Play. For kids it comes easily. But for adults it’s not something we do that often. When was the last time you played a game, acted in a skit or picked up some crayons?
It had been a long time since I had done any of these things—until I attended a contemplative retreat a few months ago. But that’s exactly what we did at the retreat. We played, we laughed, we relaxed—and something sacred happened. Continue reading
Two weeks ago my younger son started his last year of high school. It’s hard to believe that at this time next year he’ll likely be off to college and our house will be an empty nest. My husband and I have spent the last 20 years nurturing and caring for our kids and in the blink of an eye, they’ll be gone. Continue reading
“Aloha, it’s so great to meet you,” Regina said as I stepped off the runway in sunny Kona. Hawaii.
We gave each other a hug.
“It’s nice to meet you too, after all this time,” I said.
I had been anticipating this moment for 20 years. That’s when I first found out that I had a half-sister. I had been adopted as a baby and had never known anything about my birthparents or siblings until I turned 30. At that time my birthparents, who had gone separate ways, each contacted me and we exchanged a few letters. My birthmother had never had any more children but my birthfather had gotten married and had a daughter and a son. More than 10 years passed until I finally decided to meet my birthparents, who are both in Chicago. Then another eight years passed until I had the opportunity to meet my sister, who lives in Hawaii.
The thing that surprised me most about Regina was her voice. We became friends on Facebook about eight years ago and I’ve seen plenty of pictures. I knew we looked a little bit alike and I knew she had lots of animals, including pet pigs. I also saw photos of her tattooed arms, which feature images of her animals surrounded by flowers. Her latest tattoo is quite attractive, stretching just below her neck from shoulder to shoulder like a necklace. You need to look carefully to see her pigs Baron and Boyd ensconced in a hearts and flowers.
Regina’s voice was lighter and higher than I expected. Somehow I thought this woman, who proudly announces her veganism and animal activism online, would have a lower voice and a brusque manner. Instead, she sounded kind, even when I ordered a sandwich with bacon at the lunch place she picked out.
“I hope I’m not offending you,” I said as I realized with horror what I had done.
“Oh, not all,” she said. “My husband eats everything.”
Still, I couldn’t eat the bacon when it came. I couldn’t eat much at all. I was so focused on our conversation. As I listened to Regina talk about her family and growing up in Chicago I felt drawn into another world, a world I may have lived if things had gone differently. My birthfather, Frank, had told me that his Italian Catholic family wanted him to keep me. They were family people. But he and my birthmother were only teenagers and they weren’t married. At that time unmarried pregnant girls were sent to homes where they would live until they gave birth.
When I met Frank for the first time, eight years ago, he drove me to the neighborhood just outside of Chicago where he grew up. He pointed out his high school and the tidy red brick home where his family lived. It was tight quarters, he said, with parents and five kids living in that little house.
I mentioned this to Regina and she said it had been tough for Frank. His parents worked hard and demanded a lot from the kids. If they left for the day they would give all the kids a long list of chores to do. For Regina, however, her grandparents’ house was filled with great memories of Italian Sunday dinners. She spent lots of time in the basement with her cousins around an old-fashioned jukebox. I couldn’t help but imagine myself in that setting. I grew up in California, far away from my cousins. Although we got along well, we saw each other once a year at best. And we didn’t have a strong tie to our countries of origin. Would I be a different person today with that kind of family dynamic?
For Regina, the tight family culture was somewhat constraining. She didn’t want to solely identify with one culture, one people. She dreamed of going to New Mexico. She attended college there, studied archeology and took a class on weaving for fun. She ended up getting a job as a weaver for six years. Later she moved to Idaho and New York. She became a vet tech. Then she moved to Hawaii. She never returned to Chicago, much to the dismay of her parents.
***
“Your voice, it sounds just like my aunt in Wisconsin,” said Sandy, my birthmother, on our first phone call eight years ago.
Perhaps it was comforting to my birthmother that I had something in common with her family. I did live in the Midwest until age 8 and then I returned there for four years for college. So perhaps I do sound something like a woman in Wisconsin.
Other than the familiar voice, however, Sandy and I had few obvious traits in common. When we eventually met later that year I realized she had a hard edge about her. She had grown up very poor, with an absent father. She had to live in a rented garage during high school, when she dated Frank. She was a hard worker and had always been independent, without a spouse. She was a successful businessperson. Now she had two homes. She sent me pictures of them. One in Arizona. The other in Chicago in a ritzy high-rise tower. She had platinum blond hair and called herself “Blondie.” I liked her spunk.
As I recounted some of this to Regina though, I felt sad. Sad that my birthmother had to grow up poor. Sad that her pregnancy was taboo. Sandy told me that as soon as I was born, I was whisked away. Her own mother never said a word about me for the rest of her life. It was hard to repeat these words—for the rest of her life.
“I could have kept you. It could have worked out,” Sandy had told me when we met for lunch that day eight years ago at the top of the Hancock building in Chicago.
I sensed defiance in her voice. I wondered if things really could have worked out. It would have been a different life for me, for sure.
***
Why do people seek out their long-lost family members? Frank was the one who initially decided to find me. He couldn’t remember the name of the adoption agency that handled my case so he called Sandy, whom he hadn’t seen in years. They reconnected and had the agency send me a letter asking if I would accept their letters. When I said yes, I quickly received a greeting card from Sandy that said, “One day I knew I’d find you” on the outside. I wondered how she had found such a perfect card.
I received a cassette tape from Frank with a small note that explained he wasn’t much of a writer so he recorded himself talking. His voice sounded calm and quiet. He spoke slowly and deliberately, choosing each word. He told me about his work as a truck mechanic and about his family. He said he had thought of me often through the years and wanted to make sure I was OK. I wrote letters back to each of them telling them about my life and my family.
The adoption agency told me it was rare for a birthfather to seek out his adopted child. I felt honored that I was one of the few to get this attention. I certainly wasn’t lacking in love from my adoptive parents. They are among the most loving people I know. I grew up with an abundance of care and support. I have a close relationship with my brother, who is also adopted. However, I was touched that my birthfather, and then my birthmother, would reach out to me with interest and care.
There’s a deeper story, however, which I only learned from Regina. At the time Frank began to look for me he was undergoing some soul-searching. Regina had moved far away for college and wasn’t returning. His adolescent son was causing waves. Frank wondered if he had done something wrong. He hoped finding me would show him that he had done something right.
“Finding you and seeing you were happy gave Dad a lot of peace,” Regina said.
I’ve still only seen Sandy once and Frank a few times on trips to Chicago. We exchange Christmas cards some years but we don’t talk on the phone. I see now that for both my birthparents the idea of connecting with me really was about alleviating their doubts and fears, not becoming close friends. Or perhaps they are giving me respectful distance.
After lunch, Regina took us to her house. It could have been any nice house in a quiet subdivision on the mainland. But hers had a mango tree outside, a banana tree in the back—and 11 dogs, 11 cats and two pet pigs. The dogs and pigs had their own rooms downstairs complete with a big-screen TV and as soon as we arrived, Regina let a few upstairs, who promptly greeted us with wet licks. Then she let them all out in the back to romp around. She’s known on the big island as the person to call if you find a lost animal. Most of her animals are rescues. She and her husband Mario would like to move out to the country where they could have more land and more animals.
Later, on our way out of the neighborhood, Regina stopped to greet some friends. “Hey,” she yelled out the car window. “I want you to meet someone. This is my sister.”
Her friends looked surprised. Maybe she had never told them about me. I was pleased she had introduced me as her sister.
Soon the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean and my husband and I had to catch the little island hopper plane back to Maui, where we were staying. We had drinks with Regina and Mario at a seaside bar in Kona before our flight. Mario, who is originally from Mexico and has dreadlocks down to his waist, talked a lot about his time living in California and his bold move to Hawaii. He told us his dream to someday run an orphanage and senior center on the island.
“Well, you’re already running an orphanage in a way,” joked my husband, referring to their menagerie of pets.
We all laughed.
I felt I had fulfilled my own dream that day. I had never had a sister in my life until that moment.
Postscript: Shortly after we left Hawaii, Kilauea began erupting. Fortunately Regina lives on the other side of the island. However, she has been involved nonstop in rescuing the many animals lost or at risk because of the volcano. She’s taken in more animals and found homes for others. She’s an inspiration and I hope to see her on the mainland next time she’s here.
Do you have a favorite time of day? Maybe it’s looking forward to that first sip of coffee in the morning. Maybe it’s listening to your favorite song or podcast on the way home from work.
I have a few favorite times. One time is at the end of my day, maybe around 11:30 pm. That’s when I’m usually in bed, journal or book in hand, my Schnauzer cuddled up next to me. It’s also when my younger son TJ joins me, ostensibly to cuddle with the dog for a few minutes, but also for a little mom time and a back rub.
Not so many years ago TJ was a little boy and I would tuck him in his bed among his stuffed animals after reading to him. As he approached adolescence I knew those days were numbered and I became wistful that he’d no longer want that nighttime ritual. A few years later I did stop reading to TJ and instead he and his older brother Miguel simply chatted with each other as they fell asleep. Then, Miguel left for college and TJ felt alone in his big room. That’s when he started coming to me to hang out for a while before bedtime.
Mostly, our conversations revolve around the dog. Where is Romeo’s favorite place to be scratched? Is he putting on some weight? What does he dream about? In between, I read a few pages of a book and TJ looks at Reddit on his laptop. Every so often I’ll glance over in amazement at TJ’s lanky six-foot frame stretched out next to me. How did my little boy grow into this big man? Eventually, if TJ stays a long time, my husband will come in and kick him out. But he’s reluctant to interrupt our time together.
I thought of all this recently as I learned in my spiritual direction program the importance of engaging mind and body in spiritual practices. The times of hanging out with TJ before bedtime, being close physically and mentally, are almost spiritual experiences. It feels like time stops for a while. I get a sense of the transcendent in everyday life.
At my spiritual direction group this week one of the facilitators started our meeting by reminding us that it was holy week, the most important week of the Christian year. She asked us to pray holding our palms open and facing up, as a physical symbol of letting go of those things that were weighing on us. I thought of the many worries on my mind and the things I wanted to resolve. Then I thought of Jesus’ life. He only lived 33 years and, from a human perspective, that seems short. Think of how many more miracles he could have performed or sermons he could have given had he lived longer! Yet he lived a perfect life. As I sat in prayer, with my hands open, I asked God to release my striving to complete and resolve so many things. Our meeting continued on for several more hours, but that moment, with my palms turned up, was the most transcendent.
Lent and Easter can be a good time to remember the mind-body-spirit connection. For Lent we often give up something physical, like a certain food, to focus on the holy. This year, instead of giving something up, I added something healthy. A friend challenged me to walk to church instead of driving. Since the walk is only about 10 minutes, this wasn’t difficult. I just had to remember to give myself an extra 10 minutes to get to church. The extra walking felt good. I didn’t exactly pray during the walks but I found myself in a state of gratitude as I admired the neighbors’ blooming daffodils and tulip trees. I always paused at a small creek where I could hear the spring rains running by, down to the bay. One morning I saw a family of deer cross the street. I arrived at church on Sundays in a more contented, relaxed state. This is one Lenten practice I’ll hope to keep.
Last night I participated in our Maundy Thursday service, which culminated in a powerful mind-body-spirit experience—washing each other’s feet. We did this to commemorate Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, when he washed their feet to show his love toward them. I’ll admit I was a bit hesitant to wash another person’s feet and get my feet washed in return. My partner and I let a family with two small children go ahead of us in line. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the young children were eager to participate. They each had a turn in the chair, dangling their legs above the water bowl and eagerly leaning forward to get their feet washed. When that was done, they cried out, “I want to wash your feet Mommy! Can I do it, please!” It reminded me that kids aren’t self-conscious about their bodies. They can enter into an experience in a way adults often can’t—or can only through some effort. I wanted to be a bit more like those kids.
Today is Good Friday and I will once again go to church. It will be a somber service. The sanctuary will be dark except for a few candles that will be gradually snuffed out. At the end of the service we will take turns holding a heavy hammer and pounding nails into a large wooden cross. The sound of pounding will ring in my head for hours afterwards. I will remember Jesus’ short and perfect life. I will experience his suffering and death in a tiny way through the sights and sounds of the service. I would rather skip over this part of the story but I realize darkness and pain are part of our reality. I will attend this service, if not out of desire, then out of obedience to the truth of the whole story. And fortunately today isn’t the end of the story.
What will I remember of this Easter season? I may remember that this was a time when I saw more clearly the integration of mind, body and spirit. I will be thankful that I have many teachers of this lesson—my son, my spiritual direction group, friends and friends’ children. I will commit to living not just in one dimension, but in all my wholeness, slanting toward joy.
“I have the immense joy of being a [human being], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” – Thomas Merton
My son and I surveyed the stacks of clean clothes on his bed. Did he have everything he needed for his second year in college? And what about his guitar propped against the wall? Should he bring that along too? We bantered back and forth about packing details and I tried to imagine what it was going to be like for my son to move into his first apartment off campus this year.
Then Miguel suddenly turned to me with a bigger question. “When can TJ come visit me?,” he said, referring to his 16-year-old brother. “I don’t want to wait until his spring break or anything. That’s too far.”
This wasn’t a question I was fully expecting. But I was thrilled to know that Miguel wanted to spend time with TJ. It makes sense. This past summer my boys bonded in a way they never have before. It wasn’t something I planned or anticipated.
“I challenge you to a game to 21.” It’s one of the more frequent statements I heard this summer. Thus would start a long night of ping-pong games that would easily last until 2 or 3 am. I made sure to close my window before going to sleep so the tap tap of the balls of the balls didn’t wake me up. And this would be after a day of playing online games and perfecting various grilled cheese sandwich recipes for lunch.
It wasn’t always this way. Although my kids did a lot together when they were little, they developed different interests as they got older. Miguel likes cooking, exploring new places and golf. TJ is a gamer with a cohort of online friends across the country. By the time Miguel got to high school and TJ was in middle school, they rarely did activities together. It’s not that they didn’t get along; they just lived in separate worlds much of the time. I was sad they didn’t do more together.
All of that changed this summer. In June we took a family trip to Guatemala and the last hotel we stayed at had a ping-pong table. The boys enjoyed seeing the sights –ancient Mayan pyramids and beautiful jungles–but what they really liked was the ping-pong every night at the hotel. The day after we got back from our trip, they drove over to grandma and grandpa’s house, loaded up their old table in a friend’s van, and set it up on our patio.
“Isn’t it great we’re so evenly matched,” TJ said to me after a few weeks of playing.
“The only problem is that our friends can’t keep up,” Miguel said.
In hindsight, I now realize my boys’ relationship didn’t change overnight. It began to shift last year, when Miguel was away for his freshman year in New York. The boys spoke frequently on Facetime, mostly talking about the latest music and videos, which had always been Miguel’s domain. Then Miguel began to take an interest in TJ’s online gaming world and joined his chat forum, where he got to know TJ’s friends.
For spring break TJ and I visited New York and the boys appreciated each others’ special qualities.
“TJ is so funny. He made all my friends laugh,” Miguel reported after TJ had spent the night in his dorm room.
The next day we were walking down Fifth Avenue and I commented that it could be fun to take a double-decker tour bus around the city.
“We don’t need to do that,” TJ said. “Miguel is an expert New York City guide.”
Those moments made my heart swell. I relished the fact that my boys saw the positive sides of one another.
Ironically, if it had been up to me, I may have quashed my boys’ bonding this summer. Early on I was worried they both had too much unstructured time and several times I suggested they both do more “productive” activities. At one point I asked them if they had any goals.
“No, I don’t have any goals,” said Miguel. “I just want to spend time with friends and TJ. I’ll get an internship next summer.”
“I agree,” said TJ.
I didn’t give up so easily though. I schemed with my husband about how he could hire them to do some office work at his accounting firm. This kept them busy for a week or two but then they finished the projects and it was back to hanging out at home. (Miguel did have a catering job, but it was mostly on weekends.)
Fortunately I decided to back off and their relationship deepened even more. At midnight one night between ping-pong games, Miguel invited TJ on a road trip with a friend. The plan was to leave at 6 am the next morning and drive to a national park five hours away. Uncharacteristically, TJ readily agreed, leaving his computer behind for several days. They camped, tried mountain biking for the first time and floated in inner tubes down a river. After years of planning family vacations together, I was glad to see the boys could execute a wonderful vacation by themselves.
I’m not sure where my boys’ relationship will go next. They have so much to face still in life—college, relationships, careers. If they are like my brother and I, they will bond just as much or more over the low points than the high points. I’m just glad they have reached a solid point of friendship that has blossomed despite the distance and their differences. It gives me solace to know they are taking a genuine interest in one another and can support each other in the years ahead.
Seven days, 21 people, a small farming village in the highlands of Guatemala. It sounds like a mission trip, a service project or maybe some kind of trendy eco-tourism. As I reflect more on my recent travels to Guatemala however, the description that best fits the trip is family reunion. Although we did come with a few projects in mind, our stay in tiny Panyebar was remarkable mostly for the relationships we formed and renewed. There, among the lush fields of coffee beans and corn, we saw what can happen when you cultivate friendships over a long period of time.
Our first taste of friendship came when our two microbuses pulled up to the edge of town Monday morning. Suddenly a group of several dozen students filled the streets. Some were playing instruments and others were holding banners that read “Welcome brothers from California” in English, Spanish and Quiche, their native language. We got out of our buses and greeted the students, then marched behind them up the hill all the way to the school. There, on the school basketball court, they had planned a welcome ceremony for us complete with a traditional Guatemalan dance, a flag ceremony, songs and homemade gifts. A new charismatic young teacher, Abel, served as the master of ceremonies, narrating all the events on a portable PA system. His booming voice could be heard throughout the village.
We haven’t always received such an extravagant welcome in Panyebar. The first time my family went there, in 2008, we arrived with no fanfare at all. At that point, our group’s work in the village was rather new. We had just begun supporting the village’s new middle school a few years before. When our buses pulled up that year, I remember getting out and seeing just a few little kids hanging around. We climbed up the stairs to the school office and I met a teacher. I tried to talk with her a bit in my basic Spanish and sensed she was reluctant to engage. Was this a personality issue or was she unsure of our intentions and hesitant to open up to me?
That year we accomplished a significant project (building a bathroom for the school) and the villagers did warm up to us, but I did not establish a strong personal connection with anyone.
Fast-forward to this year again, and the landscape looks much different. In the intervening nine years various members of our group (officially a 501(c)(3) called Mayan Partners) have traveled to Panyebar many times. One year a couple from our group lived in the village for five months. As an organization we’ve gotten to know the personalities, quirks and lives of the people. Most of our resources have gone to the middle school, funding the teachers’ salaries. For the most part, the school has been a success. Whereas in the past very few kids went onto high school (for which students need to move to another city), now many kids go to high school and some even to college. This is significant in a place where most adults have only a second- or third-grade education.
Still, despite the improvements in education, the village lacks employment opportunities and most people make only a couple of dollars a day. A few years ago I got involved with a project to sell handmade Christmas ornaments in the U.S. as a way to help women supplement their income. For two years I worked with a woman named Flory, the daughter-in-law of a pastor in town. Then this year I added a second group made up of women who work at a preschool. One of my goals in traveling to Panyebar this year was to meet these women face to face and get to know them. I wasn’t sure how this would go. Would it be like the teacher I met nine years ago who was hesitant to share? Would our conversation feel natural or forced? And what had happened to Flory? For some reason she had not returned my e-mails for the past six months.
After our lovely welcome ceremony full of singing and dancing on Monday morning, I made my way down a little dirt path, through a cornfield, to the town preschool. I was eager to meet the teachers and see the 125 ornaments they had been working on for the past several months. I had the names of the women but really didn’t know much about them.
Like most of the buildings in Panyebar, the preschool is made of cinderblocks, wood slats and a sheet metal roof. It’s not modern in any way, though through donations from individuals and groups like World Vision, it has a surprising number of resources, like books and chairs and tables for the 55 kids who attend. Along one wall are small toothbrushes hanging from nails. The teachers try to cultivate good hygiene, which is a challenge in a place where most people never see a dentist and lose many of their permanent teeth by the time they are adults.
When I finally stepped into the preschool, several people from our group had already arrived ahead of me. They told me that the women had been eagerly asking about me. “Where is Allison?” they said. I entered the building and was surrounded by six women, all shorter than me, wearing traditional Guatemalan blouses and skirts. I met Rosario, who I had been e-mailing, as well as Juana, Dolores, Maria, Aracely and Dominga. They greeted me with big smiles and hugs. They had been working very hard on the ornaments and were so grateful for my help in giving them work and taking an interest in their crafts. It’s possible I had met some of these women nine years before, but this time, with our shared connection over their work, it was like meeting family. They seemed open, friendly and loving.
After our meeting, I announced to them that I’d brought crafts for their students. I had prepared the crafts as a measure of goodwill between us, not knowing they’d receive me so generously. Looking back, I didn’t really need to prepare the crafts to create good feelings, but it did provide a way for me and others in our group to get to know the preschoolers. They are a sweet bunch of kids who, like kids everywhere, love to draw, play and learn.
That day, after the craft session, and after most of the preschoolers had left, the teachers and I sat in the tiny little kid chairs and talked. They offered me a fresh mango, cut into long strips. I told them about my family and my life in California. So much time went by that they got worried I would miss the bus back down the mountain. But that’s OK, they joked, we would love for you to stay here tonight!
Then, one of the women’s daughters, a teenager named Lucia, offered to carry the duffel bag of ornaments back to the school where I would be catching the bus. She treated them like a precious possession. They represented hours of dedicated work. Along the way, Lucia told me the story of how she had been ill much of the past year but now, thanks to her family’s prayers, she had recovered. She promised to invite me to her house later that week.
It was a promising start to our week with the people of Panyebar. I’ll write more in my next post about tracking down Flory, who had made Christmas ornaments for two years but then stopped answering my e-mails. I’ll also try to distill a few other experiences from our “family reunion” in Panyebar.
We stood on a small precipice of brittle rock, surrounded by pools of orange, bubbling lava. The smell of sulphur hung in the air. My husband looked alarmed. My kids looked fearful. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I thought. “I’ve put my family’s life in jeopardy. Why hadn’t I researched this? We are going to die on the side of this volcano.” I was shaking.
The trip to the volcano had seemed like just another tourist attraction when we read the brochure. It had a large photo of a volcano with billowing smoke and a description that explained that shuttles left early every morning for a day-long trip to the famous Volcan Pacaya. We had been to Hawaii and imagined the experience would be similar. There, tourists can view the smoke and active lava fields of Kilauea from a safe distance. Hand rails prevent anyone from stepping anywhere near the lava flows. Guatemala, however, does not seem to share the same safety concerns.
The morning had started out predictably. Just as the brochure said, a van pulled up to our hotel at 6 am. My husband, my two sons, ages 8 and 11, and I squeezed into the van along with a dozen other tourists. We soon left the comfortable colonial town where we were staying and turned onto curvy mountainous roads. The air was stuffy and I prayed I wouldn’t get sick on the hour and a half journey. Upon arriving in the small town at the base of the volcano, we were greeted by local residents selling trinkets and snacks. We bought a few drinks and followed our guide to a path at the edge of town. Soon we began climbing up a steep mountain path. Tall trees and vegetation grew along the sides of the path. Tourists on horseback occasionally passed us. “Why didn’t we take horses?” one of my kids grumbled. “How much longer?” We stopped a few times to rest and I wondered if the climb was too much for my eight-year-old. We were all perspiring as the sun climbed steadily in the sky. At one point our guide mysteriously broke off a few small branches of a tree and stuck them in his backpack.
Eventually, after more than an hour of climbing, we left the dense vegetation and saw a barren black slope up ahead. We walked to the slope and our guide explained that this was hardened lava from a flow about a month ago. He stepped onto the black rock, a little uneven in places, and signaled for us to follow. We walked a little farther. This lava was fresh three weeks ago, he said. The ground was brittle and some of it had dried in strange ways, leaving crevices. At one point my foot slipped and I fell a good foot into a hole. The rock cut my leg and I was bleeding a little. But I was just happy I hadn’t stepped onto running lava.
Against my judgement and not wanting to appear weak, I followed our group and the guide farther into the lava field. Our guide had obviously staked out the route and knew just where to led us over rock that had hardened sufficiently. Finally, he stopped and proudly told us we were on a lava bed that was only a week old. By this point, we were on a high precipice, looking down at fresh lava running by us. The guide laughed and pulled out the branches he had broken off earlier He stuck them in the hot lava and stirred them around. Suddenly his hat blew off and, shocked, we watched as he jumped down, inches from the lava, to retrieve it. At that point, I had lost trust in our guide and couldn’t wait to get back to solid land. My family seemed to concur as they looked back at me with wide eyes.
The trip to the volcano was by no means our reason for coming to Guatemala. We had come two weeks earlier with the goal of helping build a bathroom for a school in a rural village in the Western Highlands above Lake Attitlan. We had spent 10 days in the village, meeting the local families, playing with the kids, and falling in love with the beauty of the country. At various times those ten days I had experienced a few second thoughts, much as I did up on the volcano. I worried that my kids might fall into the large hole next to the construction site, I worried about our dangerous bus rides up and down the mountain to the village each day, and I worried we might all get food sickness. I had calmed all my worries, however, with the thought that these were risks I was willing to take in order to show my kids the world. They would be forever changed by seeing and meeting people so different from themselves. Indeed, the kids did learn a lot and our time in the village ended well. The worst thing that happened was a few mosquito bites. Now, though, with only a few days left, we decided to do more touristy activities, like the volcano.
As it turned out, getting off the volcano was nerve-wracking. As we turned to leave for solid ground, another group of about 15 tourists began picking their way across the lava field toward us. Since there was only a narrow section of hardened lava to cross on, we had to squeeze by them, hoping not to slip into a crevice like I had on the way out. When we finally reached dirt and trees I felt relief pour over me. We practically skipped down the mountain back to the van. I hadn’t planned on this adventure when we signed up to build a bathroom, but it gave us a story we could eventually laugh about for years to come. We all agreed we would love to come back to build another bathroom, but we would never climb another volcano.
***
Now, 9 years later, we are ready to embark on another trip to Guatemala. We are going back to the same village where we built the bathroom. On the one hand, we know this village and its people. On the other hand, we aren’t sure what awaits us. There is talk about building a fence along the basketball court so kids don’t plummet six feet off the side into the field below. In addition, we’ll be playing a lot with the kids, trading English, Spanish and Quiche expressions. My son hopes to film a documentary and I hope to build relationships with a group of women who make Christmas ornaments we sell here in the U.S. We are ready to take in the beauty of a country rich in many things we don’t have here in the U.S., especially time. We are eager to slow down, learn, listen and share our lives with our Guatemalan friends. 
“It’s national donut day,” my son announced to me this morning as he was scrolling through his phone.
“We should call Grammy,” I said. “She’s the donut queen.”
For years my mom has made donuts from scratch, and before that her mom made donuts. We love them. In fact, when I was growing up donuts were the number one demand we had for my grandma whenever she came to visit from South Dakota. We wouldn’t even let her unpack her suitcases before she had spent a few hours in the kitchen making donuts. (My mom was prepared with all the ingredients.) There’s nothing quite like a hot, sugary donut, straight out of the deep fryer.
Making donuts is a production involving a team of cooks. My mom begins early in the morning, mixing the buttermilk dough. The dough needs to sit in the refrigerator for two hours. Then she sets up a staging area and assigns me and my kids a task. One of us gets the task of rolling out the sticky dough and cutting out pieces with a donut cutter, a round aluminum ring with a hole in the center. Another one of us drops the dough rings into a deep fryer filled with oil. Someone else will monitor the cooking donuts and flip them so they evenly brown in the oil, then remove them and place them on paper towels. Finally, one of us finishes the task by rolling the cooked donuts in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and placing our finished product in my mom’s gigantic lime green circa 1970 Tupperware container. About this time my dad will wander in, ready to taste-test the results.
After a few too many donuts, washed down with milk, we all feel a little ill but quite satisfied. The only thing that has been harder on my stomach was the time a friend and I made onion rings in high school. My friend, who was from Georgia, had received a large box of sweet Vidalia onions in the mail, and we cooked the whole thing–then ate far too many.
Today some people talk about “slow” food, the production of traditional food using local ingredients. My mom and grandma were doing this kind of thing long before there was a word for it, with an emphasis on the slow and a focus on sweet. Around the holidays, my grandma made her own candies, everything from peanut brittle to “hooch,” a caramely, buttery candy I’ve never seen anyone else make. She and my grandpa especially prided themselves on their popcorn balls. This was a slightly dangerous affair involving mixing fresh-popped popcorn with caramel and shaping this hot, gooey mixture into a ball. Once finished they would deliver their treats to local nursing homes. For my wedding my grandma spent days making hundreds of creamy fondant mints in pretty blue, violet and pink shades. She carted them all out on the plane and between that project and making my wedding quilt, she was exhausted—a rare state for my indefatigable grandma.
My mom has kept many slow food traditions alive and, just like a good haiku poem, they serve to mark the passing of nature’s seasons. A fresh strawberry pie means its springtime. Blackberry jam is late August. Cinnamon rolls are Christmas morning. Along the way, I’ve gotten involved and so have my kids. When the kids were younger, we used to worry about having an accident with the 400-degree oil for the donuts. Amazingly, no one has ever been burned. On the other hand, we’ve been scratched up badly picking blackberries. And once, I almost started a fire with my parents’ old electric ice cream maker—the kind you put rock salt into. I had brought it to my son’s kindergarten class to make ice cream with the kids and possibly because of its age, it began to smoke. It was churning away and smoke filled the whole classroom. I turned it off and we ate mushy ice cream. Fortunately the kids didn’t care.
Today slow food and especially donuts are trendy. There are all kinds of fancy donuts with special fillings and flavors. I’ve even seen bacon donuts—bleech! My grandma’s donuts are basic, just a plain, tender dough rolled in cinnamon and sugar. I don’t know where she got the recipe. She grew up on a farm, the daughter of German immigrants. I doubt she learned it there, though it’s possible. What she did learn, though, was not to be afraid of big projects. She could do just about anything involving food or crafts. Wallpaper a room? No problem. Make Venetian blinds? Easy. Organize a church tea for 100 women. Fun! She passed on that intrepid spirit to my mother and a little bit to me. I think she’d be very pleased that in 2017 we are still making her donuts. 
When I was a child, the month of December seemed to pass so slowly. I would count the days until Christmas and it seemed to take forever. I couldn’t wait until Christmas morning when my brother and I would get up early, rush to the Christmas tree and tear open the presents. What special gifts would be waiting there? In the picture above I am wearing overalls I got for Christmas when I was 10. I really wanted those overalls. I was serious about the overalls. I wore them every day for two weeks straight, right into January. It’s like that with kids and their favorite gifts.
These days the Christmas season rushes by. Thanksgiving is over and suddenly it’s Christmas season. Time to buy a tree. Time to decorate the house. Time to buy gifts. As an adult, there doesn’t seem to be time to fit in all the errands, shopping and preparations. In the background linger all the voices that tell you what you should be doing. Maybe this is the year you should write your Christmas letter early (if at all) or this is the year you should put up those Christmas lights languishing in the basement. So many shoulds can take the joy right out of the holiday. It’s a challenge to quiet the shoulds and live in the present moment.
That Christmas when I was 10 I had my first “boyfriend.” He was a cute strawberry blonde with freckles. A few weeks before Christmas break he gave my best friend a little folded up piece of paper for me. It said, “Will you go steady? Mike” Only a few of the cool kids were going steady so I was flattered. I wrote “yes” below the question and sent it back to him. I hardly knew him and we didn’t talk after our note exchange. Then Christmas break came and I forgot about him until one day he arrived at my door with a gift. I was so embarrassed when my mother told me there was a boy to see me that I refused to come to the door. He left the gift with my mother. I later opened the gift and it was a set of Snoopy stationery. I loved it and kept it for many years, unused in a drawer. After Christmas break I returned to school and saw Mike again. I don’t remember whether I thanked him for the gift, but I must have, considering I was always taught to thank people. One day a few weeks later it was rainy and we had to stay inside for lunch. The kids were restless. Pretty soon some of the kids decided to play truth or dare. To my horror, they dared Mike to kiss me. Not only did I not want to kiss Mike, I hated being the center of attention. Instinctively I ran under a table and hid. Everyone laughed. That was the end of our going steady.
With the small boyfriend drama behind me I could turn to my interests at the time, which included dressing up my miniature Schnauzer in old baby clothes and playing superballs with my friend Kim. I still have the album of photos I made of my dog in various outfits. I don’t have the shoebox of brightly colored superballs, but I trust some other kid somewhere is having fun with those. Kids generally have such simple interests and I take that as a lesson today. Yes, I do have adult responsibilities, but I can still savor simple things. In fact, in light of my responsibilities and the shoulds, I need to savor simple things. Simple things today can mean adding a little egg nog to my morning coffee or writing a little extra in my journal. At the top of my Christmas list is a “frother,” so I can froth milk to make foam for my coffee. Next is a new leather moleskin journal and some nice pencils. Simple pleasures to enjoy the moment.
Of course, what I really want for Christmas these days will not come as a present under the tree. It’s what most of us want—a happy family, good health, fulfilling projects—and perhaps a dash of adventure. One of my most memorable recent Christmases contained almost all of that in a comical way. All four of us, my husband and two sons, had driven out to Salt Lake City, Utah a few days after Christmas to celebrate the holidays with my brother and his family. We had a great time sitting around talking, watching movies and sledding on a nearby hill. The snow-covered Utah mountains were beautiful and a nice change of scenery from the Bay Area. For reasons I don’t remember, we left on New Year’s Eve to make the l2-hour drive back to Berkeley. We passed through the frozen Salt Flats and then crossed the desolate Utah/Nevada border where you can drive 50 to 100 miles without seeing a town. Just after speeding by Winnemucca, Nevada, the halfway point of our trip, our car began to making sputtering noises and losing power. Panicked, we pulled off to the side of the road and called AAA. Fortunately we were just miles outside of Winnemucca and a driver came fairly quickly. We were towed back to town and found out that our car’s timing belt had broken. The bad news was that, since this was a holiday, they wouldn’t be able to get the part for our car until January 2. We were effectively stuck in Winnemucca for three days! A little dejected, we checked into the Winnemucca Hotel, which boasted its own small casino and restaurant. We drove our loaner car around the town (which took about 2 minutes) and cheered a little when we saw there was actually a movie theater (playing the Muppet Movie) and a Basque restaurant. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. As it turned out, we spent a very happy couple of days in Winnemucca. Besides our outing to the movie theater and Basque restaurant, we sat in our little hotel room watching bad TV shows, writing thank you notes on Winnemucca postcards and reading and rereading “Of Mice and Men,” which my son had in his backpack. It seemed that time had stopped.
I don’t know exactly what Christmas will bring this year but as long as I have loved ones near I expect it will be good. I just hope time will slow down enough to enjoy all the right moments.
PostScript: Last summer we stayed at the Winnemucca Hotel for a night on our way to a family reunion in Colorado. We reminisced about being stuck there a few years back. There was no time for a movie or a Basque meal but I have a feeling we’ll be back again.