Today is the last day I meet with my tutee “A” before she
takes her citizenship exam. She is the
first person I’ve tutored since I became a volunteer for the Cabarrus Literacy
Council and I have to admit I’m a little nervous for her. She knows her stuff, but this is an important
exam; probably the most important she’ll ever take.
Before we started she asked me about my Halloween. I side-stepped the question by just telling
her it was quiet and asked her about hers.
She was very excited about passing out candy to the kids; it was the
first time she participated fully in this particular American holiday; it’s
quite different in her home country.
On Midnight of November 1st for the children and November 2nd
for the adults they gather up the favorite foods, flowers, drinks, etc. take
them to the cemetery and leave them around the graves of their deceased family
members. They believe that the spirit of
their family member comes to visit the grave, sees the goodies left for them
& parties the night away.
So on the eve of the
anniversary of Mom’s death I decided to borrow this tradition. Since I don’t have a gravesite to visit, the
World Wide Web will have to do. Anyone
that knew Mom would have no problem naming her favorite drink: coffee. Hot,
cold, night or day she was always drinking coffee. I remember when the delivery
giants first came up with the stuffed crust pizza Mom & I spent weeks
discussing it; did they actually put the cheese in the entire crust or was it
just the edge? how do you put cheese in
the crust without it exploding all over the place? how do you hold the rest of the pizza after
you’ve eaten the edge first? … After I couldn’t tell you how many commercials,
we finally figured out if we ORDERED the pizza we’d know the answers to all those
pressing questions. Now Mom wasn’t
really one for flowers (guess I came by that honestly); she always said that
what was the point in spending all that money for something that you could only
enjoy for a few days (balloons were a different story though – everyone loves
balloons!); but interesting looking plants and/or plants with flowers were a
different story. According to the cute
little plastic name tag stuck in the dirt of this strange looking plant it is a
Kalanchoe.
I’ve managed to keep the Peace Lily
G.L.A.S.S. gave me when she died; why not see if I can do the same for this
little guy?
This is always a rough week for me. It’s strange the things that seem to pop out
of nowhere (like the stuffed crust pizza) and the others that seem like they
happened yesterday…even after all these years.
It’s almost like my body knows the date before I even look at the
calendar. Funny how A’s cultural
tradition makes me smile.
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