The sense of uprootedness
Before we moved to Panama in 1958, when I was ten, we changed our home base quite a bit. I got used to the moving and found it exciting. Moving into a new house was fun, meeting new people all the time and going to a different school not so much so. When we moved to Panama things became reversed.
Right after we moved down there one of the first friends I made was to a boy, who was my age, nicknamed “Peanuts”. We bonded pretty quickly and hung out a lot. He was quiet and intelligent and I also met his parents once and liked them as well. I remember we did not talk much but did a lot of walking and looking around. We would walk up to the pool and as well to building 400 and go down the long stairs to Gatun Lake. He showed me ‘red sand valley’, a place where many hours were spent playing, digging and fighting, as young boys do. I don’t know who named it red sand valley, for it was not a valley and it had no sand, just lots of red clay.
Then one day, just a few months after we moved to Panama, I went to his house and they were gone! I found it upsetting. For the first time in my life, instead of the one moving, I was the one left behind. I was surprised at how sad I was about it and went and told my mom. She was busy cooking, but when se saw how troubled I was she sat down with me, took hold of my hand, looked me in the eye and explained what it meant to live on a military base. How people would come for two or three years, or sometimes just one year and then move on to another assignment.
At first I rebelled against this, since I found being in Panama so wonderful and steady. Then I learned that it was not true at all, everyone I will meet and like will move away very ‘soon’. I think it was then that I had trouble making close friends. Though I still had lots of fun, I always knew that the more I liked someone the quicker time would fly and they would be gone. So I put a damper on how much I allowed myself to get close.
I always liked my classmates, they were a friendly lot but I seldom connected with those who lived in the Canal Zone. There were a few. Nan Detour was a strong connection for me and we still keep in touch. Dennis Forsgren and I during my senior year connected for a short time but have lost touch with him. Then there was Shirley Walker, who I did reconnect with like I did with Nan. It was a good school, good classmates, good teachers and I sucked at being a student big time. Even when in high school I loved to study, just not what anyone else told me to. It was perhaps the way I rebelled, with no fuss, just did what I wanted. I think I lost out on some things in doing that, but my private reading also gave me a path to follow, so I guess it is was a toss up. If I had to do it all over again, no doubt I would do the same thing.
The teachers were great and I have fond memories of many of them. I still smile when Mrs. Smith attempted tell me the correct way to say ‘there’. I remember reading something or another in front of the class and she stopped me and said: “No Mark, not ‘there’, but ‘therrre’, or something like that. So I just smiled and nodded and continued reading not knowing what she was talking about, for both ways sounded the same to me. Perhaps I had too much ear wax. She also said one day that “mad’ magazine was good to read for its satire…..my respect grew for her after that profound statement. She had a deep love of the students and really wanted us to learn. I think I leaned more from her than I realize.
It was a friendly school but I was very guarded, though at the time I did not know it. As I age I am less so, and have friends, some intimate, with whom I can talk about just anything. Dona Janzar was like that for me after we reconnected. I still mourn her passing. She was a special person who had many friends and gave attention to each one of them.
My family was good, but chaotic and like I said, in the USA we moved a lot so there was no real sense of being rooted anywhere. In Panama I found that sense of rootedness. However to my chagrin I then found that all those who lived around me who were military, were the ones who were uprooted on a regular basis. I am not sure I ever got over that…..and I doubt I am the only one. Yet it was all worth it, for I can say without any exaggeration that I would have been dead a long time ago if not for our move to Panama.
There was something deeply healing about living so close to the Jungle, the ocean, Gatun Lake and being around so many people who came from different cultures. There were Cubans, Puerto Ricans. Black and white all lived together without serious problems. Not sure an outright racist could make it in a place like Panama, or in the Military. When living shoulder to shoulder with so many diverse people, you discover that there is no real difference. Though outright bigots are impossible to deal with and seem to have thicker skulls and smaller brains than the rest of us. Perhaps they put them in cold storage and forget to thaw them out.
Then there were the San Blas Indians, the Jamaicans and I came to love both groups very much. I still remember Mandy and Freda and for a short time Gloria with deep feelings of love and gratitude that they and their families where part of our lives for a time. No, it was not perfect, but compared to where I came from in the States, it was close.
Though I still do not know most of my classmates, I do have a deep felt connection with them and for that I am very grateful. How can it not be true, for most of us have been uprooted from our home country, at least on an emotional level and we can’t go back. Though in reality who can,? No matter where they grew up, time moves on and things change. The flow of time is relentless. I think it was necessary that we give back the Canal to Panama, and I am proud in how well they are doing.
To be a pilgrim means that deep roots are in fact just a comfortable illusion, but a necessary one for us to be able to let go of one thing or person at a time as we age and move forward on our journey. Life is a mystery, a deep one and people are the deepest yet……thank God for that.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
