Spain, 1983. I had taken a year of high school Spanish and a year of college Spanish, yet I had no clue what this fellow was saying at the end of his sentences.
Maybe I “learned” the verb entender but forgot what it meant. Or maybe it wasn’t in the Spanish books we used.
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Fostering Love and Learning
Mom and Dad (a.k.a., Marty and Jim Dwyer) never became proficient in Spanish or Portuguese.
Even so, they opened their doors and hearts to strangers because they were fluent in the most important language: love.
My parents taught me how to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion—long before DEI or the internet was a thing. But after the advent of color television and NBC’s Today Show.
Curiosity about other languages and cultures. Where does it come from? How has it developed? How can we apply what we learn about others and ourselves to open doors to common ground. To open our hearts?
August 14 was my mom’s birthday—or it would have been. I learned that it was also Father's Day in Brazil. Neither of my parents became proficient in Portuguese or Spanish, but they fostered kids from other countries and and adoption of diversity, equity and inclusion—long before these terms or even the Internet were in fashion but after the advent of color television and NBC’s Today Show.
As a youngster and teenager, I was sometimes afraid of change. I was at times unkind and grateful. But the lessons my parents were trying to teach me all along have stuck with me.
Now, all these years later, I’m putting the puzzle pieces together—a powwow, a Laotian refugee, the Hebrew word meaning peace, a Russian tea, the Vietnamese foster brothers and sisters, becoming a Spanish teacher, learning Portuguese..
in the last two weeks and prompted by a post about Father’s Day in our Brasil-Boston Interchange WhatsApp group, I’ve been re-connecting with my brothers, sisters and cousins, as well as Bob Dotson, author of American Story: A Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things.
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¿Todos van al cine?
As a college sophomore and a novice Spanish-speaker studying in Spain, I once asked my madrileño friends, “¿Todos van al cine?” Or so I thought.
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