Originally posted Sept 27, 2007
Tonight it rained. I sat in wonder and listened to the sound of the rain against my windows. I stood out on the front steps and let me feet get damp. It has been such a dry summer. The rain smelled miraculous and hopeful, the harbinger of good things. Life giving and cleansing. Just what we needed.
Nighttime in Rio, just after the storm passed
I have thought alot about my trip to Rio –the one I took two Octobers ago. We took this photo our first night there. Eddie’s friend, an ex-pat who had settled in this magical city, had taken us for a walking tour and showed us his favorite spot, a park across a lake from the hustle and bustle of this city. A rainstorm rolled in suddenly, unexpectedly, catching us on the wrong side of the park. It fell in sheets soaking us all as we ran for cover under some trees, laughing. I laughed harder than I had in months. At that moment, laughter bubbled up unexpectedly, as unstoppable as the rain. It was so absurd and silly and joyful. We were dressed to the nines for a night out on the town, with water running down our noses, with my chic outfit dripping and misshapen, my “oh-so-Rio” sandals squishing and making ridiculous noises. It was the funniest thing ever to be in Rio in the warm rain. I jumped in a puddle and lost my shoe. Pretty soon we were all laughing because I couldn’t stop laughing
I had felt so heavy and stressed when I got to Brazil. I was at the height of my financial panic and I had just started to wrap my heart around the idea that Juan was not coming back. I arrived at the airport after flying all night with only $20 American and a three day training to run in Spanish. I went to the cash machine at the airport to take out money for taxi fare and found my account was overdrawn. My cell phone was out of batteries. I had forgotten my credit card at home. I had no idea what I would do next. I went up to the money exchange counter and cashed in my $20. I hoped it would be enough to get me to the hotel where I could regroup and figure out my next move. I thought I had hit rock bottom. I felt so alone, like such a failure. To keep myself from breaking down in this strange city, I repeated a mantra “It is going to work out all right” and then I added a fervent “please” and threw in a prayer for good measure.
The taxi fare was exactly what I had in my wallet.
I got to the hotel and they told me my room was already paid for. I slept a heavy deep dreamless sleep. I woke up to find lunch. A a friend of a friend living in Sao Paolo who had come to meet me. A fully charged cell phone and a Dad on the other end able to wire some cash to get me through the week. And best of all when Eddie arrived that evening he had two airplane tickets to Rio.
Four days later I was standing in the rain in Rio, laughing as the water poured over my toes and ran down my fingers. I remember thinking that the rain washed some of my grief away that night, just let it slip right away and run into this lake, leaving me feeling a tiny bit lighter and ready to start healing.
Hearts are funny things.
They carry in their memory, the echo, the footprint of every kiss, every caress, every sorrow, every hurt. Hearts remember like elephants–they remember blissful freefalls and hard impacts. Each of these memories lives in the tissue, wordlessly. There is no language but the muscle memory is clear and rises up through our hopes and our fears. I have come to believe that hope and fear is nothing but those old memories living on and through in our hearts.
For hope is nothing more than a search for something we may have lost somewhere between the time we left the great blissful stage of oneness and now. And fear is nothing more than the scar tissue left from a loss–The acknowledgment that maybe just maybe our beloved will disappear, that our hearts will stop feeling this love, that it will all fall apart, forever.
This past year for me has been a year of yearning. I couldn’t name it at the time, but now standing apart from it somewhat I can see. My heart beat stretching between hope and a sort of fear.
I had always associated fear with anxiety–that somehow fear meant that I was in a deep scary place. But looking back now I just see that fear is the other side of the coin called hope. Even in my happiest yang-i-est, sunniest days that hope fear combo was ever present.
As I fell head over heels in love with my tribe this year, the people in my life who make my life so rich and full, I found my heart so full of a cocktail of hope and fear that at times the bursting feeling felt so distracting. With every perfect moment that passed I felt my heart holding on to, hoping that that perfect moment would be followed by many many more just like it . As each perfect moment passed, I found my heart fearing that if I let go of this moment I may never see another just as lovely. The clinging and the hoping and the attaching that this is how it would be forever…always like this…That was the beat of my heart. Expand into hope, contract into fear, expand into hope and not even realize it is happening. Bumbum…bumbum…Silently unnoticed like my own heart beat.
Looking back though I can feel how much energy this hope and fear sapped from me. Looking back I can see what it cost me, this yearning. I can see with 20/20 hindsight.
A series of things have brought me to a place where I can observe how hope and fear play out in my heart, in my soul, in my hardest moments and my best days. A series of things have happened that showed me that hope, fear and attachment do not change anything. The universe spins. The world evolves. Moments come and dissipate and change and we cannot hold onto any of them no matter how lovely or how frightening. The moments dissolve seemlessly into another and no amount of hope or fear is going to change the next one from coming.
Letting go of hope and fear seems to be my soul’s work these days. Seeing how omnipresent it is, recognizing that every time I think I have let it go, I uncover a new layer, more subtle, less stark, but there nonetheless. Letting go of hope and fear means truly letting go of my attachment to the outcomes. I wonder if I ever really can let go of all my attachments. I seem to think that if I can just let that last layer burn away that my heart might be finally be free to expand outside the confines of all that hope/fear scar tissue.
On Sunday I woke up in a headachey fog. This feeling was one I only remembered from long ago. It had been so long since I had felt so terrible I thought I must have been mistaken, that this sensation was just a trick someone was playing on me, that it would pass as soon as I got the joke, as soon as I laughed.
I did my regular headache self-care ritual, the things I do that keep these monsters at bay. The advil, the hot towels, the extra bit of sleep. But the beast inside my head would not quiet. I got up and went about my day, convinced that this was all still just an illusion, a memory, a glimpse at a picture postcard of me from another time.
I went to Jackie’s to pick up Max. He had spent the night with Jake. I sat and drank water and tried to hold conversation. I looked pale and puffy and not quite right to anyone. And then it started.
It has been years since I felt this way, the vomiting, the fury that runs through my body causing convulsions, the intense pain that feels like knives in my head. Its been years since physical pain has put me in the space of living breath to breath. Even in the worst of it, I whispered to my sweet self…Breathe, you will come through this…You have so many times before. Breathe….Now again.
A thunderstorm raged outside, thunder and lightening crashing down on one another. I thought to myself, how nice of mother nature to move along in empathy of me. As the rain fell heavy I fell asleep. And when I woke there was a brief reprieve. The rain had stopped. I walked home and collapsed into bed.
Hours later the knives came back. This time no warm towels, no calming tea, no amount of self care or breathing could contain the pain. I was laying on the bathroom floor shivering but needing to feel the cool tile underneath my body. I needed some relief from the fire I felt burning through my head. I kept trying to think of cooling thoughts.
Odette came in and declared that she was not OK with this. She was calling help. I was too weak to argue (much). I lay and whimpered while she called first one friend and then another.
In the hospital I lay, my dear friend stroking my back and soothing my forehead and whispering to me that my help was coming. I wanted to believe her and lived one breath at a time. The nurse came in an injected me with a pain killer. There was one last violent fight–my body versus me and then slowly relief started to set in. Tests, hydration, and then release…home to sleep a deep sleep. Home to slip away into the quiet.
I woke better than I had been in months. Years even. The pain was a distant ache, I looked like I had been through hell and back, and felt tired and battle weary but lighter. Something inside me had burned away in the fire, a distraction, a yearning, a seeking that had finally found rest.
During my very first guitar lesson almost a year ago I learned three chords–C, G and F.
It was then that I learned that “F” would be my nemesis.
Its been over nine months and despite hours of practice and calloused Fingers, I still can’t get that damned “F” chord to sound pretty. Its Frustrating, inFuriating even. When I tell my guitar playing Friends how I struggle with “F” they look at my as though I am a Freak…”Really?” they say. “Really? Hmmm…and how long have you been playing?” Yeah…that “F” chord makes me Feel like a Failure, blocked, stuck.
My teacher keeps telling me that I just need to practice. To keep trying, now matter how Futile my efforts may seem. He counsels that one day it will all Fall into place. I am Frankly not sure though if at this point even he buys it or if he is simply trying to keep me going, prevent me from quitting in order to ensure that the Forty dollars I pay him every week continues Flowing his way.
The fact I am Flunking “F” sometimes Feels too big. To be honest, when I take out my guitar, sometimes I skip over all the songs that have an “F” in them. Hearing the muffled, blocked sound over and over again sometimes reminds me too much of all the other ways I Fail, over and over again to get it right–the big and the small…Its dead tone speaks to me my Failed marriage and my inability to Focus at work. It taunts me with reminders of Forgotten birthdays and the Forty Seven things on the to-do list that didn’t get done again today.
But other times I play “F” over and over again, until my Fingers are raw and my hand is cramped and sore. I play F with the hopes that maybe if I can Finally Figure out that F*%!cking “F” chord then I can Figure out how to Fix the other stuck parts of my life too–the Finances that are a bit too shaky, the Friendship that Feels a bit too Fragile, the stupid Fights I have with my son over and over again about trying new Foods, or his Filthy room. In those Frenzied moments I almost believe that “F” holds all the secrets and that if I could crack the code of this chord that magic would Flow like a river into my life.
Sometimes, when I am diligently working I hear a clear sound and Feel elated only to realize I can’t duplicate it–success is Fleeting and dissolves too quickly.
Stupid Friggin’ “F” chord.
It can bring up all my worst Fears–like my Fear that I will never move Forward, that I will be stuck wandering around the desert trying to learn the simplest of lessons over and over again, not just in guitar but in life. “F” can make me question why I even started to try to tackle something so hard, why I bit off more than I can chew and leaves me Feeling Foolish. “F” can leave me Fed Up and Freaked out and just one step short of quitting.
And in those moments when “F” has me Flummoxed and Frazzled, a little voice starts to whisper to me.
“F” is for Faith.
“F” is for Fortitude
“F” is for Fearless and Freedom and Flying.
All the ways I try and Fail and try and Fail and keep trying is a practice, a practice that may take me in circles but ultimately may shake loose some of the Fears heal some of the Fractures in my heart. It may just give me what I need.
“F” is my teacher.
Recently I was found.
An old dear friend reached out to me from across the wide expanse of years. We were young and dumb together, he and I. We had had many adventures–real, crazy adventures and wild emotional ones too. But that was long ago and we haven’t talked in years. We had grown up, found love, formed homes, started families. Life got busy and we drifted apart.
During the years when we were close, our relationship had been an anchor. We passed long letters back and forth over sea and land. He was in the Navy, I was teaching in Texas. Those letters kept me afloat during two very difficult years when I was far away from home, far away from love, far away from even myself. He kept me grounded, kept me reading, kept me thinking, kept me breathing. We talked about everything. We often disagreed. But no matter how spirited the debate, he saw me, really saw me for who I was, and adored me for all my imperfections. He was the first person who loved me who didn’t minimize my flaws. That is powerful love.
One New Years Eve, over 15 years ago, in a city hundreds of miles from where either of us lived he found me, sought me out to slip his arms through mine. As I lay my head on his shoulder and told him secretes, I knew that I would love him forever, that he would always be dear to me. Always.
At one point in the height of being young and dumb we had a bitter falling out. I can’t remember now any of the details or the circumstances. But I do remember the sadness, the loneliness of realizing that something profound had shifted in my life, of feeling a veil had been lifted and that I was left with life, stripped bare. Without him. I ached intensely. I was angry for I was sure that I would love him always but this did not feel like love. We stopped talking for what felt like a lifetime. The silence was so loud.
After a while though, no matter how intensely I felt the loss of him, I found that I could sit with the memories of our friendship, sit with them without anger at his betrayal. I remembered all the ways he saw me, all the ways he knew me, cherished me, even if he couldn’t understand me, even if he no longer could appreciate me. And it became clear to me that no matter how big or intense the hurt, the love I had for him was big enough–big enough to hold it. Big enough to overshadow it. Big enough to balance it. Big enough to bless it. Big enough to let it be. Because I had been seen. He saw me.
By the time his letter of apology came in the mail, by the time he found me again there was nothing but love left in my heart.
Our relationship changed after that. It would change many times. Not for the worse or even for the better. It just was, as we were, growing up. There were hurts. There was laughter. One day I sat on a park bench with him in New Orleans. I was teasing him about some girl he was dating, some girl he would later marry but the edge in my voice betrayed me. I looked down at my shoes, maybe a little embarrassed. “I just want you to be happy” I said to him. “Do you?” he challenged me in the way that only he could. “Do you really? Or do you just want me to be yours?” I was, like I often was around him,dumb struck. I just kept looking at my shoes.
But later that night I sat in a rocking chair on my friends porch in the Garden District rocking myself and looking up at the big old moon. “Happy” I whispered to the warm Louisiana wind. “Happy”. I sent my wish out for him. And for the first time I took into my heart the reality that love does not mean attachment and love often means walking away, setting boundaries, saying goodbye.
Of course it wasn’t really goodbye. Because love kept bringing us back in different ways. There were a few Sunday mornings when as I lay in bed with Juan, watching the political talks shows the phone would ring. He was watching too. Or he had news. About a clerkship. About a girl. About a death. He came to my wedding, driving through the rain from Manhattan. As he stood there with the woman who would be his wife he looked at me, and I looked at him and we both smiled–for he saw me, he saw me exactly for what I was. Happy. Messy, imperfect but happy. And it brought him joy.
But life is a busy thing. Careers, children, houses that are too big, budgets that are too small. We no longer had time for penning long letters. Sunday mornings were full of chores, and work. There is a Christmas card, maybe two and then silence. But this time the silence came so gradually I didn’t even hear it. Its been at least 5 years since our last communication–It was around the birth of his son. I sent a congratulations. He sent a thank you note. And then it was quiet.
But he found me.
Truth is he always does.
And he found me at the perfect time.
At a time when I needed to remember that love, true fearless love, is big enough to hold any hurt, any betrayal. That in the end love is always bigger. That forgiveness is but an affirmation that love is more important, mightier, stronger. He walked back into my life exactly at a time when I needed to remember that fearless love changes, morphs and may appear to retreat but never really dies. That love is not equal to attachment but that love always finds you when you need it most.
He is coming this way, my dear old friend. Passing through town this month. And he says he wants to see me. He always did see me. And when he does I will slip my arms round his waist and lay my head on his shoulder for a moment and see him too.
I am so out of tune.
The whole world is waxing, growing more yang, full, ripe and bright. As we march forward to the solstice the days stretch infinitely long. As I looked into the summer sky I saw a moon growing fat and fire flies dressing up the lawn with their shimmers. It seems as if the whole world is getting ready for a party, a celebration, and explosion of life.
But I am waning, growing yin, dimmer, diving deeper into myself. I am touching dark places of my heart. The places where the shadows lurk. The places where I am still and silent–where the air is thick and heavy and smells a little like cedar and crushed pine needles.
I have not gone quietly to this place. I have fought this whole waning cycle. I have kicked and screamed and railed against the rain, and the cold and the quiet. I have yearned for connection and have reached out into the darkness pleading for the light and the energy and the bubbling up of joy. I wanted to sing in the sunshine and dance and blossom and expand and I fought the contraction with every ounce of energy I had.
Then, yesterday I got some upsetting news. Its news I don’t want to write about here only to say that it was distressing and stressful and opened up old wounds, wounds I thought I had long ago healed. I found myself reliving abandonment all over again–the feeling of losing my heart, the panic of losing control. I felt vulnerable and weary and alone. And suddenly I embraced the yin for there was nothing I wanted to do but go away and pull the covers over my head, drink chai tea and slip away into the dark of a new moon night. It was as though my soul knew I needed this quiet to deal with what would happen and was preparing me for it all along. It all suddenly made so much sense.
I am swimming in the yin, letting it wash over me. I am grateful for the silence for it asks nothing of me. I am counting my breaths now, keeping my heart focused here on the now for it is all I have afterall. It is all I can do, just breathe, and I have noticed that my breathing, even in this space, can sound like music. And I am thankful for the absence of noise, community, busyness and bustle.
The distressing problem will be solved. I am not worried about that. The wound on my heart, the one it opened up–it will heal, I am certain of it. And the seasons, they will turn again. Of that I am sure.
It may be days, or weeks or months but I will expand again. I will be yang and joyful and bright. I will light up the sky like a June moon. But for now I am a waning moon, growing dim and letting the world rest and be still.
Last night I sat with a powerful woman drinking coffee in an anonymous strip mall. It could have been anywhere in America but it was halfway between where she and I were. A place to meet. And I we sat and talked she told me stories and I remembered some of mine.
I remembered being pregnant with Max. I remembered how tired I was, how much work it was just to be. How the simple act of walking from one place to the other would require me to rest, put my feet up, retreat. I remembered how on one hand I was doing nothing to actually grow this child and yet how I was doing everything to grow him. How this very creative act left me with no energy for anything else and yet…how it felt so strangely not me.
I remembered the not knowing, the fear, the waiting. I remembered the feeling that the end would never come or that rather I had no idea what the end would actually be like. How would I be as a mother? What would this child be like? What would it be like to cradle, nurse, nurture this child? How would it impact me as a woman? How would it impact my marriage? The answers to these questions were imminent but nevertheless hidden, unknowable, unfathomable.
I was changing before my very eyes, but at the same time I couldn’t see how. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
I was changing before everyone else’s eyes and friends and strangers couldn’t help but comment on the changes. The shape of my belly, the look in my eyes, the thickness of my hair. They all saw the changes but we all acknowledged these changes to be temporary. I had no idea what would come next. How life would be forever changed by this journey I was on.
I remembered the day that I sat in the airport and thought my water had broken. I called the midwife from my cell phone trying to keep calm. I was only 5 and 1/2 months along. She was calm and cool even as she told me the news. It could have been my water…But it could also equally have been a simple, small, harmless infection. I asked her what I should do–Should I get to the emergency room? Rush somewhere to save my baby? She said, “No”. There was no use in rushing. If my water had broken there would have been no saving. There was nothing to do but get on the plane and go home and sleep, hope that labor would not come. In the morning they would check me. A good outcome was all in the hands of faith–out of my control.
Pregnancy–this metaphor has sat heavy on my mind as I think here I am, pregnant again. Not with a child, but with a new life. I am in the words of my dear friend drinking her latte, “pregnant with myself”, pregnant with this next phase of my journey. I am pregnant with a life I cannot see, I cannot touch though I feel it stir inside me now and again. I wonder about it but now its out of my hands, mostly. I try to picture what it will look like, what it will feel like to hold this life in my hands and I know that there is no way I can imagine it, no matter how hard I try. I might as well just rest with my feet up for the process of getting to here has exhausted me so. I am doing nothing and yet I am tired. I am so tired. I have no energy left for anything else. Not for writing or playing my guitar or even gardening today. I am just so tired from the act of creating myself anew.
I think tonight about how so many generations of women spent their whole lives in the cycle of pregnancy, birth and the celebration of new life. I realize that now I am not that different, that none of us are. And while birth control or choices about family size have changed the physical realities of pregnancy, if we are honest we are in a constant cycle if only metaphorically–pregnant with possibilities and dreams, birthing of one’s self, creativity, and celebrating a new life, new growth, new beginning. Of becoming new again.
It has been raining all spring here in Maryland. It has been a cold wet spring. Usually at this time we have broken out the shorts and sandals and we are dining on the porch but I am sitting with a sweatshirt on shivering. It has been gray and drizzely and the weather just matches my mood so well.
I had been waiting all winter for the spring and frankly I am a little disappointed.
I had been waiting for the blossoming and am feeling heavy hearted.
I had been waiting for something to spring forward, new and exciting but am just feeling stuck in the muck, the sticky emotional mud that pulls and splatters.
Last Friday, I wanted to climb into bed with a pint of icecream and a box of feeling sorry for myself but instead I went to my neighbor’s house for pizza. He had invited a whole gang of folks–people I like, even people I love. I was so grateful to be surrounded by these wonderful people, people who can make my heart sing but at the same time I was so aware of my otherness–how apart and completely alone and unconnected I felt.
As I sat at the dining table and watched all the families–the couple interacting in their perfectly imperfect ways I was aware of how terribly lonely single parenting can be. Of how alone I can feel when Max does not need attending to and I am there, just me. I was so painfully aware of each of the small kindnesses, the knowing glances, the intimacies around me and knowing that no matter how my communities loves me they don’t love me like that and as much as I don’t want it to be…the tremendous way that they love me…it is not enough.
With each breath I find myself shrinking and growing smaller, unable to give, unable to think, move, act beyond my
own small petty problems. It weighs on me heavy, and I can’t focus beyond my own small little heart and its small little sorrows.
I lay my head on the pillow and let the tears flow like the rain, leaving my bed cold and wet.
And I wonder, where is the grace that will break me out of this cold wet spring? I reach into my heart to touch it but all I feel is deep wanting. It almost consumes me so run from that dark place, slam the door and shrink some more.
I want to build a fire but the wood is wet. I want to open the door but the wind is forcing it shut. I want to dance in the sunshine but the rain is falling hard, through the trees. I want to dwell in hope but this is where I am.
I am here.
Late last night, my stomach full of yummy, yeasty homemade pizza, I lay down my head to sleep. Sleep was not coming though and so I was able to indulge (thanks to the magic of cheap phone cards) in a three hour marathon conversation with my dear friend Jen down under.
It amazes me, even now, that she and I found each other. We live literally half a world away from each other but our hearts beat at the same frequency. I can’t quite figure out how the universe matched us up, but in some ways, it almost doesn’t matter how. The fact that we are connected now is all that really is important.
Getting off the phone with Jenni I was drunk on the notion of possibility.
But I had called her in an impossibly bad mood. My last several weeks have been about meeting obstacle after obstacle–many of them homemade by yours truly–but obstacles none the less. I feel bruised and battered from the onslaught of “no good news”. I am a little bird flying into windows I didn’t imagine were there. My nose is sore from pressing itself up against the glass in so many of my little life venues.
The message I have been getting from the universe is this: Wait. Sit. No. And I have been angry. I want to experience: Now. Go. Yes.
These last couple of weeks I have started to sullenly accept the wait, sit, no. I am adjusting to this season, to this reality, to this place I am. This quieter place. This space of not now. But perhaps too much. Because last night I realized that I had given up on Now. Go. Yes. I had moved into a grieving spot for it.
Letting go of the need to move forward feels healthy to me. Closing myself off to the possibility of moving forward does not. Its such a fine, practically invisible line, but once I cross it I know it. It is the the border between peace and despair.
My friend Jenni, she knows about this line too and together we talked about the challenge of staying grounded in reality while still staying open the possibility that reality is going to shift and change. Indeed, it always does. When reality is not so rosy, it is easy to only consider the negative possibilities. We whisper to ourselves instructions to come to terms with the possibility that we might not get well, might not accomplish our goal, might not have a fairy tale ending, might not reach the finish line. But we feel so committed to helping our brains consider the negative that we refuse to give equal due to the other possibilities–we might get healthy, we might accomplish it and more, we might have the ending we hoped for or something better, we might reach the finish line and keep on moving.
I asked Jenni why we do this to ourselves? Why do we only consider the negative? Is it that we don’t want to be disappointed when the negative possibility comes true? But really will we be any less disappointed when the time comes? And by only considering that negative possibility have we actually taken a step to make sure that it is the only one that will come true? In an effort to prepare our hearts for the worst, do we actually start to ensure that the worst is what we will face?
Somehow keeping open to all possibilities seems to be the lesson of my week. To recognize that every moment, in fact every breath provides an opportunity for a new possibility to unfold. To learn to stay in whatever this moment brings knowing that the next brings a brand new world.
My friend Maya needs our help. The other day when wandering through the office she told me a story that made me weep. I need to tell it here and ask you all to help us.
Last Wednesday, two of her family’s oldest and dearest friends, Waheed and Nusrat Hashmi, an elderly Pakistani couple, were ripped from their homeby Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Hashmis were placed in detention near Cleveland, where they remain, clothed in orange jumpsuits, unable to see each other. They are likely to be deported this week.
The Hashmi’s story is a story of the system failing. Plain and simple, it is a story of it all going wrong. Dr. Waheed Hashmi legally entered the United States in 1973 as a Fulbright Scholar. Since then, he has worked with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with immigration attorneys to ensure that he and his family have a chance to attain permanent residency in the United States. He followed the rules every step of the way.
Over a period of approximately 35 years Dr. Hashmi, a scientist, and Ms. Nusrat Hashmi, a floral designer, have lovingly raised their children, held jobs, paid taxes, contributed towards social security, and invested their time and talents to build a better Toledo community.Due to a series of circumstances and occurrences beyond their control, including oversights on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, some of which were revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, the Hashmis have faced several obstacles to attaining permanent residency but they never gave up hope of achieving what all immigrants want–a decent life for themselves and their children. However, as law abiding people, when they recently realized that their dream of staying here could not be realized, they voluntarily made plans to leave and return home to a country they had not been home for more than three decades. But those plans were interrupted last week when ICE showed up at their door and arrested them.
If the authorities had taken the time to explore the details of the Hashmis’ case, they would have learned that after Dr. Hashmi retired from the University of Toledo, the couple began the process of selling their home and leaving for Pakistan where a job was waiting for Dr. Hashmi. They were never given the chance to prove that they were in the process of returning to Pakistan. Instead, public resources were used to lock up this elderly couple who posed absolutely no threat or risk of flight.
At the Maple Heights City Jail, Dr. and Ms. Hashmi are being held in separate quarters, are unable to see each other, and their interaction with their children has been severely restricted–they have been allowed only 20-minute visitations during which they can only speak with their children via a telephone and across a glass screen. The trauma of the detention threatens the health of Dr. and Ms. Hashmi–both of whom have serious health problems.
As it stands now, they will never again see their home in Toledo. They won’t be able to say their goodbyes–to their home, their community of 35 years, not even to their children, who won’t even be allowed to hug their parents before they leave.
It is simply inhumane to hold two elderly people in custody for no good reason, especially when they were voluntarily planning to depart the U.S. The Hashmi detention is a colossal waste of precious tax dollars and does not make us any safer. ICE should lock up those who would do us harm, not senior citizens whose misfortune has brought them into the grip of a dysfunctional immigration system. ICE needs to do the right thing and release Dr. and Ms. Hashmi.
Please read more about the case and consider signing on to a letter to Julie Myers, the head of ICE. Maya and her family , are hoping that if enough of us speak up together the Hashmi’s can be released from detention and allowed to close up their house, say their goodbyes and start their new life with dignity. The unjust detention of the Hashmis is not at all an unusual case. The Hashmi family hopes that bringing attention to their case will help the push for immigration reform.
You can get to the online petition that Maya set up by clicking here. Please take a moment to go there and read their story. This should not be. It should not be. It should not be.
UPDATE:
The Hashmis have been released! Our joint efforts on many fronts—grassroots, legal, and political—sent a powerful message to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
