Talking to Strangers

I come from a long line of people who talk to strangers. I guess you could say it’s one of our family values. As a child I can remember my grandfather – in the line at the bank, in the grocery store, in the parking lot – telling stories and laughing it up with people he hardly knew. “Pop” as we called him was famous for knowing how to set a stranger at ease and for asking a question to show that he cared. My mother reported his effusive style often embarrassed her as a child, but it didn’t stop her from taking this superpower to a whole other level. If there’s any woman on earth who is a magnet for your life story, it’s my mother, Ginny Hammond. Strangers will tell this woman anything. She doesn’t have to say a word.

Family Hold Back

On the please-talk-to-strangers front, my mother met her match in my father. Throughout my whole childhood, my father brought home people we did not know for dinner, often giving my mother a whole five minutes heads up to think about how to stretch dinner for twice as many as she had planned. I don’t think she minded one bit. After years of growing up with my grandfather, she was used to it. “FHB” was the signal her mother gave when Pop pulled the same trick so many years before – Family Hold Back – and we learned quickly how to take this secret code for sharing as the perfect excuse to skip over our expected serving of vegetables or the dreaded helping of tuna noodle casserole.

The funny thing about Family Hold Back is how much it taught me how to not hold back at all – especially when it came to opening my heart. I know from those who came before me that it’s okay to not have a neat house or a well-rehearsed speech for someone new. All I have to do is ask the first question – even an expected question like “How are you?” will work – as long as I say it with unexpected sincerity and love. In a world with so much noise where no one is really listening, you’d be surprised what people are willing to share, if only they have the chance.

But even with all this preparation for true and honest moments, I sometimes miss the Call to Listen, which is one of the ways we offer up our lives for one another. Sometimes the call has to find me – in its irresistible urgency – like in this recent encounter I had with an African woman I’ll call Joyce.

Call to Listen

A few weeks ago Joyce stopped me on the playground as I was dropping my son Carter off at preschool. I was in a rush, a classic Monday morning bad mood, and I didn’t have my customary interest (or patience) for someone I don’t know. Just to be polite, I asked her how her children were doing, since I’d recently learned she’d left them in Rwanda so she could work here and send money back home to support the family. She told me they were doing well, but that she missed them. “They are grown now?” I asked, as I scooted Carter off to play. I couldn’t imagine any other way you could bear to make such an enormous sacrifice.

“Oh no, they are nine and twelve,” she said, looking pained. “They still need me so much.”

Yes, yes, of course. But even at this, I didn’t slow down, though something in my soul begged me to reconsider. “Are they with your mother or your husband?” I asked, distracted with Carter’s backpack and lunch for his hook inside the classroom downstairs.

“My mother,” she replied. “Oh, that’s good.” I said, “Your mother will know how to do everything for them.”

I was almost at the gate now – ready to make my escape, to drop off Carter’s things and be done with it – until her voice now honest and low, finally reached my heart.

“My husband died in the war.”

The war, what war? I stopped mid-step and turned to look straight in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.” For everything, I thought. For not listening, for neglecting to care, for assuming everything was fine when I’ve seen sadness in your eyes from the moment we first met so many months ago.

“Thank you,” she said unafraid, eyes shining with grief and hope for this tiny moment of compassion. Her sorrow felt so fresh, so new.

“I hope your girls dream about you every night,” I told her, “I hope they wake up in the morning feeling you so real, so close to them, that they can hardly think of missing you the rest of the day.”

“Thank you,” she said, soaking it in, letting the kindness of that thought fortify her endurance, her reserves. “Thank you. I hope so, too.” We held that thought together like a promise, a perfect dream made true.

Grateful

I left school glad that this woman insisted on that simple exchange and grateful for all the ways my elders prepared me to recognize – just in time! – the sacred, hallowed ground of the ordinary moment. It is a tiny invitation to Call that both blesses and haunts – insisting that I meet Christ in unexpected places, where grace and resilience prevail. In the eye of a stranger, in a story tightly held, waiting for an audience of hope and light.