Hope and Be.Longing

Broken Nativity

December 10, 2018

I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a one-eared camel. He is guarded by three wisemen, two whom were once beheaded and have been re-glued. The shepherd has lost his feet and the angel looks battle-weary. The donkey and cow’s chipped edges have been filled in with marker. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are in the center, and only they remain whole.

It is the first week of Advent and my heart is vulnerable. We said good-bye to our precious dog a few days back—the dog who helped raised our little boys to be tender-hearted and responsible young men. I’m reflecting back on a year of aches, both heart and body, our own and those of others.

And I’m identifying with the fragile nativity before me.

Belonging, Immigrants, Refugees, Stories of Hope, Belonging, and Longing

Moving Up

November 4, 2018

“We are now without a country.”

My friend Sasha and I listen as a beautiful South American* family tells a story entangled with hardship and hope. Renata*, the mother, has just told us that their government is destroying all official documents—such as birth certificates—of their fleeing citizens. She, along with her husband Andrés and two children Mateo and Isabella, escaped violence and persecution, but were not able to apply for protection from the U.S. until after their arrival here.

They are waiting, and we call them “asylum seekers.”

Stories of Hope, Belonging, and Longing

Crimson Carrots

December 10, 2018

Today is not a one-bucket day. Waiting a full week to weed after the heat and rains of late July was maybe a mistake. I haul out the wheelbarrow and consider how I’m missing a date with friends and iced tea to tackle this. But the landscaper stops by tomorrow to check on my plants, and I aim to impress.

Sedges, he called them in his reply to the snapshots I sent. Tall grasses disguising themselves as the smaller grasses we paid to plant. I waited too long to pull them because I was deceived into thinking they were the real thing, or if not, they at least looked attractive. But how quickly they spread and now the landscape is all in a tangle.

Stories of Hope, Belonging, and Longing

A New Taste in Town: Tawk’s Story

December 10, 2018

Tawk’s ambition is to bring a new taste to town.

Tea Leaves Salad does it. My friend Sasha and I start our meal at Pa Lian Burmese Restaurant in Wheaton sharing a plate of this popular dish made of “grounded tea leaf, fried yellow beans, fried lava beans, fried peanuts, sesame seeds, sliced tomatoes, cabbage and lime”. It is crunchy, salty, and full of flavor—a perfect complement to the tiny cups of hot green tea we are served.

I order Shan Noodle as my main dish: clear flat rice noodles topped by ground chicken curry and soy bean paste, with a bowl of chicken soup on the side. After my first spicy bite of the curry, Tawk instructs me to ladle the broth over the noodles and mix well. He also graciously hands me a fork when I hesitate at my ability to eat noodles with chopsticks. I love the contrast of the slippery noodles with the crunch of the topping.

Sasha orders Nangyi Thoke: a salad of thick rice noodles, ground chicken, sliced shallots, hard-boiled eggs, tamarind sauce, fish sauce, and fried onions, served with a small bowl of chicken soup. She describes it as “tasty and texturally interesting, with thick, hollow noodles that make a playful elastic feeling in my mouth that contrasts with the crisp fried shallots.” It is mild, tangy, and yummy—something she’d order again.

Stories of Hope, Belonging, and Longing

Super Wash

April 30, 2018

I’m waiting at the Super Wash in a yellow plastic scooped chair between a ficus tree and a dispenser of coffee in paper cups. The man who hasn’t stopped humming since he carried his first load of clothes through the back door slips quarters into the coffee machine and chats as his cup fills.

“Been coming here for years, twice a month. Decided we’d rather not maintain our own machines at home. They replaced the old coffee dispenser with this one—double the price but double the size. And do you know he spent $5,000 on new washers? Nice owners, from South Korea, always cleaning the place. The plants are a nice touch.”

I watch him quizzically as he chatters, wondering if it really is easier to go to the laundromat than do your laundry at home. And only twice a month? He is jovial, if not crisply clean—the type that seems unfazed by a washer broken for 22 days that no one can fix and seven loads of laundry to haul around in a Mini Cooper on a Friday night.

I sort laundry memories while I wait. I’ll hang this one with the others, though the gray strip mall setting off Roosevelt Road isn’t as colorful as the rest.

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