Good morning.
Do you ever think of the shadow-memory people in your lives? The ones you never really knew but whose path crossed yours more than once? I sometimes do, and today was one of those days.
Today is the Second Sunday After Epiphany, and the reading of the Epistle for this Sunday is from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth.....". Paul knew a Sosthenes too.
Sosthenes's name is pronounced SOS-ten-es, with the stress on the first syllable. In proper Spanish it is written with an accent on the o, but I can't find it in the alts. It is a Greek name, and beautiful. I remember the first time I saw Sosthenes. My father and I were driving from San Benito to Brownsville, on some business of his, on a Saturday morning long ago. He was going to meet Sostenes Berdeja for some reason, probably having to do with the cotton business, which was my dad's calling for most of his life. As we drove along, we met another car, and instant recognition caused much mutual honking; the cars turned around toward each other at the side of the highway (there were no other cars on that highway; that's how long ago it was). Sosthenes and my father performed the abrazo (the Mexican meet-and-greet) there on the side of the road, and leaning against the other car, they began a leisurely discussion.
"Stay in the car," had been my father's order when he abandoned me there, but of course it was an order no eight year old child could reasonably be expected to obey, out in the country on a perfect spring morning. I was shortly out and in exploration of nearby territory, which included an irrigation canal full of running water, lots of bushes and birdsong, and a bridge over the canal where I soon found myself lying face down, staring into the water. That is where and when I saw that magical little creature that I think I've mentioned to you before: a little tube about eight or ten inches long, of living crystal, snoozing in the water just below my eyes. I know he was snoozing because I had plenty of time to look at him before his eyes opened, he panicked, and swam out of there. I think he must have been a tiny baby gar, because I thought he looked like a little dragon in the water and there werent many alligators in the Valley back then. Dragons either.
Some time later, my father came to me in panic because he hadn't found me in the car and was sure I had drowned in the canal. I hadn't but I had to endure much recrimination all the way back to San Benito. That was my first memory of Sosthenes.
Five or so years later, my father took me and my sister no. 2 to Monterrey, N.L., to get us out of our mother's hair for a few days, as she was great with child and exasperated. This time I was thirteen, and Sosthenes rode along with my father over the night-dark roads of northern Mexico. I remember him as a huge, kindly figure, the lights from the dashboard dimly lighting the contours of his face, as the Spanish conversation drifted towards the back seat. Nothing more happened on that ride, except for having to stop so that Sister no. 2, who was High Maintainance, could decide whether or not to throw up. (She didn't).
That's nearly all for Sosthenes in my memory. There's one last memory where my father was in the kitchen telling my mother that Sosthenes Berdeja had hit a hog on the road, driving those same roads we had traversed in the night, before. (Everyone drove at night because it was too hot to drive in the day and there was no A/C!!) I thought it was funny but my father said it was serious and I think there had been a hospitalization as a result.
Funny the things we remember. A pleasant voice speaking a language I didn't understand much, a huge dark shadow with a kindly aura (children always know, you know), a beautiful name...which I am sure came from that very passage of St Paul I mentioned before. That was all. But I will not forget him, and on the Second Sunday after Epiphany I'll always be reminded of his name.
YAZZYBEL
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