My Finger is Purple

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I knew Mitt Romney when I was a kid. Of course, he wasn’t a U. S. Senator back then; he was just an annoying Boy Scout who, with his buddies, pushed his way into the refreshment line at stake youth dances and ate more than his share of dessert. I remember wondering who the heck would name their kid after a baseball catcher’s glove? But I liked his dad who was our Stake President. He was also the president of a large car manufacturing company; there were a bunch of them in Michigan. I lived into Dearborn, home of the Ford Motor Company, and it wasn’t till years later that I discovered the city of Pontiac wasn’t named after a car.

I have a very nice black and white photo of President George Romney and I sitting together on the stand at a stake conference. He is the guy at the pulpit. I’m the gawky 13 year-old girl buried in the choir of 100 young people. (Even my kids couldn’t find me in that photo!) Now days, Mitt Romney and I have something in common. Our names have both been on the ballot in a November election–which just points out that even economically challenged schoolteachers can have a voice in how this country is governed.

My neighborhood in Dearborn was filled with ethnic groups. For me, that meant exotic foods with unfamiliar spices, and pots simmering on the stove from which wafted enticing smells permeating the air up and down the street. Most of my friends had grandparents living with them who spoke the language of the old country from which they had come.  Armenians, Greeks, Russians, Italians, Czechs, and a dozen other countries which till then, I had only read about in books—all attracted by good jobs at the Ford plant. Eating with my friends’ families became an adventure for me, and an opportunity to learn new skills for my mother. As far as a 13 year-old could tell, ours was the only family in the area whose citizenship could be traced farther back than two generations.

It was a radical change of scene when my dad got transferred to New Mexico. At the time it was the only state in the Union which printed all official documents in both Spanish and English. I don’t remember finding that unusual, but I did love Old Town with its more than 400 years of living Spanish cultural history, and I discovered cheese enchiladas, chili rellenos, and sopapillas dusted with cinnamon and sugar for dessert. Still my favorite to this day.

Years later when Son #1 was called on a mission to Hungry, he had some trouble getting a Visa into the country, but he assured me I didn’t need to worry. If he couldn’t make it to Budapest, the second largest Hungarian speaking population in the world was in Cleveland! He did make it to Europe, and I have photos of him helping a farmer butcher pigs and handing out food and cash to LDS refugees from Yugoslavia who were fleeing the civil war. Plus, he still makes a yummy homemade dropped noodle dish with a serious dose of paprika. Bonus!

When my husband and I volunteered as Inner City Missionaries in Salt Lake City, we were assigned to a local Hispanic Branch. The older folks spoke no English, and our Spanish was iffy at best. Our first assignment was to help a little family with three children and a grandmother. Though the adults were not-yet-citizens, our job was to assist them in filling out their income tax paperwork. My husband got on the phone with the IRS, secured a Spanish speaking agent, and spent two hours as the go-between so that this dad could accurately report his family’s income. I sat in the kitchen with his wife helping minimally as she boiled, then de-boned eight or ten chickens for the dozens of hand-made tamales she made and sold in a Walmart parking lot each weekend. (Yep—I sampled one. Heaven!)

You learn a lot about people by the food they share. My husband says that “ethnic food comes from moms across the world just trying to feed their families as nutritiously and with as little expense as possible.” Maybe he’s right. We all love our kids, no matter where we come from.

My election ballot came in the mail this week. As I opened the envelope, I thought of the pictures in the newspaper I’d seen several years ago when Iraq held it’s very first open election. Soldiers were deployed to protect the voting sites as hundreds of thousands Iraqis stood hours in line to vote. One voter had commented that by “Iraqi standards it went very well. Not many people were killed.” As every voter completed his/her ballot, each dipped a forefinger in a purple indelible inkpad to avoid the possibility of voter fraud.

As of yet, I don’t think I’ve had  chance to sample an Iraqi dish, but like other moms across the globe, I want my children and grandchildren to have enough to eat and a chance to go to school so they have the skills to feed their own children. That’s why I’m sending my ballot in today. And I’m voting in favor of candidates who care about families, no matter what they look like or where they originate. My finger is purple. Is yours?