Reoriented

It was raining, but there were fireworks to welcome me home. Not just little crackers, but big booming, sparking things overhead. Of course in Tlalixtac, Oaxaca (say that three times fast), I could have come home just about any day of the year, and there would have been fireworks. In fact, the fireworks for tonight weren’t for celebrating my return, or for celebrating any of the other occasions that merit fireworks—new house warming, birthdays, deaths, death anniversaries, patron saint parties for the neighborhood (which can last for weeks)—but was the routine practice for a safety class “for pyrotechnic teachers.” It tells you something about southern Mexico when you have schools setting up to teach pyrotechnic teachers.

It’s a good thing they have added a safety class. With that much “pyrotechnics” (techniques of fire), there are horror stories. I remember when I was a little girl growing up in a tiny town of Honduras and had been invited to someone’s birthday party to break open the piñata and scramble for candy, staying low to the ground to avoid the bat still swinging overhead until an adult waded into the crowd of children  to coax it from the hands of the bandana-blinded child still intent on cracking it, the firecrackers were going off everywhere, and one caught in my dress (dresses were the only thing girls wore back then) and burned a hole right through it. And I remember coming home and our big brave hound of a dog was huddled under a bed (he was not an inside dog at all, but we couldn’t keep him out on these occasions), trembling and salivating with fear. We guessed he’d had a firecracker come too close as a pup, too.

His name was Dicky, named after a member of our mission staff back in Wheaton (along with Rufo, named after the director, and Rhoda Bird, our parrot, named after the secretary. Rhoda Bird’s claim to fame was falling into the washing machine, one of those old timey round ones that just washed, and you had to put the clothes through the wringer by hand and rinse them in a tub of water yourself. It was my job to pass the clothes through the wringer. I remember how the sheets used to pop the rollers apart and you had to spread them apart, dripping all over, and put them through again. Anyway, Dicky (the dog) would not have approved of some of the places we’ve lived in southern Mexico. The town where we lived in Guerrero, called Tlapa of Comfort (now there’s an oxymoron) is cramped between a high shaggy mountain on one side and a river on the other, and a wash snugged up to one side that changes from a bed of gravel to a raging, five foot deep tributary when the rains wash down the mountain. There are fireworks almost every day, and they echo off the side of the mountain and rattle the tile roofs of the houses so that they have to be rearranged every so often to keep the light out.

No, the fireworks were not for me, but I had two parties in my honor. In the morning, our church got together a bit earlier than usual and laid breakfast out on the table, and we had chiles rellenos, and tamales de amarillo, de rajas, y de frijol, and tostadas, and chicharron con salsa, and pollo rostizado, and jello that looked like the Mexican flag, and if none of these sound like breakfast foods, then you’ll just have to come try almuerzo in Oaxaca for yourself.  We told them about doing the Grito in Canada. Someone at the table wondered if Canadians do fiestas. How do you answer that?  I mean, most parties don’t have fireworks there. And we prayed around the table, and studied the Bible together, wondering, in the gospels, what the preaching sounded like before Jesus had died and come back again (and no, that wasn’t Robert wondering).

Then in the evening (good thing I had a nap!) we had another party with team members, and that’s when the fireworks started (pyro techniques, I mean, not the other kind that people light off). This morning both Robert and I woke up disoriented in our own bed, thinking we were in Canada, until the dogs started barking, and the traffic on the Panamerican Highway started up in earnest. After today’s fiestas and fireworks, though, I think we are finally re-oriented. It’s good to be home.