John... Just Some Poor Schmuck [JSPS]

Among the criticisms that I receive about my blog, few are able to be repeated publicly; one of those is, "We want more pictures of you," (I am not making this up!).  So here I am, just sitting, as one of the girls at St. Ann's uses my camera.   

I usually head over to St. Ann's on a Tuesday after I finish my classes at Mercy.  I picked that day as I am finished an hour or so earlier than the others.   It is hard to tell how I will feel; generally I am tired starting out, but the girls provide so much excitement and noise, they don't let you take it easy at all.   And then when I walk or bike home, I am tired again; however, I am filled with gratitude for the comparatively gentle sound of the traffic screaming past me. I really have no idea how the Sisters and Matrons last all day with the girls' din!

Yesterday, when Tony and I were over to re-fix the computers, the older girls were developing a dance routine, and they were including all the younger ones who wanted to join them.  Very nice:  Sister Barbara's "Big Sister - Little Sister" was working well.  However, for the hour plus we were there, they only played, constantly, the first minute of the same song ..... over and over and over...   By the time we walked  (yes, dear, it was before dark) to the Brazilian Churrascaria, I was in urgent need of something soothing!

A small aside: This is one of my favourite restaurants.  It is a barbecue place that serves unlimited portions of chicken, beef, pork and whatever else they can catch.   And you never know what cut you are getting, as they work their way through the whole animal, so last night there was beef heart and no homemade sausage.  When we walked in, the two good-looking young waitresses, Pauline and Faustina, rushed to greet us and called me by name ..... I still have the looks, eh?   Faustina, the Brazilian, won this time and took really good care of us.  It seems every time I go, I have a hard time getting my beef rare ..... but Faustina got it sorted out - and rare it was.   And the beer was cold --  Parbo, a Suriname beer in a Brazilian restaurant - very international.  (Well, Tony was also cosmopolitan with an American Sprite!)  I was looking forward to a big slice of whipped cream cake, but there was none to have.  Faustina gave me her personal telephone number to call her any time.  She actually said, "When you are coming the next time, call me and I'll make sure there are whipped cream cakes."  She gave us a Crème Brûlée  on the house.  Later, she called us a cab.  She said that she'd be looking for us again and to please return soon.    And we left her a nice tip as we usually do, but as I assured Tony, it had nothing to do with the warm welcome we receive. 

What am I doing here in Guyana?   This is the question that I usually answer in this blog with some facts and a few good stories composed of partial truths.   These are pretty easy to whack out on a weekly basis as there are so many stories happening to me everyday.   The WHY I am in Guyana is a much more difficult and personal question.   And after 9 years, I am not sure that I can give an answer that will seem true tomorrow. My most recent answer I shared during the Teacher Appreciation Day.

(If you look closely, you can see that I am wearing my Met Life shirt because my brother Peter said that if I got them some good advertising, he'd get Tony and me up in the Snoopy Blimp for the Masters ......)

"Why do you come?", they asked me.   I am not sure of all that drives me.  There is a part of me that is still a competitor [I am sure it is mostly my mind that is the competitor as my body has certainly forgotten] and, in that world, you are only as good as your last game.  Reputations and trophies mean nothing.   You have to get out on the pitch as an untested competitor and if you win, bragging rights only extend to the start of the next game.  The past disappears. The present is all there is...  I can't seem to rest on laurels and while they are comforting, they are not powerful enough to be engaging.

And there is a part of me that is still Roman Catholic - guilt!  I am not downplaying guilt, as I feel it serves many useful purposes in life; I am just aware of it as a force in my living.  I have through an accident of birth (speaking not so much about my parent's birth control methods as the luck of my place in the world) had a privileged life with health, smarts, adequate finances, loving family, great looks ..... !  This is combined with a professional career of 25 years of listening to and witnessing the suffering of so many who were "just like me" except that their lives were devastated by illness or death or addiction or cowardice.   How could I not have the questions of "Why not Me?"  What makes me special, I have no idea.

Though I have been accused of being a Biblical Midget [and probably with some justification], there are many texts that I have pondered, including Luke 12,48:  "When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required."   I can engage in as many mental gymnastics as I want about not being wealthy, the bottom line is "I have been given much."  

And because I am a liberal, I will say the opposite in a gesture to the Indian principle of Non-Contradiction - with apologies to Ninian Smart.   I am reading a Trinidadian writer, V.S. Naipaul, who wrote, "..the conviction that is at the root of so much human anguish and passion, and corrupts so many lives [is] that there was justice in the world."  I remember discovering Existentialism in university and probably haven't been the same since.   Elie Wiesel,  a Jewish writer who saved my Christianity many years ago, had written about the illusion of order and justice after his experiences in the Holocaust.  And this is where I found myself after seeing so many deaths at the hospital.   If there is no justice or order -- whether seen, imagined or believed -- in this world or the next, then if there is to be justice - it is mine to do for sure -- and maybe yours.

I think that having my life make a difference, and have meaning, has trumped pleasures [most of the time].  This may be the psychological equivalent of competitive lasting values .....  All emotions are fleeting , as are so many things in life.  I used orgasms in the teacher appreciation day reflections.   They are not designed to last.   However, meaning seems to have a durability in its remembered power.  I "must" have [yes, seemingly a grand neurosis] my life mean something.

And what about my family?    [Now I really will need that principle of non-contradiction.]  I  love my wife, Anne.  I have been happy and loved more than I could have imagined - which is also an argument for the lack of justice in the world, as I do not deserve her.   I cherish and take pride in all my children [most of the time, eh?]:  Kristin, John Aaron [he is my favourite son], Sue, Sara and Christine.   When I hear about their achievements in living and working, I am puffed up with pride and love.   As for the grandkids: Aidan, Emily, Evan, Isabel, Jennifer, Sienna and Sydney (plus an honourable mention to Shilo), I love them -- not that I really know them, as if any grandfather could really understand a grandchild ..... and they will live, I hope, a long and full life in a world I must make better.  

I do not know why this love and pride is not enough...   I do remember being critical  of a special service of remembrance that Anne once conducted in her little country church.  She said of the deceased that he was a good husband and father - period.   How did that make him special or enough?   I have mellowed and as usual Anne was right AND it is not enough for me.   At the risk of offending my wife and children:  they are not enough.  Not enough in the sense that I deserve more or better, just that I am selfish and want to be remembered - not by history and fame, but by myself. So if/when I get to some nursing home, sitting in a "Gerry" chair drooling, while some nubile young nurse pats me on the head and says, "There, there, dearie, you have to sit up just a little longer,"  I will know that I did everything that I could with my life... and remember.

Mine is not the evil of a works righteousness [just so I can keep my Lutheran status], as issues of salvation and next world kin-doms have imperceptible effects on my motivation or actions.  There was a cartoon ..... and if my dementia were not progressing I might remember which strip ..... in which, when confronted with the choice of heaven or hell, the character's response is, "Surprise me!"    There is more than enough in this world to worry about, without any conjecture about the next ones.   [Uh, oh:  there may go my Lutheran status.]

In the end,  I am not sure why I am here... I just know that I am.

 

I'll end with a story of a new girl at St. Ann's.  She arrived at the home the day before I visited. And let's just say that her father was not a nice guy; her mother had died; and she was from a small Amerindian village where no one spoke any English.  They called her Naiomi and she spoke only Caribe.  [The fierce warring tribe that conquered the Caribbean; she looks fierce, eh?]   I can't imagine how scared she must have been.   Well, it was arranged for someone from Amerindian Affairs to bring a Caribe speaking translator to chat with her.   Naiomi really enjoyed it and started talking in Caribe.  The young Caribe translator with a newborn baby, who was in Georgetown because of a difficult pregnancy, had to teach us some words too ..... 

So "Usabba". 

John