Our Friendly Fern

We’d only been in the country three months and I’d yet to find a plant store.  We were enjoying lunch at a nearby diner.  I’d just finished regaling Andy with my plant sagas, and voila!  God really does provide.  Along came a man with a large fern on his head carrying a tray of smaller plants.  I relieved him of his head fern and a “tu y yo” cactus to begin my plant family. 

Apparently here in the D.R., you can just pop a seed in the ground and it grows—like magic.  Unfortunately, I have not experienced this phenomenon to be true.  Simple ferns seem to thrive pretty much everywhere here—except my apartment. 

My fern grew well for a while, then its leaves slowly began turning brown and yellow.  “It’s pot constrained,” declared the experts.  I bought a bigger pot with new soil.  “Ferns love the sun, you must move it outside.”  The sun simply turned the leaves yellow and brown faster.  I began pruning the ugly stems and leaves.  Maybe it’s just going through a weird adolescent stage. 

Nothing worked any miracles.  My fern has managed to muddle through almost a year under my care.  I’ve recently started adding nutrients to the soil.  Maybe chemicals will do the trick.  Regardless, Hannah greatly enjoys giving our fern regular haircuts.  She has permission to cut off the brown portion of the leaves—a rule she adheres to very loosely since scissors are so fun. 

Cursive Curiousity

I had to buy a textbook for Hannah’s class this year.  To my surprise, they are teaching the 3-year-olds to read and write in cursive!  Isn't that strange?  Although maybe it's a new teaching rage in the U.S. too.  

According to my cursory research, many Dominicans think (1) it’s easier for young children to write in cursive than script, and (2) having nice cursive handwriting is really, really important.  Honestly, I don't even remember how to form 50% of the letters in cursive.

After slightly more than 3 months, Hannah can now write an “a” in cursive.  It looks kindof like a "q" to me.  Hmmm.  She can write Hs, As, and Ns in script.  Not to brag or anything.  Especially because as hard as I try, I cannot get my daughter to put these letters in the correct order to spell her name.  She writes them in a long string “HHAAAAAANNNNNNNHH” in the order of her choosing, which in her mind spells her name just fine. 

Actually, the cursive thing might work well because she associates Spanish sounds with the cursive letters and English sounds with the script letters.  I pointed to her cursive “a” and called it an “ā” (as in “āte”).  “NO, mom, it’s not an ā, it’s an aaaaaahhh," (pronounced like ŏ as in “pŏt”)!

Maria

It was really hard not to cry today while talking with Maria, who now cleans for us once a week.  She's had a very hard life but still sings praise songs to God while she cleans.  After talking for some time she looked at me with tears in her eyes and genuinely asked why so many bad people prosper and why God gave her this life – she's never done anything that bad, she's never stolen or physically hurt anyone.  Obviously I know the "correct" theological answer of we're all sinners and none of us "deserve" good things from God, but the cards do fall very unevenly.  

I've dared to attempt an answer to this question with inquiring students and friends accusing God of (usually theoretical for them) injustice, but this was totally different.  I told her that I don't know.  All I do know is that another reality awaits her in the future. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  Jesus  is coming to make everything new and to right all of the wrongs.  This morning my heart genuinely longed for Jesus' return for the first time in a long time.  It felt good and hard at the same time.  

Maria found her first "son" in the garbage was she was 14 years old.  Wet and naked with a note stating his birthday—all in a shabby cardboard box.  Her mother said there wasn't enough food or money so if she took in this boy, she'd have to find another place to stay.  So she walked the streets until she found someone to provide her shelter in exchange for work.  

She eventually married and had a second, natural-born son.  Her husband said there wasn't enough food or money for everyone so she couldn't feed her first son (now 10 years old).  She refused.  He left.  She ended up homeless on the street with 2 boys.  She found a kind woman who gave her a small room (servant's quarters) in her house.  A friend from church found her walking the streets looking for work with her son.  He got her son into our church's school (where Hannah attends).  

She and her sons eat one meal a day, usually rice and an egg.  Her 2-year-old never eats breakfast, never has milk.  I met her through Hannah's school.  She has an incredibly sweet and happy spirit.  I employed her one day a week and buy (powdered) milk for her son (which she could never afford even with the extra employment). I feel really blessed to have met her and her son, but the inequity between our lives is palpable.  Material poverty surrounds me (this is just one example) and I wrestle with how to respond most wisely and most obediently to my King.  Please pray for me in this journey.  

Please pray for Maria and her sons.  Though through all of this I'm really really grateful to have a community of brothers and sisters here wrestling with the same things.  Community always renews my hope and strength.

My Tree

I am sad.  Today they chopped down my favorite tree.  Someone decided to clean up one of the many vacant buildings surrounding us.  They hired a crew of Haitian laborers, who lived on the premise until all the trash was removed, until every tree had been cleared.  It took them almost two weeks.  

The last thing to go was my tree.  It provided shade for our apartment building, but was technically growing on the other side of the fence.  It had three huge trunks growing up from different places.  It had the most beautiful, full leaves.  I prayed that God would rescue my tree.  I don't think I’d ever prayed for a tree before, but it seemed like such a shame to take out one of the few mature, gorgeous trees on our block.  

They tried to cut it down on Friday and couldn’t do it with their machetes.  I celebrated.  They returned the next week with bigger machetes and down it fell.  I saved some of the leaves and put them in a vase on our table.  I will miss its large leaves swaying in the wind outside my window.  I will miss the red woodpecker who lived in the tree (even though he ruined the wooden shutters on our bedroom balcony).  By some miracle, the chicken living in the lot next door managed to survive.  

Since the “clearing” nothing else has happened.  The building is up for sale and it could be years before it sells.  Now we get to look at an ugly cleared lot instead of an overgrown little forest, which managed to bring beauty into our lives despite the mounds of garbage it more or less covered up.  

Swimming with the Fishes

We recently adopted two goldfish.  Hannah named them Goldie and Snowy.  Snowy has slightly more white on his/her (how do you tell gender on fish?) tummy, though truth be told they look pretty much identical to the unskilled eye.  Our journey towards adoption began at Hannah’s school in May.  They were doing a unit on animals and each kid was supposed to bring 50 pesos to buy either a fish or a baby chicken.  Yes, you read that right:  chicken.  

While tempted toward the baby chicken for novelty’s sake, we decided that a dead fish was much easier to recover from than a dead chicken, so we should clearly choose the fish.  Some weeks later, Hannah brought home a very sad looking Beta fish in a plastic water bottle.  He was already sort of floating on one side.  The prognosis didn’t look good.  We (the adults in the household) took secret bets as to his date of expiration.  I unfortunately won.  He didn’t make it to the next morning.  Hannah demonstrated impressive resilience.  She was quite excited by the idea of flushing a fish down the toilet. 

After returning from summer travels, Hannah and I walked to a small local pet store.  We selected two beautiful goldfish, bright blue tank rocks and a pretty green plant.  The goldfish almost suffocated in our original glass vase for lack of oxygen (strange how they’re always at the top of the water gasping for air ... hmmm).  Thankfully, Joselyn’s daughter is a goldfish expert and her roommate had a large glass aquarium that was only collecting dust.  We have since transitioned Goldie and Snowy to their new home, and they have been swimmingly happy ever since.  

The tank started out on the floor where the girls enjoyed watching the fish and Naomi enjoyed trying to catch the fish.  Unfortunately, Naomi actually fell into the tank one scary afternoon.  I’ll never forget her little feet kicking in the air and the panicked look in her big blue eyes (underwater).  Thankfully I was less than 20 feet away.  She was very scared but fine.  The fish seemed unfazed.  So now our cool tank is high up on a ledge in our enclosed balcony and I have learned a valuable lesson.  Maybe, we should have gone with the chickens?

Brange Bizcocho

Andy was gone.  I was tired of white walls.  I needed something to do at night after the kids went to bed.  Why not paint the house?  My last distant memory of painting was my parent’s rundown rental house in Delavan, IL some 20 odd years ago.  Delavan is internationally famous for 2 locals in the Guinness Book of World Records shooting marshmallows the furthest distance - from 1 person’s nose to the other person’s mouth = )  I digress.  

I clearly needed a painting refresher course, so I spent a few days watching You Tube videos on painting and spackling.  Feeling sufficiently confident that I could replicate the best prep and paint methodologies, I headed to the paint store.  Now my friend had warned me that choosing and mixing paint colors was ... umm ... different here.

My first tip-off was the dirty looks I got taking 10 paint color cards out of the display and leaving the store with them.  When I returned with my chosen colors, they hand-mixed “matching” colors from a different brand of paint all-together and showed me about 1,000 more color options on rings that were clearly not to be removed from the store.  They also suggested that I really wanted a different color than what I’d selected.  You really want this one, it will look better.  Ummm.  No, I really want the one that I chose.  No, you don’t, you should use this color.  Ack.  In the end, I think he was right, but who fights with their customers to change their paint colors?

Apparently I have a talent for picking brownish-orange colors gone wrong.  My “subtle orange” kitchen color was in fact a garish brown-orange.  I returned it for a brighter, definitely-no-trace-of-brown orange and after being blinded by its OJ intensity for a few days, I have grown fond of it.  The living room was a sadder story.  I chose a creamy wheat color.  Ha.  It came out ... drum roll please ... brownish-orange.  Depending on the time of day it looks peach or pink, definitely not creamy wheat.  Andy says our living room now resembles a big wedding cake or bizcocho.  This was not intended as a compliment.  Thus, I have cleverly entitled this blog Brange (brown+orange) Bizcocho. 

At some point in the upcoming months I hope to finish Hannah’s room (pale blue) and Naomi’s room (pale yellow).  I am curious to see what the colors actually turn out to be.  I’m optimistic that neither will veer towards brown-orange, but ... you never know! 

Happiness Is

My freshman year, I was in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, the musical.  According to Peanuts, “Happiness is two kinds of ice-cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree ...”  Sadly enough, I can still sing most of the song.  I would like to add a cute orange rechargeable vacuum and a QVC-special Shark steam mop to that list.

I have literally spent hours upon hours sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing my floors.  I have repeatedly removed every toy and book and rug from my floors so the buckets of soapy water could work their magic before being “gomo”ed down the drains with a big rubber squeegee.  The result? ... black feet and pernicious dust the very next day.  Argh.

With no windows, the pollution walks right into our apartment, especially November through June during la zafra or sugar cane harvesting season.  To harvest sugar cane they burn the fields causing black ash to float miles and land on my floor.

However, I have won.  No more pushing the same dust around via old-fashioned mop and broom.  Ha ha ha ha.  My little vacuum eats dust for dinner and my Shark steam mop leaves the floors sparkling clean, germ-free, and chemical-free.  Booyah.  Our feet actually stay clean for at least a few days now.  Hooray.  And it takes about 10% of the effort.  I am free!  We’ll see how the system holds up come November.