About four months ago I was at an awards luncheon in Los Angeles which recognized the efforts of several citizens who have fought against racism and intolerance. I was seated beside an elderly woman, I guess she was in her sixties. She had a very sweet nature, a very shy loveable peaceful way about her.
Speaker after speaker got up to recognize someone or to accept an award as we were served lunch. The woman listened attentively, politely. She accepted each dish with curiousity, she smiled and thanked the servers each time she was brought something new.
I tried to pay attention to everything being said, I really did. There were a lot of noble efforts being recognized, a lot of hard work being acknowledged. There was an old man there who received an award for publicly fighting against homophobia since 1958. The problem was that there were so many awards, so many people speaking that I got tired of listening. So I sat politely and began interacting with the old woman next to me. We exchanged a lot of smiles, nodded and smiled acknowledging each new taste, each new dish.
Then someone said something from the podium, the speaking was finally drawing to a close, and the woman next to me began crying. Silently, quietly, trying to be unobtrusive. I was torn between the instinct to help her and the fear that I may make her uncomfortable by bringing attention to her tears, so I tried to be unobtrusive as I reached out to her. She leaned into me, it was really very touching.
After that, the speakers finished altogether and we were brought dessert. The old woman turned to me, here eyes big and bold, and she showed me a brooch she had on a chain around her neck.
She told me it was her son. She told me he had had a hardware store in Simi Valley. She told me that he had been murdered on September 15th, 2001, four days after the World Trade Center attack, that he had been targeted in his store specifically because he was Muslim. She told me that after he was dead she found out some things about him that she hadn't known, that he had never told her. People approached her at his funeral, one after the other, and told her how he had lent them money, arranged credit for their family, bought things of his own accord for their children, people he had hardly known at the time of his kindnesses. The woman wept as she told me this, her eyes were so big and so full of pain, and I knew she would carry this pain for the rest of her life.
I was reminded of a story my mother had told me of when she was a little girl. It was during world war two and my mother lived in New York City and one night she found herself outside her father's shoe store, in her mother's arms, watching as her father tried to put out the flames burning his looted shop to the ground. His shop had been looted and burned because a mob of Americans had learned that the owner was Jewish, and there were those who were blaming Jews for the war raging in Europe.
The next day the surrounding shopkeepers helped clean the ruins of my grandfather's shop. The neighborhood residents banded together and raised a sum of money for my grandfather to reopen his shop. These people were not Jewish, my mother told me, but they respected her father. He was too heartbroken; he could not believe this had happened to him in America.
The old woman at the luncheon I went to said almost the exact same thing.
Speaker after speaker got up to recognize someone or to accept an award as we were served lunch. The woman listened attentively, politely. She accepted each dish with curiousity, she smiled and thanked the servers each time she was brought something new.
I tried to pay attention to everything being said, I really did. There were a lot of noble efforts being recognized, a lot of hard work being acknowledged. There was an old man there who received an award for publicly fighting against homophobia since 1958. The problem was that there were so many awards, so many people speaking that I got tired of listening. So I sat politely and began interacting with the old woman next to me. We exchanged a lot of smiles, nodded and smiled acknowledging each new taste, each new dish.
Then someone said something from the podium, the speaking was finally drawing to a close, and the woman next to me began crying. Silently, quietly, trying to be unobtrusive. I was torn between the instinct to help her and the fear that I may make her uncomfortable by bringing attention to her tears, so I tried to be unobtrusive as I reached out to her. She leaned into me, it was really very touching.
After that, the speakers finished altogether and we were brought dessert. The old woman turned to me, here eyes big and bold, and she showed me a brooch she had on a chain around her neck.
She told me it was her son. She told me he had had a hardware store in Simi Valley. She told me that he had been murdered on September 15th, 2001, four days after the World Trade Center attack, that he had been targeted in his store specifically because he was Muslim. She told me that after he was dead she found out some things about him that she hadn't known, that he had never told her. People approached her at his funeral, one after the other, and told her how he had lent them money, arranged credit for their family, bought things of his own accord for their children, people he had hardly known at the time of his kindnesses. The woman wept as she told me this, her eyes were so big and so full of pain, and I knew she would carry this pain for the rest of her life.
I was reminded of a story my mother had told me of when she was a little girl. It was during world war two and my mother lived in New York City and one night she found herself outside her father's shoe store, in her mother's arms, watching as her father tried to put out the flames burning his looted shop to the ground. His shop had been looted and burned because a mob of Americans had learned that the owner was Jewish, and there were those who were blaming Jews for the war raging in Europe.
The next day the surrounding shopkeepers helped clean the ruins of my grandfather's shop. The neighborhood residents banded together and raised a sum of money for my grandfather to reopen his shop. These people were not Jewish, my mother told me, but they respected her father. He was too heartbroken; he could not believe this had happened to him in America.
The old woman at the luncheon I went to said almost the exact same thing.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
badm0j02:
i like your peircings/tattoos comments. ever entertaining is the truth
badm0j02:
when we feel a hug welling up in us for a stranger, there's always that brief fear of misunderstanding or being shunned.