What my Eyes could Read: Part 4 and Epilogue

To start this story from the beginning, click here

San Jose, CA, late 1970s, age 7, playroom

            “Colin!  Colin!  Where are you?  Colin!  Why aren’t you coming?!”  I threw my toy car against the wall.  Why isn’t he coming?  It had been too long since my brother had come to visit.  I had called to him the day before, and the day before that, and many other days before that.  By this time, I didn’t even know how many days it had been.

I was now screaming, “Colin!!”  My throat burned red and hot.  I picked up my bear, laid him on my toy ironing board, and imagining Colin within him, I pounded on his tummy.  “Colin!!  Where are you?!  Come back!” One more pound. 

I paused.  Horrified.  What had I just done to Colin?  I picked up my bear and hugged him tight.  “Colin, I’m so sorry!  I promise I’ll never do that again.  Please, please come back,” I whispered into my bear’s ear.  I screamed again, this time at the ceiling.  “Come baaaaack!!”

              Another car tore across the room.  Then another, and another.  One was in the air when the door opened, with Mom peering through the door opening.  “Karina, are you okay?”

            How could I answer?  If I answered it honestly, “Colin won’t come to me,” she wouldn’t understand.  She didn’t know how to pull me into her and have me cry it all out like Dad did.  Besides, she thought Colin was imaginary.

            Quickly drying off my face, I mumbled, “I’ll be okay.”  Relieved, she closed back the door, smiled, and said, “All right.” 

            Colin never returned.  I knew he wouldn’t.  I had pounded him through my bear.

             For years, I felt grief and guilt: grief over the loss of Colin and guilt for scaring him away.  I had also had an imaginary sister.  But she left me when I was four.  I hardly remember anything about her.  I prayed for a brother or a sister until I was 21, then modified my prayer to marry into a big family.  That’s not quite what happened.  I married another only child, but one who carried Colin’s essence.  He had Colin’s playful, curious mannerisms, and with his spikey brown hair and oval face, he looked like Colin all grown up.  About a month after he first asked me out, he popped a tape into his car cassette deck.  Astonished, I exclaimed, “This is bossa nova!”  Outside of our family’s Brazilian friends, I had never met anyone who knew this music, let alone listen to it.  He was at least as astonished as I was and asked how I knew this music.  I shared my background and asked the same of him.  He had discovered it at a youth jazz festival, loved it, and had started learning to play a variation of the genre on his saxophone.  About a year later, we were engaged, and when Mom saw our engagement photos, she remarked in wonder, “You two look like brother and sister!”  My heart burst with joy.

 San Jose, late 1970s, age 7

            “How about ‘Squeaky’?” I asked, holding our brand new puppy, in the back seat of our car.  Mom said she liked names that ended in “y,” so I was suggesting adjective names like “Happy” or “Yippy,” none of which she liked.  Our puppy was non-stop squeaking, so I thought “Squeaky” was perfect.  Not Mom.  “Veto!” she cried out.  We then passed a Cindy’s restaurant and I said, “How about ‘Cindy’?”  “’Cindy’ is perfect!” Mom exclaimed, delighted.  “She has the color of cinders.  Yes, ‘Cindy’ is it!”

            Mom and I had both been begging Dad for a dog, and once he finally relented, we flew out the door looking for one.  We found a sweet, squeaky, cinders-colored, female cockapoo, who became my new best friend.  Not long after that, I made a human best friend with a girl who lived only three blocks down the street.  Soon after that, I joined the swim team.  I was off and running, and swimming, and reading too.  Somehow, Colin knew just how long I needed him before I could begin navigating life in my strange new culture on my own.

 Seattle, WA, 1980s, age 14

            My dad was blessed.  He had only one sibling, but the best kind: a brother only thirteen months his junior, and his best friend.  My grandfather, one of eight children, grew up in Washington state, which drew both Dad and Uncle Bob to Washington State University.  After graduating, Uncle Bob moved to a suburb about a half hour south of Seattle, and not far from many of their dozens of cousins.  Family reunions, usually over the Fourth of July weekend, brought us to the Northwest almost every year.  The summer before I entered high school, Dad and Uncle Bob needed two full days to work out care for my grandmother, leaving Mom and me free to play tourist in Seattle.

Mom asked Uncle Bob for suggestions.  For my boater and fisherman uncle, that was easy: Pike Place Market.  It’s best known for its delicious fish, but also for its unique, crafty shops, antiques, a charming waterfront, a lovely park, and – a big draw for both me and Mom – the Seattle Aquarium and Omnimax Theater nearby.  We left around 10 am and headed onto I5 North.  We passed a sign to Vancouver, BC, and Mom, born in Canada and an alum of McGill University in Montreal, pointed to it and started describing its charm.  We passed another sign to Vancouver.  Had I ever been?  No, never been there.  We passed a third sign, Mom was getting more nostalgic, and we passed a fourth.  “You’ve never been to Vancouver?” 

“No, never.” 

“Karina, we are going to Vancouver!”

This was the 1980s -- you know, before passports were needed to cross into Canada and before cell phones, but not before traffic, congestion, and booked hotels during holidays like the Fourth of July and Canada Day on the 1st.  We arrived in Vancouver in the evening and every hotel we passed read, “No Vacancy.”  My Canadian mom knew we had to head east, and around 10 pm, she found us a little grungy motel with a vacancy in Coquitlam. 

The next day, Mom drove us to the English Bay in Vancouver, where she introduced me to Lox and Bagels, which I’ve loved ever since, and then we walked the waterfront trail into Stanley Park, where we walked and talked for hours, forgetting the time.  It was about 11 pm when we finally made it to Uncle Bob’s, where we found him and Dad sitting in the hot tub.  They tried to guess where we might have gone that had sent us out for so long and took turns guessing various excursions, day cruises, and other outings.  Then my uncle thought he had it.  “You went to a baseball game!” We laughed.  Dad’s eyes lit up wide; his face revealed he knew the answer; he threw up his arm with his index finger raised high and exclaimed triumphantly, “You went to Vancouver!”  “Isso!” Mom affirmed with glee.  That’s it! Together, Dad and Uncle Bob cried out their congratulations in unison, “Parabens!”

Often, girls and their moms go through a testing phase when the girl enters her teen years.  For me and my mom, it was the opposite.  Her surprising, spontaneous getaway with me to Vancouver set the stage for a strong mother-daughter bond and friendship throughout high school and college.  Our bond carried out to my friends too, as many of them found in her a confidante they didn’t have in their own mom.  My mom’s adventurous, youthful spirit resonates with girls in their teens and twenties.  She loves to hear about their adventures, is patient with their dramas, listens well without judging their youthful choices, and is good at guiding them through the turbulence of adolescence.  Maybe she doesn’t get young children, but she gets teens.  It wasn’t until I was writing this story that it hit me: our bond was solidified in the country of her birth. 

On our drive home from Seattle that summer before I entered high school, I vowed into my journal a promise to one day live in the Pacific Northwest.  At 14, I didn’t remember much of Brazil, but I knew the casual, outdoorsy, Zen-like culture of the Northwest fit me in a way I had never found in San Jose.  I kept my vow.  I went away to college in Oregon and then moved to a small town in Washington state, where I’ve lived ever since.

 

Epilogue

            I didn’t start reading until I was in second grade.  But even at the age of three, I had learned to read with my eyes, to make observations, and to begin forming within myself what really matters in life.  A small house with white walls and an oven that doesn’t work is a blessing; large houses and shopping malls are tiresome.  And now I drive a two-seater electric vehicle, symbolizing the simplicity I cherish.  This is the notion that was originally intended to be my driving point, my "thesis," expressed in the story’s opening quote from Luke: What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?

            In the process of writing this story, shared with the other participants in my writing seminar, we discovered my story carries a plethora of themes, and the one my seminar-mates love best is the one of the lonely only child who marries her imaginary brother.  But there are so many more: immigration and culture shock, translation, the seeds to my mysticism, and the quiet and gentle spirit I had at last acquired.  Perhaps it is not that this story needs a thesis, but that this story is my life’s thesis.

Immigrant Identity

            It wasn’t until I returned from Venezuela that it hit me: I am an immigrant.   Not a normal one, of course.  But we moved to Brazil when I was only a year old, and psychologists say that one’s identity is especially formed during the very years I was living in another country.  But no one saw me as an immigrant, so I was neither prepared for culture shock, nor was I understood.

Translator Identity

I heard the Spirit whisper to me in Venezuela that my role there is also my life’s role: Translator.  Often, this has meant translating sensitivity for other backgrounds before my own majority white culture, especially among Christians.  During this pandemic, it also means translating for my fellow liberals our principle of Equality for All to advocate that we "Save Lives" by uplifting Equality for All Conditions, in contrast to what I call “COVID Favoring.”  Lately, it has even begun to mean translating for another time.  But I must also be sensitive, remembering that all things sit within paradox, which can involve a challenge for me: bridling my Irish self from its quick-tempered impulses.

Home Identity

Dad resonated with Brazil; Mom with Canada; and I with a blend, the Pacific Northwest which combines South American zen with Canadian progressive openness.  I then married another only child, a Northwesterner, who beats to the rhythm of Brazil and carries the essence of my “imaginary” brother.  In my 20s, what did I most need?  A husband?  No, a brother.  Such fulfillment can be challenging in a marriage, and we are working through that, but it is also endearing.    

Early childhood Identity

            Some who have heard my impressions at the age of three have been skeptical.  Could a child so young have been so perceptive?  As one whose very early childhood memories have been confirmed by my mom, I am convinced we underestimate small children.  I’ve read Developmental Psychology texts on early childhood and would write some of the portions differently.  In one selection, the “expert” psychologist was explaining the “ego-centric” paradigm of young children.  The author told the story of two four year-olds who were playing on the play equipment at the park, while their two mothers were sitting on the park bench watching them.  One of the children fell, and the other child ran to the park bench and reported to his own mother what had happened.  The textbook “expert” explained the four year-old was too “ego-centric” to tell the “right” mother, the playmate’s own mother.  No, that’s not it, I thought, recalling what it was like to be four.  This four year-old was not “ego-centrically” choosing the “wrong” mother to tell.  This four year-old was telling the person he could trust, the one to whom he could safely be the messenger of bad news.

Newest Identity with a Quiet and Gentle Spirit

            My trip to Venezuela also brought an order to me from my North American Mission Director in words very similar to those that open my book, Just like Eve, which sparked my own quest and my book.  And it was in Venezuela where the whispers of mystery began.  I never could have trusted these without two factors: (1) Mom’s confirmation of my waterfall of memories.  If those were accurate, perhaps so were the whispers. (2) My “imaginary” brother who stayed with me until I was 7.  Few children have their imaginary friends stay with them until an age old enough to imprint such a strong impression.  That mine did gave me more trust than most have in the messages coming from another dimension.

My waterfall of memories answered my prayer, and the newly discovered whispers of mystery told me to quit my anti-depressants.  This took courage and faith in whispers so new.  But I listened.  I have been off of them ever since.

 What my eyes have learned to read

A quiet and gentle spirit cannot come by needing other people to understand me.  I continue to think in one paradigm, while living among those who think in another, and though I’m learning to translate, I know my translation is limited, as is the capacity of others to hear it.  And, to be fair, my Irish spirit can also mess it up at times.  I will, then, be often misunderstood.

And that is okay.

And now I know it is okay,

Even misunderstood, I can now maintain a quiet and gentle spirit.

What my Eyes could Read, Part 2

If you haven't read Part 1 yet, click here

Valencia, Venezuela, May, 2005

            My lack of a quiet and gentle spirit clearly presented itself with my North American teammates who gave me, their translator, what I was calling “translation overload.”  But my spirit quieted considerably with my Venezuelan teammates.  At a natural break between activities, one of my Venezuelan teammates, Armando, brought me into a private room, turned on the CD player and began playing David Bisbal’s “Silencio.”  Silence.  The first lyric: Ya no tengo palabras.  I have no words left.  The first lyric to the chorus, booming in volume: Silencio / Eterno y mudo.  Silence.  Eternal and mute.  The next line of the chorus: Como el recuerdo.  Like the memory.  The chorus continues with the repetition of its title: Silencio.

            I knelt like Mary, one of the sisters of Bethany, sitting at the feet of Jesus, with tears streaming down my face. The song kept repeating the word I needed, Silencio.  Meanwhile, its chorus expressed the word flowing into me, recuerdos.  Later that evening, one of my North American teammates was also like Mary’s sister, Martha, quietly but firmly reprimanding me for escaping my job to listen to music.  I simply nodded in silencio.

            The song had affirmed my silence and it encouraged my memories, which I referred to as my catalana de recuerdos, my waterfall of memories.  These were sparked by the tastes, the sounds, and the sights of the neighborhood of my Venezuelan partners.  They began on our first day, when one of our Venezuelan partners hosted lunch at her home.  The home felt familiar; it was middle-class and similar to ours in São Paulo, Brazil.  Roughly 600 square feet, it had a small sala, a little living space at its entry, then a round kitchen table, followed by the kitchen, and two small bedrooms to the left.

The meal included a little chicken, a side salad of sliced carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and the main dish, black beans and rice.  The black beans had been cooked longer and slower than we North Americans are used to.  They had likely been soaked overnight, which releases from them a rich flavor in a natural and savory broth.  They also tasted familiar, likely having been prepared similar to the way they had been prepared in Brazil, with a little vegetable oil, onion, garlic, salt, and a touch of bacon, very finely cut, and barely visible.  Only a few bites of beans initiated my catalana de recuerdos.

São Paulo, Brazil, mid-1970s, as recalled through my catalana de recuerdos

The taste of the rice and beans dish returned me especially to our dinners with our family friends, the Williamsons.  These were very close friends of my parents, with whom they had attended school in São Paulo.  Lucky for me, the Williamsons had three young children of their own; as the second youngest of four, I fit right in.  Unlike our house, their house had a special room just for eating, with a long wood table, long enough to seat all eight of us.  The Williamsons had a generous driveway for play and metal cars with pedals that we could get into and drive all by ourselves.  At the time, I didn’t know that the cars worked like a sitting bicycle.  All I knew was I could get in one and drive it.  Power! 

Other recuerdos flooded too: our trips to the beach, the park, my dad’s office at the University, and the Clube do Campo, the country club, where we often met the Williamsons and other friends.  I remembered the play equipment for climbing at the Clube do Campo and its snack bar, where I always ordered grilled cheese and Fanta de laranja.  It took many years in California before I learned the English term for this drink: orange pop.  But I found North American orange pop disappointing: too sparkly and not sweet enough.

The catalana de recuerdos brought me to recall Mom playing the “little piggy” game with my toes in Portuguese.  She carried out the littlest piggy’s cries of “wee, wee, wee all the way home” with suspense and drama: E esse porquinho, esse porquinho, esse porquinho chorou, “Cui, Cui, Cui, Cui, Cui” todo o cominho de casa!  Other than games like these or reading to me in the children’s books she had picked up locally, Mom spoke to me mostly in English.  And if I was in trouble, the language was always English.

Dad spoke to me mostly in Portuguese, and he kept pleading with me to speak the right language, fala en português, menina, fala en português.  Like most preschoolers, I replied in the language easiest for me: English.  But Dad was patient with me, and my cascada de recuerdos had me relishing in the memories of Dad swinging me, kneeling down to tickle and wrestle with me, and even comforting me in my crises, pulling me into his arms and reassuring me: Chora tudo menina, chora tudo.  Cry it all out little girl, cry it all out. 

Valencia, Venezuela, May 2005

Recalling Portuguese through my catalana de recuerdos may have prompted me to take interest in the dialect of Venezuela, this neighbor to Brazil.  I discovered the dialect of my teammates to be not only more enunciated than I was used to, but also more Brazilian.  Having visited Northern Mexico many times and having studied abroad in Oaxaca, I had become acquainted with the dialects of both Northern and Southern Mexico.  I had never heard the number two, dos, sounding more like the Portuguese dois.  Nor had I heard the number seven, siete, pronounced more like the Portuguese sete, which ends with a “che” sound.  That led me to notice my Venezuelan teammates often pronounced the “t” sound more like the Brazilian “ch.”  When I shared my observation of their Brazilian accent with Daniel the young pastor and leader of the Venezuelan team and his key elder, Samuel, their faces lit up.  They thanked me, saying that a Brazilian accent is prized in Venezuela.  Then they returned the compliment and anted up: Tu tambien, You too.  My accent, according to them, sounded less like an American’s than it did a Brazilian’s!  Verdad? Hijole!  With great grins, they repeated Hijole, a popular expression of amazement in Southern Mexico.  I could read their eyes: in Venezuela, it’s not a common idiom, but they had heard it, and were charmed by my use of it.

Valencia, Venezuela, a few days later

A twin home to mine in São Paulo.  Never would I have dreamed the Spirit had worked that plan into my three week mission to Venezuela.  But Someone was creative.  For my prayer for a quiet and gentle spirit to be granted, my catalana de recuerdos needed something very tangible – like a replica of my own house.  Three days shy of the conclusion of our mission, another of our Venezuelan teammates hosted us in her home, a perfect twin of my own home in São Paulo.  Entering this house so knocked the wind out of me that I could barely stand and had to be escorted outside for a drink of water.  The hostess graciously permitted me to tour through her house with her and a few of our teammates and to compare her house with the one I had lived in.  I had us start from the back of the house with the hostess’s back door, the one that opens that into the kitchen, and I explained, a little embarrassed, that our home opened at the kitchen.  I shared where our small, square kitchen table sat against the wall to the left, with three short, steel chairs.  Our fridge was in the same location as the hostess’s, as was the stove, and the kettle for boiling our dirty water, and the oven, which didn’t work, so I said Mom used it as storage for our pots and pans.  Daniel’s eyes grew big.  I then took them to the “back” of our house with the living area.  It was small, had a love seat and a big chair with a cushion that sunk down, but we didn’t spend much time in it.  Next came my mom and dad’s room, which had a bed on the left and, just like the hostess had, a cabinet closet.  I apologized that I remembered little of my parent’s room,  as I was rarely in it.  Daniel cast his face down, sad. 

We then moved to the other side of the hallway, where my room had been, and I remembered it well: on the right, next to the wall was my bed, a twin bed, and next to it was a little night stand with my books on it.  Then on the left side, I also had a cabinet closet, like the one the hostess had.  The English word “armoire” is far too sophisticated for these simple closets made of cheap wood, two doors opening from the center, and no drawer at the bottom.  But, upon opening the closet, mine had a shelf at the bottom.  My mother stored clothes for me on top and toys at the bottom, mostly stuffed animals, the dolls and accessories of Monica, Brazil’s most popular cartoon character of the 1970s, and then the most special items: a stash of toy cars.  I didn’t tell them why these were so special: they were the favored toys of Colin, the brother I had who other people called “imaginary.”  I teased with my teammates that I didn’t know cars were “boy’s toys,” and that it was a good thing no one had ever told me that.  Daniel smiled and nodded, appreciating my innocent tomboy spirit.  Then he asked about the color of the walls.  I thought for a moment and replied, Blanco.  White.  He lifted his head, struck, and his eyes gazed at me.  I could read them.  Daniel knew my story was true, my house was authentic, and it carried the humble quality of middle class homes of the 1970s.

            The following day, we drove down one of Valencia’s main avenues, one just like mine in São Paulo.  On the left side of the road were middle class homes, those 600 square foot casitas like ours, and on the right side were slum homes, which in Brazil were called favelas.  Since there were only a few across the street from our home, these would probably not have been assigned the term, favela.  But, other than freedom from crime, these structures were more dilapidated than most in the favelas.  These shacks were barely held up with scraps of wood, tarps, and slats of floppy, tin shingles, collected from the dump.  The mish-mash of materials collected from various dumps left openings that couldn’t protect their residents from the rain.  Our neighbors across the street cooked outside; the children were barefoot.  At three, looking across the street, I wondered, Why don’t they have a house like mine?

If you travel to Latin or South America today, you won’t see many of these. 

Today's poverty appears extravagant to that of the 1970s. 

While not from Brazil, these approximate what I saw across the street.  
But remove the background, as the shacks sat alone along a countryside, 
with open dirt behind. 

Source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/10/1a/5c/101a5c63232bcde2b5448baf256f8770.jpg

 Ellensburg, WA, May 2005, on the phone with Mom

When I returned from my three week mission to Venezuela as one of the translators, I called Mom to give a report.  When I shared some of my memories from Brazil, she was struck by their accuracy.  To the one of my move into a “big girl bed,” she exclaimed, “Karina, you were only 22 months old when we did that!”

I also had a question for her: In Venezuela, the front door always opens to the living space, and the back door is for the kitchen.  Was it a normal house plan in Brazil for that to be the opposite?  My mom laughed.  “Our front door was broken!  It wouldn’t open.  So we always came in through the back door!”

That Mom responded with such astonishment and joy became an important blessing.  This bonding with Mom over my catalana de recuerdos from São Paulo proved to be an essential prelude to the memories that were about to come, now that I was back in the United States: my early memories, from ages five to seven, in San Jose, CA.

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.
Continue to Part 3

What My Eyes could Read, Part 1

For what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?

(Luke 9:25) 

Sunday, December 26, 2004, Ellensburg, WA

            “Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?” Our pastor opened his sermon with this question and then followed it with another: “Did you ask God for any character gifts?”  If we had not, he encouraged us to do so in place of a New Year’s resolution.  I knew exactly the one: “a quiet and gentle spirit,” a quality I had come across earlier in the year in 1 Pet 3:4.  Between my anxiety, insecurity, insomnia, Irish red-headed temperament, and post-partum depression, I was far from having a “quiet and gentle spirit.”  Both a new mom and a new college instructor, my juggling act overwhelmed me with anxiety.  My husband tried to help, but he worked long hours.  With no energy, I needed us both to do what I could: limit the words and maximize the understanding. 

“I can’t read your mind,” he complained. 

“You don’t have to read my mind.  Just read my eyes!” 

“You’re an English teacher.  Can’t you speak English?” 

No, I’m spent.  Can’t you just read my eyes?  And speak with yours too?

Before the sermon was over, I had resolved to pray every day of 2005 for a quiet and gentle spirit – something I sure did not have at that time.  Nor had I had it growing up in San Jose, California, where we moved from New York state when I was five.

Late 1970s, San Jose, CA

A song had come out about San Jose less than a decade before we arrived.  But the song described a town I have never known.  “LA is a great big freeway,” begins the song; then it shifts to San Jose: “You can really breathe in San Jose.”  Really?  Perhaps in 1968, when the song first came out, you could.  But by the late 1970s, everything had changed.  San Jose was the most important city giving birth to an up and coming, thrilling new world, soon to be known as Silicon Valley.  Dad had arrived in time to be among the first of the “Yuppies,” Young Urban Professionals.  They were young, brilliant, well-educated, and handed a career and a salary previous generations had known only through sweat, years, and seniority.  Dad moved us into a wealthy section of San Jose to work as a computer engineer at the new national headquarters of the especially high tech, high powered company of the 1970s, IBM.  He had caught the American Dream. 

            And I was miserable.  Maybe I was a “poor little rich kid” with a huge three story house and lots of stuff, but few friends, busy parents, and no siblings, except for the little brother who other people called “imaginary.”  We were all “latch-key” kids in my town, like the Peanuts’ kids who live in a world of few adults who speak in muffled mumbles.  In that world, you’d better make friends, or you’d be like me, a bewildered stray.  Small and shy, I was ridiculed at school, mocked for not cursing, last picked for PE, and teased for my red hair and freckled face.

            My teachers observed me in a world of my own.  I wasn’t reading, talking, or following directions.  In kindergarten, this was accepted.  Colin, my brother other people called imaginary, sometimes joined me in my kindergarten classroom, especially if I went into the kitchen room, our favorite spot.  My teacher had the classroom set up with different spaces: a large carpeted area where we all sat down for the ABCs and a full class story, read by the teacher; a project area with long tables for arts and crafts; a math center with another long table for instruction and activities with numbers; the “kitchen” room in the corner with a play stove, fridge, and other toys where Colin liked to join me; and a reading space in the corner, but I didn’t go there much because I couldn’t read.  Even though I didn’t make friends in kindergarten or connect with my teacher, I tolerated kindergarten, in thanks to the kitchen room and Colin’s company.

            That changed in first grade.  By this time, I was expected to do that mysterious activity other people could do: read.  Colin had stopped coming to visit me at school, I had no kitchen room, and I was overwhelmed with many kids in a classroom so small.  I tested smart, baffling my teachers.  But, thankfully, it wasn’t just that I wasn’t reading or following directions, I also wasn’t talking – and that was my first grade teacher’s in to get me into speech therapy.  I loved my speech therapist, a kindly gentleman with graying hair, glasses, a warm voice, and eyes that peered into mine with a sparkle of tenderness.  The other three kids in my speech therapy class smiled, chuckled, had wide eyes, and, like me, were hesitant to speak, had to work at it.  We liked each other, trusted each other, and never mocked each other.  Without speech therapy, I’m not sure how I would have survived first grade.  The funny thing is it wasn’t speech therapy I needed; it was the therapist and the other kids in the class.  I started following directions, I started talking, and the following year, I started reading.  I had to take summer school after first grade to avoid repeating it.  But, in thanks to speech therapy, I did not flunk first grade.  It worked.  But no one knew why.  No one could offer an accurate diagnosis of my condition: culture shock.

February 2005, Ellensburg, WA

Two months after I began praying for a quiet and gentle spirit, a member of our church came to the podium and announced a three week mission trip he was hosting to Venezuela.  Little did I know that this mission trip would answer my prayer for a quiet and gentle spirit by taking me down memory lane to my early childhood in São Paulo, Brazil.  Although I had been born in New York state, and we moved to San Jose from there, New York was also not the place I knew.  The one I knew was where we had lived when I was one year to four years old: São Paulo, Brazil.  My parents had both spent their youth there and had both attended the American São Paulo Graded School.  Fluent in Portuguese and a Computer Engineer, Dad accepted an opportunity to teach Computer Design at the University of São Paulo.

The host of the mission trip to Venezuela announced that he had already recruited a number of teammates and was inviting more.  He also had a special request: a fourth interpreter.  The team was going to serve in four churches, needed four interpreters, and had only three.  I had taken five years of Spanish, had studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, and felt it burning within me to be that fourth interpreter.  But nine years had passed since I had studied Spanish.  Could I do it? I shared with the mission trip host that I’d pray about it.  Two weeks later, I asked him if a fourth interpreter had been found; he said no and would I do it?  Yes.  With three months to regain my Spanish, I set myself on a crash course with my old Spanish textbooks and a set of children’s books in Spanish that I had already read in English.

May, 2005, Valencia, Venezuela

            As it turned out, what really broke the language barrier while I was serving as an interpreter was not my study of Spanish, but my mystical bond with my Venezuelan teammates, especially Daniel the young pastor and team leader and his main elder, Samuel.  When language was a barrier, our eyes filled in the rest.  We could read each other’s eyes.

            My North American teammates, on the other hand, could not get on the same page with either our Venezuelan teammates, or with me.  When one of our Venezuelan hosts apologized for forgetting an essential dish to complement the meal, one North American partner said to me, “Tell him it was better he didn’t bring it.  There was a lot of food.”  I knew what a South American would hear from those words: “the food was no good.”  So I had to cover her tracks and translate, “Thank you, but don’t worry.”  

Meanwhile, the North American leader had much he wished to say.  He often approached me with yet another conversational topic to raise with our Venezuelan teammates.  I could see their discreet head shakes and their eyes just slightly cast down, conveying the message Ahora, no.  Not now.  So I mimicked their cues to my North American leader, who responded by repeating what he wished for me to translate.  Clearly, subtlety was not working.  I tried a different tact: an ever so slight lift of my finger toward my mouth, hoping he might catch a “shhh” signal.  No.  He repeated yet again what he wished for me to translate.  This, unfortunately, made me lose my South American subtlety and brought forth, instead, the Irish in me.  It’s a tendency I have to this day: if subtlety doesn’t work, my Irish self takes over, and I overcompensate.  I gave him a glare and a reprimand: “Not.  Now.”

            That evening, he reprimanded me: “Respect your elders.”  I apologized, explaining that I had “translation overload.”  I’m not fluent in Spanish.  Could he let me rest a little more?  Thankfully, he agreed and began to reduce his requests.  But he never learned what “translation overload” really meant: if the words had to issue forth from my mouth, I wanted them neither insensitive, nor ill-timed.  I was in a Catch-22.  Do I “respect” my North American leaders by revealing their insensitivity or do I remain sensitive to our South American partners? 

            Lying in bed that night, I started to recall similar misunderstandings throughout my life.  South American subtlety is not easily replicated in North America.  Despite my mom’s time in Brazil, subtlety has never worked with her.  Nor has subtlety worked with my husband.  Nor, of course, did it work in speedy Silicon Valley. I was beginning to see why I had been so out of place in San Jose and why, throughout life, a “quiet and gentle spirit” had so evaded me.
            The contrast between my Venezuelan partners reading my eyes with my North American partners who could not follow my words was only just the start to that quiet and gentle spirit that had so evaded me.  What spoke even more deeply were the sights, sounds, and tastes that ushered in what I began to call the catalana de recuerdos, the waterfall of memories.

      ~ End of Part 1.  To be continued . . . 
© by karina, 2020.  Please use with permission or a citation. 

Continue to Part 2