Sheri's Blog

World Vision | Day 3

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

Babulel comes from a small village in Rajasthan in the Indian desert. He's a handsome man, with a mop of thick, wavy dark hair, an enormous smile, and a dancer's grace. That last part comes naturally: Babulel is a member of a family of performers that goes back generations. He is also an artist, making the puppets he often performs with, and hand-sewing elaborate tribal and ceremonial garments that are worn at the weddings and parties and civic events where he appears. In 2002, Babulel was part of a delegation of Indian performers invited to demonstrate their art on the mall in Washington, DC. His face lit up as he described the moment, how it felt to dance on American soil with the Washington Monument looming behind him. We were having this conversation while sitting cross-legged on a woven mat on the floor. A photo album was open in front of us, filled with snapshots of Babulel's performances. The Governor of Delhi smiles from one photo; shots of prominent Bollywood movie stars are scattered throughout the album. I'm thinking, Babulel is clearly some sort of big deal in the arts here. Strange then, that the floor we're sitting on is in a room with only one wall, in one of the three worst places on earth. Babulel, the dancer and artist and cultural ambassador, the man who performs for leaders and stars, lives in Sadipur, a government slum in Delhi.

Sadipur is a legal slum, meaning the people there aren't squatters and won't typically be threatened or rousted by the police. But their situation is precarious nonetheless, as the government can sell the land beneath them to a developer at any time. When that happens, it's common for the developer to evict the slum dwellers by fire. Hired thugs come in during the night, douse some of the structures with petrol or kerosene, and throw a match. It takes so little to create an inferno out of what is essentially garbage and kindling to begin with. Some of the people do manage to escape; some are severely burned; and many, many die. It's just the way it goes and everyone knows it. Of course, nothing can ever be proven -- these things happen sometimes, don't they? One day there's a slum, and then there's a terrible fire, and then there's a high rise. That's progress, and no sense getting all worked up and making trouble because the dead were poor and nameless and easily stripped of their humanity.

Babulel left his home in Rajasthan because performing may be his passion, but it was impossible to feed his children on what little he could earn as a dancer. And there were no jobs at home in his village, no industry, no prospects. What farming there is depends entirely on the rains, and Rajasthan, already desert, is crippled by drought. Babulel brought his family to Delhi. Like the other residents of Sadipur, he's unemployed, at least in the sense of having a regular job with a predictable income. He does what he can, which for a male in Sadipur usually means shining shoes on the streets of the tourist and business districts. He's not a "sifter" -- one who picks through mounds of garbage in the hopes of finding something that might be useful for trading or sale. Sifting is the work of women and children. But Babulel the artist is also an entrepreneur, and together with his sons, has found a way to bring some of the crafts he learned at home to a most improbable classroom.

When World Vision entered Sadipur perhaps a year ago, one of Babulel's sons, Ravi, became a World Vision community volunteer. Although there is as yet no child sponsorship program in Sadipur, World Vision has opened what is called a non-formal coaching center. Ravi, has completed 10^th grade -- a very high level of education given his circumstances -- and serves as a tutor at the center. He has 35 children in his care, in different "batches" to use his words. He helps prepare those children, ages 5-10, for formal school, on the outside chance they might actually be able to attend. The odds of making it to school are poor, though, as most of these children are unregistered, meaning without birth certificates, and therefore ineligible for public school. Some private schools accept unregistered children, but the cheapest of those costs 130 rupees per month (less than $1.50 at current exchange rates). Which sounds like a bargain till you realize that the most a parent might earn shining shoes or sifting garbage is 15-20 rupees per day. That's less than 50 cents. Subtract the cost of food and cooking fuel and it's barely possible to feed a family one meal per day, much less send the children to school.

In addition to the academic coaching, Ravi and Babulel are also teaching the children at the center how to make traditional Rajasthani dolls and puppets, along with toy elephants and camels. The day we visited, there was a pile of elephant forms, each about 8 inches tall, made of layers and layers of wrapped and woven twine. Those forms are then covered with scraps of bright fabric and bits of cord, here and there a sequin or two sewn on for decoration. The end result is a wonderful handmade keepsake or toy, which can then be sold on the street. In Rajasthan, one of those little fabric dolls might sell for a few pennies. In Delhi, with a bit of luck, that same doll might fetch 50 cents or more.

Tony and I asked Babulel's if we could purchase some of his dolls. I can't wait to give them to my daughters, and tell them the story behind their creation. That they're not just little trinkets; that they represent something lasting and true. They speak to the importance of place, heritage and tradition, to the power of creativity, and to the nearly unbelievable flowering of hope in a hopeless place.

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

World Vision | Day 2

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

There are all sorts of reasons why your company may decide to relocate you.  Maybe it’s a promotion too good to turn down.  Maybe there’s a new office opening, or operations are being consolidated.  Or, maybe you’re being relocated to save your life.  Literally.

There’s a World Vision staffer in India - let’s call her Anna, since it’s too risky to use her real name.   Anna has been with World Vision for many years, and had risen to a position of leadership in the rural community where she was based.  When you pause to remember that World Vision’s goal is to help children and families and communities become healthy and self-sustaining, you can imagine Anna’s commitment to this place, the relationships built over so much time and labor.  There should have been a happy ending to this story for Anna.  She should have one day soon celebrated what World Vision calls a “closing” – the community at last able to stand on its own .  Instead, Anna was forced to take her infant and flee, leaving behind her husband and her home, and the work of more than a decade.

Part of Anna’s work with World Vision involved counseling and education on HIV/AIDS.  The disease has spread throughout the poverty-stricken of Indian largely unchecked.  Anna explained that tribal sexual practices played a role, along with the taboo against speaking openly about sex, and of course, always against the backdrop of the appalling devaluation of women and girls.   Anna was used to receiving visitors at her home, villagers with HIV/AIDS who were only willing to be counseled or treated so long as their anonymity was protected.  So a knock on the door late in the evening wasn’t unusual.  It was part of the job.

One evening Anna was home alone with her baby when a man appeared on her doorstep.  She invited him in, assuming he needed help or advice.  He said to her – in what she described as a soft, pleasant, utterly calm manner – “I have something for you and your husband.”  He dropped a small parcel into her hand and turned to leave.   She unwrapped it to find two bullets.  “One for each of you”, he said.  And then he was gone.

Here’s where Anna’s story gets crazy.   Through some twisted misunderstanding, motivated by politics and driven by suspicion and contempt of a woman in a leadership role, a powerful man in the village decided that Anna was somehow responsible for the misappropriation of funds.  He claimed that Anna had diverted funds meant for World Vision.  But remember, Anna in that place was World Vision.  There wasn’t a scrap of evidence to support his claim.  It was a complete fiction, a joke, almost.  Except there wasn’t anything funny about his intentions.  The bullets delivered to her home were no empty threat.  He had singled Anna out as a target, and she would be made an example.   Her choices narrowed to two: stay and risk her life, or leave and try to start over. 

Forced to relocate, Anna was fortunate to find a different position with World Vision in another part of the country.  The move was swift, with little time for planning.  Her husband plans to follow, hopefully within the next three months.  In the meantime, her unemployed brother joined her in her new city to help care for her child and to offer her what protection he can.  Housing is very expensive in the urban centers, which means a two-hour bus ride to work each way.  She hasn’t seen her husband since the move.  The distance and the difficulty traveling are just too great.   I asked her if she was afraid that simply going away wasn’t enough, that she could be found and killed anyway.  She shrugged.  “I don’t think so, but I don’t know, of course.  I think my leaving is enough.  It was like my defeat, and they know I’m afraid.  But I think that God brought this into my life for some purpose.  My husband and I, we accept that.”

If you saw Anna on the street, you’d never guess her story.   What’s amazing is that she has the courage to live it, and to tell it, so that other women won’t have to share it. 

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

World Vision | Day 1

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

I love Indian food, Indian music, Indian clothing, books about India, stories that take place in India – I even watched the Cheetah Girls movie on the Disney channel specifically because it was set in India.  (Talk about having to suspend disbelief:  Bollywood needs the Cheetah Girls?  Oh, and please let me tell you about the subplot involving Aqua!  Before departing the US, she’d been flirting on the phone with some guy at a Mumbai call center who was ostensibly helping her with her computer troubles.  But then she comes to India, and bumps into him on the street!   Shut up – it could happen!  And they fall in love, only he’s not just a call center worker, but some sort of prince or duke or what have you.  I’m a little sketchy on this particular point, having viewed the movie with a glass of merlot firmly in hand.  And somehow the movie ends with a spectacular song and dance number, a la Bollywood, and I’m pretty sure Dorinda rides an elephant.  Or maybe they all do?)  Anyway, the Cheetah Girls movie is called “One World”, and after my first day in Delhi, I have to say, yes, it is.

Delhi is a vast urban explosion, a city more than 300 miles across.  It’s at once ancient, dating back to

 1450 B.C., and utterly modern and completely wired.  Streets are clogged with cars, buses, motorbikes, and these crazy little taxis built on trike chasses.  They’re called tuk-tuks, and though they sport covered roofs, the sides are open to the elements.  They veer all over the road, squeezing to fill any opening in the traffic flow.  They look like great fun, in a terrifying sort of way.  I couldn’t help noticing that nearly every tuk-tuk driver had images of Hindu gods and goddesses taped in front of his handlebars.  Divine intervention no doubt plays a big role in the tuk-tuk driver survival rate.   I’d last about an hour, tops, behind the wheel of a car here before crashing.  It’s insane.

The people are beautiful.  And I don’t mean just the actors and models that grace the billboards.  The women, even in the slums, are dressed for the most part in traditional saris, some with gauzy scarves covering their hair.  Standing next to them in baggy cargo pants and a white t-shirt, I felt like a complete slob.  And in the blistering monsoon season heat, their attire made so much more sense than my own.  The children are gorgeous, though very, very small for their ages, and painfully thin.  In too many cases, malnutrition has given their naturally dark hair an odd rusty tinge.  It’s a telltale sign that the child is suffering from hunger.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise: they’re lucky to have one small meal per day.

There are horrific slums in Delhi, places so desperate that the government actually set aside a parcel of land for families willing and able to take a step up and out.  This area is known as a relocation zone, and in it, small plots of land can be leased (but never owned), and the renters may erect homes no larger than 12 feet by 12 feet.  Sewage runs in perennially overflowing ditches along the sides of the dirt streets, electrical service is spotty at best, garbage is mounded in piles, standing rainwater is a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue fever, and this, remember, is a step up from the slums.

Here’s the surreal part: the scene I just described is taking place in a city that will remind you uncomfortably of parts of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit.  The face of movie star Penelope Cruz, blown up to gigantic proportions, floats on a billboard above a cluster of shanties pieced together out of faded fabric and sheets of plywood like Our Lady of Impossible Dreams.  Kids sleep on the street beneath placards advertising smart phones and coffees.  There are luxury hotels and a Rolls Royce dealership and business is clearly being transacted on every corner.  And yet.  This is a place where child labor is rampant, where a 10 year-old might work as a dishwasher for perhaps 15 cents per day.   Where 6 year-olds beg on the streets to provide money for their families.  Delhi is such a collision of the old and new, the traditional and the modern, the haves who are cashing in on globalization, and the have nots, who barely survive one day to the next.   

When you see firsthand what a few dollars can do, how dramatically the life of a family can be improved, it’s almost shameful to think how casually many of us throw that kind of money away.  A family in Delhi earning less than $500 per year falls below the poverty line.   I used to spend nearly that amount on haircuts in a year – a realization that makes me more than a little nauseous.   You can’t help but do  those kinds of calculations, especially when you’re sitting with a mother whose children are half the size of your own, yet four or five years older.   You think about your own small luxuries – for me it’s Starbucks a few times a week, and trips to the paint-your-own pottery place with my girls.  Then you’re invited into a home that is nothing more than a single room, partitioned off with a sheet or two, dark and sweltering, and it stops you in your tracks.  You didn’t understand that you were rich, that your air-conditioned home with its flat screen TV, refrigerator, and hot shower any damn time you feel like it might as well be a palace, is a palace.  For most of us, that kind of comfort is a given.  How lucky is that?

None of us gets to choose where we come from, or how much we start with.  We can only choose what and how much of ourselves we give.

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

World Vision....FROM THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

Two years ago, Bob and I traveled to the Dominican Republic with World Vision.   The experience changed me, and my life, in ways I could never have imagined or predicted.   Changes that I struggled then to articulate and hesitate now to try and describe.  All of the words I’ve been able to come up with, all of the names and labels for what happened to me there just don’t feel big enough, or bright enough, or powerful enough to get the job done.  Call it a spiritual transformation, or a cosmic wake-up call, or an epiphany, and you’d be in the right neighborhood, but nowhere close to home.   It’s like trying to explain a dream: what feels so vivid and intense for the dreamer can sound awfully trite and tedious to the listener.   But if you’ve read this far, maybe you’ll bear with me.

There’s a patch of ground in Santo Domingo, not too far from the city center, that hugs the side of the river in full view of a busy highway.   It’s a dumping ground for garbage, dank and muddy and prone to flooding in the frequent heavy rains.  It’s also a neighborhood, if you can believe it.  A neighborhood, that is, if you can imagine calling hundreds of precarious shelters slapped together from bits of corrugated metal and splintering plywood, homes.   If you happened to be in an air-conditioned car, speeding over the bridge on your way to the airport after a vacation at one of the Dominican Republic’s luxury beach resorts, you might glance down in horror or pity or both.  You’d wonder how human beings can live like this.   How is it even possible?

It was a sweltering August afternoon, and we were slowly making our way through the maze of what I guess you’d have to call streets, though they were as narrow as hallways.  Every bit of space that could be claimed for shelter was.  Crowds of people thronged every passageway.   Children darted in all directions.  There were dogs everywhere, skeletal and weirdly dead-eyed, feral dogs nosing for scraps or crouched in what little shade could be found.   The air was pungent with odors: garbage and sewage, animal waste and the rank, fetid river mud.   And , so unexpectedly, the smell of something absolutely delicious cooking, maybe around the next corner.   But it wasn’t the smell that overwhelmed:  it was the noise.   Imagine a constant roar, just an incomprehensible din coming from every direction.

It took a long time to finally make our way to the water’s edge.   By that point, we’d attracted a horde of curious, chattering kids.  They followed us in a swarm, one of them tugging on my hand to lead me to his “house”.  I went inside and met his mom.  Their home was one room, maybe 6 feet by 6 feet.  The earthen floor was still mucky from a recent flood.  Everything they owned in the world looked like it might fit in one of those large Rubbermaid containers that Target sells by the truckload to people like me for storing extra toys and Christmas ornaments.   Through a translator, she explained that it was hard keeping house, what with having to take all possessions and evacuate every time the river threatened to flood its banks.   Then she offered me a meal.

Outdoors again, in the baking heat, I sat down on the ground.  Children clambered all over me and in seconds, three of them were jockeying for position in my lap.  I was surrounded on all sides, the kids openly giggling at my appalling Spanish, little hands in my hair, stroking my arms, fingering the zippers on my daypack, tugging at my shoelaces.  To my left, not ten feet away, was the skinned, gutted, and heat-bloated carcass of a goat.  Nestling against me as snugly as my own child was a girl, maybe 6 years old, with perfectly aligned braids and a faded but starched flowered dress.  She squeezed my wrist with her so-small hand, and in that moment – and there’s really no other way to put it and believe me, I’ve tried – it was as though the whole world suddenly shifted into its rightful place.  Like the final click of the tumbler that springs the lock.  And just like that, all of the walls came down. 

The sensation of being cracked open was so powerful that I can close my eyes and feel it still.  In an instant, I’m back in that place, in that heat and noise, the sheer cacophony of too many bodies in too small a space, engulfed in a sea of children, their eyes inches from my own.   When I tell you that happiness is possible in an inferno, that joy can be found in a gutter, maybe you can’t conceive it.  We who have so much can afford the true luxuries of the privileged: ennui, discontent, the nagging fear that someone else got the all of the cash and prizes that were meant to be ours.   Our wealth may purchase roomy homes and plasma TV’s, but it doesn’t buy us a superior brand of humanity.  It just makes the journey more comfortable.  It’s unsettling to calculate how much a successful life owes to the simple good fortune of where and to whom we were born.

Those children weren’t born lucky, that’s all.  They were born into crushing poverty, in an unforgiving place where human lives aren’t much valued, where they’re as expendable as the garbage that surrounds them.  It’d be easier to turn away if they weren’t just like your kids.  Just like my kids.  It’d be easier to turn away if you could somehow blame their parents for making a mess of their lives.  But then you meet their mothers and their fathers and their grandmothers – if they’re alive, that is - and there’s no escaping the truth:  these people are just like you. 

So the world cracked open, and me with it.  The revelation is one you’ve heard about 10 million times in cheesy pop songs and overpriced greeting cards: love is everything.  Just love.   Love as a verb, love that expects no payback or reward.  Love for no reason other than itself.  Oh, I could just throw up typing this because I know how it sounds.   There was a time, a period that stretches – oh, let’s see – for most of my life, that I would have either rolled my eyes at something like this or felt the queasy unease of knowing I was missing out on the party.

A spiritual demolition and rebuild like this doesn’t come without consequences.  Returning home, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.  The truth of my life, the price of my choices…everything was laid bare.   My marriage, a pretty fragile concoction that relied heavily on denial , rationalization, fear, and my lifelong codependency swiftly unraveled.  The pain was seismic.    And, like the metaphor implies, continues to rock us all with tremor after tremor.  That’s a story for another time, though.  With a great, big glass of wine on the side.

In 10 minutes, I’m going to head to gate A16 at O’Hare and board a flight for Delhi, India.  I don’t expect my life to change so radically again.  One epiphany per customer, right?  I’m just grateful to be here.

Return to World Vision page....Click Here

A Weird Valentine's Day This Year

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m in a weird place.

 

Matt, our Marketing Director here at the Link, asked me to write something Valentine-ish for this issue.  It could be about anything, he said.  It could be about your kids or romance or lack of romance.  You know, anything.  Something fun. 

 

I gave it some thought.  Maybe I could write about my 7 year-old daughter Olivia, and how she’s been getting the most adorable little love letters from a boy in her class.   Or, maybe I should write about my friends Nancie and Ed, whose annual Valentine’s Day Bring-A-Poem dinner party is far more romantic than dinner at even the swankiest restaurant.  Or about the 6^th grade, when Michael Jenkins gave me the single most beautiful handmade Valentine I’ll probably ever receive.

 

The problem is, no matter what I choose to write about, it feels weird.  Mostly because I’m just hesitant to be forthcoming about what’s happening in my life.  My husband and I have been separated now for more than a year.  Slowly, we’re both moving on.  Anyone who’s been in this situation knows the challenges, knows how surreal it all can feel from one moment to the next.  It’s almost like waking up one morning to discover that everything you once knew has to be entirely relearned.  Whatever else it is, it’s not an easy time.  It helps to have friends to talk to, to lean on, to ask, “Am I crazy?”

 

And that’s the part that gets weird for me.  If I talk frankly about my separation – whether it’s the reasons why, or the logistics of raising the kids, dividing the stuff, whatever – I rob my ex of his privacy.  There’s just no way around it.  And worse, if I say the wrong thing, I risk hurting his feelings.  No matter how angry or frustrated or miserable I may feel in the moment, I truly don’t want to be nasty.  (I don’t always succeed at this, by the way, and I know it.)

 

A few sentences ago, I mentioned that we’re both moving on.  Dating, after being in any long-term relationship, can be freaky.  No matter who initiates the breakup, seeing your ex with someone new is, well, weird.  It just is.  It was true when we were 16, and it’s still true now that we’re all grown up.  When my daughters talk about “Daddy’s friend Miss ___”, it’s a little bizarre.  It is!  I bet he feels the same way when they mention the man I’ve been seeing.  It’s new terrain to navigate, and from what I can tell, it sure helps to have a sense of humor.  Still, it’s tough.

 

Which brings me to Valentine’s Day.  If you’re lucky and blessed enough to have real love in your life, celebrate that.  I didn’t, and it was lonelier than being alone.  That’s been a hard truth to come to grips with.  But facing it has been a gift worth more than all the chocolates and flowers you can carry.  Which is why this Valentine’s Day, for the first time in a long time, I have something real to celebrate.  Hopefully, so do you.   

Rudolph's Pajamas

I blatantly stole my favorite holiday tradition from one of my favorite people in the whole world: my sister-in-law Nancy.  Nancy is very creative, and a great multi-tasker – valuable skills when you’re raising five kids on a tight budget.  She approached Christmas like a general strategizing a war.  Money was squirreled away all year long in a Christmas club.  Newspaper circulars were combed for bargains to be purchased and hidden, often months and months in advance of the holiday.  She baked and froze cookies, made pounds of the best homemade fudge ever, and somehow managed to decorate the inside and outside of her house, seemingly without breaking a sweat.  Don’t ask me how, but she also managed to throw a family party on Christmas Eve and whip up an unbelievable Christmas dinner, too.  I’m worn out just thinking about it.  And all of this without even a trace of Martha Stewart-esque smugness.  Seriously, she’s wonderful.

 

Which brings me to my favorite holiday tradition.  Every Christmas Eve, shortly before bedtime, as my nieces and nephews tore around the house, there would be a sudden thump or clatter of noise on the front porch.  There might even be the sound of sleigh bells jingling in the night.  The kids would tumble out the front door into the cold dark and there, in front of them, would be five sets of beautiful, brand-new Christmas pajamas.  Dropped there by Rudolph, as Santa passed overhead to make the first of his many deliveries, these were the pajamas destined to star in that year’s Christmas morning photos.  The kids, thrilled and awestruck, couldn’t wait to put them on.  Rudolph’s pajamas were proof of Santa, proof that Christmas was almost here at last.

 

I played helper a few times during college.  I’d park my noisy old VW bug a block or so away, and sneak up to the house on foot.  The pajamas would be tucked in a bag beneath some shrubs, along with a few carrots for the reindeer, and a string of bells.  I’d carefully and arrange the pjs on the porch, take a few big bites out of the carrots before strewing them about and then, grabbing up all the evidence, shake the bells like crazy and run for a hiding spot in a neighboring yard.

 

There I’d watch the scene unfold: the wonder on their faces, the delighted smiles of my older brother and his wife.  Then the door would close, and though I could still see them through the picture window, their shouts and giggles couldn’t be heard.   I vividly remember the last year I did Christmas pajamas for Nancy.   I knew I‘d be moving away soon, and stood in the freezing dark for a long time watching my brother’s house.  Seeing his family joyful and snug amid the twinkling lights and colorful chaos of Christmas, I got a lump in my throat.  I was happy for my brother - he’d made for himself the kind of family and home we’d never known.  And yet sad at the same time, sad in ways I couldn’t articulate then.  The scene in front of me was humble and unremarkable, and all the more precious for it.  And, like most precious things, terribly fragile. 

 

Now that I have children of my own, Rudolph comes to our house every Christmas Eve, right on schedule.  It’s as thrilling for Olivia and Caramia as it was for their now-grown cousins.  I’ve added a few touches of my own, like glitter sprinkled over the entire scene for an extra bit of dazzle.  Lacking a reliable helper nearby, I’ve had to improvise and just sort of pretend to “hear” something outside before the sending the girls to investigate.  But that doesn’t matter.  If I had a million years, I could never grow tired of the amazed expression on Caramia’s face, or of the way Olivia declares, “I knew it!  I just knew Rudolph would remember us!”  It’s funny, because like Nancy, I now do the tree and the decorations and the dinner and by golly, even the cookies – sometimes.  But those few minutes spent shivering on the front porch are what transform an otherwise typical winter evening into something more.  Nightgowns, a few carrots, a handful of glitter…who could have imagined that such simple things might possess such enormous Christmas magic?

Pedro's South of the Border

Anyone who’s driven I-95 through South Carolina knows Pedro – or Pedro’s billboards, at any rate. For miles and miles, Pedro teases drivers with puns and double entendres in lurid, day-glo colors (“Pedro’s fireworks! Does yours?” “Keep America Green – Bring Money!” etc. The billboards are impossible to miss. I don’t know what Pedro’s monthly outdoor advertising tab is, but holy cow, it’s got to be keeping some billboard company afloat.) Anticipation builds – how could it not? Just when you think, oh this South of the Border thing has to be a put-on, there in the distance it looms: Pedro’s Giant Sombrero. About the size and height of a water tower, the Sombrero has a glass elevator that ferries tourists nearly 200 feet in the air (cost: a surprisingly fair $1) to take in the view of Dillon, SC. And as soon as they return to earth, Pedro is waiting with a cluster of shops, restaurants, a hotel, a campground, mini golf, and even, unbelievably, a small amusement park. And all of it garish and loud and campy and tacky and culturally insensitive at best. South of the Border seemed to be the very alpha and omega of tourist traps, a quintessentially American place, embodying the very spirit of our vast, hungry, ever-consuming and easily disposable popular culture. Yet for all of Pedro’s leering at our bulging wallets, there was a kind of innocence about the place, too. An unspoken agreement on all parts that getting taken was part of the fun, part of the whole vacation experience, and besides, who doesn’t love a coconut painted to look like a shrunken pirate head? At South of the Border, everyone is in on the joke.

Can you see why I wanted to go? Can you understand the allure? It had been a long while since I’d driven that stretch of I-95, but a recent road trip from Hilton Head to Philadelphia reminded me that Pedro was still there, just waiting for me to get off my high horse and pay a visit. So, this past weekend, I did. I called first, just to be sure, and to ask a few questions. The man who answered the phone sounded both really busy and totally clueless. No problem. Many businesses in America have seemingly adopted that exact approach to incoming calls, so, like everyone else, I’m used to it. Here’s how that conversation went:

Me: Is South of the Border open?

Him: Yes.

Me: Is it true that the Honeymoon Suite has a taco-shaped bed?

Him: It’s a clam.

Me: A clam-shaped bed?

Him: Like on the beach. That kind of clam. (Note: are there other kinds of clams? Must investigate.)

Me: Awesome. How much?

Him: I don’t know. It’s not available. We only have one. It’s always booked.

Way to encourage the customer! Still, Pedro was open for business, and that’s all I needed to know. Arriving on a cool, overcast day, I immediately noticed two things: first, there were hardly any people there, and second, Pedro’s empire is clearly in a state of decay. I guess the former handily explains the latter. Maybe you could blame the high price of gasoline, but the kind of decline I saw takes longer than a single summer to happen. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When you leave I-95 and cruise into Pedroland, prepare to be dazzled by the quantity and variety of cast concrete animals. It’s like a refuge for escapees from Goonie Golf. Bulls, elephants, giraffes, apes, wolves, tortoises, dinosaurs, dolphins, you name it. These creatures are everywhere at Pedroland and God bless the management because you are actually permitted - no, encouraged - to climb, sit, and be photographed atop them. Don’t you just hate places that have, like, a full-size lavender-painted cement hippo and then yell at your kids when they try to hoist themselves onto its back? Me too. You won’t find that kind of nannying at South of the Border, mi jefe. You want to risk perching your baby on the head of a 7 foot long, 5 foot tall wiener dog? Have at it and bienvenidos.

The next thing you’ll notice are the shops. There’s Pedro’s Trading Post, Pedro’s Western Shop, Pedro’s Africa, Pedro’s Mexican Shop, Pedro’s Candy Store, Pedro’s Myrtle Beach Shop, and Hat World. And probably half a dozen more, believe it or not. Pedro tries hard to hold to the theme of each store, with mixed results. The Western Shop predictably leans heavily toward cowboy knickknacks and Native American tchotkes (think mandalas and drums. Also, peace pipes. I watched one elderly gentleman in a trucker’s hat pick up a peace pipe off of the counter, take a meditative draw on it, then put it back down as his wife shook her head in loving disapproval. I couldn’t help wondering how many other folks saliva had dried on that thing. Oh my God I need some Listerine just thinking about it.) The Africa Shop boasts some interesting carvings and a rack of brightly-colored traditional African garments. The Mexican Shop features lots of blankets, maracas, sombreros, and even a magnet memorializing Pope John Paul II. Pedro’s Myrtle Beach is home to a giant Great White shark and a coffee table made from a lobster trap. It’s also where you’ll find the most mystifying trinket in all of Pedroland: a glass bottle filled with buff-colored plastic beads of no discernible value, interest, or aesthetic appeal. Cost: $6.50. I guess people really will buy anything. Hat World was a delight, and I’ll probably forever regret not purchasing the giant yellow spider hat. The 8 dangling legs really framed my face in a surprisingly flattering way. And strangely enough, there was virtually no candy at Pedro’s Candy Store. Por que, Pedro, por que?

What all of the shops had in common was a dizzying array of the cheap, the ultra tacky - just mind-blowing acres of crap. And no matter the theme of the shop, crap made its way in. And in the midst of so much merchandising and shelving, there are bound to be all sorts of serendipitous and hilarious collisions.  My personal favorite: the Grim Reaper statue (ghoulish, full-color, 12 inches high, $17.50), displayed atop a decorative disk featuring the yin and yang symbols (6 inches in diameter, sturdy resin, $6.50), shelved next to the lounging and laughing Buddha porcelain (also $17.50), all directly beneath the aforementioned Pope John Paul II magnet.  And directly across the aisle from plastic statues of Pedro himself, wide-eyed and grinning and so raucously stereotypically “Mexican” that it frankly bordered on racism if not outright crossing the line. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to love it. I sure did.

There are multiple restaurants in Pedroland. I can only comment on one, however, and in that one, the burrito we ordered came out looking and acting suspiciously like a taco. Maybe it was unreasonable to assume that Pedro’s South of the Border could adequately dish up some Mexican food?

Head deeper into South of the Border and you’ll come to Golf of Mexico – Pedro does love a pun – and the amusement park, which is just north of Pedro’s Convention Center. (How the National Association of Broadcasters missed this location, I’ll never know.) Here’s where it started getting sad for real. The Sombrero ride was rusty and abandoned. The carrousel was still. The Ferris wheel was spinning unattended, at a speed faster than seemed sensible. The bumper cars worked, but what fun are bumper cars if you’re the only driver? The big draw, a relatively new rollercoaster, squatted next to the interstate riderless and silent. Most poignant of all was the shuttered building that once housed an attraction called “Pedro’s Reality Ride”. I couldn’t figure out what on earth that might have been, but looking around at the weeds growing through cracks in the asphalt, at the chipped and fading paint, the empty buildings, I could see that Pedro was taking another kind of reality ride, and it wasn’t pretty.   

Places like South of the Border are nostalgic from the moment they open. Was there ever an America so wide-eyed, such a cornfed rube, that Pedro wasn’t a winking irony? No, not really. But it’s pleasant to think so. To think of families, cruising toward sun-kissed beaches in sprawling station wagons, luggage tied to the roof, pulling into South of the Border for a bit of good-natured hoodwinking. Automobile culture, nuclear families, good, clean fun – the American dream, doled out with a big, gooey side of blatant capitalism. Not to mention explosives, girlie mags, tobacco, and beer. Did Pedro’s ever truly reflect who we were? Or has it always been an outrageously exaggerated tip of the hat to the more innocent past we like to imagine was ours? After all, ours is a new country, populated by folks who all come from someplace else. Maybe it’s in our collective dna to rush to fill all the empty spaces with symbols and memories, with an instant shared history, a harmless, fun sort of history that we can all fondly agree upon. Those famous good old days, right?

South of the Border is fading. Next time you’re racing up I-95, you might want to slow down and pull in. Your kids, distracted by Gameboys and i-Pods and Zunes, may not beg for the privilege quite as much as you once did.  And frankly, kids now are so hip and cool and post-ironic themselves that a trip to Pedro’s might result in their temporary blindness due to extreme eye-rolling. So what. Do it anyway. Because when South of the Border closes, as someday it inevitably will, it’ll be replaced by a clean, modern travel plaza. Sbarro, Starbucks, Burger King, an Exxon station. No herd of Technicolor cement dinosaurs, no faux-coconut bras, no rulers emblazoned with the words, “Peter Meter”.  Just another oasis on the highway, one you pull into in the middle of the night, bleary and hyper from too much caffeine, pissed off at the price of gas. Under the fluorescent light, surrounded by familiar logos, you could be anywhere. That feeling of dislocation - call it strip mall vertigo - that’s the new America.  Say what you want about Pedro. Laugh at how tacky and ridiculous and lame it all is. But when you park your car in the shade of the giant sombrero, at least you know where you are, amigo. You’re at South of the Border. As Pedro says, you never sausage a place.

 

Hey Facebook members! Visit Pedro’s South of the Border, a fan site I’ve created to celebrate the wonders of Pedroland. See photos, add photos, share your own Pedro memories, and make new friends – the kind of friends who know how to appreciate a well-executed Horny Hillbilly figurine.

A Letter To Your Younger Self

A week or so ago Parade magazine ran a feature by Jeanne Wolf called Advice to the Young Me, in which a handful of celebrities pondered what it is they wished they’d known sooner.  In a fluffy and taboid-y way, it reminded me of the excellent book, I Wish I’d Known Then: Women in Their 20’s and 30’s Write Letters to Their Younger Selves by Ellen Spragins.  Wise and charming and often powerfully moving, this collection of 35 essays by women in diverse fields – including stars, writers, activists, and athletes – is a revealing peek at the hopes and wishes, fears and doubts, that all of us share. I was particularly touched by Atoosa Rubenstein, the founder of CosmoGirl magazine, writing about an agonizing adolescence marked by bullying and ostracism. Of her adoring and handsome husband, the once-awkward, tormented girl, now a successful businesswoman and entrepreneur writes, “had I known you were waiting for me, I wouldn’t have worried so much.” It’s a sweet moment, and a validation that love is as worthy an ambition as any other.

It got me to thinking about what I might say to my younger self, today, at this very moment. Because of course the advice changes as you go, life being a continually unwinding spool and not a static portrait. And at what age would I like to grab myself for a good talking-to? I settled on 14, one year after my parents’ catastrophic divorce, one year into what would become nearly a decade and a half of grieving for my absent mother. Age 14, the age at which I decided that if I did everything exactly right, then everything would turn out okay. Age 14: the birth of my perfectionism and co-dependency. That was the year I erected my own personal Berlin Wall, not understanding that when you try so hard to protect yourself from the bad things, you unwittingly lock out the good things as well.

Dear Sheri,

It’s okay to cry, you know. You may be 14 now, but you’re a little girl, so young for your age – you were still playing with dolls not so very long ago. You miss your mom. That’s normal. You’re supposed to miss your mom. Missing her doesn’t mean you don’t love your brothers or your grandmother, or even your father, though that relationship is one you’ll have to fight to keep from being poisoned by. It’s not disloyal to grieve. And it’s okay to be angry. You should be angry. You are angry.  Here’s the good news: this anger is going to do wonderful things for you for a long time. It’s going to motivate you, drive you to push yourself far past what you’ll be told is permitted.  This anger is like a rocket booster, and it’s going to propel you into an amazing life. But a time will come when all of the good fuel in that anger is spent, and you’ll need to jettison the weight. Try not to wait as long as I did, okay? Let it fall away, and trust you’ll fly higher without it.

Hate to tell you this next thing, but you might as well hear it from me. You’re not going to be lucky in love – at least, not for a long time. Oh, don’t feel sorry for yourself!  You’re going to learn an awful lot along the way, and the biggest lesson for you is: don’t merely allow yourself to be chosen. Do the choosing. Here’s a riddle for you to puzzle over for the next several decades: the unbreakable heart is the one most broken. Doesn’t make sense right now, does it? It will, and at a high cost. But not so high you can’t pay it.  And I promise, while there’s both more and less time than you think to figure it out, you will figure it out. And when you do, wow. You are going to have so much fun. You – fun! Imagine that. I can’t wait for you to get there.

From what I can see here in 2008, you’re going to live what amounts to two lives. And I’m not talking about job changes or relationship changes or moving to new places, either. Confusing, huh? It will be, until the month of August, in the year 2007. (Freaky to even think about that far-off future isn’t it?) In August 2007, something spectacular and amazing is going to happen to you. It will radically and completely change you. I want to tell you more, tell you everything, but I love you too much to let you peek under the wrapping of what is going to be the most glorious gift you will ever receive. In fact, forget I even mentioned it, okay?  

Speaking of gifts, don’t fret over having children.  You will. They’ll be everything you wish for, everything. No, I will not tell you how many! They’re waiting for you somewhere right now, waiting for their moment to come.  Trust that it will, and don’t waste time with questions or regrets. That probably sounds impossible, I know. I know how you are.  Such the little planner! Always living in the future! You’ll get over that, believe it or not. Your babies have a lot to teach you. And stop worrying about whether or not you can ever be a good mother. What happened to you is just something happened to you; it’s not who you are.  Start telling yourself that now, today. Practice saying it over and over until you believe it. It’s the truth. 

The last important thing I want to tell you is that what you’re learning right now is going to be the very thing that gives your life wings. It may feel now that you are all alone, that it all depends on you, and that where others seem to have shortcuts or cheats, you have only a steep uphill path to climb. That’s true for you, but it’s also your classic blessing in disguise, Sher. You’re learning now that it takes work to move forward, and belief in yourself, and a refusal to quit. Wait till you sit down to write your first book – oops! I gave that one away, didn’t I? You do grow up to be a writer, among other things, and that’s got precious little to do with talent, and lots to do with just sitting down and doing the work, one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. No shortcuts. Having this knowledge now is the single luckiest thing that’s ever come your way, believe it or not.     

Just for fun: you’re allergic to milk. You were born allergic, you stay allergic, and no matter what anyone in your crazy family thinks, do yourself a favor and stop eating dairy. Also, you have curly hair. Accept that now and save yourself aggravation and time. And you are going to be totally right about stirrup pants, by the way – they’re horrid on everyone but pro jockeys.  Try to have more first kisses, even if it seems kind of gross to you right now. (Oh my gosh, you are so innocent at 14!) Kissing is something you are going to absolutely love and one of the sad truths of being a grown-up is this: you don’t always get all the kisses you want in this world. Why not? Who knows? People are so weird and walled-off. You will be too, but not for always.

I’ll leave you with this last message from your future, knowing it will seem as vague and as cryptic as the horoscopes you will always be so fond of reading:  trust that wherever you are, you are exactly where you are meant to be. 

Love,

Sheri  - June, 2008

Books - The Other Boleyn Girl & Wicked

I grew up in a family where the women catered endlessly to the men. Not out of respect, mind you, nor even affection. No, their wooing and appeasement of the various husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers in their orbit was a much more political endeavor. Like courtiers in the service of a childish and truculent king, they fawned and flattered the man in question, soothing his temper and his ego for the sake of a little peace and quiet. As a child I was struck by how effortlessly my aunts and grandmothers slid from gossiping about what a pain in the ass so-and-so was, to showering the man himself with compliments and praise the instant he materialized in the kitchen. My mother wasn’t very good at this game, mostly because she resented having to play it. And after all, as any good courtier knows, even the sweetest words fall flat if the delivery doesn’t convince. Not surprisingly, I take after my mom.

I hadn’t thought about the kitchen table gender diplomacy of my female relatives for a long time. Then I read Phillipa Gregory’s novel The Other Boleyn Girl. If you haven’t read it or seen the movie, (critically panned, stars Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johannsson) it tells the story of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated second wife of Henry VIII. Married at 12 to a nobleman, pushed into an affair with the king by her scheming, socially ambitious family, Mary was schooled in the arts of flattery and seduction from earliest childhood. It’s a terrific book, by the way – the literary version of a juicy beach read. The similarities between the powerless women in King Henry’s court, and the powerless women in my grandmother’s kitchen were staggering. In both places, youth and beauty were prized commodities and if played properly, tickets to security. In both places, every effort was directed toward the continual comfort and amusement of the monarch, regardless of how exhausting or irrational that effort might be. Like the king, the men in my family saw such service and coddling as a birthright. And like the Boleyn sisters, I think the women in my family viewed their own financial dependency as a fact of birth, too. After all, as my grandmother once pointed out, there’s no point arguing with the world. All you can do is use what you’ve got to get what you need. 

Another book I read recently that I just loved is Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. It’s the novel that the very different (and utterly fabulous in its own right) Broadway musical of the same name is based upon. Wicked is the story of how the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz became the legendary bad girl on a broom. She wasn’t always a witch. Her name was Elphaba. She was a strange child, frightening to her parents, both of whom were too distracted - her mother by boredom and disappointment, her father by religious mania – to properly care for any child, much less one who bit, and resisted their embraces, and who was such an awfully vivid and unnatural shade of green.  From these difficult beginnings the seeds of wickedness are sown, right? Perhaps, or perhaps not. It’s an easy conclusion to jump to, but Elphaba’s story is far more complicated. And, I so want you to read the book that I won’t give away any more details, or spoil any of the wonderful surprises in Maguire’s rich, imaginative story. But I can’t resist quoting my favorite sentence in the whole book:

“Or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?”

Boy, is that ever the truth.

Alright already! Here's the infamous spaghetti pie!

Bob’s been after me to make him a spaghetti pie for coming up on three years now. It’s a very simple dish, and I would have gotten around to it sooner if it weren’t for the kids, the job, the house under construction, the personal melodrama. You know - the usual things that make it easy to put off whipping up a spaghetti pie on demand.

Like a lot of the really good Italian food I grew up eating, this is a terrific example of poverty cuisine: amazing food from the simplest, and often cheapest, ingredients. In this case, pasta, eggs, a bit of meat, and some cheese. As with most simple Italian dishes, the quality of ingredients is super important. While you could probably throw this together using Velveeta and cocktail weenies, it wouldn’t be nearly as good and not a bit Italian. So, since the recipe only calls for 4 ounces of meat, get the best quality you can find. Ditto for the cheese. And please, oh please, do not use that nasty sprinkle cheese in the green can. Real Pecorino Romano or Reggiano cheese has an incredible nutty, earthy, slightly tangy-sweet richness that makes the powdered imposter “parmesan” taste like an old sock. 

You can serve this as an entrée, with a green salad. Or, as a great side dish with a roasted meat. And if you like cold pizza, wait till you try this.

Here’s the recipe Bob insists on, reprinted here with zero permission from the publisher. 

 

Spaghetti Pie

 

8 large eggs

½ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano

Freshly ground pepper

1 lb spaghetti or bucatini, cooked al dente and drained

2 oz sliced Genoa salami or soppressata, chopped

2 oz sliced prosiutto or boiled ham, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

4 oz provolone, chopped

 

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, grated cheese, and pepper to taste. You will not need salt, because the meats and cheeses are salty. Add the spaghetti, salami, and prosciutto to the bowl and toss well.

Heat the oil in a 10” nonstick skillet over medium heat. Pour half of the pasta into the skillet. Scatter the provolone on top. Pour on the remaining spaghetti mixture.

Turn the heat to medium-low. Cover the pan and cook 5 minutes. Slide a spatula under the pie and lift it gently around the edges to allow some of the uncooked eggs to slide underneath. Cover and cook 10 minutes, or until the eggs are almost set and the bottom is golden.

Meanwhile, preheat the broiler.

Place the skillet under the broiler to brown the top and finish cooking the eggs, about 3-5 minutes more.

Run a spatula under the pie to loosen it. Lift the handle of the pan and slip the pie out onto a serving platter. Cut into wedges. Serve warm, or at room temperature. Serves 8.

From Entertaining with the Sopranos Warner Books 2006