Comes the Peace by Daja Wangchuk Meston & Clare Ansberry

Author:Daja Wangchuk Meston & Clare Ansberry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

For the most part, I spent my free time with Doren and his family. They had converted their attached garage into a den and laundry room. I slept there. The washing machine and dryer hummed in the closet. Piles of clothes waiting to be washed sat in baskets. The family spent most of the time in the living room, which was dominated by a large-screen TV. A Dodgers fan, Doren watched baseball games on weekends and in between backyard projects. He built brick walls, installed a Jacuzzi, and planted bushes. I pitched in to help. I liked physical labor that produced something. In the monastery, so much of the day was spent in mental exercises, or in work that seemed futile—sweeping dirt plots that were disheveled minutes later, mopping floors that defied cleanliness.

He and Mary worked long hours. When they came home, both were too tired to make big meals. Soon I learned the various forms that American food assumed. Frozen dinners came in Weight Watchers and Stouffer’s, takeout in Mexican and Chinese, pizza in thin crust, pan, or traditional. We could pick up, drive through, or tip the delivery boy, go out for soft-serve ice cream in the evening or doughnuts in the morning.

Food was a strange battleground. Mary seemed to be trying to limit and control what was eaten, but ice cream, chips, and frozen TV dinners were ever-present and consumed. I steered clear of the food arguments, hanging out in the den. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. After spending much of my childhood hungry and scrounging for food, having more than enough seemed like a good thing. Or at least nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t know being heavy was a health concern or social stigma. Illness in Nepal was tied to rotten food or impure water, not to abundance.

In the summer, when I wasn’t in school, I went with Doren in his brown van to the fastener company in the nearby city of Industry, California. Inside a huge warehouse, thousands of metal and plastic washers sat in bins, buckets, and boxes. Walking through, he explained that some were used in airplanes and others in jeeps. He showed me the different sizes and shapes and how to sort them according to size. I went to work moving boxes and counting fasteners, setting aside those that didn’t belong in a certain bin. When I was done, he tried to pay me.

“No, thank you,” I said. He was letting me stay at his house. The Harpers fed me, washed my clothes. Mary’s mother, the ever-patient Grandma Orico, tutored me nightly, reviewing multiplication and division at the kitchen table. I had never received money for work. In Italy, I worked for room and board. The same should apply here.

During those half-hour drives to work, I would ask Doren one question after another. I had seen the science show Nova on television and was becoming more curious. By then I had learned that the earth was not flat and stationary but round and spinning.

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