Sunday Meditations

On Sundays, I like to lay on the couch and drink coffee and read the New York Times from the beginning to the end. It's a nice way to relax but also think through what's going on in the world. My dad recently sent me two other items to put into the Sunday mix. I'm passing them along to you. Maybe, like me, you like to spend your Sundays daydreaming and thinking through things.

The first is a music video from a group called Playing for Change. I'm not going to explain it here. It explains itself.

The second is from a radio program called This American Life that airs on NPR. The program is called "The Global Pool of Money," and it takes you through all the forces that came to bear in the recent crisis of the housing and mortgage market. To get to the full episode, click on "Full Episode" on the menu that runs along the left side of the screen. The radio program makes the crisis easier to understand because it introduces you to people who were operating at every level of housing bubble (the borrowers, the lenders, the brokers, the loan bundlers, the Wall Street investors buying bundles and selling them up the chain, etc.)

So some things to chew on on a Sunday afternoon.

Bye-Bye ASARCO

We got word yesterday that ASARCO has decided not to re-open the El Paso Smelter. This is good news and something we--neighborhood advocates, environmentalists, business people and elected leaders--have all been working hard to accomplish for our region. We will work to make sure that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality operating permit for ASARCO is formally withdrawn and that ASARCO sets aside sufficient funds to clean up their site.

About a year and a half ago, almost 1,000 El Pasoans gathered for a photo called Faces Against ASARCO. Our goal was to send a message to the rest of Texas that our economy, our health and our quality of life depended on ASARCO staying closed. As part of that photo shoot, we waved good bye to ASARCO. It was a hope then. Maybe today, it is something we can depend on.

Photography by Robert Ardovino.

NEIGHBORHOOD: What My Mother Taught Me About Dreaming Big

Note: These are my mother's words. Lee Byrd. She and I spoke at the Ysleta Independent School District Mother Daughter conference last week. My mother is a writer, editor and the co-publisher at Cinco Puntos Press. My speech follows hers.

Maybe you’re one of those people who dream about changing the world. I know I am. I know my daughter Susie Byrd is, too. In fact, when she was your age, she dreamed about becoming president of the United States. She was going to put an end to the death penalty. She talked about it a lot.

She was dreaming big which is a very good thing.

Dreaming big is, in fact, really important. But there are times in your life when your big dreams may get in the way of your seeing the treasure that’s right in front of you. I learned this from my mother, who was one heck of a big dreamer. Let me tell you about her.

My mother was born in 1906, in a little town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. If she were alive today, she would be 102.

My mother was a red head, an adventurous kid, full of ideas and experiments, always thinking of crazy things for her friends to do and hanging around with kids who were dumb enough to do them. Her father was from Scotland and made his living as a gardener so there wasn’t a whole lot of money for her to dream big with. But a doctor who lived close by must have noticed that my mother was a big dreamer and that there was something about her that would go far, because he decided to pay for her to go to Boston University. So in the early 1920s, when most women didn’t get past high school, my mother graduated from Boston University with a degree in business.

Ma taught school until 1935 when she met my father Eustace Merrill. They moved to Plainfield, New Jersey, and had us four kids. She raised us. She cared for us when we were sick, fixed our meals, took care of our house, shed tears over us when we failed and told everyone when we did well.

And it was there in that house where I grew up, that my mother taught us about neighborhood, about being a neighbor, about being involved in a community, especially the community that is right in front of you. My mother knew everyone in the neighborhood, she knew their kids. Through Ma, we knew everyone too. She lent things to the neighbors and she turned around and borrowed from them. She invited them over to play Scrabble, or to play cards, or for dinner or for her annual neighborhood Christmas party. And she and Dad went over to visit them, got to know them. The kids in the neighborhood played in our back yard because it was big and had a paved driveway and a basketball net and a long-roped swing underneath a huge oak tree.

Oh, she had her dreams, my mother did. Just like the rest of us, she had big dreams. But those dreams became real in the little things she did, in the very place where she chose to do them, there in our neighborhood.

My mother’s sense of neighborhood has been a blessing to me, a blessing and a legacy. In 1978, after moving from Alamosa, Colorado to Albuquerque and then Las Cruces, New Mexico, my husband and I and our three kids finally settled in El Paso, in a red brick bungalow on Louisville Street, right off Piedras, right down from the House of Pizza. We were so sick of moving that we decided that house on Louisville Street was just fine and we weren’t going to move again. And we’ve been there 30 years.

Almost right away, I wanted a neighborhood like the one I grew up in—not one that looked like my old New Jersey neighborhood, but one that felt like it. A community, a place where I knew everyone and they knew me. But how to go about making friends? I tried one lady across the street, someone about my age with kids about our kids’ age, but she didn’t seem too interested in knowing me. Maybe she hadn’t grown up in a real neighborhood herself—you know, a lot of people nowadays really don’t want to know their neighbors which I think is a real shame.

But there was another person down the street, a woman in her 30s who had mental retardation. Her name was Isabel. She thought she was nine years old. When she saw us unpacking our truck, she came down to visit right away. She saw our kids and decided they were perfect companions. And so she was at our house every day, playing with our kids—and what a treasure they thought she was: someone who looked like an adult but who had fun like a kid.

Through Isabel, I came to know her mother Benita and then her four brothers and two sisters and their families. Isabel’s father Lalo was friends with Mr. Acosta on the corner. Through Lalo, we met the Acosta family.

At night when we sat on our front porch, looking out at the lights of Juarez, we heard music. The Coulahans from across the street were sitting on their porch and listening to classical music.

There was a middle-aged bachelor next door, Art, and he liked to come out on his front porch late at night and sing old Elvis songs and he liked to sit in his living room and curse at the Dallas Cowboys when they weren’t playing very well. We could hear him from our porch.

Mrs. Pino was the neighborhood busybody. She had opinions about everyone’s house and yard, ours included, and she came over to tell us about them.

And so one house at a time, a neighborhood grew up around us. Some neighbors have moved, some have stayed, their children all grown up and coming back to visit us. They always stop in to say hi. The lady across the street who wasn’t interested in being friends with me moved, but not before we became really good friends. In her place came a woman named Terry Martinez who introduced me to Martha Garza on the corner. The three of us walked in the mornings and they taught me how to make friends by sharing all the small details of their lives. And then, the greatest thing of all, Susie and her husband Eddie and our grandkids moved into the house of the middle-aged bachelor Art when he left and so right there in the neighborhood I have all the great treasures of life: family, children, grandkids, dear friends and good good neighbors. When I think of the dreams I’ve dreamed, none could have been much better than watching this neighborhood become a reality.

And so I dream big in a small place, but I’m not constrained. And I want to encourage you to do the same: dream big, but never neglect the life and the people that God has put in front of you.

What My Mom Taught Me

One year, my mom and dad posted their New Year’s Resolution on the fridge for everyone to see. “This year, we will welcome everyone into our home with a glad heart.” This is one of the most important things that have I learned from watching my mom move in the world.

My mom is a great fixer of things, and there is not much that she doesn’t think she is in charge of fixing. On her drive to work, she used to pass a homeless woman on Cotton Street. The homeless woman was bundled up in layers of clothes and had a too small sign asking for help. She sometimes held the sign up side down or turned the words towards her, instead of towards the intended audience. The sign was poorly written. Some words were misspelled. The sign also said that she needed the money for a drink, which my mom thought was a little counterproductive. As a writer and an editor, a person whose life is words, this was much more than my mom could bear. She couldn’t take it anymore. One day, she drove down to that corner with a big sign and some markers and she worked with the homeless woman on producing a more legible sign that better served its purpose.

Turns out that the woman’s name was Jeanne. In her fixing, my mom got to know Jeanne. She would stop by and visit sometimes. She got to know Jeanne’s story. Turns out Jeanne wanted money, not for beer, but for food and water. Mom explained that the sign would lead people to believe otherwise. My mom would fill me in sometimes. I think my mom tried to get her some help, find her a place to stay, but Jeanne was at that corner with her own purpose. She would not be moved. But I bet she was glad for the conversation, glad to have someone stop by and visit and want to know her.

My mom charges in to fix things and fix people. She sees a problem she wants it solved. That is her impulse always. It never quite works out the way she saw it, charging in. But what always happens is that my mom opens up a glad and welcome heart and it is that act of welcome, more than anything else my mom has to give, that helps people, that changes things.

This is my mom’s gift. She did not come by it naturally. She works hard at it. She recognizes in her actions what so few of us recognize: we will probably never have much luck in changing people, but in changing ourselves and making ourselves welcoming of just about anyone, we can change the world.

For the last 30 years, my mom has charged up and down Louisville Street with her fix-it-up spirit. She would like some of the men to quit drinking. She would like the man on the corner to fix up his house. She wants one of our neighbors, a renter, to be able to buy the house from the stingy landlord. She worries over some of the kids in the neighborhood, wants to warn them off of the path they have taken. She would like me to not work as much and spend more time at home. She knows all of our stories, she pays attention to all of us, she worries over all of us. We all depend on her.

This last year was a hard year for the neighborhood. A young boy whose father grew up in the neighborhood was killed in a gang fight. The boy’s dad grew up two houses down from me. His mom and sisters still live there. After his son died, he would often wander over to my mom’s house. He needed to talk to someone. He needed to talk to my mom. He would talk about his anger and his grief and his guilt. My mom would listen. Even after he left the neighborhood, he still needed what my mom had to give: a glad and a welcome heart that he could depend on.

So, remember this:

1. Our moms have a lot to teach us.
2. We should be the change we want in the world.

Note: This is from a speech that my mother and I delivered at the Ysleta Independent School District Mother Daughter Conference.