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7/5/06

When you are recovering, 24 hours make such a difference. This morning I woke up with a sensation of hunger, instead of nausea ( it was short-lived because the effect of the medicine ran out soon.) However with the help of medicine, I could eat a healthy breakfast!

While taking a walk in the neighborhood this morning, I ran into an old Indian woman with whom I had talked a few times in the past. As most Indian professional families do, her daughter, who is married to an American, invited this woman to live with her family. She is helping her professional daughter raising her children.

Probably because she has to manage the cultural differences, she is always eager to talk to me; she must find something Asian in me. To me, however, she is often an unwelcome intruder. First, I have to slow down my walk when she joins me. Second, I often did not understand her Indian English, and it was difficult to carry on a meaningful conversation.

Today, however, she was waiting for me sitting on the bench in front of her house, wearing a baseball cap.

" I do not have any stamina to talk to her today. What is the best way to cut the conversation short? Well, I shoud say that I am sick."

..."Well, you are sick? What do you have? " Oh~,shoot! Well, I should spill all the beans.
"I have cancer." "Where? When did you discover it?" "Esophagus. In May."
She did not understand the word esophagus, and I had to explain that it is a food tube.

Suddenly, she opened her fat fingers, showed several gold rings, and said, "We call this gold." Then she pointed at her necklace, and said, "We call it a chain. but this is gold too. We humans call things by different names, but they are the same, like we call water rain or river."

"What is your name? ah~Mayumi. I fast every week and pray for three Hindu gods. They have three different shapes, but it is actually one god. From this week I pray for your recovery, I pray that all your cancer disappear. My daughther christend her children because of her husband. But you know god is one, no matter how we call him."

" You have to walk alone with your god, but pray that you need to live for your family." Looking at me straight in the eye, she said, "When you get better, please offer a few branches of roses to my god," and she gave me two hugs just like Italians do.

Not knowing what I am doing, I was saying to her, "namaste."

"Namaste" in Hindu means "whatever your outer appearance, I see and greet the soul in you."
Compassion and connectedness among human beings are everywhere and very powerful.