Sisters in Song

Yesterday I opened Facebook to find awful news. Pilar’s 79-year-old mother had been killed in a crash caused by a drunk driver. Pilar has been a dear friend of my wife and I ever since she started dating a high school buddy of mine back in the late 1980’s. They later married, and though it became more difficult to stay in contact as we were raising our own families, we still count them as some of our closest friends. Over the last week I have been enjoying seeing photos of Pilar and her sisters beaming with happiness as they pose for pictures with their radiant and youthful looking mother. She was visiting her daughters, who all live here in North Carolina, from their home country of Colombia. My heart sank for my friends. The happy visit that I had been following through Facebook had turned tragic.

I had just finished college and moved into a small rental house with a friend. We decided to have a keg party. My roommate and I had invited pretty much everyone we knew. It was turning into one of those parties where you expect the police to show up and shut it down due to complaints from neighbors. Amazingly, that did not happen. My future wife and I had just recently started dating each other and she was at the party as well. We were well into the revelry when people began asking, “Where is Kenny?” He had always been a reliable participant in all of our group’s parties. There were no cell phones. We could not just call and say, “What is holding you up, dude?” We soon found out what the holdup must have been.

Kenny pulled into the driveway in his enormous seventy-something automobile. As he stepped out of the car with his usual giant smile on his face, the other doors on the car also opened. Kenny had brought friends. Girls. Kenny, tall and handsome, had brought a group of dark haired, exotic, gorgeous girls to the party. It did not take long for word of this to spread through the party. Every male in the house practically stampeded out the door and surrounded these stunning sisters who were from Bogota, Colombia. I don’t know how long any of them had been in the States at that point, but they were clearly still learning English. They were all smiles and their limited ability to speak fluently in the language of the other partiers did not stop them from boosting the already lively mood of the event.

It turned out that Kenny had met Pilar at the Mexican restaurant she was waiting tables at while she worked on perfecting her English.  As our group of friends made our way through our early twenties there were many more parties and get-togethers. Kenny and Pilar along with Pilar’s sister Rocio were reliable friends that you could count on to always be there for every opportunity to celebrate the New Year, someone’s birthday, or just a casual night hanging out at a local bar. Sometimes one or two of the other sisters would join us.

My friend Kenny was a talented musician and artist.  I wanted to learn to play guitar. I knew that starting at age twenty-something would be difficult. Like learning a new language becomes harder once you have passed a certain age. Since Kenny was a musician, I always wanted to show him when I learned something new on the guitar. If it was at a party, he would join me in another room and I would attempt to play whatever song I was working on. I liked showing him because he was always supportive. “Dude, you are rocking it”, he might say. Many times Pilar and Rocio would come with us to listen. They would clap and say nice things about what I’m pretty sure was some dreadful sounding stuff. During all those times, none of them mentioned that Pilar and Rocio were talented musicians themselves. And I never asked.

At one New Year’s Eve party, and our most well attended one, I told Kenny that I had learned a new song. We went back to the other room, only this time quite a few more people came along. I twanged out my version of Military Madness and by the end several more people had come into the room. I must have been getting better. Someone actually asked me to play something else. I had nothing. It was like I could learn one song at a time, but without song sheets and time to re-practice I could not play anything else. Kenny said that maybe Pilar and Rocio would do a song. Pilar reluctantly agreed and I gave her my guitar. She said that she was not very good, I had no idea that she even played at all.

And then she started this unique strumming with the back side of her fingers and using her thumb along the bass strings. She started singing in Spanish. I had never heard anything in this style before. Colombian folk music. Almost as soon as Pilar started singing, Rocio joined in. The song was sung in a combination of harmonies and rounds. Shortly after they started, the entire group at our New Year’s Eve party were crowding into the small room. It was beautiful, happy music. It was the music of a family. Immediately clear that this was something that they had done for years. They knew their parts. They explained later that they had sung these songs their whole life as a family. On this night, they were having to handle their own parts but also the parts their other sisters would normally cover. I was amazed.

People that came to that party would talk about it for years. I had friends that I had even forgotten were at that celebration come up to me years later and say how they remembered those beautiful girls singing their hearts out in Spanish and how amazing it was. Over time, I would ask them to sing at every get-together. They made playing and singing seem effortless. Occasionally I was fortunate enough to hear at least one more of the sisters join in with the same effortlessness and talent.

These sisters, who had shown up at my party all those years ago, are much more than beautiful girls as I had seen them that night. They are talented musicians. They are brilliant artists. They are whip-smart engineers. And they are all consistently kind people. But mostly they are sisters. Sisters close to each other in a way that I think is unique to the culture that they were raised in. A culture clearly fostered by their mother that they lost this week. I know that this sisterly closeness and love is strong and that will keep them going as they move through this tragic circumstance. They will lift each other in song.

Finding Instant Karma in China

I was a Dad with a mission deep in the Hunan province of China. My six-year-old daughter needed some fruit to eat. When we arrived in the country, our guide had warned us not to eat fruit that might have been washed or cut. There were bacteria from the water on the fruit that our western tummies were not used to. It was fine for our new eighteen-month-old daughter to eat because she was acclimated to the water. She had spent those first months of her life in a local orphanage. But my fair-haired child wanted fruit. She was on the other side of the world with us, all normal routines were out the window. She had been a trooper, but she really wanted to have some fruit. My wife had suggested bananas since they would not have been washed or cut. I had seen a fruit stand earlier as we were taxied around the crowded city of Changsha. As the designated hunter/gatherer of our family, I set out to face the hazardous streets in search of a bunch of bananas.

I filed into the herd of moving people squished into the narrow sidewalks. The occasional motor scooter would buzz its way down the walkway sending people scattering. I dodged a couple of near misses, feeling the heat off the exhaust. I crossed horn-honking intersections, aware that our guide had warned us that in China, “Red-light is more like a suggestion.” I was relieved that the largest of the intersections that stood between me and the fruit stand had a pedestrian underpass. I skipped down the steps. I was under the streets when I noticed that not many of the fashionably dressed business types from the surface had accompanied me. There were people under the bridge. My brain stem jumped to attention, its pre-historic role awakened. Fight or flight. I chose flight and briskly made my way to the other side. As I made the ascent up the steps I saw that a few of the subterranean folks had taken notice of me. They had started to approach me, but were already too late. I was back in daylight with the potential bananas in sight.

I wish I had a picture of the real fruit stand, but this looks very similar.

 I do not speak Chinese. Other than the families in our adoption travel group, I would estimate that approximately three people out of the five-million people in Changsha spoke English. The lady at the fruit stand was not one of the three. There was some fruit that resembled bananas hanging in the corner. I pointed to them. She spoke to me in Chinese, but immediately knew that it was meaningless to me.  She walked to the bananas and held them up in a question? I nodded and spoke in English, a fruitless exercise, I know. But she understood the nod. She put the bunch in a bag and held up five fingers. I assumed five Yuan, or about two dollars. That seemed right to me. I opened my wallet which had the equivalent of an average citizen of China’s entire year’s salary in it. I pulled out the Five note and held it out to her. She had an immediate look of panic on her face and began vigorously shaking her head no. She reached for my wallet and looked at me with kind eyes. I handed it over. She rummaged through the cash and finally pulled out a tiny little bill with the number five on it! She held it up with “aha” written on her face. I smiled.

Everywhere that I had spent money, the stores would hand these tiny bills back to me as change. No coins. I guess this miniature five was like a nickel. Two cents American. The kind, honest, fruit stand vendor had stopped me from paying her enough for a whole truckload of bananas. I would have never questioned the price that I thought she had indicated with her five fingers. She could have just taken it. She could have bought some nice things for herself or her family. Instead she held my wallet that contained more money than she had probably ever seen in one place and pulled out what amounted to two pennies. She set an example of kindness that I made a mental note to try and follow. Tuppence for bananas.

Happy to have successfully gathered sustenance for my family, I made my way back to the hotel. At the big intersection, I had a choice to make. Under or over? The street was not designed for over, but the well-dressed folks of Changsha were dashing their way across. Brakes were screeching and horns blared. If I imagined a photograph of chaos, it would look like this scene. I chose to go under.

I made a few hesitant steps down and tried to survey the best route through. It was dimly lit with those kind of lights that make a loud buzzing noise. I could see people milling about. Unlike the super-efficient people on the surface, they seemed to have no place to get to in a hurry. I looked closer and could see old cushions and sheets fashioned into makeshift beds. These people lived under the ground. Subterranean. I’m not sure how many of them had all four appendages, but most were missing an arm or leg. They had beat-up looking crutches or just had one crutch. It seemed that whether they had all of their limbs or not, most of them had severe facial deformities. We knew that this was a condition not favored by Chinese culture. In fact, the rules stated that you could not adopt a child from China if you had a facial disfigurement.

They were waiting for me. They knew that I would have to come back this way. I knew the look. I get approached within blocks of my own house by people needing money. In America we have been taught not to give cash to the homeless panhandlers. We are told to be suspicious. That they will just use it to buy drugs or alcohol. That we become enablers by doling out money. We are told to advise them of the availability of resources offered by the community. But what we usually do is ignore them or pretend that we have no money to give.

In China, I had money to give. Should I? These folks clearly needed it. They were dirty and malnourished. They were desperate. What would happen if I opened my wallet of cash under the streets of Changsha to hand out money? Would they all politely line up and wait their turn? Would I be mobbed? Would I be beaten or killed? My mind was getting away from me. It was right as these thoughts were running through my brain when I felt a tug on my cargo shorts. I looked down to see a man who had made his way to the halfway point on the steps where I was hesitating. He had severe cataracts and must have been nearly blind. He was missing the lower half of both legs. He had crawled up the steps on his belly. He was dirty in a way that I had never seen. Grime so rubbed into his skin that it looked like permanent stains. He had a tin cup in one hand. He was pleading with me in Chinese.

I tried to reach into my pocket to get out my wallet. His hand clung to my shorts. I was nervous and continually scoping out the other tunnel dwellers. As this man was tugging harder and harder on my pants, I noticed a few of the men from below start to make their way toward us. I tried to ask the man to let go of my shorts so that I could get my wallet out, but of course he had no idea what I was saying. As the others got closer, my primordial response system went into overdrive screaming, “Fight or Flight!”  Dammit!  I just needed him to let go of my shorts. I started to move forward. Now he was grabbing my leg. He was making a wailing sound. Several others under the intersection took notice. They began to head my way as well. Instinct took over. I wrenched myself free of the legless man on the steps. As I rushed forward to try and run through to the other side, the force with which I freed myself sent the poor guy tumbling down a couple of steps. His tin cup was jarred from his hand and loudly clanked down the steps. I could hear his cries as I dashed as fast as I could for the staircase on the other side. I had caused a commotion. There were voices of outrage recognizable in any language. These people did not like me or what I had just done. I made it up the steps and back into a normal, bustling streetscape. A surface free of people with disabilities or disfigurements.

With my bag of fruit still in my hand and my wallet full of cash, I headed directly to our hotel. I delivered the bananas to my perfect blond haired, blue eyed daughter. She had dazzled the residents of China with her beauty. They wanted their picture made with her. They wanted to touch her hair. She was a star in China and now I was her hero who conquered the streets of a foreign land to return with the fruit that she had wanted so badly. Only, I did not feel like a hero. I definitely was not a hero.

The lady at the fruit stand had demonstrated kindness, restraint, and generosity to me. And I fully intended to make an effort to emulate her. And yet only moments later I did just the opposite. I could think only of my own safety. I had knocked over a legless man who desperately needed someone to show him some kindness. The universe asked me to put my beliefs into action and I failed. The Karmic consequences would be brutal. 

I needed redemption.

The next week was spent in Guangzhou China. We stayed in The White Swan, a hotel known for its grandeur and luxury, in a room that overlooked the Pearl River.  Our adoption group was scheduled to tour a Buddhist monastery. This monastery was famous for its one-thousand-year-old pagoda. It was seventeen stories tall. If we wanted, there would be an opportunity to participate in a traditional Buddhist blessing of the babies. We were all in for that. However, we were warned that beggars waited outside the temple to prey on tourists. Our guide told us not to give them money. She said they wanted it for alcohol and that they would just waste it. That sounded familiar. 

Bigotry has a universal lexicon.

Incense for Ancestors

Our bus pulled up across the street from the entrance to the monastery. And then I saw them begin to gather around our bus. 

It was as if the people from under the bridge in Changsha had made their way hundreds of miles south to Guangzhou. 

The beat-up crutches, the missing limbs, the cleft palates and the facial deformities were the same. Our guide instructed us to wait for security to move the beggars back before we got off the bus. A couple of men wearing bus driver style uniforms began to herd the people away from the door of the bus. There efforts opened a space for us to make our way into the temple as the hungry and needy called out to us. I could not get them off my mind.

Furnace to burn money for the spirits.

Flowery Pagoda 1000 years old

We were safely enclosed inside the walls of the temple. Everywhere around us incense was burning for ancestors. There was a furnace for burning money so that the smoke would rise and bring wealth to departed family members. The one-thousand-year old pagoda did not look a day over eighteen. It was shiny and fresh.

It was tall enough that the poor people, in so much need, just outside these gates must have been able to see it. It must have seemed like an insult to them. It’s fresh paint more important than their empty pockets. There were decorative lanterns everywhere. We took pictures. We participated in the blessing of the babies in front of three immense and golden Buddha statues. Fashionable young women wearing short-shorts wanted their picture taken with us. And outside the gates I knew that the others were waiting. The others who had been shunned for being different.

 I know that the cosmos would not view what I did next as a real act of redemption. But I needed to make a symbolic statement. I needed to demonstrate an example of kindness and acceptance of differences while in this country. This country had a dark side to it. A side that so valued baby boys over girls, that the orphanages were overflowing with abandoned girls. The law was one child per family. So in many cases, if a girl was the first born, they were left in secret near a police station or welfare institute. But it went further and we knew it. Children born with birth defects were often abandoned regardless of sex. They were considered un-adoptable and spent their lives in institutions until they were old enough to be released to live as best they could in the streets. Or under the streets, as I had witnessed in Changsha.  And now I was complicit in the perpetuation of this bias. When I raced past those people with birth defects and those who had limbs amputated to get through that tunnel, my actions told them that they were to be feared and that they had no value.

An adoptive mother that was in our travel group came up to us. She was horrified at the condition of the people we had seen as we got off the bus. I told her that when we headed back to the bus that I was going to give the people money regardless of what our instructions were. She said that she would do the same thing. I asked my wife to get the kids on the bus while the guards were holding the people back and that I would dole out some money and then be right behind her.

Outside the gate with my family safely on the bus, I already had cash out of my wallet and I was grasping it inside my pocket. My co-conspirator had done the same. She and I were now the only travelers in the space between the guards and the humans that so closely resembled those that I had feared under the bridge. They were reaching their hands out between the guards, pleading in Chinese. Out came the cash. At first we were trying to hand out the money, but it became too frenzied in an instant. The guards were not happy. They pushed their backs up against the people and shouted for us to get on the bus. So we both tossed the rest of the cash over the guards and scrambled onto the bus. The driver slammed the doors shut. I looked back at the excitement and mad scrambling for money that ensued, but not for long. The driver engaged the throttle as if the people weren’t there. The excited scramble quickly turned to people dashing out of the way for their lives.

We have not been back to China. It’s been Ten years. We traveled there to bring home our beautiful, spirited daughter. I walked to a fruit stand to get some bananas and got more than I bargained for. A lesson and a gift. I got a lesson in generosity and honesty from a stranger. The gift came from the man who clutched at my shorts and begged for help. The gift came in the form of his unforgiving wails as I left him tumbling down steps and his tin cup that clang-clanged out with each bounce downward. Those sounds have haunted me. And I hope they always will. They are the sounds of humanity.