For those of you who watched Sesame Street in the 1980’s you’ll remember the song so often included in the show:
“One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things does not belong.
Can you tell which things are not like the other?”
Refresh your memory with this quick little clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b0ftfKFEJg
This jingle always comes to mind when I’m
getting ready to leave my childbirth class. It’s easy to spot my red pea coat from the pile of black coats and
sweaters. Picking up my red loafers,
again from rows of paired black sneakers, it hits me- I am different than them.
“As a birth worker serving the Amish, I receive a certain amount
of reverence and respect. As a non-Amish woman I am always just on the outside
of inclusion; if that makes any sense. No matter how much time I spend serving,
living and working among them I will never be one of them. Of course I don’t
want to be Amish. Still a little part of my heart hurts knowing that my
sacrifice of comfort and time, the gift of quality culturally sensitive care
will never win me full belonging. I will never be inside the circle.”
As
I wrote these words last week tears came to my eyes. The passage is part of a novel I am currently
working on. When I started writing the
paragraph they were just fiction. As I
sat back to read it I realized it to be my truth. And I cried.
Fourteen years ago when
my husband and I bought our house we wanted a rural location and school
district. Little did I know how I would become immersed in serving the Amish
families in my neighborhood. Literally
my neighbors. I attended a birth just
this morning for the family whose farm shares a property line with mine. And I love it.
They appreciate and respect me
and my professional wealth of knowledge. They call, send letters, flag me down
when I am out running, stop me in the middle of Wal-mart. Together our children ride the
bus, learn at school and play at home. It is a rich life.
Raised
in a family, church and community where diversity in culture is embraced it has
become a defining value for me. Both personally and
professionally, I am comfortable and drawn to relationships with those
different than myself. I find myself drawn to vocations that serve people from
other cultures. Running a food pantry and financial assistance program,
interpreting English to Spanish during a surgical operation, childbirth classes
with the Amish-I have loved the diversity of each one.
And
for the most part it works well. Culturally competent care stretches my muscles of compassion. Challenges me to look at life from outside my
own view and appreciate the differences. I enjoy learning about other people’s experience of life. Being in their
homes, eating their food, learning their language. I’ve learned so much and I
am a better person for it.
Now
after all that would you believe me when I say that I still feel on the outside
at times? And that that last bit of space between our worlds can really be a
splinter in my palm. What would it be
like to be one of them? Not to actually BE Amish, but to be the same? I
don’t feel this way all the time. The
tiny bit of hurt surfaces now and then. Mostly when I’ve been in on an intensely emotional experience. Like a baby dying, like a victorious birth hard won.
Sometimes I just want to belong. Really belong. Am I alone in this flip side of appreciating difference? Alone in my longing to be the same?
