Christmas Memories, Volume 3

Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez, Guatemala, 1992.

This was to be my second and final Christmas spent in Guatemala during my 2-year mission for the LDS Church. And oh, how the mighty had fallen by this point in time.

See, I was a mission big-wig up until a couple of months before this time. Some of you reading this are former Mormon missionaries yourselves, and so you may be able to relate to what I'm about to tell you, but for the rest of you, maybe I ought to delve into a little detail.

You see us wheeling around town in white shirts and ties on mountain bikes, our helmets securely fastened around our chins. To you, we're all the same. Quiet kids from Utah out knocking on doors and calling everyone "sir" and "ma'am".

But there's a sort of hierarchy that goes on in these missions. Most of us just go out and knock on doors, but some get called to positions of leadership. District Leaders watch out for small groups of maybe 6 or 8 missionaries; Zone Leaders look out for 3 or 4 of these districts; and then the really big Kahunas, the 2 Assistants to the President, or AP's, rule over all of them.

I shot through these ranks early on. I bypassed District Leader altogether and instead spent 5 months as the Mission Financial Secretary. I learned quickly that even among humble servants of Christ, everyone loves the guy who controls the purse strings. (waitaminute- didn't Judas control the purse strings...? Never mind. On with my story.)

After my time in the office, I spent another 5 months as a Zone Leader in two different zones. With 6 months left before I went home, I was on the fast track to AP. Everyone expected it of me. My name was legend.

Then we got a sudden influx of 20 or so missionaries who had to be pulled out of Honduras due to a political uprising. Suddenly, we had to open up a bunch of new areas to missionary work that either had never seen missionaries before, or hadn't seen them in over ten years.

That's where I got sent. For two months, I was banished into relative obscurity in a village deep in the Mountains, walking its hot dusty streets and struggling to adapt to its local dialect of Cakchiquel. While I was there, large groups of missionaires went home, and even larger groups arrived. By the time I was brought back out of the mountains, nearly a third of the mission had never heard of me, and any thought of me rising into the highest levels of leadership were long since forgotten.

Suddenly, my huge head had to deflate and adapt to the idea that I wasn't anything special anymore.

That's when I got sent to Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez, to finish out my last 4 months.

It was a small, steamy, sweaty little town on a major higway running along the Pacific coastal plain. People here walked and talked and worked a little slower due to the heat, and the effort required just to cut a swath through the thick wet air from day to day, moment to moment.

Rio Bravo, like any small town, had its own peculiar cast of characters. There was Noe Revolorio, the pastor of the largest Evangelical church in town. He was a quiet and unassuming man, thin, bespectacled, gaunt- but once he took stage to deliver a sermon, it could be heard echoing through the concrete canyons of the town's streets, from one end of town to the other.

There was Sister Victoria, the local friend-to-Mormons. Not a member of the church herself, she nonetheless loved it, and loved the Missionaires, and made sure her Mormon-suspicious husband rented us our house/chapel at the cheapest rate possible, and even showed up at meetings on occasion when she could sneak out without letting the husband know she was gone.

There was Victor. Victor was a young guy in our local congregation. A bit effeminate and socially awkward, he was a short, skinny little guy with a front tooth missing and a prominent lisp because of it. Which did nothing to reduce his effeminate nature. Victor was an all-around good guy. If something needed doing or someone needed helping, Victor was there, usually without you even having to ask him. Or even INFORM him- word got around that town quickly, and Victor would just know, and he'd show up to help.

There was the town drunk. Every town had one, but this guy was the angry variety. He'd wander town in stinking clothes and with an bitter disposition, barking at anyone who was unfortunate enough to cross his path to give him some money, or food, or at the very least, a little respect. His local nickname was "Mi Perrita," which translates into "My Little Doggy," but "Doggy" in its feminine form, just to add another list twist of indignity to his already miserable life.

And there was the Snake House. Nearly every town I had lived in had one- a house with 2-4 attractive sisters living in it, aged anywhere from 15 to 25, who loved to flirt with the celibate missionaries, and use their womanly wiles to drag them down the path to hell. Or at least get them to flirt back. In Rio Bravo, the Snake House was right next door to our own house, which doubled as the local church building. And the Snakes were Alma and Sarah, two sisters, ages 19 and 21. Alma was the brighter, less-attractive of the two, but by less attractive, I mean in the way that Jessica Simpson is slightly less attractive than Pamela Anderson. Sarah was the more attractive of the two, and was also far more open in her flirting, blowing loud kisses to me every time we left the house in the morning to do our daily visits.

And then there was my missionary companion, Elder Calderon. A young rich kid from some little village on the border of Mexico, his heart just wasn't in this whole mission thing. And frankly, at this point in time, mine wasn't in it as much as it once had been, too. I was tired, and I wanted it to be over with. I still put all I had into my daily duties, as did Calderon, but we were always good for staying somewhere a little too long if the conversation was enjoyable, or taking the longer, more scenic route to an appointment, even if that meant arriving a little late and having to leave a little early to take the same route back.

Christmas in Guatemala isn't like Christmas in the States. It's a lot more like the 4th of July. Fireworks are set off all night on the 24th, in increasing number and frequency as the night progresses, culminating in a cacophony of violent explosions at midnight to celebrate the birth of our Savior. As missionaries, we'd visit as many people as we could, both members of the church and members of other churches, delivering a brief Christmas message and then being stuffed with fresh-cooked tamales. By the time you've had you tenth tamale for the day, you want to puke every one of them back up, but we were troopers- we just kept on going, kept on visiting, kept on eating as the night grew later and the noise of the fireworks louder and harder to talk over.

Our second-to-last visit of the night was to the Snake House, our next door neighbors. Now I know, I labeled it the Snake House, and in so doing diminished it to house-of-sin status in your minds, but it was more than that. Alma and Sarah were just two of the 5 sisters who lived there. They lived there with their niece, Llesika, their mother, and on holidays like this, their father would come home from Guatemala City to visit.

I really liked their father, and loved any chance I got to come and sit and talk with him. The daughters knew their social places during visits like this; Me, Dad, and Calderon were left to sit on the nicer seats by the fire and talk, while they would enter and leave the scene with tamales and drinks and softly-spoken inquiries as to our general level of comfort and whether we needed more to eat or drink. They'd then back out of the scene, ducking behind Dad and winking flirtaciously when they were pretty sure he couldn't see it. Not that he'd really care; if one of his daughters could land herself an American husband, he'd have been all for that.

We sat and talked for way too long, and as much as I enjoyed it, jousting good-naturedly over our differences in religious views, and laughing and joking around, I subconsciously knew we should be getting on to our last appointment.

That appointment was at Victor's house. See, as nice a guy as Victor was, he was also overly sensitive to perceived slights. Arriving late was taken by him as an indication that we really didn't value him or his friendship. Inattentiveness was another indication to him that we really didn't care too much for him. He was wrong, of course- we loved this guy. When he loosened up and stopped worrying about how people were treating him, he was more fun than anyone else in town. We cared for the guy like a brother. But always being watched for any indication of ingratitude was exhasusting, and it created a strange situation where, as much as we knew we'd enjoy the visit, we wanted to put it off for as long as we could, even though we knew that so doing would only make matters worse.

Finally, I presented the Snake House Dad with his gift, and then we wrapped up the conversation and politely made our departure, awkwardly declining the traditonal Christmas hugs from Alma and Sarah before finally relenting under their insistance and enjoying the carnal body press from the hottest babes in town. We did duck the kisses, though, much to their dismay.

Victor lived right around the corner from us, and we cautiously made our way over. I was bracing myself for the guilt onslaught as we approached his gate and called out to announce our arrival.

"We're here, Victor!" I called out, expecting to hear him say in response, "A la', Elders, we expected you 45 minutes ago!"

Instead, his voice drifted over from the fire in the back of the property. "Over here, Elders, come get some Tamales!"

Mmmmmm, tamales..... more tamales. Well, hell, it was Christmas, so we dished ourselves up a couple and sat down by the fire.

I let my eyes adjust and looked around the fire as we sat down. Victor was there, with his mother, and his niece, and then there was some guy I didn't recognize at all, sitting almost directly across from me.

Victor made an introduction. "This is Juan."

I nodded my head, stood up, circled the fire, and shook his hand.

Now that the fire wasn't between us, I could see him a little better, and I recognized him this time. Startled, I hesitated before I shook his hand, and then offered it and shook it firmly.

I hadn't recognized him at all, because I had never seen him bathed and in clean clothing. I had never been that close to him without smelling that acrid, oily stench that comes from rubbing alcohol sweating out of your pores all day every day. I had never heard him talk to me, only shout, or growl. I had never seen him quiet, or humbled, as he was tonight.

It was Mi Perrita. It was the Town Drunk. Cleaned up, smelling good, sitting quietly and politely, and enjoying a tamale with the family.

"Hi, Juan, nice to uh- meet you," I said.

"Nice to meet you too," he said back, keeping his head down. See, he knew I knew who he was. The whole damn town knew who he was. And as much as I wish I could say I had never laughed openly at him in public, it wouldn't be true.

Now, I had never openly MOCKED the man in public, but there had been times when he approached a group of us on the street and started to berate us, and in those times, it often seemed that the only was to defuse the situation was to laugh and walk away, or run, sometimes, if he was particularly loaded up and aggressive.

To me, I was laughing at the situation. Here I was, a middle class white kid from the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, running down a street in Rio Bravo, Guatemala, with an angry drunk guy screaming at me. That was funny! So I laughed.

Mi Perrita- or Juan, as I guess he was actually called- didn't find it as funny. To him, he was the source of my laughter, not the situation itself.

And now here we were, face to face, on Christmas Eve, eating tamales around Victor's fire.

I sat down, and Victor pulled out his bible. "Let's read the Christmas story," he said, and we did, passing the bible around the fire, each of us reading a few verses from Luke Chapter 2 between staccato bursts of firecrackers out on the street behind us. Juan could read fast and loud, something not often seen in Guatemala, where 5th and 6th grade students often struggled to read a full sentence.

The night wore on, and the conversation was fun and lively. Then Juan told us his life story, which I only vaguely remember now. He was from neighboring El Salvador, and had somehow ended up in these parts on a work assignment of some sort. He started drinking while he was here, missing his family, and ended up a full-blown alcoholic, and now spent his days wandering the streets of Rio Bravo. He was embarrassed and ashamed, and cried openly as he got to that part of his story. We sat silently and stoicly, not really sure what to say.

He pointed to the fire and said he was was burning his clothes and starting over. I looked in, and sure enough, there were the last few burning rags of the outfit he had worn every day for months now, probably for years. His fresh clothes were Victor's, donated to him. Victor didn't announce that; I just recognized the shirt. Victor only had three or four shirts to begin with. I made a mental note to come back in the morning with some extra clothes.

Finally, the fireworks in the background reached such a crescendo that conversation became impossible. We stopped talking and walked out to the street with our own fireworks and added to the noise of celebration. Juan lit them and threw them like a champ. Victor danced around like a fool with his little niece as they blew off entire chains of them. It was midnight. The Christ child's birth had arrived.

We went home and went to bed. I wish I could tell you that Juan's life changed from that moment forward, but it didn't. By the end of the week he was walking the streets again, drunk and angry. But he was now a frequent visitor to Victor's home, between these drunken binges, being fed a fresh meal and getting fresh clothes from a family that really couldn't afford to give him either. Maybe he wasn't clean and sober overnight, but at least now he had a place to go to renew his commitments when he fell off the wagon, where he knew he was just loved and accepted, and not judged.

I left Rio Bravo 2 months after that and returned hom the the United States, and I have no idea what ever became of Juan. Maybe he finally cleaned up. More likely, he stayed drunk, and improved his life in fits and starts, only to fall back down again, over and over and over.

But more importantly, as I saw it, Juan now had friends, and family, that he could turn to. he had a home to go home to.

And Victor? Victor proved to me once again that most everybody I met in that country understood Jesus and his teachings a lot better than this arrogant white boy ever did. Well, I'm better off for it in the end.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Christmas Memories, Volume 2

I have lots of friends. I don't mean that to sound like I'm Mr. Popular; I just do.

The majority of them are of the casual-acquaintance variety. We nod when we pass in hallways, we exchange friendly greetings and handshakes at church, we might even toss a text message back and forth on a bi-monthly basis.

Others go a little deeper than that. They are the call-on-in-my-time-of-need friends. Or the share-what's-really-bothering-me-when-everyone-else-thinks-I'm-fine kind of friends.

Some of these friends, though, aren't really even friends anymore. They are just a simple DNA strand short of being family.

Rob and Allison would fit nicely into that latter category of friends.

I met Rob in 1996. I was a 23-year-old newlywed. He was a long-haired 18-year-old kid. My wife and I had just moved into his hometown and were attending the same church congregation as his family.

I took an intense disliking to him the first time I saw him.

It was the hair. He had this little-English-prince hairdo, all the same length, all the way around. I remember he'd part the front with his fingertips like a pair of curtains so he could peer through them.

I hated that haircut.

A couple of weeks after I first spotted this kid and decided to dislike him, I was standing in the hallway at church after the meetings let out, chatting with one of our new friends there. Behind me, I heard some other group engaged in a discussion of their own. I had no idea who was talking at the moment; all I knew was that whomever it was, he had my sense of humor. I turned and immediately thrust myself into the conversation. I answered some smart-ass comment of his with one of my own before I even knew whom I was speaking to.

It was the long-haired punk kid I so disliked.

He just banetered back with me as if we had been best friends for years.

And from that moment forward, we were.

Rob has seen it all from me in our 12-year friendship. He's been there to see all of my kids almost from birth. He's taken roadtrips across the country with me. I could say things like "Busch Gardens", "Rambo", "Dog", "NASA", or "Hand check" to him, and without even having to re-tell the stories behind those words, we'd be laughing ourselves into fits.

In 2004, Rob saw me at my absolute low point in life. Barely divorced a year, I was a mess. I had no idea where my life was going. I lived it miserably from day to day. I followed one bad mistake with another. Every word out of my mouth was inane and selfish and foolish. I think back on those days and I'm surprised anybody who knew me then stuck with me.

It was in the midst of this horrible time of my life that Rob and his new wife Allison invited me to rent a room in their home in Boca Raton, Florida, just as the holidays were approaching. Mind you, they didn't respond favorably to a request from me; they OFFERED it to me. I reluctantly accepted.

Reluctantly, because as low as I was at the time, I recognized that this was going to be Rob and Allison's first Christmas together as Man and Wife. Something deep inside of me said that this should be a private time for the two of them. They ought to be spending it together, just the two of them. My presence would be an unfair and unwelcome invasion.

"Whatever," Rob said. "Just come. We want you here."

So I did. I drove down from West Virginia, where I was working at the time, and moved my things into our new place in Boca.

Christmas arrived a day or two after I got there.

It would be unfair of me to exclude the rest of Rob's family when I mention my group of friends who are now family. Rob's mother and father and siblings would fit into that category, too. Without any hesitation whatsoever, they invited me over to a large family gathering at his sister's apartment. Presents were exchanged, guitars were brought out, songs were sung, and throughout the day, laughter prevailed.

I have been the unrelated guest at other family gatherings before. Usually, you sit in the corner, and get an occasional 2-minute chat from whomever is unlucky enough to wander by your seat. They don't exclude you by design, necessarily, but they don't quite know how to include you, either.

There is none of that in Rob's family. You'd have never known, if you were a silent observer, that I wasn't related to them by blood. I was included in everything. I was in the center of every conversation in my edge of the room. I was given gifts, included in the singing, and sometimes given the floor to share a story or joke of my own.

I was family.

The following morning, Christmas morning, was shared back at our apartment. Our tree was my camera tripod with a green tablecloth draped over it. Small, inexpensive gifts, typical of any newlywed couple, were exchanged.

And once again, I was family. I was included. I was WANTED there.

Rob and Allison probably still don't appreciate the gift they gave me that year. Not the one they had for me under the tree; it was a nice pair of dress pants, one that I thankfully still fit into, in fact. No, that gift was nice, but it wasn't the one that mattered. Because what Rob and Allison gave me was a FAMILY.

As I look back over my life, I remember fondly, every so often, a person here or there who has shown me a glimpse of what Jesus himself must have been like. See, I like Jesus, and I love reading every account of his life and teachings that I can. But as vividly as I can imagine the scenes of his life, sometimes trying to imagine his personality or persona eludes me.

But I can tell you one thing about Jesus, from what Rob and Allison and the rest of their family showed me that year. If Jesus were to have happened across a recently divorced, hopelessly drifting man who's every thought and word was tainted with anger and bitterness, I know exactly what Jesus would have done with such a man.

He'd have invited him into his home for Christmas, and treated him as a part of the family.

I know, because Rob and Allison and their family did that themselves.

Christmas Memories, Volume 1

Christmas 1985 or so. Maybe 1986. The exact year doesn't matter all that much.

I was in Junior High at the time, a skinny little kid with pale skin and almost-black hair, which I liked to keep as shaggy as I could get away with. My daily wardrove was jeans, a denim jacket, and an Iron Maiden T-shirt. Sometimes I mixed it up with a Megadeth T-shirt to keep things lively.

I was the 4th of 8 kids. I was about 14 when this happened, which means that my two oldest brothers were off serving missions for the LDS church at the time, both of them in Northern California. We were supporting the two of them at the time, which was probably quite a chunk of change! But as a 14-year-old, I wasn' privy to the family bank statements, so all I can do right now is make an educated guess: We were poor.

Not DESTITUTE. We still had a good sized home and food on the table, and all of the creature comforts we needed. But Christmas? As I recall, it was looking a little sparse that year.

Our family tradition, on Christmas morning, was to line up in the upstairs hallway sometime just before daybreak, and wait for my Dad to get the camera out so he could catch every moment of the day on film. Once he had gotten himself in place down in the living room, we were allowed to come down the stairs and stand there, lined up in age order, and gaze out upon the filthy lucre spread out there for our enjoyment. Dad never promoted a false belief in Santa Claus; we knew from early cognizance that Mom and Dad were the source of this bounty, the bulk of which was assembled in individualized piles of presents around the edges of the room, the rest of which was in the pile of gifts under the tree.

Dad snapped the usual shot or two of the anticipation-faces, and then he released us to go tear our piles apart.

In years past, my own individual pile had held many a pleasant surprise for me. We always had a Big Gift- whether big in size or in prominence, it was THE gift of the year. Like the year I got a Six Million Dollar Man large-size action figure, with the rubber skin on his bionic arm that you could roll back to reveal his cyborg parts. Or the years when I got race tracks or train sets. It was always something I had been wanting for months, and it was always the Moment of the Year when I opened it up and got to play with it.

This year, though, my pile was a little scanty. I went over and looked for my Big Gift. It was hard to pick out, because nothing in the pile was very big. Finally, I spotted it- a small, oddly shaped package wrapped in paper and a bow.

I knew what it was before I opened it. It was a cheapo walkman from the local K-Mart.

I knew this for two reasons:

First, we lived within walking distance of that K-Mart, and that was our childhood hangout. We used to walk over all the time and check out the goods in the electronics department. I had seen plenty of these cheapo walkmans hanging there before, and I knew the shape of the plastic wrapping from memory.

Second, I had gotten the same gift for my birthday, just a month and a half before.

When I got my cheapo walkman for my birthday, I got made fun of. Some of my friends looked at it and said, "Look, no rewind button!" It was true- that model just had a fast forward button, and if you wanted to rewind the cassette tape, you popped it out and turned it over, and fast forwarded it until you got to about where you wanted to be. My friends, all of whom came from families that could afford the authentic Sony Walkman, complete with their shiny pseudo-metal finish and rewind buttons, had a great time mocking my cut-rate K-Mart walkman.

I pretended not to care, but secretly, I coveted that Sony Walkman.

Now here I was, on Christmas Morning, with what? A Sony Walkman? No, the exact same K-Mart Walkman I had endured for a month and a half now.

For a moment, I was disappointed.

Then I looked at Mom.

My Mom is a saint. My Catholic friend John used to tell me that he was going to have her canonized after she died. He was going to submit her name to the Vatican and have her declared Saint Lynne, she was so damned saintly! I told him that while she'd appreciate the sentiment, she didn't need that honor bestowed upon her.

Mom had a wistful smile on her face. I was just getting to the age where I could read the emotion behind it. It was bittersweet. She was enjoying the excitement on our faces as we opened our gifts, but she was also wishing she could have gotten us something more, something bigger, something better.

I looked at my Walkman, and I imagined Mom out shopping for it. Probably balancing her checkbook, probably allotting out some cash for this purchase, probably thinking over in her mind what her little punk 14-year-old son would appreciate. Probably thinking over how much I seemed to enjoy all of those damned Metallica tapes I played on the tape recorder all day and all night downstairs in the basement. Probably wishing I wouldn't listen to it, but probably more interested in pleasing me than in anything else.

She probably checked the pricetag, and thought to herself, "Would my son enjoy this?" And then, after imagining me banging my head to that crap I used to listen to, she smiled, and she bought it.

Mom and Dad put a lot of love into that stupid cheapo walkman.

Mom turned and looked at me at that moment. She smiled at me and said, "Well, did you like your walkman?"

I smiled back. "Yeah, I love it!" I slipped on the headphones and put in the batteries and started tearing into another gift.

Mom turned to look at another sibling, and then a sudden realization crossed her face. Turning back to me, she leaned in close and asked, "Did we get you that same walkman for your birthday?"

"Yeah," I said, not sure how to answer.

Mom just muttered "dang it!" and hung her head.

"... but it's ok, I think I accidentally broke it," I said. It was lame, and a lie, and she knew it. So I tried to spin fast. "Well, no, I didn't break it, but I mean- I use it a lot, and so it's good to have another one, because I'll wear it out eventually, you know?"

Mom smiled at me and turned her ever-so-disappointed-in-herself gaze back to the other kids.

I don't remember what I did then. Hug her? Yeah, maybe. Try to talk up my gift even more? Probably.

But I remember what I felt. For maybe the first time in my life, I felt genuine gratitude- not for the gift, but for the love behind it. I understood that it wasn't about what loot I reeled in, but rather about who gave it to me, and how they felt towards me. And this gift was given with love, from someone who loved me unconditionally.

That walkman was broken by the end of the following summer. But that Christmas will always remain functional to me.

....seriously....?

Well, the word from Florida is that Mel Martinez will be resigning his Senate Seat in 2010, leaving a Republican vacancy that prominent Florida Republicans are already scrambling to lay claim upon. Governor Charlie Crist, Representative Connie Mack, Florida Attorney General (and former 2000 Senate race loser) Bill McCollum- all familiar names, all being thrown into the mix.

But wait- they're not the ONLY ones weighing out a run. Word has it that former Governor Jeb Bush is seriously considering making a run for the seat, too, and if he does, a lot of these other contenders might just clear out of the way for him.

Wait, you say- JEB BUSH? Brother of the sitting President? The extremely UNPOPULAR sitting president...? THAT Jeb Bush?

You're kidding, right?

No, I'm not kidding. And here's another thing I'm not kidding about: If he runs, he'll win. And if he wins, he's a front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2012, if he wants that job.

Oh come on, you're saying, that's insane.

If you think so, you don't understand politics, my friend.

Do any of you remember how popular George H.W. Bush was when he was voted out of office in 1992? Well, let's put it this way- the guy he LOST to only got 42% of the popular vote.

The economy was in the tank, the popular consensus was that he had botched a war in Iraq- sound familiar?

Within two years of that election, George W. Bush was voted in as Governor of Texas. Four years later, he was reelected, and Jeb Bush was voted in as Governor of Florida.

Two years after THAT, George W. Bush defeated the incumbent Vice-President during a time of prosperity and peace, when the VP should have been a shoe-in, riding a wave of general disgust over the sycophantic sexual escapades of then-President Bill Clinton.

So George H. W. Bush's son took the Presidency. The Clinton name was spoken with a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who said it.

How soon everyone had forgotten 1992.

Eight years later, the most hated First Lady of modern History, now a twice-elected Senator from New York, came within inches of securing the Democratic party nomination for President. Now she is being welcomed back into the White House as Secretary of State.

How soon everyone has forgotten 2000.

Come 2010, be ready to see how quickly everyone has forgotten 2008. Jeb Bush, who right now has the worst surname in politics, will show how quickly we look back at bad times and say, "Wow, compared to NOW, we didn' know how good we had it!"