Ariel was walking through the kitchen when I was on the phone with someone, probably one of my kids, talking about the ACT college admissions test. I’m not a fan of tests but also understand there probably has to be some way to sift and sway with all the anonymous information handed to college admissions people. I asked Ariel if he had been required to take the ACT in Houston, before he went to college in Maryland. He nodded his head.
“What’d ya get?” I asked, though I don’t know what made me think I had the right to ask such a personal question. Such artificial measurements can be the source of unearned shame or glory, and by asking I was buying-in to what I was against in the first place. Nonetheless, he answered, almost embarrassed.
“Thirty-five."
My eyebrows jutted up into my forehead and my jaw dropped.“Are you serious? That’s amazing!” Thirty-five is one point away from a perfect score. It puts him 99% above everyone who takes the ACT test. He’s in the rare 1%.
“Wow, Bud, that’s amazing!”
A score like that, coupled with his stellar performance in high school should have given him the pick of scholarships and schools. Indeed, he did have offers from many colleges, ones most American kids would die for. But Ariel is a Dreamer. He came to America as a child of an illegal immigrant. Someone told him he needed to settle for less than his dream school. I’m not sure why. I suspect it had to do with money. Instead, he ended up graduating from college with considerable debt, even after working through college and living as a dorm resident so he could afford housing. He couldn’t get a federal loan because he isn’t an American citizen, so he inches his way through paying off what could have been so freely given to him had he not been dropped to the earth the way he was. I don’t understand all of it and it hurts my head to try to figure it out. Mostly, it hurts my heart.
Ariel came to us during Covid. Our family had decided that summer of isolation that we would go to our cottage on the shores of Lake Huron and have some isolated time together without risk. We could let the kids splash in unsalted water to their heart’s content. We all drove from Utah to Michigan, then drove back. While we were gone our daughter, Kate said she had heard from one of her former students. Before she moved to New York Kate had taught in Houston for a number of years, mostly students from underprivileged backgrounds. Ariel had graduated from college and landed a job with Morgan Stanley in Salt Lake City. He didn’t know a soul in Utah, except he knew Ms Connors was from there. We told Kate to have him go stay at our house while we were gone. We would help him find a place to live when we got back. My sisters Libby and Sherry picked him up at the airport and acclimated him. Poor kid, getting picked up by two old ladies in a strange town during a pandemic. What a way to start your future!
Ariel was born in Honduras, to a teenage mother and an absent father. His story is his to tell, and he owns it with what appears to me to be ownership in places that he cannot and should not own. He did not choose to be born under these circumstances, and his path as a child was directed by those who had stewardship over him, however unfortunate their decisions may have been. His mother followed his stepfather to Texas, unofficially, bringing her two boys with her. Ariel was around 8 years old. He spoke not a word of English and was thrust into a situation where everything was unfamiliar. He adjusted, he kept his head low and learned quickly. When, in the second or third grade, his teacher touched his back and he winced, the school discovered whipping stripes on the tender skin of his back. By law they were obligated to report it. That’s when this timid child was forced to present his flesh as evidence against his stepfather, who was arrested, imprisoned and deported back to Honduras, where he was subsequently murdered.
Ariel was given the ungodly burden of responsibility for this circumstance and has suffered under the weight of it ever since. He learned early on to keep his head down and not make waves. This went against all he had learned to do and put him in a terrible situation emotionally.
Given his personality, intelligence, moral compass and placement in his family, he became the responsible one, tending the additional three young brothers that came when he was a teenager. He loved them, and they adored him. He was the sounding board for his young mother, for good and for bad. Leaving his home to go to college, he could not have known he would be severed from all he knew so completely and painfully. The rest of his past is his to tell, but it includes considerable mistreatment, poverty, shame, and a blessed but small portion of love and tenderness. Ariel did not choose the unbending path he is set upon. He is evidence that the scales of moral judgement are skewed and imbalanced. I love him dearly, and my insides want to scream at the ridiculously hard circumstance his presence here creates for him. It has already been made known to him that his life is in peril if he returns to Honduras, because of his relation to other people there.
Where does a child like this go?
I want to take a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and polish the scales off the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….”
Ariel has lived with us, off and on, for the past three years. I am stunned by the irreverence and the seeming disregard we Americans seem to have when it comes to helping those who cannot help themselves. I’m frustrated with our legal system. And I am married to an attorney and judge! Can’t someone… anyone… give this young man a helping hand to find a place to call home? The legal vortex he is required to swirl in reminds me of Toto swimming through that tornado in Wizard of Oz. He’s required to pedal hard to get nowhere fast.
Ariel grew up here, he acclimated as he was told, he follows laws and pays taxes and knows the political system better than I. Political science was one of his best subjects in college. I am disheartened and angry that he was robbed of the chance to follow correct steps toward citizenship simply because he was a child brought here by his mother. Had she left him he could have grown up and taken his own legal path. But a mother won’t leave her child, and she shouldn’t. These poor kids are caught in a mess not of their own making and it seems no one is offering a hand to help them out of it. Oh, America!
Cuncle Ariel |
Ariel is solidly tucked under our wings. He is ours, heart and soul, as much as he is willing to give himself. Our grandkids call him Cuncle Ariel. Half cousin/ half uncle. He is the most nurturing and loving cuncle there ever was.
Our kids hold him like a brother. Dave and I love him like a son. Early on, Dave taught him how to drive. We celebrated the day he got his license.
He and I share cooking secrets and trade recipes. He has stayed up through the night making and bottling raspberry jam with me. He reads from the New Testament with us each night. When it’s his turn to read be speaks the word of scripture he has never before read in English, and he does it with grace and faith. He is willing and able and adaptable. Last month he and Libby came to help us finish up a project at Johnny’s warehouse. He lets us boss him around like one of our own kids. And he knows my love language, tidying up my ridiculous messes when he can and setting the tables for Sunday dinner. Ariel understands my warped lifestyle and accepts it and loves me in spite of it. And I love him. I love all of him.
Passed the driver's test! He's good at tests! |
I currently live with three wonderful men: My Dave, who is my steady and the one who will laugh at my jokes and cheer for my messy projects. My Timo, who is giving his life in service for two years as a missionary and gracing our home with his spirit. And my Ariel, whose pure heart, brilliant mind, and incredible tolerance and patience keep him dreaming. They are in the 99th
I dream with my Dreamer boy: I dream of the day I will be able to travel across the borders of this country with him and show him the magic of our world. I dream of the day we can go together to the voting booth. He knows more about how to cast a vote in our current campaigns than most politically well seeded people I know, but he can’t vote. I’ll celebrate with him the absence of ridiculous amounts of paperwork, loop jumping, and expense that comes with allowing him to live here and contribute to our economic and emotional well-being even though it allows him few privileges. Seriously, unless you’re a dreamer or love a dreamer, you have no idea what they have to go through just to exist. I dream of the day he won’t have to walk on tippy toes through his life journey. He is a strong, intelligent, incredibly capable, creative, hard-working man trying to squeeze his way out from under the unforgiving thumb of Uncle Sam. And that’s me, and my family, trying to lift the hat away from Uncle Sam’s ear and whisper, “Ease up, will ya?
His arm permanently belongs around us. |
He has a permanent seat at our large family table. |
He reports on the service he gave as our Christmas gift, like his adopted siblings do. |