Wonders and Wanders

Despite this unstable world of ours, Abigail and I made it back to the Dominican Republic where we belong, papers in order (or so it seems. I’m still semi-struggling with the Department of Migration, but at least I’m here by my husband’s side and the siblings have been reunited). Latin music and Reggae is once again the soundtrack of my day, a billiards hall being halfway down the street from my house. At least they are respectful of the residential district and don’t play the music too loudly or late into the evening.

I’m convinced that music is inescapable in this culture. I was out at our land a few days ago, and one of the neighbors was hosting a DJ competition. There were cars and trucks with speakers stacked 10ft high on top of them all gathered in a loose circle, taking turns mixing beats and Spanish and American pop. The fiesta was at least a half mile from our property but the music carried perfectly over the low-growing trees that have garzas (like pelicans) nesting in them.

I don’t mind the noise, I usually just shake my head and smile. It’s a more vibrant way of life than I’m used to, that’s all. Music is communal, not something you keep stifled behind your own sound-proof walls.

In the morning, the only music I hear from my bedroom is that of the songbirds. The sound always takes me back to when I was 10, standing on the front stoop in a cotton dress in the early spring, ready to go to church with my family. But before getting in the car, even at the “I can’t wait to grow up” age of 10, I somehow knew that one has to pause sometimes and soak in a moment before it escapes like the smoke after blowing out the candles.

I turned 28 this month. It feels whole, more even-keeled than I was a decade ago. I still have as many psychological problems as the next, I suppose, but I’m thankful for the growth that has happened, the demons that have been conquered. The college years and early 20’s are not for the faint of heart, I tell you.

There is still one thing I can’t let go, can’t move on from. It’s the stoop of the house on that hill, the place that was home for 20 years. I read an article written by Annie F. Downs, and she compared growing up and leaving her family farm to leaving Eden. It’s an apt example, and I know exactly how she feels.

The only thing is, while Adam and Eve couldn’t go back to Eden, I could have gone back to the Lane. I could have replicated the story, raised my babies there, or someplace similar.

But sometimes God calls you out like he called out Abram. And sometimes part of the Christian journey isn’t just leaving wrong desires (sin) behind, it’s leaving good desires behind as well. We leave lying, bad attitudes, and lust at the cross, but, when called to do so, we leave nice places, and loving relationships, and healthy lifestyle preferences too. The key word there is “called.” You don’t leave good things flippantly. You leave in the name of something or someone important.

Just because we leave doesn’t mean we have to forget. I don’t want to forget. I keep going back to the past because I want it to matter. I don’t want my hill and my inner flower child to think that I left them because they weren’t good enough, because I didn’t cherish them enough. I want them to know that they are important to me and will always be a part of me, that they do in fact influence me every day.

The past matters.

In the Christian walk, we tend to harp a lot on Paul’s “forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward to what’s ahead,” and “old things have passed away,” and “we are new creations.” But have you ever counted how many times Scripture asks us to remember the past? I’ve never counted either, but I know it’s a lot. We are told countless times to remember the past and give thanks for what God has done. Indeed, Christianity is built upon remembrance, whether remembering God’s faithfulness to Noah when we see a rainbow, or taking the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of his body broken and blood spilled. We are told that even in heaven, the place where you’d think we’d be most present-minded, we will sing the Song of Moses (see Revelation 15 & Exodus 15).

We are called to remember.

We are not called to let the past debilitate us, or to dwell on sad things, I will add that. However, we are called to remember how God was strong for us in our weak moments, and present for us in our sad moments. And of course we remember the joyful and sweet times and are thankful for all the gifts that the Father of Lights has given.

So there is a balance, as there always is. But even as I walk deeper and deeper into this new chapter of my life—marriage, children, Hispanic culture, two homes in two worlds—I can let the memories of the other chapters come when they want to. I can cherish them and polish them. I can sip at them like a dry wine and know that God let whatever it is I’m remembering happen for a reason. And I can say, with the Israelites and everyone gathered in eternity,

“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
    Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
    awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

(Exodus 15:11 ESV).

 *****

The Lord has done wonders, and will continue doing wonders. I’m thankful for his faithfulness in my life even when I’ve wandered in my wonderings. They are wanderings and wonderings that have been captured in this blog, which many times has been my space for searching for the truth and fleshing out my experiences. I’m thankful for all the readers who have encouraged me to keep seeking, keep writing, ever since I started this blog all the way back in 2005.

I have, however, found myself in need of a slightly more professional space, something to inspire me to give my best each time I write. So while I’m going to keep this blog open, I probably won’t be publishing here from now on. Instead, you can find me over at https://matteawilgo.wordpress.com/

 Onward and upward we go! The action shall continue to rise. 

 

North and South

One-hundred sixty-five cups of black tea. That’s at least how many I’ve drunk since arriving Stateside last August. It’s how I start every morning here in New York. At home in the Dominican Republic, where leaf tea (Camellia sinensis)is uncommon, I make “tea” from fresh ginger root and cinnamon sticks, sweetened with the island’s own cream-colored sugar. I wish it had caffeine, but it’s still a good drink for starting the day.  

One-hundred sixty-five cups of black tea, occasionally with a dollop of milk, never sweetened, equals 165 days separated from my husband. The separation was planned—I’d needed to update my passport, apply for my residence visa, catch up on monotonous paperwork, plus introduce our daughter to USA friends and family—but the duration was not. Even considering the pandemic it didn’t seem like everything would take more than 3 months. I had made two different extensive flow charts to guide me through the litany of legal processes (what do you know, my public health program planning classes actually prepared me for real life [also this gives you a hint at how complicated it is having a non-resident alien as a husband]) and 12 weeks seemed like a reasonable estimate. 

Yet here we are. 

I miss drinking ginger tea with my husband on weekend mornings. They are not leisurely mornings by any means (hello, Abigail, and all the work people who call my husband at home) but at least we are together, and at some point before noon we can agree that the tea was spicy and sweet and hit the spot. 

Usually, I make the tea myself. However, there’s a woman from church who sells it on her street corner a few blocks away from my house. She has thermoses of tea, coffee, hot milk, and a container of homemade biscuits (“arepa”) set up on a plastic table beneath a red and white umbrella. A few times before I left for the USA, Victor surprised me and came home at 9am between jobs to steal me away from the house and grab tea and biscuits with me. We roared over on the motorcycle, made our purchase, then roared back. He had to return to work right afterward, but it was little moments like those snuck into busy days that we used to say goodbye. 

Ginger tea is one of the few things Victor and I have in common. Yes, you read that right. The man with whom I am married to for forever is very different from me, and I from him.

He likes sweet, I like bitter. He likes one movie genre, I like another. We have different hobbies. I’m introverted, he’s extroverted. He likes rap, I like classical. He’s a night person, I’m a morning person. We have different tastes in fashion. I’m a planner, he’s spontaneous. 

He thinks and operates generally like a Dominican, whereas I think and operate generally like an American. This means we have different ideals, different ways of interacting with people and navigating situations, and even different ways of interpreting life and the passage of time. 

As you might guess, being opposites often makes us an unbeatable team. Where I’m weak, he’s strong, and vice versa.

As you might also guess, if we are not on our A-game, our differences create the perfect storm for conflict, or at the very least add a level of difficulty to every day that we have to navigate on top of everything else. 

But, by the grace of God, we’re making it. And not just making it—we’re doing well. In our 3 short years of marriage we have learned so much about each other and how to act as one in everything from choosing what to have for breakfast to discussing how to raise kids. I’m confident that we’ll continue improving as time progresses, and that one day we’ll look back and laugh about how clueless we were about each other. 

We will keep improving because we are not the ones in control of our relationship: Christ is. It doesn’t ultimately matter that my husband doesn’t think pizza is the best food in the world (I maintain it’s because he’s never had New York pizza). It doesn’t ultimately matter that we have different opinions on tattoos. It doesn’t ultimately matter that our perceptions of punctuality are different or that we have different levels of decorum. 

All those things may induce stress in the moment, but we live and die over only one thing: Jesus. We are planted on the same bedrock and reaching up towards the same goal. Because of that, I can always kiss him goodnight, and we always stay friends. 

I think marriage is potentially one of the hardest relationships on earth. You can move out of your parents’, drift away from your friend, and quit your boss, but biblically (barring a few exceptions) you can’t divorce your spouse. 

So I guess my overriding point, besides talking about tea and reminiscing over good times with the husband I’m quite in love with and miss, is that if he and I can be in a healthy marriage with all of our super-extra-mega-ultra differences, Christians in general should be able to be friends with one another and encourage one another. 

God has given us all the grace we need to be friends. Victor and I are in a healthy relationship precisely because we’ve grabbed onto that grace. As my pastor preached last Sunday, if relationships are failing, it’s because the parties involved have received the grace of God in vain. They are not using what is readily and easily available. 

So Christian, let’s believe in the power of grace and step across the church pew, the picket fence, the voting booth, the color line, the frontier—whatever it is—and be friends, okay? 

When the Sun Looks like the Moon

The sun looked like the moon. 

They told me it was a dust storm from the Sahara, that this was why the atmosphere was hazy, this is why the sun was a pale orb in the morning sky.

I had been sending off my husband to work and the boys to baseball practice, so it was there in the carport facing east at 6:15 AM that I became confused and wondered if I was seeing the sunrise or the moon. 

I went inside and closed the windows and doors we usually keep open. Someone had forwarded me an advisory via Whatsapp from the Red Cross warning of the danger of the poor air quality.

The dust storm took two days to pass through. When I investigated how it is exactly that a sand storm from an African desert could end up in the Caribbean, I learned that the African Easterly Jet wind that generally blows west had been rather weak in early June, so when a succession of haboobs--yes, that’s what giant sand storms are called--developed in central and west Sahara, the dust accumulated on the West coast of Africa until that previously weak Jet suddenly picked up strength again. 

Voilá, the dust pile was carried across the ocean to us. 

For those 48 hours, the air seemed still, the heat more oppressive. Perhaps I imagined it. What I didn’t imagine was the eerie lighting, the poor visibility that melted the horizon. I suppose it was like smog, though I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced smog. 

I had never experienced a dust storm either. That is, not a literal dust storm. 

The change in the climate put me in a mood, made me pensive. I realized it’s because the earth was mimicking the spiritual state of my heart; perhaps even the spiritual state of the world. 

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul talks about love. This chapter of his letter is famous for that very reason. We read it at weddings. You’ll find verses from it on rustic plaques at Hobby Lobby. However, 1 Corinthians 13 is not, at the center, talking about love. That is to say, Paul is not talking about love for love’s sake. His reason for talking about love (in my opinion), is that he wants to explain what will last for eternity. 

Right now “we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). 

Right now, we are in a dust storm. We can’t see clearly. We don't have the answers. We look at the sun and we don’t even know if it’s the sun. The sun contains 99% of all the mass in our solar system, and 1.3 million Earths could fit inside of her. It’s enormity should make it easy to identify. Yet sometimes, because of the dust storm, it looks like the moon of all things. The moon is even smaller than Earth.

It is frustrating to have such obscured vision. 

It is disheartening to live in dusty times. 

One might conjure up hope that there is resolution just past the horizon but where is the horizon, even?

The Word of God speaks into our tension: “Tranquila.” 

Or as we say in English, “Calm yourself.”

Paul says, you know what? Even if we knew all things and understood all mysteries it wouldn't matter because knowledge is going to pass away. 

This is not to say that knowledge isn’t good. In fact, even though the passage says that knowledge is going to pass away, that it isn't eternal, Paul explains that one day we will actually know fully, “as we have been fully known.” The importance of knowledge is given less weight, I believe, because it itself is not the answer to our dilemma of not being able to see. 

An example: 

It is knowledge, specifically higher mathematics that I can't get my mind around, that puts rockets into orbit. 

It is knowledge that could and will create a safe, functional vaccine against COVID-19. 

Therefore, knowledge is good.

However, it is not knowledge alone that will bring a person to choose the salvation from death that Christ offers. Even if I could prove the existence of God and the resurrection from the dead of the historical man Jesus, knowledge itself could not convince someone they need a Savior. Only love can do that. I have to fall in love with Jesus, with his sacrificial death on the cross, and believe that I need him, in addition to my cognitive understanding of Jesus. A person who knows Jesus but does not love him will go to hell. 

That is why, for as important as knowledge is, it is not important when compared to love. 

That is why, in the midst of our dust storms, we can relax. 

In a time when more than ever the world is screaming for answers to her problems, and we ourselves do not know what to do with our lives, we can relax. 

Because the one thing that matters most, that was good yesterday, that is good today, and that will be good for all tomorrows, that is the very point of being alive, is what we already have: love.

(And if you don't have it, it’s easy to get. Just ask me.)

So go love someone. 

In your daily crisis, love. 

Bonus points if you love someone who is unlovable, or someone who doesn’t agree with you, or someone who is hurting you.  

That--loving the people who don’t deserve it--is true love, and is the greatest love. 

It’s what Jesus did for us, it’s how he loves us: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

I know the sun looks like the moon. 

But love. 

Leverage Your Suffering

There’s something about the way the wind blows warm down our street. “You are here, you found it,” it says. It makes me feel satisfied, yet a little nostalgic at the same time because I’m not where I was. 
I remember walking snowbanked corridors, the way the wind whipped rapidly from one compass point to another, one moment stinging the left side of my face, the next moment the right. The most unbearable was when it sprayed snow into my coat collar. It was so cold. But there was Christmas, there was magic.

Here, it is so hot. I am writing this beneath my fan, Abigail sleeping (finally) next to me. Today she discovered power naps. Twenty minutes of sleep in the morning, twenty in the afternoon and yet she’s been going strong, all smiles and wiggles and what I like to think are kisses and not her simply biting me or slobbering all over me.

I am out of magic. I used it to get here. Abigail is made of fairy dust

 ————— 

Once upon a time, life was words written on a page. Life was stuffed chairs and blankets and cups of fine jasmine tea that Lia bought from a tiny, low-ceilinged corner-shop in Villach, Austria. I remember the store was near a skating rink.

Life was whispered conversations in coffee shops. We stood transfixed before paintings 800 years old like the artists knew what we wanted to know. I think they did. The artists, the architects, the playwrights, spoke of suffering. They suffered for what they loved, because they loved. That’s why I went. It was to press my ear to the paving stones and discover how to live.

I searched.

And I found.

I found a diamond.

It is brighter than I imagined a diamond could be. It is also harder.

It is love.

And love is sacrifice.

And sacrifice is death.

But take heart, because death in this realm—death of desires, of time, of health, of money—is life in another realm.

The days of just plain dreaming are over. The days of doing are upon me.

—————

Confronting suffering is uncomfortable, whether your own or someone else’s. Rembrandt painted his suffering in a self-portrait. He’d lost his young wife and children years before, to conditions that are easily curable with access to modern medical care. In the portrait, he looks grieved, untimely ancient. But the way his one eye is squinted slightly makes it look like he’s asking a question: “What about you? What are you going to do about it?”*

As Americans (or as anyone from a developed country) we always say, “I know I am so blessed.” I would read, or see something on the news, or go on a mission trip, and say the same. Running water and electricity 24/7 give us the freedom to do many things, whether work or play. But we tend to look at the material difference between us and the nations. What we don’t necessarily see is the way poverty changes the human spirit, changes the trajectory of life. In poverty, sometimes no matter how hard you try, there is no way out, your whole life long.

Imagine that. Imagine what it does to you. As Americans, we are taught in first grade that there’s a way out when they tell us we can be anything we want to be when we grow up. And you know what? Within reason, we can. Maybe we can’t be exactly what we want to be, and that hurts sometimes, but we can get the life we want outside of work.

We need to leverage that. Leverage our power for those living in poverty, leverage our suffering to help others who are suffering. Sometimes it’s our suffering that is our power. Rembrandt knew that, I think. Jesus most certainly knew that.

Christians, wake up from the American dream and love your neighbor—the one next door and the one in the next country.

I might be out of magic. My dreamy days of playing sleuth in cathedrals may be over. But I have found the meaning of life, the power of love and suffering.

Lord give me the grace and strength to live as I am called every day.

_________________________________________________________
*Painting analysis inspired by an art history teacher of mine, Dr. John Barber. Fall 2014.

Look, See Jane Run

I ran today.

It was one lap around the baseball field, with an 80 meter sprint at the end. Because I stopped running in the first trimester of my pregnancy*, and I’m now 9 weeks postpartum, it had been 9 months.

Nine months without running.

I’ve never been a fast runner, but since 2014 I’ve been a consistent runner and I love running. It’s for those two things that I let myself identify as a runner. Today, finally being able to run again, I felt like I was flying. It didn’t matter that my sprint was slow, that my legs were like anchors dragging through a reef; it was soaring.

I felt alive.

I felt like Mattea.

Nineteen days after giving birth safely to my sunshiney daughter, Abigail, I returned to the clinic’s emergency room with a 104 degree fever. That high fever was to last 2 weeks total and I was to spend 9 of those days in the hospital.

It was hemorrhagic dengue (stupid mosquitos) complicated by an amoeba (again) and two different infections. I never needed blood transfusions but the doctor told me I should be thankful to be alive. 

The hardest part of being ill was being separated for days from my newborn daughter (cue the tears). The best part was that my mom flew in. I’d missed that woman a lot.

The illness left me wiped out, paler than a New York winter. I lost all of my pregnancy weight and then some—though was left with the belly so we can’t market dengue and amoebas as the next post-pregnancy weight loss plan. Ha.

I felt incredibly weak, incredibly inept.

Running today, I felt strong and adept.

Víctor and Abigail were in the shade, looking on. I love seeing Abigail’s tiny form in her dad’s arms. She’s 22 inches of cuteness cuddled into 6-and-a-half feet of manliness. Abigail is our dream come true. In the midst of some trying circumstances her baby presence has brought such happiness. She is what I most wanted.

I’ve been given so many things I’d wanted for so many years: a husband, kids, a little baby girl.

In this place of contentment, of dreams fulfilled, I’ve been challenging myself to dream again. For all my life I dreamed of Abigail; now I need to dream with Abigail.

Like I said, dengue wiped me out. In the past, illness has always driven me to put the pedal to the metal. Something about a brush with evil makes you want to fight for what is good.

This time, however, I’ve found myself scared, sorely lacking in confidence. With simple, daily tasks suddenly so difficult while I was ill and recovering for weeks on end, how could I ever think of changing the world? How could I ever think of dreaming?

But I’ve decided to do it. I’ve decided to dream again, to crack open doors and peak inside. To even envision doors where there are none.

I want the people to say of me "look, here comes that dreamer."**

I need to show Abigail how it's done, how dreaming, seeing what´s not there, makes life incredible. 


*I know that if you are active before pregnancy you can stay active and many women continuing running until the bigness just gets uncomfortable. But this being my first pregnancy, I played it safe.

**Quote from Genesis somewhere, when Joseph´s brothers are referencing him. You google it and find the exact chapter and verse. 

It’s a Jungle Out There

We bought a jungle.

It’s more than six acres of bush, rocks, spiky plants and creeping vines. There’s a smattering of papaya and pineapple with tigers in between, as well as a few bushes of pigeon peas and a lemon tree or two.

When the sun sets, birds twitter and insects chirp. By day or by night, heat or lesser-heat, the air is fresh, and the breeze seductively whispers “breathe me.”

One day, it will be a farm. One day, it will be something productive.

The other night my husband and I sat on the concrete edge of the above ground swimming pool that could be filled with water only after digging up the water pump. The unfinished cabin was in the corner of our vision, the untamed land filling our view in front of us.

To me, the land looked like our lives: Victor is 6 feet deep in law school; I’m pregnant; we’re raising teens; apartment hopping; visa applications are open but nothing is submitted. Everything is wild and unfinished.

Everything is bursting with hope, if we have the eyes to see it. But also there’s the possibility of never arriving at where we want to be. What if we blow it? What if we should cash in now? I ask those questions of life. My husband doesn’t ask those questions. His spirit is indomitable.

So as we sat on the edge of that dry pool with its peeling blue paint, looking out over our land, it calmed my heart to dream with him, to see what this place can be if we work hour by hour, day by day. To also, metaphorically, see what our lives can be.

We hate the land enough that we want it changed. We love it enough we will put in the work to change it.

G. K. Chesterton said that is true patriotism: loving and hating your country at the same time. And though we hate our country for its things, we don’t love our country for its things. We love it for who it is, for its essence: its United States-ness or Dominican-ness or Italy-ness or whoever. If we love it for its things there could come a day in which our love ceases; if we love it for its essence, we will never cease to fix the things we hate.

We will have hope. We will see its potential.

We’ll walk through the change process well.

Victor and I could resort to chemicals and dynamite to change the jungle. Americans, conservatives and liberals alike, could - and are - resorting to hate and fear tactics to change the things they don’t like about the United States. But toxic methods, born out of fear, not hope, not love, destroy more than they create. They violate life itself.

They violate beauty.

They violate mystery.

This jungle that we own is full of mystery, like our lives. We don’t know what the ground holds, what trials and joys await. That’s why it takes hope to see the potential. That’s why, when I don’t have hope, I grit my teeth and look for the easiest way out.

We have to trust that the black space between the stars isn’t out to get us - that we can in fact move forward in love.

When you don’t see the path, tread determinedly, but tread softly.

Last week my woodsman-of-a father-in-law drove out to see the land and showed us which plants were beneficial and which were not. It wasn’t until we got his clear that we began to clear.

In the same manner, if you don’t understand the way a spirit enters the womb of a woman with child, tread softly.

Let’s not destroy our jungle countries, whether they are 6 acres big, an island, or a quarter continent. Let’s love their essences and act accordingly.

Inhales and Exhales

The first time I met my Dominican mother-in-law I was a sweaty New York gringa of a mess. The power was out and I wouldn’t have running water again until my husband got back after 5 from work and fixed the little orange engine that unfaithfully pumped water up to the tank on the roof when there was electricity. The sink had dirty dishes in it and I was in the middle of unpacking the life I had brought with me in two suitcases and a backpack. Given the circumstances, when I heard my name called from outside, I definitely panicked a little. Before going downstairs, I checked who it was from the balcony: my sister-in-law, who I’d met previously and who had called my name; and another woman I had only seen pictures of, my husband’s mother, Criseida. I greeted them from above, then ran down the two flights of stairs to let them in through the carport entrance.

I was embarrassed. My face was red, my hair was in a messy bun, beyond frizzy. I don’t remember, but my deodorant had probably stopped working.The first thing I did was apologize in very broken Spanish for my physical condition, and explained that I had no water. I couldn’t finish the explanation because Criseida gave me the biggest hug and told me not to worry.

The state of the house, the state of me, the state of my Spanish — none of it mattered. She understood. My mother-in-law bustled through my home, deftly hooked up a 4-burner camp stove that had been unloaded from her little red hatchback, remedying my problem of not being able to cook, and finally sat me down with her on the balcony where from her purse she pulled arepas, lightly sweetened Dominican biscuits, and we ate and chatted.

By “we chatted” I mean she talked and I tried to understand. Criseida is one of the persons to whom I am indebted for teaching me Spanish. In an immersion setting, it is critical that you have people who are not afraid to talk and talk and talk to you even though they know you are not understanding. It’s how you learn. Bit by bit, you do understand.

It was going to take me longer than normal to understand Criseida, though. She spoke fast, with a very Dominican accent, two things that still stumble me, even as I can understand a moderately paced academic lecture delivered in Spanish.

I did manage to gather that she was telling me her testimony of faith in Christ. I was able to reciprocate a little, and also gather some of her personal information. Though she had lived in San Pedro or Santo Domingo for decades, her life before starting a family had taken place in Miches, a little town in the north that was eventually to become one of my favorite places to visit. After giving birth to her second son, she and her husband, a pastor and successful fruit juice vendor, moved to San Pedro.

Lord knows what else she told me.

After an hour or two she and my sister-in-law had to leave. They were at that time living in the capital, a 45 minute drive west, and needed to get back to their own home and responsibilities. The visit ended with another hug.

That night, with water in the pipes and lights on, I excitedly “told” my husband (somehow — remember, we don’t speak the same language at this point!) that his mom had stopped in and I was quite convinced she loved me. Of course he was proud. Who doesn’t want the mother-/daughter-in-law relationship to start harmoniously?

That being said, given the language barrier and the fact that she lived in Santo Domingo, my relationship with Criseida, for as sweet as it always was, grew slowly. It was probably not until 6 months ago, when my Spanish really took off and Criseida spent a few nights in my home while Victor was in the North with the Air Force, that I truly felt like we were “gelling” as the cool kids say.

A few weeks after that stay, on Victor’s birthday, and after almost 10 years of living in the capital, Criseida moved back to San Pedro into the home she owned. Suddenly visits were easy to make. I stopped in at her home a few evenings a week, and Sunday afternoons she came to our place after we exercised together at the sports complex.

Criseida had some chronic health issues, but they were manageable. Things seemed to be on the up and up until, without much warning, a few days before her birthday in early March, doctors discovered one of her major organs was failing — and it was too late for them to do anything more than keep her comfortable. Of course we hoped for a miracle. I’ve never watched 4 siblings fight so hard, using their different abilities, for their mom’s life. They treasure her.

But like I said, there was really nothing that could be done. On May 2 we were forced to say goodbye. Criseida’s faith became her sight.

I knew my mother-in-law for 1 year and 7 months, far too short a time. But in that time she did care for me like I was her daughter. No matter the condition of her health, no matter if I was in her home or mine, she hosted me. She always made sure I’d eaten or had a comfortable place to rest.

She rejoiced always.

She was a strong-willed woman, a beautiful woman, one who made Christ her identity.

And can we talk about her sense of humor?

I miss her. When I walk into her house it is strange not to find her there.

— Exhale.—

I carry Criseida’s first half-gringa grandchild in my womb.

It is new life. I am so thankful that she was with us to receive our long-awaited pregnancy announcement Christmas week. I am thankful she got to see my belly swell to its current size. I’m thankful I got to tell her, the week before her passing, that I can feel the baby moving now, and that I won’t be surprised if baby is born with wings because it feels like there’s a butterfly inside of me. In a few short months our child will

 — Inhale.—

 Life and death, inhales and exhales. There is nothing new under the sun.

We are incredibly grateful for this baby life. This baby's been such a comfort to my husband and I and all of our extended family these past few weeks. Life lives on. It’s a miracle.

I remember to take my vitamins, drink liters of water every day to combat the heat, and try to rest and go to my doctor appointments on time. But we are dealing with a miracle here. At the end of the day what can one do except lie in bed full of wonder?

Full of hope.

Because though these bodies come and these bodies go, the soul — life — is forever.

Feliz Día de las Madres, mi Mami Criseida. Gracias por tu ejemplo. Gracias por darme un esposo maravilloso. Nos vemos.