“I want to do it again,” my girlfriend says. “It’s so relaxing!” I agree with her. Unfamiliar activities require our full concentration and full dedication. All the petty worries and obsessions of everyday life fall away from us automatically. It’s both relaxing and exhilarating, at least for me, since I’ve never been much into needlework and could not fully imagine how this strip of paper would become a flower.
But when my friend reached for tissue paper, she ruthlessly called the volunteer back: “Sorry,” she says, “only one flower per person! After all, others also want to do needlework. ” In fact, there was already a queue behind us. So we get up and move on to the next table, where we make and decorate simple picture frames out of cardboard and aluminum foil.
Family day at the museum in Monterey, where Victor is exhibited. For this day, he prepared various activities, especially for children. When I picked it up the night before, five tables were ready. But then there were more than 200 visitors instead of the planned 50, more stations had to be installed, more materials purchased and more volunteers called in. The museum is bursting at the seams, and yet it is relatively quiet inside. Children and adults are seated at all tables, leaning intently over their work. No one runs, no one raises their voice, no one loses his temper, even the smallest ones. And so will I, if my needlework turns out to be completely different from what I imagined.
But soon I put my hands down and look instead. Most of the families are of Mexican origin. In Salinas, an hour away, they grow artichokes and strawberries, most of the field workers come from the other side of the border, many only seasonally. But those who have families with them are here longer, their children study in American schools. “We don’t want them to lose touch with their culture,” they say. This culture is foreign to other children, but they take on projects with the same enthusiasm.
“In San Francisco, I’m going to have problems again,” Victor says, pointing to a table where a motley group is working together. “Some say we can’t share our culture with strangers, it dilutes it. This is some nonsense! Our culture, every culture is always in constant change!”
The girl uses a stick to pierce the intertwined tendrils and butterflies into her aluminum frame. “You’re really good,” I tell her. And she, without raising her head: “Yes, I know.” She later tells Victor that she wants to be an artist too. “I didn’t even know it was a job.”
“That’s exactly what happened to me when I was your age…”
There are miniature altars in shoeboxes at the next table. Victor has sawn small blocks of wood that can be glued, painted and decorated to your liking. I stand behind the little boy and look over his shoulder. “Papa,” he writes on his altar. He lost his father this year, his mother explains when she picks him up. The boy allows Victor to take a picture, the altar solemnly raised in front of his chest, his eyes dark and serious. They go, mother and boy, he carries the altar, she puts her hand on his shoulder. And for a moment it seems that the three of them are together again.