An Oooey Goooey Mango Christmas
In anticipation of Christmas,
we hope you will accept this small gift,
a chapter from Father Skipper’s book -
A Toy Truck for a Marine and Other Christmas Tales
From a Simple Missionary Priest
Born on the Fourth of August – some might say a month too late for someone who could appropriately be described as a living fireworks show – with blonde hair and blue eyes inherited from his grandmother and mother, Mikey was as All-Miami as picadillo and pizza, frijoles negros and hot dogs, Cuban coffee and The Hurricanes and The Dolphins. But he’s always been a puzzlement.
Now to understand this story, you must first understand the neighborhood. Some laughingly say it should be called “Shhhh! Don’t tell,” because sixty-plus years ago, when today’s abuelos and abuelas – grandparents - first moved in, that’s the way it grew: without the required permits and pretty much “Shhhh! Don’t tell.” A garage converted to a bedroom here. An extra bedroom and bath added there. Sometimes even a whole second-floor suite. With the work completed almost always by un amigo de mi primo – “a friend of my cousin.” In a decade or so, those post-World War II “all-look-just-the-same” little houses were home to expanding families of new and not-so-new refuges, opening small shops and workshops, restaurants and groceries.
Now, more than six decades later, Mikey’s abuelos had never moved. This was more than home. It was where they had planted roots, reared their family and grown old together. This was also where, except for his family, abuelo’s two greatest prides were the giant mango trees in the back yard, dominating the entire neighborhood. And abuelo confidently declared, his were the best mangos in the world.
Because they shared the same values, it was where, having met in the Maryknoll Fathers Volunteer Corps in Tanzania (can you imagine two Cuban-American Miami Hurricane alumni teachers first meeting in East Africa), Mikey’s parents decided to rear their family. Roots and family, traditions and values are important.
For a while not much changed in “Shhhh! Don’t tell.” On occasion a family might move to Kendal or abuelos might retire to be with their kids in Vero Beach or even South Carolina. Then, just about a decade ago, two months into hurricane season and just at the beginning of mango season, the neighborhood changed! Actually, depending on how you counted, it changed once, or twice or five times. Oh, how it changed! At almost one and the same instant, Mikey was brought home from the hospital – for the first time – all blonde fuzz and blue eyes. And, las mujeres Americanas - the American women, all four of them, moved into the “Shhhh Don’t Tell” house next to his abuelos.
For a few days, the whispers and comments clashed with each other. “Ah, que guapo, que lindo, un rubio! Fijese! How handsome, how beautiful! A blonde! Imagine that.” And “Quatro mujeres. Viejas! Son Americanas! Quines son?” “Four women! They’re old. They’re Americans! Who are they?”
Mikey?
Well, we’ll get back to him in about a literary decade. But, the women. After a few days of what seemed like seclusion and secrecy, they wandered the neighborhood, door-to-door, introducing themselves. Trying to explain the somewhat unexplainable. They were, they said through Sister Grace, the only one who spoke Spanish, semi-retired Catholic missionary Sisters – from the Philippines, Japan, the Sudan, and Guatemala. New York winters had proven just too cold and they came to “Shhhh! Don’t Tell” to open a little house of prayer. Not quite a cloister, they explained, but a place from which they could help others by being a constant prayerful support. “We place the hurting and their pains in the loving heart of God and we accompany them on their journeys,” she explained. “Oh, and we make bread for the poor and for our friends.”
They were, she explained, committed to changing the world quietly. Being strength to the weakened and hope to the hopeless through prayer. Their Casa San Francisco de Asis, was dedicated to praying throughout the day the Saint’s prayer “The Praises of God”:
You are holy, Lord, the only God, and Your deeds are wonderful.
You are strong, great, the Most High.
You are Almighty.
You are Good, all Good, supreme Good, Lord God, living and true.
You are love and wisdom, humility and endurance.
You are rest and peace, joy and gladness.
You are justice, beauty. Gentleness.
Our protector, guardian and defender.
Our courage, our haven and our hope.
You are our faith, our great consolation, our eternal life.
Great and Wonderful Lord, God Almighty, Merciful Savior.
Over the years, and depending on the wind and weather, from mid-afternoon to evening, the neighborhood would fill with the ohh-so-subtle aroma of fresh-baking bread, and, if you listened carefully, you could hear the chant four times a day… “You are holy Lord, the only God….” It was a sound as familiar to Miguelito as his parents’ laughter or abuela’s nightly benediction “Que duermas con los angelitos” - “May you sleep with the angels.” Mikey grew up with the words. They may, in fact, have been the first English he learned as they wafted from the tiny chapel next door or filled the evening from the garden under the overhanging branches of abuelo’s mango trees.
As he grew from diapers to toddler, from walking to running – non-stop and everywhere, from tricycle and to training wheels to bike, Miguelito also grew from play-on-the-floor little toy wagon to full-scale big boy’s wagons made for hauling all sorts of things. And, year-after-year, mango-season after mango season, abuelo taught Mikey two great lessons: Mangos are God’s favorite fruit and his most delicious, oooey, goooey gift to His People, and mangos are a gift to be shared. It seemed to Mikey this was abuelo’s most-favorite-thing-in-the-world to do - give away his mangos
Abuela, Mikey’s, grandmother insisted that a first stop of the Mango Man and his red wagon was to be the house next door, for the gentle women who prayed and made bread for their neighbors and the poor. And, one day, Sister Grace added a request to her gentle Thank You: “Why don’t you bring us the really bruised mangoes, the ones your grandfather doesn’t give away.” “But, but… they’re ooooey, messy,” Miquel protested. “Yes,” replied Sister Grace. “There’s an oooey, goooey part of all of us, but God can make even that something special.”
“Do you know,” she inquired, “Why we make bread for the poor?”
And slowly, quietly out poured the story of their home’s namesake and why they make bread. How in the year 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, St. Francis and Brother Illuminato travelled - mostly by foot – from Italy to Damietta on the northern coast of Egypt because Francis wanted to plead with Christian Crusaders and Malik Al Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, for an end to the war and to save thousands and thousands of Christian and Muslim lives. Francis and Illuminato dared to walk across the no-man’s-land between the two armies and Francis and the Sultan spent days respecting each other, listening to each other, sharing with each other, maybe even praying at the same times, and letting God be God.
In the end, explained Sister Grace, Francis left Damietta, believing himself a failure because he could not convince the warring sides to accept peace. But, “and here’s Francis’s kind of little miracle,” whispered Sister Grace, almost two years later, the Sultan had an opportunity to destroy all the European Christians because the Nile had flooded their camps, leaving them trapped by mud and dying of diseases, Sultan had the opportunity to kill them all. “Instead,” Sister Grace continued, “every day he sent them 50,000 loaves of bread and 1100 bushels of barley for their animals and saved the lives of his sworn enemies.
“And so, in honor of St. Francis and the Sultan, we make bread and, when we can, we share it with those whom others do not see or do not think about or do not like. And now, if you will share your grandfather’s ugliest, oooey, gooeyist mangoes, maybe we can do something special with them.”
Mango season is over. Tonight is Noche Buena, “the Good Night,” Christmas Eve. Throughout “Shhh! Don’t Tell” abuelos and hijos – grandfathers and sons – have spent hours preparing the lechon – roast pork. Abuelas and hijas huddle over their frijoles negros y arroz – black beans and rice. And, as the sun sets, if you are just quiet enough, you might hear
You are holy, Lord, the only God, and Your deeds are wonderful.
You are strong, great, the Most High.
You are Almighty.
And some time tomorrow morning, Miguelito’s and other families throughout ”Shhh! Don’t Tell” will discover on their doorsteps small bundles of homemade bread and jars of mango marmalade, with the handwritten note:
You are Good, all Good, supreme Good, Lord God, living and true.
You are love and wisdom, humility and endurance.
You are rest and peace, joy and gladness.
You are justice, beauty. Gentleness.
Our protector, guardian and defender.
Our courage, our haven and our hope.
You are our faith, our great consolation, our eternal life.
Great and Wonderful Lord, God Almighty, Merciful Savior.
Merry Christmas