Unexpected

My Daughter Ren and My Recipient, Al

Dos cosas, as we say around here.  1. The unexpected is not tragic, so stop worrying! But I do want to talk about it! 2. If you are a hand wringer, whiner, pearl clutcher or big fat baby about the subject of racism, please do not read further.  This is just real life and nothing to get too emotional about, but I know some of you cannot help but get hysterical if race is ever mentioned and for that I am sorry.  Stop reading!  (Maybe go watch cartoons.)

For those of you who do not know me, I feel compelled to tell you where I sit and where I stand: I am Plain White Vanilla, as you can see, by various photos of moi on the blog.  However, my ancestry is quite diverse, including people from Three Continents and Not Everyone Was a Christian nor did all of them Come Here Because They Wanted To Come Here and Some Came in Chains.  Some of them were in their wilderness and it became Mexico and then Texas.  At one point, I had living relatives that were not white. All of those folks have gone on to the other side now.  

 I do have a Chinese daughter, as you can see above, and she is my relative and she is not white, but she is not my ancestor.  My point being, though I look like an Uppity White Lady, (I am substituting Lady for The B Word, and you will see why in a minute) and I certainly have all the benefits of being UPL, I also have the benefit of having those relatives that were called all the ugly names, fled in fear, or knew the stories of those that were forced to come. I learned a lot about bigotry and prejudice from them, as they were mistreated and it did occasionally come up in their story telling. I do not recall any of them ever saying anything unkind about other people, and maybe they were just careful around little kids, especially me, since I had a big mouth and just loved to repeat things, but deep down I believe they were not bitter.  I think they were happy and grateful people, regardless of all the harsh things they faced. 

Having said all of that about my history as a member of the human race, I did not expect the subject of race to be part of this story.  But as it turns out, it is and I did not know because I did not want to see it.

The first thing I ignored, was the several times that Al mentioned that he did not expect that he would receiving a kidney from a white person.  I also noticed that Al's family, who is in and out of town, have never been around when I was around, which is not a big deal, but several times, he mentioned he wanted me to meet them and they never have been able to show up when we were visiting with him.  I have a vague recollection of them outside my hospital room but not coming in, and when I asked Al if the nurses had sent them away or what had happened, he did appear a little nervous.  And changed the subject.  Finally he said "They figured you would not want to meet them."

Al even mentioned that there had been some concern amongst the friends and family that I might be an Uppity White B Word.  I told Al, "Nothing wrong with that!" and we yucked it up and both said "I yam what I yam" in our Popeye voice....Many times it was mentioned how they speculated in dialysis about the donor.  I did not get that they were speculating about race of the donor, even though he very specifically said that they teased him that the donor might be "a rapper". He also would mention how all the Mexicans hung together during dialysis, and how there were some white people that were very rude to the Mexicans.

Finally, I got it the other day when I asked him if I could post that picture of him on my blog and Facebook and he was quite thrilled about it, and thought it would be a lot of fun, and then thought about it, for a few minutes and said, "Your friends won't like me, when they see what I look like!"  I thought he meant that his beard has grown in and he did not have in his false teeth or something, so I just told him that he did not know my friends, but they would love to see him.

A few miles down the road he said, "Your friends won't like it when they find out you donated a kidney to a spic."  Holy cccccrap! I also my drove my van off the road!

1. None of my friends use that word.

2. If they did, they know better.

3. But main point is: No one would ever, in a million years, choose not to donate due to racial differences.  I think if there was a donor that said they would only donate to another white person or person of the same race, the Transplant Coordinator Ladies would send that person packing!

Then he related how he was extremely fearful that I might cancel the whole plan, once I saw him and learned he was Native American. (Truth be told, I had been told he was by the TCL. It had all made sense to me because of my NA relatives.)  His family was pretty much convinced that I would not go through with it because of the race issue. 

However, after meeting me and hanging out with Mark, who is Pretty Much the Nicest Man in the World, while waiting for Al to go into his surgery, Al thought we might be okay with being friends with him.  He always was hopeful that we could be friends.

He said that seeing Ren and how friendly she was to him, and knowing us better, he started to think he was pretty silly for worrying about the race issue.  A real defining moment was when I told him that I had just heard that the Raiders football team name offended people because "Raiders" was another term for Native Americans.  He had replied back "Why do you think all the Natives are Raiders fans?  They like the term, but politically correct white people don't like it."  He said that my reaction, which was to accept what he said without any argument or defense of "politically correct white people" made him realize that I was "laid back about this whole race thing."

He told me he has wasted a lot of time and energy hating white people.  Who can blame the Native Americans, especially, for hating white people?  Having said that, he is right that it is a waste of time and energy to hate anyone. 

 One thing people never mention about racism (maybe because we are all so busy trying to cover up the little areas of our life where racism creeps in) is that it hurts the racist too. More than can ever be measured, because we cannot measure all the potential lost that resulted in so many good things that never could happen.

 If anyone is a racist and has not properly dealt with that hatred, then you can never fully move forward as a human being, because your spiritual life is stunted, your social life is boring, and your brain is stuck. 

I was once in a church service where the pastor asked everyone to confess to the person sitting next to them, something that they struggled with every day.  The woman next to me, looked me right in the eye and said "I hate white people."  I told her that it hurt her a lot more than it hurt me, not to mention her relationship with God.  I think that was a miracle that day, for both of us. (Honestly though, when they do "fun stuff" like that in church, I want to run away.  The pastor literally called me out from the pulpit one time when they had announced it was an all prayer service,where everyone would pray out loud with those in the pews around them.  He pointed at me and said "I just read that woman's lips:I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN BED.")

Being intolerant does not allow progress.  On a global level, look at who wins the Nobel prizes and the countries that Never Ever Win Because They Are Stuck.  You got it. 

Al said he keeps telling his family that all of their fears are unfounded.  He said that they believe I probably think I am better than them because I did this nice thing.  He knows that is not true, but they do not believe him.

I told him that they probably feel bad that they could not donate and that is why they take all this negativity and assign it to this donation.  It is unresolved grief.  It is okay to be sad that it did not turn out how they hoped.  I understand because I felt sad I could not donate to my friend because of all I had gone through (for nothing! is how I felt at the time) and also because my friend had to wait longer and do dialysis, and he and his wife had another month of stress, worry and sadness. It was a roller coaster, with varying speeds and heights for all the people involved.

But as it turns out, all is well that ends well.  There are happy endings all around!

Al is leaving tomorrow. We went to say good bye to Al last night.  He had a tough time saying good bye.

Today I was the one who had a tough time: When he said good bye on the phone today, he said "tell Mark and my Nieces goodbye, Sister!"