Today's Lesson

Librarian 9-5, M-F. Significantly stranger person all other times.

Posts tagged Remember

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After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

Filed under feminism kindness remember

194,371 notes

fishingboatproceeds:

meghantonjes:

THIS IS EVERYTHING.

How does this have 15,000 notes?

Anyway, context: I received this good advice from my chaplaincy supervisor when I worked as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital in 2000. We were talking not about any of the terrible things I’d witnessed at the hospital but about my breakup with my college girlfriend.

One time when I was a chaplain, this especially awful thing happened, and a bunch of us had to attend this post trauma debriefing/group therapy session. (The theory goes that this was a way to prevent or minimize PTSD, I think.) So here is this big group of people—doctors, nurses, social workers, paramedics, etc.—all being forced to attend this group therapy session they don’t particularly want to be at, and the counselor person is asking all of us to recount what happened that night, which no one is particularly inclined to do.

Eventually, I tell a story about my girlfriend: When I came home the morning after this thing had happened, I was really freaking out, and she was not particularly empathetic.   This story animates everyone: They all start talking about my girlfriend, and how she’s just like their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, and how I should really break up with her, because that’ll show her.

So I did break up with her.

Of course, I immediately regretted it, but once she was free of obligation to me she probably felt tremendous relief and had no intention of re-entangling. (This was very sane and mature of her, in retrospect.) So I spent my days moping around the hospital, not because of the horrible things I’d seen but because I missed this woman so much. And I felt like an idiot being so upset over this girl when there were far worse things happening around me at the hospital every day.

Which just made everything worse: I was sad because I was no longer close to this woman I loved. And then I was ashamed because I felt more upset about my own stupid romantic problems than about the illness and death that was all around me in the hospital. I felt like my problems were silly and small, but they still made me very sad, and I could never seem to get out of that spiral.

All of this combined to make me super annoying to be around. Fortunately, I was surrounded by chaplains, who are basically professionally empathetic, and are required by job description to listen to you.

It was my supervisor who finally helped me understand why I was so sad, and that I should feel sad. So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that’s not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. 

I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren’t constantly berating yourself for being sad.

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