My birthday

Hi friends. 

It has been a dark few days for America, and so, too for me. 

On Saturday morning, I met a lovely couple as I waited in the lobby at the Ann Arbor YMCA while Cecilia was in gymnastics.  They had an adorable  happy baby boy -Lorenzo - exactly one month older than Penny Kate.  We commiserated about sleep schedules, eating, hungry boy babies, older siblings, the weather.  The mom is a dual citizen of Italy and the US,  and they laughed when I told them that  Lorenzo was one of Jake's favorite boy baby names and on the infamous "list" he compiled - full of names ranging from bizarre to absurd.  The mom really laughed when I told her that Carmine was on the list.  Apparently it's an "old-fashioned" name in Italy, but not "trendy" old-fashioned.  I joked that thank God we had a girl. 

Penny Kate and Lorenzo smiled and cooed at each other. 

The mom is a lawyer - not practicing.  The dad is an anesthesiologist.  They came to Ann Arbor for the dad's residency (or fellowship) at U of M, a few months before Lorenzo's birth. 

The dad moved from Iran to the UK with his parents in 1977.  He has an Iranian passport though the U.K is all he's ever known.  

They were processing the news from the night before, knowing that they may be "stuck" in the US or the dad might be deported, as he is a green card holder from one of the 7 nations.  They had nervous laughs and smiles while they talked about it. 

They are both warm, loving, friendly people.  Our lives are so similar.  New babies, two career marriage, sacrifices made for one another's careers.

Yet are lives are so different.

My heart was breaking as I spoke to them, looked at their nervous smiles, and I just kept saying "I'm sorry," well, because I had no idea what else to say. 

Sunday was Penny Kate's baptism. 

We traveled to Oak Park, Michigan, to the church I grew up in - Our Lady of Fatima.  Fr. Paul Chateau baptized her, as he baptized me, Cecilia and Jude.  He also married Jake & I.

As we drove through Oak Park, my mind wandered back to the old neighborhood.  I lived there until I was 8 (1986). My parents lived in Oak Park from 1973-1986. 

We had many neighbors that were Holocaust survivors.  One neighbor was an older gentleman.  When I was a baby, he would come down to hold me.  He told my mom that he reminded him of his baby girl, who was killed in a concentration camp.  He lost his entire family.  This kind, gentle soul, with numbers tattooed on his arm, who had been through hell, was comforted by holding an infant that did not belong to him. 

We were also surrounded by Iraqi immigrants, Chaldeans.  So nice and warm is my mother that one little Chaldean girl in the neighborhood was named after her - Janice. 

Oak Park was a true melting pot - we were the minorities by far - when we moved to predominately white Lathrup I felt uncomfortable and out of place, surrounded by all the whiteness.  That feeling follows me until today, when I still feel out of place and uncomfortable in settings that are homogenous. 

My heart is torn to shreds on this, my 39th birthday, raising three precious children in a world that is so full of hate and a country that seems to have forgotten its history. 

My descendants- Irish and German Catholics - fled their countries because of religious persecution.  The same goes for almost every person in this country that looks like me. 

How have we forgotten that? 

How do our elected officials - most of them Christian - most of them descendants of people that fled their countries of origins because of religious persecution - how do they forget this? 

I have no answers.  I have no wisdom.  I am just very, very sad.