juddles
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- Aug 2, 2011
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Hi there all.
This is a wandering – and sharing of feelings and ideas that is not a standard post. But I think what I am feeling is sufficiently worth it to share:
As perhaps for many, during this lockdown there is a sudden increase in communications within my family. Suddenly I get emails that involve my mother and sister and brother and aunt – people who I cherish but do not usually communicate with. I actually steer clear of much of this – as being the black sheep of the family requires. I am just not “into” frequent contact, far less the sharing of feelings. But a “thread” that was recently engaged in by all these people led back to Chile, and specifically the “something” that I wish to share – because I feel it is truly relevant in this new age of COVID and fear and hope.
For those that have suffered some of my other postings, I spent many years in Chile when I was a kid. In a small fishing village. My father worked at an astronomical observatory thing – run by Europeans. But as a family we ended up living and being part of just a tiny fishing village of perhaps 500 people. This is the 1980’s – Life was simple and hard. Especially in Chile at that time.
As a kid I got on well with the locals – I was part of them - but even back then I understood somehow that my parents were the key to our acceptance there. My father was aloof in a general sense – not social at all. But he would drop everything at a moment to help someone fix something mechanical. My mother was the opposite – a sheerly social person. As adults suffer, her Spanish was never perfect, but the audacity that a crazy gringo has in a small fishing village has wins through. The people of the community loved her. Back then it was even poorer than it is now. No local medical facilities, etc. We would lend torches to the local police when they got a night job….
But I was just a teenager then – I “got” part of this, but at the end of the day I just thought my parents were nice people who helped the small community that we became part of.
As some would have read in some other posts I have made in this forum, my parents eventually left this tiny village and returned to Australia. And many years later (2018) I returned there and reclaimed the house they abandoned. And even after many many years, I found myself basking in some glory of love that the village held for my family.
Back to the current family email exchange – and now I understand why..
I will include here a quote from my mother’s email – without permission as she is old and shows flippant regard to modern email decorum anyway
She wrote:
“this reminds me of Pato Cores in Chile. Pato was legally blind and had done his 12 years of schooling at the Braille institute in La Serena. He had no vision in one eye, but taught himself to read "in negro" in (black) with the every limited vision he had in the other eye. When he started to get terrible headaches and feared for the sight in his "good" eye, I took him to my private Opthalmologist. Pato came out with a prescription for glasses and I remember us going to pick them up. He stood at the door of the Opticians and said "I can see the wheels on the trucks". In the following weeks he wandered all over our village where he had lived all his life , seeing familiar places, people and things for the first time. His vision was still far from "normal" and he did walk with his face on a slightly odd angle to see, but he saw. Pato would have been in his early thirties at that time. The sad thing was that Pato had seen that same Opthalmologist many years earlier - but as a public patient he was not given any script. Going as a private patient (we paid) changed everything. He was a bright bloke and would have loved to have gone to University. Pato died of a heart attack a few years later. “
This brought literal tears to my eyes.
I remember Pato, as he was the one (in a tiny fishing village when I was just a kid) that wore “coke bottle glasses”. I never knew before today the story.
I share this in these COVID times as a reality check. Pato, even back then, could not even get glasses to see as the system he was under did not give him that. We here in Australia are so truly successful and wealthy. We have an absolutely magnificent social security and health system – yet many of us will still suffer in this viral nightmare. But just imagine what it is like in places (almost the entire world – even the USA) where healthcare is a rich persons game..
I am unashamed of admiring my parents – they are so much nicer than me. They lived with the belief, even though they never even contemplated it, that to give is so much more rewarding than to receive. Maybe the hardship of many years spent in the aussie outback engendered that spirit in them. But I think, given my experience of living in many overseas places, that that altruistic and generous spirit is a huge national asset. We as aussies are good people. Truly so.
And that gives me great hope for the years ahead, and also, right now, in the current mayhem.
I am not a politician, so I have no agenda. So even if it sounds corny, let’s fight this current crisis together. Small good things have miraculous effects.
This is a wandering – and sharing of feelings and ideas that is not a standard post. But I think what I am feeling is sufficiently worth it to share:
As perhaps for many, during this lockdown there is a sudden increase in communications within my family. Suddenly I get emails that involve my mother and sister and brother and aunt – people who I cherish but do not usually communicate with. I actually steer clear of much of this – as being the black sheep of the family requires. I am just not “into” frequent contact, far less the sharing of feelings. But a “thread” that was recently engaged in by all these people led back to Chile, and specifically the “something” that I wish to share – because I feel it is truly relevant in this new age of COVID and fear and hope.
For those that have suffered some of my other postings, I spent many years in Chile when I was a kid. In a small fishing village. My father worked at an astronomical observatory thing – run by Europeans. But as a family we ended up living and being part of just a tiny fishing village of perhaps 500 people. This is the 1980’s – Life was simple and hard. Especially in Chile at that time.
As a kid I got on well with the locals – I was part of them - but even back then I understood somehow that my parents were the key to our acceptance there. My father was aloof in a general sense – not social at all. But he would drop everything at a moment to help someone fix something mechanical. My mother was the opposite – a sheerly social person. As adults suffer, her Spanish was never perfect, but the audacity that a crazy gringo has in a small fishing village has wins through. The people of the community loved her. Back then it was even poorer than it is now. No local medical facilities, etc. We would lend torches to the local police when they got a night job….
But I was just a teenager then – I “got” part of this, but at the end of the day I just thought my parents were nice people who helped the small community that we became part of.
As some would have read in some other posts I have made in this forum, my parents eventually left this tiny village and returned to Australia. And many years later (2018) I returned there and reclaimed the house they abandoned. And even after many many years, I found myself basking in some glory of love that the village held for my family.
Back to the current family email exchange – and now I understand why..
I will include here a quote from my mother’s email – without permission as she is old and shows flippant regard to modern email decorum anyway
She wrote:
“this reminds me of Pato Cores in Chile. Pato was legally blind and had done his 12 years of schooling at the Braille institute in La Serena. He had no vision in one eye, but taught himself to read "in negro" in (black) with the every limited vision he had in the other eye. When he started to get terrible headaches and feared for the sight in his "good" eye, I took him to my private Opthalmologist. Pato came out with a prescription for glasses and I remember us going to pick them up. He stood at the door of the Opticians and said "I can see the wheels on the trucks". In the following weeks he wandered all over our village where he had lived all his life , seeing familiar places, people and things for the first time. His vision was still far from "normal" and he did walk with his face on a slightly odd angle to see, but he saw. Pato would have been in his early thirties at that time. The sad thing was that Pato had seen that same Opthalmologist many years earlier - but as a public patient he was not given any script. Going as a private patient (we paid) changed everything. He was a bright bloke and would have loved to have gone to University. Pato died of a heart attack a few years later. “
This brought literal tears to my eyes.
I remember Pato, as he was the one (in a tiny fishing village when I was just a kid) that wore “coke bottle glasses”. I never knew before today the story.
I share this in these COVID times as a reality check. Pato, even back then, could not even get glasses to see as the system he was under did not give him that. We here in Australia are so truly successful and wealthy. We have an absolutely magnificent social security and health system – yet many of us will still suffer in this viral nightmare. But just imagine what it is like in places (almost the entire world – even the USA) where healthcare is a rich persons game..
I am unashamed of admiring my parents – they are so much nicer than me. They lived with the belief, even though they never even contemplated it, that to give is so much more rewarding than to receive. Maybe the hardship of many years spent in the aussie outback engendered that spirit in them. But I think, given my experience of living in many overseas places, that that altruistic and generous spirit is a huge national asset. We as aussies are good people. Truly so.
And that gives me great hope for the years ahead, and also, right now, in the current mayhem.
I am not a politician, so I have no agenda. So even if it sounds corny, let’s fight this current crisis together. Small good things have miraculous effects.
