While many of you will sit around a table with family members on November 22nd, Ed and I will continue a tradition we began a few years ago.
Here’s what we did last year:
It was 92 degrees in Tucson that day. We sat at one of about a dozen tables temporarily set up in the interior courtyard of a large apartment complex that houses refugees from around the world. The stately palo verdes and the lavish ocotillos surrounding the tables still proudly displayed their leaves because summer had not yet ended.
It was a truly global potluck.
Samosas from Bhutan. Kak’ik from Guatemala. Tamales from Mexico. Zahraa al sofi fatayer from Iraq. And more.
And pumpkin pies, of course.
We sat with six other people at our table. Several women and children from the Congo wore orange, green and pink tunics that glowed almost fluorescent against their smooth black skin.
The tall man seated across from us, graying hair swept back from his forehead, wore a long-sleeved blue shirt, the top two buttons left open to reveal an American-style T-shirt. His wide smile couldn’t hide deep pools of pain that seemed to lurk behind dark, intense eyes.
He’d come from Afghanistan, he said in broken English. But not directly. To escape, he had traveled through Pakistan, spent four years in Kenya, and had now been in the States for eleven months, working on an assembly line and waiting for papers to get a “better job.”
“Do you have a family back in Afghanistan?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes turning an even darker shade of black.
“Wife and children?”
Again he nodded.
“How many children do you have?”
Very slowly, he turned and pointed toward each one of us around the table and counted, “Von, Toa…”
“We are your children?” I asked.
“Heh,” he said, breaking into a smile.
My heart did one of those little flips. The kind of flip it did the first time I looked into the eyes of my newborn grandson. The kind of flip it does when Ed looks at me in that way that reaches deep down into my soul.
“You are not alone,” I said, smiling back.
I think about the vigil hundreds of us participated in last Friday night across from the detention center in Eloy, Arizona. It is known as the deadliest of immigration detention facilities in the United States. Since 2003, Eloy alone represented 9 percent of the total inmate deaths in all 250 detention facilities in the United States.
A hush fell over our group when speakers read the names of 150 people who have died while detained for immigration hearings, and people previously detained in the facility told their stories.
“Who would Jesus deport?” read one of the signs.
“Sorry little Pedro, but you’re illegal, you know what my dad does to lawbreakers,” Jesus is depicted as saying on the sign.
At one point in the vigil, we all turned toward the ominous, gray prison, stark against the setting sun. We could make out the shadows of people moving around behind the barred windows.
“No están solos — You are not alone,”we chanted in unison, raising our voices so they would carry beyond the police barricade that stood between them and us.
“No están solos. No están solos.”
Although the issue of immigration policy has been at the center of recent political debates, and although some believe they know the solution to this intractable and ill-defined problem, I do not.
I only know, especially as we approach the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, that I want to join the voices crying out as loud as we can, “No están solos. You are not alone.”
Marlena says she does not know the answer to the immigration challenge we currently face. Neither do I.
However, I do know that a willingness to expose myself to other people who are suffering, to be with their humanity and grief, to recognize the courage they require to face one day at a time makes it harder to slam my heart shut and conveniently ignore their suffering.
Words cannot Express how grateful I am Marlena wrote this post and Ed added his commentary. My son in law is from Mexico. He and my daughter fell in love while he was in California on a worker’s Visa working construction sites and she was in graduate school for social work. Once they became engaged we helped in any way we could as he embarked on the long and often arduous and very expensive road to US citizenship. This is not a path for the squeamish and every American needs a better understanding of just what’s involved. As a third generation native Californian I have always loved the Mexican culture and its many influences on and contributions to our beautiful state.
I cannot imagine my state or our country without its many diverse immigrants. The richness brought and the vast array of ways to live. I would have been honored to eat a Thanksgiving dinner with a table of refugees. I thank Marlena and Ed for making the effort to learn about and welcome them. How I wish I could have been part of the vigil for those struggling inside the Arizona detention center. Again I’m so proud of them for participating. I dont have the answers to our immigration problems either and it is a situation I feel strongly and deeply about. I feel the pain of all these desperate souls begging for compassion and help at the edges of our soil. How much longer can we bully them away? I realize this is a serious dilemma with no easy solutions but my heart does not hear the many reasons some want them all turned away.
As I gather with many of my beloved family members today I watch my sweet caring son in law…who just recently took his oath in an Oregon courthouse to become an upstanding US citizen…cooking in his kitchen. He is happy, content..a new nurse with his first professional job…..and he magically solved our dilemma of what vegetarian meal to serve on Turkey day for our youngest vegetarian son and his vegetarian girlfriend. Why meatless tacos of course….why worry? It’s a beautiful moment…filled with all the dreams and glorious stories inclusiveness can bring.
Oh, dear Robin, your comments are beautiful and heart-breaking and inspiring all at once! Thank you, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!