Flashback

Of course, Grandma has been heavy on my heart and mind today. My little sister, Kat, and her husband are there now, planning to leave in the morning for Pittsburgh. We have been texting throughout the day: heart rate way up, blood pressure way down. The end nears.

At a subconscious level I have always had a heart for immigrants. I don't think I've begun to piece it together until recently that I feel a strange connectedness with those who have come here from other countries because of my family history. I have no doubt that the many stories I heard at my grandmother's knee have come forward to shape my world view. My husband and I have discussed immigration policy, the right to immigrate vs. the reality of immigration, exploitation, discrimination, humanity vs. constituency, and so on. The county I live in is 33% Latino. I suspect that illegal immigration issues may apply to many families, but I am unwilling to treat every non-English speaking person like they don't belong here.

I delight to the very center of my soul when I'm at work and I'm surrounded by people all speaking different languages: Spanish, African, Russian, Arabic, Gypsy, Italian, Indian, Chinese, and the list goes on. I feel in balance when I am only a representative of the American English-speaking culture. We are so much more than that as a whole country. Each story being special, each blend unique and precious.

My grandma tells many stories about the family that she used to keep house for: the Christians (name, not faith). They were a rich, rich family living in Owosso post-depression. My grandma was a very young girl when she went to work for them in order to supplement the family income. I don't know if her service to them was a part of the immigration agreement that I mentioned in my previous post. Nonetheless, she gave at least ten years of her life to them as a housekeeper and servant. One of her "while I cleaned the house" stories involved perfume. Now, you have to know Grandma, she's always smelled good, with a particular habit of using liberal amounts of Estee Lauder perfume. She took such personal pride in her smell that the cashiers at the local grocery market said they always knew when Frances came into the store because they could smell that beautiful perfume. Grandma had never been exposed to perfume as a young, poor immigrant from Czechoslovakia, so when she was cleaning Mr. Christian's bedroom and found this handsome bottle of wonderful smelling cologne she unabashedly helped herself. "I splashed it everywhere", she would laugh, "but for some reason I didn't think that anyone else could smell me. I thought it was a secret." She realized, after time, that one of the reasons the kids at school would occasionally keep their distance was that the smell was so over-powering! Grandma was always able to pull one over on you if you weren't watching, but Mr. Christian, who was quite a pistol himself, let her in on his little secret. One day he whispered to her, "Kid, I don't mind you using the cologne, but will you let us know when we're running out?" Grandma would always giggle at that point.

Flash forward to today: The kids and I were burning daylight before Daddy came home from work. I decided to take them to the discount store on the corner to buy a few more toy cars, which we need like another hole in the head. I located the nearest family-sized cart, and as pulled up to load the kids I noticed a young Latino woman working at starting her car to no avail. After I had secured the kids I went to her window. "Do you want me to call someone?" "No, no," she smiled. We went in and came out a few minutes later only to find them still attempting to get the car started. The young boy approached me for a jump, which I did without any result. Omar, the boy, probably about 11, was going back and forth between his mother and me translating. It began to rain. "Can I take you anywhere?" Translation. "Yes, please. Can you take us home?" "Sure," and I opened the back door of her car to find two more children, a baby in a car seat and a 6 year-old little girl with long black hair and brown eyes. I rearranged the seating in the van, and I asked Omar (the only English-speaking family member) what his little sister's name was. "She is America." Ah. America, daughter of hope. Of course. And as I reached in to pull her out and load her into my van, there was an overpowering smell of perfume. "Oh, America, you smell so GOOD!" Her brother laughed and told me she had been playing with the perfume samples in the store. (Grandma, how could I not remember you in looking at this little girl?) We piled all eight of us in my seven-passenger van and headed home. I was watching in the rear-view mirror as America leaned all the way over to my daughter, Liberty, sitting on the other end of the seat. She softly took ahold of her hair, feeling it, running her fingers through it. I couldn't help but smile. Yes, little one, we are a little different, aren't we? America was babbling in Spanish and Liberty was responding in her 2 year-old English. In that moment my heart was so FULL...

We left them in their driveway. But even as I drove away I could smell the perfume from America that had rubbed off on my clothes, both literally and figuratively.