MARIPOSAS AZULES

           

I woke up this morning at my Grandma Leanie’s house where I have been sleeping while I am in San Diego. Once I get back from Costa Rica, I’m looking forward to spending a lot of my Summer there with her. We don’t do much; we play board games, run errands, or watch sappy movies but I love the moments I share with her. As we watched BET last night and grandma was shocked by the prevalence of black actors, I thought of the rare opportunity I had with her.

            At the memorial service for my grandpa, I sat next to my grandma. As she cried, I held her in my arms and I could feel her pulse with the crying of her heart. With one arm wrapped around her in a cherished embrace, the other held her hand. That was a moment I will never forget—a moment when our role’s completely reversed. The woman who watched me as I learned to walk and soothed me when I was upset was helpless in my arms. This is where my rare opportunity started. With the ending of my grandpa’s life, an intimate friendship between my grandma and myself has started.

            My mom took us to the bookstore today. Piling into two different cars became necessary when my mom, step-dad, and the six of us kids went on a search for books that we could all spend the next week reading. For two hours we weaved through the Barnes and Nobles and as time passed I became more and more frustrated. Granted, some days, I spend six hours at a time just flipping through books at the library. Today, the search wasn’t about my tastes though. My mom asked me to find a book that each of my siblings could read; when teenage kids are just learning to read in English, it is difficult, to say the least, to find books that they actually want to waste their time reading and were easy enough to understand. I sat in an aisle for five-year-olds and struggled to find books that a fourteen-year-old girl would care about.

            On one of the shelves, I found a journal with blue butterflies. My grandma had been telling me last night that her sister went to Costa Rica and raved about the blue butterflies. In this moment of frustration at Barnes and Nobles with all of the books sprawled in front of me, I thought of Leanie and I thought of the kids I would be serving in only a few days. The more I reflected on the connection between my grandma’s pain and the difficult task of finding an appropriate book, I realized that this was only a teaser to what I was up against in Costa Rica. When I start working on the River, I will be juggling the pain of a silenced population and trying to help them with the limited resources that are available. So I bought the notebook, and on the first page wrote: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” For the last few nights, I have been having nightmares about the taxi drive once I get off of the plane. The thoughts of being pick-pocketed or just clueless in general terrify me. But, today reminded me that being a little lost isn’t such a bad thing so I am welcoming uncertainty and with open arms I look forward to the confusion of a new world.