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 a year old 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 cascada 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

Understanding from Samuel: Part 2 of "Translation Overload"

Dear friends, what follows is the second of what will likely be a four part sneak preview of a memoire I think I'll "Translation Overload."  Click here to see Part 1, "Translating for Daniel," and if you'd like to see another facet of this time in Venezuela and the memories that accompanied that time, click here to begin another four part series.

Beauty and terror.  No middle ground.  Mother Nature kept changing her mind.  Throughout our time in Venezuela, bursts of thunder, lightning, and heavy downpours of rain raged between moments of gentle warmth with blue skies and a brightly shining sun. 

I love thunderstorms.  Electrons are popping off in a charged atmosphere, hence the lightning, and I feel the electricity surging through my own body.  None of us North Americans had thought to bring an umbrella for a mission trip in May, but our Venezuelan hosts were too kind to us -- too kind, that is, for me.  A few of our hosts sacrificed their own umbrella for us us, gratefully accepted by my other visiting teammates.  Please, may no one offer one to me.   I wanted to walk through the streets drenched like Daniel and the young men.  But head elder Samuel, the one who had served the black beans that ushered in my waterfall of memories, graciously offered his to me.  With his round face and big, warm smile and eyes that dance, Samuel carried a lovely childlike warmth about him.  As a grandfather to a four year old, the age my son had just turned, he felt like a father to me and acted as one with the offer of his umbrella.  How could I refuse?  I compromised: “solomente si contigo.”   Only if I join you.  He smiled and held the umbrella for us both.  If I had to be covered from the glorious energy of a thunderstorm, at least I did so with my father figure Samuel.

 At night, I was battling a life-long familiarity: insomnia.  I had mistakenly left my Prozac, prescribed for my Post-partum Depression and to help me to sleep, at home.  But this time, the sleepless nights were elaborating on the waterfall of memories, which came to life more vividly at night.   I was shown my toddlerhood in São Paulo, Brazil as a place of warmth where I had felt loved and at home.  There, my family was living a life without wealth, but a slow and peaceful one, quite different from our later rich and fast-paced life in Silicon Valley.  An epiphany was dawning.  Was this why I had felt so lonely and overwhelmed in San Jose, wasn’t fitting in, and had to take summer school to avoid repeating first grade?  Could I have been in culture shock?

 Although the memories brought me healing at night, the day time called for much strength.  My legs were so unsteady one Saturday morning while trying to walk into our hotel’s breakfast room that I almost fell, but, thankfully, my hotel roommate caught me.  Don, our main leader, witnessed my near fall, pointed to me, then up toward our hotel rooms, and said, “Rest.”  “They’ll be without a translator,” I said.  “I’ll call Daniel and let him know you need to rest.  He’ll understand.”  True.  He would.

             While resting in my hotel room, another thunderstorm erupted.  I opened the shade to watch the downpour, see the lightning streak across the sky, and listen to the bomb-like blasts and drum rolls of the thunder.  I had been ordered to rest, but wasn’t sleeping.  This was my chance.  Free of the umbrella, I left my hotel room and went outside to the storm.  The thunder was loud and the lightning was bright, but the rain was gentle and the air was warm.  As I walked away from the high-rise hotels and into a residential zone, I was getting wet, but not drenched, and the warm air tingled on my wet face.  Living in the Pacific Northwest, where rain usually comes with cold air, this warmth on my wet skin felt invigorating.  The exhaustion of lost sleep was gone, and strength was built into my legs.  I almost felt like I could defy gravity and levitate through the electric air. 

When I came to a fairly open field on the other side of the street, I watched the lightning show of bright lights streaking from one end of the sky to the other. Then my eyes took on an unknown sight.  I could see beyond the lightening and into the heavens.  Waves of purple, blue, lilac, and magenta, spotted with little bubbles of yellow and green, spun together into a stunning and artistic spiral. An aurora borealis?  I had never seen an aurora before, and I knew this wasn’t the time and place for one, but the photographs I had seen by those who had captured these magnificent heavenly events were the only comparison I could make to what I was seeing in the skies, but this aurora, behind and beyond the lightning, seemed like a stage set backdrop for the performers of the dancing lightning streaks.  No, not an aurora, I thought.  Heaven.  And I marveled.  Who is this Choreographer? 

Yes, Heaven.  Another of those mysterious whispers had just arrived.  But you think heaven is the afterlife.  No, heaven is here.  With you.  Now.  This was the same soft voice that had whispered that I was to be the fourth translator.  It had been right; no one else had stepped up to the plate, and, I smiled to myself, I was the right one to be Daniel’s translator.  Could I trust this whisper too? 

            The thunder, the lightning, the aurora vision, these new whispers, telepathy with Daniel, and the waterfall of memories kept building, to my amazement, and ushered in a three and a half month period that I would later call my “Summer in the Twilight Zone.” 

            The day following the aurora vision was a Sunday, Mother’s Day, celebrated as such in both the United States and in Venezuela.  Daniel’s church put on a grand Mother’s Day celebration, led primarily by the youth.  As the mother of two very young children, one who had just turned four and the other a year and a half, I was torn between missing them and feeling relieved to be liberated from their needs.  My husband and I had both felt this trip would help treat my Post-partum Depression better than any drug, and that impression was proving itself to be true. 

The celebration began with a drama presentation of mime to a song playing in the background.  The scene began to our right with a boy about twelve lying on his bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.  Like me, he was suffering insomnia.  Then a woman entered from our left, with a slow backward jazz walk to the slow paced rhythm of the song.  She began to mime anger through her contorted face and index finger pointing toward something in front of her.  Still with a backward jazz walk, she bent her knees lower.  The youth continued to toss and turn.  The music picked up and a man entered also from the left, also with a jazz walk, but this time forward, with more speed, and straight legs.  They mimed a fight.  The youth continued to toss and turn.  

The scene brought me back to my 5 and 6 year-old self in San Jose of my own parents fighting soon after we had moved there.  I wondered if that’s when my insomnia had begun.  If only we had stayed in Brazil.  The song progressed into a peak of quick, strong beats.  So did the fighting.  Then the song slowed, as did the fighting.  The parents shook hands and walked to the child, one parent on each side of his bed.  Each parent took one of the child’s hands and lifted him up to a sitting position.  Then they lifted him off the bed and took him into their arms and a full family embrace.  The song closed with the words Estás en casa.  You are at home.  

I was breathless.  The drama presentation had just confirmed and reinforced the epiphany.  Here, in South America, I was at home.  I fell onto my lap.  Into my journal a couple of years later, I recorded the moment as feeling “like I had entered a place of Harmony, as if everything, including me, was interlinked with everything and everyone.” 

A rocking, rhythmic whooping that celebrated each mother attending the service concluded the Mother’s Day Celebration, led by a youth musical team singing, clapping, and playing the drums and tambourines.  Orchids, Venezuela’s national flower, lined up the center aisle.  Two teens, a boy and a girl, stood at the front holding flowers.  Another young man, appearing to be about 20, led as master of the ceremony calling out the names of the mothers one by one, preceded by a special beat of about four measures, and then followed by another beat as long as necessary for the mother to dance through the center aisle to receive her flower.  The mothers were called in alphabetical order by first name, each starting, lovingly, with “Mama.”  Half way through this rocking celebration came my turn.  The familiar four measures of beats ran through while the mother who had just received her flower was returning to her seat.  “Mama Karina!” cried out the young MC, while casting his hand, palm up, toward me.  I was included.  None of these young people had met me, but someone must have cued them to the presence of every mother in the room, including me.  In San Jose, I had been so invisible, but here, where I thought I was a foreigner, I belonged.  I was en casa, at home.  A dancer myself, I hopped up to chassé to the drum beats and finish with a chaine turn at the end to accept my orchid, a lilac one, reminiscent of the aurora. 

            After the service, Samuel, smiling big, approached me.  He said the Spirit had prompted him to watch me during the drama presentation, that he saw my chest fall into my lap, and that the Spirit spoke to him that I had been granted a gift, a gift of the Spirit, a concept believed in charismatic churches, but not generally in those of our denomination.  His comment came as a surprise.  Were those “gifts of the Spirit” real? “Viste el cielo, no?”   You saw heaven, right?  Yes, sort of.  I thought, still confused.  But not in the way Samuel probably meant, and not at that moment, but the day before, in the sky, during the thunderstorm.  How do I explain this to him? 

            I tried to affirm what he witnessed was a powerful moment for me, and that I had felt like I had seen heaven, but the day before during the lightning storm when I saw colors, like a— I paused.  How do I translate “aurora borealis”?  I said I didn’t know the word in Spanish so I spoke it in English.  His eyes and face lit up as he exclaimed, “Aurora boreal!”  Beaming, he added that I had received a great gift.  I couldn’t make sense of Samuel’s expression, but perceived something ineffable taking place. 

I was silent for a moment and then shared with Samuel that I had a question for him.  A couple of days earlier, Daniel made himself absent for our next appointment, letting one of the others lead in his place.  Most of the team-members, both North American and Venezuelan, had also taken a break, me for my near fall and the others for sickness.  But Daniel didn’t look sick.  When he returned, I asked Daniel if he had been sick, but he assured me he had not been; all was well.  He was calm, pleasant, and returned to normal, except a little more distant from me.   Could it be, I asked Samuel, that I was Daniel’s “sickness”?  Samuel threw up his head and laughed.  “Siii!  He chuckled. Verdaaad!”  Yes, that’s right!  Still chuckling, he asked if Daniel was also a “sickness” for me.  Also chuckling, I had to admit that Daniel was indeed a “sickness” for me too.  Beneath the whirlwind of my memories and the paranormal, my attraction to Daniel had been somewhat buried, but his telepathic eyes of interest clicked my own awareness on that I felt the same way.  But my reply to Samuel was simple: I also love my husband.  “Bueno!”  Grinning, Samuel promised that he and the elders would be praying for me and supporting me right along with their support of Daniel. 

            Little did either Samuel or I realize at that moment just how much support I might need, and for more than just Daniel, and especially from Samuel himself, for no one in North America would understand what was about to come for me upon my return to the United States.  The Summer in the Twilight Zone was about to amp itself up, and like Mother Nature, hold two distinct states.  Beauty and terror.

Continue to Part 3: Remembering with Mom

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

Embarking on the Hero's Journey while Married

           Alas! To be human!  We find ourselves in a constant battle between our need for security, our longing for freedom, and the authenticity of our hearts and souls.  These run surface to deep with security demanding our immediate attention, then into our longing for freedom, and eventually, if we're blessed, into our deepest, most evasive layer: our most authentic selves, what I will call our “heart-soul identities.”  Beyond this already challenging set of forces, we further complicate our battle with our shadow self (our pride, surface-level desires, ignorance, and so forth), which do provide additional clues to our heart-soul identities, but these are clues and not answers.  To discover our heart-soul identities beneath these pressures is no easy feat.  It is what mythologist Joseph Campbell has famously called the "Hero's Journey."

           Meanwhile, we’re also called to be responsible, and not only for ourselves, but also for those around us, some of whom may still plead for security.  This becomes especially tricky in marriage.   We marry for many reasons, usually in our youth, and before we’ve transcended into a place where we can embark on the journey into our heart-soul identities.  Our deeper longings rise up later, and when they do, our need for security starts to fade, while the journey takes center stage.  By divine mercy, this process often happens with synchronicity: both partners around the same time are blessed with the chance to grow together into the new people they’re discovering themselves to be. 

          But what if this synchronicity does not happen for both partners?  What if we begin it while others still wish for us to keep them secure?  Or, even trickier, what if they will be really hurt if we long for freedom?  Not wishing to hurt the people we love, we are faced with a true quandary.  Do we follow our authentic self and embark into the journey's murky depths?   Or do we provide the security they are crying for?  Do we show them that we don’t wish to hurt them by sacrificing our deeper calling?

            No single answer can solve this quandary, and it is this one that Jasmine and Davie are each facing in the book I’m blogging Just like Eve.  I made my job as their author easier by making both of their marriages childless.  Should they choose to follow their deepest selves, leave their marriages, and potentially, though not necessarily, come together, they will not be revoking any responsibilities to any children that neither of them has.  They may, however, be revoking their responsibility to their spouses, to the vow they’ve been conditioned to believe God wants them to keep, and to their own wish to avoid hurting their spouses.  As their author, I had also made a promise to myself from the beginning to keep all four spouses well-intentioned.  There was to be no easy out for either Jasmine or Davie.

            These two also face yet another complexity: the distinction between their surface-level desire for one another (often called “lust”) and their genuine soul-bond at the root of their heart-soul identities.  The church can see only what it would call their lust, and it can’t see their soul-bond as part of something much deeper.  The Hero’s Journey each of them is beginning (for Jasmine to be free to “think at odds” and for Davie to be free to follow his own dreams) are supported by one another, but not by their spouses.  Therefore, their relationship is tied into their authenticity, but their marriages are not, something their families and church communities are very unlikely to understand.  Both Jasmine and Davie must discover it for themselves and search for a path toward it that still honors their spouses.  What a task I have given to myself as an author!

 

And little did I know I might walk into some of this myself.  My own marriage is coming to an end, officially in March.  Naturally, my own life story at this critical moment complicates my work of completing Jasmine’s story.  It seems fitting then, to follow the suggestion of my writer friends, who have been asking for a spin-off into my own story.  Next month, I’ll do so for the portion from my own life that is not recent, but goes far back, and is the only autobiographical parallel that was planned: the “no-contact” order.

 

I will be quiet about any recent parallels, except what I will now share in this single paragraph. After a lengthy time of soul searching and marriage counseling, my husband and I made a mutual decision to shift from marriage to friendship in keeping with mentor Ethan’s perspective on a “successfully completed marriage.”  Of this, I can express only a piece of my own part of the decision.  Similar to the quandary facing both Jasmine and Davie, to support and celebrate who my husband is and how he is wired, I had to stifle an important part of who I am and how I am wired, including the mystic within me.  Just as Jasmine says her husband Tim is like a rock and she is more like a ball rolling further and further away, I am also a rolling ball.  My husband is far more politically progressive than Jasmine’s husband Tim, and mine is less like a rock than he is a branch on a tree, able to sway in the wind, but still needing to be firmly fixed to the tree, which for him remains tied to the evangelical tradition that we were both married into.  Now separated from him and almost divorced, I am now finally finding myself free to identify myself as a mystic.  I no longer need to straddle, as expressed in 2013 in The Evangelical and the Mystic.  The mystic's journey dives into waters that for a traditional evangelical, at least within the context of marriage, are too complex, too "heretical," ("other thinking") -- which, like "liberal" ("open-minded") should be a good thing?  I will always love the man I married as my soul-brother, a bond you can read about in the same story that introduces the pastor for the autobiographical premise to Just like Eve.

 

This is all I will say about anything recent.  Next month, I’ll start sharing the story of my connection with the pastor behind the no-contact order that I received for the same reason Jasmine received hers: a mutual attraction with a pastor and a request for accountability.  This order is the premise of the storyline for “Just like Eve,” and it’s one I’ve imagined could have two responses from critics.  Some will shrug it off, as I received quite a few apathetic responses: of course I had been cast out.  Why should I expect different?  (Uhhh, what the Bible says . . . ?)  Others will cry out against the premise as “unrealistic.”  They might say no church would ever order a woman out of church for a mutual attraction with one of its pastors, let alone if both she and the pastor, individually and privately, took the very steps the church teaches its adherents to take: to request support and prayer from the church leaders.  They’ll claim it couldn’t happen.  I beg to differ.  It happened to me.  I’ve heard I’m not the only one.  In my case, it wasn’t the pastor’s church, which dearly loved me, who gave the order, but the leader of the church team of my ministry.  And I didn’t even get a kiss out of the deal.  (Dang!)

 

In fact, any of the instances in “Just like Eve” of church patriarchy that are most likely to make readers cringe (the no-contact order, the prayer, and Dr. Dobson’s reply to Jasmine's inquiry) are all autobiographical and nearly verbatim to the messages I received from their counterparts (including the actual Dr. James Dobson).  My own leaders meant no harm, but their fear prevented them from a response in keeping with biblical principles and within the spirit of humanity.

 

You’ve already met the pastor from my own parallel story, and if not, you can do so now, while also discovering my soul-brother bond with the man I married and why I married a soul-brother rather than a soul-mate, and ready yourself for my own parallel story to the premise, coming here in March . . .  

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

Update, a few days later: I began drafting the story a few weeks ago, but to really tell it, I need to relive the memories.  I'm reading through my old journals . . . breathing through my old journals.  I may or may not have a piece of this story ready by March.  We'll see.  As all of us have been learning through this pandemic, we can't expect or plan for anything, can we?  

Autobiographical links:

The pastor for the autobiographical parallel and soul-brother husband

The Evangelical and the Mystic

Just like Eve links:

Introduction to Just like Eve

The no-contact order

Jasmine like a ball rolling away from Tim the rock (& her inquiry to Dr. Dobson)

Ethan on successfully completed marriages

Davie kissing Jasmine

The elder’s “prayer” over Jasmine

Hibernation

Dear readers, in case you are following the book I'm blogging, Just like Eve, I am close to completion, have hoped to post a selection for it at least every other month (alternating with another post on off months), and this month would be the month for the next selection.  However, when I began writing the book in late 2017, I was not expecting I might walk into portions my own fiction.  Through much loss and change, I find myself paralyzed, mute.  Perhaps I am in a season of hibernation.  At the beginning of this month, an astonishing downfall of snow collapsed upon my region.  I can't call it a "snowstorm," for it was too quiet, too gentle, too beautiful.  But when we all woke up, we found ourselves buried.  I reflected on the metaphor of it for me, and here's what came . . . 

The creatures of fur follow the signs of Nature

We creatures of skin run to and fro

no matter Her works of beauty or terror

 

Snow coming, forecasters warn

The furs, ready, hibernate

The skins, deaf, go about their day

 

All afternoon, snow surprises

dumping,

dumping,

softly,

quietly,

deceptively

 

The day still young

the sky turns dark

Snowflakes stream,

glistening the blackening sky

in lights of white

haloed in orange

 

Any who slow themselves

who sit

who watch

fuse with the flakes in stillness

 

5 am, calls go out

Schools are closed

Businesses are closed

Roads are blocked

All are snowed in

 

What if calls come the night before?

Or before quitting time the day before?

When the creatures of fur,

with no forecasters,

are already nestled in hibernation?

 

“Take My yoke upon you,”

says the master,

“For My load is light, and My burden is easy.”

Racing about, we wonder how

 

Could we hear the wisdom of the furs

who follow the signs of Nature

and work when it is time to work

play when it is time to play

rest when it is time to rest

and who know there is a season for outings

and a season for hibernation?

 

I of skin,

used to the race,

am paralyzed, mute

Could I learn from the furs?

Could I learn

of a time to speak,

a time be silent,

a time to walk,

a time to rest,

and a season to hibernate?