AN IMMIGRANT SHORT, BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING SHORT ABOUT THE JOURNEY
Sometimes, nobody else answers the call because it is yours to answer.
We welcomed another border family to the Bay Area this past month, but they’re moving on to the East Coast. The ask was made to the response of crickets: “Does anyone have a medium sized suitcase they are looking to donate? We have a family moving to the east coast and they are in need of a piece of luggage.”
After several hours of silence, a long lapse of time for my WhatsApp group, I responded that I’d check. The message was ultimately FOR ME anyhow. I knew I had one, bagged up in a shelf in the garage, along with a hundred other things I don’t use. The question was more about, could I let it go? Living the “Power of Now” (Eckhart Tolle) reminded me, someone had a need NOW, and yet there I was, holding on to a concept of travel in the future, when all I have is the present.
I took the luggage down, remembering the trips I had taken and placed it in my minivan. After all, the memories are in my heart, not in a material thing. Turns out the family is staying less than three miles from me – was it more meant to be than that? On the drive to drop it off, I blessed the bag, which served us well over a decade. It was time for it to be of service to Beings with no clear sense of home, and wow, the adventure it will have. It will get filled with all the belongings the family owns.
They had flown in to Mexico from Venezuela in 2019 only to meet with a closed border at Texas during the policies of the previous administration. The family of three (mom, dad, son who was now five) had been in my area for a month. They had been in the first group of 25 families allowed in to the U.S. during current administration re-opening and had met our Bay Area Border Relief (BABR) members as they distributed toiletries in the Mexico tent city.
Pulling up to their house, the conversation happened in Spanish, yet my wince at her response to my question about “How long in Matamoros?” was universal. Answer: One year + nine months spent at the border town tent city. She immediately added the coexistence (“la convivencia”) was an experience they treasured. They got to know people from so many different countries, backgrounds, languages, about food and cultures. She ended by saying, God carried them through. I agreed and said that my friends from BABR were angels. I’d met one of them 5 years ago (Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga) which started me down a trajectory, a network of community I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I said in Spanish, “Dios tiene su plan, y aunque a veces no lo entendemos o nos dejamos llevar por emociones, El nunca nos dejará. Las experiencias nos harán mas fuerte y compasivos.” She replied by saying, “Si, la fe nos guiará.” (Translation, Me: “God has a plan, and although sometimes we don’t understand it or we let ourselves be taken by our emotions, He will never leave us. Those experiences will make us stronger and more compassionate.” Her response: “Yes, faith will guide us.”)
The family flies out to Virginia in a few days from SFO, my/their luggage in tow. After a while, they will move to Florida. I offered to take them to the airport, but a member of our BABR network who also emigrated from Venezuela some months ago, who didn’t know them prior to meeting them here, wants to drive them. He’ll send them off with a brotherly goodbye.
Related, in a hike today with my son, he pulled out his phone to share with me a verse his friend had just sent him. It couldn’t have been any more appropriate today, and if it was true today, it is true forever, because there is nothing short about faith on our journey: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” (James 1: 2–3, Bible NIV)
I told the family, “Vayan con Dios.”
