Dreams, Death & God

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I have many dreams. Big dreams. Out of the country and into the uncivilized wild bush dreams. I went into nursing planning to be a nurse who would go where others feared to tread. Of course, as I pointed out to myself recently, I am actually in a place no other nurses want to go, but I always imagined it somewhat differently. See following example:

My dream: “Oooh, you work in Sudan? Wow, I would not go there!”

Reality: “Eeeeew, you work in Urology? Wow, I would so never work there!”

Anyway, this dream (the one where I save lives and souls in a distant, scary country) was put on hold by my chronic fatigue syndrome and God telling me to leave China and go back to Mississippi. I was crushed, because I knew God had told me to go to China. Why would he tell me to leave? Had I missed his direction in the first place?

That dream wasn’t the only one God specifically put on my heart and then removed from my path. In fact, I was beginning to very much doubt that I could even hear from God or that any of my dreams were from him. It felt like God had betrayed me (And yes, my spiritual readers, I know God would never betray me, but it felt like it. Just because it felt like it doesn’t mean he really did.). God says stuff like “I do not whisper obscurities in dark corners—I publicly proclaim bold promises! I did not tell the children of Israel to ask for something I did not plan to give” (Isaiah 45:something, paraphrased) so why would he tell me to do something he didn’t allow me to complete?

“Maybe it was a test,” friends offered. They used the example of Abraham and Isaac. God told Abraham to kill Isaac, but really only wanted to see if he would be obedient. He didn’t make Abraham actually follow through on it. Maybe God just wanted to see if I would be obedient. This made perfect sense except for the part that I really wanted to kill Isaac! (Metaphorically speaking). I realize many people may not want to go into Tibet, or Sudan, or do things that might get them in trouble with radical Muslim groups, but I really did. Yet here I was, stuck in a low-paying, dead-end job, living alone in a trailer behind an air conditioning business in Southern Mississippi*, making enough to pay my bills and paying enough of them to make me keep working. I couldn’t see God in the death of my dreams.

Until two weeks ago. Suddenly the metaphorical light bulb flickered on. It wasn’t about killing Isaac. It wasn’t about obedience, though He did want me to be obedient. God wanted Abraham to love God more than the dream He gave him. God took away the dreams He gave me because He wanted to make sure that I love Him more than The Dream.

Lord, may I never love the dreams you give more than the Giver of those dreams.

Oh, and now that I’ve learned my lesson and still love you, can I go? Please? Pretty please? With a pickle on top….?

My Day Off

Since I've been in recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome, one of my biggest challenges is knowing when to work and when to stop. Do I push myself when I'm tired? Everyone gets tired, right? But if I do push myself, will I end up in a wheelchair again? Not everyone ends up in a wheelchair when they're tired. To help deal with this dilemma, last year I decided I would take one day per month and do only restful, relaxing things. I would take a good book to a coffee shop, browse clothing stores, check out a few old bookstores, not answer my phone, and eat a nice lunch somewhere I didn't have to cook or do dishes.

I've almost done it a few times, but ended up after a few hours answering my phone and running off on errands the rest of the day, so one day a while ago, I decided I would buckle down and do this thing. Thursday was to be My Day. And all of my hardworking Amish ancestors roll over in their graves at the horror of the thing. My boss called me and asked if I couldn't possibly work at another clinic on Thursday; I told her I was sorry, but I already had plans. Now I really couldn't back out. I slept late that morning, a great beginning to My Day. After I ate breakfast, I put my supper in the crock-pot (Okay, so I had invited my entire family over for supper, but I figured that was fairly stress-less.) and headed off to town.

My first stop was the library, where I picked up a new Terri Blackstock novel and a great old George MacDonald book and headed toward Hattiesburg. My plans for the day were relaxing: stop at a discount clothing store, visit a decorator fabric store where they allegedly had great deals on remnants I could use to recover some chair seats, eat lunch at that fabulous new Greek restaurant and find a new, cozy little coffee shop where I could spend the rest of the afternoon with my books.

The day went great all the way up through the clothing store, where I found two cute blouses (one of which, incidentally, I've never been able to wear). Then I headed for the fabric store. I drove up the street. I drove down the street. I drove up the street again, thinking I must have missed it the first time, but nowhere was the shop I remembered. I guess it just disappeared. Or moved. Or I forgot where it was. Or perhaps I just dreamed it. I did see an adorable little bakery/coffee house with an Eiffel Tower theme, so the search was not completely in vain.
Ah, well, one disappearing shop was not enough to ruin My Day. After all, I was going to that Greek restaurant next. I'd wanted to go ever since the first billboards appeared, but everyone else was afraid they would serve Weird Food, so I never made it. Weird Food, which in Mississippi means pretty much anything other than fried catfish or chicken, Chinese or Mexican food, is something I greatly enjoy. So when I pulled into the nearly empty parking lot at the Greek restaurant, my mouth was watering at the thought of lamb kebabs, warm yogurt sauces and flatbread. Unfortunately, the fabulous Greek restaurant didn't open until 4 p.m. I was hungry now and didn't see myself waiting four hours for food, so I ended up eating at Applebee's.

Ah, well, two disappointments were not enough to ruin My Day. After all, I had seen that adorable Parisian bakery/coffee house down the street. And I had saved room for dessert. It was still a lovely day. So I drove back the the cafe, and pulled into the--once again--empty parking lot. Something didn't seem right. The front door had a sign "Please use back door--remodeling." Oh, okay. The back door had another sign. "KEEP OUT." Bother. Someone must have tried to serve Weird Food there.

Ah, well, one more disappointment was not enough to ruin My Day. I kept out, as directed, and with a sigh, headed down to Starbucks, my old familiar friend. After settling into my chair with my feet propped up, a Venti Iced Latte in one hand, George MacDonald in the other, things started looking up for me. After all, I still got both food, coffee, and a book. Soon, though, my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID, which read "out of area," and righteously decided to ignore it. Probably a salesman. I returned to my book and coffee. To make things even better, a Starbucks barista came around soon offering free samples of their new White Chocolate Rasperry Mocha Frappuccino. I eagerly accepted mine, and after the first taste, tipped the straw a little too far towards my mouth and dumped the rest of the the free sample down the front of my shirt. Using all the napkins I had picked up, I cleaned myself up as best I could, and returned to my relaxing day. Soon the phone rang again. Again I glanced quickly at the caller ID. This time it was a dear friend whom I hadn't spoken to for a long time, and who was probably calling me to tell me she'd had her baby. I had to answer. As I chatted with her about her new little boy, I loaded the rest of my coffee and myself into my car and headed home.

By the time I reached Wal-Mart, where I needed to pick up some Greek olives for my supper (yes, I was serving Weird Food), I decided to check my voice mail and see which salesperson I had managed to avoid previously. I shouldn't have been surprised, the way the rest of the day was going, to discover that I had not avoided a salesperson, but a dear friend from China who was leaving America today and just wanted to chat with me before she left. This day was not going so well. In Wal-Mart, I quickly located my groceries, loaded them up and headed back out to my car. Eager to get out of the scorching heat, I reached into my pocket for my keys, and was hit with a sinking feeling. I walked around the car and looked in the passenger side window. Sure enough, there they were, dangling tantalizingly from the ignition. I called home. It would be at least 30 minutes, my sister said, before she could make it in with the spare keys. I returned to the cool interior of Wal-Mart, plunked my grocery bags into a cart, and meandered off down the vegetable aisle to wait. I hadn't even gone so far as the lettuce when--crash! My jar of Greek olives rolled out of the bag, out of the cart, and shattered into millions of tiny pieces on the floor. Olive juice splashed up into my sandals, along with a few choice shards of glass. I clenched my teeth and did not scream, but smiled politely instead. "Please, sir," I said to a Wal-Mart employee walking past with a mop, "could you help me get this cleaned up?" He looked at the mess and drawled "Weeeelll, Ah'd need t' go get th' cleaning cart." So I waited, as he ambled off into the distance. And I waited. And while some people tried not to stare, others didn't bother with the politeness. I waited some more. Finally, he meandered back in my direction with a cleaning cart. After we got done cleaning up the mess, I bought a new jar of olives, and sat down on a bench at the door. It seemed safer, somehow.

I finally reached home, and managed to pull off supper with no tragedies. But I couldn't bring myself to open my new chef knife. I would wait for another day. Maybe after a nice relaxing day at work tomorrow.

Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse

A book review


Dorcas Smucker's blog, Life in the Shoe, is one of my favorites, so when she offered the chance to review her latest book, Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse, I was delighted to do so. I received the book last week, and immediately sat down to enjoy it, expecting the same delightful humor and insights into life she offers on her blog. I was not disappointed. I laughed out loud at a few chapters, and as I tend to do with something really funny, I took the book along with me when I went to my family's home over the weekend and read a chapter aloud to the family.

I think that was a mistake. Daddy swiped the book when I wasn't looking. As soon as he laid it down, my sister Susie picked it up. Irina, my visiting pregnant-and-sick sister from Virginia insisted the book was an excellent distraction from her continuing nausea and trumped the rest of us with, “Well, if I can't have it, I might throw up.” I returned home last night, but the book stayed.

Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse is a collection of essays about Ms. Smucker's life, on growing up Amish, and being a Mennonite preacher's wife and a mother to six children. Each chapter in this book can stand on its own as a story, so I am reading this book randomly, rather than in my normal perfectionist straight-through-from-beginning-to-end method, partly because other people keep swiping my book, but also partly because I always read so fast that a good book ends far too soon, so with this method I'm hoping to discover a story on the third time through that I may have missed on the first reading.

My Dad always says, “A real writer is someone who can write about an ordinary life and make people want to read it.” Ms. Smucker is definitely a “real writer.”


Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse is available at Amazon.com. The author's blog is www.dorcassmucker.blogspot.com.

Edited to correct information.

People in Books

As a young girl growing up in the Caribbean paradise of Belize, I had no idea that I was growing up in the Caribbean paradise of Belize. I thought my life was normal. I didn't know I lived in the jungle, we called it “the bush.” I thought normal people everywhere heard howler monkeys late at night. My life was never boring, but I never thought it equaled the lives of people in books. I started reading when I was four and was forever hooked. I had discovered an entry into a whole new world, one where princesses kissed frogs who turned into handsome princes, and where children solved frightening mysteries, narrowly avoiding death at the hands of Bad Guys. In this world families went on “vacations” and spent entire weeks in hotels at the beach or camping in tents in the mountains and roasting hot dogs; here too giants freely roamed the earth, swallowing seas and stepping across entire forests. People in Books lived such exciting lives.

My mother kept our bookshelves stocked with an amazing variety of books: ancient Greek myths to missionary biographies, the Grimm Brothers to C.S. Lewis, Dr. Paul Brand with his leprosy research to Dr. Suess with his scary green pants. All of these authors and more showed up in our lives, to be read, reread, discussed, and if the book was thick enough, even used as a booster seat to elevate small children to comfortable eating heights. We obtained a lot of these marvels through Reader's Service, a book club which shipped cast-off library and schoolbooks to poor deprived people in faraway lands.

The magical world of books introduced me to other lives, the funny, fascinating, sad, exciting lives of People in Books. A few of my favorites were about girls who went to boarding school. They actually slept at their school, and ate there and everything—so sometimes my sisters and I would pretend to be at a boarding school, rather than waking up at home and doing schoolwork at the kitchen table. We were not sisters, but new best friends making up secret languages and telling stories with the silverware. Like People in Books, we pretended we too drove places in station wagons or cars, not in the back of a truck, and drank milk from cows on the farm, not from powdered Klim mixed with rainwater. People in Books had fairy godmothers who put curses on them so when they spoke unkind words toads came hopping out of their mouths, but when they spoke nice things, diamonds and daisies came tumbling out. Ah, daisies...now diamonds were pretty enough, but since the wearing of such baubles was highly condemned by my Mennonite upbringing, I wasn't particularly interested. Daisies, now, were the stuff of magic. Daisies could be used to discover whether he loved me or he loved me not. And they could be used to make daisy chains. People in Books were always making daisy chains and wearing them about their necks and as crowns on their heads. Diamonds may be sinful, but nowhere did I see where one could not wear a chain of flowers. I pulled red hibiscus off our hedge and wove them into chains, but I really wished I could see a real daisy—or a field of daisies—like those People in Books.

Some of my favorite books were missionary biographies about real missionaries, strange people who lived in far off exotic places like Africa and China, with people who looked funny, and lived in “huts” and ate strange foods like roasted grubs. We never ate grubs. Iguana and fried chicken feet, on the other hand, were delicious, but that was completely normal. My hair stood on end as I read of these brave missionaries' encounters with warring “natives,” lions, marauding elephants, and other strange creatures. I wished that one day I could meet a real missionary. I studied old black and white pictures of smartly dressed nurses, their starched white uniforms and caps standing out in sharp contrast to the dirty Indian streets behind them, and wished I could help operate on that leper (political correctness was never really a factor in my dreams) so he could use his hands again, or help to deliver a baby in the dark corner of that African hut. Those huts fascinated me. People really lived in them, according to the books, instead of living in nice houses, like the homes of my friends, which were generally one room thatch houses with a packed dirt or concrete floor.

People in Books sparked my imagination, inspired me to reach further than I thought I could, and to dream completely impossible dreams. I never got to open a clinic in the jungle, wearing a starched white cap and dress, but my wrinkle-resistant cotton scrubs are quite comfortably worn in. I've never lived in a hut, though some ostentatious American once referred to our perfectly nice thatch houses in Belize as such. I've never done surgery on the hands of a leper, but I have used mycobacterium to help treat bladder cancer. I've never met a giant, but while living in China, I entered clothing stores to the greeting “We haf no clothing for such beeg people here. Maybe eet ees best for you to try anodder store.” I've delivered babies by lantern light. I've eaten roasted grubs. I've even gone on an actual “vacation.” Twice! While I still haven't had daisies come out of my mouth when I speak—that may be because I tend more towards sarcasm than sweetness—I do have daisies planted in my flowerpots out front, though I'm still waiting for any diamonds to appear. But I've realized that even with all of this, there is only one way I can really join the People in Books. I'll have to write a book. About me. Any publishers looking for a good autobiography?

The Outhouse Memoirs

My very earliest childhood memories are vague. Until I was about four, I remember just blurred snapshots full of saturated color and texture—the crisp coolness of green, green grass beneath my feet, blue skies overhead, feeling a friend's hand in my own as we ran down the packed dirt path towards the roar of the river, slipping on the cold, mossy river rocks, and the splintery feeling of the rough wood of the outhouse seat. I don't know why that stands out in my memory and have no intention of asking Freud about it, but for one reason or another, outhouses play prominent parts in many of my young childhood memories.

The first outhouse of my childhood, I don't remember, but I've seen pictures proving its existence. My parents lived in Machaca when I was born, a tiny village four miles further into the jungle than the end of the dirt road. When they first moved there, they built an outhouse with cahun leaf walls, the same material which thatched the roof of our three-room home. These walls were later replaced with rough-cut lumber, which I remember as being the primary building material for all outhouses until we moved to The States, that magical land of flushing toilets, when I was four.

When I was very young, my mother tried to teach my brother and I a few American bathroom manners, hoping, I think, that our jungle breeding wouldn't be too obvious to our American friends. One lesson she wanted to impress upon us was this: You don't let anyone of the opposite gender see you in the bathroom. We nodded our agreement to Mom's first attempt to teach us this lesson, but a few days later, Mom decided maybe she hadn't made herself completely clear when she overheard this:

Michael: (knocks on outhouse door)
Me (from my perch inside): “It's okay, you can come in. I have my eyes closed.”

For the two years we lived in The States, I have, of course, no outhouse memories, since this was, after all, the land of flushing toilets. I also have no bathroom memories. Life must have been rather dull. But then we returned to Belize—another home, another outhouse.

The home into which we moved was composed of two houses—one a kitchen, the other living and bedrooms—and an outhouse. To reach this outhouse, one had to follow the path all the way around the kitchen, past the guava tree Irina tried to climb when she broke her arm, under the mango tree our parrot, Jo-Jo, used as a bedroom, all the way past the hibiscus, the achote bushes, and various other shrubs, to the edge of the jungle, or the bush, as we called it, where this dark, ramshackle outhouse lurked, hiding spiders, scorpions, and other frightening creatures in its smelly depths. The only light inside came though the cracks in the walls. Bad enough during the daytime, at night, the path to the outhouse could only be traversed with the safety of numbers on one's side, especially after we discovered evidence of a mama tiger and her cubs hunting in the bush behind the outhouse. The main story concerning this outhouse I cannot tell. If I did, you would probably take ill, and I would have to field death threats from various family members, and I'm just not prepared to do that yet. I'll wait until I have a really good publishing offer, and I know I'll have enough money to afford an identity change.

Things started looking up when Daddy salvaged an old guardhouse from the Voice of America broadcasting station he was building, and reincarnated it as a new outhouse. This little building became the spiffiest outhouse in the entire neighborhood; in fact, it was probably the nicest outhouse in the entire district! Made of smooth wood painted white with three—count them—three—windows, which swung open smoothly on hinges, and even when you had to shut the windows during rainy season, light came in around the top, under the eaves of the roof. The ultimately cool feature of this outhouse, though, was the big, bold, “13” stenciled in black above the door. Of course, we never used the word “cool” back then, being very un-cool, and not realizing “cool” could mean anything other than “slightly cold,” but whatever word we used to express that feeling—that 13 was it. To this day, I have no idea why that was cool, but it was. All my siblings who remember this remarkable outhouse recall the definite cool-ness of that black 13. This was also our first “two-holer” outhouse, with a big hole for big people, and a little hole with a built-in step in front for the little folks. As I'm sure you can clearly see, we had arrived at the ultimate in outhouses.

Just because we had a nice outhouse at home, though, didn't mean we always had nice outhouses to use. Most of the back villages we visited had no outhouses at all, just an expanse of bush, with lots of places to hide. The bush wasn’t bad compared to the outhouses in some villages, which usually offered corncobs in lieu of toilet paper, and bush was definitely preferable to the outhouses in town, which were the most terrifying outhouses ever. Punta Gorda was located on the shores of the Caribbean, and the good townsfolk decided to provide public bathroom facilities in the easiest manner possible, locating them right over the ocean. Completely unsanitary, yes, but the good townsfolk had bigger things to worry about, so the dilapidated public bathrooms remained open to torture small children for many years. First, you had to cross a pier, a rickety pier, with no handrails, and gaping holes where boards had rotted out. When you reached the little shacks at the end, things weren't any better. Basically, the outhouse consisted of a half-floor, a half-wall, and then empty space. I always knew I was going to fall over backwards and plunge 15 feet into the ocean and sewage below. Needless to say, we usually didn't have to go to the bathroom when we were in town. Just writing this, I am seized with an uncanny urge to grip the edges of my keyboard tightly, and I find myself holding my breath, hoping I can finish typing this before I fall through.

Back at home, our new outhouse moved with us to a new, two-story home. This time, while it was still close to the bush, the location was much closer to the house, and therefore completely un-scary. I was nine by this time, and thought fear was childish, and, since it was my responsibility to help my younger siblings grow up brave like me, when seven-year-old Irina woke me up at night to go with her to the outhouse, I told her she didn't need me to go with her. She should go by herself. Not being convinced of the wisdom of my attitude, but impressed by my bravado, she would tiptoe out and wake up five-year-old Susie to go with her instead. After we discovered a worn-down plot in the bush behind the outhouse where a burglar had observed us for several weeks before breaking into our home, I did change my tactics, and decided I wasn't too big to accompany a sibling to the outhouse after all—in fact, I was far too small, and they needed to go wake up Daddy instead.

Myron, who has since grown up and is pursuing a career in commercial aviation, was showing a keen interest in airplanes at two and three years old, which led to another outhouse episode in the pages of Yoder history. He was in the outhouse one day when he heard the roar of a harrier approaching. Knowing he had only seconds to see this airplane, he hopped off the little hole and went streaking outside. He saw the plane, but Mom saw the lack of pants, and told him next time, even if there was an airplane, he should pull his pants up before he came out. He took this lesson to heart, and a few weeks later, he came running inside—pants in place—and told Mom there was a “gween snake” in the outhouse! “But,” he assured her, “It's not thewe anymow, 'cause it came in undew the doow and then cwawled up the wall and out the window. I was going to come tell you wight away, but I couldn't, 'cause I had to put my pants on fiwst.”

That was the last outhouse we ever owned. When I was 11, we moved to The States for good, leaving outhouses and tigers and guava trees behind forever. Like I said, we won't tell Freud about this, but I really think I'll go home and paint a big “13” above the door to my bathroom. That would just be cool. Or whatever word we used back then.

On Growing Up and Achieving Independence

We all have those times from our childhood that stand out as distinct turning-points, rites of passage, if you will, into the next stage of childhood, middle childhood, pre-teenhood, middle teen-hood, old—well, you get the idea.

When I was 18, and my dad made me drive the whole way to Ohio by myself (ok, so I was following Uncle Matthew's van, but the responsibility of my car was all mine), I left with trepidation, afraid I wouldn't be able to manage the big evil city interstate stuff on my own. I returned completely exhilarated. That was easy! It's just like driving to school every day, except that it takes all day to do it! I came home from that trip and said “I feel so free! I could honestly go anywhere I want to by myself! I'm not afraid to drive anywhere! I can do anything! Life has no limits!” (The overuse of exclamation points here is intentional, and serves to show my general state of excitement and feelings of maturity.) My mom's response was to sigh, in a motherly way, and say “Oh, this is just what I was afraid would happen. I told Daddy you shouldn't do this.”

But really, this whole independence thing was Mom's idea. When I look back over my childhood, most of the memories that stand out as rites of passage, the times when I realized I could really do all this on my own, were Mom's ideas. Like the time when I was four and Irina was two and we were staying in the trailer close to Grandma Yoder's house during a visit. I woke up in the morning, stumbled out to the kitchen, where I found no mother, but only a note instructing me to wake up Irina, eat some cereal, and then go to Grandma's house, where I would find Mommy. I was the Big Girl in Charge. I could eat breakfast by myself. Life held no limits!

After a few more years, when I was 7 or 8 and Michael was 2 years older, Mom again expanded the limits of my world when she first allowed Michael and I to go to town with no adults. Now I know, by this time, you may be thinking Mom to be an irresponsible person, but given the situation, it made perfect sense. She couldn't go to town. She was sick, or pregnant, or both, or had a small baby, or something that prevented her from going to town. We were living in Belize at this time, and “town” was Punta Gorda, about 13 miles down the gravel highway on the morning bus. Practically everyone in the entire district knew us, so it wasn't like she was sending us out among strangers, and since our road was basically the only road out of town, it really didn't matter which bus we rode coming back because they all passed our house anyway. She equipped us with a list, some money and lots of directions and instructions. “Make sure you get on the bus at noon to come home.” “You can buy some panades for lunch.” “Don't miss the bus to come home.” “Stay around the middle of town.” “You need to get on the bus early and wait, to make sure it doesn't leave without you.” “Tell the bus driver you're going to ride back with him so he won't leave without you.” “Make sure you don't miss the bus to come home.” Michael, being the oldest and most mature, put the money in his wallet, while I carried my coxdal—a brightly colored woven Mayan handbag, with my little purse inside, containing my life savings of probably about five Belizean dollars, though I don't remember the exact amount.
As we stood at the end of our lane, watching eagerly down the road for the cloud of dust that heralded the coming of the bus, I tried to look casual, like I did this every day. We hailed the bus, climbed aboard and headed out for a day on our own.

I remember wandering around town that morning, after we had purchased everything on Mom's list, my flip-flops beating out a rhythm on the hot, rough streets, feeling so grown up and independent. I was in town without parents! I could do anything! We had time to kill before the bus left, so we headed to the cobenaros' stands in the middle of town. These peddlers from Guatamala sold nearly anything a 7 year old could desire: combs, little pocket mirrors, hair grease, little tin bowls, brightly colored hair accessories, new slippers, toys. I hardly ever bought anything here, unless I needed a birthday present for a sibling, because that would involve spending my money, which was something I didn't do, because then I wouldn't have it anymore. But that didn't keep me from wandering among the stalls, examining treasures, and trying to think of ways of getting things that involved me still keeping all of my money. This day at the cobenaros, I was drawn to a display of watches. One in particular caught my eye. It was a beautiful gold watch, one that had the little hands on the front that went around instead of a digital display. It had a sparkly face and a narrow gold wristband, and I thought it was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. I asked the cobenaro how much it cost. “Ten dollars,” he said. I knew that just meant the starting price was ten and he would actually sell it for far less if one knew how to bargain well. I did know how to bargain well—I liked to keep my money, as I mentioned before—but I also know that I had no need for such a pretty, extravagant watch, no matter how grown-up I was. (This was also in the days when I thought owning more than one pair of shoes was completely ridiculous. I've matured even more since then, but that's another story.) Michael, however, started bargaining for the watch. This puzzled me greatly, since I didn't know why he would want a beautiful gold watch. Nobody's birthday was coming up. He bargained the guy down to a mere fraction of the originally named price, and then—he purchased the watch. I was an inquisitive, nosy child, so I asked him why he was buying the watch, but he wouldn't tell me. It was nearly noon by then, so we stopped the panade lady on the street and bought several of her delicious fried panades, stuffed with minced fish or refried beans, and holding the newsprint wrapping carefully so the spicy cabbage and habanero pepper topping wouldn't fall onto the street, we made our way to the park, where all the buses were lined up waiting to go home. On the way home, Michael handed me that beautiful watch and said “Here, this is for you.” I was shocked. For me? It wasn't my birthday, or Christmas, or anything else that deserved presents. I was completely speechless, which even at seven, was a remarkable thing for me. That watch was my most treasured possession for years to come, even after the gold wore off, and the hands stopped turning. When I wore it, I felt beautiful, loved, and all grown up. I had gone to town without my parents! Life had no limits!

Too late did my mother realize that allowing me to experience life without limits at four, and at seven, would lead to drives across the country at 18 and moves to the other side of the world a few years later. Mothers, take heed to this tale. Never give your children the opportunity to feel all grown up, or someday they actually will be all grown up, and leave, and go places without you. Only you can prevent forest fires—er, I mean independent children. Go now and do your duty.