Remembering with Mom (Part 3)

Part 3 of "Translation Overload" sneak preview.  Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

May, 2005, home in Washington State, talking on the phone with my mom, in California

            “You remember that?!”  Mom applies strong emphasis to the “mem” of “remember” and I can hear the shock in her voice.  I am now home from the mission trip I had taken to Venezuela, where my “waterfall of memories” poured forth from our life in São Paulo, Brazil, where we lived from the time I was 6 months to nearly four.  I’ve just shared with Mom my memory of the lead up to my graduation from my crib to what she called my “big girl bed.”  Mom is stunned, almost shrieking in disbelief.  “But you were only 22 months old!”

            I’m not crazy.  My friends doubted the auditory and visual extrasensory perceptions, but what about the “waterfall of memories”?  Did they think I been making those up too?  With this confirmation from my mom, would they listen to the rest?

Most of us can remember only back to about the age of four.  That had been true for me too, and my parents had returned to the United States in time for Christmas in 1975, and therefore, just before my fourth birthday two days after Christmas.  Any faint blurs I may have had from our life in Brazil were little cloudy bubbles.  Nothing distinct.  Then I went to Venezuela, ate those black beans at Samuel’s home, and the catalana de recuerdos – waterfall of memories -- came gushing out, in detail.

On the phone with Mom, I describe the inside and the outside of our house in São Paulo, our neighbors’ sticks and plywood shelters across the street, the house of our close friends the Williamsons, and my preschool, both the outside playground up a gravel hill from the little classroom, and the one room classroom, where both the floor and the walls were made of basic wood beams.  I relate with joy the memory of driving the toy push cars at the Williamson’s home with their kids, eating dinner at their home, our maid painting my fingernails in the front yard of our house, Mom reading Monica to me at the little table in our kitchen, and this memory, the earliest, of the big girl bed, at 22 months. 

I tell her I recall being in the back seat behind Dad driving and Mom in the passenger’s seat.  We were descending down a great hill at night time into a glorious span of lights in São Paulo in the “il-bu-car” (toddler for “little blue car” for our VW Bug).  Mom turned around to tell me we’d be going out to dinner and I could order my favorite grilled cheese sandwich and fanta l’arange (orange pop), and “and then we’ll come home and you’ll get your ‘big girl bed’!” 

Mom, astonished, says the memory is returning to her, and she fills in the details: the hill into the city with its “city yights” (toddler for “city lights”) was the return drive from the university Brazilians affectionately call “USPi” (pronounced “oo-sp-ee”), the highly acclaimed University of São Paulo, where my dad was teaching.  We had only one car, which my mom needed, so together as a family we made the daily trek to and from his work.  Sometimes, instead of coming straight home, my parents would stop at the Clube de Campo (Country Club), usually for their monthly payment.  Then they’d stop to eat at the snack bar.  Mom laughs that my memory from toddlerhood recalls the snack bar as “going out to dinner.” 

Home now from Venezuela, more memories are coming, but this time from our early years in San Jose, California, and, unlike those from São Paulo, these memories are hard and tighten up my chest.  I don’t share any of them with Mom this day.  I like our bonding, and I mostly need confirmation that the memories are true, and I am not crazy.  Because I’m still seeing visions and hearing voices, but some severe, and having nightmares too.  A few weeks later, I would also be vomiting and suffering from migraines, unusual for me, and I would soon be calling these three and half months from mid-May to late August, 2005 my “summer in the twilight zone.” 

But this is late May, before I conceive this time as a twilight zone, and what I most need is strength to make it through the nightmares and their chilling daytime effects.  In one nightmare, my feet had been tied up and roped to the back of a car speeding down the highway.  I woke chilled, associating the nightmare to end times persecution within my then-Evangelical consciousness.  I woke with a recollection of a prophesy I thought was in Revelation of two prophets dragged through the streets behind a chariot driven by charging horses.  Perhaps my perception of such a prophesy came from a commentator embellishing an image from Revelation out of a similar image from the prophet Nahum.  I can’t find the prophesy now and don’t know if it exists, but the image fit into my terrified consciousness of the time.

 In another nightmare, a few of us are at a zoo, had gotten lost, were now in the grounds of the lions, and we were trying to find our way out before the lions noticed our presence.  I awoke, sweating, and connected the dream to Daniel, the pastor I had just connected with, and the biblical Daniel, deemed by many to have been another apocalyptic prophet.  Daniel in the lion’s den. What about the young pastor Daniel I just left in Venezuela?  With whom I shared special a mutual attraction?  Is he okay?  What is happening to him?  I became terrified for him, and I kept seeing the vision during the day, and my mind kept expanding upon it and increasing its terrifying nature.  This vision tormented me. 

 These nightmares threw me into Evangelical apocalyptic terror.  Today, I mostly see apocalyptic imagery as metaphor for an internal transformation, akin perhaps to what I was going through at the time.  But in 2005, my evangelical consciousness held too much stock in a great global apocalyptic catastrophe.

 What a time in my life to be gripped by such fear.  Evangelicals have been trained to know the group of people expected to face the worst: pregnant and nursing mothers.  The account in Matthew said to be from Jesus describes climate disasters, wars, the call to flee, and the warning to the most dire group to face that time: “But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing in those days!” (Matt 24:19) 

 Perhaps, I muse today as I admit this fear with shame, that I might have needed to have that consciousness quite literally scared right out of me.  I wonder if that’s what I had needed more than the Prozac, prescribed for my overwhelmed angst, which my doctor had diagnosed as post-partum depression.  The nightmares were purging out of me this internal terror I didn’t know had been gripping me.  Could my anxieties have had less to do with post-partum depression than to evangelical terror of an apocalypse? 

 And this was the life moment to grip me with the greatest terror.  I had weaned my little girl only six months earlier.  Two of my friends in my moms’ support group were pregnant.  Two others were nursing.  All with little ones, once a week, we met at church, chipping in to a pool of funds for two babysitters to watch our toddlers and preschoolers, keeping the babies with us, while we talked, prayed, and helped each other through the drama of raising little ones.   I could not tell them about my apocalyptic fears.  Either I’d contaminate them with my terror, or they’d really think I was crazy.  Probably the latter.  But I needed help, and they were the friends I had been bonding with at that time. 

 “You haven’t been sleeping,” one of them replied to what I had just shared of a couple of memories and, without any details, that I was seeing things and battling nightmares.  “It makes sense that you may be seeing some pretty crazy stuff.” 

 “And you went off your Prozac.  That can throw you into some really wild places,” added another with tired nonchalance.  Really wild.  Maybe that can explain some of the nightmares, but it can’t explain the rest . . . ?   “How about you double up on your meds?”

 A third, who had been listening intently with compassion in her eyes, scrunched her mouth, a little worried over these replies, especially that last one.  Will she understand?   She seems to get that this is real.  Can she offer support?  She took a deep breath, affirmed that I had obviously encountered some powerful experiences, and even ones that had brought me back to childhood. Can she help them see that this is real and I need support?  “I’m not sure we can help you,” she said, shaking her head.  “I wonder if you could find a counselor, even one who specializes in childhood issues?”

 I sighed, frustrated.  I didn’t want a counselor.  I wanted a friend.  But this was my support group for new moms, and what I needed went pretty far beyond how to handle the terrible twos or how to potty training while nursing.  I wanted to know how to manage confusing world of the extrasensory, how to confront the nightmares, and how to honor the “gift” Samuel said I had been given, if that was true, and without getting swept into its never-neverland.  Most especially, I wanted them to affirm that I wasn’t crazy.  But I couldn’t tell them any of that.  So I paused in silence, and then said, “I hear you, but I want the spiritual strength to get through this.”

 The friend who had suggested I double up on my pills nodded.  “How about talking with our pastor?” 

 If they don’t understand, how will he?  That’s what my husband had been wanting me to do too, but I was recalling one of the pastor’s recent sermons when he was preaching on one of those passages of the Spirit’s move among the prophets, and he began fairly apologetically.  “Now we today probably don’t understand this very well, because we don’t see it ourselves, but . . .” and then he continued with the visions of the prophets.  If that’s what my pastor believes, how could he be of help?

 I gave a slight shake of my head and remained silent.  I could think of only one person who could really help.  And he was in Venezuela.  Samuel.

 I had already reached out to Samuel, twice, first in an email, to which he replied with encouragement, and then, in a moment of desperation, at 10 pm on the phone the other night.  He listened with understanding, assured me that Daniel was okay, offered his encouragement, suggested I find a local spiritual mentor, and said that I had the divine strength within me.  “Karina, tu tienes el poder.”   Karina, you have the power.  He spoke with conviction.  Whatever is happening, he understood.  I said I doubted my strength.  Then he spoke again, still in the same warm, soft voice.  “Karina, son las tres de la mañana.”  Oh goodness.  Valencia is five hours ahead of Pacific Time.  It’s three in the morning.  I was horrified.  How could I wake him like that?  I deeply apologized and wished him a very good night sleep.  That conversation at 3 am for Samuel had been about three days earlier, and, as it turned out, it was my last contact with him.

 Hoping to find confidence in the memories, I’m closing my conversation with Mom with a description of our home in São Paulo.  I start with the kitchen, since that’s where we always entered the house, and describe it from the view walking in.  Our small, square kitchen table is to the left, against the wall, with three short, steel chairs on each side.  Our sink is in front of us and the stove is to its right with a kettle sitting on it.  The oven is beneath the stove and I see Mom pulling out pots and pans.  Mom laughs.  “That’s right!  The oven didn’t work!”  The fridge is set against the wall to the right.  Down the hallway to the left was Mom and Dad’s room and to the right was my room, which I also describe with its “big girl bed” against the right wall, a little nightstand next to it, and the closet chest on the left side with my toys at the bottom.  Then at the “back” end of the house was our little living area with a tweed tan love seat and a big black chair with a cushion that sunk down so far that we didn’t use it much.

          “Wow.”  Mom can utter only one word.  She is silent.  I have one final question for her.  All of the homes we entered in Venezuela opened at the front door to the sala, a little living area, small like ours, and then led to the kitchen at the back door.  “Why did our front door open into our kitchen?  Was that normal in Brazil?”  Mom laughs.  “Our front door didn’t work!”  The door had been damaged and got stuck.  Their landlord had warned them that if they tried to open it, they wouldn’t be able to close it again, and if my parents did that, their landlord said with a smile, they would have to pay for a new door.  Mom chuckles, remembering the smile.  It was like their landlord was hoping they’d mess up, try to open the front door, and have to buy a new door for that house.  “So we always came in through the back door!”

             My mom laughs again, goes silent, lets out a deep sigh, and speaks again. “Wow.  I can’t believe you remember any of that, let alone all of that!”

 I’m not crazy.  What a relief.

Continue to Part 4: Misunderstanding with Pastor Tired

Return to Part 2: Understanding from Samuel

Start at Part 1: Translating for Daniel

Translating for Daniel: Part 1 of "Translation Overload" sneak preview

Dear Readers, as promised in my last blog post, the following selection begins my own parallel story of Jasmine, the fictional heroine of the book I’m blogging, “Just like Eve.”  When I finish Jasmine’s story, I hope to write my own – without blogging it – for future publication.  This selection and the following ones will be an intermission from “Just like Eve” and will provide a sneak preview of my own story.  I also hope, eventually, to significantly develop and revise “Just like Eve” and self-publish it as an e-book. 

And now for the first part of what will probably be a four part introduction to my future memoire:

February, 2005

            Sunday morning began like any other: rushing to get our two toddlers, 15 months and 3 years, ready for church and into their nursery and preschool rooms and breathlessly making it in time for the second half of the worship songs.  Settling into my seat, I reminded myself to follow the New Year’s promise I had made two months earlier.  Our pastor had challenged us, in place of a typical New Year’s resolution, to pray for a character gift.  I took him up on it, already knowing the one I needed, from 1 Peter: a quiet and gentle spirit.  Maybe that could get me off Prozac.  My children were sometimes a delight and other times overwhelming.  My older child, frequently throwing himself into rages, threw me into them too, and I was terrified I would one day lose it and hurt him.  Upon hearing my story, my doctor determined me to have Postpartum Depression and prescribed the drug of the day.  It helped, but I hated it.  Please, God, get me off this drug.

A long-time member of our church, Tom, retired, 70s, was invited up to the podium.  He introduced himself as part of a multi-church short-term mission team headed to Venezuela.  My ears perked up.  I had gone on house-building short-term missions to Mexico, and I had kept hearing of other mission opportunities, mostly in Asia and Africa, but I had been yearning for one to the country where I had lived at the very young age of one to four: Brazil.  As a bordering country, Venezuela was close.  My interest was sparked.

“The church is growing Venezuela,” he said.  Missionaries from our denomination had recently trained a few young, new pastors who were leading four new churches the missionaries had planted.  To assist the fledgling churches, four teams would head to the new churches for three weeks in May.  Could I make myself free in May?  The pastor of each church would lead each team to meet with families who had requested prayer; after prayer, the teams would invite the families to come to church.  I preferred to meet physical needs, like food and housing.  My interest was waning.

Tom invited any of us interested in the trip to talk with him after the service.  Then he added one important special request: a fourth translator.  With four churches, four translators were needed.  Only three were on board.  My interest was reignited. 

Translator?  Could I do that?  I had studied Spanish for five years and had studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, enough to achieve some proficiency -- a decade earlier.   Could I be up to the task now?  

It’s you.  An unfamiliar voice from outside of me, yet inside of me, and seemingly so intimately close, whispered.  What is that? You’re the fourth translator.  Who is that?  

The voice spoke with a confidence I lacked, but I mustered the courage to find Tom after church.  I said my Spanish was rusty, but I’d take two weeks to consider it. 

Could we afford the trip?  In May?  I’d have to take spring quarter off from my new position teaching at the university on the non-tenure track (NTT).  But spring is the quarter with the fewest classes, and I was the newest NTT instructor.  I didn’t yet know if I would be offered a spring quarter contract.  My husband and I trusted the money could work out.  I was more worried about the Spanish. 

My two weeks was up.  Still hesitant, I found Tom.  Had a fourth translator been found?  “No.  Can you come?” he pleaded.  “Please, we need you.” 

I bought a bunch of children’s books in Spanish, mostly fairy tales and others I knew well, so they’d be easy to follow, and I read them aloud during bedtime story time to my children.  They didn’t care in the least bit that I was reading to them in Spanish, were as engrossed in the stories as always, seemed to follow them just as well, and I wondered whether they had even noticed that I had switched languages. 

Just as that soft little whisper encouraging me to be the fourth translator was a sneak preview of more to come, so were the memories returning of my earliest childhood in São Paulo, Brazil.  While reading to my children, who were the same ages I was while living there, I remembered sitting on my own mom’s lap at our little kitchen table in São Paulo, while she was reading Monica stories to me in Portuguese.  Monica was Brazil’s Charlie Brown, though a girl and very precocious, the favorite cartoon among Brazilian children of the 1970s.  She’s much more like today’s Dora: intelligent, sweet, and curious, but she gets herself into more trouble, and, miraculously, she always gets herself out.  I was also remembering one of the Monica stories when she and her friends built a rocket.  I soaked in the memory, not yet knowing it was the first of what would become many of my toddlerhood. 

But I also grieved it, sometimes fighting back tears while reading to my children.  I had lost Portuguese.  When I was six, Portuguese was no longer lovingly spoken in my home, and I lost it.  Hence, my own decision to read to my children in Spanish was bolstered, and this language, at least was returning, slowly, but coming.  Nevertheless, I felt entirely unprepared to be the sole translator for the church I would be sent to. 

* * * * *

 I had nothing to worry about.  I was translating for Daniel.  At 32, my age, he was young to be pastoring a church, but so were they all of these new churches.  I also soon learned he was engaged to be married.  I could follow him as easily as my kids could follow our bedtime stories.  I didn’t need to understand Daniel’s Spanish because I understood him.  Watching his expressions, his movements, his mouth form the words, and his eyes, everything that came from him landed into me crystal clear, whether I was on official duty, or we two were alone walking between appointments, or connecting with other teammates during off-times. 

            Some of these were fun banter, like the afternoon while our team was at the home of one of our hosts, waiting for a meal to be served, and a few of us – Daniel, me, and the 20-something Venezuelan male team-members – were hanging out in an open area outside the dining room.  The young team-members, wanting to learn some English, were pointing to various things around.  They started by pointing to some of the objects around us: the water jug, the carpet, the cat.  Then they began asking for some descriptions.  One pointed to my hair and asked, “Rubia?”  My hair is strawberry blond, but I made the translation easy and replied, “Red.”  Another pointed to some of the older team-members who were standing away and engaged in another conversation, and asked, “Viejo?”   I chuckled. “Old.”  Another pointed to himself and asked, “Guapo?”  This time, I laughed, and replied with a complementary tone of appreciation for his physique.  “Haaandsome!  Gooood lookin’!”  Then another pointed to Daniel, tall and thin, and asked, “Flaco?”  Daniel turned to him with a shocked face and smiled a teasing rebuke, waving his index finger back-and-forth in a clear cross-cultural gesture of “No, you don’t!”  He turned back to me and pointed to me.  “No, Karina!”   Then he pointed again to the young teammate in another teasing reproach.  The young men were laughing.  I was giggling.  Daniel commanded our attention. ”¡Karina!”  He pointed to me with a strong command in his voice.  “¡Soy tu pastor!  ¡No!”  I giggled and turned to the young man.  “Lo siento, no puedo.”  I’m sorry, I can’t.  I motioned, palm up, toward Daniel.  “Es mi pastor.”  He’s my pastor.  I looked back to them again.  “El me manda silencio.  Lo siento.”  He orders me silence.  I’m sorry.  I clasped my fingers together and spoke very apologetically.  

Daniel took on a triumphant smile.  “Gracias, Karina.”  I nodded, came up close to his ear, and whispered into it.  “No problema, Skinny.”  He threw up his head, chuckling.  Then he turned to me with a wink.  “¡Recuerdas!  Silencio.  Soy tu pastor.”  Remember!  Silence.  I am your pastor.  I giggled, stopped myself, got serious, put myself into attention, and saluted him.  “¡Si, Señor!”  Smiling, he nodded, then bowed his head in solemn gratitude.  Then he looked back up at me with a warm smile. 

* * * * *

             On other occasions, like after I shared a description of my home in São Paulo or when he showed me a neighborhood dump, we spoke no words and communicated just through our eyes.  Our familiarity was magical.  Did I know him?  

I also felt this with a few of my other Venezuelan hosts, particularly with the head elder, Samuel, a new grandfather.  It was to his home that we went for our first lunch.  The meal was simple but ushered in what I would soon call my cascada de recuerdos: waterfall of memories.  I began with what I usually do: the salad, this one a simple one of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a little onion, lightly seasoned and without dressing, as none was needed.  The special entrée was a small portion of savory chicken.  But something unexpected happened when I took a bite of the black beans.  Tears rolled down my face.  My North American partners were embarrassed.  These tears were unexpected to us all, me especially.  The black beans tasted very familiar, but with a taste I didn’t even know was so familiar.  I learned later the South American way of cooking black beans:  they are soaked overnight, cook for many hours before they are served, and are seasoned with onion, garlic, salt, finely cut bacon, and a little vegetable oil.  At the time, I didn’t know what made them so distinct, just that I had known this taste, had loved this taste, but had not experienced it for a very long time. 

In the coming days, more familiar tastes arrived, along with the familiar sounds on the streets, the sights in the neighborhoods, and the interiors of people’s homes.  Memories from my early childhood poured like a giant waterfall, my cascada de recuerdos, and kept building, filling up my mind with my very early childhood into a remarkably colorful and vibrant picture, one that explained my life and the struggles I faced in kindergarten and first-grade with a culture shock unknown to my parents and teachers.  These will be shared in the future memoire, but some of them are already blogged in my first story of Venezuela and Brazil, especially in Part 2. 

My North American team-mates held a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment over my memories; my Venezuelan team-mates were charmed; Samuel showed special interest; Daniel was especially drawn in.  I kept sharing them with him.  Too many. 

He excused himself when I wanted to share yet another one.  Later, we sat down to lunch, directly across from one another.  I admitted under my breath, while looking down at my un-eaten plate of food, that I was sad he didn’t come to see what I wished to share.  He put his hand on mine, then tapped it, and gently said, “Karina,” then he made sure he made eye contact with me.  “Lo siento.”  I’m sorry.  His eyes said the rest.  I like you too much.

Click here to read Part 2: Understanding from Samuel