The Tile of Belonging

Unexpectantly life can lift us up like a leaf on a sudden gust.   As we spin and float slowly back, we glimpse the mosaics of our lives anew from this angle and that.  With each turn, we recalibrate where we have been and where we are going.  To our amazement, we can notice tiles that we have never realized were there.   Where had that one come from?   How did this one get included in the mosaic?   When exactly had this one been put into place?

So it was for me this fall when a friend of my mother’s died.  Often when our parent’s friends die, we are sad from a distance.  The death does not reach in and twist our hearts.  Our sadness is almost cerebral.  It is someone else’s shortfall and our hearts fill with empathy and sympathy but not genuine loss.   This time, it was different.

Without my realizing it, Poppy had managed to lay a tile in the mosaic of my life.   I can’t tell you when exactly he put it there but from my vantage point, swirling in the updraft of his death, I could see it plainly- an unmistakable tile I had never seen before.

As with many of my tiles, the edges of this one are complex and uneven, not like those with neatly squared-off points.   I think this tile may have begun to take shape when I was very young.    At the end of WWII,  my Hungarian parents were uprooted and forced to find a new home.    They  walked across Hungary and Austria to avoid Russians  troops, and finally settled in Munich, Germany, where they attended medical school.   Once graduated, I was born and they wanted to find a new life.  At 29, they applied to become sponsored refugees to the United States.  I think their education and medical training are primary reasons they were selected.  My aunt and uncle were not so lucky.  With all the returning GI’s, America needed doctors.

I was just one and half then.  All our possessions fit into two wooden crates and these had been shipped ahead of us.  Other than that, my parents arrived in NYC with two suitcases and pockets bulging with dreams.  None of us spoke English, so we were set up in an apartment.    My father was sent to take English classes and my mother was granted her only request, a stroller so she could walk with me every where she needed to go.

With time, we were relocated to New Brunswick, NJ, where my mom stayed home with me and my father worked in a local hospital.   It was a German community, so mother and I had no need to learn English just yet.

Mother wrote to my grandmother every day about the skyscrapers of NYC and life in America.   She wondered why my grandmother never referred to these letters.   It turned out the letters, which were seen as American propaganda,  were being confiscated by Communist officials who had taken over Hungary.  Grandmother had never received even one.  For over a year, there had been only intermittent communications between my mother and my grandmother across the sea.

Consequently, the feeling of distance and isolation grew.   We had little money and no family here.  We knew no one else.  It was up to the three of us make a new life for ourselves.

Skipping ahead four years and through a move to Delaware, my parents divorced.  My mother found herself in medical residency at Wilmington Memorial Hospital while trying to raise me as a single mom.  In the 1950’s, there were few single mom’s, even fewer female physicians, and fewer still female physicians who were not native speakers of English.   Not everyone understood our circumstance, our accents, or my mother’s pierced ears.

Poppy was a colleague in the hospital.   He and his wife were transplants from New Foundland.  They knew what it was like to come to a new country, to start over, and build a life.   They took us into their hearts with the simple assumption that we belonged.   As naturally as the gradual rhythm of the seasons, we were drawn into each family event from births, to anniversaries, to graduations, to weddings.  There was always room for us at their table.  At last, I had an extended family where none could exist before.

With the years, our families grew and changed.   Poppy’s five children gradually became adults as did I.  When I married my high school sweet heart, Poppy was the photographer at our wedding.   His youngest daughter walked with me as my flower girl.

Thirty years later, for our son’s marriage, my mother’s only wish was to be able to dance at his wedding.   After having both her knees replaced, her dream came true as she waltzed with Poppy while all of us looked on-  a sight I will treasure for a lifetime.

As I settle from being stirred by Poppy’s death, I have come to value this “new” tile  more than ever.   Poppy, his wife, and family set the glaze, carefully placed, and permanently adhered a precious tile in the mosaic of my life.   They did so without fanfare or the need for recognition or thanks.  They filled the void so naturally I did not notice when it became an integral part of who I am.

As many do, I  longed to belong.  I felt different growing up in the ‘50’s without a dad.   This family let me know that I fit in.   They accepted my mom and me for who we were, in the condition in which we appeared.  They remained steadfast and never failing through a lifetime of changes.

The tile of belonging has been nestled among the other tiles of my life without attracting attention.  It took Poppy’s death to help me find and recognize it.  Even still it blends in, just as Poppy would have wanted it to, providing support that silently sets me free to float upon the currents of life knowing that I can always land among those I love.

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