Last summer I was given two suitcases by the pastoral office. The generosity was tied to my intention to retire, which it turns out I didn't. The givers did not ask for them back.
The suitcases
waited patiently for ten months until we packed for Europe. It was when we started to schlepp that their features came into their glory. Wheels on the bottom? Let me shake that inventor's hand. A handle that extends so that I can stand erect while hustling through a crowd? Amazing. Interior pockets, a USB plug, and the capacity to expand all made traveling more comfortable. The expansion trick could be incorporated into holiday pants in November.
Packing was an exercise is prediction. Would the weather be cool, or scorching? Was a colorful scarf worth the space it took, or should I skip it? Whatever the final decisions were, I had to hang on to them for dozens of transitions. Everyone around me was pulling their own collection of personal garments.
A few years back my community had a fundraiser for a family of refugees. I was preoccupied with my own life at the time and did not go. The idea of displaced people didn't resonate, and my heartstrings stayed slack. I thought of them on my trip, retroactively compassionate for that effort to smash belongings into a box you carry with you.
Hope and Aurelle's
friends are different. They understand immigration because it is all around them. It was part of our conversations, and the girls said that barely a day went by when it did not come up in their classes. Several of their friends are majoring in fields that address international law and politics. They had a great deal to say about it as we ate dinner. I listened, ignorant and unaware. But I began to care.
It was almost as if I was like my suitcase. I felt my capacity to hold other people's lives expanding.