“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.” – Elie Wiesel
Ten years ago I led a writing group for residents of a local homeless shelter. It was a wonderfully diverse group of people. Men, women, old and young with experiences that they shared and more that they did not. One day I arrived at the shelter and was immediately greeted by one of the group members.
“Look at this!” She handed me a copy of the local newspaper and stood there with a smile on her face. For a moment, she looked like she was about ten years old. Her voice held the excitement of a young girl who just discovered that she could, in fact, do a cartwheel on the front lawn. On the front page of the section was a story about a 92 year-old man who had just written his first book, a memoir. She was beaming.
She was almost 80 and was writing for the first time. A former nurse, she was a petite woman, no more than 5 feet tall. She walked gingerly, as though every part of her hurt. She had delicate hands with long, thin fingers and carried a small calendar filled with dates and times and the names of people she spoke to. It helped her remember her life. It held many slips of paper and note cards and was held together with a well-worn rubber band. She was always waiting for me when I arrived, anxious to see what stories will reveal themselves on that day.
She’d joined the writing group just a month before and she had become a regular. Sometimes when we were writing, she let out just the faintest sigh. She’d forgotten what something was called, she said.
“I understand.” I reassured her. “It happens to me too. Just keep going, It will come back.” It usually does.
“What do you do in there?” a colleague asked as we sat together in the dining room and chatted.
It was such a simple question and yet, I searched for an answer that would do it justice. To describe it seemed to miss the point. The residents called it a writing class but class denotes something academic, something taught. It’s not really about the writing, I wanted to say. It’s not about syntax and descriptions and correct punctuation. It’s not like that. It’s more about… well, about this.
“On March 15, 1939, I was awakened by a very strange noise coming from the street. We had wide windowsills and I always loved to sit on them and spend hours watching the goings on on the street. On this night, I headed for the windowsill. Down on the street were many soldiers, goose-stepping up the street. My mother came in and called to me. I was never allowed to sit on that windowsill again.”
On that fateful day, life as she knew it changed forever. An innocent young girl who sat on the windowsill, her knees curled under her petite frame, watching as Nazi soldiers invaded her beloved Prague. A moment emblazoned in her memory. An historic moment told through the eyes of a young girl.
“I was on the last children’s transport out of Czechoslovakia,” she tells us, her voice punctuating the word ‘last’ to let us know that not one day goes by that she isn’t grateful for that twist of fate.
It is an image I still cannot get out of my head.
I turned to my colleague. “That’s what it’s about. That’s what we do. We take risks together. We share stories of our lives and in doing so we open each other’s eyes to something new, to a different possibility of what can be.”
We share our stories. We share ourselves. We build community.
Image from here.
