Los Angelitos de El Generico

Dear Wrestling,

Hi. I'm sorry it's been so long. I think I need to recommit to this blog's gimmick, which is that I am writing directly to Wrestling as supernatural entity--it definitely is that.

So. I've been having a rough time off and on--I mean, the country has, and that's part of it. I'm kind of bouncing between feeling terrible about children in cages and then my PTSD picks me up by the scruff of the neck and shakes me, and not like playing, like, "Hi I'm a terrier and you're a rat and I was *made* to destroy you.".

And then I go running back to you, as much as I can for as long as I can.

But what I really want to talk about, because I could use the break, frankly, is Mith's latest (last???) essay.

Go read it.

Please, what follows doesn't make sense without it.

********************

OK.

So I'm thinking about my Los Angelitos.

It's in Scotland, between Glasgow and Edinburgh--not far from Stirling, actually. It's in a lovely green valley. The building itself is nestled among aspens and pines. In the fall, on the rare sunny day, the sun warms the fallen needles and the children carry that scent with them for the rest of their lives. There are beautiful snow white goats in the field, and an enormous snow white dog who lives with the goats. She is not a pet, but she is kind and she takes very good care of the goats. She had to have surgery on her right shoulder, and when Generico massages that sore place she leans into him and nearly takes him off his feet.

The building itself is oddly Mexican in appearance--smooth adobe walls painted magenta and cerulean and lime. It's like a bright jewel dropped on the countryside. The front porch would fit in on any Southern house though: painted wood, banisters, with a few donated rocking chairs at the far end.

My own beloved, sorrowed North Carolina is like enough to Scotland that her people settled here in droves--similar landscape, but better weather, great! Right?

Well.

Especially right now, NC is not the most welcoming place. It tries, it really does--for instance, we've got more folks in sanctuary in places of worship, safely, than any other state. When I worked in a bookstore, we had someone come in seeing about donations for Muslim refugees. It was late enough in the year that our small budget for donations was spent, but my manager and I and several others took some time and bought some notebooks and Korans and Arabic-English dictionaries and geometric coloring books and all kinds of things, because folks here try, but the government is quite the opposite.

Scotland has done much, much better. It's one of the most welcoming places in Europe for refugees. There are language classes at community centers, towns have welcomed half or more of their own populations in families needing help.

So just out from this beautiful, quiet, small city in Scotland is an orphanage--but it's not really an orphanage. It's more of a halfway home for families with young kids--and in the circumstances, by families we mean older and younger siblings. Grandmothers and grandchildren. Single parents and babies.

One of the best parts of this particular refuge is the music. The local musician community has reached out, and there's the most wonderful musical exchange happening now. Local folks are learning new tunes, the kids are getting free music lessons/music therapy, the grownups are getting instruments to replace those they had to leave behind...

It's not home. It's too wet, the hills and trees are weird, the sun just never comes out...It doesn't make up for any number of hardships, some too terrible to bear. There are still nightmares and a foreign language to deal with and bureaucracy and the occasional nasty neighbor.

But it is a beginning. And there is laughter. Little did we know, all this time when he had no English and not much Spanish, Generico does have just a little Arabic--he's not fluent! Not in anything! But he has the same few words in Arabic that he has in English and Spanish. Enough to make the children laugh and to comfort the older folks.

Enough.

He chases the goats and the chickens with the children and he looks very serious when the adults try to teach him to play guitar or fiddle--he never learns, but it's okay. He knows it means thank you, and they know his attempts mean you're welcome.

When the goats and chickens are up for the night, there's a bonfire in the field. Stories get told around it--stories in Arabic, in English, Scots, once or twice in Gaelic. True stories, some that happened to the people there and some that didn't. It is the kind of place to make one believe in hope, and so even when the stories are hard and full of pain and betrayal, the children look to the masked man and know that pain and sorrow can be lived through, and that better days can come again.





Thanks, Wrestling. I love you.

Autumn