Jagged Scar On The Perfect Face

That Dodge Dart was everything wrong with my childhood. Powder blue, almost muscle, vintage 70’s. Not blocking garage or front door, parked on the cement driveway under a sturdy, old Pine tree. Ladder for those branches you couldn’t reach when climbing. An easy way up. Sap stuck to your hands wash after wash. Season after season it sat. Dad didn’t drive it. Mom couldn’t abide it.

Pine needles piled up on it in the fall; fine yellow dust falling on her with every Spring breeze. Sitting silent in the periphery. Was it ever discussed? “Hey, what should we do with that car?” I’m guessing dad meant to get to it ‘one day.’ Take her to a mechanic maybe? One day. Money was tight. One day. 

The black mark on the white wall, jagged scar on the perfect face. Deep green dichondra lawn, winding white cement driveway bordered by berry and bush. Mom spent hours in the front yard; mowing, mulching, mending, pruning. Beauty from chaos. Eye is drawn to the scar, the entropized car in the corner.

It wasn’t about memories of family trips in the Dart. No recollection of sis breaking it in with barf on a road trip. I wanted to drive that car. It wasn’t a Camaro or Chevelle sure. More muscle in it then the white AMC Hornet I ended up with. It disappeared with a small chunk of me.

They cut down the pine tree. Too tall, old and close to the roof. A hazard to the house. The Dart vanished. Undiscussed when under the tree, no discussion upon its sale. Obvious in the driveway but not talked about. Hazard to the home. My childhood motif. 

Lessons I Learned From The Immigrants

And if I sing let me sing for the joy 

That has born in me these songs

And if I weep let it be as a man

Who is longing for his home.

I spent my childhood in the company of immigrants and refugees. Dichondra and Bermuda, chlorine in pools; the neighborhood. Settled in. Life in the San Fernando valley. Yet our parents still smelled the salt water. Our parents; family names like Mitrevics, Oeffinger, Cardella and Fusillo. Fleering other lives to live this one; leaving pogroms, property and riches for the new world.

We observed like kids do. I told my close friend I could barely understand his mom because her accent was so thick. “What about your mom’s accent,” he asked with emphasis. I assured him that my mother had no accent. He swore his didn’t either. 

The accents are an echo of a land no longer lived in. A home that day to day life keeps at bay. Comfortable at get-togethers. Almost home again. Laughing in native tongue, breaking traditional breads; pirogi and Rupjmaize (dark rye). At times; quiet, lonely times, the pain is palpable. James A. Smith gives this example of what it feels like to be an immigrant, “You lose something of your upright bearing if you no longer have the soil of your own land beneath your feet; you feel less confident, more distrustful of yourself.” What’s my takeaway as the child of an immigrant?

Freedom is a painful process. Hardship is part of the process. Moving forward (a myriad of meanings) entails going from the comfortable known to the questionable unknown. Always trading something; cigarettes and soap buy the next border crossing. The journey isn’t about escaping pain. It’s about grasping freedom—inching forward in small increments toward greater fullness. 

There will always be a transient tension; the homeland behind you, hunger for all that ‘home’ implies ahead of you. Home is comfort not permanence. Being home is having a sense of ‘place.’ In a broader sense just as Jesus had no place to lay his head, he was able to find sleep wherever he laid his head.

Be hospitable to strangers. As God reminds us in the first testament, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” By culture, compassion or both the mothers in the neighborhood were mom to their own children and their friends. They, my own mom included, often took in the outcast as well. As the sojourner is blessed he blesses others.

By faith Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise, a seed of blessing to many. Freedom, tension, movement and pain are part and parcel of the process. This is the transient tension, setting out then settling down. Losing self, finding self, giving. Such are the lessons learned from the immigrants.

Photo by Alexandra Kikot on Unsplash