Out Like a Lamb

“An ‘Eeyore’ is someone who always finds the downside,” I said to my class last night. One of the three students who showed up had mentioned knowing someone who is always complaining about something. “Another name for that is a ‘Debbie Downer.’”

Then I did my impression of the Rachel Dratch character from Saturday Night Live. Van and Luz Alba nodded in solemn recognition; Yuwei chuckled and looked a little confused. 

My story about seeing a large cockroach ambling through the eating area of a local public space (which I will not name here) garnered a more enthusiastic response.

"What is a ‘cockroach’?” Yuwei asked.

I drew a little picture on the white board, and he instantly understood.

“I see a big one one time,” Luz Alba said, getting up from her chair to act out her experience. “And I get a rock to... because they are hard,” she pointed to her back to indicate the shell on the pest, “and I squish it.”

She mimicked picking up a heavy rock and placing it on the ground.

“I place it on top him and...” Here, she lifted her right foot, leg bent at the knee, then brought her foot down in a loud stomp. “I hear ...”

She made squishy, splatty noises for us, which sounded particularly funny in her Latina accent.

All four of us cringed and laughed simultaneously.

Our ESOL class met last night for the first time in about a month. I hadn’t realized how much I missed chatting with these new-found friends until I found myself wiping away tears of laughter.

We caught each other up on our lives: Van got a new part-time job as a cashier. Yuwei went to an American sports bar with some friends from work. Luz Alba had her first gig as a translator for asylum seekers in Cleveland. It felt like a true homecoming.

Then the conversation meandered easily through some old English proverbs, the pleasures and horrors of camping, the oddities of American sports bars, and our immense joy at the change in the weather. 

After we had warmed to each other again, Yuwei gave us an excellent presentation about Chinese New Year and the subsequent Lantern Festival. He talked about the month-long preparations of food and paper cuttings for the festivities, the emphasis on reconnecting with family during the holiday, and the importance of offering the first servings of a celebratory meal to the kitchen gods.

“I prepare this almost a month ago,” he said while searching for the right word at one point. “So I don’t remember all the English.”

He grinned his usual shy, charming grin. Language barrier aside, he did a fabulous job putting together a slide show on his computer about the Chinese zodiac and the travel snarls after the festival that rival our own crowded highways and airports around the Christmas holidays. I was quite impressed, especially because he called this presentation his ‘homework.’

“The Lantern Festival signal the end of the holiday,” he said. The whole thing is a fifteen-day welcoming of spring and the new planting season. Students and most workers get most or all of that period off from work, and everybody spends time with family and good friends. They print optimistic hopes and wishes on paper banners to adorn their doorways and eat sweet or savory sticky rice balls, depending on what part of the country they are in.

“We had a celebration here,” Yuwei told us. “The food was at the museum across the street because the library does not welcome food. Then we come here to the audi..auditoo..” (I had to pronounce ‘auditorium’ for him) “to finish celebrate.”

It sounded like a wonderful and joyous celebration.

I feel as if I’ve had my own personal festival of lights. The long freeze of February had me pinned down for a while, but now the spring is back in my step, and the corners of my mouth once more turn upward as easily as they used to.  

With the return of reasonable wether and longer daylight hours, I am no longer an Eeyore or a Debbie Downer.

And with the reconvening of our Thursday evening class, I feel a sense of purpose again, a sense of belonging and warmth. The Year of the Lamb may not bode well for young women looking to get married, but it seems a good sign for me. 

Let’s hope March gets the message.