Forged in Diversity: How My Community Shaped Me Into a Stronger Person
Following the funeral reception, everyone was a little drunk. They watched in amusement as four-year-old Cole groped his way about the garden, having wrapped his face and head with a long white scarf he’d found. Like a little Bedouin.
I watched His Drapedness as he stretched his arms out in front of him, stumbling, adults gently guiding him as he bumped into chairs. “Developing perception” is the game I saw him playing, little Bedouin boy on the edge of the desert, imagination on fire, his camel standing nearby.
Now I’m reflecting on moments from my own childhood when I would pretend to be blind and walk around with my eyes firmly shut. Running tap water into a glass, holding the lip of the glass with my forefinger, and listening to the pitch of the water as it rises. The higher pitch indicates the glass is full and it’s time to turn off the tap.
As a child, I spent many Friday evenings with a group of boys referred to in my household as “the Blind Boys.” A School for the Blind occupied the entire half block behind our house. How a group of these boys came to be a fixture in our home started quite simply.
The 8th grade children at the local parochial school walked Catholic blind kids from the Blind School to church for confession and Mass. My sister Mo performed this escort service and one of the boys, with a big crush on her, asked if he could “call on her at home.” Mo, perhaps with poor judgement in the situation, gave him our address. She’d told him while walking to church that she had four sisters. Too much to resist, I would imagine.
Soon afterwards an entourage of four blind boys showed up at the door on a Friday night to visit her. My teenage sisters, typical teens, shot out the back door or into their bedroom in no time. So, six-year-old me sat and visited with them and gave them coffee and cake my mother prepared. They stayed for hours. It must’ve been such a relief to them to be in a home instead of the institution they lived in. Sometimes my toddler sister would sit on the couch and listen alongside of me.
This routine on Friday nights persisted for years: doorbell rings, teenage girls out the back door, Mom calling to me, “Come down and talk to the Blind Boys.”
What did I get out of hanging with the Blind Boys? Simply that what was initially strangeness became familiarity. I laughed at their jokes, listened to their stories and felt they were friends.
They were not all completely blind. Some boys were losing their sight for a myriad of reasons, so they were still sighted enough to read, play ball, go bowling, or see a movie. Coming out of the kitchen with the coffee and cake, I observed the partially sighted would be holding magazines or newspapers up, inches away from their eyes, reading.
I learned so many things from these conversations. One item was that they were competitive among themselves about who was the least or most sighted and how capable they were at handling everyday life. So one would brag about how he went to the movies last week to see the latest film at the local movie theatre. The ones who were completely blind would ask questions. “Was the girl pretty?” “So did they get the bad guy in the end?” “Were there any cowboys?”
I got a Braille book from the library and ran my fingers over the letters, imagining what they meant. Without instruction in the reading of Braille, I substituted imagination for knowledge.
John eventually graduated and went back to Ohio, but he passed along our address like an insider secret to the next generation of boys.
Now there were a new bunch of boys who would come by, no longer looking for my sister, but for me. I didn’t mind, though, and would listen to their schoolboy tales — a mean teacher, another student who was bullying, all the normal stuff.
In addition to the Blind School, there was a Hassidic seminary only blocks away from my house. So Hassidim would often walk in the neighborhood, and while I knew they were different, because of the heavy wool coats in summer and long tendrils of hair (payot) hanging from under their hats. I came to find out this was “based on an interpretation of the Tanakh’s injunction against shaving the ‘sides’ of one’s head.” (Wikipedia) So I acclimated to having the black-suited, tendrilled, huddled figures scurrying down the street. I never saw any women.
The neighbors were from everywhere: mostly Italian and Irish, but Cuban and Scandinavian were also in the mix. How different the houses smelled, new spices, different foods, variance in sit-down-to-dinner time, all of it leaving an impression. And yes, there were some houses whose smell I did not care for. But the garlic in my Italian neighbor’s home? Divine.
My godmother, a concert pianist, lost her hearing when she contracted meningitis in her mid-20s and ran a high fever that burned her ear drums right up. The last thing she heard was the ambulance siren arriving at her home. So, I grew up with her deafness, sitting next to her at family gatherings explaining what was being discussed. I’d learned to sign a bit and speak slowly so she could read my lips.
I would say the diverse community I grew up in equipped me better for life. I had a confidence with people who were different than me. Accepting difference was as normal as, well, a different-smelling kitchen with lasagna in the oven.
As an adult living in New York City, it came to me quite naturally to approach a blind person tapping with his/her cane in the subway or Port Authority and ask, “Would you like me to accompany you to your bus?” No one ever turned me down, but rather they seemed glad for conversation and companionship. I knew just how to offer my arm for them to hold.
Decades later and somehow related, I’d just had my hair done in midtown Manhattan, cut ‘n color, and walked out into a hot summer day. I crossed the street when a big “whoooosh” moved the hair on the back of my head. A woman started screaming. A bicycle messenger headed in the wrong direction drove right into the woman walking behind me. Her head hit the edge of the curb and split open, blood everywhere. The young bicyclist stood nearby, stunned at the damage he’d done. I ran into a store nearby and got paper towels and headed out to help the woman until the ambulance arrived. Her blood was all over my white pants and top, but oh, nevermind. Pressed the paper towels up against her head to stop the blood. Bystanders gathered with their phones, but none of them stepped in to help. Midtown traffic prevented quick ambulance care, so I cradled her head on my lap and sat on the ground while the woman screamed curse words at the unblinking sun above. I kept telling her to stay calm, and she, facing the opposite direction, would stop her yelling and cursing to ask “Who is talking to me? Who is that?”
The ambulance finally arrived and the EMTs got out wearing hazmat suits. I suddenly realized I’d put myself in danger. At this point in time it wasn’t so long previous that the country feared AIDS more than anything else.
My hairdresser watched the whole episode from his storefront and later told me, “It was so gross to watch all that blood pouring on your white pants, but your hair looked fantastic.”
Now, I’m not some do-gooder, looking to save everyone I see in distress. Not at all. My point is simply that having been born into a kaleidoscope of life, I became more comfortable with people different than me. And perhaps that makes me a little more likely to act in situations that send others running. Not always, though. Believe me, I’m well aware of my many limitations.
Born into circumstances beyond our control, we begin our journey of understanding others in varied ways. However, I am grateful for the diverse neighborhood I grew up in, which helped me to advance my understanding of people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities.
The divisiveness in our nation — our world, in fact — seems to be rooted in fear of the Other. When I speak with people fearful of those who are different, they talk about never having met someone that wasn’t like them. Isn’t it true that the Internet and media bring us closer together, whether we like it or not? We get access to the lives of individuals outside of our everyday circle.
I am of the opinion that the old era of tribalism and fear of the Other, present for thousands of years, is slowly coming to an end. It may take a long time, but it’s something to look forward to, and I don’t think it’s only in my imagination.
