One of the favorite parts of my job as an event coordinator has been working with the Ward Belmont Reunion for the past ten years. The youngest of these women are 82 now and two years ago we had an attendee that was celebrating her 100th birthday the day of the reunion! This year one woman who always attends, Mary, pulled me over to meet her college suite mate, Anne. She pointed to the lovely pearl earrings Anne had on. Anne told me ,”Mary gave these earrings to me for my 18th birthday so I wore them today”. I teared up as they hugged each other. She has cherished these earrings for over 65 years. The earrings are a tangible symbol of the love and connection these two dear friends still share.
I think connection is one of the things we all long for as human beings. It is one of my heart’s greatest desires. We long to be known; we long to be loved and understood by others. Connections give life meaning. Connections can come in unexpected ways and from unexpected people. This was illustrated to me in my own family at a recent family birthday dinner. My children were very young when I divorced. Their father remarried a year later and they suddenly had a whole new set of relations. We all have come a long way over the years. Even though it was not the way we planned life to go my children have been immensely blessed by all the connections of their mixed up family tree.
My children’s stepmother, Melanie, is British. When my children were young, Melanie called herself “the bonus mom” and she has been. Her parents, Clive and Lindy, have always been loving grandparents to my children. This connection has meant so much to me because my own parents became very ill when I was in college and died long before any of my children were born. Clive and Lindy made a choice to connect as grandparents to three small children across the world that they had never met. These choices to connect have enriched all our lives.
My father-in-law, Paul the Elder, as we call him, is from Boston – the son of first generation Greek immigrants. His father died suddenly when he was 10. He was raised by his mother who worked in a factory and never learned to speak English. He started working at a grocery at age 10 to help his mother support their family. He went on to attend Harvard University on full scholarship and earned a PhD from Brandeis University. But these accomplishments are not the defining measure of what kind of person my father-in-law is. The quality that really amazes me is his desire and ability to connect with others. After his wife of almost 50 years died, he moved to Tennessee after spending his whole life in Boston. I think we were all concerned about how he might handle not just the change in location but the intense culture change.
Paul the Elder has thrived in Tennessee in a way that none of us expected. I do not remember him ever visiting a church in Boston, but since he has moved to Tennessee he has become involved with several different churches. On Fridays he has started going to the local mosque. He said he told the Imam he didn’t know what he was doing but they embraced him. He said to me, ” they wouldn’t tell you but they are feeding people all over town”. He helps the Islamic community with their food drives. On Sunday he goes to the AME church down the road. He assists them with their clothing drive. He works during the week with a local church of Christ feeding the homeless. He hand paints tags to go on each piece of clothing and food baskets for all of these different groups. He likes to put ” be blessed” on each tag.
As we visited last night, Paul told Lindy that “be blessed” is something in the Tennessee culture he had no concept of before moving here. He goes out to small towns in the Middle Tennessee area and sits and paints his tags outside. People come up and ask him what he is doing and that starts conversations. He has made many friends this way. One friend is an 80-year-old Hawaiian man, Joe, that somehow found his way to Spencer, Tennessee. Joe loves to draw and he has starting drawing flower designs on the “be blessed” tags for Paul to paint. Paul asked Lindy to help him paint the tags during her recent visit. Paul puts these tags on every piece of clothing for the clothing drives. He puts them in the food baskets. He leaves them around stores and coffee shops for strangers to find.
Paul the Elder told us that after he moved to Tennessee he gotten lost out in the woods and a man stopped to help and give him directions. As he was leaving, the man rolled down his car window and hollered, ” Be blessed!”. I have heard this expression my whole life, but Paul the Elder was so touched by the simple kindness of a stranger telling him to “be blessed” that he started his own ” be blessed” campaign.
During his outdoor painting excursions Paul met two elderly women that love to knit so he has started buying yarn for them to knit caps that he then gives out to the homeless. He goes to these small towns and finds ways to connect with strangers. “Life is just so exciting” he tells me.
I looked at the tags and was struck by their artistic beauty, but what really touched my heart was the connections they represented. I am sure that the person finding it in a food basket or at a coffee shop does not realize they are being connected to an 80-year-old Hawaiian man, a 75-year-old Bostonian, and Lady Martin from Great Britain.
We all long to feel connected. I embarrass my children all the time by the way I chat with strangers. I had gone to the restroom once at a restaurant and was chatting with a woman as I came out and one of my sons said ” good grief Mom-you go the bathroom and come out with a new friend”. We buy computers for quick access to email, Facebook, and news updates. We panic when we leave our cell phone at home and have to go through a day of work without it. But so often our devices do the opposite of what we intend-they separate us rather than connect us. We are so busy listening to our music or checking email and messages trying to connect that we literally never even see the person right beside us. Paul the Elder rarely talks on his phone and does not have an email account but he is constantly connecting with people. He left his home of 73 years and found a way to thrive in his new home.
So this week-notice who is next to you as you go through your day. Decide to connect. Put away that phone, take out your ear buds and be a blessing to those around you. You might make a new friend, meet the love of your life or just be the smile a heartbroken stranger needs to make it through the day.
BE BLESSED!
© Michelle Campanis 2015
One is NOT Only 