This is how we make the world good and beautiful and kind

A poem by Langston Hughes was the 'spark' in a recent writing group session; in response, I wrote the story below. Its essence speaks loudly to me in the wake of last week's US election results: Each of us must do what we can to move this world in the right direction. 

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren’t you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind.

excerpt from TIRED by Langston Hughes

When is a table a door? 

Yasmina took her seat on the makeshift bleachers, as she had dozens of times before. But today felt different. Today was different. Today, she was here to watch her son defend his championship title. His first ever title, won so brilliantly last year. He had overcome the great odds of his early childhood to find his feet in this cold northern land and to make a place for himself in this challenging community of newcomers and refugees. Downtown had never been what she had imagined when she had been told that’s where her apartment was waiting for her and her son. She had been so relieved to be given a plane ride from the refugee camp into a new future that she had hardly spared a thought for the details of where she and Hakim would end up. She simply got on the bus with her two suitcases and one son and looked forward, seeing only the generalized brighter future that she had been hoping for for so many years. 

Hakim took his place at the table and twirled his red paddle four times, his way of invoking the luck of the gods and the smart use of his skills. He felt the smooth roundness of the ball in his hand, then looked straight across the table at his opponent. A young man, like him on the cusp of adulthood, but Hakim was still shackled to his mother by both tradition and emotion. Hers, not his. He was eager to move on and away, but he knew his mum was reliant on him for so much. He wanted to earn this title for a second time for her; maybe a second title would give him the leeway to go to a university further away than the suburbs of this drab city. He could only hope. He must play his heart out, play his very best, play to win — and to leave. 

Yasmina was grateful for a great deal, but maybe most grateful for the arrival, one Thursday, of the ping pong table in the common room at the apartment block. It had, apparently, been given by a local woman who no longer needed it, so had donated it via her friend who was a program manager in the building. That simple green table with the white stripes and a net stretched across it had been foreign to Yasmina and Hakim, but with his friends in the building and a few YouTube how-to videos, they soon understood what the table was: An opportunity to play a game and to have fun without ever having to go outside or spend any money. Pretty soon, a house league had been established with teams formed across ages, genders and cultures. Anyone who could reach the height of the table was eligible to play. Everyone tried it, but eventually the serious players stood out, Hakim being one of them. 

The championship game got underway, with Hakim serving hard and fast, slicing the ball to just skim across the net and bounce low on his opponent’s side. His mother didn’t know how many hours he spent practising that serve, but he knew just how important that opening move was in every game. His skill served notice to his opponent that he was not a mere amateur, but a player with purpose and vision — to win. He loved this game, loved how it felt to move on feet light and swift so his hands, sure and strong, could deliver via the paddle the exact move he wanted to give the ball. The best of seven games would give him the title he wanted and he got it, winning the first three games easily but then having to fight for the fourth one that returned the title to him. Winner. Champion. Man. 

Yasmina knew this second title was a turning point for both of them. Hakim had proven himself a serious player, all while also being a serious student and a loving son. He was growing into a fine young man and she would need to match his maturity by letting him live his own dream. He wanted more than the local university, he wanted to spread his wings and, though he loved his mother — she knew that — he loved what life here in this still-foreign-to-her country had to offer him. He wanted to live large and that, Yasmina, realized, was a bigger gift than she had allowed herself to ever imagine back in the days of the refugee camp where living did not reach beyond eking out a daily existence. A future that grew from Hakim’s own choice and his own skills and hard work was something her son deserved. And she must let him go so he could build it. 

———

To make the world good and beautiful and kind takes many things: Money and power used for the greater good, not individual gain. Connection and community that can take as little as a friendly conversation to get it started. And, sometimes, a ping pong table, not used for 24 years and donated to the right place, can be the spark for fun and games that lead to a new way of seeing the world and how we can be in it: That is when a table is a door… 

Val and I stored our ping pong table in the basement for 24 years before, finally, moving it along. While Yasmina and Hakim are figments of my imagination, the table is real and is being used in the common room of a Winnipeg apartment complex in which immigrant and refugee women live with their children. Who knows, maybe one of them will have the experience that I have given Hakim in this story. I hope so. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo credit: Thomas Bresson, CC BY 4.0