Fifty years ago today, I was eleven
years old and living in Napa, California. Our family of seven (2 older sisters,
2 younger brothers) had just arrived 8 months earlier from Holland, full of
hope and angst. Only my father knew English, but the rest of us were well on
the way to picking it up, immersed in our classes at a local parochial school, taught
by Sisters of Mercy from Ireland, all heavily dressed in black robes but always
carrying a sparkle in their eyes and a keen sense of humour, which gave humanity
to their no-nonsense teaching style.
In my own case, Sr. Mary Ligouri had
placed me in the back of the 5th grade classroom and assigned one of
the brighter boys to help “tutor” me, giving us an early grade spelling /
writing book as our only resource. It was full of pictures, and in the way that
kids have, we were able to communicate despite the fact that there was no
shared language. When I’d finished one book, the next grade’s version would
appear. Gradually, immersion did the trick and English became my dominant
language – although I won’t tell you what my first learned words were.
Life might have been hard for my
father and mother, uprooting themselves from all that they had known and loved,
relatives and friends included, but there was a general tone of optimism
through it all. We had done what my father had wanted to do twenty years
earlier, and here we were in the land of opportunity, with a young President,
beautiful vistas, and roads that went on forever. Where in Holland you would
make serious plans if you were visiting relatives in a town 15-20 miles away,
here that would simply be a nice afternoon drive to go shopping.
In some ways it was quite an idyllic
time. I had a newspaper delivery route on early mornings, served Mass at 6:30
am during my shift at the local parish, bicycling there in the semi-darkness,
and enjoyed making new friends among a group of classmates that were much more
multi-cultural than the society from which we had come.
As you may have guessed, I’m trying
to set the scene for the news that Sr. Mary Ligouri shared with us just before
lunch on November 22, 1963, with tears in her eyes and a constricted voice. An
old TV was found and rolled out. Lessons stopped. The news on the small black
and white television became our most important teacher. And the idyllic dreams
for the future became a bit less idyllic for a while. For three days, the world
watched as the nation went through its mourning rituals, with the television as
our 1960’s version of the internet, communicating what it could and providing a
national support network for us all. It was an amazing experience.
Today, when I reflect back, I can
appreciate the sense of tragedy, injustice, and mild national depression that
ensued. But I also recall the palpable and growing national conviction that
even this would not undermine the country’s aspirations and hopes. If anything,
it made them all the more important, focused, and worthwhile. Difficulties and
suffering can bring goodness to light, although it requires a change in
perspective. “The dark takes form in the heart of the white, and reveals it.”
(Rabindranath Tagore) Finally, with grace and experience, hope prevails.
