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A few weeks ago I was driving with my three year old down the Post Rd in Fairfield in the pouring rain - the kind of driving rain that hits your car so hard you can’t hear the radio, or a conversation, or see past the hood of your car, and your wipers are going as fast as they can but you still can’t see. That kind of rain. We were on our way to the Stop and Shop, and as we pulled around the roundabout down by the motel and the diner on the edge of town, we noticed a family standing on the curb. A mother, a son, four huge rolling suitcases and three dogs. Just standing there in this wild storm, and I said to Penelope “what a horrible thing to have to stand in the rain and wait for the bus like that.” And without giving it a second thought, I looked away from them and pulled into the Stop and Shop parking lot and drove around looking for a place to park. I couldn’t find a spot close enough to the door so we’d stay dry, so I abandoned the effort and figured I’d try another market closer to home, maybe we’d get luckier there. And as we came around that roundabout again, a good five minutes later, that family was still there. Only now they were gathering their things and starting to walk. We drove right past them, drove another hundred feet and then turned around. It took a while to get back in their direction, and by the time I pulled up to them they were ankle deep in a flooded street, stuck at a dangerous intersection, struggling with their dogs and their bags.
I rolled down the window, “Do you need a ride?” I asked her.
“Yes!” She said, almost in tears.
I double parked the car, told Penelope to stay put and got out to help them load their things into the car. It was pouring. I ran around to open the car doors for the woman and her son and I asked “Where are you going?”
She started to cry. I couldn’t get her in the car, she was wandering in the street. “I don’t know,” she said. And, standing there in the rain, face to face with them both, that’s when I realized: This woman was mentally ill.
“How old is your son?” I asked her.
“10, 13, 14, I can’t remember.” She was crying. “Thank you for getting him off the street”
I put her son in the backseat first, crammed all three dogs into the way back, then stuffed their luggage in anyplace I could get it to fit. The wind was blowing, we were sloshing around in flooded street, by the time I got them all in the car, there were leaves stuck to us, mud splattered on us, the dogs were mashed in the car at weird angles so there were tails and paws in our laps and faces. We were a mess, and when I closed the door something amazing happened. This little family and I were bound together. As my mind raced through options of exactly where I was going to take them, I realized that I didn’t feel that I needed help for them, I needed help for us. I had never felt that desperate in my whole life. Never really come close to understanding some of the issues that were all going on in my car: homelessness, mental illness, families in crises. It was frightening.
When we got to Operation Hope they took us all in. They pulled out dry clothes, sent someone to the kitchen for something hot to eat, treated us with such dignity. And though I had explained the situation to the receptionist at the front desk, the case worker that met us inside the building only knew we needed immediate help. It took me awhile to realize that she thought Penelope and I were also homeless. When she reached to take Penelope from my arms and get her dry clothes and offered me sneakers and a pair of oversized jeans I was struck not by how quickly I had become, in her eyes, just another person off the street, but by how her behavior was so completely devoid of judgment.
It was sobering to say the least. And I don’t know exactly why I’m sharing this story except to say that four years ago I’m not so sure I would have made another lap around the block to pick that family up. But more importantly, I’m almost certain that four years ago I wouldn’t have noticed this woman’s behavior and held her in such high regard for it. My involvement with the Diversity Committee, and the discussions I’ve been a part of, have forced me to confront my own shortcomings when it comes to understanding how people and communities mix and interact.
There are eight points of Diversity: race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, age, ability and ethnicity. But GFA sends high schoolers to the People of Color Conference every year and these students come back with all kinds of stories, with minds opened up to all kinds of new ways of thinking, but they all report one common idea: That we’ll never understand each other unless we can be quiet and listen. Just be still with your thinking and hear what’s happening around you. You don’t have to agree or identify with someone’s views or culture or experience, but you do have to see it. You have to acknowledge it.
I have a family member who is a homeopathic physician and she was explaining to me that in Chinese medicine depression is rooted in the simple feeling of not being heard or acknowledged. Isn’t that fascinating?
I’ve heard so many times from so many well-meaning people that they don’t need to be a part of the Diversity Committee or learn more about the issues that we research and discuss because, as they say, “I’m not a racist” or “I’m liberal, I’m always open-minded.” But I think it’s arrogant for any of us to assume that we got this figured out. We should always be looking and listening for other people’s stories and experiences.
We may not be racists, but are we comfortable enough, if we’re white, to introduce ourselves to the one person of color in the room when we know they are new to the group? We may be liberal, but are we comfortable sitting with someone who may not speak English well, or who is clearly out of our own socio-economic level (either above or below), even if it means watching them sit all alone? We may be open-minded, but do we still say things like “That’s so gay” or “You’re such a retard” or “That’s so ghetto”? Do we still laugh at caricatures of cultural stereotypes in popular culture? Do we even address those around who do?
For me, this whole Diversity Initiative is an exercise in common decency. We have become, to some degree, a nation that finds sport in making each other uncomfortable, in finding humor in other people’s struggles, into flaunting our good fortune instead of sharing it. Not everyone, of course, but there’s no denying we are people who vote each other off the island, so to speak. Where do those people go? All those people that get booted off the island? And how do they feel? Every one of us has had that feeling and hated it. Every one of us has been pushed to the fringe at one time or the other by someone who thought we were less, or minimized our effort or made light of something, or just didn’t think before speaking.
I love this committee because for the four years I’ve been here, we have forced each other to think before speaking or called foul when we didn’t. We’ve heard from students how hard it is to come back from vacation and hear about travels abroad when that student stayed home because it was the only option. Or how some have struggled with learning differences – things like dyslexia and processing disorders – and how the support of their school community has made all the difference in the world. One visiting scholar lectured about children’s literature and how important it is for kids to see their faces and their families in picture books and novels. Without that, she told us, they may never become what she called “gregarious readers.” Parents with handicapped children have spoken to our group about raising a child with physical or emotional challenges. One adult child told us “I hate the ‘R’ word. If I could do anything I would take that out of our language.” We’ve talked about middle-schoolers coping with their sexual identities, heard from adoptive parents and their children about their experiences, and talked openly and heatedly about issues that were, I thought, taboo in polite society. Our discussions are frank, sometimes a little rough and usually bring us to a higher ground.
And who knew there was so much for me to learn? I was that arrogant, liberal, open-minded person who never gave a second thought to most of what was going on around me.
We are leaving GFA this year to move to California and I will miss this committee. It has pushed me to look more closely at myself, to question more openly what I see going on around me, and it made me able to stop in the pouring rain and help a family that needed help. And for that I thank you all so much.
I hope when I leave that you all keep leaning into discomfort. Fight for childcare for working families. Raise money for scholarships. Fight for what you believe is missing. Fight for what you think is right. Because as good as it is here, it can always get better.