Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. As you can see Mattie was playing a keyboard. This keyboard was given to him by Jerry and Nancy! Jerry and Nancy work together as music volunteers at the Hospital. In fact, we met them during Mattie's very first week of treatment. Their music, entertainment, and conversation really made a difference to us that evening, the evening when Mattie was to start his very first chemotherapy. For just a short moment in time we all felt normal, we forgot we were in a PICU, and there was laughter in the room. The power of music! Over time, Jerry and Nancy became friends of ours and would do a "Name that Tune" game with Mattie. Mattie loved the game because Jerry always played songs Mattie knew! Jerry and I worked that out ahead of time through emails, so that Mattie would feel happy and good about his guessing! This was a very generous and thoughtful gift from Jerry and Nancy. A gift we held onto for a very long time. However, on Friday, October 4, when Peter and I visited Georgetown, we donated the keyboard back to the Hospital for other kids to enjoy. Jerry and Nancy loved this decision and hopefully music will continue to live on in the pediatric units.
Quote of the day: We don't heal in isolation, but in community. ~ S. Kelley Harrell
My mom and I learned a lot from this exhibit. I had no idea the incredible influence the Flemish had on the world of art in Italy. The Flemish introduced the Italians to oil paints, the beauty of including landscapes within portraits, as well as painting people straight on versus in profile.
I will give you a brief description of the exhibit so you can put this into context, but then I will share with you the highlight of our visit...... a chance encounter with a full blooded Apache Native American! A FIRST for me!!!
The exhibit description:
Learning about California's missions is a rite of passage for California's fourth graders and their parents. Yet few might realize that Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who founded many of the missions, was already 55 years old by the time he came to California in 1769, a milestone preceded by decades of service in Spain and Mexico.
The exhibition also provides the backdrop against which the missions emerged: early California was home to numerous and diverse groups of Indians for millennia before the Spanish arrived. Culture and customs varied from village to village, Indians in California spoke more than 100 languages and Indians in the parts of California colonized by Spain numbered nearly 70,000.
Serra, under the auspices of the Catholic Church and the Spanish flag and in keeping with a centuries-old tradition of Spanish missionaries coming to the Americas, believed his life's work was to convert Indians to Christianity. The missions were vibrant outposts of European culture and an expression of a Catholic spiritual ideal. But they also were shaped by the Indians who lived in them. Further still, missions had a darker side. In many ways they were coercive, and Serra's work encouraging California Indians to relocate to the missions ultimately led thousands to early graves, as diseases killed many who came to live there as well as many more born in the Franciscan establishments.
This exhibit was quite big and was housed in over 5 rooms. When my mom and I comb through an exhibit, we can be there for hours. We read all the signs, documentation, and view the art. We usually land up chatting about it along the way as well. I suppose we are a curator's dream! Not everyone shares our love for spending time learning about the art. Needless to say, this exhibit was emotionally charged, but needless to say, without personal context, sometimes it is hard to get the true magnitude of what you are reading.
That instantly changed for me when a man walked up to us and started talking to us. This man's name was David and he is a full blooded Apache Native American, born on a reservation in Texas. We learned that ONLY 11 people remain from his group because the rest were killed. David shared with us aspects of his life, how alcoholism impacted the lives of his grandparents and how at a young age he was separated from his parents and family and forced to attend a school in which he had to learn Catholicism. His stories of coercion and abuse were almost too hard to listen to and frankly it made you pause and ask yourself WHAT COUNTRY AM I LIVING IN?!!! But here is the next best kept secret, or at least it was to me. Native Americans are considered US citizens, however, if one is born on a Native American reservation, then you are NOT allowed to vote!!! I repeat, David has NO voting rights despite working and paying taxes and being a citizen. I was speechless and came home tonight to verify what he reported. Unfortunately what he reported is correct.
I suppose why history was never one of my favorite subjects in school, was because of how it is taught. It was taught to me in a matter of fact kind of way with dates, wars, and so forth. But history comes alive when you hear a personal story and in so many ways meeting David brought history alive for me. Though I wanted to refute what I was reading in the exhibit, I found after talking with David for 45 minutes, that this was impossible. David was working the security detail at the exhibit and while we were there, I did hear him talking to other people throughout the day. I could hear people thanking him for sharing his story with them. Nonetheless, David related to my mom and I, and he felt comfortable sharing his history with us.
Toward the end of our encounter, he told me I had a glow! I asked him what that actually meant and he said that meant I am a happy person, happy about my life and so forth. Of which point I laughed and told him this couldn't be the furthest from the truth. I then told him about Mattie and our loss. David then held my hands and in the middle of the exhibit literally gave a blessing to me and Mattie in his native tongue. The premise of the blessing was for Mattie to know he is loved and that I should know that he always walks beside me. It was a very touching and meaningful prayer and it left my mom and I both crying. Needless to say this was a visit to the Huntington Library which I would never have expected, but one I won't be forgetting anytime soon.
The amazing part about David is he could be bitter, hostile, and angry at the world. Certainly given how he has been treated and is still treated today, this would be justified. But he doesn't seem to exude any of these traits, instead, he is calm and uses his experiences to educate others. As he said to us today, we are the change agents. One person at a time. Very meaningful and I believe even though I have no idea what it is like to be Native American, we related to each other. We both experienced loss on some level and a loss to our identity. Certainly in drastically different manners, but once again, I experienced first hand how loss bonds people together.
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