October 15
The other day our Raices y Alas cooperativo went to the home orchard of a generous local family who wanted simply to share their bounty and have children on the land. We shared gratitude for wind, water, land, fire, sang and blessed the trees, the animals, the plants, the soil. Life in all beings. The children sprinkled maíz to give the trees the same nourishment that sustained our ancestors, and tobacco to honor the local tribes and the spirit of the trees.
Our Reverence soon bubbled into joyful play and delight. They came up with many ingenious ways to climb a tree and pick an apple. Arms outstretched. Playing with ladders. Perching in trees. The host (who is also sheltering a Latinx familia through www.ltssthousing.org) generously picked, sliced and gave taste tests of sweet, crisp, tart marvels of cultivation.
During our gratitude circles, a fire affected child used the time well to express the same mix of feelings I hear from adults: heartbreak at the loss, awe at the help, hope for the future.
I used to lead grief groups for children in the elementary schools and I wish we could do so now. But for this moment, I was glad this young one knew how to make good use of a a safe circle.
It was a glorious day.
After all the smoke, standing in this well loved and gracious orchard, with extremely generous tenders, warm sun shining, blue skies and children reveling, felt like a miracle.
Even more so because two years before, I was at a family u-pick orchard in Big Bear, CA in a similar reverie. I had just chatted with a fellow Chicano about how awesome the little back woods orchard we were in was. When the owner struck up an extremely racist conversation with me, most likely because I’m white presenting. I told her I’m Mexican, but she wanted to keep telling me how awful my people are. I kept gently countering her fearful/contracted ideas with actual facts and experience. (Her: “You just don’t know, you’d have to run criminal background checks to know (how awful ‘they’ are) Me: “Actually I ran many in child protective services and you’re wrong”) The Chicano and his children walked by clearly stunned, disappointed. My husband and children watched wondering why I kept talking to her. It was partly because I was intrigued that I had met a live one (In my family, we often say I should have been a journalist or sociologist) but the cost was heavy.
On our way to the orchard, I had adored the maples and sycamores’ fall colors, sunlight glinting off the leaves, deep joy in my nature loving heart at my escape from the city.
On the drive away from the orchard, I sat with the pain of the vitriol that had been spewed on me and my people. The woods were now bleak and frightening, there seemed to be no safe space in a land where someone could hate so freely and righteously (an experience not new to many BIPOC).
This was obviously not my first experience with racism but it was my first hearing it expressed in such cold, convinced detail. I was reminded, again, that my happy place was run by gun-wielding (she made sure to tell me how many she had) descendants of settlers.
How could someone hate me and my people so?
There are many colonial and trauma informed answers to this, but the visceral pain of being despised just for existing in such a comprehensive way by a perfect stranger, struck me to the core and had my inner niña heartbroken and despairing. I had to do some ancestral juju and send her toxicity back to her, of course. But it took some effort and I will never forget that day.
So here we are two years later on beautiful land with loving folk and happy children. And I realize this day captures so much of the healing I’m experiencing, helping familias. Every time someone trusts me to take direct aid to families and I get to carry this true relief to my comunidad. It is a salve on the wound of generations. All of the loving, caring and open hearted people who are seeking to help are the direct juxtaposition of many of our collective experiences in this country.
All fire victims are having the experience of a renewed awareness of the goodness of humanity. The Latinx community is having this experience AND years of overt and covert racism are being healed. Maybe not all, but essential layers. This rogue valley is full of really good people that can single handedly foster miracles…and so many are.
I’m new here but I’m so proud of us.
And I’m so grateful to ALL who have sent donations from across the country. Thank you for supporting dignity, autonomy, trust and healing in a community way. Just like the rarity of a family opening their home or sending us off with bushels of apples for free, significant cash being handed directly with honor and trust is a humanity/mutuality/reciprocity we are all blessed to return to.
Though we may get lost, I know that if we keep coming together like this, we are stronger than any fear or contraction.
To Donate:
Go Fund Me: www.gofundme.com/f/almedafireslatinxrelief
Venmo: @sylvia-Poareo
Note:
I’ve been sharing my experience of the Almeda Fire in southern Oregon on my Facebook page, but I want to share it here so you can all walk with me on this journey. Click the “Almeda Fire” tag at the bottom of this post to read the entire series.