One Heart at a Time

by Delilah

  At first I thought there had been some kind of mistake, and I hit reply to inform the nice lady who sent the very enthusiastic letter that I had not in fact requested an exchange student for an entire school year. As I was typing, I remembered the conversation in the kitchen a few weeks before when I had exhaustedly capitulated and told my twelve-year-old that, yes, she could look into the exchange program for the summer! I had anticipated a thirteen-year-old Chinese girl spending a few weeks wading in the creek, eating popcorn and pizza, and jumping on the trampoline. Not a handsome young man from Spain!

  I walked into the kitchen holding the letter at arm’s length between my thumbs and index fingers. I held it in front of Blessing, who did not understand the discontent on my face. “What?” she exclaimed.

  “Read,” I demanded. “Out loud.”

  She had no clue what I was holding, and in her very mature voice began to read, “Dear Ms. Rene, thank you for your interest in hosting an AFS student for the 2016–2017 school year. We are excited to let you know we believe we have identified a young boy from Spain that will fit well in your family dynamics.”

  Her eyes lit up with excitement for a few brief seconds, then she tried to mask her enthusiasm by feigning ignorance. I did my best to look stern and angry. I demanded to know when and how she filled out the application form and was incredulous that she would sign my name. “You do know forgery is an offense that can land you in jail, right?”

  Her brilliant response: “It was a computer form. I didn’t sign your name, I just typed it in.”

  After doing my best to list all the reasons we couldn’t host a foreign exchange student, Blessing started parroting back all the things I have said to my kids over the years when they were frustrated or upset that others had treated them with prejudice or shunned them because they are black. “But how will the world change if people in our small town aren’t exposed to diversity and different cultures? It will be good for us to practice our Spanish language skills with someone from Spain. Think how good it will be for our family to embrace a person with a completely different background.” And finally, “The letter says this boy is Catholic. God must have chosen him to stay with us since we love Jesus.” The God card, she pulled the God card…

  Before the week was over, my husband and I had completed the background check, sent it in, and made an appointment for a home inspection. The girls took on the task of emptying out their older sister’s bedroom, festooned with red-and-black flowers painted on the walls, and prepped the room to be transformed into a blue-and-brown boy’s room.

  In the heat of August, Antonio—Toni—arrived, and within weeks he became another child of my heart. Silly, shy, talented (he was the genie in his school’s production of Aladdin), and smart, he adapted well to the ways of the farm, considering he came from a very progressive neighborhood in Valencia, Spain.

  He went from sit-down dinners of paella with his family each evening when his father returned home around nine p.m. to crowding around the wood table at our dining nook, eating homemade applesauce and pork chops. From city streets and buses to tractors and the farm Gator. From feeding pigeons in the parks of Valencia to feeding our three-hundred-plus chickens and gathering fresh eggs each day.

  I am convinced Blessing will be a great lawyer or policy maker one day—there is absolutely no way to win an argument with that child, and she always leads with her heart. As exhausted as I am taking Toni to his various projects and outings, I have to admit it has been a true blessing to our family to have him this year.

  Perhaps things will be a bit more quiet next year…

  Oh, who am I kidding!

  It was against all odds that I became pregnant with my daughter Shaylah. I had been told by two doctors I would need medical help to conceive, as I had polycystic ovaries, and without surgery I could not become pregnant.

  On one cold December day in 1993, I took nine-year-old Sonny sledding at his school. We slid down the terraced hills over and over, until the sun slipped away and the streetlights came on. “Just one more run,” he begged. I agreed, and my son and I raced down on our sleds. But with the cold night air, the snow had frozen solid and was a slick sheet of ice. Our sleds flew out of control down the hill. Sonny rolled safely off and I tried to, but somehow I managed to go barreling headfirst toward a metal light pole in the middle of the field—a field that was about five acres of open land with one light pole. I managed to roll off right before impact, and instead of whacking my head, I hit my side. I lay on the frozen ground, fearing I had died or was about to, but too prideful to cry for help. After what seemed like a frozen eternity, I managed to stand, gather my son (I abandoned the plastic sled), and walk home. A trip to the urgent care clinic the next day revealed a black-and-blue side, two broken ribs, and a bruised kidney. Bed rest was prescribed.

  Eight weeks later I became pregnant, and to this day I’m convinced the collision ruptured the stubborn cyst on my ovary. The pain was hell, but the product is pure heaven!

  I didn’t start to show until my fifth month, but when I did I looked like I was carrying twins or triplets. I retained so much water my feet and legs swelled up like an elephant, and I swear I could hear the water slosh as I walked. Still, I wanted to make our weekly treks for Point Hope to the park and back alleys with tuna and lemonade, wanted to visit with our homeless friends who were expecting us.

  A friend of mine, Marge Latch, had joined us on several occasions, and on this particular day she offered to drive. I sat in the passenger seat, uncomfortable in my very pregnant state and happy that she had air-conditioning. We parked in downtown Philly, met two or three other volunteers who were there to help us, and started our walk, handing out the simple sandwiches and talking to friends as I waddled down the parkway toward the art museum.

  On our way back to the car to go to Rittenhouse Square, Marge panicked. She had locked her keys in the car, and the heat of the day was becoming unbearable. We discussed solutions, found someone with a phone (this was 1994, before every living person had a cell phone attached to their ear), and sat down in the shade to wait for her brother to come with a second key.

  As we waited, a homeless man approached us. We had given him lunch earlier, and he came to see why we were sitting together. Marge was nervous—she was a sweet woman with a very tender heart and was being cautious around this homeless man given our circumstances. I was too uncomfortable to be cautious, and I did not remember meeting him before this particular day.

  I could not guess his age. He had dark skin that shone like leather on a saddle. His hands were dirty and thin, but they looked incredibly strong. He was small framed, animated, energetic, catlike with clear green eyes. But unlike the uncomfortable energy many of our street friends had from drugs, his seemed to come from within.

  From his tattered backpack, he pulled out a worn black flute case. He asked, “Can I share a miracle with you?”

  He started to tell us a story. He said he’d once played the flute in an orchestra, but foolish choices in life had caused him to sell his instrument and leave the orchestra. He was walking down a side street in Philly and saw a flute, just like the one he’d once owned, in the window of a pawnshop. He only had ten dollars in his pocket, and the flute was worth hundreds. He took a chance and went in. The owner eyed him suspiciously and asked what he wanted. He asked to see the flute in the window, and the owner hesitantly gave it to him to examine. The pawnshop’s owner told him it was worth over a thousand dollars, but he would take $200.

  Others in our group were growing restless; they could have left in their car but didn’t want to abandon Marge and me. At this point, I was engrossed in the man with the sinewy fingers and the bright-green eyes.

  The homeless man went on with his story. “I asked the owner if I could play it, and he said yes. I assembled the pieces, made sure the keys worked, and started to play. When I finished my song, he said I could buy it for however much money I had on me. I gave him the ten dollars and he accepted it—he ev
en threw in this case.”

  Suitably impressed, we all said, “That is a miracle!” and applauded his good fortune.

  “No,” he said, his green eyes twinkling, “that’s not the miracle.” He went into another long story describing the community he lived with, a small tent city under an overpass. And how after his good fortune scoring the flute, he took it back to his tent and put it inside. A night of drinking and partying with his homeless companions led to a blackout. When he awoke the next day, the beautiful instrument was gone.

  His heart was sick—he had been so elated with his blessing and now he was as depressed as he had been joyful. He said he was too sad to yell or carry on; he simply sat and cried. Soon someone from the community noticed and asked why he was crying, and the story of the stolen flute spread through the camp like wildfire. No one claimed to know anything, and they all set about searching for it. “Maybe you were so drunk you don’t remember what you did with it?”

  “No!” he exclaimed. “I was not so drunk I would lose the flute I love. I lost it once—I would not have lost it again.” All day they searched while, our new friend said, he sat and wept.

  When he woke the next morning, the flute in its beat-up black case was sitting by his head, as if it had never been taken! Again, we were amazed, and again we all exclaimed, “Now that is a miracle!”

  And again he said, “That is not the miracle I wanted to share with you.”

  Now his eyes were like emeralds, dancing with energy. He carefully took out each piece of the flute, caressing them with his fingers of bronze like a lover, or a soft newborn baby. He fitted each piece together and tested the keys. Then he closed his bright eyes and began to play.

  The music lifted up through the green of the trees on the parkway, up through the fluffy summer clouds, up past the punishing sun, up to heaven. Within a few minutes, I was wiping tears off my face, and as I looked at Marge, Donna, and my other friends, I saw they too were crying.

  The song he was playing was “Amazing Grace,” and never have I heard it played so beautifully. He wove together two or three hymns I was familiar with, always coming back to the refrain that we all sang silently in our heads as he played the notes. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”

  We stood in stunned silence when he finished the song. Silently he bowed his head, and then he prayed for us. For my unborn daughter, for each of us to be happy and content in life. When I opened my eyes, I met his, and with a twinkle and a radiant smile, he said, “That’s the miracle.”

  You’ve read my stories by now and know that I grew up in a small-town bubble. It wasn’t until I grew up and out of that environment that I was exposed to a big, wide world of diversity. The melting pot of life. Differences of color, culture, talent, and opinion.

  In our present world, we are exposed to a lot more diversity online, through social media—people post their feelings and political agendas, and information is overflowing to us. It’s a world of abundant information, like-minded and differing views right at our fingertips. It’s amazing to have endless knowledge available to us and to be so connected to so many people at the click of a mouse or just by looking down at our phone. But is it the answer to learning about and loving on people? I doubt it.

  Who could’ve known the homeless man on the street would give me such a gift that day? This person I was so far from being able to understand, whose shoes I could not fill, whose story I couldn’t relate to, whose skin or gender I couldn’t identify with, whose talent I couldn’t match—this man blessed my life and touched my soul with his music and his faith. It was one of those unexpected moments in time when God showed up as an angel in disguise. In that moment, I wasn’t concerned with his appearance, nor did I care about the foolish choices he made in his life; I was mesmerized by the grace-filled sound coming out of his flute. In that moment, I appreciated he was willing to step out of his comfort zone to approach us and share his miracle with us. I gave him a sandwich; in return he gave me everything he had. That kind of exchange doesn’t happen online.

  My daughter Blessing quite literally forged her way ahead in bringing another foreign exchange student into our home and our life. This young girl who had nothing, who went from neglect, abuse, and malnourishment to having the extreme opposite in a house full of siblings and family, wanted to open her home again to yet another person. Similar to my street friend in Philly, she wanted to share what she had and cherished the most with another person. And again, when I accepted her plea and went along with her forgery, boy, was I blessed! To see my children prepare for Toni’s arrival and accept him into our home with welcoming arms. To learn about Toni’s culture and lifestyle, and watch him step out of his comfort zone and grow into a farm boy!

  Generally speaking, we seek out people who are like-minded, who think like us, who hold the same values, maybe worship the same way. We meet a lot of people, but we befriend people we make natural connections with, and that’s just human nature. Here’s the thing, though—there will be times in our lives when an unnatural connection will be made. We’ll make the acquaintance with someone who is so far different from us that nothing about it makes sense—except that maybe we’re supposed to step outside our comfort zone and talk for a bit. See the differences and appreciate them. At the very least, respect them.

  CHAPTER 11:

  A CONNECTED HEART

  Mom was big—that’s the only way I can describe her. She had a wide-open face with sparkling green eyes. Wilma Dean had a big smile and an even bigger laugh. She was six feet tall, and she had big bones. She wasn’t fat, she was just, well, big. She filled a room with her presence. In the fifties she would have been called a dame or maybe a broad. Today women get offended by these terms, but I smile when I hear them, thinking of Mom.

  She usually had a cigarette lit and a cup of black coffee close by. She wasn’t radical about anything, and she didn’t conform to anyone’s expectations. Dad tried to control her, down to the clothes she was allowed to wear, but somehow that still didn’t confine or constrict her big personality. Mom was a teen in the fifties, and while many of her contemporaries were putting flowers in their hair and getting high the following decade, Mom was home with kids pulling on her skirt as she planted veggies in the garden and splatter painting her kitchen floor pink and brown, since there was no money to buy linoleum.

  When she was young, Mom wore red lipstick and pedal pushers and looked like a movie star. As she got older, she still wore red lipstick, and she thought that was enough, even with curlers in her hair. She would tie a bandana over the wire rollers, put her red lipstick on, light a cigarette, and head for school to pick us up out of the rain. I would die a thousand deaths of embarrassment that she was in public with curlers in her hair and try to walk the other direction. “Get in the damn car, Rene, you are getting soaked to the bone,” she would say. Damn was her favorite word. The damn car. The damn rabbit that bit DeAnna. The damn rain. The damn teacher that gave too damned much homework. It’s a good word and fits for any occasion. “I don’t give a damn what time you think you have to be at school, you are going to sit down and eat breakfast,” or “Dammit, Rene, get in here and finish these dishes.”

  Along with her big bones and her big feet, I also inherited the damn gene. In the same tone with the same inflections, I have become her voice of damnation! Today I stubbed my toe and screamed, “Dammit!” and then I laughed at how I open my mouth and my mother comes out.

  Mom was an early bird; Dad was a night owl. Mom was always up before anyone else in the house, and until I was in high school and just coming home at the break of dawn after sneaking out all night, she was the first one to pad around the floor in her big, bare feet and had the coffee brewing before anyone else was ready to stir. On more than one occasion, I jumped in the shower after climbing in the back window, pretending that I had been up and running for exercise when really I had been out all night with De
e Dee or my boyfriend, racing down to the beach or sneaking into the high school to play a prank.

  Wilma Dean was spontaneous. She would wake us up on a Saturday morning and say, “Get your coats on, we’re going for a ride.” The four of us kids and our neighbor Dallen would pile into the family station wagon and take off on one of her adventures. Most often we would go to the beach after a storm to search for the round glass Japanese fishing floats and beautiful pieces of driftwood. Sometimes we went during a storm to watch the mountainous waves crash over the jetty in a deafening roar and witness the power of lightning striking on the horizon above the blackened sky of the Pacific Ocean.

  Mom would take us berry picking in the forests and fields near our home in the spring, or up to the coastal mountains to hunt for mushrooms or huckleberries. Sometimes we would sneak onto old farms or find an abandoned orchard and pick apples that fell to the ground. Mom insisted if they weren’t being used and had just been left to rot, then we weren’t stealing them. To this day I adhere to that philosophy and have taken my kids picking fruit in abandoned orchards on a number of occasions… okay, I admit sometimes the orchards weren’t that abandoned… okay, I will pick apples off the ground of someone’s property in the middle of a crowded suburb if I see they’re going to waste. Our little town now offers a map for gleaners of abandoned fruit trees so people can salvage the food before it goes to waste. Mom would like that.

  Mom didn’t really care what other people thought. I loved that about her. If there is one quality or trait I hope to keep alive in her memory, it is that one. She would wear what she wanted, eat what she wanted (pickled pigs’ feet and okra come to mind), say what she felt, and didn’t conform to anyone’s standards—except for Dad’s. Whether she was afraid of his temper or wanted to please him, I don’t know, but he was the only person whose opinion seemed to carry any weight with Mom. She didn’t care that she wasn’t a part of the country club set or that she wasn’t invited to play bridge with the popular women in our little town. She didn’t ever try to impress anyone or pretend to be someone she was not. By the time I was old enough to be aware of such things, I loved that Mom was comfortable in her own skin. I remember her telling me stories of how shy and embarrassed she had been as a child, ashamed of her tall stature, ashamed of her Arkansas drawl when she moved to Oregon as a teen, and embarrassed by her size-twelve feet and the fact that no nice shoes ever fit. But by the time she had given birth to the four of us kids, she was completely at home in her height, her big feet, her silly southern sayings, and her own personality.