Oh, The Pain!

Posted on | September 29, 2008 | No Comments

Mama Lou loves corn. She likes popcorn, fritos, cornmeal, cornbread, bugles, corn on the cob… you name it. So when we left Cincinnati with bags of microwaveable popcorn it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was when Mama Lou and Pippi tried to convince me that dried seaweed tastes like chips – with that “delicate crunch”! Ha! I’m good. I’d rather the seaweed used to wrap sushi rolls like the ones we made ourselves when we touched down in Yellow Springs with Pegah and Amanda – our brilliant hostesses.

Our group dinners in these cities are always filled with thought-provoking conversation. I am practicing listening, and I’ve learned so much about myself – in terms of what I feel I can offer to conversations, when I simply want to “look good,” and when I feel the need to defend or attack an idea, concept, or belief. Hearing Tetris share about growing up between Colombia and Massachusetts, living without her mother or father for years, starting school not knowing the language and having a younger sibling that she wanted to protect made me envy her perspective and understanding. “In Colombia, we are forced to be politicized early; it is the nature of living in Colombia. We are bombarded by the politics of America and therefore understand US politics in a way that its own citizens don’t.” Though I am truly as proud of my ancestors and predecessors who are so completely of this land (e.g. my beloved g-dad, Octavia Butler, the Lumbi – my indigenous ancestry, Toni Morrison) as I am critical of their placement here, and displacement, I do not have the “outside looking in” perspective that would provide what I believe is a much more creative (or spiritual) way of living life itself. Somewhere in the conversation someone said: “In this country it’s more about hope than it is about faith.” Ashe, I say to myself. Hope makes one close their eyes tight with hands pressed firmly together, head tilted back in some sort of prayer. Faith is the action – I believe – one takes after hope. You move with faith. People sit on their asses, with remote in hand, 100 lbs overweight hoping a “lose-weight-while-sitting-in-that-same-recliner-and-watching-your-favorite-sitcom-diet (or contraption)” commercial will come on at 2AM. People walk around the track before having to take their children to school, with a few new friends, 100 lbs overweight with faith that the pounds will begin to disappear. I am no longer interested in working with people who are hopeful.

Those who move in faith remind me of a line that is repeated in HURRICANE SEASON: “We have NO time to philosophize peace.”

Amanda tells us that there’s a sunflower field in Yellow Springs. She said that through the course of the day, the head of the sunflower faces the sunshine, slowly facing east, above, west, and below again. We tell Huey she’s gotta go set up the camera and record this transition of the sunflower heads in real time, and fast-forward it for the documentary. She declined. (lol)

The next night we decide to use the fire pit and grill in Pegah’s backyard to prepare our dinner. Amanda’s son, Austin comes over. He’s a vibrant six-year-old. He asks each of us to follow him to the backyard. He comes back in at some point to report that Tetris has discovered a swarm of bees. She comes in. She’s been stung. A bee got inside her pant leg and stung her. We are all shouting out home remedies we know to manage bee stings. I’ve never been stung by a bee before – I ALWAYS run no matter what folks have told me – but I saw an aloe vera plant on a table and suggest they put some on her quickly reddening thigh. I’m told she was brave and moved the log that was home for the bees, far away from the fire pit. Austin coaxes me to go out and sit with him as Tetris goes back to building the fire. I sit on a stump as he shines a flashlight so his mother can locate wood for the fire, and Tetris fans the flame. Suddenly Austin starts shouting something incomprehensible. “Ahhhhhh!!!!” He’s screaming and running toward the house. His mother runs to him and is asking, “What is it Austin?! What’s wrong?!” “A beeeeeeeeeeeee! A bee stung me!!!!!! Ahhhhhhh!” Amanda picks him up and he’s stiff as a board. He’s grabbing right under his belt buckle, at his hip bone. As I watch at a distance, still on my stump, not wanting to get in the way, I feel a pinch on my left arm. I wipe my sleeve and sure enough – there’s a bee attached, holding on for dear life or stuck. I jump up and quietly walk to the house too. As folks run out of the back door to see why Austin is screaming, I’m walking in telling them, “We both just got stung.” It hurts like hell and wish I were six and could warrant the same leniency to scream at the top of my lungs. I hear him yell, “Oh, the pain!” And we all are fighting the urge to burst out laughing. Then he says, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” His mom says, “You should stop talking and take a deep breath in, then out. In, then out.” Then I hear him say, “I need some aloe vera!” Hilarious!

We wind up cooking on the small grill close to the house’s back door and on the stove. Pippi goes to work on some portabella mushrooms, while Huey works on the turkey burger meat. I taste a grilled mushroom and could immediately understand the moniker, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach! Once it was all done, Pippi asks if we want our bread toasted or not, and I think, “The girl just made mushrooms tastier than a juicy steak, can breathe and juggle fire, is a mechanic, and is now asking if I want my buns toasted…” “Lindsay,” I say, “I’ll marry you!”

That night we watched Water directed by Deepa Mehta. Extraordinary! A film about the life Indian (from India) widows and the life they are supposed to lead as Hindus, set during the time of the rise of Gandhi. We learned that people protested the film and threatened her life for wanting to tell this story in her way. It took five years before she could begin shooting again. It is the last in a trilogy that I can’t wait to see parts one and two of.

This is the first of many confrontations I’ll have with religion.

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