Carol is not only an editor of textbooks from ESL to supplemental science and English, she maintains her critical skills by teaching English to foreign students through our local library and over the years, it turns out that teaching forms a bond between teacher and student that is based on the very practical foundation of trust. When one of her students, a woman from the Domincan Republic who has been in this country for many years and through in part to Carol’s tutlage has become an American Citizen, had the opportunity to buy her own home, she came to Carol to help her with translating and understanding the many complicated mortgage documents.
Of course, there were many others who helped as well, and the woman, who has worked and saved in this country while raising a daughter, was able to jump through all of the hoops and successfully buy the house, a three-story home with rental units on the second and third floors.
So you can imagine how thrilled we were her student invited us to the house warming this afteroon. House warmings have a long and storied tradition in many different cultures and often incorporate blessing, religious offerings, chants, incantations, music, food, song, dancing, and in my own culture, smoke. In the old days, a Cherokee home was properly rendered free of evil spirits by the shaman’s building of a fire using seven different hardwoods and the blowing of smoke in the seven directions (OK, for you White Men, the seven directions are: North, South, East, West, Up, Down and Here).
It turned out to be a wonderfully delightful Hispanic celebration–people from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Hispanic American, first and second generations born in this country as well as naturalized citizens. Although I speak Cherokee and a smattering of Welsh in addition to English, and took several years of Latin in high school, I really do not understand rapid fire Spanish, so I was the fish out of water, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter. I didn’t understand the words or much of the conversations painting the world around me, I felt the warmth, the excitement, the bond of family.
And when the Hispanic preacher came to bless the house, he produced an accordion and the whole assemblage joined in. They sung in Spanish, but the hymns were old English, and the enthusiam and exurberance filled the room with a sense of purpose and meaning. The pastor played his accordion and the voice rang out in perfect harmony, "Oh, We Give Thanks." I could not believe the reverence and sincereity in the eyes of the participants, expecially the men who seem transfixed in glow of communal joy.
Everyone there knew all the words. In Spanish. Thy Faithful, followed, then a prayer, another blessing, or perhaps a continuiation of the same one, ant then they sang yet again, the final song, Holy, Holy, Holy or, O, Holiness.
And then came the food. The celebration. The sharing of what was already there, already there long before today, and will be there long after today is done and gone. There was no smoke, but then, we probably didn’t need it. And anyway, there are no Cherokee shamans anywhere near here.
I heard the voices, the laughter,
The songs, the that prayers came after,
Come safe at home, ever after.
Citizen Poet 