Connections

In 1999 I made a life-changing decision. I packed up an odd assortment of clothes, books, old letters, journals and headed for Copenhagen, Denmark to give birth to my child. There are many things I left behind: friends, belongings, family. In the landscape of family, there was my father, living in a home on Dekalb Avenue. My father's kidneys had failed him and due to his insistence at not showing up for his dialysis and the fact that he was officially a ward of the state, he had very little options. His health was bad. He had already suffered numerous strokes which let him unable to use the right arm and hand. I had visited him in the hospital a few times, and the last time was due to the fact that his neighbor had found him passed out in his room. He was not happy to be in the home. He complained endlessly about it and in fact, one day, with his face full of rare hope asked me, "Lesley, why don't we live together?" To which I immediately and flatly replied, "No." I was an adult by then, no longer a child and childhood was something I was happy to be over and done with. Childhood for me was an imprisonment guarded by fumbling adults asleep at the wheel, and my father was no exception. His volatile emotions, addictions, violence, dementia, outbursts were fixed episodes while growing up, and there were no indications, at that point, when he asked me, that he had changed much. When I had suggested, for example, that he drank water instead of warm 40s he scoffed, "Water? Only poor people drink water." This from a man whose kidneys had already failed repeatedly.
Anyway, it is no easy matter to not show up for the the attempt of a Hollywood fix for your relationship with your father. Of course there was a part of myself who imagined the reconciliations, the healing potential of such an arrangement. There was a part of me that envisioned my living with my father, but a bigger part urged, "don't fall for him again..."
All I could think about were the visits to my father while in college. There were times I would bang on the door of his girlfriend and they would tell me to go away. There were the times when they would jam for me after their interactions with the sickening sweet seduction of a drug that rots your teeth, your bones, your spirit...my life was a hectic balance between an elite West Village college studying Marx & Engels and the observation of the steady demise of my father on the streets of Brooklyn. But anyway, why the story?
I've been thinking about Ray.
The point is, moving to Denmark placed a concrete distance between my father and me. While there were some things I enjoyed about being far away from him, there were other things I felt sad that I could not do. Like bringing him some home cooked food so that he had a break from the anemic hospital food so-called health providers offer patients. By the time he had made it to the home, I knew how important it was for him to have me visit him. But I was no longer in Brooklyn and so unable to do so.
After a few years in Copenhagen my then-husband and I, along with our 3 year-old son decided to complete a dream we had together and move to Hawaii. We ended up in Maui, a place it is rumored, where one must be aware of one's unconscious. Why? Because, it manifests. I have witnessed this, I have experienced this. Maui is magic. Maui can be the insistence on all that is good and beautiful in this world, but watch out: There is an underbelly to this, a deep down gritty reality that must exist alongside the collective idea of Paradise...
We found a small apartment alongside the sugarcane fields full of Filipino field hands with neighbors who included a family from Seipan whose matriarch, a 90 something year-old Japanese woman who could not use her legs, would be brought out by her family everyday to sit in the garden and weed. When she saw my son Kai, her face would light up and she would engage in long, drawn out conversations with him in Japanese. She never spoke to me, but Kai called her Oldemor (great-grandmother in Danish) and his face too, would light up upon seeing her. There was the neighbor who was the son of a famous porn star who played Pat Bennetar's Love is a Battlefield everyday. There was the prostitute from Texas with the boyfriend with long sideburns and then there was Ray.
Ray was a Filipino man about the same age of my father. I noticed him because, no kidding, he looked like my father. He would sit in front of the house everyday, and had the expression of a deflated man. His soul seemed to have shrank away from life, he, like my father, seemed to have given up. I would smile at him, and at first, he seemed confused, but soon warmed up to me. I began small talk with him, and one of the things I noticed was that his nails were unusually long.
See, Ray had had a stroke. He couldn't cut his fingernails. Just like my father. So I would cut them for him. Ray had family, but no one talked to him because, I'm guessing, he had been more than a jerk to most of them. Just like my father. He also had an unkempt afro. Just like my father. And you know what? He played the piano. My father? Organist.
I wondered at the fate of it all. Here I was, so many miles away from my daddy, only to land in a place where seriously, I ended up with his twin as my neighbor. I felt that the Universe was giving me someone to act in grace with, someone to connect with who I would naturally have empathy with because, hey, he was just like my father. I could continue with all the things we did together, but I won't cause then it would sound like I'm bigging myself up when that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is Lilly.
Who is Lilly? Lilly is my upstairs neighbor now in Copenhagen. She is in her 80s and has just had painful surgery which has rendered everyday life a bit of a challenge for her. She's a talkative woman and when I do get into conversations with her, I understand everything she says despite the fact that she speaks Danish. I know this has a lot to do with the fact that it's because I WANT to know what she is saying. When I speak to Lilly, I think about my grandmother in Trinidad who I can not be with. I give Lilly my telephone number saying that if she needs anything, please call me. We sit and talk about the fact that she has lived in the very same building I am living in for fifty years. She talks about her husband, who is deceased, and who had gone blind. I listen to stories of lives lived, from a woman whose heart oozes with that tender love one can only have when one is in touch with the glory and magic of life.
There are many other such meetings and connections I have made throughout the years...but I think, what a great principle to live one's life by: Missing a family member? Unable to do what you can right there where you are for your family or friends back home? Open your eyes, they are right in front of you: there are always people around you, immediately around you who would cherish a connection with you. Just think if we all did this consistently. Then there would be no lonely people. No people in need of a manicure because they can no longer do it for themselves. No one in need of social services buying groceries for them cause their neighbor offers to pick up a thing or two for them while they go grocery shopping. Connections. It's all about making these connections--that in the end we are all really, part of the same family, regardless of distance, roots and nationality.
Happy Sunday,
the lab