This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Let’s start with more good news about Guillermo! He’s back home in Las Vegas, enjoying a relaxed recovery, still weak -- no reason to rush this -- but buoyed by Erlinda’s attentive care and tasty menus. I can attest to both, especially the latter. You’re in the house any longer than 10 or 15 minutes and she has a plate of food in your hand or, most recently, a big cup of mango juice.
I thought the surgeons would just extract the cancerous pocket from Guillermo’s stomach, but when Erlinda showed me the papers, photos and drawings, it appears they actually cut Guillermo’s stomach in two, above and below the cancer, and sutured the remainder to the colon. Wow!
My faith in Honduran medicine is renewed. But the real miracle, that baffled even the doctors, is that subsequent tests show no metastasis at all. Erlinda showed me that page three times, and Guillermo was practically speechless, just smiling ear to ear.
Chemo could use some kind of metastasis. His math teacher told him he does not have a single point, he’s flunked every quiz. “I can do the homework, I can’t do the tests.” But I keep encouraging him. Hey, even zero is a number, so that’s SOMETHING, right?
But I knew I could not take him to Tegucigalpa and miss school. I kept postponing a trip because I didn’t want to leave him behind, but he actually told me to go. There was the matter of a new phone for the one that seems to have been stolen. So I finally went.
In Tegus, Roberto, world’s best cab driver, was waiting for me. We swept by Barrio Suyapa to pick up Chemo’s brother Marcos, but the minute we got to the hotel, even while we were still hugging Angelica, Marcos’ bright yellow T-shirt was covered with “chilios” -- tiny insects no bigger than an eyelash -- leaping out of the low, leafy trees; as fast as we’d brush them off, they regrouped. They even slipped into his eyes, virtually blinding him.
“Change his shirt! Change his shirt!” Angelica cried. While Marcos ran into the hotel to rinse his eyes, I ran to a dollar store and got him a dark blue tee. Problem solved. Weird, huh? But that’s why we’re waiting for the rains -- to wash the trees clean!
Marcos’ birthday was approaching (April 25, feast of St. Mark), and his phone had been stolen by some delinquent in his dangerous neighborhood. So I would buy two phones: one for Chemo and another for Marcos. The best price was at the Cascadas Mall (about $15 apiece), and serendipity must have been guiding us, because as soon as we arrived Marcos lit up like a firecracker. “The Circus is here!” There it was, a bigger-than-life bigtop, a great, glowing tent, running lights on every surface, and a huge banner, “Tonight only -- 2 for 1.” We couldn’t miss this, though we both agreed we wouldn’t mention it to Chemo.
Circuses have become controversial in recent years, and I admit I have been cowed as well, though my whole childhood can be measured in the ecstasies of entertainment that only the circus can provide. Reading recently “The Circus that Ran Away with a Jesuit Priest” had whet my appetite again; it’s a beautiful memoir by Nick Weber, whose “Royal Lichtenstein Giant 1/4 Ring Circus,” as poetic as it was magical, entranced mostly college audiences for 20 years. I saw every performance I could ever get near. So this Suarez Brothers Circus from Mexico sitting in the Cascadas Mall parking lot was the Promised Land.
Marcos and I scurried to complete our errands, the two phones, Pizza Hut (the wings!), and other items on my list, and soon we found ourselves in the cheap seats (the best view) at the circus. It was a wonder!
Maybe small in scale compared to those three-ring extravaganzas, but a series of delights and thrills, from the happiest juggler in the world, throwing balls all over the tent and catching them in his pocket, to that huge spinning wheel where the acrobat climbs out on top and keeps losing his balance -- almost! Scares me to death.
Only two animal acts, but they were big, literally. Sixteen horses, Clydesdales, no less, with a toy pony running in and out of their marching, dancing legs. And just as many enormous Bengal tigers; here was “Life of Pi” without the CGI, jumping all over the cage, including through hoops of fire, and practically swallowing their tamer. I forgot my camera, so the only photo I got is the one we had to buy. But I was glad it would live in my memory.
We invited Elio and Mema to lunch at the Mirawa Restaurant the next day, and as we sat there all full, looking at platters that were still heaping, suddenly in comes Elio and Mema’s very pregnant daughter Regina and two nuns she had invited to lunch to celebrate a school they had just opened in a poor little town near Tegucigalpa. We invited them to dive in, and soon we had a party going on.
Since the nuns live in the same dangerous neighborhood as Marcos, I encouraged Marcos to join their Youth Group. Lovely and lively and non-judging, Sister Teresa and Sister Suyapa reminded me of the two nuns Holden Caulfield runs into in “The Catcher in the Rye”; he keeps looking for them again, since they’re virtually the only people who don’t abuse him. But Marcos, of course, was mortified. And Teresa understood. “Don’t worry, Marcos! We won’t bite. Poor kid, he comes to lunch and gets a couple nuns sicced on him!”
Back in Las Vegas, preparations were underway for the annual Feast of the Holy Cross, May 3. Like Christmas and Holy Week, the secular and the sacred compete for attention. Nominally religious feasts, they are also vacations. When the Festival Committee showed us their plans in a tri-fold brochure for the week’s activities May 1-5, they’d left us only one night and one morning for, shall we say, Jesus.
But Padre Jaime was determined to make the most of it. First, he wanted the Cross to lead the parade on May 1, to set the proper tone; May 2, an evening procession through town, armed with candles and bullhorn, with six stops along the way, mostly near liquor sellers, to preach our “mission,” followed by Mass and vigil till midnight; May 3, a morning Mass for the feast itself. Attendance was huge; we’d invited every other town around us, and Padre Jaime brought his “big band” choir from Victoria to really jazz things up.
And then we snuck in another morning of activities, Saturday, May 4, with games and foods and music, up at the church grounds where the committee wouldn’t see us, for a “Family Day.”
Tipping the balance in favor of faith was a knot of novenas that were being observed the same week. The regular novena in the little church anticipating the feast, as well as the one-year anniversary of the death of Doña Sofia, the ancient lady whose family wanted to honor with a full-blown novenario, and then, unexpectedly, the death of another dear soul, Doña Mercedes, 85, prompting yet another nine-day round of prayer. My chairs were all over the place, and the Legion of Mary, in charge of all three novenas, went non-stop, 2 p.m., 3:30, 5, every day. The core of each celebration was the Rosary, customized with songs here, a meditation there, Bible readings over there.
Pardon me, but I loved it! It seemed so ironic that, while there were soccer games, horse games, even pig games, not to mention drinking games every day, beauty pageants, “mojigangas” (clowns in scary masks), and beer-soaked dances at night, a steady Catholic cadenza was anchoring the week dedicated to God’s mercy. Indeed, “mercedes” means “mercy.” And Padre Manuel even offered Mass right in Mercedes’ house.
The last night of Mercedes’ novenario coincided with the finale of the Feast, May 4. I appreciated her even more during the novenario when her family came from far and wide to do everything first class. Her husband, Vicente, I have to admit, had been a curiosity to me. Vicente was trampled by his own horse many years ago, leaving him misshapen but with a quick wit unimpeded by the cracks across his skull. With his wife’s death and his family’s support, he warmed up to his Christian faith again, something he had let Mercedes handle all these years.
The morning Mass for the Feast doubled as a memorial Mass for Mercedes. Vicente, accompanied by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, was in quiet tears most of the time, his crippled hands folded in prayer.
Turns out it was Vicente who, before his accident, had taught carpentry to Elvis (my neighbor) all those years ago. So that last night of her novenario featured a concert organized by Elvis for his “second father,” a sing-along of all our favorite church songs, while the Rey Feo (“ugly king”) contest was running in the dance hall a couple blocks away, where guys dress (or cross-dress!) as ridiculously as possible and prance and perform.
You know, most of the stuff during the feast really is just a bunch of fun, things you’d never blame anyone for -- especially the marimba music, good anytime -- if it weren’t competing with the Cross of Christ! So live and let live, I guess. That’s a motto of A.A., always a wise touchstone. God does not hide.