Dr. Lisa's Bountiful Life

Time Only

Five years ago my friend died.

Her life ended. My life shifted, dramatically.

My life had been in the process of shifting, but January 18, 2007 was a significant demarcation point, nonetheless.

It was the day I realized that there is no time to lose.

It was the day I realized that days spent unhappy are lost days.

It took me a long time to get to the place of believing this.

Forever I had been taught to accept what was. I had been taught that to ask for more would demonstrate ingratitude.

I knew that I was fortunate. I was grateful for my good fortune.

But I also knew that I could no longer accept what was.

Because in doing so, I was wasting time.

And time is ultimately all we have.

Until one day, like my friend Hanley,

we don't.

Guatemala City

2011

~~~~~

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Holiday Heart

Dropping by a high-end store recently, I learned a bit about myself when the clerk (out of my earshot) told my companion, "Well, she obviously has a good heart."

Not typically a high-end store shopper, my clothes reflected not only this, but also the fact that I had just spent the past week travelling. Cowboy boots, creased jeans, a favorite old red jacket and patterned red and black scarf completed the look.

The jeans even had a bit of dust on them, courtesy of the Guatemala City dump.

The clerk, not an unkind soul, wanted to reassure my companion that although I seemed to be lacking fashion sense, I appeared to have other redeeming qualities.

When my dearest one relayed the clerk's comment, he also teased me gently about being 'a diamond in the rough.'

I considered covering myself with a sheet, and skulking out of the Boston mall.

Then I decided that having a big heart might be OK.

And that if I looked fashion-disinterested because I had just spent several days in the midst of impoverished children, I was largely fine with that, too.

It was actually the perfect comment to begin my holiday season. It reminded me of who I want to be. Yes, I like to dress well, but I also want my beauty to be interiorly derived.

And this is the way I like my holidays.  Though I love the festive atmosphere created by burgundy ribbons and evergreens, I am more likely to notice a bright line of stars across the night sky on a December eve.

I am more likely to notice the way that this makes me feel: that I am part of something much bigger than I might often remember.

The December holiday season, as hectic as it may seem, offers a chance for us to pause in our busy lives.

It offers a chance to ponder the meaning of light in darkness. To ponder the importance of hope, and rebirth; innocence and renewal.

The holidays are not about canned music or garish window-dressing. They are not about decorative trappings.

The decorations are merely a reminder to look inside ourselves.

To contemplate who we are, and how we wish to live.

To peel back the layers (whether fashionable or not) and open our hearts to those we love.

 

Guatemala 2011

 

 

Deliberation & Joy, Re-Entry

Before I left for Guatemala, I had tea with a friend who had herself visited the Safe Passage site several times. Jane, one of the foundational members of the group that created Our Daily Tread, had known our late friend Hanley Denning well.

Jane told me that "re-entry" after my trip might be interesting.

Which it has been.

It has been interesting to return to a land of relative peace and prosperity, knowing that I am a fortunate lass.

It has been interesting to return to the life I have cultivated for forty years, and realize that there are a few things I still need to change.

It has been interesting to return to my friends and family, feeling changed already.

The most interesting thing has been to remember what we originally wrote in Our Daily Tread in 2008: live with joy; live deliberately. Share what you have, and who you are, with others.

These words, printed the year after Hanley's death, continue to ring true. I know that I must continue to live each day as if it is the only one I have been given. Life, as my dearest one reminds me often, is not a dress rehearsal. Happiness and joy are within our grasp, if we keep this notion in mind.

At the same time, I am cognizant of the fact that I must continue to work deliberately toward the future. I have a radio show that is among the most important things I have ever done. I have patients I value highly. I have three children whom I call beloved.  I have countless friends and family members who enrich my life, daily. I know that even as I am enjoying the present, I must be making necessary changes to ensure the sustainability of my joy, and the joy of those around me.

Finally, I know now that in sharing what I have and who I am, I must be highly realistic about what I actually have to give. Guilty in the past of giving just about everything away to my own detriment, I no longer have that luxury.

I am just one woman. I do not need to save the world.

I simply need to show up. Be who I am. Treasure what I have been given.

Do what I can.

Be the best person I can be, at any given moment.

And if I stumble, or fall short of the expectations I have set for myself, treat myself the way that I attempt to treat others: with compassion and love.

These are my re-entry thoughts.

Life is simultaneously long and short. We must live deliberately, and with joy.

We must share of ourselves.

And we must continue to realize what a gift each day truly is.

 

Guatemala City 2011

 

Grocery Store Gratitude

A week ago, I was traipsing through the bustling Bodegona (grocery store) in Antigua, buying staples such as peanut butter and shampoo for my Guatemalan-living son.

Today I am back in Maine, having just completed a visit to our own local supermarket with my daughter.

The contrasts are stark.

Never having been one to enjoy grocery shopping, I can now say that I have little to complain about.

Our local store is a veritable Zen retreat center compared to the Bodegona. Bustling at all hours, at the Bodegona the narrow aisles are constantly crowded with shoppers. Spanish holiday music blares from every corner. The smell of fish, cheese, baked goods and industrial cleaning solutions mixes with the lingering scent of human sweat.

If there is an organizational system in place, one is hard-pressed to understand it. The dairy case is next to the Tupperware display, and shampoo wrestles for space with soda cases. One can find just about anything desired--from multi-colored marshmallows to color televisions.

Given that Guatemala is a third-world country, and poverty is prevalent, those who are able to shop at the Bodegona are a privileged lot.

As are those, like myself, who can return after a week to a country of relative wealth.

Those, like myself, who can return to a state with clean air and water.

Those, like myself, who are not asked to make a living by picking trash out of a dump.

It remains to be seen what longstanding impact my journey to Safe Passage in Guatemala will have upon my life.

At the very least, I know I am grateful for my own orderly grocery store, in my own beautiful state.

I am grateful for the opportunity to understand how bountiful my life truly is.

 

Guatemalan groceries

2011

 

 

Universality

I am told that Guatemalan families are comprised, on average, of 3.4 children.

Women tend to have their babies early—at Safe Passage it is not unheard of for eleven- and twelve-year-old girls to be giving birth.

By the time children in the poorer areas of Guatemala reach the age of six, they are considered old enough to work.

And they do. They can be found hawking fruit at the local Mercado and selling their shoeshine services in Antigua’s Central Park.

Babies and toddlers, too, are everywhere. Carried on backs, their heads peaking above their mothers shoulders; slung across chests, often nursing while their mothers work. Crawling on dirty pavement and on street corners, as their mothers peddle necklaces and soccer jerseys. 

Being cared for by their older siblings, many of them only months older than they.

Children learn early that survival is contingent upon their family’s ability to work.

If Guatemalan children in the lower socioeconomic strata have the benefit of access to an education, it is rare that their parents will be involved in their daily school activities: there simply isn’t time for soccer-game-watching in the face of a family’s need to eat.

Safe Passage parents recognize the value of an education. Each morning they prepare their children for school as best they can, given the dearth of running water and electricity that often exists in their makeshift homes, and walk them to the project. They kiss them goodbye, leaving them in the capable hands of staff and volunteers.

They return at the end of the day knowing that their kids will have been fed breakfast, lunch and snacks. They know that their children will have had the chance to brush their teeth and comb their hair.

They also know that their kids will have received instruction in reading, writing & ‘rithmetic. They will learn social skills, art and music.

And, on rare occasions, parents will have the chance to see their children perform.

Yesterday, on my last day in the project, I, too, had the chance to see the children perform: it was talent show day in the Guarderia (nursery school).

As a mother of three in suburban Maine, I’ve seen many a school performance.  I’ve seen plays, concerts and sporting events.

I’ve had the privilege to witness countless kid-related activities.

Yesterday I was struck by what a privilege this indeed is.

I stood behind rows of parents and siblings, their clothes soiled by city grime, and realized that the chance to witness a child in his or her growth is an opportunity not afforded to parents whose main focus is survival. 

I knew that the joy of watching one’s first-grader dress up as a flower, or perform a rhythmic dance with a pom-pom held in hand, is a joy relatively unknown to many across the globe.

What I also saw yesterday, however, was the universality of parental love.

Whether we are seeing our children perform on a temporary stage in a school carved out of dump-lands, or we are joining them (as I have this past week) in their volunteer activities in a foreign country, we do so because there is nothing more important than to be present in their lives.

We also know, regardless of where we live or what our family looks like, that we will do whatever it takes to help our children survive.

 

Talent Show

Safe Passage, 2011

 

Dia de Gracias

When our children are very young, we are active participants in their lives. 

We feed and bathe them; clothe them and care for them.

We sing to them, talk to them and rock them to sleep.

As they age, they need us in different ways. We become less participants than active observers.

And sometimes the activeness of the observation varies greatly.

This week, I returned to active participant parenting: I joined my son in his volunteer life at Safe Passage in Guatemala. 

No longer simply watching him from the high school soccer sidelines or from the bleachers at the baseball field, I was once again by his side. 

We ate together; walked together. Travelled daily from Antigua to Guatemala City (and back) together. Rode the “chicken bus” to Pastorales with his friend Nico in search of red cowboy boots. Toured the Mercado, the artisan market and the catacombs of Mersed. Took photos of the volcanoes from the rooftop at Café Sky. Squeezed in tiny tuk tuk’s (micro-cab/motorscooters) together, to be transported over Antigua’s bumpy cobblestone streets.

Throughout the week, son introduced me to his friends and fellow Safe Passage volunteers. One morning on the volunteer bus, he even offered up my services as “stand-in Mom” to all whose parents were far away on Thanksgiving Day.

 Then yesterday, the American-inspired “Dia de Gracias,” I took part in not one, but two Thanksgiving feasts: one offered by his homestay parents, Jose and Lucky (complete with pie made with green pumpkins), and one that my son created with Nico, to feed their fellow volunteers.

 We sat under cardboard cutouts of Spanish Santa’s and blinking lights from the Mercado, with plates of stuffing and green beans balanced on our knees, and gave thanks for companionship and bounty.

 And I realized (once again) how blessed I am to be a mother.

This Thanksgiving week, I have been with my son. Firmly back in his life, participating in his world.

Mi hijo, now my man-child, has given me a gift beyond measure. A gift his sisters continue to afford me as well.

Sometimes it takes a journey of several thousand miles to remind us how fortunate we are. 

Safe Passage Volunteers, Maine contingent 

Dia de Gracias, 2011

 

 

 

 

Safe Passage: Spirit & Reality

Signs of Hanley are everywhere.  A painted wooden sunshine on the Guarderia (nursery school) playground declares this “Hanley’s Garden;” Hanley’s portrait hangs near an artificial Christmas tree at the entrance to the school.

 These, and other reminders, belie the fact that it has been almost five years since her death.

 But it is in the children that her spirit seems most represented.

I knew Hanley first as a sweet and slightly goofy high school kid. She smiled readily, and found humor in many things. She was eternally kind. 

She was the type of person, I thought at the time, who might like children. Her spirit was itself childlike; joyful. Gentle.

 When I attended her wake in the winter of 2007, I was shocked to see her body lying before me, bereft of that spirit.

Scheduled to get my passport photo that day for an upcoming trip, I followed through with the task. My photo retains a hint of the underlying uncertainty I had been feeling. A hint of the grief-tainted wonderment that my friend’s spirit was no longer present on the earth. 

But, of course, this spirit has remained. 

Every child who spends time at Safe Passage channels a bit of this spirit; every staff person; every volunteer.

There is an underlying sense of hope and purpose.

The Safe Passage program currently serves 550 children and adults through work in three main buildings.  This week while at Safe Passage, I have seen every age represented, from toddlers engaging in water play, to mothers studying for their sixth grade diploma.

I have witnessed first-graders learning about healthy foods from La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar); I have joined eighty -ear-olds in a dusty rooftop yoga class.

 All around us, outside the walls of the program, poverty reigns.

 Homes are primarily shacks built of makeshift items, found in dump forays; shells of human beings roam the streets, their minds evaporated by the glue they sniff constantly.

Glue is known to reduce hunger pains. It also enables one to escape reality.

In many parts of Guatemala City, it is easy to see why reality escape might be an attractive option.

But within the walls of Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), a different sort of reality escape is taking place. It is purposeful, and long-term. It is made possible through education and vocational programs. Every participant is taught self-sufficiency, from the children who clean up their classrooms after lessons, to the adults in the “Creamos” program who are creating jewelry for resale.

Every individual who wishes to make it so is being given the opportunity to move past their current circumstances; escape their present reality.

It is in this sense of opportunity that the spirit of Hanley Denning remains most evident.

Hanley, though no longer physically present on the earth, remains with us still.

 

Camino Seguro (Safe Passage) 2011

 

 

 

Recycled Lives

“They are more scared of us than we are of them.”

 This was my tour guide’s response to a suggestion that the presence of circling vultures seemed an ominous sign. 

How could they seem anything but ominous? We were standing near several abandoned tombs at the edge of a city-sized cemetery.

We were also overlooking a vast ravine, which has served as the dumping ground for Guatemala City’s trash for countless years. A line of yellow trucks snaked in between sheer cliff faces, formed abruptly following recent landslides. 

What was unusual about this line of trucks was that they were currently in a standstill. According to my guide, it was likely that toxic substances had been disgorged by a previous vehicle and that the trucks were waiting to be given permission to proceed.

As if waiting for a given period of time would have any significant impact on the dispersion of toxic wastes.

Or as if this particular set of toxic wastes would make even a small difference given the unfathomable amounts of other unsavory items already in the dump: animal carcasses, human waste, industrial discards.

And, likely, human bodies. Those buried in previously mentioned landslides, sucked into sinkholes or caught in methane fires.

Meanwhile, even as the trucks remained motionless, the piles of surrounding detritus swarmed with human beings.

These beings, my guide informed me, were performing a valuable service. They were collecting recyclable materials to be removed from the dump, thus reducing the waste piles that would eventually need to be capped off to make room for more waste.

Our fellow humans, more than a mile away, reflected on the ground the birds circling high above them in the sky: each organism a sentient spark, searching to find a bit of treasure amidst items abandoned by others. 

The stench of the dump remained in my nostrils as I left the dump with my guide, and we wove our way through streets teeming with overflow trash, and ownerless roving dogs.

I gagged slightly, and held my breath.

We pulled up in front of a gate, across from a house constructed remainder scraps, topped with by a corrugated metal roof. The sheet which comprised the door moved slightly with our passing.

And as the gate opened into the Guarderia campus of Safe Passage, I saw what Hanley Denning had worked so hard to put in place before her premature death in 2007.

An oasis; a place of creation, rather than discard.

A center of calm, and clean, and sanity, where children whose parents picked through trash piles could receive an education, and themselves be freed from their parents' poverty-stricken life.

A place where sentient humans could extract and nurture the best in other sentient humans; a place where treasures could be found.

In the distance, the vultures circled, and workers scavenged near toxic waste piles.

Here, I realized I could breathe again, and was no longer intimidated by ominous-seeming birds who were merely trying to take their place in the circle of life.

Here the concept of recycling took on a whole new meaning.

 

intersections

Guatemala 2011

 

 

Guatemala: Grit & Reality

I had been hearing about Guatemala for years. Myriad friends of mine had made the journey, volunteering with the organization Safe Passage, and returned to Maine, their heads filled with stories. They shared these stories with me enthusiastically, when we asked for contributions to the book we were writing to raise money for Safe Passage.

They shared these stories with me with even more enthusiasm once we published "Our Daily Tread." They assumed I, too, had travelled to this Central American country. 

Until this week, I had not. And now, what had been an imagined geography, has become real.

Grittily real.

I was met at the Guatemala City airport yesterday by a bearded young man wearing a navy blue Safe Passage t-shirt. He stood behind a gate, waiting with a driver named Jorge.  I didn’t immediately recognize that this young man was waving at me.

It wasn’t until I was immediately in front of him that I realized this was mi hijo; my baby boy, grown and slightly grungy from the Guatemala City streets.

This man-child of mine was proud to show me his new world: ever-present Gallo beer signs, festooned with the company’s jaunty chicken logo; an enormous Latin version of a Christmas tree in the city center; my first glimpse at the Safe Passage project, seated in one of the city’s meanest neighborhoods.

He chided me gently for attempting to take a picture of the project with my iPhone. This expensive gadget--and a tall, blond American woman--would be an easy target for thieves.

The van alarm, set off when I climbed from the car in my photo quest, and the armed guards standing watch in nearby doorways reminded me that I was not in Kansas (or Maine) any more.

Indeed, I was in Guatemala. A gritty third world country, where the contrast between the haves and the have-nots is stark.

Where beggars missing limbs sit on median strips, and children live near toxic garbage dumps.

Where rampant air pollution crawls into the lungs and grabs the breath from urban visitors. 

I was in Guatemala, where my friend Hanley, a tall, blond American woman herself, had braved the gritty, crime-ridden streets to offer a generation of impoverished children ‘safe passage,’ through education and bodily nourishment. 

I was in Guatemala, at long last.

And it, and all of my past work with "Our Daily Tread," had finally become real.

 

Guatemala 2011