by Dan Gediman
He listened patiently before finally admitting, “I can’t think like that. I am a simple man.”
Appa is a brilliant scientist who can deconstruct the building blocks of nature. Yet human nature is a mystery to him. That night I realized that he was simply not skilled at dealing with people, much less the turbulence of a conflicted teenager. It’s not in his nature to understand human desires.
And so, there it was—it was no one’s fault that my father held no interest in human lives while I placed great importance in them. We are at times born more sensitive, wide-eyed, and dreamy than our parents and become more compassionate, curious, and idealistic than them. Appa perhaps never expected me for a child. And I, who knew Appa as an intelligent man, had never understood that his intelligence did not cover all of my passions.
So what do I believe? I believe that coming home has saved me hours of wrestling with my angst on a shrink’s couch. It has saved me years of questioning and confusion. It has saved my friends from carrying my destructive emotional baggage. I now see my parents as people who have other relationships than just Appa and Amma, relationships that shape and define them. I now overlook their many quirks—quirks that once seemed like monumental whims directed at me and me alone. I have forgiven myself for my picked-up habits, my homegrown eccentricities.
Best of all, I now know my parents as friends: people who ask me for advice; people who need my support and understanding. And I’ve come to see my past clearer. After our move from India, my parents have become my only link to a great part of my heritage. Knowing them makes me secure in where I come from and where I’m going.
Bhavani G. Murugesan is a litigator in Sacramento, California. Every day she pauses to relish one small moment of happiness, whether it be a baby’s head bobbing over his father’s shoulder, the rustling of leaves, or a clean and empty sink at the end of the day—a sight still rare in her life.
A Good Neighborhood
Jeff Nixa
I live in a bad neighborhood.
At least that’s what people said about it. “Cottage Grove Avenue,” said a friend. “That’s a bad neighborhood.” A co-worker said, “I wouldn’t buy there. There’s no resale value.” One mother was appalled. “Don’t you want your kids to go to a good school?” Even our real estate agent sat me down and said, “Think about your wife’s safety.”
Soon the fear began to sink in. I called friends who lived there and asked, “Do you feel safe?” They laughed. “Have you been talking to real estate people again?” They invited us to dinner, in the bad neighborhood.
As we drove up, I scanned the streets as if on a recon mission in Fallujah. But our friends welcomed us in, poured wine, gave thanks, and passed homemade bread. After dessert they brought out crime statistics on a map from local police.
Sure enough, in the blocks surrounding us a vacant house had been vandalized. Drugs confiscated from a woman. A man passed out in a yard. This was as bad as—college.
Then I noticed the same symbols dotting the rest of the city: robberies, rapes, domestic violence. That month burglaries and auto thefts were worse in a wealthy suburb.
That’s when I realized that all of those warnings really weren’t about crime, real estate values, or schools. They were code words white folks like me use to signal “low-income people of color”—a perfectly concealed racist weapon, hidden deep in the anxious beliefs of my own friends and colleagues.
I believe sometimes the truth does set people free. So we bought the house on Cottage Grove.
That was seven years ago. No one told me that the day we moved in, a pack of joyful kids would run over to meet our kids. That our historic house cost less than a minivan. About Demetrius, raising his nieces while their mother is doing time. About Jose and Maria’s burrito place. And Mike, the ponytailed Harley biker who one day stepped out directly in front of a speeding car and yelled “Hey,” to the startled driver, slamming his fist on the hood, “there’s kids around here!”
In my “bad” neighborhood, we sit on front porches, hear the neighbor girls’ jazz double-dutch jump rope riffs, and buy snow cones on hot days out of an old guy’s shopping cart.
Sure, there are nuisances here: litter, alley dogs, clutter in yards. But danger? I’ve learned that stupid behavior is color blind, and bullets prefer alcohol and drug deals over law-abiding citizens any day.
I love my new neighborhood—it balances my life, shows me real color, and saves me from things far worse than litter or a stolen Subaru—like the blindness and coded racism of privilege.
Jeff Nixa has lived with his family in South Bend’s Near Northwest neighborhood since 1996. He is a commentator for Michiana Chronicles on local public radio station WVPE. Mr. Nixa has a law degree, and his careers have included hospital chaplain, massage therapist, and counselor. His interests include sea kayaking, bike commuting, running, woodworking, and landscaping. He is currently completing an apprenticeship with a Cherokee healer and plans to offer classes on urban shamanism to help people open their hearts and honor the earth.
Believing in People
Rebecca Klott
I believe in the power of children.
As a psychotherapist for children in a small rural county I have watched, for ten years, children overcome some of the worst types of abuse and neglect one can imagine. I have watched children carry Sesame Street–character lunchboxes into my tiny office, sit in a chair twice the size of their tiny bodies, and tell me how they are surviving while their daddies cook meth in the bathtub to make money so they can have electricity the next month. I have sat with teenagers of alcoholic parents as they try to figure out a way to help their parents get better. I have visited homes where the walls appear to move as cockroaches take over the house of a five-year-old boy.
Children can and do survive. Recently, a young woman I had treated in the beginning of my career saw me in a local grocery store. She was an angry, aggressive sixteen-year-old when I first met her. She’d been sexually molested, beaten, abandoned, and placed into foster care before I knew her. She’d seen scores of mental health professionals and had no use for the lot of us. She had scowled at me, called me names, and told me I had no business talking to her. And she’d been right. I was young, inexperienced, and knew nothing that would take away the grief she knew. So, when I saw her ten years later, my stomach lurched with regrets about all of the things I knew then that I couldn’t give her when we first met.
I wanted to disappear, to get lost in a shelf full of potato chips. But she came straight to me and shoved a clean, soft hand my way, and a smile spread across her wide lips.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” It was all I could say, as I knew I had done nothing for this girl-woman.
“For believing in me.”
And she was right, I had believed more in her than I had in myself.
She went on to tell me about how much this belief had bothered her, haunted her, angered her, and healed her. And how she couldn’t get away from it. She had finished high school, late she told me, but she’d finished. She was working part-time and taking classes to become a massage therapist. She had one child. And this was what she said she felt I’d helped her with the most: believing in this child, her child, as her parents had not believed in her.
I believe that believing in a person can help them believe in themselves. I believe we must, must keep believing even when we want to stop, to turn away in disgust and despair. Because, even when we think there is no hope for a child, they might show up next to the Pop-Tarts in a local store and remind you of their power.
At the time this essay was written, Rebecca Klott was working in a community mental health setting. Since that time, she has returned to school and is working on her doctoral degree. Ms. Klott lives with her husband and daughter in Michigan.
Becoming Friends
Larry Chaston
This I believe: when people find their commonalities they can get along and become friends.
&n
bsp; In 2002, I was stationed at a firebase in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda had invaded the country a decade before and had imposed their fundamentalist ideas on the local Pashtoon people. We were there to gain back their freedom. I knew we had to win their hearts as well as their minds—but this would not be easy. As Christians (Catholic, Mormon, and Protestant), we were considered infidels.
In January of that year, al-Qaeda destroyed the mosque where the villagers worshiped. Our unit offered to help rebuild the mosque, but our senior interpreter, Abdul Hajji, discouraged the plan. He did not want infidels building their place of worship.
Abdul and I discussed other possibilities, including keeping infidels, us, away from the mosque, especially after it was built. We could accidently desecrate it with thoughtless acts. I told Abdul we were the same: we both believed in strong family, we both honored the laws of Moses, and we both prayed to the same God.
Abdul asked, “Do you pray to Allah?”
I responded, “I pray to the God of Abraham.” Abdul nodded his head. We had found our commonality, and the mosque project began.
We paid a local architect to design the mosque and local laborers to build it. We purchased all of the materials, the bricks and logs, from local suppliers. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne were assigned to provide security and support. By working together, the infidels and the Pashtoons, we replaced the destroyed mosque and repaired the damage al-Qaeda had done to the community.
Several times a week al-Qaeda fired on our unit. Many of their rockets landed in the farmers’ fields around us and even crashed through their roofs, landing in their homes—often without exploding.
Our executive officer, “the Captain,” who in real life is a farmer from Idaho, had an idea. He wanted to destroy all of the unexploded rockets in the surrounding fields. So the Captain went from house to house, asking if the family had unexploded bombs or rockets in their homes or fields and offered to destroy the ordnance to keep the children safe.
The Pashtoon people were so pleased they began coming to the firebase gate, asking for the Captain and showing him where rockets were located, allowing us to destroy the explosives. Soon all of the loose ordnance was destroyed. We had worked together to protect their children.
I found commonality with our interpreter, Abdul. The Captain found it with the fathers of the children around our base, allowing us to accomplish our goal of helping the people of Afghanistan.
I believe that God has placed each of us on this earth with a mission, part of which is to get along with our brothers and sisters, no matter what their creed or culture. In working with people and soldiers all over the world, I have seen time and again that when people find their commonalities, they are more likely to come together and become friends, even under the most stressful conditions.
Sergeant Major Larry Chaston (ret.) is a Vietnam veteran (U.S. Marines) and an Afghanistan veteran (U.S. Army) with over forty years in active duty and National Guard service. In civilian life, he is an engineer, installing robotics. Sergeant Major Chaston and his wife, Judy, have been married for forty-two years. They have six children and seventeen grandchildren.
Just Say No
Jessica Paris
I believe in just saying no.
For my sixth birthday, my granddaddy gave me a silver dollar. As big as my palm and strangely weighty, the coin bore the profile of a stern Eisenhower. At that time, 1975, a dollar was twenty times my weekly allowance and would buy me four Milky Way bars, six packs of bubble gum, or twenty Charms Pops. But this dollar was not for spending. It had risen above the pettiness of commerce. This was more like an artifact of history or a piece of public art. So despite my temptations, I said no to Mr. Feeney’s candy counter and saved the silver dollar, displaying it on my dresser along with other cherished objects.
This is my first memory of saying no to the razzle-dazzle, lose-ten-pounds-in-ten-days, buy-now-pay-later, you-deserve-a-break-today, just-do-it world we live in. It’s not just the media’s roar I’m referring to; it’s what my family, my friends, sometimes even my inner voice tells me—go ahead, take a break, splurge.
But I have skepticism about pleasure that guides me: I don’t believe we satiate our desire by feeding it any more than we do by depriving it. And sometimes deprivation leads to greater satisfaction than indulgence.
Take Thanksgiving. Eating triple portions of turkey and tubers doesn’t make me feel gloriously satisfied or thankful. Overcome by gravy, I feel gross. However, occasionally I fast and listen to my stomach’s knock, knock, knocking for two days. How chewy, how nutty is that simple cup of brown rice that breaks my fast.
Here are some ways my philosophy currently manifests itself: I say no to sugar before lunch, no to high heels, no to a cell phone, no to artificial sweetener, no to pierced ears, no to bottled water, no to carrying a balance on my credit card.
Sometimes saying no is easier than saying yes—I don’t have to say no to thong underwear; it says no to me.
It’s not that I’m particularly self-disciplined. The opposite is true. It’s because I’m too lazy to rise for a six o’clock jog that I have to at least be able to say “No thanks, I’ll walk,” when offered a ride home. There are also things I don’t resist: books, two-hour phone calls, a six-minute dose of artificial sun to survive Juneau’s November.
But when I need it, my strength to say no is bolstered by knowing that every no is a yes to something else. Not owning a car for my first thirty-three years is the reason I have skied to work on the Iditarod trail and why I have walked to work under the pyrotechnics of the morning Northern Lights. And the money I didn’t spend on a car allowed me to travel to India, where I rode trains, oxcarts, auto-rickshaws, camels, and even a festooned elephant.
I’m no puritan or prude, martyr or miser. But in a world of such bounty, such opportunity, such Krispy Kremes, choices have to be made. I believe that saying no to some of life’s shimmering pleasures buys me a moment of peace and a small sovereign patch where I can pause and ask what it is my heart truly desires. No is not deprivation, it’s deliberation. No is not loss, it’s freedom.
And my silver dollar? My older brother James stole it to buy Tootsie Rolls and little plastic army men. He believes in saying yes.
Jessica Paris is an educator. She lives in Juneau, Alaska, with her husband, two children, and four chickens. They listen to KTOO public radio.
Courage Comes with Practice
Theresa Macphail
I believe that embracing fear produces courage.
After my brother died in an accident, my mother was inconsolable. I was only four years old at the time, but still I understood the seismic shift in my mom’s attitude toward safety. Suddenly everything around us was potentially dangerous. Overnight, the world had gone from a playground to a hazardous zone.
I grew up with a lot of restrictions and rules that were meant to protect me. I couldn’t walk home from school by myself, even though everyone I knew already did. I couldn’t attend pajama parties or go to summer camp, because what if something happened to me?
As I got older, the list of things to fear got longer. My entire life was divided into “things you should avoid” and “things you needed to do in order to have a good, long life.” I know my mom was only trying to protect me. She worried about me, because after my brother died I was her only child, and what if something happened to me? What if?
I became a natural worrier. I worry about things like getting cancer, losing my wallet, car accidents, earthquakes, having a brain aneurysm, losing my job, and my plane crashing—disasters big and small, real and imagined.
The funny part is you’d never know it by looking at my life because I’m constantly forcing myself to do the things that frighten or worry me. In fact, I’ve developed a rule for myself: if it scares me, then I have to do it at least once. I’ve done lots of things that my mom would have worried about: I’ve ridden a motorcycle; I’ve traveled—a lot. In fact, I’ve lived in China. I’ve performed stand-up comedy,
and I’m planning my second wedding. I still travel to China often, chasing bird flu as a medical anthropologist.
There’s something else I don’t usually talk about, but it’s a cornerstone in my belief: when I was fourteen, my mother died suddenly in a car accident. That loss on top of my brother’s unnatural death could have paralyzed me, but at my mom’s funeral I remember making a choice. I could either live out the rest of my life trying to be safe or I could be brave enough to live out a fulfilling, exciting, and yes, sometimes dangerous life.
I worry that I may have betrayed my mother by writing about her in this light, but she has been a driving force in my life and, in the end, I think she would have been proud of me. Courage isn’t a natural attribute of human beings. I believe that we have to practice being courageous; using courage is like developing a muscle. The more often I do things that scare me or that make me uncomfortable, the more I realize that I can do a lot more than I originally thought I could do.
Even though I inherited my mother’s cautious nature, I’ve also come to believe that fear can be a good thing, if we face it. Believing that has made my world a less scary place.
Theresa Macphail is a medical anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. A writer and former reporter, she authored The Eye of the Virus, a fictional account of a bird flu pandemic, and is currently at work on a nonfiction book on the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Ms. MacPhail lives in Berkeley with her husband and two cats.
Adapting to the Possibilities of Life
Donald L. Rosenstein, m.d.
I believe in adaptation—that is, the same stimulus does not invariably elicit the same response over time.
The first time I saw my son flap his arms, I nearly threw up.
My son Koby was two at the time, and he and my wife and I were at an evening luau in Hawaii. Dancers emerged from the dark, twirling torches to loud, rhythmic drumbeats. I thought it was exciting, and so did Koby. He began to flap his arms—slowly, at first, and then with an intensity that mirrored the movement of the dancers.