5/05/1993,
I have been renting a room from a Fijian family in Kinoya, Suva for the last few months while I continue to teach at the Pacific Regional Seminary. My landlady is a widow with two daughters and a son in the background. The younger daughter is 5 years old and always speaks English to me. At breakfast as I put marmalade on my toast she watches me like a hawk and as soon as I go for a second helping of marmalade she shouts. “Enough, enough!” I retire ashamed.
On Saturday I can laze over breakfast and chat with my landlady. One Saturday she was going to a wedding later that morning. “I always cry at weddings,” she admitted. “Why?” “Because when I see the bride all dressed up and radiant with joy, I think to myself, ’You don’t realize the problems and troubles that are waiting to ambush you!’”
My landlady has a guava tree in the small patch in front of her house. Beyond that there is a bus stand. This year the guava crop has been good and she sells them to the people waiting at the bus stop. I asked her one evening how much money she had made that day. “Nineteen dollars” she said. “But some days I can make twenty four or twenty five dollars.” You know,” she said, “Yesterday I went out and hugged the guava tree and said to it,” You are great! It is because of you that I can feed Father!”
by Fr. Frank Hoare
