Out Of The Desert by Kathleen McAnear Smith

 

Even in old age they will still produce fruit, they will remain vital and green. Psalm 92: 14

There’s not much green out there in the desert. Wide open spaces, and a train that howls in the night as it rides over hundreds of miles of track. Lights more bright on one side of town than another. I’ve stood on the view point looking down over El Paso, Texas into Juarez, Mexico and let myself be mesmerised by the stony hills and dusty roads. When I was growing up, this is where I would visit my aunt and uncle and cousins. Every family celebration meant crossing the Rio Grande that wasn’t but a strip of water, and head into that section of Juarez that had my uncle’s favourite restaurant, El Camino Real. Best arroz con pollo with music!

Now days, there is this fence. There’s the violence and the drugs. Before my uncle passed away a couple of years ago, he hosted our last whole-family celebration gathered around a long table in a different restaurant. This restaurant went a little more out into the Texas side of the desert, called Cattleman’s. Best steak ever!

In this blogpost I wish to honour my aunt. Aunt Eleanor is now 92. Years ago, while my uncle was director of the Spanish Baptist Publishing House, she started a free clinic right on the border, near the fence. Some call it a wall. What ever you think of it, wonderful people from Mexico still cross over and line up on a Saturday morning to have the best doctors in town see them for free. My aunt and her team pray for unwell loved ones, distribute free Bibles, insure everyone has their moment of triage with a nurse, see a doctor, receive free medicines. Even with more recent restrictions there is a queue outside the door of Iglesias Bautista and it often extents around the corner. 

Aunt Eleanor inspires me. Even now, as she more recently puts her feet up and the new director of the clinic socially distances brief visits to check on her; I am inspired. She still speaks two languages (and has me read Psalm 23 in Spanish to see if it is possible to improve my accent), and she still asks how I am doing and how she can pray for me. 

I know I am writing about her today as I’ve learned one thing about myself when I’m stuck in a non-writing mode; and that is to focus not on a story, but on a character. I’ve decided an aunt is going to reign righteous as I write my first novel, and she’s going to look and sound and act a lot like Aunt Eleanor. It is my hope that as I start to work on this development of characters, a real story will emerge. Inspired by Aunt Eleanor, I think I’ll have the old ones flourish. Maybe I’ll get my grandmother in there, too. Lot of crazy, dreaming, God-fearing, change the world women in my family. Plenty of material.