"Besame"

Growing up I had the great fortune of being in a family that could afford to travel. My father had served his mission for the LDS Church in Germany and was anxious to show us the ropes. It was during this trip that I began the tradition of learning at least one new phrase in a foreign language every time I left the country. I learned how to say, “Cream of mushroom soup,” “Those Americans - they fight like women,” and, “I don’t speak German,” in German. Random phrases, however, are not at all the only things I’ve learned from these trips.

In the summer of 2008 I embarked on what would be the last vacation paid for by my parents before I began my life as an independent adult. We would go to Cancun, Mexico with a group sponsored by my high school; the trip would include all of the normal escapes to beaches and ruins, but the majority of it would be spent far from Aztec remains and wide expanses of sea and sky.

I got to spend my final free vacation working in Orphanages and Soup Kitchens. Every morning my family, my roommates and I woke up early to make ourselves look as beautiful as was reasonable before choking down something unrecognizable and climbing onto the bus for the long drive to wherever we were going that day. As soon as we arrived, we parted ways for the day. My dad and my little sister went to the orphanage, usually to do paintwork or assemble the new playground toys that we had bought them. My mom split her days between the Orphanage and the Soup Kitchen; she spent her time giving haircuts and so went wherever she was needed most. I went to the Soup Kitchen. I was a Dental Assistant, but only in the basest sense of the term. I assisted the dentists by means of washing the blood off the instruments and reloading the needles for shots. On occasion they had need of a few extra hands to hold down the latest child, or even adult, who seriously needed extreme dental work and desperately wanted anything else.

I wasn’t able to work in an orphanage until the day before we left. I spent all of that morning painting around windows, but eventually my break came and I could at last spend some time with the children. I had been looking forward to this chance all week, but when it came right down to it I realized that the language barrier did nothing to quell my natural awkwardness with children. I joined a group of friends who were speaking excitedly into a cluster of small, round faces and grabbed a hold of a student I recognized who spoke Spanish fluently.

“Tell me something I can say to them,” I begged.

Paul looked thoughtful for a moment, then replied, “Tell them, ‘Besame.’”

“Bay-sa-may?”

He nodded. I turned back to the tiny eager faces and held my breath, waiting for some kind of Divine intervention. It took the form of a little boy who had the courage to walk up to me with a small smile on his face. I knew enough Spanish to understand when he introduced himself and to convey my own name; then out of my mouth came tumbling, “Besame amigo.”

The little boy placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed down until we were at eye level, and then he leaned forward and softly pressed his lips to my cheek. Before I could recover the little boy grinned shyly and retreated back into the larger group of orphans, and voices began calling out that it was time to board the buses for the final time.

“Paul!” I shouted.

The boy I’d spoken to a minute before turned toward me.

“What does ‘Besame’ mean?”

“It means ‘Kiss me,’” He responded with a grin. I turned from my group and ran back to the small group of children. Quickly finding the boy I was looking for, I pulled him into a tight hug before planting a kiss firmly on his cheek.

“Adios,” he said, smiling widely.

“Adios.”

As I pondered these few short moments during the short walk to the buses and the much longer flight back home, I decided that the so-called “Language Barrier” has a number of loopholes. Love is a universal language, and if I can ask for a kiss and directions to the bathroom, I’ll survive. All I need to learn now is the Spanish translation for “Cream of mushroom soup.”