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!

Summer is...

the wall of heat inside my ovenlike car
overcome
by the sharp wave of cold that drenches my insides
when I bite into a pink sour lemon sno-ball.

With the doors flung ajar
I sit with my legs hanging out like a clumsy colt's
and let the breeze blow through, straight from the brassy blue sky.

crunch suck melt slurp ahhhhh.

Trivia

My sister (who visited last weekend--see "The Fecund Gulf") "tagged" me, which means she wants to know seven things about me that most blog readers don’t. So you get to hear them too. (ps I knew all of her 7 posted things on her blog, CrashOctopus.com--somewhere I am getting major sibling points!!)

1. I'm a nomad--I was born in Texas, grew up in Illinois, went to school in Boston and France, and have been to a good dozen other countries and 40-some states (Alabama being the latest--see the post titled Stars Fell On... on April 17). I also lived in New Orleans for a summer and now have ended up in Mississippi. It's sort of like that roulette rhyme: 'Round and 'round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!
2. I was super-picky about the food I would eat when I was little; I ate nothing green except peas. The veggies I would eat consisted of corn, potatoes (okay, those are both starches), peas, and cooked carrots (never raw, horrors!!) with ketchup on them. Now I eat everything from alligator to rattlesnake to liver to rutabaga to spinach to borscht... my, how times have changed.
3. I used to play the piano. Key words, "used to." As in, no longer.
4. I am allergic to kitties. But not the ones I fostered, mysteriously enough...
5. I saw the movie The Notebook last night for the first time and I cried. I am a sucker for a good love story--not the sappy kind, but the kind that is a testament to the kind of love "that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds."
6. Eating whole pints of Blue Bell Ice Cream & watching YouTube videos of West Wing montages, Avril Lavigne music videos, and the guy who can play all of the original Mario Brothers soundtrack on the piano are my guilty pleasures. Okay, maybe not so guilty... I thoroughly enjoy them.
7. I like bats. There goes one now! (I think a colony lives in the live oaks in my front yard.)

Now I'm supposed to go "tag" 7 other bloggers... yeah, I know, hmm, 2 other bloggers, one of which already tagged me. But here's the link to the other blogger, my godsister Alison, who is now *it*! http://www.bluishorange.com/

The Fecund Gulf

"O God, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
it is teeming with countless creatures,
living things both small and great.

There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it."
--Psalm 104:24-25

Last weekend my sister came to visit (hurrah for lovely sisters who sacrifice their time and their money to come and see you--and as a birthday present, no less!) and it was fantastically refreshing. We ate too much, we slept in (a little), we got sunburned and bug-bitten. And we got to have those great long conversations where you find you don't have to explain yourself because all the ground work is already laid--you've known each other for so long, learned each other's habits, passions, mannerisms and endearing and/or annoying idiosyncrasies, and so the person you're talking to already gets it, gets you. It's like jumping right back into the middle of a book you haven't picked up in five months, and not having to go back and reread to catch yourself up because you know the story so well. And to think we used to fight about who crossed the invisible line in the back seat of the car...

The other thing we did last weekend was Nature. We saw and experienced so much wildlife that I told The Sis we should be getting our own Discovery Channel show. Here's a little taste:

Saturday we went to the beach armed with cameras and sunscreen and wandered out onto a dock with some kind of shorebirds perched on the end, hoping to get a shot or two (The Sister is a photographer, amongst other things).

While she was on her belly stalking these two smidgeons of birds--who, seemingly incapable of flying far enough to get safely back to shore, just kept edging closer and closer to the end of the dock until they had nowhere else to go--I was experimenting with the effect of my shadow on a school of tiny fish swimming against the current like iridescent grains of rice. Suddenly a great, beautiful heron flew almost directly over our heads. The Sister was trying to follow it with her camera as it passed us, when, lo and behold, a second heron as magnificent as the first came in to land about twenty feet away from us on our dock. Yes, we were laying low, and yes, we weren't really moving, but I was awed that such a normally skittish bird (the same species that takes off from the pond I run by in the mornings if I so much as breathe wrong) would choose to stay this close to humans. The heron (a great blue) just stood there for 10 or 15 minutes, unperturbedly grooming itself, inspecting us, and scanning the horizon for... what? Its partner? Food? Do herons just sit and veg out sometimes with no purpose other than to stand there lookin' good?

The highlight of the visit in terms of comedy was definitely the "heron pretends to be dog by scratching itself with long clawed feet" routine.

I'm a romantic, I freely admit it--but in the tradition of Native spirituality, it felt like the Heron Spirit had deigned to pay us a visit. It felt pretty special.


Next The Sister tried wading out into the water to snap a few photos of a bosomy pelican napping on a pier piling. It didn't seem to feel too enthusiastic about posing; but I got some good shots of my sister realizing she was knee-deep in saltwater holding a battery-operated device!

As she waded back out of the water, we were approached by another form of wildlife: a 2-year-old gabbling incoherently about the little crabs in the reeds--or something. Lest you think he is a little behind developmentally in terms of learning to speak intelligibly, we learned from his grandparents that he is learning to speak English and Portuguese--we just felt dumb compared to a little kid who could tell whole stories about marauding airplanes and spies in two different languages (albeit at the same time).

Later that afternoon we took it into our heads to go crabbing, an adventure which started out at the marina bait shop with a lesson from an elderly black lady who taught us how to tie a lead string onto a crabbing net like she'd been doing it her whole life--which, come to think of it, she probably has; another lady we met later that afternoon was crabbing for "groceries," as she put it. This is one way people put food on their tables down here.

Then off to the grocery store for a pack of chicken necks, one of which we tied to the sweet spot in the middle of the crab net and lowered off of the public pier (see The Pier). When lowered to the bottom, the upper ring of the net collapses flat onto the lower ring, leaving the bait innocently lying on the ocean floor, free to tantalize passing crustaceans. Every 20 minutes or so (we were told), you pull the net up and see what you've captured. Easy enough, we figured--we'll have caught enough in a few hours to give us both a few boiled crabs for dinner, no problem. Heck, let's invite the neighbors!

Four hours later, grand total of caught creatures (drumroll, please):

-1 one-clawed, midget crab too small to keep.
-1 shrimp. Which fell through the net.

Dinner was a DiGiorno's frozen pizza from Winn Dixie.

* * *

I should mention some more, well, impressive denizens of the Gulf we encountered at the Pier. A whole family was fishing and crabbing at the very end of the pier, and amidst the shrieks and laughter and the sound of aluminum can tabs snapping open, we heard a pre-teen voice squeal "It's a dolphin! Look, a DOLphin!!!!" It was, in fact, 3 dolphins (species unclear)--a mother and a baby swimming cheek-to-cheek, so to speak, and a third animal (Dad? Mom's BFF? Godparent?) swimming a distance away. They came within, what, a quarter of a mile of the pier? and then moved back out again, staying in the area for quite a while. We saw them from the bay bridge the next day, as well; because they stayed in the same place for two days running, and because the mother and baby were swimming so close together, we hypothesized that Momma had just had the baby and was sticking in a sheltered spot to help it get used to swimming on its own. I'd never seen a dolphin in the bay before--I'm sure it happens all the time, but all the same, the cetacean sighting along with the heron visit conspired to make me feel we were having an enchanted day, despite the crab fiasco! (I've since been informed, by the way, that crabbing at the public pier probably did it--it's overcrabbed. Next time, The Sis and I will be heading out to the Gulf to a less popular spot to get us some crawly critters for dinnah.)

The next day we borrowed a friend's kayak and hit the wetlands. I am proud to say that it took us almost no time at all before we were smoothly gliding through the water, paddles synchronized in a glowing example of sibling solidarity... well, minus the numerous times I though The Sister needed some help turning and I added my own back-paddling or braking, thus throwing off her careful calculations about how much reverse thrust would be needed to bank a turn. I couldn't resist--I was just trying to help!

But seriously, we executed some sweet maneuvers, including reverse paddling and three-point turns, and we only got stuck once--in someone's front yard! I was unaware that private individuals have docks leading from their houses out into the wetlands, and that, even if you are inadvertently intruding into their "lawn," they will wave enthusiastically and walk all the way to the end of their dock laden with Cokes and cups of ice to cool you down from the hot hot sun. Now THAT is Southern Hospitality!

Aside from mastering the art of the kayak--which can be really euphoric when you get a good, coordinated pace going and find yourself slicing cleanly through the water--the rest of the experience was rather Alice-in-Wonderland. Kayaks sit so low in the water that you end up at eye-level with the reeds and the mud, and the red-winged blackbirds squawking at you that you're invading their territory are actually perched menacingly close above your head, so that you feel they may indeed have the upper hand and it would be best not to incur their wrath. This circumstance also allows you to drift in close enough to observe the minuscule crabs burrowing into the mud anchored by the waving grasses of this water-prairie. At times, the blackbirds and the great blue heron which buzzed our watery foxhole (the same which starred in yesterday's dockside drama??) actually made me feel I was traveling through a rolling Illinois grassland.

The labyrinthine* channels leading off of the main waterway are so precise that you wonder if they weren't laid out by humans hands. Every twist and turn as you navigate their meandering corridors is a surprise; once we turned a corner a bit too quickly and surprised an alligator out of its nest, right into the water beside us. Alligators move fast, so fast that my sister missed the whole thing because my head was in her way (I was sitting in the front). This capacity for speed, coupled with the fact that we were now sitting in a very low-slung plastic shell (which no longer seemed very sturdy) in opaque brown water concealing the whereabouts of a creature whose bite PSI** can be comparable to that of having a small pick-up truck dropped on you evoked a response that can be best summarized by the word:

PADDLE!!!!

We saw neither hide nor claw of this superb predator after it slipped into the water, fortunately--just a whole lot of fish jumping and flopping out of the water (trying to escape alligators?? Trying to grab an insectual snack?), a small <--- green heron (they're about 18 inches in body length), and a whole lot of boaters destroying the wetlands by going so fast through the main channel that their wake violently slammed the fragile reed-laced mud, thus carelessly washing away vital habitat. I felt like painting a gigantic NO WAKE sign in red letters on white plywood and installing it in a prominent location in the marina, perhaps under cover of nightfall in some sort of eco-guerilla action--hmmm, it's dark out now...where do we keep the spray paint?

This intimate tour of an unfamiliar ecosystem was like getting to peer at a Caravaggio up close; maybe beforehand you had a vague notion that the painting was a masterpiece, but you had never really looked at it that carefully. I'd heard how magnificent and ecologically vital the wetlands are; but now, I've stood nose-to-nose with the brushstrokes and discovered for myself this magical world teeming with incredible life, an entire network of organisms that, from afar, only looks like a lot of grass and water--pretty, but unanimated. Ah, how very artful is Mother Nature!

*awesome word, no?

**http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/alligator.html

1 dead in attic

Some days, it hits you harder than others. Like the days when you just happen to glance up as you drive to the post office to buy 2 cent stamps because you neglected to mail something important before the rate increase, and a two-story metal skeleton sprouting through the tree tops claws across your vision with its twisted, naked steel beams. Or the days when you're driving a couple of volunteers to work sites along the Gulf Coast highway, and for no apparent reason you start to count the number of barren lots marked only by empty metal signs and weeds and you lose count after 50. You get good at guessing what used to be in a particular spot, places where formerly lively establishments have been rendered bleakly anonymous but for a telltale row of gas pumps, a half-legible Olive Garden sign, or a set of front porch steps leading nowhere.

A few nights ago a volunteer group asked me to lead them on a "tour" of the town--it was already pitch black, so the only place I could think to go that was well-lit (besides the casinos, of course) was the local Katrina memorial, where a stark granite wall marks the height of the storm surge, and a collage made from artifacts locals found in the wreckage of their homes sits under floodlights. It's continuously illuminated in a way that reminds me of a war monument or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In a way it's both, I guess--350 some people died in the storm, and almost 20 months after she hit they still haven't identified all the bodies.

We walked around the memorial, peering at Little League trophies and battered silverware and rosaries and a silver "Most Likely To Be Missed" plaque from a high school class circa 1970; we then crossed the street over to our van, which was parked in the shadow of a multi-storied apartment complex that looks perfectly normal until you realize that the entire first floor has been erased.

Once back in our vehicle, we drove a few blocks east to an Episcopal church just off the water; like a cow carcass set upon by piranhas, the structure was picked completely clean by the immense wall of water that swept the coast that day. The surrounding property is one big mess of debris and brush, fallen trees and stubborn stumps and prickly, crackly vegetation, and out of it rise the rusted, dully red legs of a giant spidery sculpture, obscenely splayed like a tragicomic parody of the fiery orange Calder Flamingo in downtown Chicago. These metal beams are all that's left of a once graceful sanctuary built in 1969 after Hurricane Camille destroyed the original church building in 1969--talk about bad luck. Its congregation had chosen to rebuild in the same spot that first time because they were inspired, I suppose, by its proximity to water, that holiest of elements. This time, not without heavy hearts, they're relocating north of the interstate, a good 3 or 4 miles away.

It's in those moments--when you find yourself scrambling over the implacable rubble of a church, or when you notice that that piece of plastic ground into the dirt next to you as you cut across someone's lawn is an orphaned hairbrush, barely recognizable; when you feel the sky go grey and the wind pick up and the lightning dance a little jig across the tree tops and you're reminded in no uncertain terms that you now live in Hurricane Country; when you read a heart-wrenching Chris Rose* column about New Orleans struggling to revive itself after the storm and it socks you in the solar plexus because it is so real and because you know that so many houses sit empty, still--that's when you know, in your bones, why you're down here.

PS. A huge THANK YOU to all who participated in last Saturday's nation-wide Stamp Out Hunger US Postal Service food drive! Our food pantry was the recipient of over two mail trucks full of cans and dry goods, and although our caseworker was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of food--I don't think any of us had ever seen so many cans of potted meat--we were all thrilled to have so much food to distribute to our clients. Well done postal customers!!

*Chris Rose is a stellar Times-Picayune columnist who returned to the city literally hours after the storm to report on the devastation and whose writings acted as a lifeline for many exiled New Orleanians longing for news of home in Katrina's aftermath. A book of his collected post-Katrina columns, 1 dead in attic, is phenomenal; it is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand (as much as it is possible for someone who didn't live through it) what the city and the people that love her went through. http://www.chrisrosebooks.com/