Post No Work, Day 3: Late night

As the night continues, we're still up. We sit here in the kitchen/dinning room sharing stories and thoughts. All deeply personal. Some causing welling up. At this point we've gotten into the innate varieties in our (Bobby Aazami and my) Persian parents - both his parents and my mother are from Iran. Talking about the pride they carry, the inability to translate personal thoughts and passions into words [unless, of course, they're talking about the Baha'i Faith or their pride in their children when speaking with strangers or friend and we are not around (an attribute Emily Price had mentioned her father also shared, as well as my father)], and their, thankfully, diminishing belief that the non-Persian cultures of the world will eventually come around and aline themselves with traditional, Farsi speaking people. This last bit is one that doesn't solely dwell with Persians, but one that most other cultures have had to tackle over the last hundred to two hundred years. Anyway...

Hitting the rewind button for a while, we talked about our (Bobby and my) leaving of the Baha'i National Center. How we both felt like the time had come for us to move on. I admitted to both of them that I had been feeling it for some time, and Bobby told us a story about how his moving on felt right, three months or so before the lay off. He told us that it was the perfect time to leave, especially knowing now that the lay offs took place.

Then, he told a story about receiving a prayer book at his goodbye party, a tradition for those departing from the BNC and weren't fired. He said that he wanted to make a big joke about receiving the prayer book, that he was primed and ready to blurt it out, but got choked up looking down at the personalized message and signatures from all the members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. It was a big deal for him. It's a big deal for everyone leaving to feel like their service was appreciated.

I stood there across from him, looking down at my hands. They looked the way one's hands would look if they were holding something that meant something. ...yeah, that sounds overly dramatic and silly, but that's the way it felt. When the story concluded I told them that I felt bad for everyone that was laid off. No one had a party; no one was forced to stand in front of a large group of people to tell them what their plans were for the future; no one had the chance to look down at a symbol of their service.

Bobby was shocked. He apologized to me as if a proxy for the NSA, and it was appreciated but I still felt a little hollow.

Fast-forward a bit to Luthando walking back through the front door, shifting pieces of mail in his hands. Amongst them was a book-sized, padded envelope. I saw it and felt something, but didn't dare cling to it. We continued talking about whatever we were talking about at that moment until he got to the table in the dinning room. He analyzed the envelope addressed to him and passed the rest of the stack to me.

On the sticker, affixed to the padded envelope was the letterhead for the BNC and my name and address. First, I thought it was a DVD. The newsreel or something. But why would they send me the newsreel? I rationalized it away quickly and began opening, and there it was... The prayer book.

It hit hard. Bobby began cheering and stomping, hooting and hollering, around the kitchen as if rubbing it in my face. "See! See what happens! You feel bad, like you're not appreciated and Baha'u'llah delivers proof!" And he was right. Despite my previous comments that I had come to grips with my departure from the BNC, despite swearing to my parents that it didn't hurt "that much" and that I was prepared and probably needed to leave, it still hurt a bit until that moment.

I opened it up and saw that every member had signed the card, stuck to the inside cover. On the opposite side of the folded page, a message addressed "Dear David". It didn't matter that each are the same, that they're form letters printed out, folded, and presented to the NSA members to sign. I felt like they cared. That my service meant something to someone other then me.