The overpass
A couple of years ago, I was sitting with a friend on her living room couch while a party of some kind buzzed around us. (I have a way of finding the corners at parties.) As we talked, I told her about life at Kinbrace and how much of it happens as the fruit of spontaneity: a conversation on the stairs or by the gate; a child looking for a playmate; an unexpected dinner invitation. She listened with nodded understanding, and then asked if I’d heard about the ‘vow of availability’. I hadn’t, but I was intrigued. (It turns out that this comes from the Northumbria Community, where modern-day monastics live together by vows of availability and vulnerability.) That day in her living room, this friend gave me the gift of language which so aptly describes my experience—and my ongoing commitment—alongside refugee claimants at Kinbrace. I may not have taken a vow of availability, but it certainly describes the posture of openness—to people and to God—that I want to cultivate.
…
On Friday afternoon, I was reminded once again of the fruit of availability. It was one of those windy and sunny (sun-swept?) fall days, and I headed out for a walk, rather aimlessly. As I approached the train tracks that cut diagonally across East Van, I turned down the street with a pedestrian overpass—a conspicuous turquoise chain-link structure. I walked up the ramp, then paused in the middle, standing directly above the tracks. I looked at the garbage below, cut through by a path for a train. I looked up—the North Shore mountains. I kept walking.
Just before I popped out the other side, I recognized the person approaching; it was her eyes—between head scarf and mask.
“Firouzeh!”*
“Anika!”
(This is real, human ‘facial recognition’.)
Before any small talk, she was whisking me away. “Come to my home!”
Although I knew that her family moved close by when they left Kinbrace, I had no idea it was here, in the subsidized housing which straddles the neighbourhoods of Strathcona and Grandview-Woodland. I considered the offer for a moment, thinking about what I might have to get back to...
“I’m just on my way to pick up my brother from school. Come for tea! My mom will be so happy to see you!”
Spontaneity prevailed. “...Okay!” I said, as I followed her back across the street. She unlatched a gate which opened onto a patch of green in front of their street-level apartment. A buttercup lawn with an overgrown rosemary bush in the corner: a garden.
She knocked, and in a moment her mother appeared at the door, head uncovered. She hadn’t been planning to have a visitor today. “Hello!” I said. Her twenty-something-year-old son Rayi brought me upstairs to the living room and we talked about his job, and their new neighbourhood. One by one he asked how everyone at Kinbrace was doing.
Soon Firouzeh was home with her youngest brother Shahou in tow. Shahou has autism. “Do you remember Anika? Say hello!” said Firouzeh. He glanced at me and waved while his eye-contact carried on to more important things. He plopped himself down on a plush chair and set to work on his iPad, making happy sounds to himself.
“It’s his first year of school and he went straight into grade four!” Firouzeh reported. “All of his classmates love him.”
“I’m sure they do!” I said.
She pulled a binder off the shelf. “His support worker made this for him.” There was a photo of a smiling Shahou on the front, and inside were laminated photos of favourite foods and activities, with velcro backings.
Their mother came with green tea. Firouzeh told me all about her online high school classes, and the Korean dramas she’s been watching in her spare time. She spouted off the names of her favourite Korean actors.
Her mother spoke up. “Korea...air-o-plane!” she said, while making a throwing motion through the air.
Firouzeh laughed. “Oh, she jokes about putting me on an airplane and sending me to Korea!”
Shahou looked up at one point and noticed a plate of danishes on the coffee table. He ate one. And came back for two. And returned for three. “Shahou! Bas!” Firouzeh interjected, as she gently pried the pastry from his hands. He took one last defiant bite, and then just as happily surrendered.
My cup of tea was refilled and emptied again.
Firouzeh pulled a photo from the shelf. “This is my mother with Rayi when he was a baby,” she said pointing. “I think she is the most beautiful woman. And this is me and my father and my older sister. ...I’ll see them again one day.”
Eventually, it was time to go. I said goodbye at the door, crossed the street, and walked back towards the overpass, looking up at it as some kind of portal from one world to another.
“Come to my home!” What a beautiful phrase to have on the tip of the tongue. And what a beautiful world Firouzeh and her family inhabit...where time moves slowly, tea flows freely, and surprise visitors are always welcome. That ‘vow of availability’ was just the way in.
…
According to the Northumbria Community, “Availability is about being open to life: to God and to others. It is to be open to those who cross my path, believing that there is good reason to give of myself, and receive from others, just because God loves us and gives us each other, even if only for a time.”
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my neighbours.
