Ay Carmela

Today when i was going to blog i had many things i wanted to write about. I wanted to ponder on the word longing, or describe my desert experience, or maybe even say something about thanksgiving. But i checked my email and got one from the philippines. A 9 year old girl, the daughter of my host family got dengue fever and she didnt make it.

Ay Carmela, you were just a rascal. You would wrap your slender arms around my waist and smile up at me and anything you wanted, i would give. I couldn't resist. You came to my window the day i was sick, and the day your mother went to the hospital to give birth to your baby brother. You told me that your baby brother had died. "so handsome" your mother would describe him later. "so handsome." Now you are there with him and I can not imagine your mother's pain. Ay Carmela. You loved to draw. You drew volcanoes and Jolly Bee and wrote your name in large little-girl handwriting across the page.

And this I remember is one reason why poverty sucks. When you have to raise your family in a shanty house across the path from a mucky river, with inadequate health care, lack of nutritious food, the little ones can die. Life is so meshed with death.

I brought your picture to my family's thanksgiving. On the table I put the one of you smiling up at the camera when we were all making nga pamaypay (fans) from construction paper. I want to honor you. Little rascal girl.

I am thankful for life. Sometimes when i am in downtown eating lunch and i see all the breathing bodies in their business suits eating panda express, or walking hurriedly to the next meeting, i wonder if we realize what a mystery, what a gift each breath is as we breathe it into our lungs, it oxygenates our blood stream, our heart beats and we are alive.

Ay Carmela, i don't want you to be just a reminder to me of why poverty sucks, and why we need to fight to eradicate the unjust systems that keep the poor poor and the rich rich. I don't want you to be just a reminder that life is precious and i need to be thankful even for the car ride home from thanksgiving dinner with my grandma, aunt and sister and brother, where we got lost and everyone was backseat driving. "We are heading west so we need to make a left." "No were not we need to make a right." "Okay if thats what you want to do, go in the wrong direction." etc.

I bought you and your sisters hair ties with bobbles on the ends the other day, which i meant to send via some friend traveling to your 'hood. but i forgot to give the present to them. And now they are sitting in a brown paper bag on my desk at home. Now i dont know what to do with them. They once seemed like such a good gift. Now they seem like plastic and rubber bands.

Ay, Carmela...

I love you...