Why I Keep Thinking About Pinecones

For about a year now I have been going back, in my mind, to this one day I spent in Honduras. It was during my home stay with a family from Tegucigalpa, a nice family, loving, caring, and all that jazz. The mother called me “hijo” (son) and the son (12 years old) would try to speak English with me when his mother was not around. But Mama (the mother) wanted me to learn Spanish so much that she continually would yell (nicely) “Mateo, mi hijo, no ingles aquí, no ingles.” (Matthew, my son, no English here, no English) and though I loved Sebastian (the son) for trying to help me out, Mama’s orders for me to stop speaking English came as a great relief because Sebastian’s English was more confusing than his Spanish most of the time.

So, about this one day that I keep going back to. It was one of the many days where I had no clue what was going on from Sunrise to Sunset. I woke up (as I did most days in Honduras) with the sun at something like 4am and sat in my room (falling in and out of sleep) longing to know what time it really was while understanding that the only clock in the house (which worked) was Mama’s cell-phone, and that her cell-phone was in her room, and thus in a place where I could not see it.

It was my third day at home stay, and I had learned to accept that there was no way for me to know what time it was. Plus Candy (the maid like lady whose room I had taken over) and I had by then developed a sort of routine where she would knock on my door and ask me questions which (I hope) were intend to check if I was up and nothing more because there was no chance I was going to understand what she asked but, as I had to answer to tell her I was still alive, I would say “si” followed by a “gracias” that I prayed to God informed her that it was all right if “si” made no sense and that I was getting up and that if she asked me in fifteen minutes I might be able to understand her more.

I’m not sure if the “gracias” did this for her, for as I said I had no clue what Candy asked me each morning while I lie in bed, and thus I don’t know if when I stumbled into the kitchen five minutes later Candy was asking me a new question or the same thing she had asked though the door. Either way Candy found our routine funny in some way and she would laugh and laugh each morning and I would smile while praying (yes I prayed a lot) that her laughter was a sign that she understood how confused I was and not a awkward giggle to cover-up how I was breaking some great cultural phopa.

So this in that way this day I keep going back to was like every day during homestay. Candy knocked on my door, said something, I replied “si… gracias”, got dressed and brushed my teeth before yawning my way into the kitchen where Candy asked me something I didn’t understand. Confused I walked into my room (she followed me) to grab my dictionary so I could ask her to repeat herself. She beat me to it though, and grabbed my church shirt off my bag and told me something which I understood to mean “do you want me to iron this?” and so I said “si” and followed her back to the kitchen where I found Mama and Sebastian (as dog-tired as I was) eating breakfast.

I ate breakfast slow that day. Laughing to myself about how Mama had asked me if I wanted the milk in my cereal hot or cold on the first day and that though I had said “frío” I had been severed hot milk each morning after that. To be honest I got used to eating Corn Flakes with Hot Milk by the end of the weak but as this day was still only day 3 I was very happy to have my watermelon juice to help wash down the newly odd taste.

The day then continued as most days in my home stay did. Mama told me the plane, I made sure she thought I understood by saying it back to her and then went into my room and looked up the words I didn’t know. I would then get dressed and wait for the family to be ready.

Eventually the whole family was ready so we grabbed a taxi and went to church. I expected to go to Mass while I was in Honduras (if it any church at all) but my family was highly involved in a large Assembles of God church so, lucky for me, I understood a good deal of what was going on during the serves since I spent most of my pre and early teens in a AOG church back home.

It was after church that everything went crazy. Mama had told me we were doing some things with Johnny (her boyfriend) after church but what I did not understand is what “some things” meant to her.

Here is a list of the things we than did with Johnny.

We went and picked up more family
We bought Chinese food to eat later
We drove across the city and got soda
We drove for an hour (I loved that drive as I was in the bed of the pick-up) out of the city and into the mountains.
We stopped by this little town and looked around
We got in a paddle boat and paddled around
We meat more family
We went to Johnny’s parents house and I met them
His parent tried to talk to me
We went to where Johnny was building his new home
We drove for another half-hour higher into the mountains
We stopped, in the middle of this dirt road with a great view, and ate.

It was here, sitting on the top of one of Honduras many mountains, that I first started to think about Pine tress and it is here, after Chinese food on paper plates in the middle of a dirt road with 10 Hondurans, which I go back to again and again. See, when Johnny’s son (Juanito), Sebastian and I finished our food we started to run around the mountain. At first we kicked a ball around but when Sebastian almost sent it down the mountain we turned our attention to a grove of tall pine tress.

I had never seen pine tress like these before going to Honduras. They dwarfed the largest trees I had seen in the woods around my house and (as I soon discovered) these pine trees didn’t only seed via the brown pinecones I had learned to collect and turn into birdfeeders as a child (apply peanut butter sprinkle with bird seed) they also produced a soft hive shaped cone that was filled with sap and covered in something that looked like orange pollen.

Juanito and Sebastian got really excited when they sighted an orange pinecone and began grabbing rocks off the road to throw it. Juanito (who was a bit older than Sebastian and much stronger) hit it once or twice before Johnny came over and told Sebastian to climb the tree and shake it down for us. When the orange pinecone hit the dirt road it cracked open and a bunch of the orange powder rose into the air.

“Ven a me, Mateo” Johnny said, crouched beside the spilt pinecone and ushering me closer with his hand. “Mateo” he said picking up the split pinecone with his left hand and a normal brown pinecone with his right. “Mateo, esta es como vida.” (Matthew this is like life) he said shaking the two pinecones. “Un Pino” he said pointing at the pine tree with his lips “y dos frutas” (one tree and two fruits). He asked if I understood I told him yes and than asked why, “porque?”

His words:

“Las frutas de el pino son como hijos. Un pino y dos frutas son como un padre and dos hijos. Estan desde una cosa, pero las frutas estan muy differente?”

My Translation:

The fruits of the pine tree are like sons. One pine tree and two pinecones are like a father and two sons. They are from one thing, but the fruits are very different, yes?

“Si” I told him, puzzled now by the meaning of his words and not the definition and though I wanted to understand more I did not know what to ask. I wish I had asked, “Porque?” (as in why do you tell me this) but before I had much time to think Sebastian was out of the tree and had run over to get his orange pinecone from Johnny.

We soon left. The eleven of us all loaded back into the pickup, and we drove back down the mountain, Sebastian in the cab with Johnny, Mama and his Pinecone while Juanito and I sat in the truck bed (with the other six Hondurans) and watched the pine grove fade away, then the mountains, the small towns, until we were thrust back into the city. When we got back into the city Juanito slide over beside me and asked how to say “Dios te bendiga” in English. I told him, happy to be the one teaching for once.

When we got back home (after dropping family members at their houses) Juanito and I kicked a ball around while Sebastian, Johnny and Mama talked inside the house. Juanito and I did not talk much that evening as we kicked the ball around. I wonder if he was thinking about what his father had told me, I wonder if he understood why Johnny had told me this, if he understood the “why” behind the interesting metaphor. What little we said was in jest. I called him Juanito-ito-ito (ito means little) while he chased down the ball and because he was bigger than me (stronger, not taller) he called me “Ito” as I struggled to dribble the ball passed him.

When Johnny emerged from the house he called Juanito and I over to him. “Buenos-Noches, Mateo” he said pulling me into a hug. “Buesnos-Noches.” I said glade to understand both what and why he was saying this. When Johnny let me go Juanito smiled at me and said “God bless you, ito” before pulling me into a hug. “Dios te bendiga, también” I told him, laughing as he hit my back with all his strength.

Mama came out of the house and Johnny and Juanito got into the pickup. We waved goodbye, and as Johnny rolled away he said, as if he thought I might forget.

Como dos hijos, Mateo (Like two brother, Matthew)

I laughed hard for the first time during home stay when he said that, I can’t explain why. He didn’t say it to be funny, he said it to teach me something, to pass on wisdom, but when I laughed he didn’t look confused, or hurt, he smiled and gave me a thumbs up, so I repeated what he told me back on the mountain as he rolled to far away to hear me, before anything else, I walked to my room and I wrote it down, word for word, in my journal.

“Las frutas de el pino son como hijos. Un pino y dos frutas son como un padre and dos hijos. Estan desde una cosa, pero las frutas estan muy differente!”

I am still not sure what Johnny meant by his lesson with the pinecones. I wish I knew if he meant padre like father or Padre like God, but then I am glade I don’t understand because if I did than I guess I wouldn’t still be thinking about that orange pinecone which sat in our sink for the rest of the week, dripping sap.