This holiday season as I madly scramble to find gifts for
everyone on my list, I take a moment to reflect on how I have
already received my best gift this year long before Christmas.
This holiday season as I madly scramble to find gifts for everyone on my list, I take a moment to reflect on how I have already received my best gift this year long before Christmas. It doesn’t matter to me anymore whether Santa leaves anything for me under the Christmas tree this year.
When I read former police chief Mark Zappa’s remarks on the opinion page that “the Saudi on the street hates us, the Sudanese on the street hates us, the Iraqi on the street hates us . . .” Okay, maybe I’m a “Kumbayah naïve liberal,” as he accused, but I found his view too narrow-minded a way to look at the world. I don’t think the Middle Easterners who own businesses here in Gilroy hate us. I don’t believe the Sudanese refugee living in my home hates me. I know that of the many Sudanese refugees who have come to visit Gilroy (and who just a short time ago were “the Sudanese on the street”), none of them have shown any signs of hate. In this climate of media-hyped fear and loathing, it’s easy to forget that most people in the world are just like us in the sense that they want to make good lives for themselves; they want a safe and comfortable home for their families; they want enough food to eat. They are thinking, “How can I eat tomorrow? How can I make a good life for my children?”
When we went grocery shopping, Angelo insisted on paying. When we got home I tried to pay him back for my portion of the bill, but he wouldn’t take it. I tried to explain the way we share the cost of things in my family, the way my mom and I shop and keep track of who bought what. It didn’t make sense to him. “If you’re going to start dividing everything,” he said, “Where does it end?” Do you divide the eggs you cook in the morning and figure out who bought which eggs? Do you divide the water you cook with?” I could not get him to let me help pay; he said to me, “You have the cow’s three legs and a head. I only have one leg.” Which means that since he is staying in my house, I must let him contribute by paying for things when he wants to. When he first came, I was keeping track of everything in the refrigerator, but now it doesn’t matter to me who bought what. “Food is food,” Angelo tells me. “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours.” And somehow there’s always enough.
Imagine me at the table at Thanksgiving, trying to explain to my Japanese in-laws that a Sudanese tribesman now lives in our home. They listened closely as I explained how Angelo’s tribe was caught in the middle of a civil war; homes were burned and children were separated from their parents. They wandered for 14 years in the wilderness, surviving starvation and the attacks of soldiers. Angelo witnessed his fellow refugees killing themselves in despair and helped bury other children when he was still just a child himself. He is one of the survivors. Civil war burned their villages and drove thousands of children out of Sudan, but the American Dream is alive and well here in this community. Because of the gift Angelo has been to me this year, I have discovered what a community Gilroy truly is. I found out that my next door neighbor teaches English to Angelo; former Gilroy Foods employee Don tutors him in math; Bonfante Board Member Patti Hale has been a mom and a mentor to him as he learns cooking and the customs of our culture; a carpenter named Joe moved all of Angelo’s things over in his pickup truck – and now for Christmas, many different secret Santas in our community are contributing to a Christmas stocking as a gift to Angelo to welcome him to this American custom here in his new life. When I see people open their hearts toward someone who has been so much less fortunate and has suffered so much, I experience the joy of the true meaning of Christmas.
It’s funny how everyone tells you what a wonderful person you are for taking someone into your home, and you start out thinking you are being so charitable. Everyone gives you kudos for how generous you are – but then you grow to realize that it is not a one-sided experience. You start to recognize how much you are being impacted by the other person and that it is a give and take – as your preconceptions are challenged, you find there is just as much you are learning and being given by the other person. I’m never going to see the world the same again. People just don’t get it when you try to explain. I’m the one being blessed. I’m the one being given the best gift this Christmas.
Kat Teraji’s column is published every Thursday in The Dispatch. You can reach her at ka****@ea*******.net.
