The Glue of Kindness

_

One of the strongest bonds in any neighbourhood is kindness – and I see numerous examples around me. But, as Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Kindness"* points out, "Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,/you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing." *

She describes the losses that dissolve dreams of the future, the endless journey on a country bus, and the dead Indian beside the road that might have been you. Such sorrows can open the door to empathy until, as Nye writes in her concluding stanza, it is "only kindness that ties your shoes/and sends you out into the day."

As I reflect on this poem, I think of Michael Beaton, now deceased, who used to cook a weekly breakfast for his fellow residents in 220 Oak Street, a building with the reputation of being a rough place to live. But because of his kindness, others in his building, even as they grieve his loss, are inspired to follow his example and continue the breakfasts.

Or I think of Breshna Kayoumi, a woman who left her home in war-devastated Afghanistan and is now raising her five children here in the vicinity of Regent Park. Yet despite her personal struggles with anxiety, she continues to look out for another Afghan mom with a history of severe heart problems, at one point, getting this friend to hospital in the nick of time for life-saving surgery. When I commend Breshna, she brushes off my praise. Kindness simply goes with her everywhere, "like a shadow or a friend."

I also remember an elderly Chinese man who attended one of my English classes at Yonge Street Mission years ago. "Telling our Stories” was the theme of the course, and my students, mostly young immigrant moms, enjoyed sharing their experiences of childhood games, school uniforms, elaborate weddings, and, best of all, babies. In the midst of this, our token grandfather was gracious but mostly quiet. The only part of his life that he genuinely wanted to disclose was now that he was retired – "My Happy Life in Canada."

Gradually, though, we did learn bits and pieces of his earlier days in China. He had been born in Hong Kong, where he attended a Catholic school. But during World War II, when the Japanese started bombing the city, the family fled over the border to south China, only to find more bombing there. After the war, when the Communists took over, life continued to be tumultuous. During the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, ill-conceived government policies created a famine in which tens of millions lost their lives.

"We were eating bark and grass," my elderly student said with a shudder. "It was awful."

Eventually, he worked as an engineer to maintain the machinery at a big state-owned factory. There he met his wife. They had a daughter and, if I remember correctly, a son. But then, in the 1960s, the terrifying upheavals of the Cultural Revolution erupted, and this quiet man – because he was a Roman Catholic – was sent to prison. 

I was reluctant to ask more questions because he obviously coped by keeping his memories deeply buried. Recalling his earlier comments, I shifted to the present, "So what do you do now that you're retired – in your happy life in Canada?"

"Every day, I go and swim at John Innis Pool. That's why I'm still fit at my age," he replied, slapping his chest with pride. "I also try to improve my bad English." (He was one of the best in the class.) And then his final response – a response that should not have left me surprised: "I serve food to the homeless at the Good Shepherd Mission. Yes, I have a happy life in Canada."

I will always cherish the memory of these three neighbours – Michael, Breshna, and my elderly Chinese friend – for how they reached out to serve others. Many who live troubled and painful lives become hard and broken. These three, instead, were broken open – to discover "it is only kindness that makes sense anymore."

* https://poets.org/anthology/naomi-shihab-nye