Irish author Nuala
O'Faoloin, overwhelmed by the thousands of letters she received following
the publication of her memoir, "Are You Somebody," said that
she could not understand why people were so responsive to her writing
until she realized that writers are spokesmen for people who feel they
have no voice, for people who are too busy to tell their stories, or
for those who don't think their story is big enough to merit telling.
But each person
holds within them an entire universe, and the sharing of it is a precious
gift.
Recently I was waiting
for a table in a favorite restaurant in need of a quick lunch before
getting back to work. The man in line behind me politely asked if I
had eaten in this particular place before and if it was a good place
for seafood.
"Yes,"
I said, "I've eaten here many times and their seafood is excellent."
He was a big man,
well over six feet, wearing a leather bomber-style jacket and a baseball
cap. He had thick gray hair and kind eyes.
As we chatted, I
told him I thought I heard a hint of Texas in his speech. Having lived
there for years, I am fond of that delightful accent. He said yes, he
was born and raised there. This was his first time in Massachusetts.
He was picking up a horse and had to wait a few days until the animal
was ready. He decided to visit Gloucester because he read "The
Perfect Storm" and loved it.
When the waiter
told me my table was ready, I asked the man if he would like to share
and he enthusiastically accepted.
He was a delightful
companion. While we ate he dazzled me with tales from his career transporting
equipment for the film industry. He knew many popular stars and directors
and told excellent stories. He asked if I knew a place to buy Gloucester
T-shirts for kids, and I gave him directions.
"I'm kind of
anxious to get home," he admitted. "I'm not used to being
away from my kids this long. The little ones call me every night and
tell me they miss me."
I asked how many
and how old.
"Six kids,"
he said, "the littlest is five and the oldest fifteen."
Since I had judged
his age to be about 60 -- a fact which he soon confirmed -- I was a
little surprised. And then he told me the most remarkable story.
He had been married
for over 30 years and, with his wife, raised three children. After they
were grown and on their own, his wife told him she wanted a divorce.
A decision, he told me, that came as a complete shock. After she left,
he spent most of his time working, trying to get used to the idea of
being alone at 53. He was hurt and couldn't imagine beginning to try
to meet women and to date again. For years he immersed himself in his
job.
While working on
a film set in Arizona he became friendly with a Navajo woman who worked
in a coffee shop he frequented. He had little enough to do in the long
hours between set changes, and he spent time there talking to her. She
was more than 20 years younger than he, married with six kids, and living
on a nearby reservation. It was a bad situation.
Her husband, it
turned out, was an alcoholic and abusive. The woman felt her life was
hopeless. She invited him to the reservation and he was appalled by
the conditions she and the children lived in -- no plumbing, electricity
that worked sporadically, inadequate education. The younger children
spoke only Navajo.
And so he made a
decision. He asked her to bring her children and stay with him until
he could help her find a decent place for them to live, a reasonable
job, good schools. At first she could not imagine living away from the
reservation but, in time, he persuaded her. She and her pack of shy,
fearful children left the abusive father and the desolate reservation
and moved in with him.
The rest of the
story was beautiful. He and the woman fell in love, and he dearly loved
her children. When her divorce was final, he married her and set about
the task of raising a new family, including teaching them to speak English
and teaching them what it meant to have a loving father.
"They didn't
even know what it meant to have a Dad," he told me. He pulled out
his wallet and showed me pictures. "This is all of us in Disneyland,
I took them there last summer," he said. They had never seen the
ocean before. "I have to get back for Christmas, they don't really
understand what it means, and I want to be there so we can have a real
traditional Christmas."
He wanted to fill
a bottle with water and sand from the Atlantic Ocean to take to them.
We said good-bye, and he headed off to get his souvenirs. He was, I
thought, one of the happiest people I had ever met in my life.
Since that afternoon,
I have thought about him and his new family many times. "What a
precious gift they are," he said about his children.
I thought what a
precious gift he is to them. And to me, too.
We might never have
met. I might never have known who that big man was at the next table
eating fried clams. But he gave me the gift of his story and I know
I am the better for it.
