Cambodian Grandmothers
12/1/93 John Calvi

On this quiet morning I am at my desk as a bit of snow and sun mix in the sky. It’s beautiful. The wood stove is on a slow burn and the rest of the wood pile is refusing to get into the woodshed by itself. I have been going back over my 93 calendar as I answer some letters months overdue. And there are flashes of memories of stories, people, teaching, and travel. This year I worked with 27 different groups in 3 countries. Though much of it seems a blur now as I begin a resting time, certain stories and images are strong, especially from the last trips.

I spent a Sunday in October as the guest of my friend Malis near Boston. Malis is a social worker helping Cambodian refugees settle in the U.S. We met in 1988 at an international conference on torture in Costa Rica. She arranged to have a dozen refugees, all Cambodian grandmothers tortured by the Khmer Rouge, meet with me at the home of a Buddhist priest.

In a large empty room with a mat on the floor each woman would come lie down and rest while I said my prayers for guidance and asked where my hands should go. I would sit holding feet or shoulders or head or other places where ache, and soreness held the memories of earlier hurt. Sometimes I could feel the sadness or physical pain seep out, smooth and clear. Usually I could feel the peacefulness and deep relaxation wash in like a tide of light. In the adjoining room the women waited and watched through the doorway. At first there was the utmost reverence and quiet. They each entered with hands clasped in prayer and bowing. As the day went on the quiet turned into talk of the news of families and children, trying on clothes brought from home, lunch, talking about how it felt to be touched by me. There were 2 women I was of no use to. But the rest I helped very much. I will never forget the look of one of the oldest women – short, petite, brown and most graceful. She entered with a combination of regal humility and sweetness. She was grateful upon rising and bowed with hands together, a gesture I returned. However when she stepped to the doorway with the eyes of her peers on her she did a little dance with raised hands not unlike Magic Johnson after the winning point was scored.

Malis had done this once before a few years ago at her house but the setup was different. She would come in with a few people tell me the jist of their experience and while I worked with them she’d fetch a few more and give me a brief history, “This women saw all her children murdered, this child lived alone in the jungles eating whatever until she found the border and then was raped by guards at the camps, this man was left for dead after his torture, this woman lost all the men in her family” What is most obvious for me and what I must keep before me is that the quality of reverence is the balancing/grounding agent amidst such pain. It beckons grace and hope. My primary experience of this time and the last is one of grace and hope- that all pain is essentially the same and comfort can be given no matter what has happened. It tires me but this fall the fatigue was in balance with the gratitude.