Not all of my stories will be or have been about my health issues, and the related incident is not mainly about them.
Seven years ago, I was helping our daughter Katie move from one apartment to the next. I was carrying a light load. On my first trip out, I hit a divot on her sloping lawn and heard a crack. A doctor friend of hers,who was helping her move, told me not to move as he was pretty sure I broke my leg (I had broken the tibia and fibula). One of the other movers, a Chinese friend of Katie's, prayed with me as I laid on the ground and then kissed my cheek.
I won't go through the ordeal of the hospitalization, where Katie stayed at my side and Tom eventually joined her. I was released on a Thursday night.
Katie had gone to Turkey (as previously planned)for several weeks and left on Wednesday. Originally the doctor had said I needed to wait 10 days before flying home to Wisconsin so Tom and I secured an Extend-A-Stay hotel room of some sort.
We got to the place late in the evening. It was raining hard and there was no covered area to park or to at least let me out. We saw a young man there. He was smoking a cigarette and I assumed was on a break from work. A quiet thought came to me: "Judge not".
As we tried to get me out of the car, he came to my side immediately to help. Together, he and Tom helped get me down a very long hall to a handicapped room (Why would it be way down at the end of the hall?) I felt so weak that Moehn, the Pakistani young man, stayed with me while Tom went to get a chair from our room for me to rest in the middle of the hallway. Moehn kept asking, "Mum, are you all right?". He was so kind and cute. When we offered to pay him something, he adamantly refused.
We found out that he had a summer job selling at trade shows and was working in that area.
We asked him to come back the next night for cookies and just to visit and he seemed very pleased. He showed us pictures of his family, some of whom he hadn't seen in awhile. We invited him to come to our home in Chilton, Wisconsin and to bring along a friend if he could - something I almost never do spontaneously. I knew he was trustworthy.
He called us - and we him - several times after I returned to Wisconsin, Moehn always asking first with sincerity, "How is Mum?". We found out Mum is a term of respect and care from his country.
We sent him a graduation gift. He graduated from a university in Michigan, but somehow we lost touch after that. Moehn is one of those strangers you feel privileged to meet. I am glad I didn't let a first impression deter us from meeting a very encouraging person.
You just inspired me to facebook my friends from Pakistan. They've been gone a few months and I miss them!
ReplyDeleteThanks Christina!
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