Thank You, Nana

I don’t really get homesick anymore.  To be sure, I miss the people I love, Chipotle burrito bowls, and tap water that you can drink.  However, now I have a home here.  I have a house I take care of, a job I love, and friends I see on the weekends.   I feel “normal” here.  I am sure my normal is quite different from yours, but nonetheless I have a normal.

Still, some days every bone in my body yearns towards Massachusetts.  Today is one of those days, as my family is on the cusp of loosing our matriarch, my Nana Anna.  I want to be at her house on Felch Road celebrating the 4^th of July as we did for so long.  Or at her summer home in Plymouth where for many years of my childhood we faithfully made the pilgrimage to Plymouth Rock, despite the fact that it is probably the lamest national monument of all time, in any country.

Being tossed into a world – Guatemala – so different from my own has given me time to reflect on so many cultural norms that I took for granted in the United States.  Most frequently, I find myself thinking about family.  Not a day goes by without somebody asking me about my marital status.  A few times, they have skipped over that and just asked, “Where are your children?”  because it is unfathomable that a 23-year-old woman wouldn’t have any.

Part of the role of a Peace Corps Volunteer is to explain American culture to Guatemalans.  So I (nearly always futilely) explain that I want to have a career and travel and have a house before I have children.  I have spent a long time thinking about why I want these things and I think I know the answer: my mom.  The ten years she took between college graduation and childbearing have made me who I am.  She traveled to Mexico, took time to fall in love, and worked hard at becoming a professional. 

I am who I am because she did that.  Growing-up I had a wonderful example of a worldly, intelligent, hard-working mother.  She didn’t have to tell me to be those things because she was those things and I wanted (want) to be just like her.   There are lots of equally valid routes to becoming a great mom, but I plan on taking the one my mother did.   The time she took to find and become herself is the greatest gift she has given me and because of her example, I am sure that I want to give the same gift to my children.

However, my mom isn’t alone.  In fact, she is one of five children and each is spunky and independent in their own way.  Each of her siblings has walked a unique and admirable path.  How did they get this way?  Well it seems to me that the answer to that question is their mom, my Nana Anna.

You see, Nana herself was a driven and independent woman.  She was widowed at a young age and was forced to raise five children at a time when few women worked outside the house.  Life wasn’t perfect for her, but she was able to provide for her family with her work at the Town Hall, a place where she earned a lot of respect.  She was involved in town politics and, in her younger years, liked to sharpen her brain by knowing baseball statistics.  She was never too old to learn and she never failed to surprise.  Just two months ago, despite her frailness, she danced the night away at my cousin’s wedding with moves that only a grandmother could pull-off.

She was also a woman before her time in her understanding the importance of adventure.  When my dad announced he had taken a new job in Canada, the rest of the family (including myself) was devastated that the job was taking him away from MA, the only home we had ever known.  She saw what an opportunity this was for my dad and the entire family, so she congratulated him genuinely as the rest of us cried.

I remember calling her to tell her that I was coming down to Guatemala.  Her response was “I didn’t realize you were such a wild child.  All of my grandchildren are.  What did your mothers do to you?”

Our mothers did for us what she did for them – provided an example of a hard-working, intelligent woman unfettered by what the rest of the world expected from them. 

As my nana, Anna Dunn, prepares to leave us, the next generation of Dunn (NOT dumb) woman is coming into their own at school, at work, and even in motherhood.  I am proud to be a part of this sisterhood of women carving their own path and I am so thankful to Nana for starting it all.  Many of us were not fortunate enough to inherit her height, but, in each of my cousins, I can see a little bit of her strength.

Thank you, Nana.