The Apple Juice Invite

She invited me in for apple juice.  Not tea or coffee, neither a Coke nor a glass of water, but straight-out, lukewarm apple juice in a cup.  And, while the drink might not have been my #1 beverage of choice, the moments shared over it were sweet indeed.

Monday morning was just brimming with mistaken misperceptions.  My own, that is.  To begin with, I was running a good bit late to pick up a newly arrived Bhutanese family for x-rays at the children’s hospital.   Since we didn’t have an appointment and rather were just supposed to show up, I wasn’t too concerned.  Drawing on previous experiences of sometimes needing to wait up to an hour for refugee clients to be ready to leave, I decided not to call, envisioning that I might still need to wait once I arrived.  I was wrong.  As soon as I pulled up, both parents rushed out with three year-old Sonam in tow, the father quickly installing the child’s car seat and then explaining he was off to his ESL class soon and as such wouldn’t be joining us.  And here we find misperceptions # 2 and 3: I had gone in expecting not to be able to communicate with either parent, only to revise my view immediately and imagine that it was just the father who spoke some English.  However, after clearly, albeit almost tentatively, introducing myself to Shreeni, Sonam’s mother, I found that not only was she able and prepared to answer my questions, but that she was also eager to ask them of me as well!  And so the drive to the children’s hospital went far, far more smoothly than last time, with little Sonam munching contentedly on an apple and Shreeni and I chatting away.

The actual x-ray process itself was blessedly uneventful, with the most notable moment being when the technician cheerfully and sincerely asked, in reference to the family’s current residence, “So, they live in a refugee camp on Chestnut Avenue?”[1]  Thinking of pictures I’ve seen of squalid living conditions in grossly overpopulated refugee camps in Kenya and Jordan, I tried for a moment to imagine what it might mean were such a camp to be located here, in the States, or even in Clarkston, a mere couple of miles from the hospital and my own apartment.  Would maybe then we be propelled into deeper levels of awareness about these international neighbors of ours, mobilized into greater action on their behalf, opened up to new heights of hospitality and solidarity?  I can only wonder.

Back at the Chestnut Ave. apartments a good deal later, I grabbed the car seat as Shreeni corralled Sonam and his shiny green cellophane balloon up the stairs.  Once in the apartment, I began to say my good-byes just as Shreeni motioned me to sit.  I started to explain about the meeting I needed to prepare for, the afternoon class that was coming up, and the reading I really had better finish.  But then out came the apple juice; and well, that was that.

As I sat there gulping down the juice so proudly offered to me by my host, we spoke together of our families, our favorite hobbies, our likes and dislikes, with Sonam’s gleeful antics over his balloon prompting giggles that punctuated the conversation.  How fun it was to really get a chance to converse, especially given that almost all of the French-speaking clients that I have been given the opportunity to know are males!  The experience was encouraging, on the one hand, instilling me hope that Shreeni and I might have the chance to grow into friendship as we meet again through follow-up appointments.  But it was also saddening, humbling, and a very real sort of disturbing.  Here I had been, assuming the family would be late, assuming first that neither parent spoke English and then perhaps it was just Shreeni who didn’t.   And then, having been corrected on that count, I still instinctively assumed the need to answer questions at the hospital, only to have to bite my tongue and give her space to find the words she needed herself.  Yes, it was humbling indeed for me, who can be oh so sensitive to/ aware of xenophobic reactions towards refugees by others, to come face to face with these very same tendencies within myself!  

Womanist theologian Emilie Townes writes that “we must come to know folks through their lives and not from books or images that caricature the very is-ness of people…we must meet people as pilgrims rather than tourists.”  Clearly this is a thing about which I still have much to learn, a beautiful way of relating to others which I so often fail to embody, instead coming up woefully short.  And yet, nonetheless, on that sunny Monday afternoon, there we sat together smiling: Shreeni—the woman whom I had unwittingly allowed my mind to stereotype— and myself, holding on tightly to one glass full of grace.

 

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[1] NB: Names of street and people have been changed for privacy.