PART 1:
Eric Frimpong left his wife and crying kids in Ghana to look for work in the States to give them a better life. Eight years passed without him seeing his family, and the last hurdle Eric needed to clear to be reunited with them was significant: gaining U.S. citizenship.
Working as a maintenance technician at a senior community called Goodwin Living, Eric heard about a resident, Jill Miller, who could help him study for his citizenship exam.
Jill, and her husband Carl, in turn gained something from Eric:
New-found purpose and a friend.
THE TEST is a short documentary that tells their collective story. A story of people from two groups—immigrants and older adults—whose contributions this country doesn’t readily see.
The filmmakers hope (as do I, though I haven’t seen their film) that THE TEST “can provide a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing cynicism about immigration and aging in America.” If that’s your hope too, click here for ways to lend your support.
I could end there, but this story gets better:
Goodwin Living resident Rita Siebenaler saw that the fees associated with gaining citizenship could be prohibitive for team members like Eric and asked the Goodwin Living Foundation to consider covering the costs. Residents and other staff would provide tutoring for the test.
Rita’s involvement contributed the stimulus for what is now the Goodwin Living Citizenship Program. And for more icing on the cake, Goodwin Living offers a free Citizen Playbook for workplaces across the country to welcome immigrant workers.
PART 2:
When my parents lived in Chicago, I secured them the “free” services of an aide.*
“Shirl” helped around the house and took on the “task” of doing puzzles with my mother. This turned out to be an important—but quiet—contribution Mom made to Shirl’s health:
“Infected” by the puzzle bug, she was less interested in smoking.
While Shirl didn’t ditch cigarettes completely, she told my mother that she was doing puzzles at home too and had really cut down the amount she smoked.
That’s a win and The End.
*This post describes how I got in-home help and paid as a family caregiver.
PART 3:
Around the time that she turned 90, my mother (who gave me the green light to write this) started pondering out loud about her purpose.
She’d say, “There must be a reason for me being here…” before adding something to the effect that she didn’t feel like she was doing much. This launched me more than once into a fiery sermon that I’d start with, “Are you kidding me, Mom?!”
First, I reminded her of the number of people who call on her for prayers. These weren’t idle requests that people were making—they asked for her prayers because they provided them support. Also, I hoped that she understood that her telephone check-ins and greeting cards helped friends in her former senior community get through lockdowns.
And anyone could see how touched people were by her gifts of handmade Christmas ornaments and personalized needlepoint bookmarks (which folks often wanted to wear).
And while I couldn’t enumerate the effects that she—the longest-lived person in her clan to date—was having on her great-grandchildren, my inner knowing said that they were and would be profound, even if not fully obvious now.
But there was a part of my sermon that I gave with extra “oomph”:
The part when I dispensed a quotation from Marianne Williamson that gives me solace when I start trippin’ and question the value of my own contributions:
“We are the permanent holders of a spiritual career, for it is what we are and not what we do that represents our greatest work in the world.”
Despite my assertion that HER PRESENCE was her present to people, she didn’t seem to buy it. But when her buddy at her senior center told her, “YOU BRING JOY!” she was convinced.
And that reminds me of another quotation I dispense by Dr. Maya Angelou:
“People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
PART 4:
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is a prominent author and teacher who created “The Healer’s Art,” a curriculum that’s been taught to tens of thousands of medical students. Mentor and inspiration to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, I “met” Rachel on his podcast.
Here, Rachel, who’s been chronically ill for decades and was told she’d be dead by 40, describes lying on her mother’s couch making other people suffer for her suffering.
But one day, though Rachel insisted she was too sick to get dressed, her mother carted her off to…wait for it…a race car driving school to get trained!
Rachel couldn’t walk for long, but could drive a car at 110 miles an hour and win races.
Now in her 80s, Rachel…Dr. Remen…has made many not-so-quiet contributions in her career.
Right now, through her story, she’s making a quieter contribution by helping me say this:
1. We can “win” despite serious chronic illness or bleak prognoses.
2. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that someone who struggles with walking (or activities of daily living like getting dressed) can’t kick our butts at something else!
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