Stress? Not me. I have a Gardening Angel
Peggy Don’t Care About No Stinkin’ Cartels!
Don’t I have a lovely garden of spring flowers?
What I have is the privilege of knowing a very special person. Peggy was visiting one day when I was whining about the fact that because of the drought, Central Texas had no bluebonnets this year. She called later to say I was wrong. As she’d left my house, she’d noticed a bluebonnet out by my mailbox. “Impossible,” I said, and went to look. There it was, a beautiful artificial bluebonnet at the base of the mailbox. The next morning my bluebonnet was joined by a pair of Indian paintbrushes. Then four giant daises. Then a troll and a couple of gnomes to watch over the blossoming garden. On Memorial Day i walked out into the courtyard and saluted my own American flag. The next weekend, here come the flamingos.
Somewhere in the nighttimes, my secret Gardening Angel was at work. But this entry is not about my garden. It’s about Peggy’s garden. Peggy is a true Guardian Angel for hundreds of the poorest of the poor living in the midst of daily violence. Peggy hasn’t let the drug cartel bloodbaths keep her away. She says she can’t let the desperately poor be forgotten.
Once a month, Peggy loads up her rented van with donated food from Austin businesses and heads across the border at Laredo. Yep. That border, the one with the tanks lined up at the bridge, the one
separating the most dangerous cities in the world from Texas, the border no one else is crossing these days. The last few times Peggy has crossed, she’s been accosted by teen gangs banging on the roof of the van, asking what she’s carrying, then backing off when she answers, “Food for the poor. Do you really want to steal food from the poor?”
They let Peggy pass. She crosses into Nuevo Laredo calling to be let inside the high walls of the orphanage. Little girls at Casa Hogar–with no other home and no parents–run out squealing, “Peggy! Peggy! Miss Peggy!”
Peggy’s van has items for the girls who have nothing, along with the food she’s carted across the border for the people in the colonias outside Nuevo Laredo who have less than nothing.
Usually, the girls in the orphanage help with the colonias project. When I went with Peggy the girls got up at 5:00 in the morning to convert supplies into hundreds of sandwiches and to bundle individual bags of a pound of rice, a pound of beans, an orange, rice and two baloney sandwiches. At nine or so, Peggy heads out from the safety of the orphanage to the makeshift shacks of the colonias.
Before she parks the van in the rutted dirt in the colonias, children and grandmothers, some on crutches one in a wheel chair (that Peggy found a way to provide) come running from around dozens of corners.
She stands on top of the vehicle, says “Good morning!” then calls out for everyone to line up. The line goes on as far as the eye can see.
People often ask me, “What does a person with a Defined Self look like?”
The reference in the Page on Differentiation on reads:
4. As you work on clarifying your beliefs and responsibilities you must begin acting in accordance with them. Many people say that they believe something, but if you watch them they often do not do what they say they believe in doing. This does not mean that they are lying, or lazy or even wrong. It does mean that if work on differentiation of self they will to be less successful than might otherwise be the case. To work toward differentiation of self means that one’s beliefs must be put into practice.
The most amazing part of who Peggy is can best be said this way. When those little girls come running out to her van, they’re not running out for the goodies. They are thrilled to see Peggy because is the brightest light in their world and one heck of a fun person.
