Eye-Opening Experience

This boy — I just couldn’t let him go. So now, for however long he’s here, he’s in my life. I talk to him all the time. He wants to see how a movie’s made, so whatever movie I do next, I told him he could come and see what it’s like.

So many of the children I’ve spent time with through Make-A-Wish are struggling with being different in one way or another — because of their races, their socioeconomic situation, or just their illness. The mere fact that they have a potentially terminal illness sets them apart, and many of them suffer, at such a young age, the effects of being made to feel different because of that. I think back to when I was young, my mother was white, my father was black, and I’ve always felt different and sometimes out of place. I talk with these kids about my experiences and about how they can deal with being different.

I have such a deep compassion for children, and the joy that comes from helping them is immeasurable. I desperately want children of my own, and hope I haven’t missed the chance. But if I have, I’ve also learned through my own life experience that I have the capacity to love as my own a child who is not my own. And I know I will keep embracing children like the little boy I spent the day with — sort of my extended family of children.
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A Deep Compassion for Children

We read about them every week: celebrities who are selfish and self-indulgent1, people with too much money and not enough good sense. Obviously, though, everyone in Hollywood isn’t that way. Hundreds of big names in television, movies, music, sports and media give their time and money to raise awareness, and more money, for causes near and dear to their hearts. Often they get involved because of one intense2 experience, such as the illness of a friend or a family member. They suddenly realize, as Halle Berry put it, “These things don’t just take care of themselves.”

Berry, 38, the flawlessly beautiful Oscar-winning actress, is a prime example of Hollywood’s generous spirit. Aa a diabetic3, she helps raise funds for the research and treatment of childhood diabetes. She does hands-on work at shelters of the Jenesee Center for battered women. Since Berry’s own father abused her mother and older sister, and she herself has admitted being partially deaf in one ear because a man she was involved with once struck her, she relates in a fundamental way. She also works with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which tries to grant the dreams of terminally4 ill children.

A few weeks ago, I spent坰 a day with an 11-year-old boy with cancer who wanted to come out to California to meet me. The trip was arranged through Make-A-Wish. He’d never flown on a plane, and his wish also included going to Disneyland and to Universal Studios. We rode the rides, had lunch and played miniature golf — we just had the best time. The hard part for me is when the “wish day” is over and you’re supposed to say goodbye. Most of these children are terminally ill, so when you’re granting their wish, you know you may be seeing them for the last time. There was a point when I thought, I cannot do this. Then I realized that before a child passed away, I was able to put a smile on his face. So I told myself it would be really selfish to let a little pain stop me from doing a lot of good. expat story-began-frombasesome iasoy