Tucson Refugee Festival

The other day Cece and I went to the Refugee Festival held in downtown Tucson.  We walked around, enjoyed the music and perused the handicrafts.  It wasn't till I saw the group of African teenagers running a "kick the soccer ball through the hole" booth that I was struck with the pain of missing my boys in Thailand.  

I choked up.  They were identical to my boys in their love of futbol and in the way they held themselves; balanced on the edge of a peculiar "self"-confidence that is buoyed by the group, and an innocent fragility.   I longed for a welcoming smile.  

I imagined asking my boys in Bangkok what kind of booth they would like to run.  

"You can do anything that you want, but you'll have to put down the money to create it."  I'd say.

"Anything?" they'd query.

"Yup."

They definitely would not come up with the idea of a dunk tank or a stuff your face with food contest.  Plain and simple, they would come up with a football game.  It's something they know, love and requires very little investment.  

I left with the bittersweet feeling that comes with loss and love.  Oddly, I'm grateful that the fog of amnesia that's been rolling in as we begin a new life, an ocean away from the previous one, is not impenetrable.  

Roots

In 1896, Pedro Aguilar left his small Yaqui village near Hermosillo, Mexico.  Simultaneously driven out by rumblings of civil war and drawn forth by rumors of work in the north, he made his way to Tucson.  There he rented a room in the Presidio neighborhood.  His affinity for machines eventually helped him to secure a job with the railroad.  Later, he met and fell in love with Jesus, a woman from a different Yaqui village near Hermosillo, who was living in a nearby apartment.  

Soon they married and Pedro purchased a lot and began building a house, poco a poco (a little at a time) as was typical in those days.  Put up the beams of the house, save some more money, close in a room, save a little more then put up another adobe wall.  Their house grew as their family grew.   Alex, Manuel, Carmen, Frank, Helen, Albert, Pete, Angel and Jesus all came at a steady rate two years apart over twenty years.   They passed through the house sharing the rooms until a sister was married or a brother went to war.  

Today, Albert at 81 still lives in the house.  It's the only home he's ever known, if you don't count the fire station where he lived for the 48 hours on, 72 hours off intervals of fire fighters.  

The little house at the back used to be a garage until some time in the 30's when the space was needed for people.  Adobes were stacked, floors were laid and windows installed.  Eventually, three little rooms were made.  Helen raised her three girls in the house converting the porch into a room for her oldest daughter Tessie.  

After Frank moved back from California, where he taught math, he moved into the little house in the back and transformed the area around the house into a gorgeous flower garden, still famous in the Aguilar family today.  After Frank passed away, Albert rented the casita to a lady who made tamales, that were by most accounts good, but not as good as "ours".  She left and a couple of guys with a cleaning business moved in, but were precipitously deported.  

The latest arrival to the house is Albert's niece and nephew, Cecelia and Daniel.  They moved in after Cecelia's family put in an effort, quite possibly equal to the original conversion from garage to home.  They invested countless hours painting, installing cabinets, laying tile, scrubbing and scrubbing some more.  The intense and generous effort was to welcome them back home after ten years in foreign mission and to welcome their baby who's expected some time in the last week of July.  

A new life blooms forth in the desert from ancient roots, which like the Saguaro's extend in many directions and nourish for hundreds of years.