daily worship...

it was 3 am and we were awake... again.

the truth is neither one of us has been sleeping well lately. 

we find each other at the most unbearable hours of the night, she typically rocking herself into reverie, rosary clutched in hand and soft murmurings of prayer to her god escaping her lips and me sitting on the white tiled patio beneath lemon trees branches listing towards the earth heavy with their mottled fruit trying to quiet my thoughts with steaming tea.

last night i softly tiptoed across the patio past the hammocks swaying themselves in dream under striated moonlight and found her in the kitchen bent over the stove. her fraying nightgown was pulled taut over thighs as robust as christmas hams as she distractedly shoved into the oven what appeared to be some sort of casserole run amok.

¿profe...? i questioned softly so as not to startle her.

gladys turned around and had tears streaming down her face.

profe, the night wouldn’t let you sleep again?

ay, mija, esta vida no me permite dormir... oh, my daughter, this life won’t let me sleep. 

i nodded silently. 

i would like you to meet a remarkable women, gladys garcía jimenez, the latina grandmother i never dreamed i would have. the two of us together with a menagerie of other women of varying ages, shapes, and histories that breeze through and land softly in this sanctuary of a home gladys has created, compose a sort of garanimal-esque family. we are, to say the least, unconventional, but all warmly received by gladys’s open doughy arms. 

my host mother stands about 5 feet even. what gladys’s negligible stature lacks in height she rectifies in accommodating width. her honey died hair sits in tight curls while white roots reveal her 72 years of age. she is a viuda, a widow, and not just in name, but in practice. while it often seems that in the states there is a set expiration date on the appropriate mourning period, in much of latin america this appears not to be so. after 14 years without her husband, gladys can still be found at varying hours of day or night in his office she converted into a space for prayer visiting her dearly departed love and confiding in jesus. 

gladys is what some may refer to as an old school catholic and bears in her all of the privileges and burdens this affords. sometimes i feel as though she is heavy with god; that life is something lived not for the here and now, but for that unpredicted moment when she leaves this world and enters the unknown. “kelly, i want to make sure that all of my bags are packed, because i will never know when my final moment arrives.” and so this is gladys. she spends much of the twilight hours packing her bags with endless streams of hail marys and our fathers that she must lug around in daylight just in case some unforeseen rogue misfortune ushers her into what lies beyond the here and now...

...

kathia arrived on gladys’s front doorstep appropriately on a sunday, god’s day. she was young at 19 years of age, but seemed even more youthful given her rosy pinched cheeks and thoughtfully chosen knee socks worn with smartly pleated school girl length skirts. she was studying to be an english teacher, but had wanted to be a scientist, which makes much more sense when you meet her. kathia’s most pedestrian actions seem to be done in a methodical and plodding manner. she runs her life with a keen eye and a fastidiousness to detail that would make martha stewart writhe with envy. 

kelly, ¿eres cristiana? ...are you a christian? kathia asked in such a chirpy tone it seemed as though she was asking if i liked puppies or rainbows. 

well, i thought about this one.

i often construct some sort of vague answer in my head when asked about my religion kind of tap dancing around the question. first, i considered lying. it would be easy to say “yes” and i could tell by the way she asked me she assumed, or at least hoped i was a christian like her. there is something to be said for being able to find common ground with someone who comes from a seemingly divergent life story and sometimes, that ground needs to be sought out to establish a shared frame of reference.

era... i replied hesitantly. i used to be.

in evenings while i immure myself in my room preparing for the dreaded GREs, kathia braves the seasonal rains to go to the catholic church that lights up the northern end of the avenida central like an overly eager christmas tree. despite seeming young in most other respects, kathia approaches her god with a heavy measure of reverence. 

i did not want to offend, or harm our blossoming friendship, so i did my best to choose my words deliberately. i considered the laundry list of reasons why in recent years i had become increasingly disillusioned by the catholic church and thought it may be prudent to chose a reason kathia could relate to: 

the position of women in the church. 

i explained to her about my experiences in guatemala and what i felt was implicit irresponsibility of the church in astronomical birth rates that contributed to a whole litany of devastating problems including infant and mother mortalities, and my foremost issue of concern, food insecurity. i offered to her my belief that women’s bodies simply were not meant to endure 8 births, the average for women in my former community. she spoke of the rhythm method, a commonly expressed alternative offered by catholic women when questioned about family planning, and i expressed my concerns of it being unreliable and difficult for an indigenous woman in a culture where they are not second class, but third class citizens having the double stigma of being Mayan and female. can this woman realistically say to her partner, “oh, honey, not tonight. i’m ovulating.”?

i also said i thought women should be able to be church leaders. that i felt a woman could just as well represent the teachings of jesus as any man and i did not understand why, supposedly based on primarily biological functions (apparently we may soil the pulpit with our monthly menses), the catholic church has forbidden women’s participation as church leaders... and why, as catholic women, we do not chain ourselves to the pulpit and scream, “misogyny!”....  well, okay, i may have not said all of these things. i thought it best to spare kathia most of my liberal bent tirade. i tried to soften my abhor and imagine myself in kathia’s lightly scuffed maryjane’s.

kathia explained that she felt that she was part of the church and that prayer was her contribution. hers is a quiet introspective relationship with her god and, as in much of the rest of her life, she seems to find comfort in the structure and, in a sense, the freedom this permits. both kathia and gladys seem to be at peace with life, and i envy their spirituality, as comfortable as well worn sneakers. 

i also have sought out the catholic church in the past seeking solace and finding comfort in its creaking orthodoxy even as i see it becoming wizened with passing generations and evolving mores. there is a certain level of serenity that is afforded by its tradition and regimen. still, i find it deeply unnerving to go to mass on christmas sitting in a pew surrounded by women praying to a god that has mandated that we are less: unworthy to make decisions about our own bodies, unworthy to interpret the bible, unworthy to make decisions about doctrine... and yet we sit just as gladys does, hands clasped worshipping and obeying “Our Father”. i have been reading, Half the Sky, a book that looks at the role of women in development and this quote hit me for its pithy words:

“...women themselves absorb and transmit misogynistic values just as men do. This is not a tidy world of tyrannical men and victimized women, but a messier realm of oppressive social customs adhered to by men and women alike.” (p. 69)

the quote was in reference to an afghani woman that had been brutally beaten by her mother-in-law and husband alike and yet, while acknowledging the impropriety of her own circumstance, expressed that the merciless practice itself was an acceptable treatment of wives who were not submissive: 

“I should not have been beaten, because I was always obedient and did what my husband said. But if the wife is truly disobedient, then of course her husband has to beat her.” (p.69)

as much as many may see it as a stretch to compare western women in the catholic church’s acceptance of prescribed gender roles to a nation well-known for its egregious treatment of women, the parallels are undeniable. we are often the one’s propagating, or at the least permitting, our own gender’s oppression.

...

we were sitting on the patio together, gladys diligently sewing new lemon colored, gingham curtains and me halfheartedly flipping through rodale’s guide to composting. she quietly informed me that a nurse would be moving in soon. her son’s wife was having a baby shortly, and because she was a doctor living in the city lacking time, she would be sending her newborn to be taken care of here, 4 hours outside of the capital.

marcía showed up late at night in puro aguacero, a deluge of a rain, her body thick with baby weight, at the side of bartolo. despite her evident beauty she did not have the radiance of a young pregnant woman about to bring a new child into the world. her skin was not glowing, but rather perspiring and jaundiced. she did not greet me, but instead only offered a tight lipped harrumph upon arrival. bartolo stood awkwardly at her side his hair white with age and a large panza that rivaled marcía’s baby bump in size looking more like her father than a husband. he grasped my hand like it was a lifeline and he was on the maiden voyage of the titanic clearly trying to compensate for his companions less than enthusiastic greeting.

bartolo left early the next morning and marcía stayed alone in gladys’s home for the next three weeks stationed on the sofa typically with a plate of food precariously teetering atop of her makeshift table of a belly. she stared vacantly at the screen always appearing to be on the verge of tears. i have never seen a more miserable human being in my entire life than marcía. any attempt at conversation was dismissed with a wave of the hand and eventually, regretfully i stopped trying. 

it turns out that marcía is in fact not bartolo’s wife, but his mistress. and it turns out that he is not leaving his wife to be with her like he had promised. that instead she will be a madre soltera, a single mother. not surprisingly, marcía did not want to have this baby, but had wanted to become a doctor like she had dreamed of and worked towards for the last several years. as bartolo goes and continues his life with his wife and children, marcía is left alone to fend for herself and the whole putrid situation smacks of injustice. 

...

these are just two stories of women living in gladys’s home of many. although it sounds like a house burdened by the often seemingly inherent anguish of life, it truly isn’t. gladys’s endless stream of visitors provides abundant laughter and always food enough for anyone that may show up unexpectedly for a cafecito. everyday it seems as though there is a new someone arriving on the front doorstep, hair neatly coiffed with belongings in tattered baggage of differing shapes and hues. gladys does her best to nurture us with equally large helpings of warm food and kind words, and in return, eschews the solitude she so fears. 

this is me. 

i am so american that i remember thinking upon arrival to panama that i did not want... no, that i did not need to live with a family. that i would require my “space” and would be fine without the often relentless commotion that comes with sharing living quarters that, admittedly at times, can feel stifling. and yet, here i find myself warmly nestled in this place accepting and embracing this hodgepodge of a family comprised of women that show up not only with packed belongings, but stowed away histories that slowly are unraveled day by day. despite our divergent pasts, we are joined together based on the common bond of womanhood that can never be trivialized, because those roots run deep and they run all over the place.