Degrees of separation
In 1985 I was a volunteer in a community mediation program in San Francisco. I both mediated and co-mediated disputes and worked with mediators as a trainer/coach/observer.
One day I was asked to co-mediate a dispute between two homeowners. The one who initiated the mediation had complained about the house next door, a house that was owned by an absentee landlord, absentee in that he rarely visited the property or his tenants and had no idea whatsover what was happening. Apparently the house had been populated by drug dealers and prostitutes. Also, the backyard was full of overgrown weeds which provided an environment conducive not only to rats but also to small boys in the neighborhood who liked to run through the conjoining backyards. The weeds covered some window wells that the first neighbor felt presented a hazard. The absentee landlord had lived in San Francisco for 20 years and owned the house as investment property. I was there in part because I spoke Cantonese -- the primary language of the absentee landlord.
The mediation had been scheduled earlier, then postponed because the first party was taking the trip of a lifetime: a first trip to Europe for him and his wife in celebration of their 42nd wedding anniversary. They were the first and only owners of their home in San Francisco, had raised their children, watched their neighbors die or move away. This trip was a chance to visit their country of origin, Italy, as well as a break from a lifetime of hard work.
Their trip did not go as planned.
They were on the TWA flight that was hijacked that June. A young Navy man was murdered on the plane. The couple were, ultimately, safe, but traumatized. Their dream holiday became a nightmare that they couldn't forget.
During the mediation, he kept saying, as he brandished his multiple-page list of complaints about the house next door ( some of which dated from five years before), "Nothing's as bad as having a gun held to your head!" "Nothing's as bad as having someone shot right in front of you!"
He was right. Nothing, especially when contrasted to the complaints on his list, is as bad as what he and his wife experienced on that TWA flight from Athens to Greece.
The two parties worked out their differences. They met each other for the first time. They walked out the door not as friends but as two men who'd worked out an agreement about how to move ahead. And they worked through a hijacking and how it changes everything.
Yesterday I thought of the man with the five-year long list, the dream trip of a lifetime, the horrible, tragic way it was interrupted. And I remembered how he was concerned about the neighborhood boys hurting themselves, concerned about his neighbor and that he didn't know what his tenants were up to. I remember how I struggled with the Cantonese in this emotional exchange, struggled to explain that he'd been part of the hijacking, and that nothing is as bad as having a gun held to your head.
Yesterday, the SF Chronicle had a story about the hijacker. He'd been released and had returned to Lebanon. The man I met has died, as has his wife.
But I remember.
One day I was asked to co-mediate a dispute between two homeowners. The one who initiated the mediation had complained about the house next door, a house that was owned by an absentee landlord, absentee in that he rarely visited the property or his tenants and had no idea whatsover what was happening. Apparently the house had been populated by drug dealers and prostitutes. Also, the backyard was full of overgrown weeds which provided an environment conducive not only to rats but also to small boys in the neighborhood who liked to run through the conjoining backyards. The weeds covered some window wells that the first neighbor felt presented a hazard. The absentee landlord had lived in San Francisco for 20 years and owned the house as investment property. I was there in part because I spoke Cantonese -- the primary language of the absentee landlord.
The mediation had been scheduled earlier, then postponed because the first party was taking the trip of a lifetime: a first trip to Europe for him and his wife in celebration of their 42nd wedding anniversary. They were the first and only owners of their home in San Francisco, had raised their children, watched their neighbors die or move away. This trip was a chance to visit their country of origin, Italy, as well as a break from a lifetime of hard work.
Their trip did not go as planned.
They were on the TWA flight that was hijacked that June. A young Navy man was murdered on the plane. The couple were, ultimately, safe, but traumatized. Their dream holiday became a nightmare that they couldn't forget.
During the mediation, he kept saying, as he brandished his multiple-page list of complaints about the house next door ( some of which dated from five years before), "Nothing's as bad as having a gun held to your head!" "Nothing's as bad as having someone shot right in front of you!"
He was right. Nothing, especially when contrasted to the complaints on his list, is as bad as what he and his wife experienced on that TWA flight from Athens to Greece.
The two parties worked out their differences. They met each other for the first time. They walked out the door not as friends but as two men who'd worked out an agreement about how to move ahead. And they worked through a hijacking and how it changes everything.
Yesterday I thought of the man with the five-year long list, the dream trip of a lifetime, the horrible, tragic way it was interrupted. And I remembered how he was concerned about the neighborhood boys hurting themselves, concerned about his neighbor and that he didn't know what his tenants were up to. I remember how I struggled with the Cantonese in this emotional exchange, struggled to explain that he'd been part of the hijacking, and that nothing is as bad as having a gun held to your head.
Yesterday, the SF Chronicle had a story about the hijacker. He'd been released and had returned to Lebanon. The man I met has died, as has his wife.
But I remember.
posted by Dianne at 10:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home