Sometimes, you unexpectedly meet someone who changes your life forever, though you will never see that person again, and it’s in the most unexpected of places with that person under the guise of a perfectly ordinary passerby. And then you start talking, and something begins to resonate beautifully – you begin to see the person’s dreams and every word makes up a melody where formerly you could barely understand a word that person was saying.
Today, my last shift at my old volunteering job, it happened, just in the space of forty minutes. The building’s traffic was winding down, with not many new patients around, so I sat down for the second time with the voluble Ecuadorian immigrant I had spoken to – or mostly, listened to – a few weeks back. Evidently, she remembered me as vividly as I remembered her.
She began with a lament as last time, with the witty summary: “It’s expensive to live, and it’s expensive to die.” Sixty dollars for a bottle of eye drops that turned out to be the same size as a sample that her doctor gave her; $240 for four pills (a month’s worth) to treat osteoporosis. And as last time, she reiterated her homesickness and desire to return home, where she had not visited for 20 years. But her legs – and now her eye – might be keeping her here.
It was at this point that the conversation began to change. I had never known why exactly she wished to go back to Ecuador, and finally she began to talk at length about it. She told me how there were so many poor people in her home town, and how there were so many old people who couldn’t get from place to place anymore.
She told me about how the rich are always going on vacation to this country and that, all for fun and leisure, seemingly ignorant of the tragedies befalling so many people. “If only they could give me a sewing machine … I could sew overcoats for the women and work shirts for the men.” And she went on to tell me about her grand dream of heading up a new church with a big bell on top, that would cook meals and give free juice during ceremonies and have a space for weddings; that would care for orphans and transport the elderly who lost their means of going to church. There would be a rotation of movies played as well in LSC style, with one comedy for the kids and one serious movie for the adults, but only once a month since it’d probably cost money, and people don’t have that much money to spend on leisure. She even talked about bringing warm meals to the inmates at jails, along with sending prayers, so that perhaps the warmth might bring back the misguided people to goodness.
And she talked about community, too: how, in the United States, neighbors are so distant, sometimes complete strangers. How no one goes next door to ask, “Hey, how are you doing?” on a regular basis, how no younger ones come to stay and take care of the elderly. How she only asked one favor out of her neighbor – to bring her a bottle of milk – and the neighbor forgot. She reminisced on the closeness of family and community in her childhood, and smiled at the thought of having people over and such if she ever could find a new home.
All this generosity and goodwill … coming from a woman whose savings have been plundered by those she trusted, and who still must work despite her obvious old age and frail health because of repeated taxing (esp. by the Reagan administration, she noted, if ironically). From a woman who is not some rich entrepreneur looking for something fun to invest in and make her name famous for. She said she didn’t want her name associated with any of it – just the church – for she feared for her own safety if others thought she was rich.
But the contrary, she is not rich at all. When she finally stated how much money she had to her name, I almost froze. The possessions in my room alone total to a greater sum. And yet she never once mentioned something she wanted to buy for herself, except a home with a big kitchen – and even then, that would be for cooking meals for others. She never once said she hated those who had cheated her out of her money – the Lord would take care of that.
But I nearly cried when I heard all of this, because there was a twinge of “Death of a Salesman” in the whole dream … because it might never come true. Because poor health and dwindling savings eaten away by huge medical costs and a terrible insurance plan might prevent her from even stepping on the plane. Because maybe the rent money supposedly saved up by her niece might have all been spent already. And it was really then that it hit me, how much is left to do in this world that may seem to some to be already perfect and quite a nice place to live in. I realized that kindness is not just taking your family on a trip or giving a birthday gift to a friend, it’s also seeing the bigger picture, of never giving up on the possibility of bringing happiness to people you don’t even know, and maybe even people who have wronged you.
If an elderly woman with damaged knees, osteoporosis, and an infected eye, who finds cell phones and air conditioning to be luxuries, can still believe in the dream of building and giving happiness to those who need it most, I sure as heck better believe, too. Her accent was thick, her English broken … but every word that she uttered was crystal clear to my ears.
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