Kids Quotes of the Week

Kid: Why is your mama so fat?
Me: I don't know. Why?
Kid: Because she eats too much and she was born that way.

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Kid 1: My uncle killed a snake this weekend. He stabbed a stick right through the neck.
Kid 2: I'd kill it with a beaver.
Kid 3: My dog would eat the face first.

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Me: So I talked with your mom.
Kid: Did you touch her hair?
Me: No... what's up with her hair?
Kid: It's so soft.

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Among Us

You're not supposed to have favorite clients or get too emotionally attached, and for the most part, I abide by these rules. Except when it comes to my little 5 year-old sugar pie. He moved the US barely a year ago and used to whisper to me in Spanish during group activities when he first arrived and was confused by everything. He has since gained an (almost) complete understanding of the English language as well as a whole hell of a lot of confidence. He still holds my hand though and jumps into my arms on a weekly basis. And sometimes tells me that he misses me, and I melt into a puddle.

A few weeks ago, he told me a story about theses scary monsters on TV. Kids have the ability to talk for minutes uninterrupted, and I have to admit that I have developed a nasty skill of tuning them out when they are describing TV shows or movies. I hate it when adults do it, and it is even more confusing and unbearable when children try to explain plots to shows that I will never watch.

After a few minutes of planning what to eat for dinner that night while he sweetly relayed information in the background, I realized that he was possibly describing the Loch Ness Monster and other water dwelling creatures. And then he floored me with his language acquisition and said, "And the man on the TV said that they still live among us today. Cool, right?"

I thought, whoa. Did he just use the phrase "among us?" So I prodded a little to see if he was simply repeating the phrase or if he knew what he was saying.

"They live among us? Really?"
"Yes. Among us."
"Does that scare you? Or give you nightmares?"
"I mean, is among us in this world?"
"Well, yes in a way, I guess it is."
"Ok because I decided that I kind of want to go to mungus, but I am a little scared too"
"Oh really?" (I was trying to figure out what he was saying)
"Yeah. I mean, if my dad wants to go to mungus, then I want to tell him to be careful, but he could go there if he wants to see the monsters."

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And those are the less heavy days when kids are sweet and innocent and words are new and exciting.

Get Your Kicks on Route 66

The Route 66 Roller Dome is situated right off the highway in a small town near Tulsa. It has become one of the options in a never-ending stream of activities for our clients when school is out of session.

As one of the more stressful and potentially painful activities that we do with the kids, I am never fully prepared to deal with the chaos that is the Route 66 Roller Dome. Turns out that kids these days are also never fully prepared to skate. It's like watching a Whack-A-Mole game of children on roller skates. One falls, then another, then WHAM! one really falls, then another. It's tense, but it's good for the kids to try new activities. Rightfully so, many kids are a little weary to try out this hazardous activity, but my job is to help them overcome their fears and gain more confidence in themselves.

This day, I was targeting a particularly apathetic kid. He has a tendency to refuse to participate in activities and then incessantly complain about being bored and having nothing fun to do. In other words, he has a tendency to drive me nuts.

When he got out on the rink, it was like watching a baby walk for the first time. It was unbalanced, halting and so exhilarating. He was doing it! He had his PVC pipe walker to keep him at a 90 degree angle, moving precariously one foot, then the other. My baby bird was finally leaving my nest.

Fast-forward 30 minutes or so. A dramatic little client comes bounding down the rink frantically yelling, "Miss Molly! HE NEEDS YOU! He ripped his pants!" 

I could vaguely see him through the smokey fog and disco lights of the roller rink. He was sitting awkwardly on a bench in the alcove-turned-arcade on the opposite end. I casually walked over, bobbing and weaving past uncoordinated monsters on roller skates. "Miss Molly, I need your help," he inconspicuously said to me as I approached. I assumed it was a bad tear since most of the kids' clothes are very, very worn. And then, there was the problem. There it all was. The boy had left his house that morning forgetting a very integral piece of clothing: his underwear.

To make matters worse, the tear wasn't a small rip. It was the entire seam of the pants. Zipper to back belt buckle.

I mean. How. How do I even. One of my coworkers found a beach towel in her trunk, and we wrapped our client up as if he was headed to a luau. He refused to take off his skates until we convinced him that the walk of shame back to the lobby would be much more graceful without wheels.

On the ride home he was very quiet but didn't appear too upset. We had a quick chat about remembering to bring all necessary items of clothing before the next activity, he agreed, and I watched as he hobbled into his house the towel constricting his regular stride.

Weeks later, we ended up needing to bring him with us to the roller skating rink since his older sister wanted to join us. As he peered over the wall, watching all the other kids skate, I assumed he was still embarrassed and couldn't bring himself to try skating again after such a traumatic event. I didn't blame him.

"How are you feeling? Do you want to try skating again?"
"No, not really."
"Is it because of what happened last time?"
"What do you mean? What happened?"
"Well . . . you know . . . "
"What?"

THE BOY DIDNT EVEN REMEMBER THAT HE FELL AND RIPPED HIS PANTS AND HAD HIS DANGLING PARTICIPLE POTENTIALLY EXPOSED IN FRONT OF ALL OF HIS PEERS!

I love it, because I know him well. And this was not traumatic or even the least bit interesting enough to remember two weeks later. Thank the good Lord for that. 

10 Cars and a Helicopter

Some days are heavier than others.

"I don't want to be successful. Everyone says I'm going to end up in jail, and they're right. It's no point trying no more."

He is 17 years old. He was caught by the police ("like 10 cars and a helicopter") for stealing and selling puppies last weekend. When he told me, I laughed out loud and said, "Puppies?! Puppies are what brought you down?" He smiled and said, "I do whats I do, Miss Molly." After attempting to exchange money for some wiggly pure breeds, the police arrived in full force, surrounded him and his brother, told them that if they moved an inch that they would be "shot in the ass," slammed their faces against the car windows and took them to juvie.

Unfortunately, I've become accustomed to the arrests and the asshole cops and the drugs and the guns. I'm unfazed but disappointed in my clients' decisions when they make choices that are so detrimental to their future and when they don't express much regret. But as frustrating as it can be to hear no remorse, it is far worse to to hear the sounds of utter defeat. I taught my client what self-sabotage means, and he agreed that he is indeed sabotaging himself. When I asked him who believes in him, he said, "Just you. And my mom." He has reached a point of no return.

This boy was born into poverty, kidnapped by his dad for a year, taken back by his mom, sent back to his dad then back to his mom, and told he was stupid and incapable of making anything of himself over and over. This is real life.

No matter how many times I try to get him to identify positive qualities and talents in himself, no matter how many options to his gangster lifestyle I present, no matter how many times I advocate for him with schools and programs, no matter how much his mom loves him and works hard to provide a life for him, he is still a young, Latino male living in urban poverty with little chance of success. And days like this are very, very heavy.

We ended the session by shaking hands and agreeing that he would take it one step at time, call me before he attempts a felony again, and start completing some assignments for school. It isn't life-changing, but it's a step. And at this point, a step is monumental.

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But good news, y'all! He's been telling me for years that he's got my back. Today he told me that he doesn't like it that everyone is afraid of him. I told him that I wasn't afraid of him and he said, "We got you, Miss Molly. If anybody messes with you, just let us know. We'll take care of it."

We got robbed . . . in 2013

This is a post that I wrote in 2013 after getting robbed on our vacation back to Mexico. I'm not sure why I didn't post it, but alas, here it is.

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"Are you sure? Shouldn't we take a taxi?"

"We are fine. We've got Antonio with us. He's Mexican. If he think it's fine, then it's fine." 

We knew we shouldn't have done it. We were so stupid. How many times did we tell the students not to walk down that alley? We never did it when we lived there. Not once. Why in the world did we do it then? Alas, safety is indeed the best policy, and comfort is dangerous. 

Cue the flashing lights, the 15 Mexican police trucks with machine guns, the cops that wanted a bribe, the gawking neighbors shaking their heads, and the two drunk men claiming "I'm not going to lie, I've been drinking a little bit, but we can help. We know them! We know where they live." 

So for the third time in as many years, I had my wallet stolen. The difference was that this time it felt personal. It was maddening. It made me feel like an idiot and a spoiled brat. And it reminded me that even though my "skin is a nice color, it's not so white like other gringos" according to one of my Mexican friends, my skin still radiates rich, white, privileged American girl. 

The most sickening part of the whole ordeal was when I realized that it wasn't actually that harmful or detrimental to our lives. They took so much from us, and it didn't even truly matter. If we wanted, we could just buy it all again. Obviously that would be a big financial strain and student loan payments would stop for a while, but we could. We could buy two nice, expensive cameras, a pair of sunglasses, a necklace and a wallet. It wasn't life changing. How pathetic is that? 

These kids - honestly, they couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 - face the consequences of oppression and violence every day, and live in such poverty that they bought a gun, pointed it at three friends walking down the street and then clumsily and fearfully took their possessions. They risked their lives for a couple hundred dollars, and although it may seem trivial and meaningless for such little payoff, but it means something to them. It means that they have money to give their moms to buy food for dinner, or to buy a new pair of baller shoes from the mall, or maybe even money to buy pot to smoke with friends after school. I'm not sure it really matters what they will use our pesos to buy. What matters is that it does matter to them. The point is that they aren't criminals or drug runners or gangsters. They're kids who live in a colónia in Mexico that doesn't have enough money to go around and even the educated and skilled can't pay their bills.

When I told my boss (a Mexican woman) about the incident, she shook her head and said, "Isn't it so sad what the situation in Mexico is doing to people?" And by "people" she didn't mean Ryan and me. She meant the boys who robbed us. I loved that she responded that way. Of course she did, she's a social worker! But she wasn't shocked or upset on our behalf, she was upset because she saw the context in which the robbery took place, and she saw the kids who stole our things as people who are hurting and struggling to make a life.

It's easy to dismiss those who hurt us as a label (i.e., "thief," "con-artist," "bitch"), but it's much harder to look at those who hurt us as real people with real problems and a real past. I can't begin to imagine their lives, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that I won the lottery in life by being born where I was to the family that I have and to the opportunities that I was given, and they weren't awarded those same chances in life.

Yes, being held-up at gunpoint in an alleyway in Mexico is a crazy soundbite and a pretty good truth for the game "Two Truths and a Lie", and yes, it's scary as shit to look back on the event and realize that someone actually pointed a gun at us. But if all Ryan and I took from that experience was the soundbite and a sense of loss for our things and thought "poor us! We only have ONE digital camera left," then that would be the biggest travesty of all.

                                                                                                                              

One roll of film was recovered from our day in Puebla, and herein lies the final 3 photos of my LOMO camera, may it rest in peace.

The brightly colored street in the center of town exposed over the Cathedral - look closely!

Two different streets in Puebla - look closely!

Our Stable Existence

Our vagrant life has become our stable existence in middle America. It has become an adventure less about discovering new things and more about rediscovering what it means to live near family in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Ryan and I are both full-time workers and part-time graduate students. We have a dog. And a duplex. And an expendable income, ladies and gentlemen! We still speak Spanish and eat chilaquiles and sopes like nobody's business, but we also go to baseball games and eat apple pie.

I'm getting my Masters in Social Work while working as a case manager for Spanish-speaking families in Tulsa. I spend most of my days counseling elementary kids who can't control their anger, middle school and high school boys who sell and/or consume drugs and make bad grades, and moms who desperately need an advocate as well as a translator. I teach English and parenting skills to Mexican and Central American women three mornings a week. We practice the simple tenses together, but mostly we converse about the struggles of being an immigrant, the pain of living with abuse, the confusion of the US school system, and sometimes (often) they make big potluck feasts at 8 in the morning - and sometimes (once) they bring me tequila in a Walgreen's pill bottle to add to my coffee.

Although it has been a transition from the mountains and brightly colored homes of Cuernavaca to the rolling hills and Mid Century homes of Tulsa, we are happy. Very happy.

I am busier than I need to be, and my job stresses me out on the daily, but one of my New Year's Resolutions is to write more often. How many days have I stumbled home, drunk with exhaustion but dying to share a part of my day? Well . . . to be honest, not that often. I try to leave my work at work. I rarely tell Ryan about my day, because more likely than not, it was a hard day with sad shit. However, there are moments that I need to record. And as the interwebbies as my witness, maybe I'll write more than once every 2 years.

Now I will leave you with a picture of why our little duplex in the heart of Tulsa is a very happy place for us. Look at this face!

Standing out, fitting in

We end each day exhausted here, whether we've worked hard or not. It's a strange and somewhat disconcerting feeling to come home from work in the early evening, as we have countless times this year, collapse on the couch, and believe that we could easily nod off until the next morning.

It's only recently that I've begun to realize that our chronic lethargy is due in large part to the intense, near-constant energy we put to the task of simply fitting in - of minimizing, in whatever way possible, in every moment we spend in the presence of others, the extent to which we stick out like sore thumbs, attract curious stares, prompt giggling, cause confusion, provoke frustration, or rouse pity. In public, we keep our profiles as low as possible, trying our best to dress as the locals do and prevent our nasal English from reaching beyond each others' ears. Our heavily accented Spanish is laced, as best as we can muster, with elaborate politeness, in the attempt to convey just how grateful we are for the listener's patience. With our local friends and acquaintances, the pressure is a little lighter, but not by much. Though it's now more or less habit to announce our entrance into a room with a hearty "¡Buenos días!" or "¡Buen provecho!", it's still a bit of a mystery, for me at least, where to put my hands as I'm circling a room and kissing each woman on the cheek, and I can't say how many times I've almost gone in to kiss a man on the cheek when I'm in a rhythm. I know it would make a great story for someone someday, which makes it almost worth it, but it would also make me the paragon of foreignness (and, inevitably, the butt of jokes till kingdom come), which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. All by way of saying, of course, that cultural norms are complicated, and attempting to follow them is energy-sapping.

But in these last few months, it's finally felt as though all that energy has started to pay off. We're much more confident to share a story, no matter how halting, while at the breakfast table with staff. If the restaurant where we do karaoke nearly every week had a punch card for free sopa azteca or conventos after buying 10 or 20, we certainly would have earned several by now. Every time we go there, we meet our boss Naty's wonderful family: her two kids, two grandkids, her brother and sister-in-law, often her parents as well - four generations at the same table. Sure, we'll miss the food, the language, the culture, and our lifestyle in general when we leave in a month, but it's the people we'll miss the most, people we've worked very hard to fit in with - and largely succeeded - despite all of the barriers.

Like so many US middle class individualists, we've spent so much of our formative years trying to distinguish ourselves in a variety of ways - how we dress, the sports we play, the musical instruments we learn, the grades we strive for, the music we listen to, our sense of humor. Though beards are certainly not at all uncommon among men my age, I know that mine, on some subconscious level, is an assertion of my identity, another way to stand out.

In a few short weeks, we'll be heading back to the US, where the norm is the attempt to stand out, not to fit in. Maybe one of the things we love most about living here (and one of the reasons that we're bound and determined to move back) is the enormous challenge of integrating into a new culture and the rewards that come with it. That challenge won't be there when we get back to the States - it will be easy to communicate with everyone, and we'll know what to do (more or less) in every situation. We'll have all the comfort foods we grew up with, beautiful autumn weather, and the same families we've always loved and adored. But we won't have sopa azteca, awkward moments interacting with street vendors, or weekly karaoke marathons. Knowing that our wonderful family and friends will continue putting up with our urge to stay abroad, we'll be coming back for more in January. And, if all goes well, we'll have many more nights of disconcerting exhaustion, but we'll sleep well knowing that our challenge here is worth the effort.