My backyard

I was born in a little fishing village on the north coast of Honduras. My family immigrated to US when I was almost four. I grew up in NYC, attended Catholic schools, went away to university, and have lived all over the northeast, south, southwest, St. Louis, and now in the SF Bay Area.

I came to CA for a gig in the software industry during the late-90s boom. The job ended in January, a little over a year later. It was a very cold winter in the northeast. I decided to stay in California. I have blossomed here.

I wrote this piece during a trip to my native village. I spent a month having some maintenance done on my house. My house is a modest adobe house on the very spot where I was born. The Caribbean Sea is my backyard.

It’s Only Sand and Water

It rained so hard last night inside and outside that I began to envy Noah. At least he got a warning. To top it off, the power went out, my laptop battery finally died, and I was powerless to soothe myself with gentle music, inspiring song, or the opportunity for deep, reflective journaling. I looked forward to morning. Surely the sun would come out and the power would be on.

It got worse. The tarps that the roofers had secured to the back part of the house gave way. It was raining buckets into the kitchen and bath beneath that section of roof. I began to doubt God’s promise to Noah – no more water.

I have an unreasonable number of pots and buckets. I positioned them strategically to catch rain. The containers failed to be enough to hold back the flooding in my kitchen and bath. I could barely sleep, dreading the mess I would have to clean up in the morning.

It wasn’t yet 7 when I heard the roofers hammering and the sound of water pouring. I got up to open the door so that they could get their tools, locked inside for safekeeping. The roofers were bailing water, by the bucketful, from the roof tarps. The kitchen was as bad as I feared. Overflowing pans, muddy floors. … I went back to bed.

My rest was disturbed by my roofer calling to me. More money! Irrelevant why. Since I was up, I walked to the trucha (bodega) to get a phone recarga (add money to the pre-paid calling card). As I walked back just a few minutes later, I noticed that the sun was fully out. The gently damp dirt road belied the force of the night’s rain. I returned home to face the dreaded cleanup. It is Wednesday. Last Friday, Angi (housekeeper) had told me that she would be back on Monday. I have not seen her since. Like most of the town, she is celebrating Semana Santa (Holy Week).

I opened my door. It’s as if someone had been there in my five-minute absence! The floor was completely dry. The soaked ceiling panels were almost dry. The dripping tarps, dry. The muddy floor, just a few small mounds of sand. The only work for me was the work I created by my doubt and worry. I had pans and buckets to empty. Everything would have been perfectly fine had I truly practiced my belief in God. The sun had cameth in the morning. The muddy mess of the dark, scary night was only sand and water.

The power was out for several more hours. I wrote this in my hammock on my iPhone. It felt good to write and it felt good to remember that fret and worry are always optional.

I paid the 33% discount senior rate when I went to Trujillo this morning to go to the bank. I love fringe benefits.

As I entered the bank, I saw my childhood friend, Elvia. She was seated in the special seating area for senior citizens. Elvia’s face beamed when she saw me. We hugged and exchanged niceties. She patted the seat next to her and invited me to sit. There were four rows of seats. As each person was served, everyone moved over a seat and snaked their way to the front of the line.

Everything at the bank has to be double-checked, triple-verified, and quadra-confirmed. When it was finally my turn the cashier graciously asked, “What can do for you?”

I said, “First I want to deposit this check, and then I want to make a withdrawal.”

“One thing at a time, please” she said, smiling her bright, well trained smile.

She quadra-confirmed my cashier’s check, front, back, sideways, and backwards. Then she asked a passing colleague, “Can we take these?” The colleague asked, “How much is it for?” Young cashier shrugged, not having figured it out yet, despite all the checking. She handed the check to colleague. Colleague double-checked – front and back and said, “Ye-es, I guess, but you should get it approved.” Young cashier excused herself and went to the supervisor’s desk. Supervisor triple-verified, quadra-confirmed, said a few words, pointed, signed, and waved young cashier off. Smiling young cashier returned to her counter, punched in some stuff, looked up, and said, “Your account is expired,” I looked at her in puzzlement.

“You haven’t had any transactions in over a year,” she said.

“So I can’t make a deposit?” I asked.

“The deposit is no problem, but making a withdrawal is.”

She printed something out and said, “Sign, please.” “Go to the Informacion Desk; they will reactivate your account, and come back here. Don’t wait on line, just come back up to the window, and I’ll make your withdrawal.” Sounded reasonable …

The information cashier was busy confirming the sides on her take-out order, “Potatoes? Oh, then that one has no potatoes; oh, bread? …” It took about two or three minutes before she finished and acknowledged me.

Reactivating my account took about 25 minutes. I got my new bank book, returned to the teller. There was a whole new group in the seniors’ area. I stood a discreet distance from the woman who was transacting at the cashier window. I swear, everything takes forever! After about three or four minutes, I could feel an awkward tension. I knew I was being watched. I decided to say something to the man who was in the next-to-be-served seat. (It’s one thing to pop in ahead of someone quickly, but a whole nother thing to do so after an extended wait; too much like cutting in line.)

“I’ve already waited in line; I had to go take care of something at the information desk. She told me to come to the front of the line.”

“Well, go to the front of that line,” the Garifuna gentleman pointed to the regular bank line, “that’s where you belong.”

“No, this is the line I waited in,” I said.

He said, “That was before. It’s crowded here now, and there’s only one cashier. The regular line looks long, but there are four cashiers. It’ll move faster, and this line is for the elderly, pregnant women, and the like”

I smiled, politely thanked him for the compliment, but otherwise pretty much ignored him. Having clearly lost my attention, he started complaining to the man in the next seat. The two “elder” “gentlemen” egged each other on; indignation grew. The men insisted that I not have a turn at the senior window. The second gentleman protested that I don’t appear to be pregnant, or handicapped, and I don’t have small children. He motioned to the woman seated three seats down. She was nursing an infant while a toddler did sloppy cartwheels in front of them. I thought of saying something, but I was kinda enjoying the unintended flattery. Finally, the woman at the window finished her transaction. The cashier waved me to come. The Garifuna elder jumped in front of me, slammed his passbook on the counter and loudly protested – “What’s the point of the senior window! They only give us one cashier! It’s nice to have the seats, but then they just let anyone in here! No, she cannot have my turn! She is not qualified to use this service!” As the amen corner groaned their support, he turned slightly to face them. As he did, I slid my new bankbook to young cashier.

“Call security!” he shouted. Someone did.

One of the guards stationed outside the bank door came in, toting his rifle. He assessed the situation, turned, and left. The crowd would not let up! Young cashier, clearly uncomfortable with divulging my personal information, spoke through clenched teeth, “She has the age.”

I held up my ID.

“1951! That would make you 63 years old! You’re not even fifty!” A roar of awe waved through the audience. Garifuna elder persisted, proclaiming that I had borrowed someone’s ID, just so that I could cut in front of him in the senior citizen line.

“It must be your mother’s or somebody’s!”

“It’s just not fair to take advantage like that!”

He stood over me the whole time that young cashier counted out my withdrawal. Wanting privacy, I tried shooing him away, but he was so incensed that he did not appear to notice the stack of 500-Lempira notes piling up in front of us. I quickly gathered my money and left him shouting at the window. I turned back and stuck my tongue out at the second elder as I sauntered haughtily past him. The tension in the room dissipated. The whole room erupted with laughter. As I passed her, an elder woman, tugged at my shirt, politely asked, “Really dear, how were you able to borrow an ID?” I paused then replied in a loud, soft, whisper, “I didn’t borrow it … I stole it!” Louder laughter exploded as I exited the bank.

The best fringe benefit of my age is not looking it.

Who knew?

Actually, my aunt, Ketcha had warned me. “Don’t give away your old zinc!” she said. “There’s a man that comes around in a truck on Friday. He will buy it from you! Those people! Those people will all come around asking for a piece or two. Don’t give it away! Sell it to that man! He comes every Friday! He’ll buy it from you. Okay.” That’s what Ketcha told me, with as much passion in her voice as I have noted by punctuation.

It turns out that what passed as variously rusted sheets of tin roofing (laminas) are as good as gold in these parts. My first evidence this morning was when I visited my cousin’s very fancy house in Santa Fe. Her walls looked awful. Water spots everywhere, many cracks and even a few missing chunks. The ceilings here are 24”x48” panels. There was a prominently missing panel adjacent to the fancy ceiling fan in the middle of the room. The remaining panels in the room were sagging, and the crown molding was leaning this way and that. It turns out that her roof had leaked for years. My roof was at least five years away from that level of deterioration.

True to my aunt’s admonition. The day that the roofers came to measure, my next door neighbor, Edna, whispered to me, “Let’s talk about those laminas. Not now, later, okay? I need a few for my kitchen. In the rainy season it’s really hard to cook.” Edna’s kitchen is a clay stove just outside her back door a few feet across from the multi-surface cistern that serves as her water tank, washtub for clothes, kitchen sink, food preparation counter top, and baby bath. Three years ago, the new kitchen had a thatched roof, as did the house. The kitchen is now covered by old zinc sheets supported on a few sturdy branches cut from hardy trees. It is open on all sides; one side being ocean facing. I have watched Edna cook on a windy, rainy day. The flames dance and peek around her rustic cookware. Yes, the kitchen can, indeed, use some shelter from the storms.

As the work got started on my roof, people stopped me on the street to ask if I would be selling the laminas, or how much I’d be charging. Some just asked me to save them a few. Neighbors and friends, indios from the surrounding mountains, even the lady who walks through town selling tortillas every evening stopped by. “Save me five,” she whispered in a hushed voice and a huge smile. She had never spoken to me before, never stopped by my house with her delicious tortillas. I only got to purchase them when I happened to be at my sister’s house when she stopped by with her basket of goodies.

I said “You know they’re not perfect? They have holes, you know.”

“I know, but save me five, please.”

My favorite inquirer was a man on a very big saddled horse. He wore a big white cowboy hat and a Bowie tie – lanyard thing. He looked like someone from a 1940s ranchera movie – kind of like a Mexican Marlboro man.

I had no idea what a fair price would be for a zinc roof sheet. I asked a long-time friend, Tonia. “It depends. Some people sell for 50 (lempira – about $2.50). Sometimes they go for 25 or for 30.” When I say friend, I mean sort of; not the life-long, trusted opinion kind, but rather the hang out on the porch or play some BINGO neighbor kind. I just needed to get some scope of the market. l had paid about $10 to $15 for the laminas when they were brand new. I asked my sister. “It depends,” she said. “On what?” “It depends.” “Is 40 or 50 a good price?” “It depends.”

I was not out to get top dollar for the laminas. Until my aunt’s admonition, my concern had been how to dispose of them in an ecologically sound manner. I passed Tonia on the way back from my sister’s house. “I think I’ll have an auction,” I said.

“Auction! Who ever heard of auctioning laminas? That’s not done.” Her tone punctuated her statement with an unspoken, “Dummy!”

The Mexican Marlboro man came by twice. The first time I told him that many people wanted the laminas. “Will you take 25 lempira for each?” he asked, ignoring my response.

“I don’t know what they’re worth,” I replied.

“Let’s make a deal. I’ll take all of them for 25 each. “Some of them are not that good, but I’ll take them anyway.” Let’s say 30 each,” he insisted.

“Thank you. I’m still deciding how to sell them in a way that is fair to everyone. Everybody wants some. I’ll decide when all of them are down and I can see them better.”

“When will that be?”

“Monday. They should be down by Monday noon.”

Early Monday afternoon, Mexican Marlboro man comes riding up on his big horse. “Buen dia.”

“Hola.”

“It’s really hot today.”

“Yes, and humid too,” I said

Pause. Clear throat. Pause – all the while smiling broadly. “Have you decided?”

“Excuse me?” “Oh, you’re the man who wanted the laminas.”

“Si, have you decided how much you want for them?”

“I’ve decided to have an auction.”

“Okay, when?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here,” he said as he rode off.

On Monday afternoon I walked around town with sheets of paper folded to look like envelopes, a pen, and a bag. I approached each person who had inquired about the laminas and told them that I would auction the laminas on Tuesday, while offering a paper and pen. Most looked at me quizzically. I explained how the auction would work. Each person would put their name, the number of laminas, and the amount they would pay for each. On midday Tuesday, I would open the bids. The person who bid most would choose first. Then the next highest would choose, and so on. Most people just did not get the notion of a Dutch auction. Some people responded with, some variation of “How can I tell you how much I’ll pay for the laminas! They’re your laminas. Tell me when you decide how much you want for them.” Most people said some variation of, “I don’t have any money,” followed by a wordy explanation. Their offers to buy and requests to save them some were made to alert me that they wanted to get some free laminas when I got around to giving them away. I said, “Are you sure? You can write two, three, or even one Lempira if you want. There might be some left that you can have for that price.” None of them took me up on my offer. Those were the people that my aunt had warned me about.

Others just did not grasp the concept, no matter how many times I repeated it or how many examples I gave. The tortilla lady shyly admitted that she did not write. I gave her the paper and told her to ask someone else write it for her and bring it back. I got three offers for a total of 11 laminas ranging from 100 to 30 Lempira.

The next day the 50 Lempira lady came by just as I was settling into my hammock for my mid-morning nap. “Can I take my five?” she asked. “Priscilla outbid you. I said, “She gets to pick first. Wait here while I go get her.”

As I walked back from Priscilla’s house, bag and sheets in hand, Yency asked, “I heard you have laminas to sell.”

“Yes. Are you interested?”

“How much are they?”

I explained the auction and offered him a faux envelope and pen, “I’m doing it now. Priscilla is on her way. Other people are waiting. You still have time to bid.”

“No, not at the present moment,” he said, as he rose from his bench to walk along with me.

Priscilla arrived and selected a perfect sheet. I had replaced a few really pitted ones last year. At 100 Lempira, she saved 200 Lempira off the price at the hardware store. She was delighted. Next the 50 Lempira lady took her five nearly perfect ones. As she picked, a couple of people asked why she was picking after Priscilla. She explained. They exclaimed, “ohhhhh!” as they finally got it.

I went around to find the 30 Lempira lady. “Oh, please forgive me. The chimbo man came and I gave him the money I had. (A chimbo is natural gas used for cooking) I interrupted what I imagined was a setup for a request for credit with a, “Oh, that’s no problem. I understand. There’s plenty of laminas. Come buy when you have some money. I’m sure there will be some left. You’ll just have a later pick. I have to get back to the next person on my list.” If you’ve kept count, gentle reader, you know that there was no next person.

As I got back to my porch, Yolanda came by. “Hey! Give me one of those pieces of paper! I heard you have sheets of paper. I want to buy laminas,” she huffed. Yolanda is a plus sized woman. She must have run when she saw people walking away with laminas.

“You don’t need the paper. That part’s over. Take a look. Let me know how many you want to buy and how much you want to pay.”

“I have a hundred Lempira. How many can I get?”

“Take a look and make me a fair offer.”

She handed me the money and went through the pile.

“I’ve set aside four. Is that all right?”

“Take another,” I said, rewarding her honesty.

“Oh, thank you! I really needed these. My roof is really bad. Thank you! I’ll send someone to pick them up. They’re over there. Don’t let anyone take them! I’m so glad I got these”

“Tell the tortilla lady!” I shouted as she rushed off.

A voice approaching from inside the house got closer. It was Angi, my cleaning lady asking, “Are you selling the laminas?”

“Yes, do you need some?”

“Siiiii! When it rains, you should see how it just pours down in the place I’m living.” She demonstrated the pouring rain as she spoke.

“Oh, I wish you had said something earlier. You never asked. … Call your husband and get him to pick some up. While he’s here, he can help us move the furniture around.”

My suspicion that she had not asked because she didn’t have money to buy was reinforced when she asked, “Do you have any saldo left on your phone? (Saldo is money available left for making calls on the pre-paid cell phones.) My phone is all out.”

I handed her my phone.

As we talked, the tortilla lady showed up with a young man. “Can we buy some laminas now?”

“Sure. Pick out what you want and tell me how much you want to pay.”

The pair picked carefully through the pile, selecting and substituting.

“I’ve picked five. How much?” Margarita, the tortilla lady, was one of the people who had insisted that I set the price for the laminas. I caved. “Twenty-five.”

“We’ll take two more.” She said. She explained that she was going to make a kitchen. Two more would make it really nice.

I was happy to make her so happy. She handed me 200 Lempira. I had no fives. I gave her 30 and asked her to please stop by with some tortillas. She agreed.

Angi’s husband showed up a few minutes later. “Go pick out what you want,” I said.

“Did you find any you wanted?” I asked as they walked up to the porch. Yes they are right there.

“Okay. Let’s go move the furniture.”

It took about 15 minutes.

“Thank you,” I said when we were done. “Go ahead and take the laminas. Is that okay?”

Big huge smiles and a quick scurry out to take the sheets away.

When I returned to the porch, Yolanda was waiting. “I want five more laminas,” she said. “I prayed,” she looked up at the sky, “and somebody came and bought a dinner. Now I can buy five more.” She launched deep into a story of exactly why she needed the laminas. I was moved.

As she selected, Yolanda’s friend came by. As she helped Yolanda select, the friend said “Oh, these are the really good ones. The old ones back when they were thick.” She looked up at me and said, “Save me five. I’ll be back them for them tomorrow.”

“Bring money. First come, first served.”

“Pisto primero (money first),” she said as she laughed and motioned to her genital area.

I have heard the expression throughout my entire life. This was the first time that I understood its crude etymology. That’s just one of the things that I learned today. I be keenly aware of what a blessed life I have. I am realizing more and more keenly, moment by moment how much I take so much for granted. I have been worried about my leaking roof for a couple of years. One of the reasons I gave myself for leaving my job at this particular time was to come tend to my house on the beach. I reasoned that the value of my house surpassed the money I would have to earn to replace it. Earlier this week I learned that the rain that poured in when tarps served as my roof one night cause no permanent damage. Today I learned what a truly minor inconvenience that was. People here live with that kind of interior downpour all of the time. They are happy to pay to take my castoffs to slow the rain down to a gentle trickle.

I truly am prosperous beyond words.

Here is a picture of my new Aluzinc, corrosion-resistant roof.

What’s the difference between Oprah, a minimum wage care giver, and me? To neighbors in my native fishing village, absolutely none.

There is no sense of scale between abject poverty and not. When you have to scrounge every day to feed your children, when you live in a mud house with a roof that leaks, when all of your clothing is second-hand gifts – the opposite is the luxury of daily meals, a modest cement house with a tin roof, and a new made-in-China outfit from Walmart.

There is a young man in our village who lost both arms from the elbow down when he tried to enter the United States to find work. Jose did not have “papers.” His family and neighbors chipped in to provide meager finances for his trip. He was to be their financial salvation. His misfortune occurred when he attempted to hop on a train and somehow got caught in the mechanism. Jose cannot feed himself. He cannot clothe himself. He cannot wipe his own butt. Jose is a young man. He looks like a teenager, although he must be in his late-twenties. Sadly, if he could find a way, I am certain that he would try again, even with no arms. What are his options? Imagine such a life. No price is too high. Horrors!

I had heard this young man’s story for years. I knew his late grandmother. The first time I saw him, I knew he was the one I had heard of. Our eyes met. We nodded to each other. Maybe he knew I was the one he had heard of.

I rarely hear this side of the immigration story when I am in the United States. The conversation is about something other than human beings. Some still refer to these strivers as aliens. What “they” are doing is wrong. “They” are taking away American jobs. “They” are abusing our healthcare system. “They” should go back where they came from.

In contrast, there is a cute little cement house directly across the dirt road from my house. A father lives there with his three daughters. His wife, the girls’ mother, is one of the fortunate ones who made it across the borders. I suspect that she probably works as a home attendant at minimum wage or maybe less. Within months of her arrival in the US, she started sending money to buy the materials to build the house. That was about three years ago. Since her departure, her mother has died after a long illness. The working woman, wife, mother could not be there to comfort her dying mother. The little girls that the mother left behind are entering puberty. I dare not speak to them about their mother; I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. When we see each other we make polite conversation.

I suspect that they are very much like other young women I knew as happy children. Their mom is working in the US. She was a trained, licensed nurse here in our town. She was a single mother living with her mother. She left her girls with her mother. The younger daughter, Kim, is a sad teenager. Years after her mother left, she still cries herself to sleep sometimes, she told me. Maybe when the immigration laws change, she will be able to legally join her mother in the US.

Having grown up in immigrant communities, I know a lot of “Kims” whose mothers came to work in the US or Canada, often legally. Those mothers were at least legally able to make visits home. The challenge to their return was financial. Those “Kims” sometimes were the ones left behind while older or younger or other-gendered siblings joined mom. Some “Kims” went to the US to be with mom and carried guilt for the siblings and cousins and aunts and grandmothers and friends left behind. A 50-something year old woman I know still cried last summer as she spoke of how the migration had broken her family.

In some ways this story is not unique to immigrants. I have African-American friends who suffered a similar dynamic as their families migrated north.

I am the luckiest one. I am the daughter of a WWII veteran, naturalized US citizen. I had my fourth December birthday in an icy cold New York City tenement. I am still not completely over the trauma of being ripped from my happy tropical paradise. As I approach retirement from my solidly middle-class life, still, I long to be home. I come to my house on the beach, on the spot where I was born, often. I can. I have a magnificent, modestly affluent life in California that to my neighbors in my little fishing village is just like Oprah’s. I have lived in a dozen cities in seven states looking for home. Thirty years of off and on psychotherapy have helped. I just now get why I haven’t been able to move back to New York City, where I grew up. It’s still not home. It’s where family is, but it’ll never be home.

I know that the immigration “problem” cannot be solved in and by affluent nations. I think I read somewhere about a move to improve (or provide) economic conditions that would mitigate the need to leave poorer countries. – or maybe I just dreamed it. I believe it is the more effective, cost-efficient, and humane alternative to undocumented economic migration. Makes a difference, financially speaking.