Comfortable and Good at the Laotian Church

Sabai dee baw, tuuk tuuk kon, Sabai dee baw? This Lao greeting, roughly translated in my brain as "Are you comfortable and good?" we sang at the opening of each Laotian church service in San Diego, where my parents were supporting the work of the Lao pastor there. "Are you comfortable and good, one and all? Are you comfortable and good?" (The proper response to "Sabai dee baw?" is "Sabai dee." "I'm comfortable and good"--I have well-being.) The rest is a blur--me at thirteen years old, a bright, dry new city after New York and Pennsylvania, metal folding chairs, a few songs, and some teaching in Lao, which I didn't really follow.

Oddly, I'd had the impression that I knew Lao, as I had spoken something close to that with my neighborhood friends in Northeast Thailand. I hadn't realized the degree to which my grasp of that language had eroded each term I'd gone off to boarding school, starting at eight years old. For reasons unclear to me, I was left instead with a standard Thai, which sounds the most familiar to me even now. Another discovery, which I had to make the hard way back then, was that the two languages weren't necessarily mutually intelligible.

I was under the impression that they were a dialect, or even an accent. I imagined them as close, as Southern American English is to whatever it is the rest of us speak. But when I found myself choosing Thai to talk to a couple of young women cleaning up after an event, they looked at me strangely, even as they answered. My mom had to set me straight later on when I asked her about the women's reaction. "No, it's actually a different language. They're really not as close as you think." The language barrier and the cultural barrier--between my fellow English speakers and me--shaped my experiences that summer.

We also attended the sedate Brethren church, pastored by our host at the little house in the Barrio, that shared the building with the Laotian congregation. Older ladies wore white kerchiefs on their heads--an observance of the Apostle Paul's head covering discussion in Corinthians. Again, my mom had to explain this to me. There were a few kids there, and I met an age mate who shared my first name. A hospitable and eager companion, she talked frequently about my coming over to her house to spend the night. We would walk down to the local gas station, she said, and get "munchies." (Eventually, parent permission for this arrangement was sought and acquired. I stayed for what felt like days. That was the same family with four kids and the classic TV shows that brought on my yearning to return to my quiet chair and library book under the wind chimes.)

At picnics and events with the Lao church, I was always game for the food--often quantities of laap, minced or ground meat with lime and hot peppers to eat with sticky rice. We'd go to the Bay and spend hours there, amongst the stubby trees that were good for climbing and the cropped, sandy grass. I grew attached to some of the familiar faces and talked to the kids in English. Eventually, over the years, the Lao picnics faded into Cambodian picnics, and I was unsure why this was. I had fewer links to our Cambodian friends, although I'd encounter a few familiar phrases and savory dishes.

Indoor parties with the Lao were commemorated with karaoke numbers. The emcee would get up with the microphone and announce beforehand, "Pang tee nung . . . Pang tee song . . ." (Song number one . . . . Song number two.) Then followed the singing, which could go on for quite some time. A few years later, I brought my fiance to one of these gatherings--who knows how I got reconnected--and the degree of collective karaoke stamina was brought home to me.

That summer, we left Harold and Barbara's nest and landed our own place in South San Diego. First, we toured homes, considering what we could afford. I remember one run-down candidate, where I kept up my habit of making little observations in front of the manager. "Look, though. It has plenty of cupboard space." My mom finally had to discourage these comments in a discreet aside: "Don't do that, okay?"

In one neighborhood, where I seem to remember uneven sidewalks and grass sprouting through the cracks, we saw a little girl on a bike regarding us as we cruised down the street. My dad pulled up alongside her. "Hi. Do you live around here?" She took off like a startled rabbit. Yes, it was well-meant, but Dad hadn't watched the recent "don't talk to strangers" documentary that I had just seen. He didn't realize that he had taken the script word-for-word from the creepy bad guy in the dramatizations. The little girl had done just what the TV program advised. She had pedaled away, despite the fact that our station wagon, laden with mom, dad and kids would have been an unlikely vehicle for a kidnapper. You never know, though. It's best to be safe.

We finally landed on a brown-carpeted and draped three-bedroom stucco house up behind another house, but I'll leave that story for another day. It was that same summer, before I started eighth grade, when we went to camp with the other kids from the Brethren church, traveling up in a van on the appointed week for our age group. I'd never been to a real summer camp before, and this one was a classic: pine trees, a chapel with fun songs, free time with options like a "craft shack" where we could choose to paint plaster figurines, a swimming pool, and more.

However, cabin assignments blended kids from different church groups, so my cabin consisted of me, two sisters from a family of four girls who were all named after the seasons, and another camper I didn't know. And after a day or so, I drew the short straw and became the odd one out. The air inside the cabin had a stifling "they've just been talking about you" feel to it as I entered, and my roommates looked down at me, cross-legged in their bunks. They asked a loaded question or two, and I was too paralyzed and self-conscious for a good comeback. I'd just say something awkward and fuel their fire. If there had still been windchimes to go back to, I would have dreamed of those.

Life was soon to switch tracks again, although we stayed on at the brown house. We didn't work long at the Lao church. Was it six months? A year? Maybe once we started attending a different church, my dad continued with the Laotian congregation for a while longer. Meanwhile, my parents enrolled us in a small Baptist school in our area of town, my mom got a job, and I found the place where I'd be connected for the next thirty-eight years and counting.