After discussing all the things we’re learning about life, my dear friend who lives in the Middle East and I decided this week we would open a worldwide chain of coffee shops. Caffeine-loving contemplative types could sit over coffee and experience moments of insight and wisdom, drop their coffee mugs in that “Eureka!” moment and not have them shatter at their feet. We decided we’d call the chain “Unbreakable Epiphanies.”
Aside from the entrepreneurial fantasy, today I had my real-life connection to epiphanies with a student. I started doing my first lesson with “Daniel” (not his real name), after finishing up his testing last week. We talked about how he felt about the other Spanish-speaking student at the site who just dropped out of school to go to work now that he’s 18. We also talked about what he wants to learn about English (most of our discussion was in Spanish today, as his English is still very limited), where he feels he needs to be.
Just like with my regular classes in the past, I gave him a questionnaire about his hobbies, his social constellations, and his fears and hopes about learning. Before we could get very far, we got stuck on his family. No mom–she died two years ago after he had arrived to the US. He grew up in a tiny pueblo (town) in Mexico. He lives with his dad, who hasn’t spoken to him in over three weeks. Daniel isn’t sure why. He lives with some other male cousins as well. He doesn’t talk with anyone who lives at home. He has one friend whose name he knows, and he spends a lot of time with him after school.
We then talked about Daniel’s journey to the US at the age of 12 (three years ago now), how for the first time he saw snow as he was walking for over a week across the US border. He talked about how he thought he saw a man die as he fell down a ravine because of the slick trails, but the man survived because the snow broke his fall. Daniel remembered these details with exquisite memory. Then we discussed how some events we live right on the edge of life, how we can remember them so strongly afterwards, and how most of life is just average, forgettable. He hadn’t thought of life this way before, and he liked knowing that, he said.
Next we began brainstorming about things we’ve lost to later turn into poetry. We listened to a song by a Lebanese singer who laments the loss of her boyfriend to help evoke feelings. The first thing he wrote about losing—his mom. We brainstormed for a while and then talked about things we could both relate to… missing warm tortillas, the sound of chickens in the morning in Mexico, the mariachis playing their desperate ballads of love and loss. Then we got back to his mom, and many memories poured forth. I wasn’t sure what to do. I listened, tried to help him put words to beautiful memories (he had loved her and could not return to Mexico for her funeral, where she had died apart from him).
It occurred to me to ask her name. “Epifania.” Epiphany. A not very common name in Mexico, an uncommon coincidence. “Do you know what an epiphany is?” I asked as gently as I could. He didn’t. I explained that he had had one with me just today, recognizing that there are different kinds of experiences in life—those on the edge and the average, daily, forgettable kind. A look of recognition crossed his face. His mother had been given a beautiful name, and I was glad to give him something about his mom that he could take with him.
We’re planning to work on writing to remember and to understand in efforts for him to improve his English. He says he’s looking forward to it. As for me, my epiphany was one about irony and connectedness, recognizing that the moment of the epiphany, no matter what it is, really is unbreakable.
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