We would run as fast as we could with a genuine fear that there was a real monster coming after us. He looked monstrous to us. The real monster was ignorance and the fear that is spawned by ignorance.
Sometimes some of the greatest lessons one learns in life are not apparent for many years. There are moments in life when it takes maturity and added knowledge of life to be able to reflect and appreciate the experiences we had when the opportunities to learn and to grow were presented to us.
There was a gray-haired woman who lived on the 1700 hundred block of 21st Street. She regularly walked through the alley corridors of the neighborhood with her son, perhaps to minimize interaction with those who did not understand what cerebral palsy was back in 1964. She would walk down the corridor of the "L" train with her son walking distorted and twisted. Sometimes he would have saliva dripping from his mouth.
"Run, run, here comes the monster" we would yell.
"El monstruo."
We would run as fast as we could with a genuine fear that there was a real monster coming after us. He looked monstrous to us. The real monster was ignorance and the fear that is spawned by ignorance.
One day we were playing behind the home of the grey-haired woman when she and her son came out unexpectedly from behind their tall wooden gated fence. It caught us by surprise. My friends had a late start running from the monster. I stood there frozen as the mother asked me gently and kindly to stay.
Something made me smitten with curiosity as I fearfully held my ground. The mother asked me to come over and touch her son. She assured me that he was not a monster. I can remember her soft, patient tone of kindness and gentleness-one I was unaccustomed to hearing. She was believable. I trusted her and approached him. I touched him and he spoke to me although I had no idea what he was saying. He was still scary but I was not afraid.
The mother explained to me that God made him this way but he was just like me and her.
She easily could have returned our ignorance with ignorance of her own. She could have been like many of the adults in this still predominately white neighborhood and called us little spics. She, instead, responded to my youthful ignorance and fear with love, gentleness, and kindness. She built a bridge for her son and I with these traits. She invited me to reach out and erase my ignorance and fear I had of her son and it changed me a bit that day although I did not know it at the time. I think I am just becoming aware of her positive impact on me as I recovered this long, lost memory today and started to think about writing about it.
Kindness and gentleness.
I would stop by their front stairs and talk whenever I saw them outside. I still do not know who was happier of the three of us for this bridging of fear and ignorance. I was only about 9 but I felt brave, special, and loved when I was with them. These were not things I felt for most of my childhood.
I soon helped other kids on the block lose their fear of this man whose name I no longer remember. I think it was Edwin but I am not 100% certain of it. It was 43 years ago.
Sometimes there would be a few kids on her stairs as we sat and talked to her and her son. We no longer ran from the monster. The monster disappeared thanks to the love and kindness of a special woman who taught me the power of gentle kindness and love.
I am sure she was doing it for her son but I think I received more out of it then anyone else. I felt special for perhaps the first time in my life when I was with them. Maybe, subconsciously, I was searching for approval and love as much as the gray-haired woman was searching for the same thing for her son.
Who would have guessed,as I sat on the stairs with them, that someday I would have hit a man in the face with a hammer, knocked out a knife-wielding foe with a plank of wood, smashed several heads against concrete walls, and brutally beat to near-death a man for sexually abusing the aunt of a friend.
A river flows in its natural course. Severe child abuse set its course for me.
Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that the influence from the gray-haired woman are among the reasons I am not dead or rotting away in prison, and why I was able to reconnect with my lost sense of humanity.
I now have moments when I too can be gentle and kind.
We impact every child we interact with.
Inspirational article that spurred my memory
Link to the inspiration story
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