Have You Seen Luis Velez?

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“It’s so rare for guys your age to come in here and show an interest in language, and tell me they’re wanting to learn something when they’re not even being graded on it. It’s inspiring for someone like me. So I’m going to quietly hand you one. But the arrangement is strictly between you and me. And it’s going to be back in less than a week with no problems. Right?”

“What is abnormal, though? Normal is just the norm. The norm is just what the average person feels. Most people have those feelings. But some don’t. Those who don’t are in the minority, so in that sense abnormal. But we don’t use ‘abnormal’ in that sense when we speak. We use it to say ‘bad.’ It’s not bad. It just is. Some people just are. Maybe schoolmates make a thing out to be bad, but only because they don’t understand it. People laugh at things they don’t understand. It makes them feel safe. But it’s a false feeling. They are no safer. They just feel as if they are. The world is full of people too foolish to judge the difference.”

“Because I have lived ninety-two years, Raymond, and if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that we are never so unique as we think we are. We are all people. Sure, some things will be different from one person to the next. Some people have more of those feelings than others. Some have too much, and it causes all manner of havoc. Some have none at all. But I can tell you this as a human being who’s had a lot of experience being one: If you’re feeling something, other people in other places are feeling it, too. It’s never just us.

“Never be afraid to look, Raymond. It’s always better to look. Whatever you’re afraid of, turn toward it, not away. Once you’re willing to do that, it loses all its power over you.

It becomes like asking a fish to tell you about the water. It’s all around him. He swims in it at every moment. But he will likely say, ‘Water? What is this water of which you speak?’ So often this is true.”

Raymond did not believe in the saints. He did not think that Saint Jude was now with him, helping him with his hopeless cause. He did, however, very much believe in the simple magic of a girl who barely knew him, yet would be so kind.

Life gives us nothing outright. It only lends. Nothing is ours to keep. Absolutely nothing. Not even our bodies, our brains. This ‘self’ that we think we know so well, that we think of as us. It is only on loan. If a person comes into our life, they will go again. In a parting of ways, or because everyone dies. They will die or you will die. Nothing we receive in this life are we allowed to keep.

People gripe about growing older—their aches and pains, how much harder everything is—as if they had forgotten that the alternative is dying young.”

“That’s so much better. You should definitely name him Ramon.”