-"adult" (I was, myself, only nineteen) indulgence of thinking before acting. I thought, I bet his parents let him play with that. I'd better not interfere. After all, I wouldn't want a stranger--even if it were a scrawny kid from the other side of the country whose arm was so thin you could put a rubber band around the bicep and still have slack--coming into my home and telling my kid how he ought to live. The audacity of such a behavior was repugnant. Do unto others as you would have done unto you, that was my missionary motto. "Uh…" said my companion, who was (read: is) a better person than I, "¿Hermana?" Since we're brothers and sisters in the Church, we called the adult women (regardless of their parental status, though most of them were mothers) "Hermana", which means "sister" in Spanish. It gets vague here. I'd like to think that my companion's words snapped me out of my smug self-assurance, pulling me into the real danger that the five year old kid was in, and that I leapt forward and snatched the cheese grater. Maybe I was the one who said, "Uh, ¿Hermana?" and it was my companion who saved the day. Maybe the tentative question, complete with correctly inverted question marks, was enough to get one of the parents to recognize the danger and intervene appropriately. Whatever the case was, the three year old's cheese grater was confiscated before he could do any harm. The kid then promptly burst into tears. |
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