Gratitude

Tis the season to count your blessings, and I have been faced once again with the exorbitant amount of privilege I possess.

I am thankful for my passport- which allows me easy entry to most every country in the world.

I am thankful for my freedom- for my every day walking around and doing what I want because I come from a place that people respect, have a skin color that people don’t question, and have the financial means to legally stay in or move to most any country in the world I desire.

I am thankful for my education- for the power I feel over my future because I have had far more than most the privilege to spend time learning.

I am thankful for my family- for the countless meals and traditions and laughs and guidance they have shared with me- for how they are the reason I can feel deep down within myself that I am safe and known and loved.

I am thankful for that sense of worth I have known my whole life- because I have always had my family to fall back on I have explored, taken risks. I have failed and not faded away. I have succeeded and been celebrated wildly.

I have been acutely aware the last several weeks of how “blessed” my life is, how “untouchable” I can feel, sometimes, from so many disasters that so many face. And I have lamented my privilege even while I have enjoyed it.

This week I stood with laced fingers through that awful fence again asking a young woman far braver, brighter, and beautiful than I could ever hope to be how she was. “I’m fantastic”, she laughed. I cannot fathom why she should be detained, she so much does not belong there.

Outside I comforted a family friend as he silently wept, telling me how his 8 month old daughter clung to him and cried when the officers took her and his wife away. And I can feel the weight of my own daughter in my arms and see the pain of my husband as he talks- were such a thing to be our reality too.

Then I listened to a kid who I have always wanted so badly to love as my own explain why he can’t keep up at the international school he miraculously (and independently) got a scholarship to attend. Between the hours long bus rides to  and from the school, his responsibilities to cook and clean in the studio he shares with other teenagers -he can’t complete his homework. If only, he said, someone could cook for him, or wash his clothes, or take his responsibilities that enable him to earn enough money to pay his rent- if then he could concentrate on school like any other student. And I can’t help but think- this kid is amazing- look at all that he has done without any help. And think of all the more he could do if he got a break every once in awhile.

Then we shared Thanksgiving with some lovely friends and a young man freed from arbitrary detainment. And when I looked at him from across the table, where he shyly smiled time to time I was so angry at all the meals lost to him- very suddenly acutely aware that once his world was family and meals and traditions and celebrations until it wasn’t that anymore and then he was suddenly thrust into another culture, and then again a prison, and now here he is- hopeful but heavy laden with so very much trauma from his last several years of life.

And then today I went to survey an apartment option for our temporary house guest. I’ve seen dozens of studios of various sizes and a wide range of cleanliness over the years. Though this one was fairly large and fairly clean my heart still sank. I talked with three former clients of mine who were happily prepared to welcome in a fourth roommate to their studio apartment not quite the size of my living room. Three different guys whom I had last seen some 18 months ago and for which not one damn thing had changed. Still waiting for status (what the heck UNHCR?!), one of them still literal skin and bones so obviously not receiving the medical attention he needs, still looking for jobs and trying to go to school and eeking out a living while they hideaway afraid of immigration. It was … heart- breaking and infuriating and I just can’t help but think- CAN WE NOT DO BETTER THAN THIS? Two of these guys were 15 when I met them. 15. What a shame. What a waste.

And so my gratitude has looked like angry hot tears at so much injustice I can hardly breathe, the reality that I see myself in so many of these fine young people, the confusing noun “privilege” which I have barely been able to wrap my head around, and a broken little heart that in feeble, probably misguided ways, wants to love hard enough to bring about some sort of redemption or hope anyway but which fears no amount of loving will ever see redemption for so many sweet kids.