Notes From Public School - Day 108

This afternoon, I invited 3 of my students to sit with me at my teaching table as we waited for their bus and car number to be called.

2 are from Honduras and 1 is from Colombia.

“Would you use words to paint a picture for me of life in Honduras and Colombia?” I asked.

They’ve learned I love to write and use words as colors to paint pictures of people, places and things around me.

“I had an old neighbor,” said Daniel, “With hair as white as cotton. His back was hunched over like a tree bending in the wind. One of his shoulders hung lower than the other because he carried giant bags of coffee beans from trees to trucks every day. When the bags of beans were across his shoulders, you couldn’t see his face. But I wish you could’ve seen it. He had very kind eyes.”

Wow.

Sometimes, 10-year-olds can speak in the language of poetry.

At all times, they are poetry.

They are poems.

They help me look more closely and listen more carefully to life.

They help me write with seeing eyes and listening ears.

Here is a piece of writing that came from my time with them:

Ah, these are my only chancletas, my only flip-flops. Now, they've fallen apart. Turned to dust. There's nothing to repair with the little bit of wire and tape I have left.

I have a few centavos and pesos in my pocket. I could use that to buy another pair of chancletas at a roadside market, but I need to use it for Hilcias.

A new pair of chancletas can buy tortillas, beans and mangoes for a week on the migrant trail, and I care more for his belly than for my feet.

The migrant trail is so rocky hard and scorchingly hot. Barefooted, without chancletas, I feel each step on the trail.

It hurts.

But I have tough feet.

My heart is in my feet.

They're feet that've walked the farms and fields of El Salvador from sun rise to sun set since I was a little girl.

They're hard as stones.

They're part of the earth itself.

I know, though, they weren't made to a thousand miles over the migrant trail without chancletas.

But I walk step by step, carrying a pack on my shoulder that holds everything we own in the world, holding Hilcias in my arms, walking slowly and steadily with abuelo.

We sit by the side of the trail.

I give a small sonrisa, a small smile, to Hilcias along with a handful of mashed tortilla, beans and mangoes.

As I touch his little hand, I notice it is cracked like dried mud, much too calloused for a child.

His heart is in his hands.

I kiss him on the cheek.

It's soft like the skin of a mango.

And the sun has given it a mangoes sunrise color.

How I love my hijo.

I give a tear to the earth for my bruised feet and his weathered hands.

Once, a kind priest told me, "Our tender God walks the earth with his feet and holds the earth in his hands."

As we make our way to Matamoros and the bridge to el Norte I wonder, does God hold my tender feet that've been broken by the earth.

Well, no matter.

Whether or not God is holding my feet, I am holding my child, walking beside abuelo, and we travel on.

On my bruised feet.

With my beating heart.

Una vida mejor awaits us.

I hope.