mi pueblo

June 15th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

Living abroad, I introduce myself in the following way…

Spanish speaking person:
Where are you from?

Me: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (phonetically spoken, “PEETS burr geh, pen seal BANE yah”). Do you know it?

Spanish speaking person:
This is the Steelers?

Me: Yes, also, the Pirates.

I rarely get into New York, Colorado, my stint in Texas, up and down the east coast, Italy, the boat… So many words. I don´t have all that vocabulary, and who has that kind of time? When I am being asked this question, I assume people are just looking for a general “what type of gringo are you” answer. Something that helps them know how to deal with me, not a dissertation on my journey through life.

I was in a market in a pretty remote area and I saw this guy across the checkout area with a Pirates t-shirt on. I was just smiling and waving him down like we were dahn the Iggle or something. (We were NOT. This was a stranger in a strange land.)

Nonetheless I went over and was like hey man, I am smiling because that shirt is from mi pueblo. Which, could be a confusing statement on its own, so I generously went on explaining about how the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins all have the same color combo – Black and gold! See? –  and how seeing that gear so far from home makes me happy. Either that story was a real stunner, or my new bud was just letting the clock run down until F got through the checkout and came to collect his girl. And you know, standing in silence with another person takes real grit.

F sees this – high key talking to strangers in combination with wandering off –  as a genetic trait passed on from both – BOTH, I say – of my parents.  In the simplest telling of the story, its just the way of mi gente.

 

time capsule

November 8th, 2017 § 1 comment § permalink

We have the habit of making highly questionable decisions in November. Multiple times we have ended up offshore in the North Atlantic about this time of year…or later. This year, we are staying put in the tropics, fiddling around with the boat and exploring Panama by land and sea. Perhaps our decision-making is improving?

To honor this progress, I offer a short video of me keeping watch last November…

…in contrast with this photo of our current neighbor, Ms. Sloth.

IMG-20171106-WA0000

I will leave it up to you, Dear Reader, to determine if we are headed in the right direction. I honestly can’t tell if this is the right way or what. For now I suppose the thing to do is make like a sloth and hang in there.

don’t fence me in

January 29th, 2017 § 2 comments § permalink

You know that phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

Its something one might say to invoke humility in the face of their own good fortune, or to express identification and unity with the struggle of another.

Yesterday the first headline I read began, ”Refugees, Visa and Green Card Holders Detained, Turned Away…”. I sat upright and my heart pounded in my chest. You see, my husband is a green card holder (he’s actually my Permanent Resident Alien Spouse, to be exact) and we are currently in what we hope will be the final stage of the process.

Until we reach that promised land of a 10-year green card, allowing supposed free movement in and out of my country, his residency and immigration status informs every aspect of our lives together. Where we go, how we work, when we visit family, and how we plan for our future. The thought that the rules we have been so diligently following would somehow and suddenly be thrown up in the air put my heart in my throat.

Then I read further, and saw the changes were affecting travelers only from Muslim countries. My heart promptly returned to my chest. My husband is from Italy.

That quick moment of relief affirms for me that what divides us is bigotry and racism, social constructs that have no tangible basis, yet have deep influence in our history, society and individual behavior. I can insist all day long that I am not biased against Muslims, but that moment of relief would be no less real. My privilege would allow me to leave it at that, accept our own good fortune and move along.

at_capt_stans

After the courthouse, with Alien Spouse.

When we got married in a small town courthouse in rural GA, the clerk doing our marriage license heard F’s accent, saw his foreign birth certificate and filled in his race as “Other”. F thought this was fantastic. I thought it was sort of an Alpha-Omega moment, where our national pastime of keeping everyone neatly sorted turned a white European male into The Other. We had become completely estranged from the source material of our racist thinking. The center could not hold.

So this morning I intentionally rewind to that heart sinking feeling that came before the momentary relief. Because there but for the grace of God go we.

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