Lilian and her beautiful mind

There is so much hate and evil in the world that, when we are presented with a truly admirable human being, we must take note.

A few details in this tale have been changed to protect privacy, but the overall account is completely intact.

Lilian was born in El Salvador, nearly forty years ago. She worked on her family’s farm and attended the local school, but only through the sixth grade, the highest offered in her village. There was another school in a town, a middling distance away, offering higher grade instruction, but Lilian’s family was too poor to send her there. So the sixth grade was her zenith, for quite some period of time.

When I first met her, Lilian was living locally, here in Massachusetts. She was married and had several children. She worked hard at an assembly line job, contributing to her family’s needs.

She had taught herself English and was quite proficient. But her goal was to obtain a GED (General Educational Development) certification, and then to improve her employment situation. She wanted for her children what she was unable to have as a child.

We met weekly at The Literacy Center, where I helped her with mathematics. Other tutors worked with her on science, social studies, reading, and writing. But we worked on math.

Initially, Lilian displayed great ease with the basic operations of  addition, subtraction, and multiplication. We had to work a bit on division, but she quickly mastered the concepts. I was beginning to appreciate how sharp she was.

Fractions were a challenge, but we explored how they worked and I made sure that she understood all of the methods, not just memorization. She worked hard, did her homework, and was never pessimistic. A bright, motivated, hardworking student – what more could any tutor ask for?

Unsurprisingly, Lilian mastered fractions. And then geometry. Algebra. Statistics. Probability. Over a period of eighteen months, she became highly proficient in high school math. Then she received a promotion at work. They had noticed that she had a mind for and the ability to understand and manipulate numbers.

Meanwhile, with the help of her other tutors, Lilian sat for the GED exam and aced it.

I feel that I had a small part in her achievement, but it was only in guiding the intelligence that she naturally possessed. I will never forget Lilian and her beautiful mind, the self-discipline, the hard work, her cheerful do-or-die attitude.

Lilian is an immigrant. She is short, a bit round, and not beautiful in the Hollywood sense. But her soul shines out with the light of a thousand suns. God knows, I would welcome a multitude more of her. And be proud to call all of them fellow Americans.

We would all be the better for it.