Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Dinner table talk
Last night Ted and I met up with Rose at the Sesame Chinese Restaurant on Watson. Sesame has been there for decades, but Ted had never graced it with his presence. He is vegan, so he was pretty sure he could find something good to eat, and he was not disappointed. We were there for an hour and a half and the conversation was wide-ranging. I believe us Elders taught the young philosopher a couple of things. There were plenty of laughs, too, as there always are with us good humored people.
The conversation wound around to Rose’s time in South Africa. She was living there when Apartheid was being dismantled. The word is associated with the movement to eradicate this racist policy of segregation and political oppression. It’s origin is from the Afrikaans words for “apart” and “hood”. The strictness and cruelty of its policies assured the minority white population that it was the dominant force from 1948 to the early 1990’s. Under this system, South Africans were classified into four different groups: White, Colored, Indian, and Black, with White at the top of the pyramid. Millions of Black South Africans were forced to leave their homes and live in segregated neighborhoods.
We spoke about Nelson Mandela, who worked against apartheid most of his life. For his efforts, he spent 27 years behind bars. I read his biography and remember clearly that when he was finally set free the first thing he did was to forgive his captors. He believed that if he was not able to do that, he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned in his mind. He was set free in 1990 and became the first Black South African President in 1994. Rose was there for that hugely significant event.
The word, “Ubuntu” came into my head as we discussed the efforts to heal South Africa of hundreds of years of oppression. Ted had never heard it and asked how I knew it and what it means. It is an African philosophy that I read about years ago. He quickly googled it and learned that it means we share our humanity with all others. It supports the belief that there is a universal bond that connects all humanity. It is this philosophy that allowed the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to do its work of healing the deep, deep wounds of systemic racism.
After such serious discussion we moved from the sublime to the silly. Rose asked if Ted knew about the glasses story. He had not heard it and I was glad to tell it. You must know that Rose and Mary both wear glasses all the time, which implies that they need them to see. Somehow, though, they spent two or three days wearing each other’s glasses without realizing it. Rose drove home from Indiana sporting Mary’s glasses. Now, the glasses are very similar in appearance, but different in prescription. That apparently did not bother either of them. Not until Mary tried to clip on her magnetic sunglasses and failed several times did she realize that something was wrong. She took the glasses in to Rose thinking they were broken. That’s when they discovered the mix-up and realized that they had been looking at their own glasses on the other’s face without recognizing them. We got a great laugh out of this true story.
When dinner was cleared off the table I kept waiting for my fortune cookie. I remembered the last time I was at Sesame I got a cookie and opened it, only to find that the slip of paper inside was blank. Apparently I did not merit any wise words that night. Well the waiter never brought us cookies but he showed us a bowl full of them on our way out the door. We each grabbed a cookie. I was looking forward to learning my fate so when we got in the car I opened the cellophane and eagerly broke the cookie in two. This time there wasn’t even a blank slip of paper. The cookie held nothing but air – again I got bupkus. I don’t know what this means, but perhaps my philosopher son will explain it to me.