I believe that apologies are in order.
Last May, when I returned to your furrowed fields and grassy flatlands, it was with the bitterest attitude that I unpacked my boxes, brimming with so many months of memories of my time in the city. I was ready for a summer of little inspiration, for weeks of inexhaustible boredom, of too much of the same old thing.
While I can’t say my expectations didn’t fulfill themselves, I believe I was being a bit unfair.
As it turned out, because of my time in Chicago, I was able to appreciate you a little more, Muncie.
I found in you many things I had noticed before, but never truly counted on: your quiet calm, the starry show that reveals itself each night in your sky, the eternal expanse of emerald fields reaching out in every direction, to every horizon. Things I once despised about you became minor blessings: your sluggish pace made me slow down and consider the life I’m living, the lack of things to do inside your city limits gave me more evenings alone at home, to read and think and contemplate the world from the comfort of my front porch swing.
It’s hard to admit it, but it’s true: sitting here in my apartment in Chicago, with sirens wailing in the streets below me and the honking of irritated traffickers beating these words from my brain, I miss you, Muncie.
Thanks for always being my home.
Goodbye for now,
Naomi
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The most obvious marks of my venture to Mexico have all worn away. My suitcase is empty, my clothing washed, folded, tucked away into my drawers. The russet lines of dirt, having once formed crescents beneath my nails, have disappeared. The sour, coppery smell of the water that ran from the hotel’s shower has left my skin, and in it’s place, the soft, coconutty warmth of my lotion. My burnt part line has healed, my strained muscles have relaxed.
From the looks of me, I never left America.
But if you were to perforate my skin, peel it back, and leave my heart exposed, you’d see the change.
I know, because I see it, too.
I can’t spend a dollar now without thinking about Luis, and what ten pesos would have meant to him. Every meal I consume makes me wonder when Miguel ate last, and how much he ate. The screaming kids climbing through the colorful tubes at Escapades, shoving handfuls of tokens into the arcade games, makes me think of the deflating soccerballs Denzel and Samuel kicked around in the naked dirt. When I climb into my bed at night and burrow beneath the layers of blankets and snuggle into the warmth of my mattress, I can’t help but think of the splintery, unforgiving beds we built for the families of Camalu.
My heart has been touched, my attitude softened.
I assume that eventually, these reminders of the conditions I left behind when I crossed the border will fail to be triggered by my daily spending habits, that someday soon I will be able to lift the first forkful of a meal to my mouth without thinking about what Enrique’s mom might have put on the table that day.
But I know I will fail to forget completely. I know these children’s faces, their laughs, their smiles, will find a way to seep into my life, to wedge a space in my heart, my thoughts, and take root at the center of me.
And if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to go back and know the reality once more.
My life changed last week, sometime around 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. It was hot, I was sweating, and my muscles ached from forcing screws through plywood and 2 X 4s all afternoon. I had sawdust in my nose, ears, eyes. The once pale skin of the part in my hair was badly burnt and seemed to sizzle, without being touched.
The air was heavy. It always felt heavy there, in Mexico, and not just with heat, but with the smell of all kinds of things wasting away: food, human feces…and hope.
I was inside a cinderblock house belonging to a family of 7, including two children with spina bifida, one in a wheelchair, the other lying in a small bed under mosquito netting, disabled in every way.
I was inside a doorway, looking into the room in which stood this small bed on which the small boy lay, nine years old but no bigger than a child five years younger. The window above his bed threw light across the ugly scene before me: the boy’s body wrapped in a thin sheet, his too-small limbs, his pale hands, fingers curled toward the light, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if in fear.
But it wasn’t the sadness of it all that forced my throat to tighten, tears to crawl into the corners of my eyes, my breathing to become cramped.
It was the love in the room, encircling the child, shining in through the window, touching every dirty cinderblock, wrapping itself around me as I stood, unable to move, unable to cry, unable to say anything.
If you’ve ever been to areas of Mexico like Camalu, where people build only half a house at a time, hoping to one day maybe have enough money to finish it; where rabid, infested dogs live in the same houses as babies and aged adults; where the dust is a constant thing, rising up in a hazy billowing choking cloud at the slightest disturbance; where children stay hungry and sick because treating them and feeding them comes second to survival; where hope is hidden in the furthest reaching places of the heart, because there’s so much hurt, so much need, so much loss–then you know that a child like this one would be considered a parasite. A leech. A helpless, empty shell, unable to work for the good of the family.
Just one more thing to worry about.
One more thing to take care of.
One more thing to wish had turned out differently, better, so that life could have been a little easier.
But consider the picture I’ve described here: yes, the house is dirty. The floors are bare cement. The walls, nothing more than cinderblocks. But the child, though helpless, disabled, dying, was asleep. Breathing peacefully. Wrapped in clean sheets, lying in the yellow glow of the afternoon sun, on a mattress and a bed.
In a city where I watched children play with glass and nails unsupervised, climb over barbed wire fences to go after lost balls, and sit in piles of trash, this one was tucked in. Kept safe. Made comfortable.
Loved.
Even in America, a child like this one, with an exposed spine and a part of his brain seeping out the back of his head, would have been a huge burden on any family. Imagine sacrificing so much money, time, and love on this tiny, helpless child, as these parents, in a far more stressing environment than we will ever have to live, seem more than happy to do.
Imagine this type of love. The type that takes sacrifices and effort. The type of love that hurts you, that wears you down raw, that requires the impossible.
It’s the most beautiful love.
The love swelling, abounding, exploding in that room in a little house in a stagnant city in Mexico is the same love Christ gives to me, to you, to everyone.
I had never before witnessed love like this in my life.
It looked messy, difficult, pained.
It looked real.
