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May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others,
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung.
And may you stay
Forever young.
May you stay forever young.
(Forever Young: Bob Dylan – 1974)

I think my Aunt Totis was the first woman I had a crush on. At some point in my life, after infancy and before adolescence, I thought her the most wonderful woman in the world, and I fell forever in love with her. It occurred during one of our frequent trips to Mexico, when my Dad sensed that my mother was growing homesick and he would put her and their four children on a plane to Mexico City. There we all merged into the family of my grandmother Mima Mari. We joined my great-grandmother, Mima Rosi, my aunt Totis, and my two uncles, Pepe and Lalo, in a two-story apartment house on a street called Calle del Chopo. It has since been renamed Doctor Enrique González Martinez, but the street still houses a Pemex gas station and a steel and glass edifice that was once the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (renamed the Museo Universitario del Chopo in 1975). Totis was not her real name. It was a childhood derivation of the name Aurora (actually, Maria Aurora), which the untutored tongues of her younger siblings slowly molded into Rora, then Roris, and finally just, Totis. My aunt responded to all three, but she would icily ignore her formal name, when pronounced in a haughty or reprimanding fashion.

My Aunt Totis was a Mexican version of Auntie Mame. She was glamorous, joyful, and effervescent with charm and excitement. Many of my memories of her, and her younger brothers Pepe and Lalo, are during the early 1950’s, when they were still young and single, and living together with my grandmother. My chronology of scenes gets mixed up from the many times our family lived in Mexico City. They begin when I was 3 or 4 years old, and my mom and dad moved all of us to Mexico. There we lived for over a year in the home of my grandmother, Mima Mari and her extended family of five adults. After that long stay in Mexico, of which I have a few images, I remember our visits in flashes of summer vacations, with my mom flying down with the children to visit her family, or driving down one summer with my dad. I have clear memories of leaping hurriedly from my bed to catch the early morning breakfast group of Mima, my mother and Totis, and Pepe and Lalo before they left for school or work. I would sit quietly, listening to their early morning banter about classmates, politics, and religion in their elegant Spanish. They were all working or attending graduate school at the time. Pepe was finishing his studies in philosophy, Lalo completing his law degree, and Totis getting a credential to teach English, while working as a private secretary. I loved the snappy and humorous repartee of these siblings, as they told their mother and each other of what they were planning and whom they were seeing. There was always a lot of inside joking – making fun of, or mocking, some of the in-laws or people they encountered. Later in life I would learn to characterize this style of commentary as “snarky” – making statements about people or events that were sarcastic or impertinent. Those four siblings were the youngest of a family of eight children, and they considered themselves the more intelligent, clever, and charming of the clan. They were young, smart, and attractive, and on the cusp of successful lives and careers. My mother’s husband and three children did not disqualify her from inclusion into this elite set. I loved all my uncles and aunts, but Totis was special, I think, because she took the time to make me feel that I was the center of all her attention – even as a child.

Of all those times and people living on Chopo, I have the fondest memories of my grandmother and Totis. They beguiled me with their kindness, by always taking time to involve me in their activities, and never dismissing my questions or desires to be with them or to help. Mima would always send me with the maid, Crisanta, to buy fresh bolillos (rolls) or tortillas at the corner panadería or tortillería, before meals. She would also allow me to accompany her to the Mercado de San Cosme and let me carry her grocery bag on the way home. Totis made me feel as if I were her personal companion (dare I think date) when we went to the Lago de Xochimilco to see the floating gardens, Sanborn’s Café for lunch, or the Convento y Iglesia de San Francisco for mass. Totis would listen to all my questions and elaborate on all her answers. You see Totis was also a wondrous storyteller. She spun enlivening tales of my early years in Mexico, embellished the legends behind the prayers we learned in Spanish, and created dramas of the historical figures that populated Mexican history and art. Her information filled in many of the blank spots of my childhood in Mexico by describing incidents I had forgotten. How, for example, I promoted myself to the job of official greeter at the age of three or four. According to Totis, whenever someone knocked on the door, I would rush and open it, interrogating the visitors in lisping Spanish.
“Bueno días, señor (o señora), soy Antonio Delgado a sus ordenes,” I would say, introducing myself formally to the stranger at the door. “¿Y que desea Usted? Aquí no tratamos con vendedores.” I would add in a menacing tone, warning off all salesmen and solicitors before they could make their pitch. Friends and family visitors later confessed to her of their amazement over this serious child who greeted and ferociously questioned them in such a formal manner. Totis explained that because she and her brothers never spoke down to us in Spanish, the vocabulary I heard modeled in that house was always formal, eloquent and direct.

Another time, after we finished saying our evening prayers in Spanish with my mother, it was Totis who warned us of the absolute necessity of this practice. She especially stressed the need of always including the Santa Maria, or the Hail Mary, by telling us the story of a dissolute and wealthy hacendado who lived in their hometown of Aguascalientes. Although he squandered his family’s wealth in gambling and vice, this sinful man never failed to say a nightly Hail Mary in memory of his mother, even on the night of his death. At the stroke of midnight, the funeral coach carrying the coffin with the dead hacendado was stopped on its way to the Campo Santo (cemetery) by a band of dark, hooded horseman demanding the corpse. Flames shot from their eyes and mouths, as they demanded the body from the terror stricken driver and the priest by his side. But in a flash of white light, an angel of the Lord appeared in front of the coach, holding a sword across his chest.
“Be gone, Satan,” the angel warned, menacingly. “You will not drag this soul to hell tonight, for Mary the Mother of God protects him. Despite his sinfulness, this man, out of love for his mother, prayed to the Blessed Virgin every night without fail. For that reason alone, La Virgen Morena petitioned her son to spare his soul, and God has granted this request. Return to the pits of hell, Lucifer, and trouble these honorable men no more.”
With a shriek of anger, Satan and his hooded demons turned their dire mounts and galloped back to the gates of hell, cursing their luck. For they knew that if the dead man had missed but one night of prayer, his soul would have been forfeit for all eternity. But his mother’s love, and the intercession of La Virgen de Guadalupe had saved him. Needless to say, even though we took comfort in saying a nightly Hail Mary, it took a long time for me to get over the fear of seeing a devil lurking in the shadows of our bedroom, waiting for me to slip up and forget.

On our regular excursions to historical churches and museums, it was Totis who colorfully illustrated the romantic backstories of the people who had lived and populated those places. Even though Pepe was the philosopher, and Lalo the historian, it was Totis who spun the compelling stories of Mexico. While visiting the Bosque de Chapultepec and touring the Palacio de Maximiliano on a Sunday afternoon, she told us of the tragic tale of the Austrian prince who became the puppet Emperor for Napoleon III of France in 1864, and how his wife, the Empress Carlotta, went mad with grief when she failed to prevent his execution by the Republican forces of President Benito Juarez.

While they still lived together with Mima, my bachelor uncles sometimes complained aloud that Totis was too bossy and pushy. However, from my perspective, I viewed those qualities as being more organized and assertive than they were. I assumed that her job as a private secretary had trained her in those skills and she was better prepared to be in charge. For example, I remember during one of our visits to Mexico without my father Totis discovered that my siblings and I hadn’t yet learned to ride bicycles. Without delay Totis reserved one day to go to Chapultepec and rent bikes, and, along with my mother, spent the afternoon running after us until we could balance and pedal on our own. Totis also organized outings and picnics in the country, planned excursions to archeological sites, and even drafted her boyfriends into acting as tour guides and chauffeurs. I only remember one boyfriend from those days. He was a tall, skinny, young man with a pencil thin mustache, who wore fancy white shirts and crisp blue suits. He owned a stylish roadster with a rumble seat in the trunk, and I remember sitting in it with Lalo one Saturday on a trip to the campo (countryside). My initial pangs of jealousy subsided the more I heard him speak, because his personality paled in comparison to the energy and effervescence that emanated from Totis, and he was never as clever or funny as my uncles.

Thankfully, when the time came for me to finally meet her future husband, Adolfo, my romantic crush on Totis had evolved into idealized affection. I believed Totis embodied all the qualities that a modern woman should have: independence, intelligence, and a huge capacity to love. She was the type of woman I thought I wanted to marry. I also found her suitor, Adolfo, to be so different from any of her earlier Mexican boyfriends that I immediately fell under his spell. In many ways, Adolfo was the stereotypic Mexican macho. He was an earthy, charismatic, larger-than-life figure, who would give you the shirt off his back, if you asked him. He was a tall, robust, and hearty man who filled a room with laughter and bonhomie. He was nothing like the doctors, lawyers, and intellectuals who visited my grandmother’s home, nor was he anything like my uncles. He was simply himself, and I loved him. Adolfo had dropped out of school at an early age to pursue a life of commerce, and by the time I met him he was involved in many businesses. He owned the Pemex gasoline station on Chopo, down the street from Mima’s apartment courtyard, and he had his financial fingers in a variety of foreign and domestic investments. However it was from his Pemex location that he first noticed my shapely Mexican aunt, and started his campaign to wed her.

They were opposite in many ways, and yet very similar. They both grabbed onto life with both hands and shot off sparks of excitement and emotion with each other, and in their encounters with others. Adolfo was truthful, but coarse in his language and remarks; while Totis was discrete, but cutting with her comments. Adolfo was naturally relaxed in every social setting, and made people feel that they were his closest friends. Totis was gracious and charming to all, while maintaining her emotional distance and trusting only her family. After they married, my early friendship with Adolfo became the cause of the only fight I ever had with Totis over a strict family rule.

In my mother’s family one never asked for favors or begged for gifts. Many times the common sight of Mexican children tearfully pleading with a caretaking adult to “regálame eso” when seeing a toy or candy in a store, was pointed out to us as a sinful practice. Totis and my mother always made it very clear on shopping trips, that well-reared children, niños buen educados, never begged or whined for gifts, candies, or favors. Totis would reward us when she chose to, and no amount of entreaty or supplication would sway her. She had expanded this dictum to include her new husband Adolfo – especially because he was naturally generous, and eager to please his new in-laws. I forget the exact details of the scene, but I clearly remember Totis storming into Mima’s house on Chopo Street one afternoon with eyes flashing angrily, and her tongue spewing searing accusations. She held a ribboned box in her hand and denounced me for begging a gift from Adolfo. I think she was referring to a playera, or a tropical shirt that I openly admired while visiting him at the clothing boutique he had opened near his gas station. Lifting the box high in the air, Totis vilified its contents as further evidence of the requested favors being heaped on Adolfo by her nieces and nephews. I was so shocked and angered by these charges that my throat constricted in rage and I couldn’t protest my innocence. In utter frustration, I burst into tears and fled the room in despair. I ran upstairs and hid under my mother’s bed, huddling in the furthest corner. I cowered there, wiping my streaming eyes and nose, while silently cursing my aunt, for what seemed like hours. I refused to respond to the pleading and coaxing of my mother and grandmother to come out, and I ignored their whispered discussions. It wasn’t until I heard Totis’ high heels clipping on the wooden bedroom floor, and saw her face peering sideways under the bedcover that I turned my head and listened.
“Toñito, mi niño querido,” she began, soothingly.
“¿Que quieres, Aurora?” I replied rudely, knowing that she abhorred my using her formal name when addressing her.
“Vengo a pedir su perdon,” she continued, ignoring the slight. “I should not have come in here, in such an angry fashion, and accused you of those things. I’m sorry I hurt and offended you. I should have asked you about the shirt first.”
“You should be sorry,” I insisted angrily, while feeling that same emotion slowly deflating even as I said the words. “I never asked Adolfo for any gift or favor.”
“I know that now,” she said softly, “and I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”
Until that moment, I don’t think I’d ever heard that phrase expressed in such a caring fashion from an adult. Perhaps it is because the words come out so much better in Spanish than English. The phrase, ¿Me perdonas? rolls off the tongue and comes from the heart. Saying the words in English, Will you forgive me? seem to catch in people’s throats. I was ensnared by her sincerity and sweet remorse.
“Claro,” I said, scrambling out from under the bed, to be greeted by a teary aunt Totis, who gave me a fierce hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Before I married, I visited Mexico City three times by myself, without parents or siblings: as an 18 year old, high school graduate, in 1966; a 21 year old, college graduate, in 1970; and as a 23 year old, beginning, graduate student in 1973. Each time, although I always stayed with my Aunt Helen and her son Gabino, I spent as much time as possible with Totis and her family: Adolfo, their daughter, Nena, and their two sons, Adolfito and Tavo. In 1966, while attending summer school at the Universidad Autónoma de México, I could always count on seeing Totis every weekend, and on unexpected weekdays after class. She would pile her three children into her tiny Renault sedan and drive across town to rescue me from an afternoon of boring homework, or a Saturday with nothing to do. I was still pretty dependent on Totis for transportation on that trip, even though I was growing confident in using the bus system for traveling downtown and commuting to school every morning. It wasn’t until my second stay in 1970 that I really started using public transportation in Mexico. The Metro had just opened and I was soon traveling on it to all parts of the city on my own. This coincided with a new job and more time constraints on Totis. She was now teaching English at a secundaria (high school) every morning, and busy chauffeuring her own children to and from school every afternoon. During this visit I made a habit of taking la Línea Azul through downtown to the Taxqueña Metro Station, and walking to Totis’ house in Campestre Churubusco. I’d stay for dinner, chat with Adolfo and the kids, and decide whether or not to go home by Metro or spend the night. Even though I varied my activities on this trip as much as possible, spending more time with my cousins, and other aunts and uncles in different parts of the city, Totis and her family were my North Star. I always felt most happy and comfortable there – talking to Totis as she prepared dinner, or just watching television with the family.

I finally got a second opinion about my favorite aunt when my friend Greg accompanied me to Mexico in 1973. The idea was to settle him in with a Mexican family, as a college boarder, while we attended the Universidad as graduate students for the summer. Totis in her inimitable fashion stepped right in and took over when we shared our plan with her. She found housing for Greg near the university and adopted him as another member of her family. She delighted in practicing her English and charming him with her interest in his family, his life, and his future. We made it a habit to join Totis’ family for dinner on Fridays after our last classes. There Adolfo invited us for cocktails at his bar and peppered Greg with questions about his classes, his interests, and his travels throughout Mexico City. Adolfo spoke only Spanish, but every week Greg’s conversation and comprehension got better and better. At our last dinner in their house, Adolfo complimented him on his growing fluency, but took the lion’s share of credit for providing him with cocktail hours of practice.

The last time I saw Totis was in 1988, when she came to visit my mother on one of her irregular trips to Los Angeles. Kathy and I had just moved into a sprawling 4 bedroom, 2-bathroom house in West Hills, CA., and I wanted to show off my family and home. I remember driving her around the West San Fernando Valley, showing her the scenery of the nearby hills, and telling her how Greg was doing as a bilingual teacher and school administrator. It seemed as if I had finally caught up to her position in life as a happy and satisfied parent and professional. Yet while I had gotten older (I was 41 at the time), she still seemed ageless. She continued being the independent, attractive, and charming woman I had fallen in love with long, long ago. I never saw her again after that visit. Later that year my mother informed me that Totis had been diagnosed with cancer of the throat, and would be undergoing surgery and follow-up therapy. My mother went to Mexico soon after to check on her recovery. On the occasion of that visit, Totis simply turned her head away from the side of the bed where my mother was sitting, and refused to look at her or say a word. Those actions were so uncharacteristic of Totis that I was stunned when my mother described them. My mother and Totis were as close as two sisters could be without being twins, and I couldn’t imagine Totis refusing to look at, or speak to her. It seemed to me as if she was depressed and giving up, and I couldn’t believe that. Totis had led such a joyful and exuberant life. Even weathering her son, Adolfito’s death in an automobile accident. I couldn’t believe that the cancer or the operation had taken away her spirit, or animo. She died on December 7, 1989.

A few years later, I accompanied my mother on her last trip to Mexico. On that visit we went to Totis’ home to see how Adolfo was doing. Nena and Tavo were married by then and living in other parts of the city, so there was no one else there. It was strange finding Adolfo alone in a house that had once teemed with so much energy and noise. Adolfo had grown thinner and grayer since Totis’ death, and he confessed that his eyesight was failing. But that did not stop him from speaking as exuberantly as he always did, punctuating his statements with Mexican profanity and bawdy jokes. He asked about my wife Kathy and the children, and then he fell back into reminiscing about Totis and how much my mom looked like her. Periodically he would burst out with loud exclamations of affection. “¡Te quiero, Toñito!” He would exclaim, and then announce, “¡Güera, como te quiero!” It was as if he wanted us to remember how much he loved us, because of our connection to his dead wife. A chauffer drove us to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and there he continued asking us for details of our lives in Los Angeles. Eventually his energy seeped out like a deflating balloon and he admitted how much he missed Totis and longed for her company. We left the restaurant on that sad note, and he had his driver take us home to Helen’s house. On the way back, my mother predicted that this would be her last visit to Mexico. Her connection to Totis had been the strongest bonds to the country of her birth. Now that she was gone, this land and its memories had somehow lost their luster and appeal.

I wrote this personal essay about my aunt Totis in a fevered determination to finish. I wasn’t even sure why I was writing it, but I knew the answer could only be found at the end. I suppose these reminiscences gave me a chance to finally express my grief and sorrow over Totis’ death. I never had a chance to see her after the surgery, or before she died. News of her death came to me as a verbal announcement over the phone. It only struck me later that she was gone forever, and the world seemed a dimmer place.

Yet my thoughts always go back to my mother’s story about her visit with Totis. I wanted to believe that if I had gone with my mother to see Totis after her surgery, I would somehow have coaxed her into turning. Why would I think that, when my mother failed? Why would my request move her more than her sister’s? Maybe because I presumed that Totis loved me like a son, and would never have denied my request to see and talk with her. Totis never let me down. She always set the example of how to act, how to live, and what to say. She never stopped helping me, teaching me, or loving me. I would have assured her that her appearance or speech were never the qualities that made her special. Rather it was the energy, care, and love she showered on people that determined her character and appeal. I would have said that I was sorry about the death of her oldest son, Adolfito, her illness, and her operation. I would have asked her forgiveness for not having visited her sooner or more often, or come when her cancer was discovered. I would have told her how much she was a part of my growing up and becoming a man. How the qualities she demonstrated so casually in her every day actions and encounters were the same qualities I found in the woman I married. That Kathy was a strong and independent woman of faith, who was also vibrant, charming, and funny. I would have asked to let me see her one more time before I left, so I could tell her how much I loved her.

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time?
You’re only dancing on this earth
For a short time
And though your dreams may toss
And turn you now.
They will vanish away
Like your Daddy’s best jeans –
Denim blue fading up to the sky
And though you want him to last forever
You know he never will.
(You know he never will.)
And the patches
Make the goodbye harder still.
(Oh Very Young: Cat Stevens – 1974)

This essay is about writing a letter to my granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen (Nena). I wrote one on the occasion of her Baptism (see Child of God), and I thought I’d write another in November or December. The problem was I couldn’t think of one preeminent event to focus on. Too many things were happening to Sarah in those last months of 2011: she was on the verge of walking; she was having a surgical procedure on her eye ducts; her birthday was fast approaching; and her parents were purchasing a new home in Gardena. What events merited a letter? I couldn’t make up my mind for a long time. I started one letter in late October about Sarah’s operation and when she started walking (see Nena's Walking Letter below) – and then I went jogging on the Sunday after her birthday.

I get my best ideas while jogging. I don’t know how it works. What happens during the mindless actions of lifting your leg and thrusting the foot forward, and then repeating those motions with the other leg and foot; alternating them, again, and again, and again? Why does the act of leaning forward and letting your body fall forward through space – while catching yourself with every step – take your spirit to another place? Whatever it is, my legs and body function on there own during this earthbound experience while my thoughts soar. On this particular Sunday afternoon, my mind seemed to glide along the thermals of possible topics for a blog essay about Sarah. What about her operation, birthday, or developmental benchmarks? While these subjects seemed appropriate to an adult, were they events Sarah would want to remember or ask about later in her life? When I passed the one-mile mark of my run, the idea hit me. Sarah would be leaving her first home, and moving into a new one in December! This event would be truly dramatic for her – as well as her parents. The family would have to re-orient itself to a new home, new rooms, a new neighborhood, new sights, and new people. Teresa and Joe would be leaving behind memories of their first two years together as husband and wife, and their first year with their baby girl. Yet, Sarah Kathleen would remember none of that. I also realized that I could use multiple mediums in telling this story. I could photograph the interiors and exteriors of the house, write a new letter about the occasion, and incorporate both in an essay for my blog. I could describe how the idea occurred to me while jogging, what I wanted to say in the letter, and then describe the photo shoot with Sarah – going room by room and recalling scenes and images of her first year there. After returning from the jog, I showered, changed, and began writing a new letter to Sarah Kate about remembering.

You see, Kathy and I moved out of our first home in Reseda during the summer of 1988. Toñito was 10-years old at the time, and Prisa had just turned 8. The children had spent all their early lives in that little yellow house on Yarmouth Avenue: sleeping in bunks and sharing the same bedroom; learning to swim in the backyard pool, and ride bikes in the elementary school parking lot nearby; shooting basketballs at the garage hoop in the alley, and playing catch in the front yard; and taking long walks throughout the neighborhood, or driving to the nearby park or shopping malls. I was always convinced that they retained clear and permanent memories of that house and the times we spent together, until one day when they were both in college we drove by it.
“Do you remember growing up in that house?” I asked, eagerly, pointing at the yellow cottage-like structure, and wondering what shared images they would call forth. After a long pause, Prisa responded first.
“No, not really, Dad. I mean”, she added, hesitantly, “I remember some of the people we played with, but nothing about the house or the things you’ve told us we did.”
“What about you, Toñito? I asked, unbelievingly. “You must remember some of those things we did – like going on walks around the neighborhood, or walking to Newcastle School and the candy store on the corner.”
“Sorry Dad,” he replied. “I have some hazy memories of walking around the lake in the park, some railroad tracks near a baseball field, and a warehouse-looking structure with an artillery cannon in the front. But I don’t remember too much about the house and the neighborhood.”
This exchange with Toñito and Prisa was the scene that occurred to me while jogging, and it started my thinking about a letter for Sarah. If my own children could not recall memories of their first house, which they left at the ages of 10 and 8, Sarah Kathleen would never remember her house on Taylor Court unless she had some help.

I loved that house on Taylor Court. At first it was because it reminded me of the little, yellow house, with white trim, that our own parents bought in Venice, California, in 1960. It too was a small, two-bedroom house (that would expand to three), with only one bathroom. How a family of six managed to survive with one bathroom has always been a mystery to me that thankfully Joe and Prisa never had to solve. But I grew familiar with Prisa and Joe’s house through the eyes of the infant I cared for twice a week for one year. The bookend memories I will always have of the house on Taylor Court are of parties: celebrating Christmas Eve (and a house-warming) with the Delgado, McDorman, and Williams families in 2009, the year Prisa and Joe were married and began renting the house; and celebrating Sarah’s first birthday, on November 12, 2011 (See Sarah Kathleen’s First Birthday). In between those two events, Sarah’s birth, growth, and development dominated my thoughts, attentions, and photographs. It somehow seemed fitting that her parents were purchasing their first home, and moving out of the rented house on Taylor Court just as Sarah was starting to walk on her own. Walking is a transitional event – an act of separation and independence. Buying your first house is too.

I started photographing the last images of the Taylor Court house five days after Sarah’s birthday party. The best place and time to take pictures of Sarah was always in the soothingly painted, violet nursery, after her morning nap. There she usually awakened happy and refreshed, and I could quickly engage her interest by discussing aloud her choice of clothing apparel for the day. I pulled out shirts, pants, and socks, from the dresser drawers and draped them on the crib bars for her appraisal. After a quick change of diapers and clothes, I’d play with her on the nursery floor for awhile: coaxing her to crawl through the tent-like tunnel, as she moved from stuffed animal, to bookcase, to dresser; or calling out the names of the alphabet letters she pointed to on the floor mat on the ground. My own favorite piece of furniture in that room was the wooden rocking chair, tucked away in the corner. It was there that I would settle, cradling Sarah in my arms, rocking and singing “Duérmete mi niña”, until she fell asleep for her nap. The clearest memory I still hold of that nursery was the day Joe and Prisa returned unexpectedly from a morning of visiting child-care facilities. Prisa’s maternity leave was drawing to a close, and she had come to the final realization that strangers would be caring for her baby, three days a week, when she went back to work. The pain of separation would eventually fade for Prisa and Joe, as the caregivers grew familiar and learned to love Sarah, but seeing the invisible bonds between mother and child in that room is an image that will never fade.

A whirlwind photographic tour of the house followed, with my trying to keep up with a swiftly mobile Sarah Kathleen. She burst out of the nursery on unsteady legs and strode precariously down the long hallway to her parent’s master bedroom. In the middle of the room was a bed draped with a comforter depicting wolves in the forest. This is where Joe and Prisa read aloud each night to Sarah from a book called Goodnight Moon before placing her in the crib for the night. That bed always provided Sarah a safe haven from an interrupted slumber of painful teething, and was her first playground for tickling gymnastics. The wolf’s face on the comforter was of infinite interest to Sarah. Once I tossed her onto the bed, she would position herself in the middle of the cover, point at the wolf’s nose, and ask, “Dat?” I honestly believe that our response, “nose”, was the first word she learned as a baby, and she would point to her own nostrils, or mine, when prompted with the word. But my favorite scene of that room will always be of Sarah sleeping soundly on her stomach, before she was able to flip over or crawl on her own. There was something magical about watching a baby sleeping peacefully alone, without fears or constraints.

From the bedroom, Sarah guided me back up the hallway to the Study or Library. Despite its academically sounding title, this room, which also held a desk, computer, and television monitor, actually provided a wonderful playground for Sarah. With a wide expanse of open, wooden flooring, it was here that she first bounced in her Baby Einstein jumper for long periods of time, and took her first unimpeded steps from one side of the room to the other. As she got older, she would hoist herself up on the bookcase against the wall, and systematically emptied the shelves of books, music CD’s, and video DVD’s. From the library, Sarah scampered into the laundry room, heading for the kitchen and dining room, pausing only to manipulate the control dials of the washing machine. Since turning six-months old, Sarah imitated every adult action that caused a mechanical result, and washing machines and electronic devices gave off the right kind of aural and visual effects to catch her attention.

Sarah’s high chair dominated the dining room. There she consumed her meals at breakfast and lunch when I babysat. She was always ready to eat. All I had to do was ask, “Are you hungry?” and she would respond by saying, “Num, num!” while raising her arms quickly into the air, begging to be lifted, carried, and positioned into her high chair, in preparation for a meal. Then she would watch me, while munching on the cheerios I placed on her tray, as I mixed and micro waved her bowl of oatmeal, counting aloud for her benefit to 10: “1-mississippi, 2-mississippi”. Feeding Sarah was when I had her fullest attention, and I preferred spooning the finger-foods Prisa had prepared for her myself, rather than letting her eat it on her own. I would talk to her as she ate and ask question about the food in English and Spanish.
“¿Que dice la comida?”I would ask at every meal.
“¡Cómeme!” I would reply for her.

After breakfast, we adjourned to the backdoor. There I lifted Sarah up so she could look out the window that occupied the upper quarter of the portal. She would knock on the window with her baby knuckles and then reach for the doorknob. Stepping through the doorway onto a cement landing overlooking the backyard, I’d always pause so Sarah could gaze at the two items hanging over the entrance: a wind chime made up of tiny, tinkling wizards on one side, and a twisting sparkler made of glassy crystals on the other. Then we would descend into the backyard that was composed of a narrow strip of grass and a cement walkway leading around the house to the garage. A painted cinderblock wall separated the yard from the neighbors to the rear and on one side.

On re-entering the house, we made our way to the living room – Sarah’s first playroom. As a newborn and infant, this area was covered with blankets, quilts, and floor mats that allowed adults to watch and engage Sarah as she lay on her back, inspecting the world within eyeshot, until she eventually progressed to turning her head, flipping onto her stomach, sitting up, and crawling away. Toys slowly began filling the periphery of the room until they were piled into a playpen located next to the solitary pillar that divided the living room from the dining room. Now Sarah crisscrossed the room on her feet, searching the tops of coffee tables, lamp stands, and couches for toys, cell phones, keys, or electronic remote devices. Inevitably she would make her way to the front door where we would repeat our ritual whereby I lifted her so she could look out the peephole window, knock on the thickly glazed windowpane with her knuckles, and then reach down to open the door and walk outside.

Thick hedges and bushes framed the front yard of the yellow house, and thick, course grass covered the lawn. Stalks of miniature bamboo reeds sprang from the flowerbed under the front yard windows, and a row of dense shrubbery curved around the perimeter of the lawn, separating the sidewalk from the grass. This was the area that Sarah only started exploring when she was able to walk – and even then, very unsteadily. When weather permitted, I would take Sarah outdoors to play on the grass. We always borrowed the neighbor’s neatly manicured lawn next door. The first time I sat Sarah on the grass, she remained motionless in confusion, shocked by the strange sensation of cushioning grass against her pants. Tentatively reaching out to touch the blades with her finger, she soon began inspecting the rest of her surroundings. It was on that putting green-like surface that Sarah first spied and touched leaves, branches, and flowers, and soon her curiosity compelled her to crawl around and grasp them. The next time I placed her on the grass, she quickly started crawling toward the sidewalk, where the texture and coolness of the cement fascinated her. When she was able to walk, the flat and gleaming surface seemed to beckon her like a ribbon tied to a balloon. It was a foreshadowing, I think, of what was to come. That cement sidewalk, and the street beyond, would soon be taking her to a new home, new neighbors, and eventually more and more independence. With that thought I put away my camera and offered my hand to guide her on the walk.

Taylor Court Letter

Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Letter to Sarah # 3

Dear Nena:

I’m writing to you on an occasion that is really more important to everyone but you. Yet, it is an event that will always be brought to your attention. In years to come, whenever you pass by, or go near, the intersection of 162^nd Street and Taylor Court, in the city of Torrance, adults will inevitably ask if you remember the little yellow house on the corner. Of course you won’t remember, and for awhile you will probably simply say,
“No, I don’t.”
Nevertheless, your mom and dad, aunts and uncles, and even Mima and I may continue pressing: “Are you sure you don’t you remember anything about that house?”
After hearing this question repeated over and over again, and perhaps sensing or seeing the disappointment on our faces with your reply, you may be tempted to change your answer by saying,
“I’m not sure, maybe I do remember something about that house.”

You see this was the house in which you were born and raised during the first year of your life. This was the house that greeted you on November 15, 2010, when your mom and dad drove you home from the hospital. This was the house that sheltered you and protected you as you slept in a crib in your parent’s room for the first weeks of your life, until you moved to your own nursery room down the hall. It was there that we watched you grow and marvel at your surroundings as you lay on your back, on a quilted floor mat with hanging devices hovering overhead. Those scenes and more during your first year of life are so fixed in our memories that we find it hard to believe that you won’t remember any of them. But that’s all right. I used to ask your mom the same question about her first home on Yarmouth Avenue in Reseda, and she didn’t remember it either.

The Taylor house was where you mastered your earliest development skills: raising and turning your head and body, sleeping through the night, eating solid foods, crawling, speaking, and walking. All of those things were done in the confines of that house. I won’t make a list of all the scenes and images I associate with this house in this letter. I’ll save that for a blog I’m writing. Instead, I’ll just reassure you that you knew the old house very well. Once you were able to crawl and walk, you explored every nook and cranny of that house. Every room became your playroom. You especially loved bookcases, cupboards, drawers, and closets. The only exception was your own front yard. Since the front lawn of your next-door neighbors, Betty and Tai, was so well cared for and manicured, I used it as our tiny park. There you could crawl and roll around on the grass, picking up and trying to eat leaves, twigs, and flowers. You would point at their lawn figurines in the garden, and stare endlessly at the knothole face in the tree – the one with two blue button eyes, a white button nose, and a red paper-sliced mouth.

You and your parents moved into a new home on Saturday, December 3, 2011. This will be the house and neighborhood that you remember as you get older. Taylor Court will become the house of myth and legend, the home that old people talk about. At this point in your life you are concentrating all your senses and powers at mastering language and the world around you. Memories are still the domain of older children and adults. But when the time comes when you are asked about that house on Taylor Court, you can say:
“I don’t remember much, but my grandpa told me about it in a letter and a blog.”

I love you, Nena Chula,

Poppy

Nena's Walking Letter

Saturday, October 29, 2011
Letter to Sarah #2

Dear Sarah Kathleen:

On Friday, October 28, 2011, just sixteen days before your first birthday, you started walking. I mean seriously walking, not just standing upright after hoisting yourself up on a piece of furniture or table, and taking a step or two before falling. You raised your knees from a crawling position, pushed away from the floor with your arms, and balanced yourself upright on two legs. Wavering a second or two on bowed knees, you proceeded to step forward once, twice, and thrice, before falling forward onto your hands and knees. With the verbal encouragement of your parents in the background, you quickly repeated the process, taking two more steps before another face-plant on the floor. None of this independent locomotion occurred the day before when your grandmother and I babysat on Thursday. On that day your were putting on a demonstration of all the skills and physical benchmarks you had reached so far:

· Pressing plastic connecting blocks together and pulling them apart;

· Fitting shaped objects through their matching openings;

· Dropping a miniature basketball into a hoop;

· Scampering quickly throughout the house on hands and knees;

· Kneeling upright and hopping forward;

· Pointing at objects you were curious about, or wishing to hold, and saying, “dat”;

· Pushing up on your arms from a prone position, and lifting your knees off the ground to form an inverted V-shape;

· Using any handhold or wall to straighten yourself into a standing position, and then proceeding to step free and balancing yourself on two feet before collapsing on the ground.

You were so close to walking that we both held our breaths, willing it to occur – but it wasn’t meant to happen on that day. What is so surprising is that it happened when it did. You see, on the Friday morning before you walked, you were in a hospital having a surgical procedure on your right eye.

Of course, you won’t remember anything about this hospital visit or the surgical procedure when you are old enough to read or understand this letter. And that’s how it should be. For you, it was just an earlier-than-usual car ride with your mother and father to a place that had new faces and new surroundings. You won’t remember the extra care and tenderness in the way your mom and dad talked to you that morning, the way they held you, and the way they glanced at each other when you smiled back, made sounds, and followed their directions as they dressed you and packed you into the car seat. Parents have a great capacity for hiding their nervousness and worry when trying to make you feel safe and comfortable. And by doing so, it makes them feel better too.

Mima and I did not accompany you or your parents to the hospital that morning. I’m a coward when it comes to witnessing medical procedures that might cause pain or discomfort to a baby. Your Uncle Toñito had an operation when he was 2-years old to remove skin tags from his right ear. It was the only surgical procedure we experienced as young parents, and it was nerve-wracking for me. I still remember his cries and tears when a nurse fumbled at trying to install an IV connector into his tiny arm. But Mima and I were wide-awake at 5 a.m. on the morning of your operation, knowing that your parents were waking you up, and going through the necessary tasks of getting you ready for this journey. We held you in our minds all morning, remembering your actions of the previous day, the things you did, and how you acted. At 9 a.m., Mima received a text message from your mom saying, “Everything fine. Sarah was a champ.” I took a deep breath and murmured a prayer of thanks.

Later that morning your mom sent us a video of you eating a late breakfast. You were still feeling the effects of the anesthesia, and your movements and actions were woozy and uncoordinated. You had difficulty grasping food with your fingers, and couldn’t locate your mouth to chew. Your mom said that perhaps after a long nap you would feel better and your reflexes would return. I doubt anyone expected the amazing rebound of your muscles and coordination. I’ve heard it said that our bodies and muscles rebound and recover quickly after an injury or trauma. Something obviously happened after your nap, because later that day Mima told me that she had received a phone call from your mom saying that you were walking. A video soon followed and we saw for ourselves how you had mastered this new skill. After a surgical procedure that required anesthesia, you were walking. You are amazing!

I love you, Nena Chula,

Poppy

If you are interested in seeing more pictures of our photo shoot at Taylor Court, click on the link below to my Flickr Album:

2011-11-17 Sarah Kate's First House

It was not you, who chose me,
But I who chose you,
And appointed you
To go and bear fruit that will remain,
So that whatever you ask
The Father in my name,
He will give you.
This I command you:
Love one another.
(John 15: 16-17)

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels has been in operation for nine years now, but many Catholics in Los Angeles still don’t like it. I have to admit that it is a challenging structure to appreciate, having none of the soaring aesthetics and inspiring pinnacles and towers of the beautiful gothic cathedrals of Europe. The first time I saw it in 2002, Our Lady’s Cathedral looked like a boxy, adobe mission church on steroids. Standing with my wife Kathy on the corner of Grand Avenue and Temple Street, I again thought that while the architecture might complement the semi-arid topography of Southern California, it still looked like a sandstone-colored presidio with a bell tower. That impression would change, I knew, once we entered the building, and passed through the enclosed hallway, along the side of the church. Suddenly we would be met with an explosion of all-embracing, streams of golden-hued light, which fills the vast worship space with glowing color. It’s as if the floor, aisles, and pews vanished in a splash of glistening air molecules, leaving only the elevated, tapestry walls, and hovering windows to guide our way to the altar. The interior of the Cathedral, with this incredible use of light through specially glazed windows, always affects me that way. I feel as though I’m actually in the company of the “communion of saints” suspended on the wall tapestry, and in a place no longer on this earth. Only the feel of the printed program in my hand reminded me that we were in this holy space on this particular Saturday morning to witness the ordination of our brother-in-law Dick, as a Permanent Deacon of the Catholic Church.

About five years ago, when I learned from Kathy that Dick intended to study for the diaconate and become a deacon of the church, I was surprised. Oh, I knew that he was a good family man, a serious Catholic, and very active in his home parish, but to actively seek ordination into a sacred order of the Catholic clergy was something else. I always thought of the diaconate as a transitional order for men on their way to the priesthood. For example, Father Dave, Prisa’s Carmelite friend who baptized her daughter Sarah in May, was ordained a deacon before receiving Holy Orders as a priest (see Child of God). Dick, on the other hand, was already a loving husband, a caring father, and a successful banker and businessman, so I couldn’t conceive of him aspiring to anything like the priesthood. I still remembered Dick as the determined young suitor from Notre Dame University, who was so in love with Kathy’s sister, Patti, that he followed her to Los Angeles after his graduation in 1975, and courted her relentlessly until they married in 1977. Dick was a serious-minded kid from Green Bay, Wisconsin who, once you got to know him, loved to converse, argue, and laugh. He had a wry sense of humor and was doggedly persistent in achieving all his goals. I got to know him best during his early-marriage days, when he and Patti moved into their second-floor apartment in Glendale and we lived in Reseda. We doubled on dates sometimes, but mostly visited each other. Patti and Dick were also regular babysitters for our first child, Toñito, and loved playing with him, and watching him unfold into childhood. They became annual guests at my mother’s Posada parties on Christmas Eve, after my sister Stela invited them during an Oktoberfest encounter. When their own children, Danny and Brigid, came onto the scene, they purchased homes in the South Bay section of Los Angeles, and our interactions became scarcer and scarcer, occurring mainly during general family celebrations and get-togethers.

I knew Patti had become deeply involved in the religious activities of her parish when she was named Director of Religious Education (DRE), but I knew little of Dick’s religious interests, other than his membership on the parish’s Finance Committee. When I learned that his pastor had recruited him as a candidate for deacon, I was surprised. When I was told of the time and training required for the diaconate, I was stunned. The diaconate required a four to five year commitment for both the candidate and his wife for weekend classes twice a month, and a weekend retreat twice a year. On one occasion, while visiting us after one of these training days, Dick described his curriculum. His work consisted of a lot of academic study of the bible and exegesis of the Old Testament, and lots and lots of spirituality workshops to foster constant prayer. Prayers, and the integration of the Liturgy of the Hours into his daily life, were the best part of the experience, he explained, and the hardest. I remembered thinking at the time that prayer was probably the keystone to a meaningful church ministry. Dick had the intelligence, common sense, patience, and caring to do all the work required, but prayer, and the support of his wife, Patti, would be his only real help in the years ahead.

It has been five-months now since Dick’s ordination on June 11, 2011, and I couldn’t tell you why it took me so long to write about it. I suppose I was a little awe-struck by the occasion, the setting, and the ritual, and needed some time to process the event and everything I learned about duty, service, and Christian love.

The day was overcast and cold – perfect weather for a June morning when formal attire is required, and men and women come dressed in robes and miters, suits and dresses. I had never been to an ordination ceremony of any kind and was unsure about what was going to happen. The interior light of the cathedral glowed in a rich golden hue, and cast an ethereal haze on all the proceedings. The pews were divided into clearly marked sections with red signs on golden rods, indicating the different seating arrangements. The tapestry saints hovered above the heads of the seated guests, giving the impression that they too had joined the viewing of this important event. An usher guided us to an area at the side of the altar, reserved for the candidates and their families, and there Kathy and I found the rest of our party. Dick’s mother and two sisters were already seated, along with three members of Patti’s family, her sister Tootie, with her daughter Maria Teresa, and our brother-in-law, Luis. We quickly spotted Patti and Dick’s children, Danny and Brigid, standing in the back of the pews, and looking to the needs of their grandmother, aunts, and uncles. Eventually Dick’s brother, Bob, and Patti’s sister Tere, with her two daughters, Maggie and Nora, would join us before the start of the ceremony. We were near enough to the altar to insure close-range photography of the sacramental ritual, and I began snapping pictures of the setting until a booming pulpit voice from the presiding priest stopped me cold.
“This liturgy is being photographed by a professional photographer,” he stated, in a firm and commanding tone. “To maintain a spirit of reverence and solemnity for the ceremony which is to come, please refrain from taking photographs or videotaping during the liturgy. Also, please turn off cell phones and pagers. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Normally I would have interpreted this prohibition as a ban on the use of flash photography, but something in the unyielding voice and manner of the priest cowed me for the remainder of the ceremony. To my regret, I sullenly obeyed these instructions for most of the rite, until Kathy and Luis’ urgings finally melted my self-imposed resolve in time for me to take some photos of Patti at the conclusion of the ceremony.

Even my dampened mood could not dim the pomp and majesty of the opening procession, as wave after wave of bishops, in their immaculate white robes and mitered hats, followed by tides of monsignors, pastors, priests, and deacons, flowed down the center aisle to take their places in the sanctuary of the altar. At the end of this ribbon of gold and white, came 14 men in plain, white albs, accompanied by their wives, who joined their families in the side pews to listen and watch the unique ceremony that followed. It became obvious to me right away that the readings and gospel were designed to spell out the duties and obligations of these future deacons. The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6: 1-7) was very forthright, and it explained that when the early Christians began complaining to the 12 apostles that widows and orphans were being neglected in the daily distribution of food, the apostles decided that “it is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table.” So they chose 7 reputable men, “filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Those seven became the first deacons of the Church. Similarly in the second reading (1Timothy 3: 8-10, 12-13), the epistle itemized very precisely how deacons were to live and act: “deacons must be dignified, not deceitful, not addicted to drink, not greedy for sordid gain, holding fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. Moreover, they should be tested first; then, if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons. Deacons may be married only once and must manage their children and households well. Thus those who serve well as deacons gain good standing and much confidence in the faith in Christ Jesus.” Thankfully, the Gospel of John (John 15: 9-17) was a little more uplifting in its message to the deacons. In it Jesus explained, “it was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you”. Then Jesus gave his disciples their clearest order: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” At the conclusion of the Gospel, each of the 14 men were called up by name before the archbishop, and formally “elected” as worthy candidates for the diaconate before sitting around the altar to hear the homily by The Most Rev. Jose H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles. I remember leaning over to Kathy and saying something like, “I didn’t realized how difficult this ministry was going to be.”

The homily was a reflection on the readings and a clarification as to what the archbishop saw as the role of the modern deacon. He reiterated that “by the laying on of hands” they would join the long line of deacons and saints that stretched back to the very founding of Christ’s Church. He stressed the gospel’s message that they were chosen to this service by Christ himself, and it was incumbent on them to continue a life of prayer, wisdom, and knowledge. He reminded them that their ministry of service was not only about actions and activities, but doing them with love. Archbishop Gomez repeated Christ’s words that they were commanded to love, “to love even to the point of laying down your life for the love of God and the love of your brothers and sisters”. He ended his message by demanding their obedience. Although he stated it gently, by saying, “As those early deacons did, I urge you: stay close to me as your archbishop, and I will stay close to you as my deacons” – it was very clear that they would be working for him.

To be honest, I was more than a little stunned by the readings and the archbishop’s homily. A job description was being announced that stressed four points: 1) There weren’t enough priests to proclaim the Word of God and serve the needs of the people of the Church, so deacons must provide those services; 2) Deacons must lead righteous and selfless lives, and act beyond reproach; 3) Deacons are chosen by Christ and they are commanded to serve and love the people they serve; and finally, 4) Deacons are to obey the archbishop – they were the bishop’s men. This is not what I expected to hear in an ordination that I imagined would be akin to a graduation ceremony. I assumed that for laymen not continuing toward the priesthood, the deaconship was a sort of honorary degree given by the Church to recognize their dedication to a parish. On previous occasions, I’d seen deacons on the altar with priests, participating in the sacrifice of the Mass, or acting as a priest’s representative at the burial portion of a church funeral. These appearances seemed ceremonial, and the deacons, in their robes and vestments, were simply acting as sacramental substitutes. That image of a deacon didn’t fit the job description I was hearing now. In essence, deacons were to do the heavy lifting of the Church, and they showed up when a priest was not available, or could not complete the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy that were necessary to sustain a church.

Following the homily, the proceedings resumed their traditional ritual flavor, with carefully choreographed words and movements. The ceremony resembled a sacramental production number filled with inspirational singing, movements, and prayers, all meant to transport these men into another realm beyond the senses. It began with each candidate kneeling and placing his hands in those of the archbishop and declaring his promise to fulfill his duties by saying aloud, “I promise”, or “prometo”, as a sign of obedience and commitment. Then they prostrated themselves before God and the assembly to pray the Litany of Saints, and beseech their help and intercession. Caught up in the significance of this posture and prayer, I actually felt for a moment that the candidates were joined in communion with the saints on the wall tapestry, who leaned forward to answer the supplication with a resounding, “we will”. Then came the laying on of hands in which the archbishop placed his hands atop the head of each candidate in silence and conferred the sacrament of ordination. Finally, after a prayer of consecration, the new deacons stood around the altar as their wives and pastors vested them with the symbols of their office. There I saw the two people most instrumental in Dick’s investiture, his wife, Patti, and pastor, Monsignor Barry, hang the stole from his shoulder to his side, and then dress him in his dalmatic robe.

I thought the ceremony was over at that point, until I saw the new deacons lining up for another ritual. Once again, each deacon knelt before the archbishop, who handed him an oversized, Book of Gospels, with the words:
“Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you are today. Believe what you read. Teach what you believe, and practice what you teach”.
Archbishop Gomez stated this litany 14 times, and each repetition drilled the significance of the words deeper and deeper into my consciousness. What a simple and overpowering mandate: To be consistent in believing, teaching, and practicing the lessons of the gospel.
“Man”, I thought to myself, “if there was ever a hint of envy or awe at the ministry Dick was choosing, it disappeared with those words.” The new deacon was beginning an amazing journey on a new and challenging road, and the map was being spelled out for him in those 23 simple words.

Then each vested deacon arose, holding his book high over his head, and walked back to the pews to symbolically place it in the hands of his wife and partner in ministry. It was at that point, with Luis and Kathy urging to take a photograph of that exchange, when I realized I had blown it. Not only had I failed to record all the important scenes and images of this ceremony, but the one I regretted most was the moment Dick’s eyes met Patti’s, and she accepted the Book of Gospels into her hands. I imagined those eyes communicating his love and appreciation for her constancy over these last 5 years, and admitting that he could not travel this new road alone. Only her love and companionship could sustain him. The Sign of Peace ended the investiture portion of the ordination and the mass proceeded with the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

As moving as all these moments were, a particularly emotional moment occurred near the end of the service, when each of the 14 wives was called forth to the sanctuary to receive their certificates of completion of the deaconate program. Patti left Dick’s side and joined the circle of women around the altar, and I finally was moved to take out my camera out and record those important images. Then Archbishop Gomez, the other bishops, pastors, and priests thanked and applauded the work, dedication, and commitment of these women, who were asked to play such a major part of the diaconate ministry. They would not wear a title or the vestments, but they were the rock on which the foundation was laid, and they merited the recognition. I continued taking pictures until the end of the ceremony when Patti and Dick joined the recessional line and walked down the central aisle of the Cathedral and out the door.

Following the liturgy, the newly ordained deacons and their wives proceeded to the Cathedral Plaza where the deacons gave their first blessings to fellow parishioners, family, and friends. There is long-held belief among Catholics that the first blessings of newly ordained priests or deacons are extraordinarily powerful. I’m not sure if I believed that, but I still felt an overpowering imperative to congratulate and hug this man, brother-in-law, and friend who had chosen such difficult and loving journey for the remainder of his life. To me, Dick would always be that Young Lochinvar who came out of the mid-West, to woo and wed the smart and beautiful Patricia Greaney. Only now he was also a deacon, a man of God, in the service of Christ and his teachings. So I figured I’d hedge my bets and ask for his blessing anyway.

If you are interested in seeing more photos of the ordination, click on the link: 2011-06-11 Deacon’s Day.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say.
Yours sincerely,
Wasting Away.

Give me your answer.
Fill in a form.
Mine for evermore.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I’m sixty-four?
(When I’m Sixty-four: Paul McCartney – 1967)

I turned sixty-four years old last month, and I intended writing about it right away. I thought it would be a straightforward story about what how I was occupying my time these days, and describing my impressions of turning three score and four years old. However, I’ve discovered that writing about feelings is an impossible task for me. It’s like trying to describe the rustling of a leaf in a windstorm. I found myself buffeted by so many disparate emotions and memories that I couldn’t string them together into a coherent narrative. My first try was a disjointed disaster, that hung on the delicate limbs of three scenes: hearing the Beatles song, “When I’m Sixty-four,” on my first trip to Big Sur as a freshman in college; disbelieving the news that my father had died; and marveling at the physical and motor developments of my 10-month old granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen. Thinking about it now, I realize that instead of writing an essay, I should have encapsulated those images into a poetic collage of some kind. Instead, I gave up and I put away my first draft. The story didn’t work – it was too fragmented with nonsensical feelings about growing up, getting old, and dying.

Oddly enough, all that changed when Kathy handed me a copy of Bishop George’s latest pastoral letter to his congregation, in which he reflected on his recent heart surgery. I’ve mentioned George in my blog before, and how one of his sermons helped reframe my perspective on Christ’s radical message of love and service while viewing the murals of San Francisco (see Murals of San Francisco). This serendipitous letter now gave me a vehicle to understand what I was struggling to express in my essay, and how to resolve it. George began by stating a rarely enunciated article of our religious faith: “that God’s grace is present for us in every moment, and in every circumstance, no matter how difficult or challenging or painful the moment is.” This is our belief as Catholics, he wrote, but in the moment itself, we can feel too afraid, confused, or distracted to make sense of how God is present to us, and acting in our lives. This is when God gets our attention by something someone says to us, or something we read. George’s moment of clarity came when he read and reflected on John Donne’s poem, “Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness”:

Once I am coming to that holy room
Where, with Thy choir of saints evermore,
I shall be made music; as I come
To tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

George found in this poem a lovely metaphor of how to connect our life here on earth with eternity with God. Our life here was a practice session, a rehearsal, and we prepared for eternal life by living the life of Christ here and now. “I realized”, he wrote, “that the rest of my life, long or short, is for tuning and thinking, and, of course, daily practice and rehearsal.”

I first heard the song, When I’m Sixty-four, in the Spring of 1967, when my high school friends, Wayne, Jim, Greg and I went camping in Big Sur. Jim kept playing the new Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, over and over again. Wayne had just bought the new LP, and Jim brought along his portable, battery-operated, record player to play it. The only role Greg and I had in relation to the music was to listen and enjoy. When I’m Sixty-four was an easy song to learn for four college freshmen who had spent their high school years memorizing popular songs from the radio. It had a catchy tune, filled with silly lyrics, and we sang it a lot. It was a funny song really, because the concept of turning sixty-four years of age was the furthest thing from our minds. We were just turning 18 and 19 years old, and our own parents were barely in their early to mid forties at the time. The only really old people we knew were our grandparents, but we never ascribed a numerical age to them - they were just OLD.
“What’s so special about sixty-four?” I remember asking Wayne, during one card playing session. “Wouldn’t sixty-five make more sense,” I speculated, “since it’s the official retirement age?”
“I don’t think the British and American retirement ages are the same,” Wayne replied. “I read somewhere that Paul was 16-years old when he wrote this song, so the number must have significance for him. Maybe it’s as old as he thinks he’ll live. It might be like flying through the sound barrier. You know how people believed that there was a maximum, threshold speed, limiting man’s ability to fly faster than sound - only in this case it’s about getting old.”
And that’s how the number sixty-four became a sort of age barrier for me.

In many ways that Spring Break trip to Big Sur was a breakthrough event for me. It was our first, solo, travel adventure without the advice, assistance, or supervision of parents. We planned, organized, and paid for it ourselves. We rented the tents, borrowed the sleeping bags, and itemized the fuel, resources, and food we would need for a 5-day driving and camping trip to Big Sur, and the areas around it. This was the seminal experience that taught us that improvisation, humor, and accommodation was necessary for harmony on the road, and the keys to a great adventure. You see, in many ways the trip was a series of disasters that, somehow, resulted in marvelous experiences (and memories): we missed the San Luis Obispo turn-off to Highway 1; had a tire blow out near King City; took too much time traveling through Monterey; and arrived too late to reserve a site at the Big Sur Campgrounds for that day. We spent our first night trying to sleep near the highway, with the sounds of the wilderness and the Big Sur River rushing in our ears. The following morning, the park rangers told us that the only campsites available required our changing locations after two days. Yet these inconveniences proved providential, because they allowed us to explore the entire park, and introduced us to two very different sets of campers. Our first neighbors were two nurses from Long Beach who invited us over that night for cheese, crackers, and wine. Suddenly, four long-time friends were pretending to be sophisticated players, competing for the attention and affections of two older women. That night I had my first drink of Red Mountain wine, went on a late night run to a liquor store for more, and fell asleep clutching a boulder outside the tent as if it were a lifebuoy in a turbulent sea of dizziness and nausea. It was an occasion I will never forget, although many of the details are hazy. Our second campsite was across the road from a family with two beautiful high school girls, whose parents thought we were four innocent, clean-cut college boys. We visited their family campsite often and were allowed us to escort the girls to the camp bonfires hosted by the park rangers. We used the mornings and afternoons for exploration, and visited the nearby towns and sights of Carmel, Carmel Valley, Monterey, Cannery Row, and Nepenthe, a café and bookstore south of Big Sur. Four years later, after three heart attacks and a deteriorating angina condition, my father died at 50 years of age.

For many years I rejected Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ contention, in her book, On Death and Dying, that, “…in our unconscious, death is never possible in regard to ourselves. It is inconceivable for our unconscious to imagine an actual ending of our own life here on earth…” I was convinced that my father’s death had forced me to accept my own mortality, and that I wouldn’t live past 50. But it wasn’t death I was recognizing – it was the lack of a modeled life past 50. My dad’s death had planted the seeds of a tall, thick, and impenetrable hedge that I couldn’t see over. I couldn’t see myself living past middle age, but I never actually accepted death as natural or inevitable, even my father’s. In fact, I felt his death was an injustice! It wasn’t right for a father to die at 50, with a son still in grade school, and another in kindergarten. I was angry at the unfairness of his death. I was also angry with my father for dying, and with his doctors for not preventing it. Strangely, I never blamed God, and maintained a benign and ambivalent relationship with Him. I couldn’t believe that God had judged, sentenced, and executed my father to death by heart attack. I suppose I still held a childish image of God. He was some Santa Claus-like figure, rewarding good and punishing evil – only He wore flowing, white robes and lived in heaven, instead of a red suit at the North Pole. Actually, it was my friends, and the practitioners of Christian principles who provided the solace I needed after my father’s death. Soon after my speedy discharge from the Air Force, I began working at St. Bernard High School as a history teacher. In this Catholic environment, I was surrounded by men and women, religious and lay, who lived the tenants of Jesus Christ to love our neighbors as ourselves, and worked toward social justice. While going to Sunday Mass was a haphazard proposition with me in those days, I was faithfully accompanying and supporting the priests and nuns who worked on behalf of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union and their boycott against grapes. Eventually two nuns from that school would introduce me to Kathleen Mavourneen, my future wife (see You Look Wonderful Tonight), and initiated a sequence of events that would lead to the birth of a granddaughter named Sarah Kathleen.

I didn’t die when I turned fifty, in 1997. Instead, I was the principal of Shangri-la MS, in the midst of my own “dark night of the soul”. The insubordinate actions of a handful of teachers and staff members, with the support of a cadre of parents, had undermined my personal and professional confidence as a school principal and precipitated a full blown clinical depression. This was the darkest time of my life, which paradoxically, led to the most insightful revelations about my relationships with God, my family, friends, and career. God ceased being a remote Olympian figure and became a tender friend, a comforter, and a father.

In April of that year, I dreaded going to school. Every day promised a new catastrophe, a new crisis, or another emotional scene of defiance and confrontation with one of the opposing staff members or their minions. I could only compare my feelings to the “battle fatigue” that bomber crews experienced during World War II after countless missions over flak infested skies where they were sitting ducks for enemy fighter pilots and anti-aircraft guns. Yet, even at that point, I hadn’t hit the depth of my despair. It was not until the first Friday of the month that I realized how broken I was. I was driving home when the aftermath of the week caught up with me. The week was the same as many others that year, with the usual emotional incidents: the same group of parents going to the Office of the Deputy Superintendent to demand my removal; the coordinator and her community rep again scheduling a meeting with the Cluster Leader to report my unfair treatment of them; and the parent officers of the advisory council demanding my presence at a special meeting to answer their questions. These highlights flashed through my mind, and when I arrived home, I just sat in the car, without moving, for about 30 minutes. I felt shell-shocked and depressed. I was comatose – just sitting there, gulping deep breaths, closing my eyes, and then opening them to stare off, vacantly, into space. I’d spent the day dealing with emotional personnel and angry administrative interactions that had drained me. I was paralyzed and unable to think or make decisions. I felt helpless and overwhelmed by these never-ending problems and the constant realization that they were being taken “over my head” and delivered directly to my superiors. Feelings of failure and inadequacy welled up like a giant, black wave, and then came crashing down over me. I only had one wish – I wanted to feel whole and competent again. I wished I could once again act with confidence instead of reacting with doubts, fears, and uncertainty. That evening Kathy finally stepped in and, by telling me what she was observing in my actions and behaviors, put a mirror to my face and let me see for myself what I had become in the course of the year. I wasn’t sleeping through the night, awakening daily at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. and not being able to return; I was experiencing gripping aches and pains in my back, neck and chest; I was coming down with constant colds and coughs; I had stopped jogging and exercising, replacing a healthy routine with daily cocktails at 6 o’clock, and drinking wine with dinner; I had developed an uncontrollable and annoying twitch in my upper eyelid; my handwriting had deteriorated so badly that my secretary could no longer decipher it; and I was always so sad, that not even my daughter, Prisa’s animated talk after her high school basketball games could cheer me. Kathy told me that she loved me, and would do anything to help, but if I could not recognize the symptoms for myself there was no hope. I was stunned, but not blind. I called Employee Assistance the next day, and scheduled a psychiatric assessment the following week. The psychiatrist confirmed what Kathy already knew and I suspected; I was clinically depressed, and had been for a long time. What surprised me most was my quick consent in accepting medication and therapy; a lifetime of stoic bravado, machismo, and hubris melted in seconds before my desire to be ME again – the intrepid, curious, and humorous man who found his job interesting and wanted to be happy as a father and a principal.

Looking back now, at my years at Shangri-la MS, I would call them the most satisfying and successful periods of my life. I fell in love with the school and its community, and learned how to be a leader. I learned from the people I worked and lived with by letting them help me and influence me. They all gave me challenges, insights, and behaviors that I incorporated into my new attitudes and actions. I let go of the illusion of the all-controlling and all-responsible principal and man, and focused on my immediate interactions with people. I concentrated on doing the right things (being fair, honest, and caring), or nothing. Freedom from this illusion allowed me the option of doing nothing, and letting other people, or other forces come into play. I recognized that something, or someone greater was in control, and I earnestly began a journey to seek, love, and serve God. By the end of my 50^th year, I knew everything would work out fine. God was in charge, and I knew He would make things right. All I needed to do was concentrate on the essential interactions of life, following the teachings of Christ, and leaving the grand strategy and future to God.

I turned sixty-four on Thursday, September 22, 2011, and I spent it babysitting my granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen. On that day, she was 10 months old, 50 days shy of her first year birthday. Being with Sarah is the most enjoyable event of my week. I don’t need to prepare, organize, or plan anything – all I do is show up and take care of her (although I must confess I bring my camera along, and take a picture or two, every now and then.) It’s a wonderful job, and I’m always amazed by how quickly she is growing up and the speed of her physical and cognitive development. Development, yuck, what an ugly word to describe what I see happening to my nena chula every week! I sound like a professional educator describing a subject in an experiment. There is a better word I like using in Spanish because it describes what is truly happening to Sarah, its called desarrollar. Desarrollar means, “to unroll, or unfold.” That is what I see in Sarah – the gradual unfolding, or revealing, of all her latent physical, mental, and sensory talents and abilities. She is like a magic spool of golden thread that is unwinding every day – and every inch of that gossamer strand increases her strength, dexterity, intelligence, and grace. She is never the same baby I left the week before. While watching her play on the front lawn, in the sunshine, I see that her hair is thicker and blonder, and her features sharper and more defined. There is always something new to hear or watch her do. At her baptism in May, she couldn’t roll over onto her stomach, now she is crawling and scampering along floors, down hallways and through rooms. She sits unsupported, while trying to connect blocks, and can raise and balance herself into a standing position, holding onto furniture. Instead of simply bouncing in her Einstein Jumper, she now steps around its circumference, using the framework for support. She manages double syllable sounds, such as dadada, mumumu, and bububu, when occupied with a task, such as knocking two toys together, or striking a drum with a stick. She also understands simple commands, such as “no, no,” and “up”, and waves goodbye when visitors leave.

Actually, my babysitting duties, and watching Sarah desarrollar over these last months, has reminded me of the times I was most eager to leave work and get home. The imperative of getting home quickly is my clearest memory of those early family days when Toñito and Prisa were infants. I would hurriedly pack up my briefcase and teaching materials and rush home from school. Sarah has awakened those old sensations associated with seeing, holding, feeding, and playing with my own children before they grew out of infancy. In Toñito’s case, the long drive through Laurel Canyon and along the 101 Freeway from West Hollywood only whet my appetite to see how much he had changed in that day. The longer I drove, the more I wondered if he had smiled, turned his head, grasped an object, talked, or done something completely unexpected. By the time Prisa was born I worked a short 6 miles away along Victory Boulevard at Van Nuys High School, but I still felt the same compulsion to get home and see if I had missed anything in her desarrollo. Every day was a surprise and a wonder.

Near the end of George’s pastoral letter he discovered a hidden dividend about death, in the third line of Donne’s poem: I shall be made Thy music. “We are not going to an eternal concert,” the bishop pointed out, “where we will listen to God’s music, just as we go to an all-Beethoven or greatest Broadway hits concert here. Instead we become one with God’s music, the profound and eternal music of creation, redemption and holiness.” It was this same oneness with God that my siblings and I imagined for our father when we asked that the words, “His spirit touched God and he died”, be inscribed on his headstone. Only now, the musical metaphors that I read in George’s letter and in Donne’s poem sounded better because they could apply to my granddaughter, my father, and myself. I could readily see Sarah as a marvelous new instrument that was steadily revealing her structure and music. I could look back and recognize the arrogant college student and teacher, and humbled principal, who steadily tuned the instrument he had become, and learned to play it better and better. And I imagined my father, on All Saint’s Day, the day he died, pausing at “that holy room” to “think here before,” and for the final time, “tune the instrument here at the door” before going through.

Thank you George, for introducing me to a poem by John Donne that helped me make sense of my essay, and hearing a better way to understand birth, life, and death.

If you are interested in the complete text of Bishop George’s letter, see link to Grace is Always Present.

And in the sixth month,
the angel Gabriel
was sent from God into a city of Galilee,
called Nazareth,
to a virgin espoused to a man
whose name was Joseph,
of the house of David:
and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And the angel said unto her:
“Hail, full of grace,
the Lord is with you:
Blessed are you among women”.
And when Mary was troubled
at what she heard,
the angel said, “Fear not, Mary,
for you have found grace with God".
(Luke 1: 26 – 32)

I’ve been visiting the county jail on a weekly basis for over a year. The route to this remote, hilly location is almost second nature to me now, and the prison environment is no longer as shocking and threatening as it once was. Although I’ll never be immune to the harsh sterility of the corridors and dayrooms, being ignored or overlooked by the guards, or seeing the flashes of violence that sometimes erupt in the cells; these things are no longer foreign to me. I’ve settled into the predictable routine of the Catholic Chaplain’s program in the jail. I report to the facility once a week and usually team with Justin, an assistant chaplain, in co-facilitating a session of the recovery and rehabilitation program called “Finding the Way in Jail”. However, with the passage of time, I’ve noticed that I’m not observing the men as carefully as I once did, nor listening to their stories as intently as before. Oh, I listen to what they say, but only with half an ear while my brain is busy thinking about what question to ask next, or how to involve more men in the discussion. I stopped being the wide-eyed, open-eared “tenderfoot” in these sessions long ago, and became one of the conductors, asking questions and directing the discussion during the sessions. The volunteer work was slowly becoming a job, like what elderly retirees do when leading tours in museums and public galleries. I mention this because after a two-week hiatus from the jail, doubts suddenly began arising in my mind about my desire to continue going as a volunteer.

You see, due to a series of scheduling conflicts, I hadn’t been to the jail for over two weeks, or seen my partner Justin in three. The only other time I’d missed so many Wednesday visits was during the summer when we were out of town. I was feeling a little guilty over this second long absence, and, yet, a little resentful about feeling that way. Weren’t volunteers supposed to be free of these pangs of obligation? Ordinarily, when these scheduling conflicts arose, I’d simply substitute a Monday visit instead; but the last two Mondays had also been reserved for other family activities. So I finally decided to just take a two-week leave of absence from the jail.

During that time I found how easy it was to fill my 5-hour commitment to the jail ministry with other activities. I was amazed at how comfortable and relaxing it was by simply NOT GOING to jail. I didn’t have to change clothes, make the hour-long drive to the far borders of the county, sit in an uncomfortably, frigid dayroom with a handful of convicts, or wonder if the session with them would be valuable or not. It was easier to fill that time with leisure activities: television, reading, dinner, and conversation with my wife Kathy or friends. Then at the end of that break, I learned that my Aunt Ana Maria (Tillie) had died, and the Viewing & Rosary was scheduled for Wednesday. I was tempted at first to just add one more week to my leave from jail – until some inexplicable impulse stopped me. When Kathy asked me what I was finally going to do about jail, I simply said that I’d go on Monday and attend Tillie’s rosary on Wednesday. However, even after that decision, there came a moment on Monday afternoon, when I hesitated going.
“Wasn’t I trying to do too much this week?” I argued with myself. “I prefer working with the Wednesday contingent of chaplains more than the Monday group. So, wouldn’t it be easier to stay home one more week, and just go next Wednesday?”
Somehow, I managed to push those questions aside and stopped debating with myself. Jail had always been a no-mind practice – an action without thought; a response without the stimuli of gain, benefits, or reward. I just went there. So I did that again. I showed up at jail – as I always had.

Justin’s face lit up with a smile, from across the room, when he saw me enter the office door.
“Tony,” Gavin, the Head Chaplain, exclaimed, looking up from the computer keyboard he was torturing on his desk. “I didn’t expect you until Wednesday. What happened?”
“My aunt’s vigil and rosary is being held that night,” I explained, “so I was hoping I could exchange days and work tonight.”
“Of course,” Gavin said, rising from his chair to give me a welcoming hug. “You are welcome any day, just let me know where you want to work tonight,” he said, returning to his computer tasks.
Greeting the other 3 volunteer chaplains who were assembling in the office, I saw Justin standing by the supply room door. He pointed his index finger at me, at himself, and then at the door, suggesting that we team up for tonight’s program, as we normally did on Wednesdays. I nodded a vigorous “yes” in reply and made my way to his side.
“Tony, how good to see, hombre!” he exclaimed. “It’s been a while,” he noted, pounding my back in celebration. “So, you want to do a program together, tonight?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied, “that would be great. Where do you usually go on Mondays, the first or second floor?” I quizzed him.
“It’s a beautiful, warm evening tonight”, he noted. “What about trying the upstairs dorms and using the open-air dayroom on that floor?”
“Great,” I said, enthusiastically. “I haven’t been up there in months.”
“Perhaps our old friend Juan will join us tonight,” he added, mentioning a prisoner I met in my first visits to the jail. “Do you mind doing it in Spanish?”
“No,” I replied, “Spanish is fine as long as you’re leading the session. I’m still not confident about doing it alone in that language.”
“We’ll do it bilingually, then,” Justin compromised, “so the men can speak English or Spanish in the session.”

Justin and I had been teaming up together on Wednesday nights and conducting the Catholic Chaplain’s program for over six months now. We had been concentrating on the first floor of the maximum-security cellblocks, the dorms reserved for long-term inmates serving 20 years to life. We rarely got to the second floor cells because they only had a dayroom with an open-air ceiling, which was exposed to the elements and outside temperatures. This was the only room available for inmate services, and it had always been either too cold or rainy to use. Even though Justin and other chaplains visited the men at the bars of these cellblocks, this would be our first opportunity to conduct a program there in almost 6 months. After getting permission from the Watch Sergeant to conduct the service, I went to the bars of the three dorms to invite the inmates to attend our program, as Justin arranged for the chairs.

When the first group of men entered the exterior dayroom, and made their way to the circle of chairs in the center of the room, I noticed that Juan was among them. I hadn’t seen him in a long, long time. He was a short, solidly built man of 40 to 45 years of age, with graying black hair and a trimmed mustache. He still looked fit enough to do a break-dancing routine that he once boasted of during a long ago session. After serving over a year in jail, his possible 30-to-life sentence was still pending.
“Juanito!” I exclaimed, greeting him with an expansive hug, “it’s good to see you, old friend. Thanks for coming out.”
“Of course,” he replied with a shy smile. “I wasn’t going to miss the chance of talking with you and Justin again. It’s been a long time.”
Three other men entered with Juan, and they seated themselves in the circle of chairs. Two looked familiar to me, but the third was a complete stranger. He was a hawk-faced Latino, with bronze skin and complex tattoos on both of his thickly muscled biceps.
“Welcome,” I said, greeting him first and shaking his hand. “Thank you for coming out and joining us tonight”.
“Your welcome, “ he replied sternly, shaking my hand in a forceful manner. “You know,” he added in a whisper, “I can’t believe you came tonight. I was feeling really bad in there,” he said, nodding to the barred cell that lay on the other side of the thickly glassed windows of the dayroom. “I really needed to get out of that place tonight. Maybe we can talk later,” he added urgently.
“Of course,” I replied, surprised by his hushed intensity. “We’ll talk later.”

Once all of the seven men who came out of the cells were there, we arranged ourselves in a tight circle. Justin introduced himself and began the session with a prayer that was different from his usual offering. Ordinarily he would ask the men for any special petitions or requests and incorporate them into the opening prayer. Tonight, however, he asked the men to sit silently, and listen to the solace and mercy of God who was present in their midst. It was a reflection on opening oneself to God – hearing and feeling the love of God in the breezes that circulated in the dayroom, and the chirping of birds flying over the steel-meshed, ceiling above our heads. After a while, Justin asked us to be conscious of our breathing, as we inhaled and exhaled, marveling at the life God had given us on this day, a day that allowed us to gather in his name. At the conclusion of this novel opening prayer, he explained the topic of tonight’s session.
“This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day,” he began. “So I thought we would read and reflect about Mary, the mother of Jesus. But before we begin, I’d like you to introduce yourself and share a saying, trait, or lesson your mother taught you, or something you can remember about her. I’ll go first to give you some time to think. I remember my mother was always working at her job. My father was a musician so he was always gone too, traveling with his band. It was my grandmother who actually raised me until I was five or six and I came to the United States. She was the first mother I really had. She taught me my first prayers and songs. I remember that she greeted every morning by singing, and she told me that each day was a wonderful miracle that we needed to celebrate. She died three weeks ago,” he added, and then stopped to quiet the trembling in his voice. “Flying to Mexico for her funeral gave me a lot of time to think,” he resumed. “I thought about how important she was during my first years of life and how much she loved me”. He stopped again to look around the circle, and held his gaze on Juan, who had once shared a song he had written for his mother on Mother’s Day (see: Can You See My Eyes).
“Juan,” he said in a stronger voice, “tell us about what you remember of your mother?”

In this fashion we went around the circle, each man introducing himself and sharing something about his mother. The first remarks were short and perfunctory, the men extolling their mothers as strong, hardworking, and long-suffering women. The shortest statement came from Steven, the hawk-faced, young man, who had spoken to me with such hushed intensity about getting out of his cell, and wanting to talk later.
“I don’t remember much about my mother,” he began. “She ran off when I was 3 or 4. My aunt and father raised me until I left home in junior high school. Since then I’ve been in and out of detention halls and jails, so I don’t see them much.”
I’d just gotten used to these brusque, stereotypical characterizations of mothers when Gustavo, a baby-faced, young man with fierce tattoos around his neck and forearms began speaking in halting Spanish, intermixed with English. It took me a while to realize that he was narrating a memory from the point of view of the 10-year old child he was at the time of the occurrence. He began by telling us that his mother, Graciela, was 15 or 16 years old when she met his father in Mexico and he convinced her to leave home and move to Los Angeles. From that point on his mother lost contact with her brothers, sisters, and parents. Graciela had 5 children, with Gustavo, the fourth, being followed by a younger brother. He remembered his mother as doing everything for them– working at two jobs, cooking, cleaning, and raising the kids. His father was a stay-at-home dad, who worked as an auto mechanic and also did odd jobs, like gardening and landscaping. Sometimes he took the two youngest boys with him to help cut lawns. The youngest boy was a little retarded and very slow in understanding orders and following directions. When his father became angry at his slowness, Gustavo remembered him chasing the small child with the weedwacker, whipping it at his brother’s shoes and ankles, and making him jump in fear and cry out in pain as he ran away from his father. His father also drank a lot, and he became angrier and more abusive when he was drunk. He yelled at his mother, calling her names and threatening to hit her, but Gustavo never actually witnessed a beating. The situation came to the point where the mother couldn’t take it anymore and she managed to contact her family, who had moved to California and lived in Palmdale. One day she told the father that she was taking the children to Disneyland for the day. In Anaheim, she explained to the 5 children that they were making one more stop before returning home, and she took them to her parent’s house in Palmdale. There it was decided that the 3 older children would stay with their grandparents and Graciela returned home with the two youngest boys. When the father asked where the three children were, the mother was silent.
“Mujer,” the father exploded, “how is it possible to leave in the morning with five children and return with only two?”
The mother simply replied, “My children are in a better place than here.”
Frustrated by the woman’s refusal to reveal the location of the children, the father waited until she left for work and then began interrogating the two little boys. Since Gustavo was his concentido, or favored-one, the father did not press him when he said he couldn’t remember. Instead, he pressured the youngest, threatening to beat him if he didn’t confess. His mother returned during one of these tearful interrogations and violently shoved the father away from the boy, standing defiantly between them.

At that point of the story Gustavo began weeping. Brushing aside the tears that were running down his face, he apologized for his weakness, but confessed that he had forgotten this memory of his skinny and undersized mother standing up to his hulking father and pushing him away from her children. That this tiny woman could finally confront this mean and abusive drunk was astounding to him. He was sure that the only reason his father didn’t beat her was fear – fear of her three older brothers who she swore would seek him out and kill him if he touched her. That night she took the two remaining boys and left the house for good. Still fighting back tears, Gustavo recalled asking his mother at some later time how old she was when she challenged his father, assuming she was a mature 34 or 35 years old at the time.
“I was 25, mi hijo,” she replied. “But I felt older after living with your father for so many years.”
She remarried, Gustavo continued with the tale, and had a daughter with her new husband. At first Gustavo and he got along well because the stepfather treated his mother with kindness and consideration. Unfortunately, Gustavo added, regretfully, their relationship slowly deteriorated because of his gang associations, and they stopped talking over the criminal choices he was making. However, his mother never lost faith in Gustavo or any of her children. Even his arrest for possession of a gun and his current incarceration had not cut it off. His mother still visited him and put money into his book so he could use the phone and buys things from the jail store.

There was a long pause after Gustavo finished his story, apologizing again for crying as he wiped away the remaining tears. The men seemed to be digesting what they had heard and seen from this young man. Gustavo’s tears, mixed with his understated admission of a drunken and abusive father, and his conflicted emotions toward a mother who both allowed the abuse for many years, but finally challenged it, opened the door to a lot more honesty from the men who followed in the circle. They also shared stories of alcoholic and violent fathers, mothers who tried to keep the children safe, and barrio gangs that substituted as families.

When all the men had spoken, Justin asked for a volunteer to read the pamphlet we were using that day.
“Can I read it in English?” Steven, the hawk-faced, young man asked.
“Yes, of course,” Justin replied, handing him an English version of the pamphlet titled, “Why Do We Honor Mary?”
In a halting, uneven manner, Steven struggled through the reading of how the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to ask Mary to accept a startling task – to bear a son named Jesus who would rule the Kingdom of God forever. He read how Mary accepted this task and then immediately went to help her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant at the time.
“Thank you, Steven,” Justin said when he finished reading the page. “Now I’d like you to think about this story. It’s not only the story of how Mary was selected to be the mother of God; it’s also a story of how God communicates to us and what he asks of us. Mary is our example of how to respond. Here she was, a thirteen or fourteen year old Jewish girl being asked to be the mother of God by a spiritual apparition. She was engaged, but not yet married to Joseph. Jewish law required that unwed mothers be stoned for adultery. To the angel’s difficult and dangerous request Mary said YES, and then she went off to help another person. All of you said YES to God tonight when you came out of your cells to join us here. But to be a follower of Jesus we need to believe even when it is impossible to believe. Just coming out of the dorms is not enough. We need to be willing to take on difficult tasks and we need to share the Gospel with others, and help those in need of assistance. How can you do that in jail? Steven, what do you think? How does one say YES to God in jail?”
“Well,” Steven replied, unsurely. “I believe in God, you know. I was baptized a Catholic and went to catechism, but sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard to have faith that God will take care of everything. But I believe in Him, you know.”
“What about you, Gustavo?” Justin asked. “What do you do to keep your faith in God and not give up?”
“Well, I pray, you know,” he began, “and I try reading the bible. I’ve been doing that lately. When they have Prayer Call the men will get together to read parts of the Bible. But I’m not that good at reading and some parts are hard to understand.”

“You can’t give up, man!” Steven suddenly interrupted, from across the circle, leaning forward in his chair and speaking with a certainty I hadn’t heard before. “I’ve been in lock-up all my life, and now I’m facing 30 years to life. But when I pray I don’t ask God to get me out. I ask him to watch over my wife and children. I put them in God’s hands, you know, and I have faith that he will also take care of me. But everything changes when you’re facing a court date, you know. You get tense, nervous, and edgy before going to court. When that happens, I forget to pray and I can’t concentrate on the bible. But man, that’s when you most need it, you know. I know God’s watching over me, and taking care of me, because he sent these two chaplains to us tonight. You see, I have a court date tomorrow. But man, I can’t control any of it. I don’t know what’s going on in the judge’s mind, the D.A.’s, or my lawyer’s. I don’t know what kind of night they had, what’s going on in their lives, or how they will feel about me when they get to court. I was starting to lose it in the dorm, you know. I was getting all tense and angry. That’s when the chaplain showed up at the bars to announce church, and I decided to come out. I’m glad I did, because it reminded me that all I can do is leave it in God’s hands. That’s how we should pray, man, leaving it in God’s hands.”
“You know Steven,” Justin interjected, “I think the reason you were called to come out tonight was to speak to Gustavo like this. That’s how God works, I think – through each of you, and the way you treat each other. Tony and I are not priests, or preachers; we’re just men who screw up, struggle through life, and come to visit you in jail. I learn how to get through my own life by listening to your stories and taking the advice you give to each other. You are the teachers here, because God acts through you when you let him. Thank you for coming tonight.”

At the end of every evening in jail, before leaving for home, Gavin insists that all the volunteers gather in the Chaplain’s Office to debrief. It’s a practice that can become arduous at times, especially when there are long delays in getting together. Sometimes it seems to take forever for all the volunteers to return from their sessions and complete their clerical tasks in the office, before standing quietly in a circle. But I’m beginning to appreciate Gavin’s insistence that we meet to describe what happened to us that evening, or recount a notable experience. When our turn came to speak, Justin and I said we were truly humbled by the gratitude the men expressed at our visit, and embarrassed by how little we had done to earn it.
“The men had a lot to say tonight”, Justin explained, “and we did more listening that talking. We didn’t even finish reading the pamphlet we were using. You know, after coming here for almost two years, I really believe that the inmates are the teachers in these sessions, and I’m the one who learns the most.”
“I used to be a teacher and a school principal by profession,” I added, “so control was always important to me. As a teacher, I needed to set up the classroom ahead of time, prepare a curriculum, and deliver a lesson. I can’t do any of those things in jail. We don’t control any of those factors here. All we can do is show up, and hope the men come out of their cells to join us. And yet they believe that this action is so important they always reserve a special prayer of thanksgiving at the close of the session for our coming. I’ve never been blessed so often, and felt so unworthy.”
I’ve finally come to realize that these debriefings give us the means to address the doubts and questions that always seem to hover like clouds over the heads of all prison ministry volunteers: Why do we come? What do we do here? Who do we help? Without answers to these questions, there is the temptation over time, to treat volunteer service as just another job, as work. I was starting to do so before I arrived on this particular Monday, a day I wasn’t scheduled to come; but listening to Gustavo, Steven, Justin, and the other men in the circle, helped me realize how important these weekly visits were to me. I’d only been away from jail for two weeks and yet I came close to saying “NO” at the impulse of coming tonight. Perhaps it was a prayer from one of the jail inmates we had visited on another occasion that helped me say, “YES”.

“Here comes the story
Of the Hurricane!”
(Hurricane: Bob Dylan – 1975)

There is always a back-story or side dramas to large family weddings, and Margi and Ron’s nuptial and reception on August 27, 2011 was no exception. There was a lot going on that weekend in Washington D.C.: this was the second marriage for both, their respective families were meeting for the first time, an earthquake had rocked the city for the first time in 100 years on August 23, a massive Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commemoration ceremony was scheduled for that Sunday, and Hurricane Irene was threatening to flood and blow the Eastern seaboard into darkness and paralysis on the day of the wedding. Surprisingly, only two or three guests cancelled their plans to attend for fear of the storm, and the remaining 165 showed up to challenge the media-hyped, climatic event, and celebrate the wedding.

Kathy and I decided to attend Margi’s wedding almost as soon as it was announced earlier this year. Our calendar was clear, and an opportunity to celebrate with family we love, in a city we greatly enjoy, seemed a perfect thing to do on the weekend before the Labor Day holiday. Since we were booking our flight so early, Kathy took the lone precaution of buying travel insurance, just in case some unforeseen calamity did occur. That should have been our first clue that unusual events would occur on this trip – even though we never questioned our decision. The Kirst’s are an entertaining and hospitable family, and Margi is a special person. She is the eldest child of Mary Ellen and Bill, the first grandchild in the Greaney family, and Kathy’s first niece. I quickly noticed her charm, intelligence, and humor during the days that I was dating Kathleen. Later, I took special note of her serious interest in Spanish and Latin American History and culture, topics that formed the core of my own post-graduate studies.

It proved to be a tempestuous weekend filled with scheduled and impromptu activities, events, and visits. We arrived at Dulles Airport at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, and were met by Kathy’s sister (and the mother of the bride) Mary Ellen and her daughter Katy. They drove us to the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, where Kevin and his wife, Anastasia, were also staying. As is our custom when traveling, Kathy and I immediately went exploring the top-floor ballroom area with its panoramic view of the Potomac River, Georgetown, and D.C.; and then went searching for the Rosslyn Metro Station, which was about three or four blocks away. There we ran into Kathy’s sister, Meg, and her husband, Lou. Billy, Margi’s brother, was touring them about the city. That Friday evening we all went to a post-rehearsal barbeque in Bethesda, Maryland, and then met up with Brian, the youngest of the Kirst family at the Marriott bar for a nightcap. There, on the overhead, high-definition television, we listened to the dire forecasts of the impending hurricane, which was expected to arrive in D.C. on Saturday afternoon, and peak in the evening.

The weather on the wedding morning started out gray, overcast, and breezy, and continued to deteriorate all day long. Raindrops were just falling as we left Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Bethesda, after the ceremony. The winds increased on the drive to the Officer’s Club at Fort Myer, where the wedding reception was to be held, and the storm slowly closed around us during the meal and festivities, and intensified throughout the day. That development eliminated any possibility of going outdoors to explore the historic army base which includes Arlington Cemetery, and occupies the heights above Washington D.C. This military post stills serves as the home of the Army Chief of Staff, and it once housed the famous generals of World War II: Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley. In fact, the club itself was named after “Old Blood and Guts” himself, George C. Patton, and featured his martial portrait in the lobby.

Along with many out-of-town guests, Lou spent the early moments of the reception on his cell phone re-booking his cancelled Sunday morning flight out of Dulles for one later in the afternoon. When that task was completed, he relaxed to enjoy the dancing, dining, and speeches that followed. The bride’s family produced three show-stopping moments during the celebration: the Father-Daughter dance, in which Margi and Bill bopped to the tunes of “Rock Around the Clock”; Bill’s toast to the bride and groom; and the Kirst Kids present – Margi, Katy, Billy, Kevin, and Mary – performed an impromptu line-dance to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places”. Kathy, remembering Bill as the earnest, college swain, courting the affections of her eldest sister in marriage, was most touched at the sight of them dancing wistfully, in quiet solitude, to the last song of the afternoon. Our only serious worries at that point were possible power outages caused by downed trees and road closures due to flooding.

After the reception, it seemed like we barely had time to change clothes, snap a picture of the descending storm from a top-floor window of the hotel, before again meeting with Meg, Lou, and Billy at a classy downtown bar called Off The Record. This popular, basement watering hole was located in their hotel, the Hay-Adams, a luxurious place, located across from Lafayette Square and near the White House. Two martinis later we had stopped worrying about the tempest raging outside and were even ready to forgo a cab ride and walk the 2 or 3 blocks to the Siroc Restaurant. Although dinner was a gastronomic blur, the walk back was unforgettable. During our homeward journey, we were tossed about by blasts of gusting winds, left defenseless with umbrellas turned inside out, and drenched by sheets of slanting rain.

Everything changed on Sunday with the passing of the storm, and Washington D.C. was suddenly at its summery best! After a breakfast with Brian and his friend Phil at the hotel, Kathy and I purchased metro day passes and travelled to the Smithsonian Station on the National Mall in search of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The new monument was to have been commemorated that day, but the elaborate ceremony had been cancelled due to the hurricane. By noon, the few remaining clouds had turned white and cottony, leaving a deep blue sky and brilliant sun. At first we followed the customary route down the center of the mall, along the gravel path, walking past the Washington Monument, and heading to the Reflecting Pool. I assumed that the MLK Memorial was close to the Lincoln Monument, but thankfully, a doubting Kathy asked a Park Ranger for directions and we veered off toward the sidewalk along Independence Avenue. As we caught sight of the vast Tidal Basin, with a gleaming Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the opposite shore, Kathy mentioned that she remembered the FDR Memorial somewhere near the basin’s walkway. Eager to see it, we walked along the shoreline of the lagoon, through a thick grove of cherry blossom trees. Looking up we both suddenly saw the gleam of a shining boulder top. Getting closer, we realized that we had inadvertently come across the MLK Memorial from the rear, through the tidal basin entrance.

The monument was eye-catching and impressive. In close proximity to the three gleaming, towering, blocks of granite, one immediately grasps the mountain metaphor and its theme of hope for civil and racial harmony. However, the monolithic statue of King was oddly stoic, and a bit forbidding, as it stared across the Tidal Basin, studying the edifice built for Thomas Jefferson, author of the idealistic, Declaration of Independence. I couldn’t help feeling that King’s features betrayed a critical attitude toward the eloquent exponent of The Rights of Man – a look that expressed the concern that his Dreams for equality, justice, integration, and racial acceptance were still unfulfilled in America.

Returning to the Smithsonian Metro after a brisk walk through the mall in rising temperatures and blazing sun, we decided to cool down with lunch at Dupont Circle. There we took stock of the rest of our day, which entailed returning to Arlington, taking a cab for dinner and an overnight stay at Mary Ellen and Bill’s home in the Glover Park area of D.C., and then taking an evening tour of the monuments with their son, Billy. On previous visits to D.C., I had caught glimpses of the larger, well-lit monuments while crossing the mall on cab rides from one part of town to another, but I’d never seen them closely at night. Billy’s offer to guide us, and, along with his friend Jeff, lead a photographing expedition of the mall, was a special treat.

That evening, listening to Billy and Jeff describe the sights of the mall, and pointing out interesting, historical facts, I realized that these two, longtime residents really loved this city. I’d always assumed D.C. was simply a convenient rest stop for the Kirst family, a place their parents could send the children to college, and take a breather from their lifelong travels around the world. Billy had been born in Iran, and lived in Italy, Poland, Russia, and Germany, and attended college and grad school at John Hopkins University in Maryland, and Georgetown University in D.C. All that time I smugly assumed that he would eventually make his way back to Southern California, the place his parents were raised and lived up until 1974, and where most of his aunts, uncles, and cousins resided. Now, as I saw the way Billy lovingly framed and balanced his nighttime photographs of the locations and images we visited, and listened to Jeff’s back-stories about the historical persons they memorialized, I wondered if they would ever leave. That evening we visited the FDR, MLK, and Lincoln Memorials, and walked around the Korean War and Viet Nam War Veteran Memorials, before returning to spend the night with M.E. and Bill.

The mall and its memorials turn strangely haunting and reverent at night. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial looked decidedly different against a black sky, its appearance changing from rugged, chunks of pink granite, to smooth, gleaming marble. The Korean War statues looked like a scene from the movie, The Fog, with its tableau of a slowly emerging lost patrol, rising from the misty darkness that enveloped them. But as always, the most powerfully evocative monument for me was the Vietnam War Memorial. Even with its black-on-black appearance at night, the names of my high school friends were still distinguishable on the dark, obsidian wall naming the dead. In the cool darkness of evening, with each location leaving its own special impression on us, we finally made our way back to the home of Mary Ellen and Bill, and an end to another very long day.

Our last morning in D.C. was spent exploring the Cathedral Heights area near the home of M.E. and Bill. We couldn’t enter the National Cathedral, because it was fenced off since the 5.8 earthquake toppled a few of its towering pinnacles, but we did manage to explore the grounds a bit, and entered St. Alban’s Church before heading back to the Glover Park area. Later that afternoon, after packing and chatting with Mary Ellen, we left for the airport, caught the 3:30 p.m. flight, and arrived home at 7:30 p.m. That evening, Kathy and I sat in our slowly, cooling living room and reflected on the events and back-stage dramas of the last four days. Over raised glasses, we congratulated ourselves on enjoying another marvelous trip together – an opportunity to celebrate a marriage during a hurricane, reconnect with distant family members and meet their significant friends, inaugurate a new memorial, and photograph national monuments in a totally new perspective. All in all it was a fabulous and worthwhile venture.

If you are interested in seeing my Flickr albums of the memorials and monuments I photographed on the National Mall, click on the links below:

2011-08-28 MLK Jr. Memorial

2011-08-28 FDR Memorial

2011-08-28 Korean War Veterans Memorial

2011-08-28 Lincoln Memorial

2011-08-28 Washington & Jefferson Monuments

2011-08-28 Vietnam War Memorial

Although you see the world different than me
Sometimes I can touch upon the wonders that you see
All the new colors and pictures you’ve designed
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine.

Child of mine, child of mine
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine
(Child of Mine – Carole King & Gerry Goffin, 1970)

Sarah Kathleen turned 6 months old on May 12, 2011, and was baptized the following week. I don’t think the significance of those events really hit me until a few days prior to her baptism, when I was sitting in front of a cinema in Monrovia, waiting to see a movie with my brothers Eddie and Alex. I was alone on a street bench waiting for their arrival when the random thought of Prisa’s high school Kairos letter drifted nostalgically into my mind. This was the letter I wrote to her in 1998, when she was a senior at Louisville High School and went on her Kairos Retreat. It was the first time I had written my daughter a testament of the love and pride I felt for her at that turning point in her life.
“Why couldn’t I have written one sooner?” I thought, regretfully. “There were so many crucial events in her life I should have memorialized, but she grew up so fast. I blinked and she’d changed from infant to child, and before I could refocus, she went from elementary to high school.”
Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning with its reverberating rumble of thunder: Sarah’s baptism was in three days! I still had a chance to remedy a parenting regret by writing my granddaughter a letter on one of the first momentous occasions in her life (even if she wouldn’t be able to read it for a few years). I took out my pocket notebook and started jotting down a few lines until I saw Alex approaching. I put away the notebook, knowing I had plenty of time to finish this letter before Sarah baptism.

Needless to say, the birth of Sarah Kathleen, coupled with my retirement, has awakened the dormant nurturer within me. I have never felt more giving and loving towards a child as I do for my granddaughter. My feelings and attentions towards Toñito and Prisa as infants were somewhat different. Those tumultuous emotions were brand new but compartmentalized by my career, and perhaps a bit secondary to Kathy’s, the primary and full-time nurturer and caregiver. Until Sarah’s birth, I had never given an infant so much undivided time and attention – and I loved doing it! That’s the strange part, I love performing the ordinary, but necessary tasks infants require: attention, diaper changes, feedings, outdoor strolls, and practice. Sarah so preoccupies my mind that the only parallel experience I can think of is when I first fell in love with Kathy. I couldn’t get Kathy out of my thoughts, and I longed for the next opportunity to see her. Yep, that was it – I was in love again! From the first electric moment after her birth, when I felt that tiny body moving in my arms, and saw her sleeping, baby face, I was totally in love. I cannot ever express how grateful I am at being able to see and care for her twice a week. It is a lover’s paradise, but not without pitfalls. Infants grow up so quickly, that the baby you love one month will suddenly change in the next - they never stay the same. So thankfully, I’ve been able to caution myself with the lesson I learned many years ago with Toñito and Prisa, during long drives home after wonderful visits with my mom and siblings, or returning from a long walks through the neighborhood: to be present in those moments together as they happen; relishing those times as transitory gifts; visualizing them as permanent scenes; and letting them pass. We can’t freeze our children or grandchildren in time – they never stop growing, learning, and changing – but we can remember special occasions. So my desire to write Sarah a Kairos-type letter on her baptism day became an imperative for me.

Actually, Sarah’s baptism was a little late in scheduling, and I’m sure its tardiness ruffled a few Catholic feathers, and dusted off some old fashioned concerns about unbaptized babies. In the Catholic tradition of our Irish and Mexican-American families, infant baptism took place quickly after birth, usually during the first month. This urgency was predicated on the Pre-Vatican II fear that babies who died without receiving the sacrament of baptism were denied the beatific vision of God in Heaven and doomed to Limbo – a netherworld where the souls of righteous pagans and innocent, unbaptized babies dwelt. Kathy and I were raised in that milieu, the cold-war era of Catholic school, nuns, foreign missions, and saving pagan babies from the vacuum of Limbo.

Collecting money for the foreign missions was a major effort in the Catholic schools of the late 1950’s and early 60’s in Los Angeles. The sisters who taught us in those parochial schools made a big deal about supporting the efforts of the missionaries in Asia and Africa, who were saving pagan souls for Christ. At first I remember them simply encouraging us to donate money by putting our pennies and nickels into a large cardboard bank, labeled with the impressively long title of Society for the Propagation of the Faith. However, those efforts were only marginally successful because we found it hard to relate to such an awkwardly named organization that had no meaning to a seven or eight-year old child. Even simplifying the name of the agency into the Foreign Missions didn’t help, because it all seemed like adult stuff to us. It wasn’t until the Society for the Propagation of the Faith hit upon the strategy of imitating the March of Dime’s efforts against polio, that it became a big hit with us. The nuns stopped asking for money to help missionaries, and started telling stories of how we could save starving and orphaned babies in Asia and Africa. The sisters read horrifying tales of how pagan women in foreign countries sold or abandoned their infants because of their inability to care for them. In China, we were told, where only male children were prized, female infants were simply left in roadside ditches after their birth. At the conclusion of these stories, the nuns announced that we, the Catholic children of America, could save those pagan babies by adopting them and sponsoring their conversion to Catholicism. We had the power to save their lives and their souls. We were given small, individual, cardboard banks, decorated with pictures of smiling infants and children, and told to fill it with pennies, nickels, or dimes by encouraging family and friends to donate. Our banks were collected each Friday, and the money was counted. With every $5.00 the class could buy one pagan baby and choose a baptismal name. Naming a pagan baby was an elaborate class ritual of influence and deal making. Students who contributed the most money nominated the names, and their popularity and contribution amount usually swayed the vote. Babies were always given 2 or 3 Christian names, depending on the nun’s approval. Monikers such as Elvis, Spike, Butch, or Junior were never allowed. Official looking Certificates of Adoption for each baby were printed, filled in, and posted, so we could keep count of the children we had saved. I think the original idea was that we would remember and pray for these babies over the years, but that didn’t happen. Eventually we matriculated to the next grade, forgot, and lost track of the children we had adopted and named.

Over the years, the phrase, “buying pagan babies” or “adopting pagan babies” became a sort of Catholic code for identifying former parochial school students. We would laugh over our shared memories of those days and the nuns who directed the money collection and naming rites. It was only later that I started questioning their stories and those practices: Were the infants truly abandoned by their parents, or purchased from them by the missionaries? How did the mothers who gave up their children to foreign missionaries feel? What types of pain and guilt did they suffer? Why didn’t the Catholic missionaries just help the mothers and parents of these children, instead of buying them? It slowly began to dawn on me that the practice of adopting pagan babies was manipulative and exploitive – a vestige of the colonial belief that western cultures and religions were superior to native ones. But what bothered me the most was the idea of Limbo, and the doctrine that if babies died before being baptized, they were doomed to go there. So it was not surprising that when Prisa and Joe delayed Sarah’s baptism to coincide with her friend Dave’s ordination as a priest so he could officiate, vestiges of those old teachings rose up to worry a few of our older family members. Thankfully, the Church’s position on infant baptism had changed since our pre-Vatican 2 days in Catholic schools. As I learned when Kathy and I joined the Baptism Preparation team of our church in 1990, and began instructing parents and godparents about the rite of infant baptism, this sacrament required adult discernment, choice, and commitment before the holy water was poured. Baptism had ceased being an automatic christening ceremony and a safeguard against Limbo, where families simply came to listen to a priest recite prayers, anoint the baby with oils, and watch him pour water over the baby’s head. Baptism was a series of statements and vows that parents and godparents made to raise the child in the practice of the Catholic faith and to avoid sin. If the parents and godparents were not ready to fulfill these vows, baptism should be postponed until the children grew up and were old enough to decide themselves. Waiting a few extra months in insure that the right godparents and priest was present, seemed a good investment to make in Sarah’s faith formation. My only real worry about delaying the baptism was Sarah’s tolerance of a long and elaborate ceremony. A six-month old infant is a lot bigger, choosier, and more active than a two-month old, and the formal baptismal ceremony, with all the talking, anointing, and pouring of water, might make Sarah restless and irritable.

Sarah was baptized on May 19, 2011, in the same church where her parents were married, Our Lady of the Valley in Canoga Park. That Thursday afternoon was bright and sunny, with cloudless, blue skies and warm temperatures. Prisa and Joe brought Sarah to our house early, so she could eat, play, and nap before the ceremony. Although Sarah is a very active infant – rhythmically rocking her body from side to side when happy, or listening to songs and music, rolling over and reaching out for objects that intrigue her, or clanging together toys in her hands like a percussionist in an orchestra – she can also act like a precise scientist, studying a dividing cell under a microscope. In a way, she reminds me a lot of both her mother and uncle when they were children. Toñito would pull back and cautiously study people and objects before smiling, as if checking and judging them, while Prisa leaned forward with a smile, seeking to embrace the newest source of her interest. This unified tendency in Sarah was demonstrated throughout the afternoon, beginning with the preparations of getting her changed and dressed, the ceremony itself, and the continuous meeting and greeting of all the friends and relatives who came to celebrate this special event.

When 2:30 p.m. rolled around, Sarah was rested, fed, and alert when Kathy began changing and dressing her in her baptismal undergarment – a long, white, cotton slip. Sarah stared up at her, wide-eyed and curious, and fascinated with Kathy’s dangling, silver necklace. Kathy had to be deft and alert to the gyrations of an infant who could turn, roll over, and scoot away if the operation took too long. My job was to stand back and photograph the proceedings, suggesting poses of Sarah with Kathy and Lisa, her aunt and godmother, and later, action shots with her parents when they took her to the church. The most interesting photos were of Sarah’s encounter with her godfather and presider, Father Dave, in the sacristy of the church.

Dave is Prisa’s high school and college friend, who had just been ordained a priest in the Carmelite order five days before. He was the reason for the delay in the baptism because Prisa wanted him to be Sarah’s baptizing priest as well as godfather. Dave had met Sarah as a 6-week old infant on Christmas Eve, but no one really expected her to remember him. They met again in the sacristy, the room adjacent to the altar where the sacred vessels and garments are stored for the different services that take place in the church. As Dave searched the drawers and cupboards for the linens and material he needed, Prisa and Kathy dressed Sarah in the flowing white gown she would wear during the ceremony. It was there that Sarah spied the one person she didn’t recognize, and her eyes never lost sight of him. When Kathy noticed this fascination with the man in black, she lifted Sarah up to smooth and straighten her dress, and whispered into her ear.
“Sarah,” she said with a smile, “this is your godfather, Father Dave.”
I watched as Sarah turned her head sideways to study this man in the roman collar. Her steel blue eyes locked on Dave’s open face, his half-moon grin, and his dancing, bright brown eyes. Listening to Kathy’s cooing reassurances without betraying an immediate reaction, I watched a series of expressions materialize on her pink face: first, open-mouthed wonder, followed by frowning concentration, and culminating with a beautific smile and an accepting kiss on the lips.

My concerns about Sarah’s reaction to the baptism and behavior in church proved groundless – she was great during the entire ceremony. The only time she was noticeably antsy was during Dave’s homily, when she was more interested in bouncing on Lisa’s lap, fiddling with the myriad folds of her gown, and sticking different parts of her dress into her mouth. Alternately grimacing, smiling, and looking around the church, Sarah alternated her attention on the flowers, the decorations, and the lights of the church, occasionally giving off an exultant yelp of glee. When the parents and godparents finally moved to the baptismal fountain, Sarah entertained herself by playing with the strings of her bonnet. During this part of the rite, she alternated her attention on Dave, who was talking, reading, and moving about, and inspecting the large, glass container that looked like an open aquarium, with water flowing out into a tiled basin below. The interplay of the lights and sounds of cascading water, glazed glass, and colorful tile captured her attention, until Dave brought out the oversized, transparent jars containing the amber hued oils that would anoint her head, eyes, and mouth. Finally, she stayed calm and serene as Lisa carefully turned her on her back with her head hovering over the fountain of water. Keeping her eyes on Dave’s face, she didn’t seem to notice when he reached out and cupped a handful of water, pouring it gently over her head, and reciting the invocation: “Sarah Kathleen, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”. He did this two more times, without a peep from the little girl in Lisa’s arms. After the water, there came another anointing of oil and more prayers. It was then that Sarah noticed the oversized Rite of Baptism book from which Dave was reading. She leaned forward, extended her hand, and grasped the side of the book. She pulled it toward her, and then brought the other hand down on the pages, as if to get a closer look at the words. Then she looked up at Father Dave as if to say, “What does it all mean?” That was a Kodak moment for sure, but the biggest hit was the lighting of the baptismal candle. Lisa had to climb a ladder to light it from the flame of the towering Paschal candle on the altar. Bringing the lit candle back to be held by the adults, as Dave recited an invocation, Sarah’s eyes never wavered from the dancing flame. She was great and everyone knew it. At the end of the ceremony, when Dave presented her to the audience as the newest child of God, Sarah looked up in surprise as the applause rose up and echoed off the walls. She even joined in.

Later that afternoon, near the end of the reception, when Prisa and Joe were opening Sarah’s baptismal gifts, they found and read my letter to her:

"My dearest Sarah Kathleen:

First of all let me tell you some things I’ve learned about you in the last six months: You are the best and most loveable Nena Chula in the whole world, and you were born to the best mother and father a child could have. Their love for you could hug the entire universe and hold it tight for as long as the image of your face and smile was in their minds to inspire them. You are a wondrous child whose wispy, golden hair glows a rosy orange when I carry you outdoors into the sunlight. There, in the freshness of morning, you stare intently through fathomless, steel blue eyes, and study the shapes, colors, and movements of the objects and people around you. What you think about them is still a mystery to us, because although you have already developed a wide spectrum of yelping, gurgling, and whirring sounds, you don’t speak yet. Instead you communicate through movements and actions. You flip over ceaselessly, from back to stomach, and stomach to back. You can leap skyward in your bouncy chair and grab, hold, and pull objects that excite your curiosity. You can spin 360° on your back and explore the length and breadth of any floor and carpet. Since the second day of your life you’ve been practicing the smile that you have today – a smile that illuminates a room and gladdens the hearts of the people who see it. Sarah, you have been learning and developing from the moment you took your first breath and opened your eyes in your mother’s arms, and today you were promised to God.

Today you were baptized into the Catholic Church and the faith of your parents, their parents, and the long line of parents before them. You participated in a rite in which you, besides already being a member of a large family that loves you, chose to be God’s Child, and a member of Christ’s Church. However, since you were too young to talk and choose for yourself, certain people were picked to speak for you. Those people were your mother and father, and two people they chose to help them and you in your quest for God – your Aunt Lisa and Father Dave, your godparents. They answered “yes” for you, to the questions Father Dave asked them before you were anointed with water. They promised that you would seek God and keep his commandments all of your life, as Christ taught us: by loving God and our neighbors.

Sarah, you are still a baby and this life-long journey can’t be taken alone. Just as you will need the help of your mom and dad to walk, talk, and act, all of the friends and family members who surrounded you today, also promised to help you learn about God. But even better, there is a miracle that comes with this sacrament. By becoming a Child of God, God also made a promise to you – that God’s love will never fail you. As water was poured over your head today, God will always shower you with the grace, love, and faith that you need. You will never be alone, my love, I promise you.

I know all of these words and ideas sound a little strange and hard to understand right now, but don’t worry. Just continue growing, learning, and smiling, the way you are. You see, saying “yes” to God is as easy and as natural as staring in wonderment at the beautiful world God created for us. You are already with God when I see the things you do each day; all you have to do is be Sarah Kathleen, my Nena Chula! For Jesus told us: “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children”(Mat. 19:14).

I love you, Nena Chula,

Poppy"

If you are interested in seeing my Flickr album of Sarah Kathleen’s Baptism, or a video of Father Dave’s Baptism Homily, click on the links below:

2011-5-19 Sarah Kathleen’s Baptism

Father Dave’s Message

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky come tumblin’ down, a tumblin’ down
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumblin’ down, a tumblin’ down

I just a lose control
Down to my very soul
I get a hot and cold
All over, all over, all over, all over.
(I Feel the Earth Move: Carole King – 1971)

The cool breeze wafting through the high-vaulted, side-entrance of the church shut off the instant we entered the doorway. It was as if an unseen altar boy had thrown a kill switch in the sacristy, and all the air molecules in the vestibule of the church had dropped lifelessly to the ground.
“The air-conditioner will be on for this mass, won’t it?” I asked, begging Kathy with my eyes to say yes. “It was on during the reception in the hall,” I added hopefully, “and it was so cool I kept my coat on for the whole time.”
“Father Art usually has it on for this mass”, she replied cautiously, “but you never know with priests.”
As Kathy dipped her fingers into the baptismal fountain at the side of the church, I searched for the telltale ribbon attached to the A/C vent over the confessional door. The strip of cloth hung limp and lifeless against the wall.
“Oh no,” I muttered to myself. “This is not good.”
My queasy stomach had finally settled down into an uneasy truce during the earlier reception in the parish hall that was held in Kathy’s honor. I didn’t feel normal by any stretch of the imagination, and my empty belly was still raw and sore from the morning’s cramping and vomiting. A dull numbness had settled in and I started believing that I could get through this evening’s activities. Thankfully, the humorous interactions and conversations with my daughter Prisa and five of Kathy’s six sisters, who, along with four nieces, had come to witness this tribute for their older sibling, aided my delicate condition. As Kathy greeted and chatted with the teachers, parents, students, and countless well-wishers who entered the hall, I sat at an outer table, which was eventually graced by the nine members of her family. It was there, while they snacked on cheese, crackers, and fruit, that I explained how Kathy and I had succumbed to an unknown stomach virus, which had her vomiting the night before, and me the following morning. We lay in bed that morning, empty-stomached, and motionless as logs, gazing silently at the ceiling, and praying to improve and feel better so we could attend the events requiring our presence later that Saturday afternoon and evening. The faculty and staff of the school and church had planned a lavish, two-hour parish farewell reception in the hall, followed by a special 5 o’clock mass and tribute, and culminating with a more private dinner honoring her 22 years at the school as 8^th grade teacher and principal. I watched disbelievingly as Kathy, with a sincere smile on her face, greeted and thanked the countless parishioners and parents streaming through the doors to say goodbye. Seeing her apparent recovery encouraged me into trying to eat and drink something. I cautiously selected three plain-looking crackers and a can of cold Sprite, hoping that a clear, carbonated liquid with unleavened bread might settle my empty stomach and give me strength. But I was more thankful for the air-conditioning that circulated cold and refreshing air throughout the hall. During the reception, Kathy found two or three opportunities to join our table, nibble at some crackers, and sip some Sprite. Her sisters and nieces would not be joining us for the Mass and dinner, and one by one they started leaving after congratulating Kathy and marveling at the fine showing of appreciation. At about 4:45 pm, one of the teacher-hostesses announced that the reception was concluding and all were invited to proceed to the church, so Kathy, Prisa, and I began our measured walk to the church entrance.

“Do we sit over there?” I asked Kathy hopefully, indicating the teachers, with their husbands and friends, who were seated comfortably in the side pews of the church, next to the altar.
“No,” she replied, ruefully, “I think our seats are reserved in the front.”
Sure enough, a woven cord with the sign, “Reserved” was looped across the entrance to the front two rows of pews, indicating they were saved for Kathy and her attending family. With Toñito’s arrival from work, that would make four of us in a row that normally fit 12.
“Kind of lonely up here, don’t you think, Prisa?” I murmured to my daughter as we followed Kathy into the pew, and I glanced back at the sea of faces beyond the empty row behind us.
“You’ll be fine, dad,” she reassured me, patting me on the shoulder. “Just think of the days when you brought us to church as kids, and mom always had us sitting in the front pew. You won’t know or care what’s going on behind you.”
These words should have calmed me, as Prisa’s humor always did, but I was anxious. I didn’t know what was producing the flashes of heat and nervousness that kept erupting inside me. I couldn’t tell if it was my unease with the countless eyes focused on our backs, watching our every move, the lack of air circulation in the building, or the fear of incipient nausea in my stomach. All I could think about was getting through this mass so we could leave this hotbox for the fresh air of the breezeway outside.

The mass finally started with the long procession of altar servers and readers coming down the middle aisle, and Father Art slowly trailing behind, falling farther and farther back. He was carefully greeting and conscientiously shaking the hands of the parishioners nearest the aisle and those in the pews. It seemed to take him forever to finally make his way to the front pew and shake our hands. All that time, I kept turning around, impatiently measuring his progress, and then stealing a longing look at the limp ribbon on the A/C vent, willing it to start moving.
Just breathe and concentrate on the liturgy, I kept repeating to myself. This was an important day for Kathy and it needed my attention. She and I would talk of this day on future occasions, so it was important to remember what people said and did in showing their respect and affection for a woman who had dedicated so many years of service to this school and its community of teachers, students and parents. As if to validate this prescient thought, when Father Art belatedly welcomed the congregation from the front of the altar, explaining the reason for this special mass, he also noted that today’s scriptural readings, complimented the event. Saint John’s gospel was about leave taking and reassuring the apostles who were staying behind that all would be well (Jn 14: 1-12). But try as I might to concentrate on the liturgy, my mind could only think of the rising temperature in the church and the lack of breathable air.
“Kathy,” I whispered into her ear, as Father began the Gloria from the altar, “do you think it’s alright if I take off my blazer?” I had noticed how some of the men who had entered the church wearing coats and ties had begun, one by one, peeling them off, while their wives fanned themselves with liturgical pamphlets. However, I also knew that we were the guests of honor at a very formal event and that all eyes were on us.
“I don’t see why not,” she replied, looking around the church. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s planning to turn on the air.”
With a huff of relief, I shed my blue blazer and began neatly folding it.
“Here Dad, I’ll take it,” my daughter offered, reaching for my coat and placing it beside her. Just then, in the corner of my eye, I saw Toñito gliding down the side aisle toward the front.
“Toñito’s here,” I told Kathy, as he slipped into our pew next to Prisa.
The absence of the heavy clothing provided a measure of momentary relief as we sat down and watched one of Kathy’s teachers rise from her seat and move to the pulpit to intone the first reading. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear a word because my mind irresistibly drifted back to thoughts of diminishing oxygen and rising temperature.
Maybe I should step outside for a minute to get some air, I thought, as the congregation repeated the Responsorial Psalm aloud, “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.” But I hesitated too long, and my small window of opportunity slammed shut as the next reader arose. Desperate to distract my growing sense of dread, I gazed up at the stylized picture of a rosary on the stained glass high above the altar. Strangely, the golden hue of the window seemed to slowly grow with intensity until the reader finally announced, “The Word of the Lord,” and the congregation replied, “Thanks be to God.”
Okay, I thought, refocusing my eyes on Father Art as we stood to hear the reading of the gospel, I need to concentrate on this. But once again, I found that my breath could find no traction in the de-oxygenated air, as I again searched futilely for a means of escape.
I can’t walk out during the Gospel! I realized, feeling the first tug of nausea in the pit of my stomach. I can’t, I won’t throw-up here! I commanded myself, willing my spasms into remission. I will control this!
“The Gospel of the Lord,” Father Art concluded, closing the lectionary and looking up at the assembled church.
“Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” the congregation countered, slowly bending to sit down for the homily.
At that moment, a flood of luminous, white light radiated from the back of the sanctuary, slowing all time and motion as it enveloped the priest, podium, and altar table. It’s unearthly shine reminded me of a day, close to 40 years ago, when hung-over and queasy, I joined my high school friends Jim, John, and Greg in a rigorous workout at Gold’s Gym in Santa Monica. In the middle of this sweaty session, I saw this same light exploding around us, barely reaching the bathroom in time to release the smothering grip of my hands over my mouth and throwing up.
Oh, oh, I concluded, watching Father Art descend the steps of the altar in freeze-framed segments to begin his homily. This is not good! Should I try running out, now?

Then everything went black.

My wife, Kathy, is leaving a school that has been a part of our family for over 23 years. It’s only now, as I write these words, that I realize how much I’ve kept that fact at an emotional arms-length from me. Ever since she informed the pastor of the parish in January, I’ve pretended that her decision was simply a wise choice that required neither sadness nor grief. Since the farewell mass in the church, I’ve come to reconsider that belief. Kathy leaving OLV School is like a daughter leaving home for college.

We enrolled our children, Toñito and Prisa, in the 3^rd and 5^th grades of Our Lady of the Valley (OLV) School, after moving into Canoga Park and becoming part of the OLV parish in 1988. Instead of keeping the kids in their original school in Reseda (St. Catherine of Siena), Kathy and I were drawn to the open, friendly, and ethnically diverse population of the new community, and the school. The following year, the principal, Sister Noreen Patrice, a nun Kathy knew from her days as a student at Mount Saint Mary’s College, offered her the position of 8^th grade teacher, and she accepted. It had been ten years since Kathy had been in a classroom as a full-time high school teacher, and much more since she taught middle schoolers as student-teacher in the credential program at the Mount. Her decision to return to work was probably based on many factors: the need for a supplemental income to pay for my insistence on a larger, more expensive home; an urge to fill the time vacated by our children’s departure to elementary school; and an impulse to resume a vital and satisfying profession that was halted to raise two children at home. Her friendship with the principal was perhaps another reason, but ironically, Sister Noreen was reassigned to a new ministry, and a new, lay principal was hired before Kathy began teaching. For me, OLV was a kaleidoscope of familial scenes mixing Toñito and Prisa as students, and Kathy as teacher and eventually principal. I remember sitting down with the children to discuss the new responsibilities and duties we had to assume with a working mother and wife, like planning and cooking a weekly menu that the kids and I could handle (which always included frozen dinners, spaghetti, and pizza on Friday). I recall advising them to ride their bikes to school and home, instead of complaining about having to wait for their mother to finish working in her classroom. I became the designated, sole contact person for parent-teacher communications and conferences, which was weird, since I still shared these discussions with Kathy, and she usually already knew more about them than I. What I also deeply suspected was that Kathy’s arrival at OLV, brought a new emphasis on friendship, collegiality, and community to the faculty and staff.

I’ve always believed that upon the marriage and departure of her two older sisters, Mary Ellen and Debbie, by 1967, Kathy became the only Big Sister in the family. With that title, she immediately assumed the role of nurturer, defender, and model to 7 younger siblings (five girls and two boys). She did this with mischievous aplomb, a self-mocking sense of humor, and a desire to help people in need. Covertly, she was also a hard worker who wanted never to let people down. These nascent characteristics were easily overlooked in her crowded and busy home and during her high school years at Corvallis, but they were spotted, nurtured, and guided by the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet during her undergrad and graduate years at Mount St. Mary’s College. I first noticed these tendencies toward family and community building when she started working as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Los Angeles High School, in 1973. Over a period of only three years, I watched how her personality, actions, and values, seemed to influence and energize an institutionally marginalized group of ESL teachers and counselors into becoming a vigorous, cooperative, and fun-lovely department. However, with her decision to remain at home raising our two children, she walked away from high school instruction and a rewarding specialty, leaving unanswered the question if she would ever return. After all her experience in high school, I never expected her to choose the 8^th grade, but then perhaps it was she who was chosen.

Until she started at OLV, I never fully appreciated how pivotal the position of 8^th grade teacher was in a Catholic Elementary School. Kathy was always a fine teacher, and was always ready to help administrators, coordinators, and counselors with special projects and cases, but she never had to assume their level of accountability. In the Eighth Grade she was literally thrust into the role of circus ringmaster for many ceremonial, extra-curricular, and matriculation activities during the school year: Sports, Parent meetings, High School counseling, May Crowning, Scholarships, and Graduation. To juggle and coordinate all of these people, events, and schedules, while still maintaining a rigorous curriculum, required an extraordinary level of inter-personal communication skills, efficient organization, and strong leadership on the part of the teacher. After a challenging first year of exposure and on-the-job training, Kathy was able to master those skills while adding a few of her own - consistency, charisma, and humor. That’s not to say that her experiences were easy, in fact many interactions were complicated by the fact that her own two children were students in the school. Toñito and Prisa were taught by their mother in gradually increasing doses from the 6^th grade to almost fulltime in the 8^th. While Toñito was able to deal with this sometime awkward situation with feigned indifference, the relations between Prisa and Kathy were occasionally tense. By the time Prisa graduated in 1994, Kathy had full mastery of the grade level and was looking for new challenges.

I suppose Kathy’s career path began altering with Prisa’s graduation from OLV, and her matriculating to join her brother in high school in 1994. With none of her own children in attendance, Kathy began flexing her educational muscles and exploring different ways of doing things in the school. I had been in school administration since 1985, first as an assistant principal and then a middle school principal in 1991. By that time, Kathy had discovered for herself the administrative truism that if you are seeking an institutional change in a school, its best to first find the resources and personnel needed, design the program yourself, and then identify the funding sources before asking the principal for permission to implement it. Even if the principal were to claim full credit for the program or event, everyone in the school knew who was really responsible for the change. Civilians usually translated this truism into the over-simplified phrase, “if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.” But it’s more than that in a school. It’s the realization that teachers are the ones best able to identify educational needs and design creative strategies to address them when inspired or supported by a competent principal who says yes. Even when principals are not competent or as inspiring as teachers would like, getting them to say yes was still possible when all the heavy lifting was done before asking permission. This is what Kathy began to realize in the years following Prisa’s departure from OLV. It also helped that my assignments as principal coincided with those years and I could give Kathy a principal’s perspective on the issues and problems she and her fellow teachers experienced at that time. It seemed that more and more of her colleagues were seeking her advice and intervention on administrative matters, and she was assuming a larger role in the operation of the school. By 1996, she was designated the “acting principal” whenever the actual principal was not a school. Soon after, when she asked me what I thought of her pursuing a post-graduate program at the Mount in school administration, I declared that it was a great idea and long overdue. Kathy had finally grown sufficiently confident to decide that, “I know I can do that job.” Shortly after crossing the stage at the Shrine Auditorium to receive her Master of Science degree in School Administration, and after having gone through a rigorous application and interview process, “just for practice and experience” a few weeks before, she was selected as the new principal of Our Lady of the Valley School, filling the sudden vacancy at the end of the 1998-99 school year.

I think Kathy was the closest thing to a “natural” principal as I’ve ever seen. Sure, she had to learn the technical aspects of the job, like budgeting, payroll, personnel evaluations, and due process procedures, but the key interpersonal and leadership skills were already part of her DNA. She had already established personal friendships with the faculty and staff, and was recognized by all students as the important 8^th grade teacher who prepared them for that crucial transition to high school. She could listen to people, empathize with their problems, and work together at finding solutions. She also had the benefit of hearing about, and in some cases seeing, the professional problems and dilemmas I experienced, and the mistakes I made as principal. Most importantly, Kathy possessed an uncannily clear vision of the school she wanted to build, and how she wanted people to get along. She hoped to unite students, teachers, and staff into a collaborative, learning community that practiced Jesus’ message of love and acceptance, and followed the teaching of the church. This was not a Mission Statement you saw printed or published in manuals and on bulletin boards, as many textbooks proscribed, it was a vision I saw demonstrated whenever I visited the school and interacted with the students and staff.

I always felt comfortable and welcomed when walking onto the campus of OLV after Kathy became principal. The school playground, when filled with active children, was always friendly and inviting, and never exhibited the posturing and cliquishness one witnessed on other schoolyards. Rather than ignoring me, as children often treat adults who trespass on their territory, the students were always eager to greet me with a smiling, “Good Morning, Mr. Delgado”. The Faculty Lounge was also unique, because it was not an exclusive gathering place for teachers and staff to meet during recess and lunch and gripe about the school. The lounge reminded me of a long family dinner table filled with siblings of every grade level, laughing, arguing, and commiserating over the events of the day and in their lives. Just as in her teaching days at Los Angeles High School, Kathy was usually present during the chatter, discussions, and joking that went on there, and always managed to include some necessary piece of school business that needed resolution in an open and safe place.

I don’t think Kathy would have ever considered leaving OLV if the educational and economic landscape hadn’t begun changing after 2008. The school was coming off of a very positive WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) evaluation, receiving a 6-year scholastic accreditation, with special commendations for their school environment and Mission. That same year, the Los Angeles Unified School District finally completed a massive school construction campaign and was preparing to eliminate year-round schedules in all San Fernando Valley schools. For the first time in 25 years, there would be plenty of classroom space for all students and teachers, even as the state was encouraging the creation of more alternative charter schools to further improve instruction. Suddenly, the competition for student enrollment between public and charter schools became fierce, just as the economy was slowly sinking into recession. The first places to feel the effects of the declining economy and this new recruitment for students were tuition-driven, Catholic schools in lower-income, and ethnically diverse communities. Over the next four years, OLV experienced a steady decline in student enrollment, a subsequent loss of tuition, and smaller and smaller operational school budgets. This situation sped up drastically with the further economic collapse in 2009, and it became Kathy’s Sword of Damocles during her last two years at OLV.

After directing four different middle schools over 18 years in Los Angeles, I’ve come to the conclusion that principals become competent, when they realize that most aspects of their job are not as absurdly impossible as they once thought. They finally see that every problem has a finite number of steps towards a solution. Although the consequences of these actions (or, in some cases, non-actions) might be unpleasant, the choices are obvious, if one has the need or the desire to make them. The trick is not to panic or despair, but to calmly realize that you have the ability to handle any issue, conflict, or controversy “by the numbers”, without investing feelings or emotions. However, the principal has to be willing to live with the choices he or she makes. In my opinion, Kathy has always been an exceptional principal because she invested all of her professional actions and decisions with personal feelings and compassion, and was especially sensitive to the emotional consequences of those actions on teachers and staff members. However, the cost of this emotional investment has been huge, and I saw Kathy struggling more and more in trying to fix a diminishing enrollment and a deteriorating financial situation which the Archdioceses believed could be solved with dynamic marketing and creative tuition assistance. 80% – 85% of all operating school budgets go to teachers and personnel. If enrollment is declining, and tuition revenue is dropping, there is only one place you can go to balance the budget – personnel: the school needs to cut staff and reduce salaries.

Last year, at the end of a particularly difficult year that saw the reduction of more supplemental services and personnel, such as classroom aides and coordinators, Kathy was offered an advisory position at the Archdiocesan Department of Education. For the first time since she accepted the position of principal at OLV, I stepped out of my role as neutral participant, and begged her to take the job. I saw it as the perfect exit strategy to an intolerable situation that would eventually beat her down – forcing her into professional choices and actions she could never live with. I told her that she was an experienced and successful principal who had built a quality instructional program and an exceptional Christian learning community over an eleven-year period. These achievements had already earned her the respect and credibility among her peers that was vital in a supervisory position. I insisted that she would better serve the profession by helping other principals instead of overseeing the budgetary dismantling of a program and staff she had built herself. If the paradigm for Catholic schools and budgets was changing, she should not have to relearn and reshape herself into the new type of principal it required. Those were aspects of the job that a new generation of principals would have to learn and master, while she could help them master other areas of growth. I think Kathy agreed with my arguments, but not my conclusion. She still felt that she could not leave the school and its community so precipitously. She had not forewarned the faculty or staff of this possibility, and didn’t want to abandon ship with the arrival of a new pastor to the parish. I just shook my head and thought she was making a big mistake in continuing for another year.

“What happened?” I said aloud, waking to find myself slumped down in the pew, my head between my legs, and some liquid covering my nose, mouth and face. Kathy was supporting me with her arms, and I noticed Prisa and Toñito’s outstretched hands were also supporting my limp upper body from falling forward. “Did I fall asleep?” I asked Kathy.
“You threw up,” she whispered loudly into my ear.
Suddenly there were more and more concerned faces buzzing around me, speaking in hushed and urgent tones. Some faces I recognized, like Rogelio, Kathy’s plant manager, who instantly materialized in the pew behind us, helping to support me into a sitting position, and Dee, the parish liturgy coordinator, who was asking how I felt and directing others to get me some ice and clean towels. In a slowly lifting daze, it occurred to me that they thought I had suffered a heart attack or a stroke of some kind. Luckily Kathy knew of my pre-existing abdominal condition upon entering the church, and explained how the rising temperatures and the lack of air had probably re-aggravated it.
“I must have passed out,” I announced to no one in particular. That realization seemed to act like a protective barrier to the growing sense of shame that lay just outside my reach. With so many people watching, why wasn’t I dying of embarrassment over ruining Kathy’s mass? I wondered. Probably because I was sick and passed out, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I decided. That thought freed my speech and motor paralysis and I began assuring people that I was feeling better and just needed air. Eventually it was agreed that Toñito and two parishioners would escort me outside and let me sit in the fresh air. Needless to say, I didn’t stay in the Church long after that. I quickly revived in the cool and wafting air of the church’s side- entrance breezeway, and Toñito brought me a change of clothes to replace my spattered grey slacks and shirt. We waited till the end of mass to assure Kathy that I was feeling better, and Toñito followed me in his car as I drove home, to make sure I made it safely to bed. I fell promptly to sleep and didn’t wake up until Kathy returned from the farewell dinner.

In the weeks after the accident, during the waning days of Kathy’s tenure at OLV, I came to the realization that I had to write a story about her leaving. I suppose it was because I started seeing the gradual dawning of awareness on Kathy’s face that she would never again work or celebrate with these men, women, and children on a daily basis, sharing their stories, joys, and sadness. Perhaps it was because Kathy began sharing, in soft, stifled conversation the different ways these same co-workers said or expressed their final goodbyes to her, their friend and colleague whom they would never again meet as their principal. Or maybe it was because I finally had to admit to myself that she and I both loved this school in a deep and personal way. This special place had nurtured our two children, teaching them a truly Christian way of working and caring for people of different social, cultural, and economic situations. It also allowed Kathy the opportunity to realize her full career capabilities as an educator and administrator. In my first year of retirement, during the 2009-2010 school year, I had the chance to interact first-hand with the students, teachers, and staff of OLV as a substitute teacher and event photographer. Even as I tried talking Kathy into accepting the proffered supervisory position in the Archdiocese, I was seeing the support, collaboration, and interconnectedness of the students, teachers, and staff. Kathy had built something wonderful at OLV, and separating from it will take a long, grieving process. Perhaps it was the incident in the church that finally jarred me into awareness. I came to the conclusion that Kathy was right in staying the additional year. She could only leave the school she loved when she knew and felt it was time – not because someone was offering her an escape from a dilemma, or a better job. Kathy is walking away from OLV on her terms, even if she is not sure where she’s heading. The only thing she can count on is that I’ll be there with her.

“Somewhere along here
I became conscious of the feeling…
that comes when you first notice
your life turning into a story.”
(A River Runs Through It and Other Stories – Norman Maclean: 1976)

When some people learn that I’m a retired middle school principal, their questions sometime follow an annoying pattern:
“So how do you spend your time?” they ask, suddenly very curious of my method for holding back what they perceive is the specter of boredom and apathy.
“Well,” I begin, innocently debating whether or not to be circumspect or candid in my response. “I babysit my granddaughter two days a week”, I say, usually deciding on an honest approach. “I volunteer at the county jail another day, and I do chores around the house. I also spend time writing, taking photographs, and working on a vinyl music project”.
Now if I heard that response, I’d probably be curious about the vinyl music project, but that is not the case with most people. A larger number of questioners tend to focus in on my writing.
“Writing,” they exclaim, “that’s interesting!”
My ears perk up at that particular word, which I’ve come to suspect, when said in a slightly exaggerated manner, is actually code for, Writing, isn’t that what we all learned to do in the third grade? The next predictable question is, “What do you write about?”
“Oh, I keep a journal,” I reply, hesitantly, fearing that we are now spiraling down a dreaded rabbit-hole with this line of questioning, “and I write a blog.”
“Oh, a blog,” they respond in a raised tone that seems to translate into, Oh God, not an Internet blogger! Just what the world needs – another opinionated, narcissistic writer spouting his views and beliefs on the Internet. “That’s great”, they continue, soothingly, “but are you thinking of writing a novel or a book?”
That question signals the end of a viable conversation for me, and I try changing the subject to something about them.
“No,” I might say, if I was talking to an educator, “I don’t think I’m ready for a book or novel yet, but I have been doing some reading about the new superintendent and his plans for next year. What do you think of him, and how is your school reacting to his ideas?” If the person is not in the teaching profession, I’ll switch to a story or news item I heard mentioned on NBC’s Today Show, or Fox’s Good Day L.A. Those two shows always give me something to discuss, instead of my writing, or why I’m not working on a book or novel with all of my free time.

I’ve been writing a blog called The Dedalus Log for about six years now. I don’t consider it a web log in the classic sense – that is, it’s not a series of short, concise, and humorous commentary about my life, current events, and popular culture. At first, I suppose I started writing the Dedalus Log more as a form of mental health therapy rather than art. It was a way to express my feelings and examine my reactions to the events I was facing in 2005: being reassigned to a new school as principal, after 10 years at one site; dealing with professional struggles and conflicts with staff and parents; and anticipating my pending retirement. As time went on this motive for writing changed, and I started using my blog as writing practice, a method of exercising my writing skills by creating, polishing, and posting long essays about my life, friends, and family. I fended off the occasional bouts of self-doubt over my abilities, and slowly started believing that I was getting better, and that one day, I might be ready for the ultimate challenge – writing fiction.

Ah, fiction, that lofty, literary genre sometimes referred to as creative writing. Since my American literature days in high school and college, I was evangelized to believe that real authors created art by telling stories and writing fiction. Journalism, and non-fiction were merely stepping-stones to the Holy Grail of literature - a novel. Even though I enjoyed well-written history books, and esteemed readable authors like Barbara Tuchman, William Manchester, and David Halberstam, they couldn’t compare to my pantheon of novelist-heroes, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, or John Steinbeck. I just assumed that if I kept practicing, I would eventually evolve into a fiction writer. But nothing happened! Over the course of six years, I experimented with dialogue in some stories, and even tried writing a blog from a third-person perspective once, but the desire to write a fictional tale never came. Whenever friends or relatives who read my blog asked if I was thinking of a novel, I just said I wasn’t ready – but that was only a half-truth. I was beginning to doubt my ability to tell a story. My biggest clue was the fact that I can’t tell a joke. Oh, I enjoyed hearing a good one, and I loved to laugh, but I never succeeded at making one up, or remembering and repeating one I heard. My daughter Prisa, who witnessed my futile humorous attempts all her life, explained it this way:
“Dad, you’re only funny when you don’t mean to be”.
The sting of truth is sharp, especially when it comes from the mouths of babes. I was beginning to suspect that my comic flaw signaled a bigger truth – what if I could only tell stories when I didn’t mean to? Is that what I was doing in my essays and personal narratives? Adding to my concern was the growing realization that I actually liked my style of writing. Personal essays were a natural and comfortable genre for me. I probably would have remained a closet essayist, maintaining the pretense of being a novelist-in-training, if I hadn’t read a story by Norman Maclean and heard Sarah Vowell speak in a BookTV appearance for her latest book.

I loved Robert Redford’s movie, A River Runs Through It, when I saw it in 1992. It was a poetic tribute to fly-fishing, and a compelling story about the two sons of a Presbyterian minister, who struggle with family, responsibility, and death in Montana of the early 1900’s. As often happens when I’m intrigued by a movie, I eventually read the semi-autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, on which the movie was based. It was there that I learned that Maclean, who taught Shakespeare and the Romantic poets at the University of Chicago for 42 years, only began writing the stories of his youth after he retired. He published A River Runs Through It and Other Stories in 1976, at the age of 74. His only other work was the posthumously published Young Men and Fire, a non-fiction account of the Mann Gulch forest fire tragedy of 1949. Norman Maclean became the model and testament to the quixotic idea that I could write when I retired – and even dream of being published. However, it wasn’t until this past summer that I finally got around to reading the other two short stories in his collection, and was shocked into stillness by two passages that helped clarify the relationship between real life and stories. In USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky, Maclean wrote:

“Somewhere along here I became conscious of the feeling… that comes when you first notice your life turning into a story.”

“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature – not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

These passages struck a chord with me, because they helped explain what I was trying to do in my essays, and assured me that I was on the right track. I wasn’t writing fiction or making up imaginary stories. I was simply describing the real actions and honest events of the people around me, and sometimes they turned into stories. I’ve always harbored the belief that our lives could be seen as stories, if we had the ability to step back for a moment and examine them. The best example of this was when I discussed childhood incidents with my son and daughter, and heard them narrated back to me as stories. Writing always helped me create a distance between human actions and their consequences, and it gave me the time to understand what was happening and see the story it told. We remember stories better than a timeline of the events, fears, and reactions that constitute our life, and, as Maclean pointed out, the ones we remember best sometimes become literature.

Although Maclean’s passages about life and story were encouraging, I still harbored the uneasy sense that non-fiction was a second rate genre, until I happened across Sarah Vowell. Many of you may not be familiar with Sarah Jane Vowell. Wikipedia describes her as “an American author, journalist, essayist, and social commentator. She has written five nonfiction books on American history and culture, and was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on National Public Radio (NPR) from 1996-2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries, and toured the country in many of the program’s live shows. She was also the voice of Violet in the animated film, The Incredibles.” I first heard her unique, pixie-like voice on an episode of This American Life, and was immediately charmed by her insightful commentary and self-mocking humor. I again heard her on NPR when she was publicizing a book she had written on the Puritans called The Wordy Shipmates. Last month I happened to catch her latest BookTV appearance in Austin, Texas, where she was promoting her book on Hawaii, called Unfamiliar Fishes. During the Question and Answer period there was an interesting exchange that shed some light on my hang-up over the superiority of fiction over non-fiction. The dialogue went something like this:

– I’ve read and love all your books, but have you ever entertained the idea of writing fiction?

– No, I’m not a liar. That question comes up a lot. It’s such an insult to non-fiction. Just because something is true doesn’t make it boring. What I love about non-fiction is that it doesn’t need to be plausible, because it’s already true. Fiction is too easy. Could you imagine this: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, writers of the Declaration of Independence, originally friends and then life-long, bitter, political enemies, dying within hours of each other, on the same day – July 4^th. You can’t make this stuff up! Fiction, humph!

I had never heard a more personal and enthusiastic defense of non-fiction. Vowell’s words put a glow on the rest of my day. She saw a world where real people and real events were infinitely more interesting, funny, and suspenseful than imaginary ones. I couldn’t help agreeing. I think that with the help of writers such as Vowell and Maclean I may eventually get over my fiction complex, and let my writing find its own course.

Toma el llavero abuelita
Y enseñame tu ropero.
Con cosas maravillosas
Y tan hermosas que guardas tú.

Toma el llavero abuelita
Y enseñame tu ropero.
Prometo estarme quieto
Y no tocar lo ques saques tú.

Bring your key ring, granny
And show me what’s in your wardrobe.
I know it holds all the marvelous
And beautiful things that you save there.

Bring your key ring, granny
And show me what’s in your wardrobe.
I promise to stay very quiet
And not to touch what you bring out.
(El Ropero/The Wardrobe – Francisco G. Soler: 1935)

When I babysit my granddaughter on Thursdays and Fridays, I don’t have fixed objectives or goals for the day. I follow a flexible pattern that allows for playtime, exploring, napping, and eating, until she gets fussy or bored. However, that was not the case on May 12, the day Sarah Kathleen turned 6 months old. On that bright and sunny Thursday morning, I definitely had two goals I wanted to accomplish. The first was to introduce Sarah to Spanish, by singing aloud the cradlesongs I learned as an infant, and the second was to memorialize and record the route we took on our daily walks. The first task required considerably more thought, research, and preparation, than the second.

As I’ve mentioned in previous stories, I was born into two Mexican families: my father’s in Los Angeles and my mother’s in Mexico City. In both, Spanish was the language of comfort and choice. As an infant, all the rhymes, lullabies, and songs I heard were in Spanish, and I did not speak English until I had to, in Kindergarten. The words and music of my infancy were in Spanish, but that was not the case with our own children, Toñito and Prisa. Although I incorporated a handful of Spanish rhymes into their routines (Papas, papas, para su mama, los quemaditos para su papa!), they learned all of their infant songs in English. I suppose I didn’t mind this so much, because I was physically present to remind them that they were American children, born of two fine and culturally rich, ethnic traditions, Irish and Mexican. This would not be the case with Sarah. I knew that Joe and Prisa were correctly excited at the prospect of teaching her the songs and rhymes of their infancies, and had already started. The only language alternative they had was a singing “Abuelita” doll, which played recorded snippets of Spanish songs when a button on her hand was pressed.
“Shouldn’t I be the one singing songs to her in Spanish?” I found myself asking, as I pressed the Abuelita’s button. I had already started singing a few American songs to her: the Sesame Street Theme song as we opened the window shades to let in the morning’s sunshine, and It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, from Peter, Paul, and Mary, when the days were overcast or rainy. But the only Spanish song I sang was Duermete Mi Niña, a Spanish lullaby, or cancion de cuna, which I found remarkably effective at getting her to fall asleep. I was almost tempted to just go along with this lazy pattern until I rediscovered the songs of Cri-Cri.

Cri-Cri: El Grillito Cantor (“Cri-Cri: The Singing Cricket”) was the stage name of Francisco Gabilondo Soler, the Mexican composer and performer of children’s songs during the 1930’s and 50’s. He wrote and recorded countless songs with simple and repetitive vocabulary, catchy tunes, and important values. He was a musical equivalent to Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, on PBS, and he was equally popular among Mexican children. I remembered hearing and singing his songs over and over in Spanish with my mother as a child, mimicking the Spanish pronunciation of vowels, the rolling “r’s”, and the soft consonants. My iTunes library contained seven of my all-time favorite songs: Los Cochinitos Dormilones (The Three Sleeping Pigs), El Raton Vaquero (The Cowboy Mouse), El Chorrito (The Little Drop of Water), La Patita (The Little Mama Duck), La Marcha de los Vocales (The Parade of the Marching Vowels), El Baile de los Muñecos (The Dance of the Toys), and El Ropero (The Wardrobe). After listening to them again, and downloading the lyrics to refresh my memory, I decided to start singing and teaching these songs to Sarah at the first opportunity. My chance finally came on May 12.

When Prisa and Joe left for work, I put Sarah down and let her roll around on the floor mat for about 15 minutes, watching and cheering her on as she flipped over from back to stomach and stomach to back, while reaching, grapping, and manipulating toys, as she covered the wide area of a quilted blanket. After a diaper change, I placed her in the Baby Einstein Exersaucer for 25 minutes, and watched her bounce up and down, while screaming her delight, and moving from one manipulative station to another in a circular fashion. After all this activity I decided it was time for her to meet Cri-Cri. I placed Sarah in a swinging chair, and situated her on the floor in front of me. I adjusted the iPod player on a table to my right, positioned the printed lyrics in my left hand, and began singing all seven of my favorite songs with Francisco Soler’s vocal accompaniment.

Sarah was an enthusiastic listener, especially when I performed the songs with exaggerated facial expressions and hand gestures. I kept her attention for 20 solid minutes. Her blue eyes popped open in wonder at the pitch of my voice, and the volume from the musical device on the counter. Her lips, tongue, and mouth moved in mimicry of my facial gesticulations, until she began laughing and giggling, as I moved my hands up and down, and used my fingers to point at her head, nose, and mouth. If I lurched at her to emphasize a dramatic part of the song, she squealed with delight. It wasn’t until I tried replaying the songs again, that Sarah became distracted, turning her head from side to side, and failing to make eye contact. The Spanish lesson was over. I lifted her out of the swinging chair, telling her she had been a wonderful audience. I felt that this new language experience had been a great success, and I congratulated her as we walked around the house. When her head started drooping against my shoulder, I suspected she was getting tired and I started crooning a repetitive lullaby, swaying her gently as I sang:
“Duermete me niña, duermete me amor. Duermete pedazo de mi corazon. (Sleep now my baby girl, sleep now my love. Sleep now, little piece of my heart).
When she emitted a surrendering exhalation of breath and relaxed in my arms, I carried her to her crib where I laid her down for a nap. She had outgrown sleeping in the middle of her parent’s queen-size bed where I could stay and watch her dream. Now I had to be satisfied with occasional peeks through the slightly open doorway to see how her slumber progressed during the quiet mornings.

Thirty minutes later, I heard Sarah’s solitary murmurings and what sounded like laughter coming from her bedroom, and I geared up for the second phase of the morning. Questioning her about her sleep and talking sounds, I changed her diaper and dressed her for the day in a onesy jersey and pants. I was a little nervous that morning because I was feeding her cereal for the first time, but she proved to be an excellent (or hungry) solid food eater, and the bowl was consumed quickly. After topping off the meal with a bottle of milk, we sat for a while on the front porch greeting pedestrians and neighbors who walked by, and watching cars motor along 162^nd Street. When she became restless, I returned her to the floor mat and Baby Einstein Exersaucer for the rest of the morning while I watched and laughed at her antics.

We usually take our constitutional walk at noon. A diaper change signals the beginning of the transition, and Sarah’s facial expression changes when I place her in the car seat that attaches to the stroller. Her blue eyes widen in anticipation and she tracks my every action: backing the stroller out of the corner, packing it with a blanket, cloth diaper, pacifier, oversized, plastic chain, and rattle. Then she watches me roll the carriage carefully out the door, returning quickly to pick her up, and carry her outside. Snapping the seat onto the stroller, and arranging the toys, diaper, and blanket at her feet, we begin our journey. Our conversation is limited, and I do most of the talking. Once the stroller wheels begin rolling eastward along 162^nd Street toward Gardena, Sarah turns silent and leans forward in her seat. She alertly inspects the colorful houses, green lawns, and purple trees on one side of the street, then turning to the other side to follow the sounds and sirens of passing cars, ambulances, and trucks. The only interruptions to her visual explorations are my exclamations of “Nena Chula, Nena Chula”, which make her smile. On this trip I also brought my camera, taking pictures of Sarah and the scenery as we went along. It had occurred to me that Sarah would one day ask, “What did we do when you babysat me, Poppy?” I wanted to be able to give her a comprehensive answer, while showing her pictures of what we saw.

Sarah lives at the easternmost part of Torrance, right on the border of Gardena, and near the Gardena Civic Center, with many commercial enterprises nearby. Reading the signs, billboards, and lettering on buildings, restaurants, and even homes, one is immediately struck be the rich Japanese-American traditions that are connected with Gardena. It is a friendly place to live and explore, and I never tire of walking its streets, seeing the sights and greeting the residents. However, the best part of the walk is having Sarah seated in front of me for the entire trip. I love seeing her manipulate toys with her hands and fingers, biting and gnawing her teething rings and rattles, and staring at the objects we pass. Watching Sarah is the best part of the walk, even when she falls asleep. Rather than time or distance, I’ve come to associate specific buildings and landmarks along our route as signals to Sarah’s actions on our stroll, and today she was very predictable.

When we reached the Japanese Cultural Institute, Sarah stopped reacting to the ambient noises and the people we passed. She listlessly held her rattle, making no attempts to shake it, and started turning her head from side to side. She stared hypnotically at the lining of the seat, pressing her lips against the fabric, as if wanting to taste the material. By the time we passed the VFW Hall, near Crenshaw Boulevard, she was struggling to keep her eyes open, while flexing her hands and fingers in slow motion. Walking through the long stretch of buildings in the Civic Center complex, her eyes would slowly close, unless an unexpected sidewalk bump, or jarring noise from passing vehicles, startled her awake for a second or two. The P.E. fields and crossover bridge of Peary Middle School marked the eastern limit of our route, and the point at which Sarah was always deeply asleep. Still grasping the plastic rings she had been biting, her head was slumped down and turned to the side. I heard long, luxurious breaths escaping her relaxed form. This was the part of the walk I loved the most - looking down on this beautiful baby, so chubby and peaceful in sleep, as I walked past the long classroom building. This was the part of our walk where I could long for the impossible, and wish that Sarah would never change. That she would remain a baby of six months, so I could carry, feed, play, and sing to her twice a week, for years to come. But reaching the Gardena Public Library always brought me back to the reality that babies grew up, became little girls who would talk, read, and go to school, and then turned into young ladies who went away to college.

When I experienced these same magical moments with Toñito and Prisa when they were babies, I didn’t have the wisdom to realize that they were merely thoughtful pauses in my mind, as ephemeral as mist. In those youthful days, I just took it all in - our surroundings, their smiles and faces, and the tangible connections of our love. I thought I could remember those moments with the same clarity as the air I breathed in and held, in that extended period of reality. But those memories faded as both infants moved on to other moments in time that I also wanted to breathe in and remember. I’d be alone with my private thoughts of infancy, time, and change, until I passed the vast expanse of the Crenshaw Lumber Company on 166^th Street, and Sarah start awakening. First a hand flexed, then an armed raised, and finally her head began turning from side to side until her sleepy, blue eyes slowly opened. She never cried or complained, simply moving her eyes to get her bearings. This orientating silence continued until we reach Lincoln Elementary School and I finally greeted her aloud.
“Hello, Nena Chula,” I said softly. “You had a wonderful nap, and now it’s time to go home!”

On the journey back, Sarah’s eyes became more and more alert and alive. It was as if she had crossed a bridge from dreams to the present, and was still trying to figure out which place was real. I sang two songs to her as we walked along - my version of Frank Sinatra’s You Make Me Feel So Young, and as much as I could remember from Cri-Cri’s song, El Ropero. As we quickly crossed Van Ness Boulevard, Sarah leaned forward to reach a rattle at her feet. She held herself in that position, with back straight and head erect, for the rest of the trip, and it dawned on me that she was outgrowing this seat. Very soon I would need to discard this seating capsule and sit her correctly in the stroller, facing forward. My days of eye-to-eye contact with Sarah were fading even as I finished singing in Spanish. Sadly, I knew Sarah would continue growing and changing, and yet, in the deepest recesses of my heart, I hoped that she would remember these first six months of her life. I knew that was impossible. She couldn’t remember them as I did, but at least she would see the pictures, and hear the stories of those days: stories of her loving parents, and her crazy Mexican-American grandfather, who sang songs to her in Spanish, and took her for long walks in Gardena. Those tales would form the first chapters of Sarah’s life - chapters of language, of love, and of songs during her first six months on earth.

If you are interested in seeing my Flickr albums of Sarah at Six Months and Strolling Through Gardena, click on the links below:

2011-05-12 Six Months Old

2011-05-12 Gardena Stroll

I’m gettin’ bugged driving up and down this same old strip
I gotta’ find a new place where the kid’s are hip.
My buddies and me are gettin’ real well known
Yeah, the bad guys know us, and they leave us alone.
I get around.
(I Get Around - Brian Wilson/Mike Love of the Beach Boys: 1964)

I started writing this story four times over the last two months, and each time I seemed to run out of gas. I finally realized that I was trying too hard, expecting to find something in the story that wasn’t there. I’d forgotten that essential truism when making or planning something – KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! You see I had this crazy notion in my head that every time my friends and I got together something magical and unforgettable always had to happen. I vainly struggled to find something remarkable in the story I was writing. Now I see that although we’ve had our share of memorable events in the past, for the most part, our reunions have been fairly ordinary (see tag: amigos). So let me begin this time by saying that last month we got together to ride along the bike path from Marina del Rey to Redondo Beach. We had lunch at Tony’s on the Pier, spent the night at the Marina del Rey Hotel, and the following day had breakfast at the Venice Pier, before splitting up. The time we spent together was highlighted by stories of our adolescence, growing up in Venice, Playa del Rey, and Westchester, and going to the beach as often as we could. I suppose the only magic that happened was the fact that we still manage to get together – even for seemingly frivolous reasons. We don’t have to go to special places, or do something extraordinary to have a good time. So I suppose this is just a story of friends taking a bike ride.

On the morning of April 18, my friend John arrived at my house in Canoga Park, efficiently attached my bicycle onto his bike rack, and together we drove to the Marina Hotel, in Marina del Rey. There we rendezvoused with our friend Greg, who had driven up from San Diego with his bike stowed in the back of his SUV. I hadn’t seen my old, high school friends since attending the funeral of John’s mother-in-law in December, and we hadn’t gotten together for any kind of social activity since September when I joined Greg and John in Cambria, for sightseeing and pitch & putt golf. In fact, it had been over a year since all four of us met for our last travel adventure to Hoover Dam and Primm, Nevada (see The Road We Traveled). It was Greg who first proposed this bicycling activity and John followed up by booking the rooms. This trip would only involve The Three Amigos, because Jim said he wasn’t interested in a biking along the beach. We arrived within 10 minutes of each other at the hotel at the end of Bali Way, and since we were too early to check into our rooms, we unloaded our bikes and took off.

The morning was cold and overcast, as so many spring days are in the coastal communities of Los Angeles. The three of us had grown up in this area and were familiar with the Marina and the weather, but we had never ridden along this particular bike path. With John and Greg riding side-by-side in the lead, we passed the launching dock where Greg once set out on his sailboat voyages around Santa Monica Bay, or to Catalina Island. Then we made our way along Fiji Way, past Fisherman’s Village, to the end of the street where we entered a section of the La Ballona Creek Bike Path. This is a dedicated, two-lane bike route that runs along the cemented creek bed from Culver City/West L.A. to its mouth at the Marina del Rey breakwater. We rode along this path that paralleled the Marina boat channel and then crossed over the Ballona Creek Bridge. We remembered that before 1961, this bridge physically connected Venice with Playa del Rey, and we identified the spot where a beach existed before the Army Corps of Engineers constructed the man-made harbor of the Marina and placed a breakwater at its entrance. John recalled body surfing there as a child, and I had a flashback of the time I almost floated out to sea on a plastic inner tube before learning to swim. Greg had a birds-eye view of the entire county-owned property being drained and dredged from his hillside home perched on the bluff overlooking Culver Boulevard. From there he saw the La Ballona swamps and wetlands gradually disappear and become transformed into a small boat marina.

Crossing over into Playa del Rey, we rode past the fraternity and sorority houses of Loyola Marymount University that bordered the beach and surrounded Del Rey Lagoon Park. None of us ever joined a Greek-letter organization but Greg and I benefited from the membership of a friend we had in high school and college. Wayne belonged to some LMU frat, and in his sophomore year he was placed in charge of purchasing beer for house parties. He became our underage bootlegger, and we had a steady weekend supply of Colt 45 for as long as he held the position. John always managed to procure beer through other means.

The trail now veered onto the beach, and I saw why it was called The Strand. From this point it became an exclusively, Class 1 Bike Path - a ribbon of cement on the sand, skirting the beach towns of the South Bay. Surprisingly, even though all three of us had gone to high school in Playa del Rey, and John and Greg had rented apartments in Hermosa Beach during college, we had never ridden on this particular bike path with its view of the coastal street, Vista del Mar Boulevard. As we rode along, three abreast, we vied with each other to identify the familiar landmarks of our youth. There was Gillis Beach, the popular high school hangout and make-out spot, with its faux oasis landscape, in front of the deserted lands purchased by LAX. In fact, John’s family, along with many of our high school friends, had been displaced by the eminent domain expansion of the Airport into Westchester and Playa del Rey in the late 1960’s. Then came Dockweiler (known to us as D&W) State Beach, with its popular fire pits and volleyball courts. Next we easily spotted El Segundo, betrayed by the twin towers of the Hyperion Treatment Plant and the mammoth Standard Oil Refinery at the edge of the sand. The refinery marked the boundary between these sparsely populated beaches and the crowded, oceanfront homes and apartments of the South Bay cities of Manhattan and Hermosa Beaches.

At this point in our journey we became aware of a sudden influx of traffic, with large numbers of skateboarders, inline skaters, and pedestrians sharing The Strand with us. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that we were all sometimes distracted by the palatial gaudiness of some of the homes on the road, and there was a tendency for pedestrians to halt in their tracks and gawk. Honestly, from the beach, it was hard to tell where one city ended and the other started. As I said, Greg and John lived in Hermosa as college students, and I spent a lot of time with them there. In those days, we remembered Manhattan as very affluent, with more single-family residences, and expensive shopping boutiques. In contrast, Hermosa was more laid-back, with lots of apartments, lower rents, young singles, and more bars. We passed the Manhattan Beach Pier without stopping, remarking that it hadn’t changed much, and halted at the Hermosa Pier, a favorite haunt of John and Greg. As we walked our bikes up Pier Avenue, I was shocked to see that a part of the street had been closed to traffic and converted into an open-air mall, surrounded by stores, cafes, bars, and restaurants. We pedaled away from this over-developed, yuppie, commercial center, and decided to end our trip with lunch somewhere on Redondo Beach pier.

The Strand section of the trail came to an end at Herondo Street, the boundary between Hermosa and Redondo Beach, and we merged onto a street (designated Class 2) bike path. We pedaled along Harbor Drive, and passed the entrance to the King Harbor Marina, until we came to the Redondo Beach Pier. There we parked, locked our bikes and went looking for Tony’s on the Pier for lunch.

That evening, with the rigors of the day behind us (and the sore butts to prove it) we talked about our families and grown children. The last time we had gotten our kids together on an adventure was the Rosarito-Ensenada Bike Ride in April 2007 (see Rosarito – Ensenada Bike Ride). Our updates mentioned that John’s son Mikey was finishing up his first year of teaching English in Korea. Greg’s son Josh was graduating with a PhD from the University of Colorado in May, and my daughter Teresa’s baby, Sarah Kathleen, was being baptized soon. We talked and laughed late into the night and awoke to have breakfast at The Terrace Café, a restaurant near Venice Pier. After the repast we returned to the hotel and went our separate ways, promising to reunite soon.

Everybody’s restless
And they got no place to go.
Someone’s always trying to tell them
Something they already know.
So their anger and resentment flow.

Don’t it make you want to rock and roll
All night long -
Mohammed’s Radio.
I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful,
On the radio -
Mohammed’s Radio

You know the sheriff’s got his problems too,
And he will surely take them out on me and you.
In walked the village idiot and his face was all a glow
He’s been up all night listening to Mohammed’s Radio.
(Mohammed’s Radio – written by Warren Zevon, and sung by Linda Ronstadt: 1976)

After juggling my cell phone in one hand while steering with the other, I finally managed to dial Gavin’s number and reach him at the jail’s Chaplain Office.
“Hi Gavin, this is Tony,” I began, talking loudly into the Bluetooth device on the overhead visor. Struggling to ignore the eruptions of frustration over the stop-and-go traffic that was making me late, I tried sounding calm and in control.
“Hola, Tony,” he replied, in his soft Peruvian accent. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, thanks, Gavin,” I lied, jarred by the tranquility of his voice. “I’m calling to let you know that I’m running late. Traffic was really backed up along Balboa Boulevard today, and I haven’t even gotten to the freeway yet.”
“How much longer do you think it will take you?” he asked soothingly.
“God, I don’t know,” I replied, staring at the winding stream of cars in front of me, inching along San Fernando Road as slow as thick, delta mud along the Mississippi. “I might get there in 40 or 50 minutes, I guess, but I’m not sure.”
“That’s fine Tony,” he said reassuringly, “don’t worry about it. You will arrive when you are meant to arrive. I’ll tell Rick to wait for you here in the office. Oh, by the way,” he added in the tone of a passing thought, “one more thing. I’d like you to be on the look out for people who might be interested in joining our ministry. Our human resources are being stretched, and we could use more volunteers and more help.”
“Uh, okay,” I stammered, shocked at the request. “So you want me to recruit other people?” I responded, restating his gentle statement into a harsher question.
“No,” he replied, thoughtfully. “Recruiting sounds like we’re trying to raise an army or start a crusade, or something. Just mention what we do, to people who might be interested. Just think of men and women you know who might like to help by visiting inmates in jail.”
“Fine,” I said, hoping I sounded positive about his request, without committing myself to the task he was asking of me. “I’ll see you when I get there.”

For the first time in my hour-long odyssey through sluggish traffic, I was finally able to unknot my stomach and take a long, deep, relaxing breath. The phone call had dispelled the crazy, stressful notion that had only grown with the accumulating minutes – the belief that I was letting the inmates down by not coming or being late. I’d get to the jail when I got there, and no amount of worrying was going to get me there any sooner. Instead all vestiges of guilt and worry were driven off by Gavin’s appeal for my help. How does one recruit people to join the prison ministry, when my own reasons for joining weren’t clear to me? I had been traveling to this jail and visiting inmates for about six months now, but paradoxically, my decision to join the prison chaplains as a volunteer had been a mindless act, without any analysis or investigation. In an earlier blog (see Building a Channel) I tried explaining how I’d merely said, “yes,” when Rick, one of the assistant chaplains, called me one night to ask if I was interested in accompanying him to the jail to observe and visit the men. I never felt I was “recruited” into a ministry – Rick called and I came. I had been coming ever since, but I didn’t consider the weekly act a religious duty or a moral obligation – I just showed up. In fact I didn’t do a lot of planning or evaluating on the days I visited the jail: I’d leave my house at 4:30 p.m., listen to music on the 32 miles drive, and participate in the 90 minute session I was assigned to accompany. How did that translate into a ministry I could explain to possible volunteers? Thankfully, in that miraculous way that clinging, early morning mists dissolve at the first whisper of dawn, so too did the stop-and-go traffic congestion suddenly disappear the moment I turned onto the freeway. I parked Gavin’s request in the back of my mind for future consideration, and sped along the freeway in the vacant fast lane and arrived at the jail in 15 short minutes.

Walking into the Chaplain’s Office, Rick greeted me enthusiastically and said I’d again be accompanying Thomas to the 800’s cellblock, the maximum-security dorms, that evening.
“Listen, Tony,” he continued, “last week you, Justin, and Thomas only met with 3 inmates. That means three chaplains were tied up with only three inmates. That’s not a good use of our limited personnel. We could have used your help in other places. Did Thomas announce the services to the men? Was there a problem with the deputy? You know”, he added with a frown, “we’ve been having trouble with some of the guards over access to the men in the 800’s. Did that happen last week?”
“No,” I said, surprised by the barrage of questions and concerns about the guards. “There wasn’t a problem with the senior deputy when we asked permission to conduct services, but the dorm guard did seem a little gruff when we asked him to release the men. Thomas made the announcement at each of the three dorms in that cellblock. By the way”, I added as an aside, “why do the inmates yell out radio call before Thomas speaks?”
“Oh that,” Rick said with a chuckle. “That’s prison slang when someone wants to make a general announcement. It’s a command to lower the volume on the television or radio so all the men can hear what’s being said. You don’t hear many radios in jail nowadays, but the TV’s are on all the time.” At that moment Thomas walked over and Rick turned to him.
“You know last week, when you met with the three men in 800, did all the men who wanted to come out line up at the bars to be released or did the deputy choose them himself?”
“Hmm, let me see,” Thomas considered, thoughtfully. “I think the guard picked them out of the line himself. He mentioned that he was having trouble with some of them, and he didn’t want more than three men coming out from each one dorm. Actually, he only let one group of men out from one dorm.”
“Well see what you can do to get more men out tonight, okay?” Rick stressed. “I’d like to give more men a chance to escape their cells so they can talk and pray together for a while.”
“Okay, we’ll try” Thomas said.

When we reached the 800’s cellblock with its three barred dorms arrayed behind the guard desk, I noticed that there was a different deputy on duty from last week.
“They don’t station the same deputies in the same cellblocks for very long, do they?” I asked Thomas. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the same person more than twice.”
“Yeah,” Thomas replied. “They rotate the guards all the time. I understand the rationale for avoiding long-term relations with inmates, but it makes it hard for us to get to know the deputies, and build some trust and confidence with them. They’re almost strangers to us and the men they guard.”
We introduced ourselves to the young guard with the trimmed haircut and asked his permission to release men for a chaplain service in the outdoor dayroom. We reassured him that we’d gotten the okay from the Watch Sergeant, but he still gave us a pained, skeptical look.
“Alright,” he sighed. “You can take 3 men from each dorm, but not from that one,” he said, pointing to the cell on his left. “They’re on disciplinary restriction”.
“Well, six is better than the three we had last week,” Thomas said cheerily. “Can we make a radio call at the bars to announce the services?”
“Go ahead,” replied the guard. “I’ll have a trustee set up some chairs for you.”
I walked with Thomas as he approached the bars of one cell dorm, and then the other to make his announcement. As we walked past the restricted dorm, I was struck by the tense passivity of the men. They lounged on bunks or sat at the bolted-down tables in a morose, bored manner, exhibiting no energy or interest in anything inside or outside the cell.
“What do you think happened?” I whispered, turning away from the dispirited men.
“It’s hard to tell,” Thomas replied quietly. “Restriction is the automatic consequence for any rule violation. Probably a fight between inmates, that happens a lot in the 800 dorms.”
We helped a chatty trustee set up 11 chairs in a circle. When no inmates appeared at the entrance to the open-air dayroom, Thomas went to investigate.
“He’s sending them now,” Thomas announced a few minutes later, returning to the dayroom. “He was delayed by some interruption, but he’s allowing 4 men from one dorm because only one inmate asked to come out from the other. We’ll have 5 men tonight.”
“That’s better than 3,” I replied, hopefully.

We greeted the men as they arrived and shook their hands. There were 3 Hispanics inmates, and 2 African-Americans. One was named James, a short, muscular man, with a uniquely form-fitting tunic that accentuated his trim build. The other was Julius, a tall, lanky fellow, with tight curly hair and a scraggy, grey beard. Thomas led the small group session, employing his usual format. He began by going around the circle for brief introductions, followed by a prayer with invitations for personal intentions or petitions. As we bowed our heads to pray, James extended his hands to the Hispanic inmates at his sides, and the rest of us followed along to form a ring of clasped hands. After the prayer, Thomas explained that we would be using the Chaplain’s program called Finding the Way in Jail, which allowed for introspection and reflection on spiritual topics and rehabilitation. Everything was moving along so smoothly and quickly, that I actually thought Thomas would, for the first time I’d been working with him, actually begin reading the pamphlet we used for the program. But suddenly, he put the folded paper down and began sharing his personal story as a recovering alcoholic. This is a topic that Thomas had mentioned on other occasions, about his brokenness as an alcoholic and his struggles to maintain sobriety, but never like this. This time he spoke of blacking out from alcohol and waking up the next morning to look in the mirror. There he saw what he was, a helpless drunk who would lie, cheat, and steal to maintain his addiction. These opening remarks about addiction, and feeling utterly powerless to change, set off a series of personal stories and testimonies from each man. The most striking comments came from the two African-American inmates, whose stories I will attempt to paraphrase as best I can.

Julius was the first to raise his arm for recognition, while holding a Protestant Bible in the other hand. He spoke with an evangelical passion, punctuating his rhythmic cadence with bible citations and quotes. His main point was that God was relentlessly pursuing us, his flawed and sinful children.
“Even before our births,” I remember him saying, “God has marked us as his own. He is the Hound of Heaven, hunting us down throughout our lives. We are not so much the seekers of God, as we are His prey.”
I was a little shocked by his intensity, and his calling us “God’s prey”, and saying that some people were “already saved” or “already damned”, as though God had pre-ordained our status at birth. But he softened this Calvinistic tone when he described how God sought unity with us, and the only thing separating us were the choices we made and the actions that we took in life. He also stressed that God was essential in making the important changes in our lives.
“I was an alcoholic too,” he said, looking at Thomas. “Only I was what we called in the hood, a ‘luxury alcoholic’. I only drank in bars. So instead of paying $5.50 for a six-pack to drink at home, I paid three dollars for a glass in a bar. I also smoked, so I’d take my drink into the alley outside and sip away. Well, as God visited misery on Job, so he destroyed my world too. I was dealing drugs and doing fine, at that time, but God allowed me to be arrested again and sentenced. Jail separated me from my sinful ways and all my addictions. God gave me another chance to study his word and change my life. You see there is a purpose to prison, if we can detect God’s hand in it. But you have to work at this new sight. We may be separated from our addictions here, but the devil still tempts you in prison. He puts evil thoughts, like revenge and despair, into your head. Just as he tempted Jesus in the desert, after he fasted 40 days and 40 nights, the devil tempts you here. He tempts you in jail, and when you get out. Only God gives us the strength and ability to resist.”

“Amen, Deacon Julius,” announced James, the other African-American from across the circle. “Surely prison is our proving ground,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, with elbows resting on his knees. “It is a place of training where we can perfect ourselves for God. Prison gives us the opportunity to make changes in our lives by separating us from the temptations and distractions of society. God helps us to change our character here, so we won’t return to our old habits when we’re released.”
He spoke in a shockingly eloquent and scholarly fashion, sounding more like a lecturing professor, than a prisoner. His measured words were so confident and precise that no one dared interrupt while he spoke.
“I come from a family of preachers,” he intoned, “but that never kept me out of trouble. There finally came a day when I was confronted by my mother, a Baptist minister, and my uncle, a Black Muslim minister, who was just released from prison. Those two strong-willed preachers brought the full force of the gospel and the Koran to bear on me. They tried to show me that I was a sinful man and needed changing. I pretended to listen, but I didn’t change. I lied to them and to myself. I’ve been in churches all my life. I can quote scripture perfectly, but that never stopped me from relishing and enjoying all the luxuries of life, and paying for them by criminal actions. Man, I had it all: drugs, alcohol, women, clubs, cars, and clothes. Even getting arrested and sentenced didn’t stop me. Sure, it took away the drugs and separated me from women and luxuries, but it didn’t change me. I’ve been in and out of prisons all my life. Prison doesn’t change you, it only gives you a place where change can occur, but first you have to admit that there is a problem. What’s the problem, drugs or you? You’re the problem, man, and until you realize that and let God into your life and actions, your character will never change! I would always return to God when I was in prison, but then I’d always relapse when I got out. The temptations of the world were too strong, and too many, and I was too weak. Then just as Paul was struck down from his high horse and made blind on the road to Damascus, so God sent me a mighty calling. His power consumed me and he knocked me down by sending me back to prison so I could finally see the light. I won’t bore you with the details of my case, but this is one time that I didn’t do the crime. I’ve committed many sins in my life, and gotten away with many crimes, but this time I didn’t do anything. I’m serving 6 to 8 years for felony assault. The charge was for threatening someone with a knife. I walked past some woman to continue arguing with a man in a club, and she called the police. She claimed I’d threatened her with a knife. Where would I have gotten a knife, and why would I threaten her with it? I never met the woman before, but I couldn’t prove that she was lying. The whole thing was preposterous, but I already had 3 arrests on my record, so there was nothing I could do. This twisted judicial system of ours isn’t about truth or justice, it is about your past. Your record determines your guilt and the length of your sentence. So here I am. I had to go to jail as an innocent man before I realized that I was the problem all along. The choices I’d made, the people I associated with, and the habits I maintained kept me enslaved in my own prison. So I stopped fighting, put my trust in God, and let him consume me. At first the D.A. offered me a deal of 9 to 12 years, but I said no and put my faith in God. I just prayed and prayed, and wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. She finally came back with a sentence of 6 to 8 years.”

“Amen to that, brother,” Julius interjected; breaking the mesmerizing spell James had cast with his testimony. “Only God will set you free. Do not put your trust in princes, or in mortal men, who cannot save you,” he quoted from Psalms, holding up his bible. “When they depart, they return to the ground, and their plans come to nothing. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Abraham and Jacob. Just remember what Paul says in Philippians 4,” he added. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving in your heart, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Yes, even in jail there are temptations,” he said, picking up the thread of his last speech. “Our thoughts are crazy things, and if we dwell on them too long they become real. The devil is everywhere, especially in prison. That’s why I fill my time with the Book”, he said lifting his bible into the air. “I read the MacArthur Study Bible every day, but it’s still hard to make good choices. Even without the distractions and addictions of the outside world, it’s hard to live one day at a time in Christ. It’s hard just getting up in the morning when you’re in prison. Every day is a trial. There is so much fear and craziness in the dorms, it’s a struggle just finding a place to sit, think, or read in peace.”
“But you’re all in the same boat, aren’t you?” I interrupted naively; surprised at the despairing picture he was suddenly painting of life in the dorm. “I mean, you’re all serving time right, so why don’t you learn to get along with each other?”
“Well,” Julius said, pausing his testimony to think. “ Most men in prison stick to their own kind, and they see things from their own point of view. We are all so different, you know. It’s hard to accept other people who look and act different, especially when emotions get involved. Someone can be having a bad day because he’s gotten some bad news from his wife and kids, and he snaps.”
“There were problems like that in the other dorm, weren’t there?” I asked, daring to mention the cell that was on restriction.
“Yeah,” Thomas said, clearing his throat and joining the conversation for the first time. “We heard that the other dorm was being punished. What happened?”

“There was a fight,” James said, bitterly, from across the room, “and of course the guards responded out of fear and retaliation. Instead of addressing the problems of racial conflict that caused the fight, the guards punished everyone by keeping them locked together and under restriction. Those men could actually benefit from a session like this one. It would give them a chance to get out and talk. Maybe that way they could vent their feelings, and understand one another. Our dorm is lucky. We work at keeping things integrated, like in Prayer Call. That’s where I met Rocky and Juan,” he said indicating the two Hispanics seated at his side.
“I noticed that you guys held hands during prayer,” I said, looking at the two men. “That gave us the idea to do the same and we all joined you.”
“Yeah,” said Juan, speaking for the first time. “James is like our preacher, you know? He makes sure we have regular Prayer Calls in the dorm, and he leads us in prayer.”
“I’ve heard that term used before,” I said, looking at James. “What’s Prayer Call and how does it work?”
“Prayer Call is a chance to come together in a group to pray or read the Bible,” James explained. “You only have to ask the guards for permission to have one, and they’ll usually say yes, unless they suspect that there’s some trouble brewing. In our dorm, we pray after every chow. Any dorm can ask, and you can have them at regular times during the day. But you have to avoid keeping them segregated by color or ethnic groups. A Prayer Call should be open to all religions and all inmates, no matter their race or ethnicity. It should include Christians, Jews, and Muslims of all colors and beliefs. That’s the first thing I look for. If only one type of group is meeting for prayer, I’ll go over and integrate it, just to make sure it doesn’t get stopped. Sometimes the guards will cancel them, if racial tensions are high or they think inmates are using them to plan riots or fights. When dorms are restricted, men aren’t allowed to gather together or meet for any reason. Stupid, isn’t it? The guards won’t let you pray together to relieve racial tension and conflict.” He wearily shook his head. “It’s sad, you know? Seeing how badly guards and inmates treat themselves and each other. Depending on where you stand in a jail, we are all behind those same bars, and each in our own prison.”

I was haunted all evening by the testimonies of James and Julius, and their stark descriptions of jail and the justice system. I was especially curious about what they said about Prayer Call, and I mentioned it at our debriefing meeting. Gavin, the Head Chaplain, confirmed James’ description of the practice, recognizing it as a powerful instrument for peace and transformation that was sometimes misused by inmates and feared by the guards.
“Our sessions with the men are also a sort of Prayer Call,” he concluded. “We are not priests or preachers who come to convert or proselytize, we are just men and women who show up to visit them without judgment or criticism. All we do is give them the chance to come out of their cells to sit in a circle to pray, reflect, and help each other change, so they can make better choices in the future. That’s all the rehabilitating we can do, the rest is up to God and them. Now let’s bow our heads and pray for God’s blessing.”

Why didn’t they leave us to wander
Through buttercup summers?
Why didn’t they leave us to wander
When there was no other?

And my questions all were answered
When the light shone from the Master
When the light shone, from the Master’s eyes.
(The Master’s Eyes by Van Morrison, Sense of Wonder album – 1985)

Flickr has a feature that allows members to collect photographs of specific images or scenes from the works of other members and showcase them in a dedicated gallery. They’re called galleries, and they are thematically driven. There are Flickr galleries of every conceivable artistic subject, genre, or style. Using this feature, then, I could collect a variety of images showing how other photographers portrayed doorways, hallways, or passages. I mention these examples because I’ve photographed these types of images over the years. However, I’ve never felt the compulsion or desire to unite them into an inclusive gallery, or to search out the works of other photographers. My photos of doors and entrances merely showed interesting pictures of a common motif, and nothing inspiring. My indifference changed last week when I surprisingly realized that I had been unconsciously accumulating a gallery all along.

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been taking photographs of my granddaughter Sarah Kathleen since November 12, 2010. I’ve taken hundreds of photographs showing her sleeping, eating, playing, smiling, exercising, and growing. If you named an infant behavior I could probably show you 10 pictures of Sarah performing it. But it did not occur to me until recently that one image was always popping up – Sarah’s eyes. I would be trying to photograph a scene or a tableau that told a story about her, but Sarah would ruin the shot by gazing off in another direction or staring straight into the lens. My camera was inexplicably drawn to those unfathomably deep, electric blue orbs that always puzzled me when I reviewed the photos. There was something riveting in those starburst, blue eyes that made me feel I was looking down into a bottomless well. What was she looking at, I wondered? What was she seeing? What was she thinking of the object of her attention? Could she connect the shapes and colors she saw to any other frame of reference? I finally gave up speculating over questions only she could answer. I assumed she was simply collecting sensory data, and that with time and learning she would make sense of it. In fact, my job as babysitter was to help her exercise her muscles and senses. So, I concluded that her piercing looks were simply a developmental phenomenon and dismissed them, but I didn’t delete those photos from my picture files. It wasn’t until I attended the Religious Education Congress in Anaheim last month and heard a talk by Paula D’Arcy that I resumed my questions about Sarah’s eyes and what she was seeing.

I first heard Paula D’Arcy speak at the Religious Education Congress in 2007. The experience resulted in a blog I wrote called Beacons of Light, in which I elaborated on her premise that there are special people who act as sources of insight and illumination to help us on our journey through life. D’Arcy is a writer, retreat leader and speaker, and her workshops are always interlaced with fascinating stories about her, the people she has met, and the books she has read. Personally she survived a traumatic car accident that took the lives of her husband and oldest daughter. Working through this personal loss, she was able to comprehend the marvelous paradox of life that allows seemingly “bad things” to happen to “good people”, and founded the Red Bird Foundation, which supports healing for those in need, and sponsors Womenspeak, a series of international conferences dedicated to worldwide change. Her presentation this year wasn’t as organized and structured as the one I heard four years ago, but I found it equally engaging. The title was, The Choices We Make, and the conference program read:

“The choices we make become the story of our lives, yet so many of our choices are made from fear or anger – not awareness. We seldom challenge or question the very things that must be questioned. It’s difficult to live life’s questions. Yet one act of inquiry has the power to effect great change. How can I dig deep for the courage to ask the real questions and make more empowering choices?”

For the last year I've been working as a volunteer with prisoners who were serving time in the county jail. Despite their differences in ages, ethnicity, or crimes, they all shared one thing in common; they were all in prison as a consequence for the choices they made. I was struck by the coincidence and thought the workshop might be of value to the men I visited in jail, or to me.

As I mentioned, Paula is a prominent speaker and a writer, but she is primarily a storyteller who highlights her narrative by citing the authors she values, their relevant quotations, and many of their personal tales. This penchant for tossing out names and quotes can be a little unnerving at first, especially if one hasn’t practiced taking comprehensive lecture notes in many years, but they are worth writing down. In my first encounter with her, D’Arcy mentioned Natalie Goldberg, an author whose book, Writing Down The Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, ended up providing me with a lot of very useful advice about writing and life. So this time I didn’t panic when she again started mentioning a plethora of writers I had never heard of before. I simply wrote as fast as I could, phonetically scribbling the names of the people she cited, and trusted my memory. I figured I could look up the names later on the Internet, correct my spelling, and get a fuller idea of who they were. She began her talk by quoting Mark Nepo, a poet and philosopher who wrote:

Having loved enough and lost enough,
I am no longer searching,
Just opening.
No longer trying to make sense of pain,
But trying to be a soft and sturdy home
In which real things can land.
These are the irritations that rub into a pearl.
So we can talk awhile
But then we must listen,
The way rocks listen to the sea.

It was D’Arcy’s belief that we spend too much of this precious life WAITING and AVOIDING this precious life. We live, she said, with very little reality, because we depend on what happens in our heads to explain, define, and categorize what we see and feel. We are barely open to reality because we tend to see things as WE ARE, and not as THEY ARE. With that premise, she began her presentation with a story about Gregory Roberts, a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from an Australian prison and fled to India for 10 years. When he was recaptured, he served a further six years in prison, two of them in solitary confinement. Later he wrote the novel Shantaram, a fictionalized account of his experiences, in which he said:

“The first wall of any prison is the one that surrounds the heart… when you escape, when you break out, it’s the wall within yourself that you must scale first… It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was free – free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

Paula believed that our own lives are filled with moments like these, moments with powerful alternatives - to fear or love, to hate or forgive - and that the choices we make forms the story of our life and how we see reality.
“There were choices about rushing past things, rather than living deliberately and consciously,” she said of her own experiences after the death of her husband and child. “The choice to slow down and meet my life: to stand before everything that matters; to stand before my suffering – in every instance; to stand, and not turn away.” Instead, she believed, we find ourselves living in stories we created for ourselves, while missing the wonders of that “ single force forever moving in secret rhythm through our lives, like a river flowing through everything and making us who we are.”
Life itself can become our greatest teacher, D’Arcy expanded. “I saw how I usually approached life with my conclusions already firm. I didn’t take enough time with things. I didn’t grant life to others, quite the opposite; I often clung to my own version of someone else’s life. I saw how strong opinions frequently rushed to cloud vision. It took great resolve to slow down the speed of my conditioned responses, but being aware of them was my first hurdle.”

“Listen to your life,” she quoted Frederick Buechner. “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell, your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis ALL MOMENTS ARE KEY MOMENTS, and LIFE ITSELF IS GRACE.”

It was at that instant that I made an associative leap, and two images came into my mind: a Beginner’s Mind and my granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen. What D’Arcy was describing reminded me of the Buddhist concept of “mindfulness,” the practice of sitting in silent meditation, or prayer, while not engaging the ideas, feelings, and opinions that constantly intruded one’s thoughts. One of the goals of this contemplative practice was the development of a “Beginner’s mind”, or the ability to observe and see things as they truly are, and not how we have been taught to judge them. This was true seeing, without the conditioning and prejudices of family, society, or education. It would be akin to how infants first perceived the sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch of the world around them; the way 4-month old Sarah probably saw her family, home, and neighborhood. How did Sarah perceive reality, I wondered anew, and what effect were my weekly interactions having on her? Was I imposing my perceptions on her, or was she somehow pushing me out of my story, and re-introducing me to reality?

Refocusing my attention on D’Arcy’s talk, she spoke of her belief in a special force that was independent of the stories we created for ourselves. Connecting with that power, she said, can plug us back into reality. Everything that occurs to us can open a door to this reality, if we choose to see it as an opportunity and turn the knob. On the day of the accident, D’Arcy’s husband purchased a book for her before the trip; it was On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It was only later that she recalled that moment, and marveled at its significance. She then quoted Annie Dillard who said, “I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment when I was lifted and struck”. Even inexplicable catastrophes and tragedies may lead us to that source of mystery and reality. One day we will all leave this earth, D’Arcy added, but people don’t live in that reality. Instead they choose to live within their own stories and act as if life never ends.

Then she quoted Dillard’s book, For The Time Being, in which the Pulitzer Prize winning author reflected on the existence of evil and human misery in the world. D’Arcy focused on Dillard’s observations in a maternity ward where newborn babies seemed incredibly alert and vigilant to everyone and everything around them. She noticed the intensity of their gaze, and how they seemed to study people and objects. She imagined that newborns saw the world the way mystics saw life, through unconditioned eyes with no preconceptions. Yet, she concluded sadly, as nurses ignored the clear-eyed gaze of the babies and put them into their cribs, the more the babies looked, the less the babies would see. From the minute they were born, the people around them, especially the people who loved them, were conditioning the infants. Soon the infants would see only what the adults saw. Infants possessed the clear eyes of the soul, D’Arcy concluded. We are a sea of humanity, lost in our stories, failing to see that our choices are self-centered actions keeping us from connecting to reality.

I sat back in my seat to ponder these powerful images, as D’Arcy continued with another illustrative story. Looking down at my notes I jotted down a quick equation: Infant’s eyes = Sarah’s eyes = Beginner’s mind = reality. I had assumed that Sarah saw incoherent fragments of reality when she first opened her eyes. I imagined color, light, shade, shadow, and darkness flooding her vision and making no sense, just like St. Paul looking through a glass darkly. I also thought it was my job as grandfather, babysitter, and teacher to bring order to that chaos by introducing language, words, and labels. The sooner Sarah could talk and read, I reasoned, the quicker she would make sense of this crazy world and be safer and happier. Surely this was a good thing, I thought. Teaching a child to define and label things was knowledge, wisdom, and power - it couldn’t be the stunting conditioning that D’Arcy and Dillard were talking about? I took a moment to inspect my motivation. What was behind my imperative to educate Sarah and teach her to describe the world around her? The answer did not take long in surfacing because it was obvious – Fear. I wanted Sarah to be safe from the vagaries and uncertainties of life and people. I wanted her to be careful, to take precautions, and to be wary of people and things. I wanted her to organize the people and things around her and not be threatened or controlled by them. Yet D’Arcy was very clear in her belief that fear was not a good reason for the choices we make and the actions we take. My fear was pushing me to impose my views and descriptions on a mind that needed to see and experience the wonders of life, nature, and reality. Sarah had to see for herself – not through my eyes. I needed to stop and reconsider what I was doing with Sarah and why. I remembered another quote by Annie Dillard.
“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”
That’s what I wanted Sarah to see - a sea of light, color, sparkle, and wonder. A poetic field of mystery and amazement, balanced on the edge of a razor. For as both authors pointed out, this world can be a dangerous place, full of misery, hardship, and suffering, but that doesn’t stop the love, wonder, and mystery from bleeding through. I needed to step back and recalibrate my time and efforts with Sarah. I needed to be part of the exhibition of this world and help Sarah become her own artist and poet in seeing it and illustrating it. I could make her a palette, and buy her the paints, but she would have to mix them herself and paint what she saw.

So many thoughts and images were shooting through my head that I had to stop. I needed to write about these feelings and ideas later, when I could make sense of them. My eyes slowly refocused to my surroundings, and my attention returned to the petite, auburn-haired lady standing behind the music stand podium. She was talking about a documentary called Dalai Lama Renaissance, a film about a group of innovative thinkers who gathered with the Dalai Lama in hopes of solving the world’s problems. Their well-meaning efforts ended in a confused debacle for everyone except the monk, who was amused by the frustration of the analysts. He counseled them to work on themselves first, before tackling the problems of the world. “Everybody thinks of changing humanity,” he said, “and nobody thinks of changing himself.” I thought this was good advice for me too. Instead of educating Sarah to be fearful, cautious, and controlling, I needed to try seeing things through her eyes, and taking the time to listen – the way rocks listen to the sea.

If you are interested in seeing my “gallery” of Sarah’s Eyes, and photos from this year’s Religious Ed Congress, click on the links below:

Sarah’s Eyes

2011-03-18 Religious Ed Congress

Get out Old Dan’s records!
Get out Old Dan’s records!
We will dance the whole night long,
It’s fun to play the old time songs,
If Old Dan could see us now,
I’d know he’d be so proud.
(Old Dan’s Records: Gordon Lightfoot – 1972)

On Saturday, March 12, Kathy and I drove to Santa Barbara to return 2 of the 5 cases of vinyl record albums that my brother-in-law Greg had entrusted to me for digital conversion. Along with the heavy, chest-sized, plastic containers filled with LP’s, I carried a pocket-sized storage device holding all the converted songs in my jacket. During an enjoyable visit with Greg and his wife Anne, we chatted in the den, transferred the digital music to their home computer, and drove to State Street for lunch and some sightseeing. I should confess, however, that the transfer was not as simple as I expected. In fact, the process took two attempts – once before leaving for lunch and the second when Greg called us back when we’d left for home, because the files had disappeared from his computer. Actually, the music hadn’t disappeared. I simply hadn’t transferred the music files into his hard drive in the first place. In my first attempt, Greg’s computer was simply playing the music that was stored in my external hard drive. When I detached the storage device from the computer to go to lunch, the songs went with it. We finally figured out that my stored files had to be copied onto his hard drive and then recognized by his iTunes player. By 4 o’clock the job was complete and Kathy and I were on our way back home to Canoga Park. I had finished Phase One of the Vinyl Music Project.

Two down and three to go! That’s how many cases of vinyl records I converted into digital music, and how many I still have to go. So far I’ve listened to 1649 songs, 143 albums, and 35 artists. While these totals are impressive, they don’t adequately describe the musical journey I’ve been on. During the last 6 months I’ve gotten a much better understanding of the rich musical scope of the artists I only half-listened to on the radio during the late 1960’s and 70’s. Over all, I think I got what I expected from this project: some musical surprises, a renewed appreciation and a deeper satisfaction for artists I hadn’t heard for many years, two new discoveries, and one major disappointment.

Van Morrison (18 albums) and Neil Young (20 albums) have to rank as my biggest surprises. Not because I didn’t already know they were great performers and songwriters, but I wasn’t prepared for the breadth and scope of their work over the 1970’s and 80’s. I’d heard their songs on the radio in the 60’s, and on other people’s records in the early 70’s, but I lost track of their musical progress and development after that. Van Morrison stands out as my stellar favorite. Moving from the rock and roll hit Brown-eyed Girl on his 1967 album T.B. Sheets to the Celtic Jazz of Queen of the Slipstream on Poetic Champions Compose (1987) Morrison’s evolution is breathtaking. Neil Young’s musical odyssey didn’t have the same steady maturity as Morrison’s. He moved beyond my personal tastes into exotic musical genres like new wave and electronica during his Geffen Records phase in the 1980’s. I thought Young’s richest period was his folk/rock years in the 70’s, beginning with After the Gold Rush in 1970 and culminating with Rust Never Sleeps in 1979.

I got the chance to renew my musical appreciation for two artists I loved in the early 70’s: the country/rock of Linda Ronstadt (9 albums), and the folk/rock of James Taylor (8 albums). I lost contact with these two performers when my turntable died, and I was reduced to listening to their Best of… CD’s. That just didn’t make it for me, because their secondary songs were always good. So, by combining my small collection with Greg’s larger vinyl library I got the chance to listen to them all over again. God, Linda could sing! Her voice soared and sparkled in all nine albums I converted, from Hand Sown… Home Grown (1969) to Canciones de Mi Padre (1987), and the quality of her singing more than made up for the fact that she was an interpreter of other people’s music, and not a writer herself. She just made everything sound better. Next to her came the sweet tunes and lyrics of James Taylor. Ever since his critically acclaimed, debut album Sweet Baby James in 1970, Taylor’s folk/rock style has held steady over the years, and I continue to enjoy it today as much as ever.

The project also reacquainted me with two musicians whom I listened to during two important transitional periods of my life, Gordon Lightfoot (14 albums) and Cat Stevens (10 albums). Gordon Lightfoot’s breakthrough album, If You Could Read My Mind was the first album I converted into digital form, because it was my most memorable purchase of 1970, the year I graduated from UCLA. I always felt a personal connection to Lightfoot, with his gentle folk style and his insightful writing. His music was the anthem of my college days, the songs we played in the Catholic Newman Center at the end of classes during long afternoons, and listened to over wine and cigarettes at late night parties in off campus apartments. Gordon was the Minstrel of the Dawn who sang of his lost love in The Early Morning Rain, and spoke to me of things I longed for in those days, as if he could read my mind. Cat Stevens was the troubadour of the 70’s who sang to the disillusioned generation of the previous decade, and tried to give them new purpose and hope. His breakthrough album, Tea For The Tillerman (1970) was the record I listened to as a young airmen, stationed at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, during the latter years of the Vietnam Conflict.

My biggest discoveries were Joni Mitchell (6 albums) and John Prine (6 albums). All during the 60’s and 70’s, I had never been a Joni Mitchell fan. I knew she had written the song/anthem Woodstock, hung out with Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young, and her song Big Yellow Taxi was a big hit on the music charts, but I never gave her music much thought. In fact I tended to confuse her with Judy Collins and couldn’t tell their music apart. I can only assume that my ear for music has improved over the years, because when I converted her albums, her sound and songs enchanted me. The other discovery was John Prine. I’m embarrassed to confess that I was never a country music connoisseur in my youth and adulthood. I learned to appreciate it only after my mid-life-conversion to the blues and the other root music of America. For many years I could only tolerate the crossover efforts of Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Kenny Rogers. When Greg first mentioned Prine’s name during my orientation to his music collection, he only mentioned that he had written Angel From Montgomery. I now think he’s great! His voice just invites you in to listen to his folk/country music, and his bittersweet stories captivate you. I never tired of listening to him sing.

My biggest disappointment was Rod Stewart and the band Faces. This was unexpected because even though I never bought one of his albums, I always loved his song Maggie May; the big hit on his 1971 album Every Picture Tells A Story. I even went to his San Bernardino concert during his tour that year. Unfortunately none of the 10 records I converted came close to this one exceptional album. They all sounded ragged, rough, and raw. Rod’s music was the only albums I did not carry on my iPod during the project.

So we move forward with the Vinyl Music Project. The third case of albums beckons me with enticing covers and song titles by the Eagles, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Steely Dan. I can hardly wait!

A dragon lives forever,
But not so little girls (sic),
Painted wings and giant’s rings
Make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened,
Jackie Paper came no more,
And Puff that mighty dragon,
He ceased his fearless roar.
(Puff the Magic Dragon: Peter, Paul, & Mary – 1962)

“Hello? I announced, making my entrance into the living room after a warning knock on the door.
“There’s Poppy!” Joe announced to Sarah, who he was holding in his arms, against his chest.
“Hello Nena Chula,” I exclaimed, putting down my backpack and camera case. I was flattered by how alert and inquisitive Sarah seemed to become at the sound of my voice. She straightened her head, arching her back and pushing away from her father’s chest, and scanned the room with wide eyes, seeking the source of her unique nickname.
“Would you like to hold her Dad?” Prisa prompted, entering the room.
“Absolutely,” I responded, “but first let me wash before I take her off your hands Joe.”
“She just finished eating, Dad,” Prisa continued, following me to the bathroom and standing in the hallway. “She’ll probably eat again at 9 or 9:30. I’m a little worried that she’s been getting a lot of down time at the daycare, lately. I’m pretty sure they’re just feeding her and then laying her down to nap, without much activity or stimulation. So, I’d like you to do as much face-to-face interactions as possible with her today”.
“Shhhhuuuurrrr, I can do that!” I exaggerated my approval, drying my hands quickly and moving to accept my 16-week granddaughter from Joe’s large hands.
“I’d love to spend the day talking and laughing with you today,” I said to Sarah, turning her so she could face me as I spoke. “Maybe we’ll even sing today,” I announced, smiling closely into her face. “I’ll take her out in the stroller too, so we’ll have plenty of things to do. How would you like that, Nena Chula?” I asked, giving her a quick peck on the tip of her nose.
“Yieee,” she squealed, smiling with wide opened, cobalt blue eyes, and then making a growling noise that sounded like laughter.
“We bought her this seat so she could also practice sitting up,” Prisa continued, showing me how the chair operated. It was a low-slung, plastic seat that accommodated a sliding tray that could hold the baby in place while providing a platform for rattles, rings, and twirling devices.
“Great,” I said, sitting on the couch and positioning Sarah on my lap so we could both watch her parents preparing to leave.
Together Sarah and I sat, watching Prisa and Joe going through their departure routine. On Thursdays and Fridays, they are more leisurely in their actions, without worrying about the baby or needing to transport her to daycare. Sarah seemed fascinated by their movement, and she delighted in being the constant target of their smiles, endearments, and questions, as they prepared to leave. First Prisa would kiss her goodbye on her way out, and then Joe, ten or fifteen minutes later, would do the same.

When Sarah became restless and started squirming in my lap, I turned her around to face me. She immediately began kicking her legs, springing into a standing position on my lap. I supported her momentary upright stance with my hands, while keeping a firm grip because she seemed strong enough to almost launch herself free.
“Up we go!” I said laughingly, as she leapt toward the ceiling. “You are so big and strong, Nena,” I crowed, suspending her in an upright position for a 5-count, before sitting her back on my lap with a resounding, “down!” We repeated this up and down exercise for about 5 minutes, her face beaming with a wide-eyed look of surprise and pleasure, while I encouraged her with cheers and laughter. Sarah appeared on the verge of shouting, when, instead, she seemed to gulp down a mouthful of air. Soon a powerful “hick-a”, shook her body and erupted from her lips.
“Oh, no!” I said, halting the play to check her reaction. “Hiccups,” I announced with a frown, “how did that happen?” Although I’d seen Sarah experience these episodes before, I paused to see how she would react this time. Hiccupping contractions can be so loud and violent that they sometimes cause babies to shake and cry, but Sarah was taking them in stride.
“Poor Nena,” I explained, lifting her to my shoulder and patting her back gently. “I got you too excited. Let’s take a walk and relax.” After completing a circuit, from room to room, through the house, we returned to the living room. “What about letting some more light in here?” I suggested, pulling the cords of the living room window shades. Still hiccupping, Sarah watched as I moved from window to window adjusting the blinds, and filling the room with bright, morning sunlight.
“Sunny day, chasing the clouds away,” I sang quietly, bouncing Sarah up and down on my shoulder. “On my way to where the air is sweet. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?"
Hesitating at the next line, I froze for a moment. As my two grown children can tell you, I am notoriously bad at remembering lyrics. Not wanting to make up the next lines, I remembered the Ipod in my jacket filled with children’s songs I had downloaded for Sarah a few days ago.
“I know what we can do for your hiccups,” I said, walking over to the couch where I had tossed my windbreaker upon entering the house. I reached into the pocket and took out a white Ipod, while still bouncing the hiccupping child on my shoulder. “Come on over here, Nena,” I said, walking to the dining room area to insert the Ipod in a small music device on the counter, and then placing Sarah into a portable chair-swing on the floor.
“Let’s see if we can make those hiccups go away with some music and singing,” I said, sitting down and adjusting the Ipod to select the Sesame Street Theme from the song list. Joining the original cast of the old PBS television hit of the 1970’s, I sang along, bending down as close as possible to Sarah, and exaggerating the mouthing of the lyrics and my facial expressions. That song was soon followed by Puff the Magic Dragon and It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” by Peter, Paul, and Mary. During the long session, in which I repeated the songs a few times, I rocked Sarah in the swing while I sang to her. At some point the hiccups vanished, as the fascinated little girl listened and watched my face and mouth, smiling back and moving her lips. The songs acted as a time machine for me, and I remembered singing those same lyrics to Toñito and Prisa when they were children, and I played the Peter, Paul, and Mommy album on the stereo in our old Reseda home.

When Sarah became fidgety and fussy in the swing, I suspected that she was getting tired and picked her up. I carried her to the master bedroom where the bed had been prepared with a tummy mat and blanket. I laid her on her stomach in the middle of the bed and adjusted myself between her and the edge. There are some issues to consider when allowing babys to sleep in this unprotected fashion. Is the baby strong enough to lift and move her head to avoid smothering, or could she roll off the bed, striking her head on the floor? Placing babies on their stomachs was the accepted method of putting them to sleep in the 1970’s and 80’s, but the practice had changed. Parents were now advised to keep them on their backs until they could roll over by themselves. This was a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) precaution. When I placed Sarah on her stomach for “tummy time”, to practice raising, moving, and holding her head up, she sometimes fell asleep. If that happened I would slide along side and keep her company while she slept.

Sarah follows a three-part choreography while sleeping on her stomach that always fascinates me. First there is the whining and physical resistance to napping. She adjusts her chubby hands and arms, and then begins raising her head, fussing and crying as she moves it up and down, and from side to side. She repeats these motions for a few minutes, complaining with short staccato cries, until she stops. Releasing a long, exhausted breath, Sarah finally rests her head on the blanket, and begins closing her eyes. She fights to keep them open, but at every attempt the slits get thinner and thinner, and soon the eyes are shut. The second phase is the long sleep, but even that part is filled with sounds and movement. Slumber is a languid workout for babies. While Sarah sleeps, her back arches and falls with her breathing, and her body moves to reshape itself into different positions. The calming silence of the bedroom turns her loud breathing into the musical score of the nap, the sound bouncing off the bed and mat and echoing through the room. Her head moves from side, to front, to side, until the optimal position is found, and her tiny hands shape themselves into tight fists, and then extending to relax them near her face. I usually take advantage of this quiet period to reflect ruefully on how quickly Sarah is changing, or to review my notes from previous visits and schedule the day’s activities.

I’ve taken to jotting down notes when I babysit for Sarah (aka Nena) on Thursdays and Fridays. I first noticed Prisa doing this during the early weeks of maternity care when she wrote down the feeding times, diaper changes, bowel movements, and any other significant actions or physical developments that occurred to Sarah during the day or night. I thought it was a good way to remember Sarah’s feeding times when I babysat, and also a handy reference guide when describing to Prisa exactly what had occurred that day, while she was away. The first week I did this, the schedule was pretty simple: Nena would drink a bottle every two hours and nap for 20 to 30 minutes. In between I carried her or watched her playing on her back in the floor jungle gym, or on her tummy on the bed. This routine has been steadily expanding over the weeks, that now, on a usual day, my notes would look like this:

7:05 Arrive
7:10 – 7:30 Hold and carry baby during departures
7:30 – 8:00 Music and singing
8:00 – 8:30 Nap on tummy
8:30 – 8:45 Diaper and clothing change
8:45 – 9:20 Floor gym
9:20 – 9:30 Bottle and poop
9:30 – 9:45 Play chair
9:45 – 9:55 Diaper change
10:00 – 10:30 Swing in backyard
10:30 – 11:00 Nap in Poppy arms.
11:10 – 11:30 Floor gym
11:30 – 11:40 Fussy baby!
11:50 – 12:00 Bottle
12:00 – 12:10 Diaper change
12:15 – 1:45 Take stroller for walk
1:45 – 2:30 Gym and Singing
2:30 – 2:40 Bottle and poop
2:40 – 3:00 Diaper and change of clothes
3:00 Mommy’s home!

My notes clearly pointed out that Sarah was an incredibly accommodating baby who didn’t mind following routines. Our first child Toñito was like that. He was very predictable in his development and easily scheduled. Prisa was not. As a baby Prisa seemed to make up her own routines and schedules, and we were forced to keep up as best we could. Even though Sarah was 16 weeks old and could grab and grasp nearby objects, she was barely on the cusp of turning herself over in bed, and still couldn’t crawl on her own. She was still the ideal child to babysit because I could control and direct all her activities. I knew that situation would soon change. Babies just didn’t stay in the same places for long, they just kept moving forward. Sarah would continue to grow and develop, and she’d be walking, talking, learning, and wanting. I wanted to keep her right there, still small and helpless in the vastness of her parent’s bed, sleeping the sleep of angels.

Usually, after 25 minutes of sleep, the third act begins with tiny noises emanating from her extended form. Her head and hands begin moving. This is followed by a slow-motion exercise of extending fingers, moving arms, and her face being pressed into the blanket, until a single cry escapes the stretching, flexing little body. It’s not discomfort or complaint, nor a call for attention, but a sound of awareness. One eye squints open and closes. Soon both eyes squint open and close. I try to position myself so that my face will be the first thing she sees when she is fully awake. When her ocean blue eyes are wide open and alert, I speak:
“Hello, Nena Chula," I ask, "did you have a nice nap? What would you like to do next?”

If you are interested in a more complete photo gallery of Sarah Kathleen click on the link below:

Sarah Kate is 4 Months Old

From the South Bay
To the Valley
From the West Side
To the East Side
Everybody’s very happy
‘Cause the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another perfect day
I love L.A. (We love it!)
I love L.A. (We love it!)
(I Love L.A. – Randy Newman: 1983)

Kathy and I spent Super Bowl Weekend at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles last month. We had tickets to hear Michael Feinstein at the Disney Concert Hall on Saturday evening and decided to stay over until Monday morning. We’ve done downtown weekends before, when catching a show or a play at the Music Center. It made for a relaxing evening of dining and entertainment without the delays and inconveniences of driving to and from Los Angeles in one night. On other occasions we’ve stayed at the Biltmore and Checkers Hotels in that same part of town, but we prefer the Omni. Even though Kathy and I were born and raised in Los Angeles, we continue being amazed at the old and new sights and attractions of the city – those we experienced in our youth, and those we discover. In the past we had explored the Central Library, Pershing Square, the Jewelry District, and the Bunker Hill complex around Grand Avenue. That weekend we planned on meeting Toñito for dinner before our show on Saturday, and then visiting some old and new sights on Sunday, beginning with a return visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). We quickly fell into our extemporaneous method of exploring cities and ad-libbed the rest of the day, before returning to the hotel and dressing for dinner at the First & Hope Restaurant. We started with a bird’s eye view of the Historic Core of downtown from the little park called Angel’s Knoll on Olive Street. Then, walking down a stairway to Hill Street, we paralleled the Angel’s Flight track, and made our way through Grand Central Market to Broadway, and then Spring Street. Along the way we saw the time-worn Million Dollar Theater, the famous Bradbury Building, the stores and shops along Broadway, and the Theatre and Latino Museum on 5^th and Spring. On our way back we inspected some of the private art galleries and residential lofts in the Old Bank District. However, the one place I especially enjoyed was Grand Central Market, which I was surprised to discover, Kathy had never seen.

Grand Central Market is easy to miss. It is tucked away at the foot of Bunker Hill in a nondescript building between Hill Street and Broadway, where it occupies the ground and basement levels. The market bears no resemblance whatsoever to our modern concept of a supermarket. There is no towering façade, no polished floors or wide aisles stocked with packed foods, and canned or refrigerated groceries. The market looks like an indoor bazaar, or an enclosed farmer’s market filled with colorful, independent vendors. I could imagine this venue starting out as a centrally located meat, fish, and poultry store, that eventually expanded to include fruit, vegetables, spices, candies, and other prepared foods.

Markets have always held a special allure for me. I love wandering through open-air, farmer’s markets and spacious, air-conditioned supermarkets, as well as perusing the gaudy merchandise in cheap 99-Cent and Big Lot stores. I feel just as curious and excited as I imagine Ali Baba did, when seeing and touching the riches contained in the secret cave of the 40 Thieves. Perhaps it’s because the goods and merchandise in these markets spark memories of times I went shopping with my Mexican grandmother, Mima, when we visited her in Mexico City, and when I accompanied my parents to Grand Central Market in 1950’s Los Angeles. I still recall my first images of Grand Central Market when I was a child of 5 or 6 years old. Saturdays were market days for abuelita, my Mexican-American grandmother, and my mom and dad would sometimes accompany her when we visited on that day. Occasionally, they allowed my Uncle Charlie and me to go along.

Grand Central Market was a wondrous experience, and it reminded me of the huge Mercado de San Cosme, a vast Mexican market located in a colonia (or barrio) near the downtown section of Mexico City, when my grandmother, Mima, took me there. The Mexican mercado was a vast and exotic emporium of colorful, individual stalls, brilliantly veiled kiosks, and clean, metal counters, filled with animated, vendors hawking and demonstrating their wares, produce, and foods in lavish Spanish phrases. The San Cosme market was a high ceiling pavilion, with criss-crossing beams that spanned the walls and decorated the overhead space with floating armadas of piñatas and helium-filled balloons of every shape and color. In contrast to its American cousin, the Grand Central Market of Los Angeles was on the first floor of a four-story building, with a decidedly, low ceiling. But what it lacked in height, it made up in vibrancy and volume. There seemed to be more of everything in that predominately Mexican-American market, located between Hill Street and Broadway, and it was all exhibited in an organized and efficient fashion along cement aisles, behind thick, glass displays, atop gleaming, stainless steel counters, and over, brilliantly illuminated signs and advertisements. Charlie and I would press our noses to cold glass and stare at rows and rows of sardines, octopus, and giant fish that seemed to stare back with surprised expressions. We would also gape in shocked amazement at lines of huge cow’s tongues, rippled sheets of cow’s stomach, goat and pig’s heads, and entire pig’s feet. It was the first time I saw meats exposed in an anatomically, identifiable fashion. The experience was better than a trip to the zoo or museum, because this mercantile venue bustled with active, loud, and friendly people speaking a mixture of English and Spanish. What I found especially fascinating was the lack of packaging. As in Mexico, much of the fruit and produce was not hidden or enclosed, but stacked and piled in the open for inspection and selection. Aisles of boxes filled with fruit and vegetables were almost a physical impediment to our movement through the market, and we were always a finger-length away from piles and piles of tomatoes, melons, bananas, apples, and oranges.

Leaving the fish, poultry, and meat sections of the market, Charlie and I would move on to the more complex counters of chiles, spices, and moles, in beckoning jars and displays of enticing shapes, colors, and textures. There were heaps of red, black, and purple chiles, in twisted, crumpled, and dehydrated shapes, next to transparent jars and vases filled with powders of black, and deep maroon mole. We sidestepped our way along the length of the long counter, with Charlie, who was five years older than me, reading the names of the spices and chiles. Then we reenacted the process at the equally long counter containing Mexican fruit and sugar candies, dried fruits, and nuts displayed behind a long plate of sectioned glass. I pointed to the delicacies I most wanted to eat and longed to ask my parents to buy them for us. But my mother had forewarned me about begging. Charlie and I were there to look and help, and not whine for candy or toys. Once the adults had purchased their groceries, and we had proven ourselves to be disciplined window shoppers and helpers, we might be rewarded with an helado, an ice cream cone, at the end of the afternoon. If we exited on Broadway, we would leisurely stroll along the street, licking our cones, looking at the Coming Attraction posters of the Million Dollar Cinema, or inspecting the open vistas of countless shops selling Mexican leather goods, clothing, shoes, toys, and magazines. If we exited on the Hill Street side of the market we would eat our ice cream while watching the two funicular cars of Angel’s Flight as they traveled, simultaneously, up and down Bunker Hill. Riding those cars on one or two occasions as a child was almost like a “D-ticket ride” on the Disneyland Railroad. There was even a moment of panic when Charlie said we were going to crash, as the two cars seemed ready to collide, until narrowly passing each other in opposite directions. Even the car ride home was exciting, because we traveled along Broadway, through the middle of town, all the way into Lincoln Heights. Along this corridor we would pass the civic center, with the towering City Hall building in the middle, and then drive through Chinatown, with its ornate building facades, lanterns, and bright lights, and finally the railroad yards, extending from Union Station.

The present Grand Central Market was still able to engender those old memories of the 1950’s and 60’s. The physical location of the store had not changed much, and the foodstuffs were still the same. The only exception was the presence of more Asian and Central American vendors and their food preferences. But, rather than trying to describe where we walked, and what we saw that day, I’d invite you to peruse the photos I took that afternoon. I uploaded them into distinct Flickr albums with individual descriptions. Perhaps those images might encourage you to do your own exploring of these downtown locations.

2011-02-05 The Omni Hotel

2011-02-06 A Sunday at the MOCA

2011-02-06 Cruising Grand Central Market

2011-02-06 On Broadway

2011-02-06 Up Spring Street

I am a child, I’ll last a while,
You can’t conceive
Of the pleasure in my smile.
You hold my hand,
Rough up my hair,
It’s lots of fun
To have you there.

God gave to you,
Now, you give to me,
I’d like to know
What you learned.
The sky is blue
And so is the sea.
What is the color,
When black is burned?
What is the color?
(I Am A Child – Neil Young, 1968)

I arrived at Prisa and Joe’s home at around 7:30 in the morning, carrying my camera case and a cup of Starbuck’s Chai for my daughter. Everyone was awake and moving around the house. My son-in-law Joe, who was still on Christmas vacation from school, was picking up the newspapers, books, and baby toys, and reorganizing them in the living room while Prisa watched a stretching and squirming Sarah in her play n’ fold sleeper.
“She’s been really good, Dad,” Prisa said sadly, reaching out to place her little finger in Sarah’s tiny grasp. “She slept for 8 hours last night and we fed her at 6 o’clock. She’s been up since then, and should take a nap again before eating.”
I nodded at her words, while looking down and longing to pick up the tiny infant who seemed ready to nod off right there. Instead I gave Prisa my full attention, as she directed me to the kitchen. For the first time since I started babysitting Sarah, Prisa was giving me an incredibly precise and detailed childcare orientation. She described and demonstrated the location and sequential arrangement of the feeding bottles in the fridge, the formula cans in the cupboard, and sterilized pacifiers on the counter. She gave me a synopsis of Sarah’s eating schedule, her exercise routines, and her changing habits. She even showed me where to put the used bottles and nipples.
“Should I return the empty bottles in the same left to right order as I found them in the fridge?” I asked.
“Are you mocking me, Dad?” Prisa accused, giving me a sideways glance.
“No chula,” I replied, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I was just kidding.” Seeing that Sarah was wide-awake, I swooped down and picked her up. The action saved me from mentioning that I thought Prisa was behaving oddly that morning.
“Well, since you insist on carrying her,” Prisa teased, “I’ll go take my shower and then Joe and I will be leaving”.

I hadn’t been to their house for about 2 weeks – not since Joe began his Christmas vacation and was helping in the full-time care of their daughter during Prisa’s maternity leave. This would be the first time I was babysitting Sarah alone. During the second and third week of Prisa’s leave, I had come by to help her with house chores and cleaning while she recuperated from surgery and concentrated on the baby. Those visits gave me the chance to learn Sarah’s infant care routines and procedures, and practice them under my daughter’s watchful eyes. Today would be my first solo effort. It would be just Sarah and me - on our own for about 5 or 6 hours. I was quite excited and pleased with the prospect. The occasion gave me a chance to help the new parents, and to test my competence of caring for Sarah, but I also had a selfish motive. With 7-week old Sarah, I wanted to re-experience those ephemeral moments of wonder that come from seeing, smelling, touching, and holding a tiny infant while caring for them. When Toñito and Prisa were in college, I was struck by the notion that I hadn’t paid enough attention while their fleeting moments of infancy passed away too soon. I feared that I had been more attentive to the developmental benchmarks they were reaching, instead of relishing each moment with them: Were they sleeping through the night? Were they fixing and tracking objects with their eyes? Were they lifting their heads and holding them erect? Were they turning over and making coherent sounds? I remembered Kathy and I applauding and celebrating each developmental milestone, but I wondered if in our haste to see them progress we had failed to truly savor the elusively brief time that they were newborns and infants, just weeks distant from their original, pre-sensory state. Caring for Sarah gave me one more chance to experience those moments, and to be completely present with her.

Once Joe and Prisa departed, I assumed my grandpa, super-nanny role and got to work. I carefully bottle-fed Sarah at 8:30, but she only finished one ounce before burping and nodding off to sleep on my shoulder. Then, instead of putting her down, I adjusted a pillow to support my elbow and held her while she slept. I could just twist my head enough to study every detail of her wispy, strawberry blonde hair, her rosy cheeks, and her pursed lips as she breathed in and out, in soothing rhythm. Occasionally the tiny bundle elicited a languid sigh of contentment, followed by a whisper of a smile. This was one of those wondrous moments I wanted to savor again, but her blissful slumber was too contagious, and slowly my eyelids grew heavier as my own breathing synchronized with hers. I floated in that twilight state between dreaming and consciousnesses until her sudden movements awoke me, and I noted that she had slept for 30 minutes. I changed her damp diaper and fed her the rest of the bottle. After a good, loud burp, I carried Sarah through the rooms of the house, inspecting bookcases and video racks, and then placed her on the jungle gym floor mat. Sitting next to her, I watched her kicking her legs, extending her tiny fingers, and making random noises and facial expressions while taking photos. I loved it, even though I discovered that a photographer couldn’t really experience the moment with a viewfinder in his eye. But if I was patient, I could perhaps record a fabulous look or expression that might give her parents a timeless memory in the future. The photo session ended when Sarah spat up a glob of her formula over her neck and shirt from all her exertions, and I had to carry her to her room and change her diaper and wardrobe. Just as I was buttoning the back of her new tunic I heard a knock on the door.
“Oh crap,” I muttered to myself, “visitors. I’m coming!” I called out, fumbling to finish the last button and place Sarah in her crib. Leaning toward the doorway, I strained to hear some acknowledgement of my response. Instead I heard the door opening, followed by Prisa’s voice.
“Dad, it’s just us,” she said, sheepishly, as she and Joe walked through the living room. “We decided to take a break and see how Sarah was doing.” Her voice sounded strained and childlike, and her eyes were swollen and red. “I just wanted to hold Sarah one more time before going to the next infant care place on our list.”

I was babysitting so Prisa and Joe could visit potential infant care facilities for Sarah. This had been the issue I had danced around and avoided discussing with Prisa and Joe since Sarah’s birth in November. They were both Catholic high school teachers, and a single salary could never support a wife and baby at home. During the faraway days of her early pregnancy, Prisa and Joe had discussed this topic with us and other married friends, and concluded that professional infant care was their only choice. I had quickly volunteered to help by making the trip from Canoga Park to North Torrance two days a week and babysitting Sarah at home. However deciding on professional day care and actually choosing one were two different things – especially after spending 8 weeks of 24 hours a day caring and bonding with her newborn baby. Anticipating the pains of separation, Kathy had been the one person strongly pressing Prisa and Joe to begin investigating early. Finally, over the weekend they had compiled a list of 8 local facilities, and today they were speaking to the owners and inspecting the facilities.
“How did it go, honey?” I asked, watching Prisa walk to crib and bend down to pick up her baby.
“Not good, Dad,” she said, cradling Sarah in the hollow of her arm and bending down to kiss her. “I lost it after the third place we saw. Joe was having a hard time too, so I didn’t feel too bad”.
“Hi Tony,” Joe said, entering the baby’s room, with an embarrassed look. He bent down and gave Sarah a kiss on the forehead.
“I figured we needed a Sarah-fix,” Prisa continued, hoisting Sarah onto her shoulder. “I just had to see and hold her for awhile before going on.” While cooing and swaying with Sarah, I watched mutely as Joe joined the embracing circle of mother and child.
“So tell me what happened,” I prompted, realizing for the first time that I had kept myself happily busy and distracted with Sarah all morning, and at arm’s length from the emotional turmoil of her parents. I felt guilty and helpless by my inability to advise or console them at this moment. I had nothing to say. I simply patted Prisa’s arm and listed to her story.

“They weren’t bad,” Prisa began a tale that went something like this. The businesses were simply cold, clean, and commercial, but without a sense of family and loving attention. The first establishment was a Montessori school with a combined daycare and pre-school, but Prisa was more impressed with their pre-school environment and activities than the nursery. The second school was a little better. It was newer, with plenty of room and a growing infant clientele and an adult staff who seemed alert and interested. However by the time they arrived at their third appointment, the crushing reality of having to deliver their baby to one of these institutions set in. Prisa found it hard to concentrate on the manager’s recitation of services with the incessant crying of an infant in the background. The wailing was like a piercing dagger to her heart. She had visions of Sarah’s tiny tears and yelps of distress being callously dismissed as willfulness that needed disciplinary training.
“That’s when I lost it,” Prisa concluded. She turned away from the woman and whispered to Joe that she needed to go home and hold Sarah.
“Everything will be fine, Prisa,” I promised, patting her arm again. “Everything will work out for you and Joe.”

Later, as I watched Sarah gently sleeping in her play n’ fold, after Prisa and Joe and left for lunch and the remainder of their appointments, I was left with my private thoughts over these events, and what I had said, and not said. Prisa would be returning to work soon, and she and Joe had to place their infant daughter in the hands of a licensed caregiver for three mornings and afternoons a week. This was a fact for which there was no other option. Oddly, I first found myself thinking of this situation as a principal. Prisa was an excellent teacher, and a classroom goes into a state of suspended animation when a valued teacher goes on leave. Students and administrators never really engage emotionally or educationally with temporary replacements, treating them, for the most part, with polite indifference and a lack of commitment. As a principal, I had tolerated maternity leaves and made the best of them, helping the substitutes adjust, and assuring the students that their real teacher would return soon. I found that excellent teachers never suffered any major problems when returning to work after the birth of their babies, and there was only joy and relief on the part of the students and staff that welcomed them back. The reunion was an economic necessity for the mother, and an instructional boon to the students and school. If every pregnant teacher were to stay at home after the birth of their baby, schools would never recover from the instructional loss. Professionally, I always chose to ignore the emotional pain of separation between a mother and her new baby, and emphasized the joy and relief of the teacher’s return. I knew that Prisa’s principal and students felt the same way, but I kept these thoughts to myself. Prisa and Joe were both fine teachers and they knew of the familial ties between teacher and student, and teacher and school. Instead I wondered about what things I could mention to Prisa and Joe.

Childcare was one decision Kathy and I never had to make. We chose to try living on my income, knowing that Kathy could always return to work as a teacher if we failed. Luckily we were able to maintain this situation for the first ten years of parenthood, until Toñito and Prisa were in the 5^th and 3^rd grade. Joe and Prisa didn’t have that choice. How will Prisa feel about going back to work? Bereft at first, is my guess. For the first few days, she will probably feel she’s abandoning Sarah Kate to the hands of strangers. She and Joe will also suffer a large dose of recurring guilt whenever the subject of daycare arises. I wish I could allay those feelings and doubts for them, but I knew they were standard parenting responses for tough choices that have no guarantees of success. Kathy and I have felt guilt, doubts, and fears, many times over the years as we struggled to make the right choices for our children. Caring for children, and making choices for them is the hardest part of a marriage – but also the most rewarding.

I believe that Kathy and I have done a fairly good job with marriage and raising children (knocking on wood as I write this). After our first two years, we concluded that for our marriage to work, it needed to be a loving and honest partnership, in which we made consensual decisions for situations we faced together. We learned to make choices we could both live with and fully support, realizing that if things did not work out the way we planned, they could always be reworked and changed. This was matrimonial problem solving, and problem solving was a fluid, evolving process. However, when Toñito and Prisa came onto the scene, this process changed. We discovered that parenting choices were different. Oh, we continued using the same partnership tools in discussing plans, solving problems, and dealing with family situations, but child-rearing choices couldn’t be shrugged off as miscalculations and then readjusted. Children were different. Every year of their lives called for new issues and different decisions: What friends should they have? When should they begin and what pre-school should they attend? In what sports and activities should they participate? We didn’t know if the choices we made for Toñito and Prisa, and the actions we took were “successful” for many years. Even today, Kathy and I have a long list of parenting choices we made that we are still unsure of, and some we even regret. Our only defense is the belief that our choices were guided by love, and, at the time, we were both convinced it was the right thing to do. I also believe that our greatest moments of parental awareness came from loving our children while making difficult choices, especially when they were totally dependent on us as infants. Prisa and Joe halted their childcare inspection duties to hurry home so they could see, hold, and carry Sarah Kathleen. They were totally present in that encircling moment of love, and they maintained their metaphysical connection with Sarah when they departed to continue their task. That wondrous bond of love will never fail – but it will change over time, as children become older, more independent, and begin making choices for themselves.

My first babysitting day ended as I described to Prisa what we had done – Sarah ate and slept, and I fed, watched, and carried her. I also promised to give her copies of the photos I took of them that day. I thought the images were important.

Dark and silent late last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling.
Geese in flight and dogs that bite,
Signs that might be omens say,
I’m going, going.I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind.

In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina.
Can’t you see the sunshine?
Can’t you just feel the moonshine?
Ain’t it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind?
Yes, I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind.
(Carolina in my Mind – James Taylor: 1968)

Despite a pretty comprehensive private and public education in California, an undergraduate degree in history, and having taught U.S. History in high school, I’ve always considered myself a novice to the story and geography of the South. The cities and battles sites of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were simply names that added color and accent to what I considered the real issues of American History: Independence, Manifest Destiny, and Slavery. My first concrete experience with “The South” was in 2001, when we attended the graduation of Ed Killmond, a longtime friend and ex-officio family member, from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Although we only stayed two days, I was enchanted by the languid pace of this sophisticated city with its antebellum homes, elegant plazas, and oak trees, garlanded with haunting, Spanish moss. I loved hearing the low pitched, rhythmic Georgian accents that greeted, questioned, and offered advice to tourists from California. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and decided that “the South” as a place and a culture was tremendously overlooked and underestimated by the rest of the nation. In some ways it was like going to a foreign territory within the United States. It was a land with a history that paralleled the other states in the Union, but remained remarkably aloof in its values and attitudes. I thought no more of that romantic land until our friends Ken and Kathy Horton actualized their long-time dream of building a house and retiring to Belfair, a golfing plantation in Bluffton, South Carolina this year.

At first, I thought I knew very little about either of the Carolinas, North or South. I remembered that Revolutionary War battles were fought there, and the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, in one of the Carolinas. But I didn’t have a clear picture of the ecology, geography, or the people of these states. In fact I wasn’t even sure in which state Kathy and Ken had moved to, North or South Carolina. I was initially confused when my wife Kathy said they lived near Hilton Head, because I thought the name sounded like a part of Hawaii. I probably would have remained blissfully ignorant of these states if not for our ties with these two old and dear friends. We have known Kathy and Ken since the births of our second children (in Kathy’s case twin girls, Kate and Andrea). Ken and my wife, Kathy, met while enrolling our 2-year old sons, Toñito and Marshall in pre-school, in 1980. That encounter evolved into a friendship between two moms and their growing children. Discovering a non-blood-related family with young children who shared common interests, parenting practices, and family values was rare. We spent the next 30 years raising children, involving them in sports and artistic endeavors, sending them to high school and college, and worrying about their jobs, relationships, and careers. The two Kathy’s always made sure that we got together at least every month or two, and the Horton’s hosted an annual Christmas Adam party on December 23 (see Christmas Adam). Although our children were the initial reason for our friendship, it lasted without them. When Kathy and Ken finally sold their home in Hidden Hills, they made the move they had talked about for years to South Carolina. On March 3, 2010, Kathy and Ken boarded their SUV and began their cross-country journey to the house they were building in Beaufort County. It didn’t take Kathy long to realize that she missed her best friend Kathy, and that phone calls could not replace the proximity they had shared for so many years. As a Christmas present to ourselves, we decided to visit them. On December 27, we boarded the 6:15 am flight to Savannah, with a stopover at Atlanta, Georgia. Six hours later we landed in Savannah.

At the Savannah Airport, we arrived in time to catch Kathy and Ken seeing off their twin daughters, Kate and Andrea, who were flying back to Chicago and Los Angeles. The twins had flown in to stay in the new house, and celebrate Christmas with their parents and Marshall, a lawyer who lived near them. Kate had established a mid-western life and career, and was now planning a June wedding in South Carolina. Andrea was the sole remaining Californian in the family, working for a Los Angeles security firm while living in the South Bay area. After saying goodbye and watching the girls saunter off to their respective boarding gates, our sojourn in South Carolina began. I thought, at first, that we would be spending the trip catching up on personal stories and exploring a strange land, but it was more than that. Sometimes an event occurs that stitches everything together. A loose collection of lifelong, mental images and pictures, and bits of information gathered from textbooks, novels, histories, movies, and television programs, finally serves its purpose and connects you with a new part of the country. This cohesion took place as we drove through the beautiful, rural countryside of South Carolina to Kathy and Ken’s new home, and over the course of our visit. The sunsets, locales, and scenery we saw, and the stories we heard from Ken and Marshall over the next 4 days and 5 nights about Bluffton, Beaufort, and Charleston quickly unearthed forgotten scenes, songs, pictures, and facts I already knew about South Carolina. The first words to come to my lips on the road to Belfair were from Walt Disney’s 1959 television series about South Carolina’s Revolutionary hero Francis Marion, called The Swamp Fox:

“Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, tail on his hat.
Nobody knows where the Swamp Fox at.
Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox hiding in the glen,
He’ll ride away to fight again.”

From that moment on everything I saw in South Carolina looked new but felt familiar. We were near Port Royale and the waters sailed by Blackbeard, and other famous pirates. We visited historical cities besieged and occupied by famous Revolutionary and Civil War generals and admirals. We traveled through the low country region that I’d seen in movies like The Patriot, Glory, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The Big Chill, and read about in novels by Flannery O’Connor, John Jakes, and Pat Conroy. During this visit Kathy and I experienced the exotic terrain and ecology of this tidewater area; the juxtaposition of its past with the present, in the sites and reminders of long-ago wars, battles, and defeats; and the seemingly continuing struggle for liberty and individual rights that intrudes into conversations and the local media. Yet in many ways, we were also at home in this new place with two old friends.

Ken is a golfer, and he and Kathy built their home in Belfair, a private, two-course, golf club located in Bluffton, S.C. It is a historic, 1000-acre plantation which was originally founded in 1811, and contains 33-acres of protected wetlands, natural preserves, and a rookery. The mixture of landscaped homes, fairways, and greens, meshed remarkably well with the natural scenery and the vast variety of wildlife that abounded there. We saw and were told of the many species of birds, such as egrets, ibis, eagles, and osprey, which inhabited the area, along with other animals like the white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, red foxes, and alligators. Since the game of golf had no special attraction for me, I was more interested in the scenery around their new house, throughout the plantation, and along the countryside. Gazing out from every window, porch, and balcony along the northeasterly broadside of the house, I was amazed at the vistas of breathtaking beauty. The Colleton River, a wide ribbon of blue salt water, flowed up from Port Royal Sound, and it ebbed and flooded over a golden harvest of marsh reeds that edged right up to the house and surrounded the spit of land on which it was built. The view was never the same, changing with the tides, the time of day, and the positioning of the sun. In the distance, we could also see the lush, green forest of oak trees that lined the far side of the river. Ken told us that Parris Island, the US Marine Base was located beyond that forest, and on still days one could hear cannon fire. These were the magical sights that greeted us each morning, and the last we saw before nightfall.

As I said, Belfair is located in the town of Bluffton, which is situated near three quintessential, tidewater cities - Savannah, Georgia, Beaufort, South Carolina, and only 90 minutes away from historic Charleston. It is also just down the highway from the Hilton Head Island resorts, and 10 minutes away from the home and work of their son, Marshall. So, the next morning, we visited him at his new law offices, to drop off Jake, Ken and Kathy’s new dog, and review our plans for the day and dinner with him that night. It was there I realized that although Ken talked about the South like a well-trained historian who loved his subject, Marshall described it like an enamored, native-born, troubadour. I’ve known Marshall all his life. Born in Los Angeles, he was raised, played sports, and attended school in the west San Fernando Valley. I always considered him to be a dyed-in-the-wool, California boy. Until we drove up to his law offices, off a dusty, gravel road on Lawton Street, I never realized how natural and comfortable he was in this low country setting. When he completed his degree at Rutgers Law School in 2004, I assumed he was returning home to practice in Los Angeles. Instead he passed the bar in South Carolina, clerked for a judge in Charleston, and began a private practice in Beaufort and Bluffton. I could only guess that his summer visits to his uncle’s homes in Bluffton and Beaufort, and his crucial decision to attend The Military College of South Carolina (The Citadel) affected the trajectory of his life. When we discussed our plans with Marshall of visiting Beaufort, he made some recommendations, encouraging us to visit Old Sheldon Church, a burnt out relic of the Revolutionary and Civil War. As we were leaving he also pointed out a lone chimney down the road. The house had burnt down long ago, but the owner was inclined to leave the solitary artifact standing. When I chuckled at this predilection for burnt offerings, Marshall smiled ruefully, saying that Southerners had long memories and there was even a street called Burnt Church Road in Bluffton.

Revolutionary and Civil War houses, churches, and cemeteries permeated the city of Beaufort. Three sites left the biggest impression. We first visited the white, colonnaded Thomas Heyworth Mansion, built in the 1720’s on the grassy waterfront of the Beaufort River. It is reputed to be one of the oldest houses in Beaufort, and Gene Roe, Kathy’s oldest brother, once owned it. There we heard again the story of how General Sherman’s invading Union army occupied this elegant, antebellum estate during the war, and how the Confederate owners, being in such great haste to leave, simply tossed their luggage trunks from second windows onto the marble porch stairway below. The cracked steps were still visible on our visit, testament to fear engendered during Sherman’s march to the sea. We also walked around St. Helena’s Episcopal Church and Cemetery on Church Street. This restored church was built in 1724, and used as a stable by the British during the Revolutionary War and as a hospital during the Civil War. Among those buried in its surrounding cemetery were two British officers, three American generals, and 17 ministers of the gospel. Finally, on our way home we took Marshall’s advice and stopped at Old Sheldon Church. The towering remains of this church and cemetery, surrounded by the mossy woods outside of Beaufort were the most haunting of our trip. The church was originally built in 1755, burnt by the British in 1779, rebuilt in 1826, and finally burnt again by the Union Army in 1865. The brick skeleton of the structure still hosts religious ceremonies on special occasions, and the interior contains the remains of William Bull, one of the founding members of the church and Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina from 1737-1744.

The following day we drove to Hilton Head Island, to inspect this luxurious residential and resort community containing 20 world class golf courses, an endless number of tennis courts, 9 marinas, 7 beach parks, and forests filled with palmettos, pines, and oak trees. It was while strolling along the walkways of Harbour Town that I saw the Carpetbagger presence in South Carolina. Residents and tourist from Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other mid-west, and northeastern states surrounded us, and I saw where the Palmetto state was finding its sources of income and picking up new congressional seats. However, of greater interest to us was our search for Mitchelville and Fort Howell, two more sites recommended by Marshall. After a meandering hunt through various plantations on the island, we tripped upon their locations just as we were ready to give up. We found a road sign next to an open tract of fenced-in ground identifying Mitchelville. It was a freedmen’s town created by General Ormsby Mitchel in 1862, and used to house the Hilton Head slaves who had been emancipated by the Union Army. Up the road from this sign we found the remains of Fort Howell, a defensive earthworks fortress, built by the 32^nd U.S. Colored Infantry Volunteers in 1864 to protect the freedmen’s town. It was hidden beneath a thick cover of vegetation, canopied by a lush grove of oak trees with Spanish moss. As I fell behind Ken and Kathy taking pictures of the forest, a whispering hush seemed to rise up from the steaming mulch of fallen leaves and vines. I imagined I could hear ancient echoes of arduous labor and anxious vigilance from the construction and manning of this fort. It was like walking back into a time when freedom and the protection of civil rights were embryonic realities in America. The rest of the day was spent with food and hospitality: eating at Hudson’s Seafood on the Docks, catching high tide on Colleton River, and visiting Kathy’s family on the May River in Bluffton.

Despite having known Kathy for over 30 years we had never met all of her South Carolinian family. Over time, we had met and befriended her mother, Kathleen, and eldest brother Gene, before they passed away, but never her brother Bill, or his wife Nancy. Kathy and I had heard that they lived in Bluffton, and were part of the local political and cultural scene in Beaufort, so we were anxious to finally meet them and see their riverfront home. While Ken and Kathy’s backyard vista of the Colleton River marsh was stunning, I have to admit that Bill and Nancy’s view of the May River was spectacular. The scene looked like it was scanned out of a travel book or an illustration from Pat Conroy’s novel, Prince of Tides. Kathy and I were so awed by the picture, we felt compelled to inspect the shore, walk by the boathouse, cross the gangplank, and stand on the docking pier, before admitting that it was real. The hosts were very gracious and equally eager to learn about us, and to describe their family’s history in the area. That night Marshall came to dinner with arms and head full of maps and ideas for our final outing to Charleston.

Charleston was of major interest to Kathy and me because it was the oldest city of the United States, the site of the opening shots of the Civil War, and home to the Citadel, the military college I had read about and heard so much about while Marshall was a cadet there. Since we were only spending one day there, Marshall suggested three stops: The Citadel, at the Northwestern end of the city, then crossing Charleston Bay to Sullivan’s Island to see Fort Moultrie, and finally returning to the French Quarter for a walking tour of the city.

Strangely enough, the Citadel was one sight that did not call up the ghosts of the South’s past. One knew immediately we were in a military college from the martial-look of everything. The vast rectangular parade ground was dotted with cannons and tanks, and surrounded by functional, beige-colored, buildings and barracks that looked like castles. The only exceptions to this design were the chapel and bell tower on the southern end. However, these buildings told no stories, the way other South Carolinian structures did. The eerie quiet and emptiness of campus signaled the absence of its most important feature, the Corps of Cadets. I realized then that they were the story, and the storytellers, of this place, but they were on holiday break for Christmas. From there we traveled across the bay where I learned two new lessons about American history.

Fort Moultrie is part of the Fort Sumter National Monument, and from its parapets on the western shore of Sullivan’s Island, we clearly saw Fort Sumter in the middle of the Charleston Bay and the city of Charleston on the other side. It was there I learned that the first shots of the Civil War were actually fired, after the Union commander at Fort Moultrie moved his garrison to the stronger Fort Sumter. In April of 1861, Confederate troops in Fort Moultrie shelled Fort Sumter into submission and the Civil War began. Besides its role of protecting Charleston Bay, the garrison also guarded Sullivan’s Island and the Africans who were quarantined there before being sold as slaves. We learned that this island was the disembarkation point for over 40% (over 200,000) of the slaves traded in America, and it was estimated that nearly half of all African Americans had ancestors who passed through Sullivan’s Island. The rest of the day was spent in Charleston, following the home and church walking tour marked out by Marshall.

Charleston was beautiful! Savannah and Beaufort had given me a sense of walking back into time, but I had never been in a major cosmopolitan American city where so many vestiges of the past were visible and in use. We walked along Bay Street and the Battery, inspecting the waterfront homes with their unique Charleston porches and cobblestone streets, and then back up Kings Street to find the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. Philip’s Church, and the Circular Congregational Church. The city reminded me of Mexico City with its multitude of ancient buildings, walkways, churches, and homes.

On our last morning with Kathy and Ken, we had a leisurely breakfast in their new kitchen, spoke about Kate’s upcoming nuptial in June, and gazed a final time on their backyard vista. Even then I was struggling to process all that I had seen and heard over the last 4 days. It wasn’t until the long flight home that an idea began forming. South Carolina was a fabulous visual experience, but there was something more to see and admire than just landscape, architecture, and scenery. I found myself reading deeper messages in all the homes, burnt-out churches, and forts we saw in South Carolina. Those structures, and the stories surrounding them, were much more powerful symbols than say, the Confederate flag we saw one day, spread out on a billboard along a country road. Those Stars and Bars called for memories of defiance and resistance, but the preserved and restored artifacts of past wars and defeats in Bluffton, Beaufort, Hilton Head, and Charleston, reminded the observer to Never Forget. It was as if the stones themselves were calling out to us.
“Never forget your heritage and history,” the ruined forts and burnt out churches seemed to say. “Remember what we suffered, and build a better today.”
Maybe that was why The Citadel didn’t feel old when we walked upon its grassy parade ground and inspected its barracks. The military college was a living vehicle for this canon of never forgetting. While teaching the stories and lessons of the past, the Citadel was also instilling a promise for the present and the future. It was a promise of hope, and we had heard it expressed clearly in the words and actions of Marshall, one of the Citadel’s graduates, and Ken and Kathy’s son. It had been a fine trip.

Words are always poor substitutes for a visual experience. If you are interested in a pictorial essay of our visit to the low country of South Carolina, see the following Flickr albums:

2010-12-27 Belfair Plantation S.C.

2010-12-28 Bluffton & Beaufort S.C.

2010-12-29 Hilton Head & May River S.C.

2010-12-30 Citadel & Charleston S.C.

Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled.”
(Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Charles Wesley: 1739)

On the Monday morning I walked into the Chaplain's Office, I immediately sensed the tension and the moody silence. There was none of the laughter and chatter that usually surrounds the staging area of the day’s activities. The normally welcoming and effusive Esperanza was tensely hunched over a computer, typing on the keyboard with one hand, while biting her nails on the other. Gavin, the calm and reassuring prison chaplain, was hectically rushing about in the back storeroom and he failed to notice our arrival. Alfredo, the Spanish-speaking assistant chaplain who met me at the security checkpoint and had escorted me here, remained standing at the doorway, as if frightened to enter. Sam, one of the Wednesday night assistant chaplains was sitting at a side desk, nervously bouncing his knee up and down, and there was a short, dark-skinned woman I had never seen before, leaning against the metal filing cabinet, apart from everyone and as quiet as a mouse.
“Hi,” I introduced myself to her, extending my hand. “I’m Tony. I usually come on Wednesdays.”
“Mucho gusto,” she responded in Spanish, shaking my hand in greeting. “Soy Maria.”
“Oh Tony,” Gavin said, walking out of the storeroom door with a bright orange extension cord wrapped around his hand and elbow. “This is Maria. She is a volunteer who helps with our prayer services on Saturdays. She is helping out today.”
The sullen spell was momentarily lifted as Esperanza smiled to greet me and I leaned down to give her a hug.
“What are you doing?” I asked innocently, looking over her shoulder at the computer screen.
“I’m downloading songs for today’s service,” she said quietly.
“Esperanza,” Gavin interrupted impatiently. “You don’t need to do that. I have last year’s songs in a folder on the desktop. Just print them from there. There are many other things I need you to do.”
“I couldn’t find them there,” Esperanza retorted testily. “Someone must have moved them or deleted them, because they’re gone. But it’s not a problem,” she added hurriedly. “I’ll just do a Google search and download new lyrics. I did it that way last year.”
“Yes,” countered Gavin, “but will those lyrics match the music we’ve recorded on the CD?” The question hung in the air like an accusation, until Esperanza finally responded.
“I’m sure everything will be alright,” she said hopefully.
“I hope so, too,” Gavin said, walking out the door and placing the long extension cord on top of a three-level cart in the hallway. “The inmates deserve a quality program from us,” he added.
What is that? I thought to myself, looking at the cart. It was loaded with a portable CD player on top, six large cartons of chocolate chip cookies in the middle, and a rack of twelve Coca Cola liter bottles on the bottom section. What kind of a prayer service is this?

Last week, when our regular Wednesday night Chaplain’s program was cancelled because of a prison-wide lockdown, Abby and Esperanza had mentioned this 11:30 am service that was scheduled to occur on Monday, the 20^th of December. The two assistant chaplains seemed very excited about this service, and encouraged me to come, but they hadn’t given me any specific information about what to expect.
“If you’re interested in seeing a different side of prison ministry, you should come,” Esperanza advised.
“If you can make it,” Abby added, “I think you’ll enjoy it. The entire program should run from 11:30 to 3:30.
Their insistence intrigued me, and despite the rainstorm and harsh driving conditions that swept into Los Angeles that weekend, I decided to go and find out more about this mysterious prayer service.

Looking past Alfredo’s shoulder at the assignment board on the wall, I saw that it was filled with a schedule of the week’s activities. There was a time, 11:30 to 3:00, at the top, and the names of three priests printed next to cellblock numbers for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Christmas Week. The name of Father Charles, a priest I had worked with before, was written in for today in cellblock 600.
Hmmm, I wondered to myself. That’s odd! I thought one of the chaplains, or a deacon would be conducting the prayer service today. Will a priest be saying a mass instead? Where would they hold a mass in a jail? Is there a hall or auditorium that they use? How many inmates are involved?
The chaplains who could answer these questions, Gavin and Esperanza, seemed very busy and preoccupied with other matters. The other assistants and volunteers looked and acted as lost and helpless as I felt. Rather than becoming anxious and dwelling on these questions, I shrugged and let them go. The benefit of volunteering is being freed from organizational responsibilities and the need to know. As a volunteer, I simply showed up, helped out, and followed instructions.
“Tony,” Esperanza said, turning her head from the screen. “If you’re free, I could use your help here.”
“Sure,” I replied, moving next to her chair. “What’s going on with Gavin?” I whispered, watching him rearrange the cart.
“He’s worried about the service,” she replied in hushed tones. “When he called to check with the senior officer this morning, the lieutenant acted like he’d never heard about the Christmas service. There had been some fights and a big lockdown in the jail over the weekend, and Gavin was afraid he wouldn’t okay the service today. The lieutenant finally said yes, but Gavin has been upset and anxious all day. I didn’t help matters any by arriving late and losing the music,” she added quickly as Gavin reentered the room.
“Maria and Tony,” he announced. “If you will be so kind to come with me, we can begin setting up in 600.”
“Aah,” I paused, glancing quickly at Esperanza, before responding to Gavin. “Esperanza asked me to help her with something.”
“That’s alright,” Esperanza excused herself quickly. “It’s not that important. You go ahead and help Gavin get started."

“Good morning, Sergeant,” Gavin greeted the deputy in her office after leaving the loaded cart at the doorway with Maria standing guard. “We received permission from the senior lieutenant to conduct a Christmas service this morning. We are checking with you for clearance, and to designate a room.”
“A Christmas service, right?” the tiny, brunette deputy repeated, sitting back on her chair with a lit Christmas tree behind her. “Sure, you can use the dayroom next to 617. How many men are you pulling and from what dorms?”
“We’d like to pull at least three inmates from each of the lower and upper dorms,” Gavin recited. “They are regular participants and we are taking their names from our attendance rosters.”
“Fine,” the deputy said. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, sergeant, and Merry Christmas,” Gavin said.
“Merry Christmas to you too,” the deputy added with a surprised smile.
“So we are using the dayroom for a mass?” I asked while pushing the cart through the corridor.
“Yes,” Gavin said. “We’ll set it up with two tables and about 50 chairs.”
“The dayrooms are a bit bleak for a mass, aren’t they?” I asked hesitatingly. “Aren’t there any other meeting rooms available for these types of services?”
“Not for inmates,” he replied grimly. “Dayrooms are the only secured facilities we are allowed to use with the men. We use what they give us.”
I shook my head over the notion of a Christmas liturgy in a prison dayroom. I had conducted discussion groups in those rooms before. They were barren, concrete shower rooms, with an open urinal, commode, and washbasin pushed back into the corner. Stacks of plastic patio chairs were dragged into these hallow, grey shells, and arranged into tight, talking circles of various sizes. The halls were also acoustical nightmares, and aesthetically ugly cement spaces, which echoed the slightest sounds and made listening impossible. I found it hard to imagine how Gavin was converting a prison dayroom into a sacred space for celebrating mass.

After receiving the approval of the dorm guards of the two bottom cellblocks, and speaking with two trustees who agreed to help with the setup, Gavin finally gave us a general description of what he was thinking:
“We will need two tables,” he began, “which will be covered up later. One table will be the altar for the Eucharist, and the other a platform for a nativity scene. I figure 50 chairs will be enough, and we can set them up like pews into three sections facing the altar. We will have the CD stereo player in the back to accompany the singing, and we keep the cart with the refreshments in the rear of the dayroom during the service. When the mass is completed, we bring the cart up to the altar table and begin serving the snacks. The men will remain in their seats and we will serve them a small paper plate with three chocolate chip cookies and a Styrofoam cup of coca cola.”
His energetic explanation did nothing to dispel my growing unease over the physical ugliness of the dayroom, the meagerness of the refreshments, and the general lack of organization. Although Gavin was beginning to sound more enthusiastic and optimistic, I was worried. So far only Gavin seemed to have a clear idea of how the room should look and what needed to be done. I couldn’t help thinking that, three cookies and a cup of coke was sad fare for a Christmas party. When Gavin and Alfredo left in search of the tables and chairs, Maria and I tried to connect the stereo to an electrical power source.

Finding a live electrical outlet in a jail is like finding a clean infant diaper when you unexpectedly need one. Prisoners are notorious for short-circuiting these power sources, and trying to sabotage the jail. There were four outlets inside the dayroom, and one by one, Maria and I tested them to confirm that none worked. I then ventured farther and farther afield, inspecting the jail corridors until I found an outlet that worked. It was adjacent to the rear door of the dayroom that was always locked. Without Gavin or another assistant chaplain at hand, I took the initiative and walked up to the dorm guard’s desk, where three deputies were in conversation.
“Hello, deputy,” I began. “We’re conducting a service in the dayroom, but none of the outlets have power. I was hoping you could open the rear door so we can run a cord through there.”
“None of the outlets work?” the tallest guard asked. “Gosh how unusual! He added, mockingly.
“No, sir,” I replied, patiently. “We tested each one.” The three guards conferred quietly for a few minutes, and then the shortest one turned to me.
“No,” he said. “We can’t do it. The door is too close to the exit door along that corridor.”
The answer was final. I shrugged my shoulders and returned to the dayroom.

Gavin had returned with Alfredo carrying a large cardboard box and the trustees pushing two rolling tables. One was a stainless steel, double-decker, cafeteria serving counter, and the other was a small typing table.
“These are fine,” said Gavin to the trustees. “Now if you can round up the chairs, we’ll start arranging them.” Then, turning and taking the box from Alfredo, he said, “Take the attendance sheets to the cell bars and read the names of the inmates we’re inviting to the service. Remember that first, we want to invite men who have attended our programs before. Then you can make a general announcement inviting more. Whatever you do, don’t say that this is a special Christmas celebration. This Christmas service is our gift of appreciation for their loyalty and attendance. I don’t want men coming out of the dorms because they think it’s a party.”
When Alfredo left, Gavin and Maria began decorating the tables. They took a sheet of white linen and draped the small table, and two folded blankets of blue and red to cover the cold metal of the serving counter.
“Gavin,” I said, steeling myself to give him the bad news about the music. “None of the electrical outlets in the dayroom work, and the closest one with power is next to the rear door along the exterior corridor. I asked the guards to open it for us, but they said no.”
He stopped for a moment, closed his eyes, and took a long, ragged breath.
“Tony,” he said quietly, “these men deserve to hear music at their Christmas mass. I’ll manage something with the guards. Why don’t you help Alfredo? I’ll see what I can do about the music.”
I nodded my assent and left the dayroom as the trustees were returning with two tall stacks of plastic patio chairs.

When Alfredo and I returned to the dayroom I saw an extraordinarily long extension cord, made up of three individual strings, stretching from the only functioning electrical outlet, down the corridor, and through the entrance door of the dayroom. Sam and Abby had finally joined us. They were arranging ceramic figurines of the Three Kings next to the central scene of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus on the two-tiered table. Father Charles was also there, placing a ciborium and cruets on the temporary altar. Gavin and Maria were giving the final touches to the first set of arranged chairs, which were organized into three sections.
“There are 42 chairs,” I announced, after counting them. “How many more do we need?”
“Let’s get 10 more,” Gavin said, looking around with hands on his waist. “We can stack them in the back and use them as we need them. Now, while you supervise that, I’ll go get the hosts.”
From that point on, everything speeded up. The trustees arrived with the final chairs. Esperanza and another volunteer appeared with the song sheets and liturgy guidebooks, and we started placing one on each empty seat. Father Charles gave the finishing touches to the altar while Sam and Abby settled on the final appearance of the nativity scene. Soon, Gavin returned to inspect the room. Everyone was beginning to relax except for Father Charles, who would be saying the mass.
“Now, Gavin,” he said nervously. “You’ll be sure to translate everything I say into Spanish, right?”
“Not to worry, father,” Gavin said. “The prayer guides are in English and Spanish, and I’ll refer the men to the numbers in the booklet so they can follow along. I’ll also paraphrase your homily.”
“What about communion?” Father Charles added. “Some of the inmates haven’t made their first communion and don’t know the Communion rite. How do we stop non-Catholics from receiving Eucharist?”
“You’ll be fine, father,” Gavin added, soothingly. “”Just give your usual explanation when conducting a mass to a mixed audience. Invite the congregation to either receive the Eucharist with outstretched hands, or receive a blessing for non-Catholics with arms crossed against their chests. I’ll translate and explain in Spanish. Everything will be fine.”

Slowly, the men began arriving in bunches – groups of 3 or 4, from each dorm. The chaplains and volunteers made a point of greeting each man as he entered the dayroom, shaking their hands, and thanking them for coming to the liturgy. The men seated themselves quietly and remained at reverent attention, avoiding any of the usual saluting, fist-bumping, or joking that went along with these momentary respites from the confines of a barred dorm cell. Soon all the available seats were taken and Abby and I removed two of the stack chairs and sat down in the furthermost back row. All we could see were the heads and shoulders of the inmates spread out in front of me.
“Tony,” Abby whispered to me, holding the song sheet Esperanza had reproduced and distributed on each chair. “The same songs are copied on both sides!”
I just rolled my eyes at this discovery of one more error in the series of small gaffes and obstacles that had plagued us all day. Finally the priest began the mass in the usual fashion, with the sign of the cross and a call to prayer, but then something interesting happened. Father Charles lost his air of confused nervousness in the gentle and personal way he spoke to the 50 convicts and chaplains who surrounded him.
"We come now to the Penitential Rite of the Mass,” he explained in a voice that carried to the back of the room. “This is the part where we ask and receive God’s forgiveness for our sins in preparation for receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ in Communion. I am authorized to give you a General Absolution for all the sins you have committed since your last confession. All I ask is that you sit in silence for a bit and review the poor choices and decisions you have made, and privately and sincerely ask for God’s forgiveness, which he has already promised you.” After a long silence, Father Charles concluded the rite. “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”
“Amen,” the assembled people replied.

There have been moments during the mass when I have experienced an incredible euphoria of oneness with the people around me – at Christmas Eve mass with Kathy, my wife, and Toñito and Prisa, when they were still children, or listening to the soaring Communion psalms sung by the youth choir of St. Bernardine’s Church. The sensation feels like a liquid energy passing from one person to another, tying us all together and erupting through the church in a tidal wave of love and completeness. I experienced one such moment in this cold and barren place, as I listened to an inmate read in hesitant English, a selection from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Is 9, 1-6):

“The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a great light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing. As they rejoice before you as the harvest, as men make merry when dividing spoils. For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day of Median… For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, and Prince of Peace…”

These words seemed to lift and telescope me over the sea of blue-shirted, convicted inmates sitting in front, and I floated above them, as they listened reverently to these words of promise and hope. They were all looking at one thing, as if it was the only point of light in a darkened cell. The Nativity scene, with the figurines that Sam and Abby had worked so hard to arrange, had become the focal point of all eyes. Prompted by Father Charles’s reading of Luke’s gospel of the birth of Christ, the prison walls seemed to melt and disappear, replaced by the cold and starry night outside the entrance of a crèche sheltering a young couple and a newborn babe, sleeping in Joseph's arms. It was as if a ragged army of scantily clad prisoners had climbed the jagged hills of Bethlehem and come to herald the birth of this child and king. A king like no other; one who came to serve the sinners, the outcasts, and convicts of the world, and show them God’s forgiveness and love. The scene also struck me as a foreshadowing of the newborn’s end. He would be in the company of these men again during his Passion, when he would suffer incarceration, beatings, and the death penalty. This was the first Christmas mass in which I experienced the alpha and the omega of the Christmas promise. The mass was not merely a celebration of a birth, but a validation of Christ’s mission. There were no angels or Wise Men at the Christmas service in the county jail, only the sinners, outcasts, and inmates whom Christ came to serve. Pangs of shame and embarrassment arose in me for my lack of faith and the disdain I had felt and displayed at the humble and frustrated efforts of the chaplains and volunteers in preparing this service, and decorating the dayroom. I had used my status as a volunteer to remain detached from responsibility, while feeling free to criticize the actions of others. The convicted men seated in front of me weren’t judging our simple efforts or efficiency, nor comparing the dayroom to the beautiful and ornate churches that are decorated for this season. They were simply thankful for the invitation to be out of their cells and actually celebrating Christmas. Abby and Esperanza had been right in not trying to describe this service to me – it had to be experienced. The beauty was not in the setting, decorations, or music, but in the union of outcast men who came together to celebrate this special mass together. For a moment I was part of that union.

When the mass ended, Gavin asked the men to remain seated for a holiday surprise. With joy and smiles all around, the eight chaplains and volunteers prepared and served our Christmas treats of coke and cookies to our guests. When the service was over and the men were returning to their cells, they stopped to thank us. Some said that this was the first time they had tasted coca cola in many, many months. They also said they loved the cookies.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow.
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
(Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Ralph Blane & Hugh Martin: 1943)

We decorated and lit our Christmas tree this weekend and filled the living room, kitchen, and family room with seasonal smells, ornaments, and keepsakes. It’s an annual, 24-hour makeover of the house, in which we lug in our traditional Christmas stuff from the garage, where it had been stored in plastic cartons all year, and cart out our regular household things, which have been replaced. But this year was different, because Toñito wasn’t there to string the Christmas lights on the tree, ridicule his sister’s choices and placement of ornaments, or sing along with the Christmas carols we played in the background. Prisa was there to help, with her husband Joe, and their 4 week-old baby, Sarah Kathleen, but not her older brother. His absence in the Christmas tree ritual was a jarring experience. I can’t recall an Advent season in which both Toñito and Prisa were not involved in some key aspects of the tree. Since their earliest years, they have always played some role in the Christmas drama that began with the selection of the tree, and culminated with the placement of the angel on top. For me, both children were forever fused in our Christmas tree traditions. By the time Toñito was old enough to appreciate the magical lights, smells, and sights of Christmas, his sister Prisa was old enough to share them. My earliest scene of buying a family Christmas tree is with me, holding Toñito’s hand, and Kathy pushing Prisa in her stroller, as we explored the Christmas tree lot at Devonshire Downs.

Devonshire Downs no longer exists today, but in the mid 1980’s, it was an old-fashioned, rural fairground and horse racetrack, located just north of the campus of California State University at Northridge (CSUN). It was home to the summertime San Fernando Valley Fair, and in the winter served as an open-air holiday market and craft fair, where one could buy Christmas trees, ornaments, decorations, toys, and other seasonal knick-knacks. It was there that Frosty, Toñito Godmother, sold her handmade stepstools, and where we brought our ceramic dip and chip platter from the daughter of his pre-school teacher. During the day, there were always animals to ride or pet, and Santa Claus to visit. Toñito’s eyes would gleam in wide-eyed wonder as we walked between the trees, through the exhibit halls, and along the craft booths. In his high-pitched, child-like voice, he peppered us with questions and speculations. What were those trees called? Why hadn’t Santa brought along elves or more helpers? How tall should our tree be, and how much could he help decorate this year? Prisa would sit in her stroller silently listening to the exchanges and soaking in the sights and smells of the grounds. We always used the same criteria in judging a tree - freshness, height, fullness, and cost - but I never knew from year to year what the deciding factor was. I would stand a tree up and turn it, while Kathy, Toñito, and Prisa studied it from every perspective. Prisa would eye it, while turning her head from side to side. Toñito would note its positive and negative attributes, and Kathy would judge it in silence. Somehow, we always made a selection and purchased a tree. From that moment on, Toñito seemed to bounce up and down with enthusiasm, like a popcorn kernel dancing and hopping in the excitement of a heated skillet.

In those days, the trees had to fit in the smaller confines of our Reseda home, so when mounted in a metal stand they were never over 6 feet tall. However, through the reflected wonder of our children’s eyes, the tree seemed as tall as its Rockefeller Center cousin. With Prisa as our excited audience, I instructed Toñito on the step-by-step process of testing and replacing the tree lights, stringing them on the tree, and evaluating them for evenness and balance. Kathy directed the placement of garland, ornaments, candy canes, and on various occasions, icicle tinsel. As soon as Prisa was old enough to firmly hold the decorative ornaments, Kathy would lift her to a specific branch so that her daughter could hang them herself. The process was halted at various times to change the Christmas record albums, admire our handiwork, and evaluate our progress. Toñito had the job of placing the tree-topping angel on the upper-most branch, until Prisa was old enough to inherit the position. He never begrudged the displacement, agreeing with child-like wisdom, that the baby of the family should always handle and place the Christmas angel.

Toñito’s delight, and mine, was in seeing the sparkle and twinkling of colored lights in the evening, and their reflection off the tinsel and garland. I discovered that we also shared the same fascination with unusual bulbs, when I found him alone one night, privately gazing at the tree we had finished decorating. He was watching the start and the steady percolating of the lone remaining, candle-shaped, bubbling Christmas light. It was the last of a set of 6 Kathy and I had purchased for our first Christmas tree after we wed. Replacements were no longer available, so as each one broke, or stopped bubbling, they were simply thrown away.
“I love watching it bubble, Daddy,” Toñito said to me, innocently, not embarrassed at being caught staring at a solitary light. “When this one stops working,” he continued, returning his gaze to the object of his fascination, “my baby Christmases will be over.”
I had no reply to this plaintive note of intuitive knowledge, so I just sat next to my little boy and joined in the watching of the last light.

Toñito told us that social commitments with friends prevented him from joining us last weekend when we decorated the house and tree, but that was only half of the story. I think he was reluctant to participate in a family Christmas tradition that had grown to include his fiancé Jonaya, because it reminded him of her absence. About two months ago he and Jonaya ended their 4-year engagement. They had been going through a difficult period of adjustment and reassessment, and it culminated in this final and irrevocable decision. Ending a committed engagement and love affair is a personal and emotional catastrophe I can’t even imagine. Kathy and I could only express our love, support, and availability to Toñito, and encouraged him to stay connected to friends and family, and to be active and social. We were relieved to hear that he was taking our advice with friends, but saddened that associations with family traditions caused him pain. The benefit of rituals such as Christmas decorating is in their repetitive actions, which help recall their original meanings and emotional significance. Kathy, Prisa, and I could not be sad too long about Toñito’s absence, with Joe’s enthusiastic ornament placement and Sarah’s observance of her first Christmas rite.

During a break, Kathy and I expressed the hope that Toñito and Jonaya’s pain would ease with time, and that they would eventually see how much they grew from their experiences together. When I shared this sentiment to Prisa, she scolded me.
“You’re being mighty generous, Dad,” she said, fiercely. “I’ll settle for my big brother feeling better and coming back for Christmas. As annoying as he can be, it’s not the same without him.”

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The Dedalus Log

Flights of Fancy

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Forever Young 1

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If the Fates Allow