Читать книгу I Love the Word Impossible - Ann Kiemel - Страница 11

i grew up in hawaii.

i was caucasian.

but there was something

about the oriental-island culture

that absorbed under my skin.

i found myself feeling japanese-hawaiian.

or maybe i was wanting to feel that, because i

wasn’t.

i was the minority.

i went through school being one in a handful of

“haoles”… or foreigners.

a minority isn’t fun. you stick out.

everything good and bad that you do

shows.

some natural instinct makes us want to be at home

in and a part of our setting. an acceptable part.

my twin sister and i hung close.

we cried a lot.

we wanted dark skin.

that was beautiful.

we were blue-eyed and very fair.

orientals are generally short and petite.

we were tall and long-legged. most students

were buddhists and hindus. we were Christian.

on our friends’ coffee tables were shrines. on ours,

the Bible. it seemed in every way,

we were oddities

in our setting.

the sun brought us as close to dark skin as we could

get. we spent hours on saturdays baking on waikiki

shore lines, hoping to blend in with the others.

today, jan and i are still sun lovers. we still feel

more secure with a tan. feelings one learns in

childhood are so hard to unlearn.

i find myself still working at keeping my back very

straight. as a child, i almost wished to be stooped

rather than peer over everyone.

anything to keep me from being too

noticed in what i thought was a negative way.

one kid who attended high school with my sister

and me was also caucasian, and Christian.

he was struggling for acceptance, too. he

struggled so hard that he ignored us. i think i

understand.

if he could remove himself from the minority

he was a part of, then maybe the majority would

naturally scoop him in as one of them. it left us

more alone, more insecure about our personhood,

more rejecting of it.

my sister recalls my mother or father coming to

pick us up after school.

she’d always go stand close to a group of kids so

my parents wouldn’t know she had no friends. we

knew that the prejudice existed.

our minority position stared hard at us. but we

hoped others weren’t so aware. there’s some

comfort in not being pitied or openly rejected.

we feel prejudice about a lot of things,

but it’s subtle.

that’s the way most prejudice is.

we don’t scream about it. it shows through in

mean, undercutting ways.

there are lots of prejudices, and they always create

pain and hurt.

often they are created for funny reasons, silly

reasons.

they make church groups distant and cold and

unable to relate

as caring circles.

love heals prejudice

because love accepts people where they are.

how they look, how they act, what their

potential is, or isn’t. it makes no demands,

no stipulations. it constantly reaches out

and says, “you may be at one pole and i

at another… but can we be friends

and learn from each other?”

a close friend of mine is a journalist who claims to

be agnostic. we met when she interviewed me for

a newspaper feature. she’s pretty, vibrant, brilliant

in her world.

she has a lovely family i’m fond of.

after we’ve been out together, and i start to leave,

i always say,

“vera, i really love you…”

and vera always responds, “i love you, too…”

i laugh and hug her and think how wonderful it

is that even taking the most sacred thing in my

life and seeing it as pure skepticism in another

doesn’t have to build a wall. God’s love streaks

through the barriers. of course,

i wish vera believed in Jesus Christ. but we love

each other in spite of our differences.

prejudice never lived in our relationship…

not even in the beginning.

when i was twelve, we took a tiny hawaiian baby to

live with us. she was a gift from her family who

already had eleven.

they considered it an honor to entrust us

with their twelfth. if ever a baby had love and

attention to grow in, lani did.

we were white, but somehow we were able to bring

into our family circle the brown skin and black

eyes that we so loved.

God planned people.

all of us.

under the skin or the type of dress or the difference

of language or drawl…

under the facade of house and neighborhood and

“what does your father do?”… similar hurts and

feelings exist.

at different times, everybody cries and laughs

and fails and feels embarrassed and insecure

and needs warmth and someone to call a

friend.

so when all the outside layers are peeled, prejudice

gets tossed out, too.

love made me reach out again and again growing

up.

not shoving, pushing love… but love that says

simply, with affirmation,

“i am a person with purpose and value. i will

be patient as you work at remembering that…”

by the time i graduated from high school, i was no

longer alienated.

it took time.

love does.

but the circle “drew us in.”

i felt belonging in the cafeteria,

in the gym,

at the bus stop.

love won.

it paid.

eric is my friend.

maybe i love him extra because he’s black.

i can imagine how it must feel

in a white-dominated world.

he’s six, and his favorite thing for me to do with

him is rub his head.

he stands tall with arms at his side, and

squirms with delight as i stroke his head

and pat his face.

“eric, i love you. it’s fun being your friend…”

word came to me that eric was to go in

for open heart surgery, and the odds were

poor.

i was upset.

i couldn’t lose eric.

he has reason to live.

the night before surgery, i drove into

massachusetts general hospital and went to the

sixth floor; most of the children were asleep.

not eric.

clean pajamas, tucked under fresh sheets.

i picked him up,

cradled him on my lap,

and rubbed his head.

“eric, you aren’t scared, are you? don’t be

scared. Jesus is going to sit right here by your

bedside all night,

just taking care of you, eric,

i love you… be brave for me.”

i prayed with eric and tucked him back under, and

walked out wondering if i’d ever see him again.

i did.

he came through.

he now scoots around on a shiny red tricycle.

i worry about eric. he lives in south boston.

and racial prejudice is exploding and killing

everywhere. i hope my love for him makes a

difference.

i hope it teaches him that people belong

together.

all kinds.

in hawaii all the manger scenes at Christmas

picture a dark-skinned Christ child.

love sees no differences.

Jesus, make my heart wide.

so wide that differences don’t matter.

just beating hearts and minds.