They call me 'Mommy': but I'm still an outsider.

THEY CALL ME "MOMMY." I was expecting Auntie or sayama (teacher), or maybe Daw Rhoda or Daw May Than Kyi, my Burmese name from when I lived and worked in the country as a young woman. But they choose Mommy. It is startling; I shrink. Why? Somehow it is an imperative--I feel I have to act like a mommy, take responsibility of all kinds. I feel like they've forced this on me; I don't want it. But I, a "rich" white American woman, have barged into their lives. And they've accepted me, taken me into their circle. Still, I resist the name, resent the assumption of such an intimate claim.

They are flower sellers I met in a local street market in Rangoon, Burma--four sisters ranging in age from 34 to 42, leaving home with great bundles of flowers on their heads at 4 o'clock every morning, seven days a week, to travel two hours by foot, by slow-slow train and finally by trishaw (a bicycle with two seats at the side) to a location near the small hotel where I am living for three months. They net $1 or $2 each on a regular day, up to $4 on a great day. Various-aged children often tag along; one sister was pregnant and now carries her newborn who sleeps in a large, flat basket among the flower buckets and crates. I am a short, white-haired, white woman from the United States, an organizer and researcher with no specific project in mind. I want to see if I can make some small contribution to this country which helped form my life when, as a recent college graduate, I stayed for three years without coming home, working in a local social center and teaching in a big, renowned high school. Burma's fledgling independence, after decades of colonial rule and a world war fought on its soil, fell to a military coup just eight months after I left in 1961, and has been controlled by a junta ever since. This is my first visit after 42 years.

Having raised and sold flowers in a small city farmers' market myself, I love the idea of spending early morning hours at an all-women flower sellers' booth less than a block from the house where I used to live all those years before. And what better surroundings to practice my halting Burmese? The women have their own reasons for letting me into their world, laughing at and with me as I learn to remove damaged petals from roses one by one, feeding me ...