Suffering, Misunderstanding, and Smile

Suffering doesn’t give you more privilege to point fingers at others. Apologies have an unbearable lightness.

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

From: Bond Wang
Sent: September 21, 2022, 12:46
To: Jenn (Club President)
Subject: Our visitor Naomi’s amazing story

Hi Jenn,

I just came upon this.

(An Online News)Naomi is organizing her husband’s liver donation: ……My husband has been awaiting a third kidney transplant since 2016. He started dialysis in 2017 (2 hours during the day, and 10.5 hours at night). Recently, dialysis is 6 hours during the day and 10.5 hours at night. It has been increasingly difficult to manage school and activity schedules for 5 children since he is the stay-at-home dad. I have always been working and going to school, so I have a similar challenge………

She’s amazing. She shows her smiles all around while visiting our zoom meetings. Zoom meeting really opens the world for us. Bond.

At one of our zoom meetings, Naomi is invited to speak. No one knows her. She talks with shocking openness, her childhood in Viet Nam, her family slogging through wars and poverty before landing in America as refugees, and her struggle to adapt to the new country. Someone types in the chat box, “Get a book, Naomi.”