A Passion for Learning

Rafael's Unexpressed Yearning for Connection

Rafael is one of several custodians who maintain the condo complex where I used to live part-time. Most days he can be seen gathering recycling bins, patching a battered wall or mopping floors in the lobby of our building. He has always seemed to be silently everywhere, head down, averting everyone’s gaze. I long imagined that it was deliberate avoidance. He had been working at the condo for three years without my ever speaking with him as I had with most other maintenance staff. Yet over time his distancing piqued my curiosity. Regardless of their complex inner feelings, those who perform the essential work that makes our middle class comfort possible usually nod and smile in our direction as a matter of self-protective courtesy. But Rafael didn’t lift his eyes to engage with anyone. It was as if he was trying to vanish in plain sight.

But one day I paused between errands as I passed him. He was sweeping the corridor by the elevators. As a retired senior, I have time to engage in chance encounters. It took him several seconds for him to realize I wasn’t just there to catch the elevator but deliberately to speak with him.

“Hello, Rafael,” I greeted him, reading the name tag sewn on his company shirt. “My name is Mark. Glad to meet you.” Sensing his shyness, I modulated my greeting to meet his guarded affect and temperament. I offered my open hand to shake his, but he was still slowly lifting his gaze from his feet to my eyes. With his bushy black eyebrows and deep-set eyes, he seemed to peer from behind a veil of diffidence. Eventually he lifted his hand to shake mine. Evidently he wasn’t used to shaking hands. At most, when pressed to engage with local residents, he had simply nodded in silent acknowledgment.

“I’ve noticed you working here for a long time,” I told him, “but I’ve never had a chance to talk with you. Tell me about yourself. How long have you worked here?” Rafael was slow to respond. Slow and quiet as I tried to be, I couldn’t yet match his rhythm.

“Tree years,” he replied, then nodded silently. His gaze returned to the floor and he leaned on his broom.

“And where did you grow up?” I asked.

He raised his eyes to meet mine. “In northern Mexico, by the border with Texas.”

“What was it like growing up there?”

Sensing my curiosity, Rafael engaged with my eyes from under his furrowed brow. He told me of swimming across the Rio Grande with his friends when there was enough water still flowing in the river and no wall at the border. They would visit his uncle in McAllen, Texas for the day, then swim back home. In halting, effortful English (but better than my Spanish), he recalled his childhood with a certain fondness, despite what must have been a life lived close to the bone.

I listened intently to his story, asking follow-up questions prompted by my deepening curiosity. Despite the language barrier he was a good storyteller. The constraints of his vocabulary forced him to stick to essentials but he spoke with understated passion.

Thus began a continuing series of conversations between us. Each time I passed him at work, he would be in the middle of one or another project. One morning he was repairing gouges at the base of a wall in the parking garage. He stood up to greet me, wiping spackle from his hands. Each time we spoke, he became more at ease with his English and had clearly added words and expressions to his vocabulary. Now he met my gaze directly and spoke more at length.

“Thank you for talking with me,” he told me one morning. “Most people just pass me by, but you stop and ask me questions. It’s very good for me to be able to practice my English. Every time I talk with you, I go home and spend two more hours thinking about our conversation.”

I wasn’t the only person on whom Rafael practiced his English. On Saturday mornings he visited his local library and read books and magazines in English. One morning the librarian approached him and told him she’d been watching him study and had been impressed by his earnestness. When he explained that he was trying to learn English, she offered to help by tutoring him in vocabulary and opening him up the world of the printed word. He spoke of her role in his life with an appreciation close to reverence.

“I love so much to learn,” he told me as he peeled spackle from his fingers. His eyes glistened. “I have an uncle who’s a teacher. I was so inspired by him. He taught me to love learning.”

“I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you talk to me,” he told me one day.

“Well, I think of you as my friend,” I told him. “You’re not just anyone. You’re my friend.” Rafael thought about it for a moment, then nodded with a serious expression. “I think of you too as my friend.”

He paused again, looked down, then back at me. “Yes, that’s who you are. You’re my friend.”

Despite his tendency towards seclusion, Rafael is not unaware of what’s happening in the world around him. With a regime determined to drive immigrants out of the country, he says he’s watching events closely. At some point he and his family may find themselves back in Mexico scrambling to find shelter and work in a place where they’ve never lived and where there are probably few jobs or housing. Uncertainty and scarcity are nothing new to Rafael. He grew up navigating the Rio Grande when there was still enough water to swim in and no wall to keep him out. He’ll find ways to survive. If he and his family are banished from this country, it will be our loss as much as his. The question is, will we be here for him and his family as much as he’s always been here for us, quietly giving our lives the grace and ease we seldom think to give to him?