I know what is it like to be viewed with suspicion. I know the fear of having police stop me and demand my papers, and the terrors that descended upon me when those same police told me that my papers were no good, despite the fact that they were. I know what it means to be somewhere illegally, even though it was the right thing to do.
What I had seen as elegant and understated, they saw as effectively communicating a message of restrained grief; not the exuberant celebration of joyful transformed lives that Dia de los Muertos proclaims. So, with my “permission” the ladies set to making it a proper altar.
St. Stephen and the Incarnation’s Misa Alegría congregation was just six months old when I suggested we might celebrate Día de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead – as a way to invite our English-speaking brothers and sisters to join us around the table. After all, most North Americans have some inkling of this strange and colorful holiday that is the Mexican commemoration of All Souls’ Day.
While gathering paperwork to get our son registered for kindergarten a few weeks ago, I came across the hospital record of his birth in San Francisco. Beneath his gender designation, length, and weight at birth was his racial designation in big-block capitals: UNKNOWN. It stopped me dead in my tracks.