The Lady From Haiti
Watch out, Snowflakes. There are real people on this earth. They have strength, gratitude, and compassion.
You might have trouble seeing them, right away. That’s because there are alternate societies, forming right beneath our noses.
The gig economy is home to an alternate world of entrepreneurs.
This is one of their stories.
I’ll tell it to you exactly the way it came to me. You can decide how much of it is true.
Daughter
My Lyft driver came to South Florida at the age of 14… on a cargo ship from Haiti.
“Nobody comes between me and my Mama,” she told me.
I guess not.
It turns out, her Mama took three bullets to the chest and lived to tell about it.
Here in the US, her daughter took care of her for years.
Now, the daughter is saving up for a house.
Entrepreneur
The Lyft business is good. The auction business is better.
While we were waiting at a stoplight, my driver checked her cell phone, scrolling through a series of online auction sites.
“Ooo. This is good.”
Apparently, you can go online and bid on the abandoned contents of storage facilities. Then, you claim your successful purchases, repackage everything, and sell it on eBay.
Under Cover
“You’ll be my last conversation today,” she said.
It was early in the morning. That seemed like a strange thing for such a chatty person to say.
“What do you mean? You’re not going to talk to anybody else?”
“Nope,” she said. “After you, I won’t be able to speak any English.”
“You mean you’re going to act like you can’t speak any English.”
“Yeah. It’s amazing what people will say in front of you if they think you don’t understand them.”
Back To Mama
My soon-to-be ignorant immigrant circled back to her stories about Mama… the one who took three bullets in the chest.
“Nobody comes between me and my Mama,” she repeated.
It turns out, she had spent about a year, watching over Mama who had developed cancer.
True to recent protocol, the nursing facilities tried to block her from visiting her Mama because of COVID-19.
(Apparently, they hadn’t heard about the bullets and the cancer.)
“You can arrest me,” she said. “But nobody comes between me and my Mama.”
And that was that. They let her stay.
That was the most beautiful part of her story.
Philosopher
The most memorable, the most amazing thing she said — and it has stayed with me for a long time…
After all that, she said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
God bless the Lady from Haiti.
-TD