Light All Around You

I was recently reminded me of some kids I met when I was in Pushkin outside of St. Petersburg, Russia -- the town where there are several summer palaces of the tsars. I was escort-interpreting for a group of folks who wanted to help remodel a nurs ing home, so I was in the middle of conversations between Russian and English all day. A boy about five years old and his big sister who was ten were living on the grounds of the nursing home because their Mom was homeless and needed some special help. It was June of 1994, and we delighted in the "white nights" -- the long evenings and beautiful sunsets.

Since visitors from the U.S. were still rare in those days, we were received with a great show of hospitality. Nevertheless, we wanted to work very hard painting and repairing the floor of their cafeteria. And we wanted to be as friendly as possible to overcome all the years of enmity. The kids followed us around and were very helpful. They invited some of us to come and meet their mother and she gave me many pages of poetry she had written. We shared many gifts we had brought with all the people in the home and those who took care of them. The most touching present, though, was a little teddy bear the young boy gave me. For someone with so little to share a precious toy!

We ate all our meals at the nursing home, but lived down the street in an apartment building for former Soviet Academy of Sciences retirees. Before lunch and dinner we had to walk back to the apartment building to clean up and then return to the nursing home to eat. In those days people didn't talk to each other very loudly, so the thirty-seven of us in groups of two to six, sometimes calling back to one another must have seemed very rowdy.

One day as we were heading back to our lodgings an elderly woman I had seen on the grounds of the nursing home was trying to talk to some of my friends. None of the Russian translators were around and I had been delayed helping with a conversation between our foreman and the assistant director of the facility. One of my friends saw me and motioned for me to come and translate for the woman.

As I walked up I bowed with respect to her in the old Russian tradition and started to talk to her. She seemed very anxious to talk and asked, "Where are you from?"

I told her we were from some churches in the United States and that we had come to help renovate the nursing home. Out from under the kind of old blouses and sweaters homeless folks often wear she pulled out a miniature Russian Orthodox cross on a dirty white string and started kissing it and praising God, proclaiming, "I knew you were Christians! You have light all around you!!"



Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com