Knickers in an Uproar
 
Last night I laughed so hard  that I had tears streaming down my face.  I guess that's what happens when you get my mom and I and my aunt and two cousins together.

Yesterday I got massive quantites of water up my nose doing underwater flips with my 11 year old cousin.  We also made amazing salsa.

The week before I was in Austin watching my 15/16 ish cousin play some wicked volleyball - she can take your head off.

In short, my family rocks my face off!   I'm so glad they're here.

 

Hello Blog, I've missed you.
I haven't written anything in a while - not a blog, not letters or e-mails, not even very many journal entries. I guess I'm still looking for words.

But I feel as though if I don't start writing again soon I'll just get flabby.

A while ago...

In eighth grade we had to memorize Emma Lazarus' "New Colossus." "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

I wish I remembered it all. I realized last week that I was born with the American Dream in my tightly closed fist. That I have never had to look for it because I am a favored daughter of the lady with the lamp.

Last week I talked with a woman who lived in fear of her life for over 30 years all the time looking for her entrance to this free land. Land of the Pilgrim's pride, where my father's died, but not her's.

She, orphaned at 15. She, waiting for her chance and that of her family's. She, wearing now only to church the brightly colored sari's of Sri Lanka.

Land where I've never questioned my freedoms but worn them as peacock feathers in my cap.

"The first year I was here, I did not like the fireworks because of the sound," she said, miming the action of a machine gun with her arms.

She told me of a church and a bomb and a world where her family was singled out because of their faith. She told me this as we watched fireworks light the sky above the Wal-Mart Garden Center. She knowing that her two children and the rest of the family were watching the same fireworks - safe and sound. Later they would share the watermelon she took home with her.

"I like them now," she said, smiling as she saw the red and green and white explosions. "It is peaceful here."

And I looked in my hand and saw the dream and freedoms I have taken for my birthright. And I looked in her face and saw only gratitude for the life that was peaceful here.

To see the fourth day of the seventh month through an immigrant's eyes is an experience which humbles.

"El sueno Americano es para todos," said President Bush, addressing the national council of La Raza. "The American Dream is for everyone."

Only when I looked at Philo. Only when I heard her story. Did I realize how true a statement that is. Only when I looked at Philo - who reached out and grabbed the dream.

...And the lesser light to govern the night.

The moon was beautiful tonight. Full and clean and very bright. And I was glad of it.