Learning to Receive

I've learned in the course of my travels that you often have to set aside your own preconceptions of "the way things are" in order to pay respect to, and gain appreciation for, your host's cultural traditions. You know, "When in Rome..." Usually this is a no-brainer for me--my openness to other ways of doing things has led me to many adventures and unfamiliar undertakings, everything from eating eel at a French-Japanese wedding to wearing the South Asian equivalent of Hammer pants to conform to conservative Indian mores. But one area of custom and cultural obeisance never fails to put my knickers in a twist: Hospitality. I was raised to offer to pay for a dinner or some other excursion or event when you are a guest in someone else's home, as a way of saying thank you; but in a lot of other cultures, this is the opposite of the norm. I once stayed with a Turkish college student in Istanbul (who had probably as much spending money as I did--zip) who paid for all my meals, all my museum visits, all my transportation, all the tea I drank and all the backgammon games I played, and even bought me a souvenir trinket I'd been admiring. When I asked, for the second or third time, to pay for a meal as my way of saying thanks, she looked me directly in the eyes and said, with a pained expression on her face, "STOP! You are shaming me." What I thought of as courteous offers were, in fact, insinuations that she and her family didn't have enough of a sense of honor to show the proper care and respect due to guests.

This same principle--the inverse of what I know--applies whether you're talking Turkish peasants or Istanbul urbanites, Varanasi schoolteachers or Delhi socialites, Lousiana ranchers or Gulf Coast dockworkers. And it means that I as an outsider have to swallow my own ingrained cultural patterns, rethink my definitions of "generosity" and "hospitality," and give up the power I'm used to having as an equal contributor. I hate that indebted feeling--it takes some serious reconditioning for me to accept, in its totality, being a guest.

In fact, it seems to me that the whole guest-host relationship is about power--my inclination as a white American woman is to assert my independence by showing that I can take care of myself (financially and otherwise) and that I won't be sugar-daddied, especially by men my own age. I'm used to being in power, or at least sharing power, and when I can't I chafe against what I see as being constrained to a very limited, passive, female role. This is, in part, why I find myself wanting to rebel so hard against the "Southern gentleman" type down here, the man who tries to pay for everything, all the time, no exceptions--and who looks at you like you're cross-eyed if you even think of trying to pick up the tab. It's like you're insulting his mother--come to think of it, you are, because you're implying that she didn't raise him right. Now, I'm not sure I could ever be that unequal of a partner, in terms of finances or power, in a longterm relationship--but as a short-term resident of the South, I am having to learn to accept the intensity of the "chivalry" here. (As an aside, let us note that chivalry as a way of life went out either with the Crusades or the pistol duels of the 19th century, depending on whom you ask, but either way it is long gone.)
Really it's a matter of becoming vulnerable enough, trusting enough, to let someone else make the decisions for you; but I tend to see the "imbalance" in this dynamic in terms of what I can't give or repay, not in terms of what I am allowing others to give to me. Something to work on.

The other aspect of this hospitality conundrum is something I often witness workcampers butting up against--accepting gifts from those you have come to help. One pastor from Connecticut who volunteered here told me how frustrated he had been when, as a young man leading a work group at our organization, he and his crew had stocked the empty pantry of the homeowner whose kitchen they'd been rehabbing as a house-warming present, only to find on their last day of work that she had used every last pickle slice and potato chip to make them a huge farewell lunch. "That food was supposed go to her," he had lamented at the time; "it wasn't supposed to be used on us!" As he later put it, he learned some grace-filled lessons about hospitality and generosity that week. I'm reminded of the parable of the Widow's Mite: the fact that the homeowner gave all she had, even though she had so little, amplified the magnitude of her gesture so that it was able to embody the sense of gratitude she felt for the work that had transformed her daily existence. In response, the workers had to learn to give up the control they'd had of the situation all week and, in a Christ-inspired role reversal, let the receiver become the giver, and vice-versa.

Another example from earlier this year: each week for 1o weeks straight my good friend Lucious cooked a massive feast for the volunteers who had come to work on his house. Each week he bought 30 or 40 steaks; he slow-cooked 3 racks of ribs; he boiled, fried, and grilled several pounds of huge Gulf shrimp; he fried up tons of flaky catfish; he roasted heaps of chicken wings and legs; he boiled snappy blue crabs; he whipped up endless batches of onion rings, waffle fries, tater tots, potato salad, etc. etc. Even though he claimed to have an "in" at local butcher and seafood shops (which he probably does, since he's been in the restaurant business for years), it still cost him a small fortune to prepare all that deliciousness; not to mention to do it ten times. And not only was each such undertaking financially burdensome, but it was time-consuming as well: he would start the day before by smoldering an entire section of tree trunk in a burn barrel to make the coals for his grill. Come the morning of the day of, he would spend hours slicing and chopping and roasting and boiling in the hot sun in order to feed his crew (and half the neighborhood). And he consistently met with a withering look of disdain all offers of reimbursement.

Often volunteers expressed consternation about this: "Why does Lucious spend all this time and money on us, when it would be better spent buying supplies or paying for labor to rehab his house?" It's for the same reason he doesn't think twice about buying workcampers a radio or renting a Port-O-Potty for their convenience: it's his way of saying "thank you."

Once again, it's about power--or rather, the lack of power you feel when you have been forced to cram yourself and your wife and your granddaughters into an unsanitary FEMA trailer for over 20 months, the helplessness you feel when even though you are the family provider, you can't get together enough resources or time to restore your family's home to a condition that's fit for living. I can't imagine the humility it takes to allow someone to help you rebuild your life and do for you what you cannot do for yourself, day after day after day. How vulnerable and indebted you would feel... and how badly you would want to restore the balance between you and your helpers, even in a symbolic way. Lucious responded to our doing for him what he couldn't do for himself by doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves--preparing a soul food-seafood feast and treating us to a good dose of Southern Hospitality. Which means put your billfolds away, shut your mouths and "eat you some shrimp, Boo!" A delicious lesson to learn.

The 3 Stooges

I must have a sign on my forehead, invisible to me but blatantly obvious to everyone around me, that says: "Please, give me animals to care for!! Preferably difficult cases!! And give them over to me for several days in a row, since clearly I have nothing else to do!!"
Because after the Infamous Kitten Incident (see Attack of the Kitties, May 6 post), I have once again ended up with multiple, domesticated (arguably) creatures under my wings--and this time it's dogs. A Whole Lotta Dog, to be precise.
It happened like this. My friend's father passed away unexpectedly, and she called me up from work and asked if I would be willing to dog- and house-sit while she and her husband went home to Florida to be with her family. We had only known each other for a period of several weeks, and the sum total of our interactions amounted to:

1.5 softball games and
.5 cornhole/grillout parties.

But she asked me because, as she put it, "I trust you." (This is one of those blessed moments in your life when you realize you must be doing something right.) I said yes, of course, even though I had never met her dogs--I am, by definition, a dog person, and I figured it couldn't be too taxing.

This is how I ended up dogsitting Merlin, Maverick, and Samson, otherwise known as The Three Stooges. (Points if you get the name reference for the first two--my friend's husband is in the Air Force, if that helps.)

Merlin and Maverick are black German shepherds, and Samson is, appropriately, a giant black and white Newfoundland. As mentioned above, this amounts to A Whole Lotta Dog. Although they are full grown, they are still in the teenage stage developmentally, and, as their owners put it, they are "really stupid" (they haven't trashed the house yet, so as far as I'm concerned, they're not all that dumb). Merlin and Maverick, who are brothers, were produced through some importunate breeding and thus are not considered high-quality dogs in a lineage sense, but in my opinion they're still some good-looking animals. Samson was an orphaned puppy being fostered by my friend's former boss when he decided he could no longer keep a steadily growing giant; my friend, having grown up with Newfs, took him on as a charity case and fell in love. He is the slowest of the three, but quite affectionate. All of them are nuts about tennis balls, shoes, and licking me in the face to wake me up in the morning. A more effective alarm clock I have yet to find.
I've been dogsitting since Thursday night (this will be night 5), and I have to say, despite the thick black and white hairs showing up in everything I own (including some I discovered between the keys of my laptop when I opened it this morning at work), it has its merits. First of all, as I said before, I am a dog person, and my family dog (a cute if somewhat aloof beagle named Belle) died in March. So it was high time I got some doggy TLC! Secondly, as I noted, these are some surprisingly beautiful animals, and once they warm up to you, they are all fun and games and let's-jump-on-Leah-because-we've-forgotten-we're-not-puppy-sized-anymore! (We just played a round of that and now the couch is vibrating because they are all panting in synch.) It's a fascinating process to discover the dynamics among the three of them and to learn their personalities. And you know, it's nice to have someone, or someones, to come home to. Even if they slobber. (In your armpit.) It gives your life a little more sense of purpose to be caring for other creatures, whether human or animal.
I'll try to take some pictures over the next few days to post here--particularly if I can capture that quizzical "What is it? WHAT IS IT??!!" look that they pull off so well anytime a doorbell rings on TV or I move more than a quarter of an inch from my seat.

Here's to lazy summer days sitting in a hammock with a beer and a saliva-covered tennis ball and the blue sky and three canine companions to keep you busy.

Opening Day

Today is opening day of the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season. How I wish we were talking about a sports team here...

Right now I'm not feeling too anxious about the season, but that's because I've never lived through the terror that is a Katrina or a Camille. They're predicting a ragin' season this year, but they predicted that last year as well and we had a vewwy vewwy qwiii-et season. *knocks on wood*

The better part of this week has been devoted to making hurricane evacuation plans, buying hurricane clips and plywood to cover our windows, and holding discussions about stockpiling our food pantry. Wasn't too freaked out until I thought about getting the interns I'm supervising in New Orleans out of there in case of a storm, and the fact that I won't be there in the city to help them.

Your prayers/good vibes for a quiet season are appreciated.

Here's hopin' that the only hurricanes we encounter this year are the kind that come in a glass with a little paper umbrella!