My brother in Afghanistan

Last Friday I went to Zabar’s to select boxes of assorted nuts and dried fruits for my brother who is in Afghanistan with the Navy.  As the Christmas and Hanukah holidays are approaching, one family member will be missing from these festivities.  I think it was important to get this package in the mail, and not to forget those who are serving our country overseas and in harm’s way.

Until last May, Oscar was the principal at Anthony High School, just outside of El Paso, Texas.  He has been an educator for decades, but he has also been in the Navy Reserve for 22 years.  In other ways, Oscar also breaks the stereotype many of us might have of our military servicemen and women: he is in his 40’s, has a Master’s degree, and was working on his Doctorate.  Before he left for Afghanistan, Oscar was promoted to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.  Administrators, teachers, and students from Anthony High School also recently sent him a care package.

It is strange to have a brother in places you read about in the newspaper’s front pages, where sectarian violence, for example, recently killed dozens of Afghanis and Improvised Explosive Devices still kill American soldiers in Humvees.  It is strange because on the one hand I know my brother well, but on the other hand he is in as remote and as foreign a place as I could imagine.

I worry about my brother, and I hope with a little luck and skill that he will return to El Paso safely.  My mother couldn’t stop crying for days after Oscar told her the news of his deployment.  Now she keeps a candle lit to the Virgen de Guadalupe in our living room, to ask Her to guide him home.  It is what we don’t know about his deployment, what our minds imagine, and what we see as ‘news’ about Afghanistan that is this cauldron of anxiety, fear, and hope.  Our family is proud of Oscar, because we know he is doing his duty for his country.

I believe many if not most Americans are smart enough to support our military, to remember and honor their sacrifices, but to judge the politicians in Washington by a different metric.  These politicians create American foreign policy, while the military is one of those instruments of that policy.  For example, I don’t believe we should have attacked Iraq to rid it of Saddam Hussein or the weapons of mass destruction that were never found.  That war was George W. Bush’s and Condoleezza Rice’s mistake, which of course they will never admit, because they are politicians.  They manipulated the fear after 9/11 to start a war that should never have happened.  From the start, we should have focused on Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda operated.

But not for one moment would I ever disparage soldiers, sailors or airmen for their service in Iraq.  On the contrary, I would thank them for doing their duty.  Once they are back home, I would do what I can to help them.  I also believe how that war was started is one thing, but how it was carried out and how it evolved are different matters.  You may start a war for the wrong reasons, but what happens during the long course of any war may have benefits.  So even saying ‘Iraq was a mistake’ is too simplistic.  We may not know for years what true effect we had in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Give Obama credit for winding down the Iraq war, and for beginning the process in Afghanistan.  I believe the majority of Americans support this policy, in part because we see our economic problems at home as paramount, but also because the marginal benefits of what we can do in Iraq and Afghanistan decrease each year.  Obama has cleaned up a lot of messes he inherited, and he has also fallen short as a leader at times, yet I give credit where credit is due.

You know, I am not a jingoistic patriot.  But I am a patriot.  It plays better for simplistic hurrahs, and in our TV culture with three-second attention spans, to wave the flag and spout unqualified red-white-and-blue accolades to motherhood, apple pie, and the United States of America.  But I do not always agree with my mother, although I still love her.  I prefer apple crisp to apple pie, and buñuelos with honey to both.  I support our military and my brother in the military.  But I will never stop thinking until I am dead, and that I am able to write what I think, even if it is critical of the United States, is one of the reasons why I know I am lucky to live in this country.

Before the holidays are over, and even after they are done and gone, connect with a military family, and invite them over for dinner or simply for a cup of coffee.  Send a member of our armed forces a care package this week.  Write him or her a letter.  When we go beyond our selves, when we do something good that is not necessary or even asked for, we are all ennobled.

Christmas Tamales in Ysleta

Laura and I drove through Ysleta in search of masa natural for champurrado.  La Tapatia was packed, they were out of masa, but I did escape with two packets of Licon’s asaderos.  I didn’t want to brave Wal-Mart (a quagmire the day before Christmas), but we still needed a few ingredients for Laura's guacamole.  Yesterday she, Aaron, Isaac, and their cousins, Caleb and Joshua, baked and decorated dozens of gingerbread cookies.  Today we are cooking for the-night-before-Christmas meal, but really it is a day to be with la familia.

My Muslim sister is here with two of her daughters; my Jewish wife and my kids are in the kitchen, munching on tostadas and chopping vegetables for the turkey’s stuffing and trimmings.  My brothers, Oscar and Rudy, who live in El Paso, cut and shaped tree branches and created a nativity scene for my parents in the living room.  Everybody is exhausted from shopping, and later we have to wrap our Secret-Santa gifts to place under el niño Jesus.  At midnight, we will rip the wrapping paper off the presents, the kids will shout and compare their booty, and everybody will sit around the living room catching up and telling more stories.

This is probably a repeat of what happens all across the country.  We don’t really question the different religions anymore, we rarely have anything but humorous, if occasionally pointed exchanges (mainly I love needling everybody while they roll their eyes), and we enjoy each other.  The different branches of our familia are seldom together, so when we do descend on Ysleta, from New York, Washington, D.C. and beyond, we are simply happy to see each other.

This morning, in the breaking news section of the online El Paso Times, I read a report about a traffic jam in front of Lupita’s Tamales in Canutillo.  The Wal-Mart shelves for dried tamale leaves and molasses have been ransacked.  All the masa, natural and preparada, at tortillerias and tamale shops is gone.  A few moments ago, I swiped half a tamale from an abandoned plate next to me: “Dad!  That was mine!  How could you?”

I understand the shocked tone, as if I have committed a sacrilege.  But I gulp down the tamale quickly, and delightfully.  La Tapatia’s tamales are heaven on earth.  Zeke’s chorizo, I could write an entire column about it.  The unique smoky taste, the fresh pork meat.  Zeke’s tostadas are nothing like the facsimiles they peddle in the Northeast to the unknowing multitudes.  Fresh Licon’s asaderos, the mere thought of them, make my mouth water.  Oh, how joyous to be back home, and hungry!

I know it’s not all about the food.  But family togetherness, at the preparation of a feast, is an ancient ritual.  It is a messy, tumultuous, chaotic affair, which probably few outsiders would endure.  I am glad we do it.  I look forward to it all year.  We have grown over time to accept each other, and to accept each other’s choices, even though we probably would have not made the same ones.

This year no severe conflicts punctuate the air.  No old recriminations.  I don’t know why.  A few years ago, during a Christmas vacation, I had a fight with my father that took years to overcome.  But this year is blessed, with our family together, laughter in faraway corners, disparate cousins working and playing together as one, and everybody remembering why it was such a good idea to return to Ysleta for Christmas.

For an Unofficial God

I was driving on Interstate 684 this morning, on my way to Connecticut to do some errands in Litchfield. I found a radio station that was playing Christmas songs exclusively, and “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” reminded me of El Paso. Soon I would be back home, with my parents and brothers and sister, and Christmas, and shopping, and the blinking lights on rooftops, and the ceramic mangers in front yards of adobe houses in Ysleta, and our nightly Posada processions, all of it overwhelming me again with God in the world. Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday to my ambivalence for and even anger toward the Catholic Church of my fathers. Happy Birthday to the simultaneous and schizophrenic materialism of the holidays. Happy Birthday to my not-so-secret existence, between believing in but not knowing of God, as an agnostic with faith.

I stopped knowing God, as I had in Ysleta, when I went to Harvard. ‘Knowing’ had meant I accepted God unconditionally, as part of the world I inhabited, as unblinking overseer, as heavenly judge, as absolute standard for my good actions. All of that stopped in college, when I met others following, and believing in, and knowing, a potpourri of religions. Why should Catholicism have predominance over these other religions? For me, there was no good answer other than it didn’t. What I assumed to be the true way was perhaps just one way among many. I certainly wasn’t about to label these other believers as ‘heathens’ or ‘infidels,’ because I would not accept that believing in your God meant you had to squash your neighbor who believed in some other God.

I also did not like to be threatened to believe in God, or to follow certain rules created by priests, without any justification other than this was ‘tradition.’ As I grew older, I did not see a reason why there should not be female priests in the Catholic Church, for example. I saw it as a matter of power, not religion, that women are kept out of the priesthood. Women can be just as holy as men. I also believe gays should be able to marry legally, and spiritually, and any other way they see fit, also because of what I have seen: gay couples I have known for years love each other as much as Laura and I do, and these couples, the ones with children, have been exemplary parents to their own children. Why are we denying gays the right to marry and pursue their happiness? There is no good answer other than those who advocate against gay marriage are prejudiced against gays. They don’t know gays, they don’t want to know them, and so they demonize them.

I grew to believe that the Catholic Church, as well as other churches, spends too much time on buildings, collecting money, power politics, and not enough time, at least for me, on helping the individual to understand how to act morally and philosophically in today’s world. Moral teachings have to be beyond platitudes and rote repetitions or scary threats. Why do some religions worship idols, figurines, bloody depictions, as if only these images will shock you into morality? The ‘you’ assumed is a weak self, one that responds to only simplistic, materialistic admonitions. What about a ‘you’ that thinks? What about a ‘you’ that not only believes in God, but wants to strive for God, and wants to do it philosophically? God as a question to answer. In organized religion, there seems to be little room for that ‘thinking, striving you.’

What do I believe now? I believe in taking care of my family. I believe in the work of helping my children everyday, and in their helping me. I believe in responsibility. I believe in being true to my word. I believe in sacrificing for others, yet I also believe in saying no, when I can’t. What will happen when I die? I will live in the memories of others, I will live in the work I leave behind, and I will live in that worm that finds my body and nourishes itself, hungry to be alive.