She sat down in front of me. Very pretty in a bright, flowery, yellow shirt with “fleur dans le jardin” printed all over it.
Having just finished one semester of High School French, and heart fluttering I nervously asked if she knew what it meant. She did not, so I guessed, “Flower in the garden.” I earned a smile and it made my day.
It was a very lucky guess; my French teacher had given me an undeserved D the prior semester on one condition: “You must promise me, that you will never take French again as long as I lived.”
The need for a foreign language at age 15 in public school was senseless to me. No one I knew spoke one, needed one, or had plans to ever use one.
Twenty years later after an early life in politics and finally defeated in a run for the U. S. Senate, I found myself hopping all over tiny villages in Mexico wanting to talk with people that couldn’t understand me. So, I lived with a Mexican family trying to make do by taking in a border now and then. They couldn’t speak English, making for a months’ worth of submersion.
Every day I would visit various shops around the town, forcing myself to use my new words.
One afternoon I hiked past this enormous mango tree bursting with plump ripe fruit. The tree towered over a little brook in a lush postcard pasture, simply bursting with butterflies. So, I decided to go around town, talk to people about mariposas and purchase all that was needed to build a butterfly net, then catch a bunch for my eldest brother who had been collecting since birth.
I returned to the mango tree, net in hand and immediately fell in some mud on my first swing. Ten minutes later into my chasing and swiping I heard children laughing. I stopped and looked up the hillside to see two women as their kids giggled at me. Instantly clear what a sight I was, a big, dirty galumphs, swinging at the wind, I started to laugh too.
Anyway, I attempted another conversation with them and the words mariposa and coleccion, hit home. I understood little of their gatling gun fast responses, but I showed them the few I had caught and then one of the kids asked, and somehow, I got it, “Would you like to see my coleccion?”
I followed them down a muddy path to what they called a home. It stood propped up, by what, I do not know. But there it was, sheets of roofing tin mixed with tree limbs, cardboard and wire.
Dozing in a hammock near an open fire, where what looked like a giant pizza tin was heating up, was the father. He sat up and smiled while pointing his finger at a tree stump. It took a moment before I got it, he was offering me a seat.
One of the little girls disappeared into the vegetation while the others kept jabbering so fast, I could hardly pick out a word, but it was clear they were talking about me. The smiles, laughter and friendliness were a contagious joy.
If it had not been for the shack of a house, dirt floors and pounds of laundry hanging on wires strung through the trees, these folks could have been a Mexican version of The Brady Bunch, and I might have accepted their offer to stay for dinner.
The little girl returned, arms filled with a half dozen little glass jars, each one holding a dead, largely decayed snake in some sort of fluid. That was the collection she wanted to show me. I examined each with real wonder, particularly the one baby viper.
They all continued to spew out words so fast, I had to keep asking them to speak more slowly in the hopes I could pick out enough. We were having such fun, even as I was drop jawed at such happiness living in total poverty.
When it was time to go, they were clearly disappointed, wanting me to stay.
Then I got it.
They had been asking me where I was staying. I had been responding with the word “no,” meaning I did not understand what they were saying. It was likewise, with their offers to feed me, again not understanding “no”. When all was said and done, and I had left despite their complaints, it finally came to me: They thought the huge, muddy, crazy galumphs was homeless and likely hungry while offering me their hammock for a bed.
I have often, since that long ago day, thought of them and wished I could be them.
R
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