What am I thankful for today? My mom and MIL have been on my mind today as Nov. 4 is the 4th anniversary of mom’s death and Nov. 8th is the 6th of Mimi’s. While I’m thankful for both of them, the thing I keep thinking of this week is a trip Mom, Lance and my boys and I were lucky enough to take together back in 2002.
I’m thankful that Mom had made friends with a man who had been to Guatemala the previous year and spoke about it so enthusiastically that she decided to go, and take those of us that could get time off.
Austin and Emerson were a week short of finishing third and second grades, so just the age Daisy is now. I drove up to Salem and we visited Greg’s sister April and her husband, then went to a motel in Portland that allowed me to leave my van and use a shuttle, if we stayed both sides of the trip. Well, we only got 4 hours in the motel before wake-up time. That was especially frustrating because then we got 7 hours in the Houston airport with no beds available. But we met mom and Lance there and flew to Guatemala City.
From there we took old American school buses up into the volcanic, Lake area and visited “Gringo Tenango” before taking a boat across the lake and through the bulrushes into a wonderful town where Mayan’s had recently won the right to live their culture, in a bloody battle with the mostly Spanish Guatemalan government.
There we got to stay in a paradise dripping with ripe figs, dragon fruit and avocado. The woodcarving and weaving and embroidery were fascinating. The best part was that we got to spend three days volunteering at a school for Mayan children. They were taught in Spanish but spoke Tsuitajil at home. We learned some of their songs and a chase game called Cat and Mouse, we taught them some songs and art and geography and played Duck, Duck, goose, and they already knew blind man’s bluff.
I’m afraid my boys don’t remember as much as I hoped they would, but it impacted me a lot and later I described a similar trip in my portal fantasy trilogy, “Duffy Barkley” ended up visiting Guatemala in a latter book.
