Just saying hello ...

[Rambee]

Dear members,

Another week has passed, so fast, too. I hope everybody is doing well. I am enjoying reading the postings on valuable information like where to find electronic books, and fun ones like sharing hobbies (dancing?, wow). I am always glad to log in - I just wish I got to do it a little more often.

We had so much snow a few days ago that our neighborhood was like a wonderland. Frozen snow on the trees looked very pretty under the winter sunlight, spreading subtle shines to every direction, which made the whole landscape very mysterious. Now all the ice is gone and the day is warm and beautiful as if nothing ever happened. I am planning to jog around the lake in our neighborhood tomorrow just to get some healthy dose of sunshine.

I just found out something yesterday, and I wonder if you will think it is interesting, too:

I used to volunteer at a community kitchen (we called it "Love Feast") that fed low-income families. I live in a pale (predominantly whites except for the college population, which includes people from all over the world) small town and we do not have really what they call "a bad neighborhood". But there is an area at the edge of the town where the housings are mostly government subsidized and the kids are not well taken care of, because their (mostly single) parents have to work in various hours. I volunteered as a cook in the kitchen on certain Thursday nights a few years ago.

There was a tall skinny white man, who looked about in his 70s, regularly showed up there when I worked, in typically poor people's clothes (clean but unmatching everything). He always carried something around in a large sack and I sometimes wondered if he picked up stuff from the street. He was a quiet man and I had not heard him speaking, until one day he walked over and spoke to me.

He said "hi" and opened his right hand. He had a set of sharp and deep-set eyes and very serious look on his face, so I almost jumped back a little. I thought he wanted to shake hands with me, but he had a lime in his hand to show me, which obviously just came out of his large sack. He asked me if I would like to have it. It was all shriveled and dried up lime and I don't even like the fruit that much. So without thinking I politely said "No, thank you." The smile quickly disappeared from his face, and he looked really disappointed. I regretted having said "no" so quickly, but it was too late, and if I said "yes" now to change my mind, I knew he would know I am taking it as a favor to him. Even if it was a favor to him I wasn't about to hurt his pride. He looked down at the lime in his hand for a few seconds and slowly walked away. He never spoke to me since then, and the kitchen was always so busy that I could not get away to be friends with him, to smooth things over.

I thought of this man often since that day and felt bad about the damn shriveled-up lime that I didn't take. I should have taken his gift and said "thank you", then it would have made him happy, and I would not have felt guilty whenever I thought about it.

Last week, I went up to the Math department to find somebody. Would you believe that I saw him in one of the pictures on the wall? He looked younger in the picture, but the face was unmistakably his, which was not the kind of face that you could mix up with someone else's. I asked the department secretary who it was, and she said that he was a math professor until he retired fifteen or twenty years ago. She said that ever since the retirement he has been tutoring the kids who don't have parents at home after school, and bikes around the grocery stores in town to pick up a-day-old bread and fruits that are going to be thrown away and takes them to the community kitchen.

The small guilt that I always felt finally got lifted! He was not one of the poor people who was in need of a friend whom I treated insensitively somehow. I was fascinated by the story that I was just told and the fact that I actually got to meet this extraordinary man. I was very happy.

We meet all different types of people while going through our life, but some are more unforgettable than some others. Mr. G., as everybody used to call him in the kitchen, definitely was one of the unforgettable people I have met.

Best,
Rambee