Ali called me up today and said the RISSE soccer team, which came to the Mansion last week to have lunch with the residents there, had a meeting on Monday and asked if they could return to the Mansion and make lunch for the residents during their school break on the first week of April.

I should not have been shocked, but I was.

This was such a generous and heartfelt decision on their part, I had no idea they were even thinking of such a thing. I don’t believe any teenagers from anywhere have ever wanted to feed the residents at the Mansion.

I had a feeling from the beginning that the refugee kids and the Mansion residents had something in common, and now, I know what it is: empathy, an understanding of loneliness, isolation and suffering. I’ve seen lots of people visit the Mansion once, but I have rarely seen anyone return, let alone to cook for them.

Both sides were touched by the visit, I knew that. But Ali said the refugee kids were deeply affected by it. I think that’s why I invited them to come. In their countries, they lived closely with older people, they were not isolated from them.

Many of them, he said, have lost their “grandpas and grandmas”, even mothers and fathers to murder, disease, starvation, natural disaster, or genocide.

Many of their older family members died in the refugee camps where they spent years waiting for approval to come to America. One of the soccer kids told me his grandma, who helped to raise him, is trapped in a refugee camp in Bangladesh and cannot get permission to enter the United States. She is sick, he said, and he does not expect to see her again.

He wants to help the Mansion residents in her honor, he thinks of her every day.

He said one of the woman at the Mansion, one of the older residents, reminded him of her.

Another told me he had great feeling for the residents, he felt badly for them. This is the thing about these boys that surprises me again and again. They show little emotion, and rarely speak much of their feelings, but every now and then, they reveal themselves. They are intensely sensitive beings. They have been through a lot, and their lives remain difficult and stressful.

One of the boys told Ali he almost wept sitting at one of the lunch tables, he kept seeing his mother and grandmother, both slaughtered in the awful bloodletting in Myanmar, where he was born. His father was killed early in the conflict, he is being raised by an aunt in Albany.

She got out in time. His grandmother is missing. So it was true, after all, across this vast geographical and emotional plain, they saw into one another, and felt a kinship that was real. And was born of suffering and loss.

I asked Mansion Director Morgan Jones about the invitation, she said they would be thrilled to see the kids come back and help prepare lunch for the residents and tell their stories. State regulations prohibit non-staffers from cooking in the kitchen, but we decided tables could be set up in the hallway and the refugee children would help the staff prepare the meal, and the staff would cook it in the kitchen.

Then, the soccer players said, they would tell the residents their stories: where they came from, what happened to them and their families when they came to America, and what their life here is like. We are going to make an afternoon out of it, and hopefully, they can visit Bedlam Farm again.

So we will choose a day in April, during the school break. And these two shall meet again, and remind us once more of what can united us, not divide us.

This connection is powerful, for me, for the residents, for the children. Two groups of people on opposite ends of life sharing the common experience of losing much of their lives, and struggling to begin life anew. Of course the kids would want to see the residents again and make lunch for them.

They know them very well.