Three times as an adult I cried for emotion and nostalgia, a sweet melancholy thinking of mom. Well, three times not directly related to her death over two years ago (2014). Three times that illustrate something special for me as her son, a guy who looks to her as a citizen of the world.
Mother's Day in Mulchen Spring (their fall)1990St. Jerome's in Jerusalem Summer 1995
Fall 1995--My friend Jacy
Bloomington, Indiana Winter 2004
Maybe I need a fall to complete the set...Hmmmmm: think, remember. (Use Jacy)
If only I could write with the "tongue of angels" and correctly, appropriately, or magically express in prose how this has worked, or what was involved,the feelings and thoughts that truly touch on how the heart and the mind works. It might be of value to others beyond me and my family, perhaps to others. Do those tears, the sentiments behind them, matter beyond me? Is there a greater power at work?
Looking back currently in my mid-forties, safely judging that I have achieved my middle age years, as my wife, who is 3 plus years younger than me, believes she has reached, as our high school daughter asked her this morning: what is the "middle ages"?; I can perhaps more deeply reflect on the shedding of tears for the notion of my mother, the idea and bond with her no matter where we are... No matter how far away. Maybe when we cry for the notion of anything there are deeper issues involved...
Distance takes us far from home. It has happened a few times for me, I have been taken far from my family over the decades. Is it possible that some souls travel farther across time and distance, perhaps across expanses of human history and its travails? I think this might be so. Perhaps certain minds, imaginations, understandings are capable of this. Or maybe this is a mere stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, the soul and spirit delve into paths unknown, as poets and writers tend to do.
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As a child I had been separated from my mom for weeks at a time; I guess that has its effect. I recall seeing her airplane take off from a tarmac at the Indianapolis airport, the plane becoming tiny at the edge of the horizon, me at the age of 3 or 4, thinking that that is pretty long and far to be away from someone I was that so close to and dependent on. I was her only son, there were two older sisters and my dad. She was my mom; I was not close to my grandparents, they were still alive then but they lived 900 miles away and were very old.
Into my teenage years in the 1980s, that unique status of her only son took on more meaning. For most of my teens I lived in different houses from my mom but we would visit at least twice a week. Maybe in some ways I grew closer to her spiritually or emotionally because of that separation in households, I don't know. We did some fun things together, we had some good trips. She re-married when I was 16, I got along well with her new husband, my new step-father.
The summer after high school graduation I went away to Spain for three weeks. That was the longest I had ever been away from all my family by three times. Not much longer after that I was able to travel to New England and Canada with my mom and Terry, my step-dad. I was preparing to go away for a two-year mission; it was a good-bye tour to my extended family in Massachusetts, people who my mother was intrinsically connected to for life. Saying farewell to them was in a way cutting myself off from my mom as well.
By November of 1989 I was away in far off Provo, Utah, embarking on the mission. My mother had given me a map of South America two years prior (I like maps a lot, if you did not know) and she had put a question in hand-written pen off the coast of Chile on the map, in the Pacific Ocean blue part of the map: "Where will you be?"
It turned out I ended up not far from where she had written that question on that wall map:
South-central Chile. I arrived there about two years later, after that serendipitous gift from her for my 17th birthday.
I arrived in Chile in January of 1990, in the heart of the summer time. I spent my first weeks and months seemingly acquiring a new look on life, new feelings and tasting and thinking through new realities. What were we humans? Who were we? Were we really all the same, despite the linguistic and cultural differences? What was this foreign culture, this friendliness, this strange but beautiful culture where people seemed in some ways more real than anything else I had known? Cultures are different, and it was an amazing experience trying to absorb it, to take it all in. And this task is incredibly difficult, after all. Even apprehending the smallest things can be frustrating and exhausting.
I was in the last few weeks of my four plus months in the town of Mulchen, my first area and first real exposure to the culture and people of this part of South America. Mulchen (pronounced MOOL CHEN) was an isolated area of some 20,000 or so in the 8th Region. I later learned that many LDS elders (and maybe some sisters) started there as new missionaries, probably because it was a safe and somewhat welcoming place, probably better than most in our mission, or maybe more preferable than anywhere in the whole country, for all I know. I was with my third consecutive Chilean companion, each of them teaching me aspects of the language and culture that was necessary to try to comprehend and accept. Or to survive and thrive in. The goal of any good foreigner, right?
Which brings me to this question: how long does it take to understand any culture? Forever, really. How do we ever really know anything? Familiarity is one thing, but knowledge ...
I had met most of the members of the ward, both active and less active. There were hundreds. My three consecutive Chilean companions and I had spent hours and days in their homes, sharing lessons, stories, films, and all types of cultural nuances. I really enjoyed these people. We prayed together, sang together, laughed and joked together. I loved them, and I felt that they loved me.Oh, and of course they were very generous with their food and drinks.
Around my last week or so living in the area, as missionaries come and go, the Mulchen Ward had a talent show combined with a mother's day celebration. I knew most of the people there, some were newly taught and baptized in the months I had been present. I felt a bond with almost everyone.
One sister, I will call her Lucy-- was particularly unique to me and I might assume to others. She was gifted as a comic of sorts: at the party in the upstairs of the chapel that weekend evening she put on a comedy routine and perhaps impromptu acting, much of which I did not understand but I was impressed by how much laughter she received. She was silly and clever, a regular local Lucille Ball. I had no idea she had that much of a gift for entertainment.
I had spent my visits in her humble house, made of wood and nothing too special like so many Chileans occupied throughout their hundreds of years of history, a nation in many ways older than ours (United States), as far as traditions and long held cultural norms. Lucy was a vivacious young mother in the ward, like many others, but it was not until that party that I realized her unique talents. Her husband was a bonified Communist, which was a little shocking and distressing to me. Communism was anathema to believing in or trusting in God, as I understood, and that did not bode very well for Lucy's progressing membership as a Latter-day Saint. How to address this concern? Could I, the new and only American gringo in Mulchen, have any chance at swaying him towards our beliefs, beyond the socio-political miasma of Marxism and its effects across our planet? This man was a man who had lived life and worked. He was slight of frame but had dark, serious eyes, large eyebrows over a thin face with piercing eyes that made me nervous. He certainly knew things that I did not, and his reference for a better world was socialism/Communism. He was a young father, and me a young man who had recently left my parents' surroundings. He had lived in a country and time where thousands had disappeared and been buried by soldiers of the military junta, others tortured and violated, a generation brutalized and suppressed, and these were his compatriots, those who he would suffer for and mourn, and join in continuous solidarity.
Chile was a unique place when it came to its Marxist history: while in my third month there Agusto Pinochet had officially stepped down as their strong-man dictator of 17 years. The transition was relatively peaceful; I saw many red communist flags flying through the streets of Mulchen that day that the left wing candidate Patricio Aylwin took office. People, young and old, some too young to remember the dark days of the coup d'etat of 1973, but certainly impressionable through the reign of oppression under General Pinochet, yelled for joy and their vindictive sense of defiance that historic March day in 1990, which the world has seen few like or before since.
A dictator peacefully transferred power, very few casualties happened in the last years of his regime.
And there I was, an impressionable young man with deep ingrained beliefs of politics and religion and history already imprinted on my soul, dealing with these people collectively and individually that endeared themselves to me. These Mulcheninos had become my people.
The people who accepted baptism, shared in our laughter and solemn promises, came to the second story church for that culminating barrio celebration, this is who I had become.
I had forgotten about so many things that only 8 months prior were of utmost importance: the news, Indiana basketball, football of all types, movies and television and music and other sports. Instead, my life as a young 19 year-old had become the lives of these people, their world and their faith, the co-mingling in the efforts and struggles that my Chilean companions and I had tried so hard to espouse to them. It was very much all encompassing, a daily struggle and joy, an overwhelming passion of what I felt was living in the moment, forgetting about the outside world that was then out of reach.
I received letters from my mom, who had promised to send one per week, and other family and friends, but based on the post office dealings of South America the postal correspondence would bunch up and arrive together in batches that made it seem much more intermittent than her regular steady pace.
My feelings and perhaps deferred longings of connection to home and my old life may have culminated that Mother's Day talent show night in Mulchen. With all these swirling sentiments of a new culture, a new language and people, people that I had grown to know inside and out, and perhaps a suppressed awareness of being away from my origins, this was a night where my tears caught up to me.
At the end of the show where I myself had sung a sentimental church song in English to thunderous applause, heightening my own emotions, I watched as Lucy's little son, the embodiment of the skinny mustachioed father who so concerned me as far as their family unity and future, in themselves a representation of the future of the country, took a single delicate rose to his mother on stage. His name was Luis or Rodrigo or Pablo, I cannot remember. He was tiny and little and had the sparkling in his eyes of his parents, the active Mormon comic and vivacious lady on stage and the more reserved, serious and perspicacious Marxist of the street some 8 blocks away.
It was a beautifully poetic and powerful moment. Perhaps for me more than anyone else.
Mom! I love you! I am this little tiny person in this vast sea of people, in a night that stretches on forever and I don't know very much, but I know what I feel for you.
This rose is for you, for your sacrifices and patience and willingness to help this little guy get along.
I love you, Mom. I miss you. You are with me across thousands of miles of distance.
I am not sure how long I wept, but I knew it was intense and real, and most likely necessary. A catharsis of emotions, if you will.
An R.E.M. favorite song of mine is entitled "Talk about the Passion", where the repeated chorus invokes,"Not everyone can carry the weight of the world."
I know I did not carry much of the world's weight that evening, but somehow, in my own way, I felt a significant part of it was my burden and my passion. And like any true Christian, knowing the solemnity and sanctity of the role of Mary, I know that in my case, me bearing any part of the feelings of worldly longing that happens in our hearts and minds inevitably involves the love of a mother.
Thanks to my mother, and those that mothered me in Mulchen, and all Godly mothers across the heavens. We think of you that night and all the vast nights across the universe.
As little Luchito did, we offer a velvet rose up to our larger than life mom. With smiles and tears.
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