The Janitor and The Child

I was sucked into a political discussion in my beloved runner’s forum. I’d rather avoid political debates because I find them so vexing. I have my strongly held beliefs, as do others. Admittedly, there are times when someone opens my eyes to other possibilities, explanations or solutions. Usually not. Too often, I’m simply bombarded by slogans, partisan rants and the regurgitated pap that's become our daily fare.

I’m irritated by the libertarians /conservatives/Republicans who pound their fists on the table exclaiming it’s all a matter of living virtuously and taking “personal responsibility” for one’s own success or failure. As if that were simple. As if that were all that is needed. I’m always left wondering if my opponent is naively blind. Perhaps the blindness is a convenient excuse; or, worse yet, thinly veiled prejudice. One never knows the truth of another’s heart or soul.

The Janitor

I spent a college summer working as a janitor. I worked 2nd shift, usually, sometimes the graveyard shift. Whenever I worked the graveyard shift, my path would cross that of a fellow janitor who was permanently assigned that shift, despite his seniority. He was a black gentleman.

He was in his late-fifties. A thin, quiet man. He only spoke when spoken to, and when he opened his mouth it was obvious he had let his teeth surrender to rampant decay. I liked him. I would always stop to chat a spell, usually because I would observe him being taunted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways as we cleaned the union workers’ locker room. That locker room scared me. The workers were, without exception, poorly educated white males. Some pretty big and ugly dudes, to boot. I always figured he could use a bit of moral support. Hell, with my long hair, I too, received my fair share of abuse. I felt a certain kinship with my fellow mop-wrangler.

I never really got to know him. What little I learned was this: he was the son of an alcoholic share-cropper who had booted him out of the family shack at age thirteen, asserting that he was a “man” now, and had to make his own way in the world. And so he did. He had no high school diploma, couldn’t even read, but he ventured alone into the world and found himself a woman who blessed him with two children and he, in turn, made a home for them…as a lifelong janitor…mopping up after others…

He wasn’t bitter. He never spoke with resentment or outrage. He simply did what he did, lived the only way he could figure out how, and took it all in with a certain detached bemusement. He was stoic. He was honorable.

The Child

My wife had befriended a family and, through her, I came to befriend them, too. The entire family was blessed with striking good looks…every one. They were good people. They were hard working and spiritual. Their youngest daughter (18 years old) was an absolute knockout. She was tall, lean, shapely and radiantly beautiful. She had the softest, kindest, most innocent brown eyes I had ever seen. The innocence wasn’t feigned, either. She had the mental maturity of a five year old.

Having met her, one couldn’t help but obsess about her fate. Her parents were aging rapidly. Despite a lifetime’s worth of special education and training, she functioned no better than a five year old, and never would progress beyond that stage, although she had blossomed into a ravishing woman with biological needs and wants she could scarcely understand or manage. She exuded the sweetness, charm and innocence of your typical kindergartener as she stood on the threshold of a waiting world.

* * *

Personal responsibility. Yeah…that’s the ticket.

I’m not a big fan of Darwinian societies exulting in the survival of the “fittest.” I’m even more put off by the recent wave of Neo-Calvinism (i.e., personal wealth and success are proof that you’re virtuous and that God loves you). No, I prefer a society filled with helping hands. Hands outstretched to lift up all who need a lift.

Really...what would Jesus do?

* * *

What For
By Garrett Kaoru Hongo

At six I lived for spells:
how a few Hawaiian words could call
up the rain, could hymn like the sea
in the long swirl of chambers
curling in the nautilus of a shell,
How Amida’s ballads of the Buddhaland
in the drone of the priest’s liturgy
could conjure money from the poor
and give them nothing but mantras,
the strange syllables that healed desire.

I lived for stories about the war
my grandfather told over hana cards,
slapping them down on the mats
with a sharp Japanese kiai.

I lived for songs my grandmother sang
stirring curry into a thick stew,
weaving a calligraphy of Kannon’s love
into grass mats and straw sandals.

I lived for the red volcano dirt
staining my toes, the salt residue
of surf and sea wind in my hair,
the arc of a flat stone skipping
in the hollow trough of a wave.

I lived a child’s world, waited
for my father to drag himself home,
dusted with blasts of sand, powdered rock,
and the strange ash of raw cement,
his deafness made worse by the clang
of pneumatic drills, sore in his bones
from the buckings of a jackhammer.

He’d hand me a scarred lunchpail,
let me unlace the hightop G.I. boots,
call him the new name I’d invented
that day in school, write it for him
on his newspaper. He’d rub my face
with hands that felt like gravel roads,
tell me to move, go play, and then he’d
walk to the laundry sink to scrub,
rinse the dirt of his long day
from a face brown and grained as koa wood.

I wanted to take away the pain
in his legs, the swelling in his joints,
give him back his hearing,
clear and rare as crystal chimes,
the fins of glass that wrinkled
and sparked the air with their sound.

I wanted to heal the sores that work
and war had sent to him,
let him play catch in the backyard
with me, tossing a tennis ball
past papaya trees without the shoulders
of pain shrugging back his arms.

I wanted to be a doctor of pure magic,
to string a necklace of sweet words
fragrant as pine needles and plumeria,
fragrant as the bread my mother baked,
place it like a lei of cowrie shells
and pikake flowers around my father’s neck,
and chant him a blessing, a sutra.

* * *