what five-year-olds can give you

I’ve been trying to concentrate on midterm studying for awhile now, and I just can’t. I should in no way be blogging anything at 1:51 AM on the morning of a huge test– I should either be sleeping or reading Macbeth. I’m also breaking my vow to cut out distractions (such as this blog) this week, but today has been hard and I feel a need to breathe it out onto paper.

Today has been hard because I can’t stop thinking about her.

Her name is Manessa and she is five-years-old. I met her last week at La Chureca, which is a dump and a community on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. That place is hell and dust and misery, but she is beautiful.

Our group drove through the dump and went to a school located in the center. As soon as we walked into the courtyard, I saw her. She was sitting by herself on the steps. I walked over, leaned down and said "Hola". That was all it took. She gave me this radiant smile that I won't ever forget and stretched her arms out to me. I picked her up and held her. I asked her about her favorite animals and then we imitated them. I spun her around in fast circles. I loved how she leaned her cheek against my collarbone as I read her Spanish words that I could barely understand.
In about two hours, she changed me. She is changing me still.

Late that night back at Casa, I sat alone at a picnic table and felt this moment of alteration that reminded me of high school english class. You know, when your teacher would ask you to cite a page number and paragraph where you can notice the main character experiencing a dramatic shift, an identifiable event that begs a response from the rest of the story. This was my page number - this little five-year-old chica with the same color eyes as mine and a big smile. I sat there and suddenly thought things that hadn't occurred to me before. Where was Manessa now? Did she eat dinner tonight? Did anyone tuck Manessa in as she went to sleep? Did someone wish her sweet dreams and whisper in her ear that she was beautiful? Or smart? Or loved?

I didn't sleep well.
Those questions kept me awake, aching.

Inside that dark, hellish dump, Manessa gorgeously illuminated for me what it means to love: to have your arms wide open, to give it away without pause, to allow yourself to receive it fully. And I think of what a gift that little girl has been to me and then I think of what she lives in everyday and I think of how unfair it is and how it doesn't make sense, and I keep trying to process it and make it right in my head. But nothing lines up when I do that. It still hurts.

Today and all the other days since the visit to Chureca have been hard because I can't stop thinking of what is enough. Is it enough for me to pray for her every day? Is it enough for me to dream for her, to imagine what she'll become? Is it enough for me to dream even for her children, that they might have a mother who holds them and spins them in fast circles and tucks them in at night?

I am haunted as I try to think of how to make Manessa more than just a moment, bigger than just a beautiful smile and two tiny hands that I held once. I am haunted, also, when I think of how I must have looked in her eyes, when I had to leave the school and set her down in her classroom. I think of how I hugged her and waved as if I would see her tomorrow, and then I walked away. I hated myself then.

Now I am in the moment of the "what now?" I am smothered by a frenzy of questions, but I am also learning, learning to believe in what mattered: that I held her. That I instantly fell in love with her. That she loved me so well. Those things count, but how do I respond to them? Where begins my dramatic character shift that some 9th grader somewhere could look at my life and pick out, years from now? I feel like, somehow, I am transforming. A grinning five-year-old with a dirty school uniform is in the process of giving me new eyes.