Mysteries without Answers

             After a decade of debrainwashing, I hit an impasse.  “Debrainwashing” is what I called that process of lifting, layer by layer, the conditioning I had been taught by my family, education, religion, and society at large.  In some way to and to some extent, I was finding each layer false.  Whatever I had been taught was not, in fact, true.  I had fallen into the rabbit hole, taken the Matrix red pill, and the more untruths I uncovered, the more I found.  I had hit that point that every genuine truth-seeker eventually arrives: is there anything we can know to be true?

            If you take any paradigm to its natural conclusion, you hit its delusion, its opposite.  You will prove it wrong with your own paradigm.  My heroine of Just like Eve took the training she had been given by her church to its conclusion and exposed the lie based on its own teaching.  Although her church condemned Eve, Jasmine read the Bible the way her church taught her to read it and found Eve heroic.

Physicists are doing the same thing.  While probing the mysteries of science, they are undermining their own laws.  Their own tools and methods are proving their science to be false. 

In Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller shows the same for the scientist she follows, David Starr Jordan.  He had faithfully followed Darwin’s scientific philosophy, faced despair, and only conquered his despair by discounting his own philosophy, yet not admitting it.  Taking his own philosophy to its conclusion, he had declared “Nature no respecter of persons,” yet he overcame his despair with an opposite manifesto: “That which is in man is greater than all that he can do.”  Of this Miller says, “It was the kind of lie he promised he would never tell himself.”  Later, she demonstrates that Jordan undermined Darwin’s philosophy when he, Jordan, declared certain persons “unfit,” even advocating for their sterilization.  Darwin, however, had adamantly insisted this is Nature’s job.  Not man’s.  Darwin warned men not to interfere with Nature.  Jordan, a devoted follower of Darwin, did just that.

My own truth-seeking under the paradigm I had been taught also led me to its natural conclusion.  I had “wrestled” for years with the “God” I had been taught, particularly “his” cruelty that extended even to commanding genocide.  In my moment of emptiness, like Nietzsche, I declared this “God” “dead.”  Although the death of this “God” was a relief, I was now left with the greatest of mysteries: What is the realm just beyond our senses?  Is there an Intelligence within it? Does this Intelligence care about us, in our world?

My impasse into emptiness was mirrored by my external life. Within two years (2021-23), a mere blink, I had lost my marriage, my career, my two kids off to college, and even our two cats, the first to my former husband and the second to my daughter.  It was also during this blink that I left the church and the “God” it taught, though continued to follow its teacher.  Just has my inner life had morphed into emptiness, so did my outer life into an empty home, no longer a teacher, wife or mom with kids and cats at home.

My blank slate drew me into discoveries new yet old, ancient, in fact, that had lain deep within my own intuition.  Having studied the wisdom of other traditions, I was aware of the ancient maxim, As Above, so Below, along with its corollary, expressed, for example, in Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas, to “make the inner as the outer,” or that our internal self is reflected by our external life.  My own life demonstrated this to be true.

Meanwhile, I was finding synchronicities everywhere, a remarkable universal harmony among all things, and that what I sow I also reap.  It often comes many years later and in ways I never would have imagined, but in some way, sometimes happily and sometimes sorrowfully, in my own lifetime, I reap what I sow.

Still, mysteries without answers remain.  Maybe I reap what I sow, but does everyone? I’ve longed to see it confirmed, yet meet another impasse.  Bullies keep bullying and the bullied keep getting kicked.  How do wealthy narcissists who exploit others to make themselves great again and again continue to win in the game of life? 

True, occasionally, some rich bastard gets his due, locked up for some white collar crime, with his mug shot plastered over the evening news, and the rest of us celebrate that this crook who had stolen from thousands finally got what was coming to him.

But the story, reporting the conviction of this crook, masks all that’s behind it.  Who are the crook’s friends?  Superiors?  Colleagues?  Was he just a fall guy?  For a much bigger empire?  A pawn of a mafia?  My longing for revenge upon the hateful persists. 

Then there are the kind, lovable, oppressed, exploited, abused ones who have done nothing to receive such abuse, then die a cruel death.  Again, no answers. 

I think about the little boy in a favorite story, who stands amidst a vast mass of starfish washed upon the seashore, throwing a few, one by one, back into the ocean.  A passerby, perhaps a teenager who’s been stomping on the poor starfish to his twisted delight, mocks the boy. “You can’t save them all.”  The boy picks up another, tosses it into the ocean and says, “But I can save that one.”  This little boy will reap what he sows, right?  Some day, someone might save him too?  And what about the teen who’s been gleefully torturing other starfish?  Will he also reap what he sows?

I wonder whether I can’t see the “reaping” for the people I find hateful because I find them hateful.  Seeking vengeance, perhaps I’m not intended to enjoy the chance to see them get their due.

Could the Universe be testing us?  Are we given exceptions to the sowing and reaping law to keep the mystery alive?  We see exceptions, point to them, and say to ourselves, “It’s not true.  What we sow, we don’t reap.  Look at them.”  So what do we do?  We start sowing bad seeds to our own delight at the expense of other people, because, why not? 

Given that we all intuitively believe what goes around comes around, we’re challenged with the exceptions.  Will we follow our intuition and try to sow kindness?  Or, will we be tempted to follow the exceptions that tell us it doesn’t matter, that we can do whatever we want?

With plenty of reason to doubt, many quit bothering to try.  Others persist in the hope for a reward and get disappointed when the “return” seems elusive or takes a long time.

That’s me.  Staying true to my intuition of its truth, I’ve tried to live it, and often, the “reward” comes barely in time to avoid a crisis.  Could this be because I’ve expected one?  If I were more like the boy who casts a starfish back into the ocean just because he can “save that one,” would the return appear more readily?  Perhaps to me, the Universe has shrugged, “Yeah, yeah, you sowed, so you’ll also reap, because that is how the Universe works, but you since you did it for a reward, you’ll have to wait for it.  You’ll have to wait so long, you’ll doubt it.  Then it can be known whether you’re willing to sow even if you don’t reap.”

Imagine a friend of the boy, also casting back starfish, who hears the boy’s reply that he can “save that one” and, in sheer delight, pipes in, “And it’s fun to throw them back!” 

These two boys aren’t saving starfish because they think one day they’ll also be saved.  They are sending the starfish back in a moment of joy.  They delight in saving starfish.  Maybe we also can delight that there are some mysteries without answers.

 

© 2024 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

Misunderstanding with Pastor Tired (Part 4 of "Translation Overload" Sneak Preview)

Dear readers, this selection is the fourth and final part of a sneak preview to a future memoire I think I will call "Translation Overload."  To start from the beginning of this four-part series, click here.

 At home in Washington State, June, 2005

            “I think I have an exaggerated case of ‘reversed culture shock.’”  I had just sat down, awkwardly, in the chair before the senior pastor of my church, mid-50s, balding.  He’s a hiker in good shape, but has been asking the congregation for prayer over pain from a foot surgery gone wrong.  It’s late in the afternoon, 4:00, and his face looks worn.  Perhaps he is tired from a long day or suffering in his feet.  Had I been more wise and less desperate, I would have suggested we reschedule. 

I had planned my first line with him very carefully.  At least this idea – that disconcerting feeling upon one’s return from a mission to another country – could be a simple way to ease into the more challenging dialogue over the nightmares and the extrasensory I had been experiencing since returning from a three week mission trip to Venezuela.  I was about a month into a 3 ½ month period I would later call my “summer in the twilight zone.”  My friends, unable to provide the council and support I sought had urged me to make this appointment with our pastor to receive his more expert spiritual council.  

How was I to describe the remarkable myriad of the extrasensory I had begun to experience in Venezuela, then glorious, and now continuing, yet with terror?  In Venezuela, these had been beautiful: the waterfall of memories from my toddlerhood in Brazil, the aurora vision, and the loving whispers of mystery.  Now at home, these continue, but they are also tainted with painful memories, nightmares, migraines and vomiting, and demanding voices.  While the whispers of mystery are lovingly repeating Samuel’s words, ”Karina, tú tienes el poder” (you have the power) to encourage me away from the Prozac and toward the divine forces within me, other voices in a stronger volume are sending apocalyptic warnings and ordering me to pack suitcases of supplies for immediate evacuation from some sudden disaster.  Hoping Pastor Tired can reinforce the whispers of mystery encouraging me into divine strength, I forged my plan last night: omit any apocalyptic fears and begin with reversed culture shock, then move to the memories, then shift to the nightmares, and close with a request for council and prayer. 

            Pastor Tired looks blank.  No nod.  No expression of understanding.  He’s led mission trips.  He must know what reversed culture shock is?  For all of the previous mission trips I had participated in, the leaders had prepared us not only for the potential of culture shock upon entering the country of service, but also of the common experience among many to face “reversed culture shock” upon the return.  This happens when you come home from a mission trip, having accustomed yourself to the foreign country, possibly loving it and learning from it, and you return a changed person and disoriented in your own country.  At 16, when I returned home from my first church-sponsored mission trip to Mexico to build houses, I felt my breath leave me as I walked up to my three-story house and opened the door to exceptional spaciousness.  Our green tiled front entryway was about a third of the size of the homes we had just built, but this space before me was just an empty entryway.  To the left of our entryway were two staircases, one up to the four bedrooms, bathrooms, and a small linin room, and the other down to the family room, a third bathroom, laundry, and garage.  To the right of the entryway was our kitchen, ending with a space for the kitchen table.  Behind the entryway and straight in front was a living room and to its right was a full dining room.  Since the family room had the TV, we didn’t use the living room much, and it was about the same size as the full houses we had built for families of six and seven.  Why did my family of three need this house?  Some of my teammates were asking similar questions, sparing me from that lonely experience of processing these questions all alone, as we supported one another.           

Today, sitting in the pastor’s office, I am twice the age I was then, and I had accurately described my reversed culture shock as “exaggerated.”  This time, it carries the unexpected “waterfall of memories” from my toddlerhood in São Paulo, Brazil which I enthusiastically begin to share with Pastor Tired.  Might he perk up upon hearing of the flood of memories from the ages of two and three that had poured into me while I was in Venezuela? 

No, he slumps in his chair with his head bowed down.  Still desperate, I persist.  “One memory even goes back to 22 months old,” I tell him, hoping for an eye of interest.  “And all the memories from Brazil were very positive, loving, joy-filled.  But now I am back in the United States, and I’m getting more memories, but these are from my childhood in California, and they are painful, making my reversed culture shock exceptionally strong.” 

            Pastor Tired’s head is now bent even lower.  Has he heard me?  I shift my body in my chair and take a breath.  Everything I’ve shared he should comprehend. Wouldn’t any pastor or leader of a mission trip understand reversed culture shock?  I have since discovered that many of them don’t.  Four months later, this same pastor took a mission trip to somewhere in Africa, and he returned to report a cacophony of obstacles and how relieved he was to be back where the roads are paved and people don’t make a living by blocking bridges and bribing you to cross them.  More open than many among the white clergy, he advocates for people of color.  But in Africa, he faced no reversed culture shock.  As I listened to his story, I reflected that the notion that some of us might be more disoriented upon our return from a mission must have been as foreign to him as the country he had just come home from. 

            The hour was getting late, 4:30; I had to get to the point.  “I’m not sleeping, and when I am, I’m battling nightmares that are also haunting me during the day.” 

Still slouching with eyes off to the side, Pastor Tired conveys polite impatience.  I’m not crazy and have a genuine need for support.  Can he please listen? 

“I’m also vomiting and having migraines,” I continue.  Then I add a detail I had not planned.  “Until now, I had experienced only one migraine in my life: on the night of September 10^th, 2001.”  I emphasize the “10^th” and the “1.”  Finally, he turns to look at me, but with eyes of irritation and in a voice like a teacher to a middle schooler who had just misbehaved.  “And what makes you think that’s relevant?” 

“What I’m going through is not normal.”

 He releases a tired sigh.

 He thinks I’m wasting his time.  How can I prove my need for support is not superficial, but genuine?  Now at home, speaking English to an English-speaking pastor, I should no longer be suffering the translation overload I was in Venezuela, where I was translating for teammates who wanted me to translate culturally inappropriate messages or at times when the culture calls for silence.  While there, I coined that term, “translation overload,” though I never defined it like that for my teammates.  I just apologized that I had “translation overload” when I refused to translate.  But now, speaking English, I realize I can also suffer from translation overload in my own language. 

Longing to be taken seriously, I shift to the nightmare of getting lost in the lions’ lair at the zoo, the reminder of the nightmare to the prophet Daniel in the lion’s den, the name Daniel of the pastor in Venezuela I was translating for, and the attraction between me and Daniel, for which, on one day, Daniel needed to take leave for a couple of hours. 

Now I have Pastor Tired’s attention.  His eyes, no longer looking away, dart straight into mine as piercing swords.  “You think a pastor was attracted to you?” His eyes glare at me, and he shakes his head, skeptical and annoyed.  “And why do you think this?” 

            Why is he pursuing this extra detail to take us off the trail of our conversation?  I’m feeling at least as annoyed as his darting eyes reveal him to be.  I did not come for Daniel.  I came for counsel, prayer, and support for the post-mission trip whirlwind.  But, tinged with insulting skepticism, Pastor Tired is driving us onto an unnecessary tangent. Why had I kept this appointment?           

Finally, I do what I should have done from the start.  I let out a deep breath, shake my head, look at him with eyes just as straight, and reply with confidence.  “His head elder confirmed it.” 

He rolls his eyes, shakes his head back and forth, and sighs with a groan.  His face scrunches up and I can see the question written all over it.  Even if true, why would the elder admit it?

           It is almost 5 pm, and finally I have some clarity about what to do.  I pick up my purse, thank him, and say, “That’s not why I came.  I’m praying for your feet, I’ll bother you no more, and I’ll look for support elsewhere.  Thank you.” 

* * * * *

            I wish I could say that this misunderstood dialogue cured me of my naivete toward the thinking patterns of North American religious leaders, but my desperation for support ran too deep, and I had been conditioned to believe they were the ones to provide it.  In my thinking, an attraction, especially a playful bond like the one Daniel and I shared, was natural and something to be enjoyed and celebrated, not something to fear or run away from.  My heart and soul, especially with the early childhood memories confirming it, were certain that something very significant had happened to me in Venezuela, and I had to pursue whatever it was.  

The whispers of mystery faithfully carried me through that summer in the twilight zone, and the divine forces concluded this period with yet another confirmation that arrived on the morning of August 30: my agonized perception of a disaster occurring at that moment, while I was camping in Oregon, away from any news reports.  After we left the campsite, we learned a hurricane was flooding New Orleans, and it was about to kill almost 2000 people.  Hurricane Katrina.

             My perception of Katrina was the final one of a visual or physical nature of that summer.  But the whispers of mystery have stayed with me ever since, and during that summer, they were faithfully reassuring me, especially with the echoes of Samuel (Karina, tú tienes el poder) and Daniel (Karina, soy tu pastor!).  Daniel spoke in jest when he called me his pastor, to prevent me from telling his friends the English word “skinny,” a word they intended to taunt him with.  But now, the same words, Karina, Soy tu pastor were whispered in truth and with tenderness by my own divine forces.  To them I was to turn, and to the scriptures, as a solitary seeker.  

That was 17 years ago.  I listened to them and I learned from them, and I have remained mostly silent about this story ever since.  But that is changing.  Outside this blog, I’ll begin crafting this wild story of the summer in the twilight zone, the translation overload, and the murky workings within the patriarchal evangelical church.  I hope you’ll join me in encounters like this with Pastor Tired, including my first-hand discovery of that odd, cultish term I had my character Ethan explain here in “Just like Eve”: “entrusted to a pastor.”  With each interaction with a religious leader, I continued to discover that I was hitting an extra sensitive button for the male clergy in the evangelical tradition.  Many carry a buried fear of what I would call a natural bond of attraction, for which they apply a very different term: “lust.”  Oh how childlike my perception was!  While their inclinations may need to be faced, for a playful bond of attraction, which view is likely to be more natural, authentic, and grounded in truth?  Childlike I may have been, but today, sobered and triumphant over the unnecessarily complicated “adult” way of thinking, childlike I choose to remain.

"Translation Overload" sneak preview Part 1 

 Part 2 

Part 3

My other story of my time in Venezuela and the memories of Brazil

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