Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Imagining a Polish-Jewish Father and a Korean Father Just Sitting in the Sun Together

I just finished reading Teacher Man, Irish-American writer Frank McCourt's beautiful memoir.

McCourt writes powerfully about multiculturalism, class, oppression, alienation, dialogue, affirmation, and humanity, without ever using these words.

Over and over, he relates experiences of transcendence that happens at the human level between honest and open people who are able to relate at the heart level, despite barriers of age, gender, culture, and class.  

The understanding of what it means to suffer is the leitmotif in McCourt's stories about compassionate and profound communication.   Even though the forms of suffering may be different, the experience of suffering of some kind, or intimate knowledge of the suffering of another, is the key to some of his students' powerful emotional understanding.   

Sometimes an experience of suffering is buried so deeply. When that happens, there's an emotional disconnect within a person. That person cannot speak from the heart because that suffering has put a chasm of millions of miles between the heart and mind. So to see what's really going on, one must use the eyes of one's heart to look into another's heart.  

I was especially moved by McCourt's story about his student, Ken, the son of Korean immigrants to the United States.  The boy hated his father because his father was so strict and demanding, insisting on Ken's practicing piano on a table top (because they could not afford a piano) – making Eagle Scout – making Black Belt – making the Ivy League – on and on.

So, Ken ran away to Stanford because he did not want to attend his parents' choice, Harvard – he just couldn't deal with the pressure of being near their demands any longer.  

At Stanford, in an English class, he broke down in front of his class while discussing his favorite poem, "My Papa's Waltz."

"...when Ken was called on by the professor to talk about a  favorite poem, what popped up in his memory was 'My Papa's Waltz' and, Jesus, it was too much, he broke down and wept in front of all those people, and the professor was terrific, put his arm around Ken's shoulder, and led him down the hallway to his office till he could recover. He stayed an hour in the professor's office, talking and crying, the professor saying it was OK, he had a father he thought was a mean son-of-a-bitch Polish Jew, forgetting that that mean son-of-a-bitch survived Auschwitz and made his way to California and raised the professor and two other kids, ran a delicatessen in Santa Barbara, every organ in his body threatening to collapse, undermined in the camp.  The professor said that their two fathers would have alot to talk about but that would never happen.  

"The Korean grocer and the Polish-Jewish delicatessen man could never find the words that come so easily in a university.  Ken said a huge weight was lifted in the professor's office.  Or you could say all kinds of poison had flowed out of his system.  Something like that.  Now he was going to buy his father a tie for Christmas and flowers for his mother.  Yeah, it was crazy buying her flowers since they sold them in the store, but there was a big difference between the flowers you bought from the Korean corner grocery and the flowers you bought from a real florist.  

"He kept thinking of one remark of the professor's, that the world should let the Polish-Jewish father and the Korean father sit in the sun with their wives, if they were lucky enough to have them.  Ken laughed over how excited the professor became.  Just let them sit in the goddam sun.  But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun.  They might be thinking.  Same thing with kids.  Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking."

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