trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

I love to receive letters. 

Write one to me.

I’ll write you back, for sure.

There’s something about putting words to paper and sending it out to someone’s heart.

When I was a little boy, I lived in a house on East Lee Road.

Trevor Scott Barton

2701 East Lee Road

Taylors, SC 29687

I could sit on the front porch and see the mail truck coming from a long way away..

When it stopped in front of my house, I’d run with hope in my heart and wings on my feet down the walkway, between two giant maple trees, across the road to the mailbox. 

Would there be a letter for me? 

Was someone in the world thinking of me?

One day last year, it wasn’t the mail truck but a second-grader on the school playground who delivered a letter to me. 

Mr. Barton

Room 201

Berea Elementary School

I took it out of it’s envelope.

I unfolded it.

Here’s what it said.

Dear Mr. Barton,

Hi! It’s Odeth from 2th grade I miss you a lot I wanted to know about you so much. I am being good. I am in 4th grade now. Do you remember me? Do you miss me? I hope you will come to my school. Ask for my name. I am 10 years old.

Your best student,

Odeth

Wow.

Odeth was in my very first class during my very first year as an elementary school teacher. 

I’ll always remember her big dimples, contagious giggle, deep brown eyes and inquisitive mind. 

Later that afternoon, when the classroom was calm and quiet, I sat down at Odeth’s old desk.

I wrote a letter back to her.

Dear Odeth,

Hiey! You will always be special to me. Do you remember the geometry lesson when you made a yellow flower from the shapes I gave you? It was brilliant like you. I still have the picture we took of that flower. Do you remember how we talked about you becoming an architect and designing beautiful buildings? I wonder if you still enjoy designing things. Do you remember how you liked to talk and how I told you that you should think about becoming a lawyer? I know you’re being the best you can be and doing the best you can do. I miss you, too!

¡Gracias y paz!

Mr. Barton

Not only did Odeth write a letter to me, she is a letter to me.

A living letter.

Of faith, hope and love.

Her letter and life asks an essential question.

“Are you thinking of me?”

Yes I am.

P.S.

Trevor Scott Barton

16 Don Drive

Greenville, SC 29607

little salt’s encyclopedia of lost things

His abuela’s name was Izote. 

It’s the name of the national flower of El Salvador. 

It’s white and fragrant, with thick pointed leaves. 

It’s a beautiful flower.

If it breaks or if it is broken, it will grow again out of it’s injured trunk.

It’s a persistent flower.

It’s full of the will to live.

His abuela was like the Izote. 

She was beautiful and persistent. 

She had been born again and again out of the wound of El Salvador’s civil war.

Little Salt never saw his abuela. 

He knew her, though, from the stories his abuelo and mamí told him about her.

His mamí wore him on her back with a tattered piece of cloth as she trudged the rows of tomatoes and peaches along the South Carolina coast. 

He felt the heat that weighed on her shoulders. 

He saw the dirt and blisters on her feet as she walked on and on, picking and bending, bending and picking, until the sun set on the horizon. 

He listened to the songs she sang about his abuela. 

He came to know her through his mamí’s heart, his mamí’s feet and his mamí’s music.

That’s a beautiful way to get to know someone.

His abuelo would sit beside his sleeping mat each night and tell him stories about El Salvador and his abuela. 

“The land was beautiful,” he said, “With green fields on the mountain that stretched as far as your eyes could see. 

They stretched all the way to the river that was as blue and crisp as the morning sky. 

We were happy there. 

The land was ours to use, the land was ours to nurture. 

The corn, the beans and the mangoes were ours to eat and sell and store away for the dry season.

Your abuela was so beautiful standing in those fields. 

I used to stop and stare at her, Little Salt, and my heart would beat as fast as a hummingbird’s heart for her beauty. My eyes would drop tears of joy for her love.

She was the field.

She was the hummingbird..

She was beauty.

She was persistent.

She was the izote.

She was love.”

little salt’s encyclopedia of lost things

She lived with her landless family on a sugar plantation in a neighboring town. 

Her weathered Father was a campesino, with wrinkles on his face for all of the times he sowed, tended and harvested the sugar cane in the hot, hot sun.

There was a kindness in his eyes that welled up from the deep feelings in his heart as he worked to keep his family alive. 

His hands and feet were calloused and gnarled, for they had been blistered and broken and used as tools all of his life. 

He worked from the time he walked beside his papí on the plantation until now in the time of his mid-life life when he walked the same land, the land of the wealthy land owner, the land that bent his back to make it appear as if he were continually genuflecting to God, or to the land owner, or to the land itself. 

She listened to his life, for she was a gifted girl who listened intently to the lives of people and knew, simply knew, the inner workings of their minds and hearts, the true meanings of their actions and words. 

In that listening, she heard the life of her papí speak.

"I am a human being. 

No person is better than another. 

My family has a right to food, shelter, clothing, school, and medicine. 

We are human beings.”

These words grew in her.

They were watered by laughter she laughed with friends in her neighborhood.

They were watered by tears she cried as she lay in bed each night, hungry from only one meal the whole day.

These words grew into action.

These words grew into love.

“I am a human being.”

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

In the community around my school, families are from Mexico, Central America and South America.

I am a part of their lives.

They are a part of my life.

I listen to their stories.

They listen to my story.

This ‘being’ and ‘listening’ helps me understand their migratory road more clearly and deeply.

When I browse a story about immigration on social media, hear an interview with an immigrant family on NPR, or read a journalist who immersed herself in the lives of migrant workers (yep, I still love to read long form journalism), I close my eyes and see the faces of the Latinx students who fill my life with their lives each and every day.

When I hear the words ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrants,’ I see Maria and Hilcias and Brisya and Patrick. 

When I hear the phrase ‘migratory road,’ I remember the stories they tell me face to face and heart to heart about their journeys from their home countries to Greenville, S.C.

This seeing and hearing and remembering is of monumental importance to the way I understand my immigrant neighbors around me.

It’s why I wear a button that says “No human is illegal” on the lanyard of my school ID.

It’s why I reach out to the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center to offer my gifts and talents to their work with immigrant families.

It’s why I read read ‘lots of books and write ‘lots of stories about immigrants and immigration.

In the picture below, you’ll see some of the books on my writing table that help me become less of a ‘political issue’ person and more of a ‘human being’ person.

In the paragraph and poem, you’ll see and hear some of my own writing, some of my own voice, some of my own heart about our immigrant neighbors who are part and parcel of my life.

I hope it helps you become a ‘human being’ person, too.

                            

Migratory Roads

When he was a toddler, he traveled the migratory roads of migrant workers from state to state and farm to farm with his family. 

He rode on his mamí’s back, tied with a threadbare piece of cloth, as she climbed ladders and reached up into the sky to pick peaches from trees and as she kneeled and reached down to the earth to pick tomatoes from plants in South Carolina.

The Things They Carry

Now

on

the land

migrants live

with holes in the floors

cracks in the walls, leaks in the roofs,

broken apart from years upon years of people

moving in, moving out, broken apart by owners using money for things other than repairs

yet held together by people like my abuelo and mamí, who will move into a used place, scrub the floors and walls with soap and water

repair broken parts with things they carry with them, patch them with grit, common sense and love

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

“You’re always askin’ questions,” said my poppa to me early one morning as I walked my shoeless feet through the freshly turned rows. 

His hands were on the plow and he was following our old mule Charlie.

I was following them.

“That’s a good thing, askin’ questions. 

Did you know questions drive the world forward, like I’m drivin’ ol’ Charlie down the row? 

Well sir, they do.

Did you know questions can turn the world upside down, like the plow turns the hard, rocky ground into soft, helpful soil? 

Well sir, they do.

Did you know questions are like the seeds we’re gonna plant in this soil? 

Well sir, they are.

It takes a long time to get from seeds to vegetables that make a difference for our supper.

And it takes a long time to get from questions to answers that make a difference in the world. 

But seeds change to food that can feed people and questions change to answers that can make the world a better place. 

You keep askin’ questions always, Carter. 

Always keep askin’ questions.”

I’ve always tried to do just that, to ask as many questions as I can.

Yes sir.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

As a teacher and a writer, I try to listen closely and carefully to the students at my school and the people around me everywhere, especially when they can’t find the words to say.

I talk with them in the language of poetry, literature, math and science as we walk down the long rows of learning and of life together.

I tell them many times and in as many ways as I can, “Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres...I love the handful of earth you are.”

I do.

Most of the time, they’re like Little Salt in the small story below.

As is true of most people (me included), they speak in ways we don’t quite understand, in ways they don’t quite understand.

But sometimes, sometimes, they are like one of my little  students named Patrick, who is from Peru and who looked at me with wide, unblinking, brown eyes, eyes the color of the deep parts of the earth, and said, “Mr. Barton, I’m glad you’re glad I’m here.”

I am.

Little Salt

When he was two, his mamí talked with him in the language of poetry as she walked with him tied to her back down the long rows of peach trees under the South Carolina sun. 

She reached up to a tree, took a peach in her hands, and rubbed the fuzzy skin against his soft cheek. She whispered,

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres

porque de las praderas planetarias

otra estrella no tengo. Tú repites

la multiplicación del universo.

I love the handful of earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

She waited for him to talk back to her with toddling talk and lovable language, to say words like mamí and amo and tú, but he didn't say them. 

He didn't say anything at all. 

He only looked at her with his wide, unblinking, brown eyes, eyes the color of the deep parts of the earth, and jutted out his little, bottom lip as if to say, "There’s much I want to say, but I can't. I just can't find the words."

Now, people ask him, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "How are you?" and he answers them with a whistle instead of with words. 

They ask his abuelo, "What's wrong with him?" and he simply sighs the sigh of one who has carried heavy loads on his back and in his heart.

“Dios sabe,” he answers, “God knows."

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

"And so it is of human life the goal

to seek, forever seek, the kindred soul."

                                 

                                          - José Martí

In a story I'm writing, the current beneath the water of the words is the question - How can I know you, and how can you know me? - It’s part of one of the biggest question in the world  -  What does it mean to be human?

One way we know and are known is through language. 

In my story one of the main characters, a ten-year-old boy from El Salvador named Little Salt, is mute. 

He whistles.

No one around him really understands him. Not even his mamí or his abuelo. His quest is to find someone who can understand him.

Can we know and be known outside of language? 

Yes, I think. 

But this can only happen through careful seeing, careful listening, careful thinking, careful feeling, careful walking and careful touching. Carefulness.

The 5 Whys

The goal of life is for us to know each other.

WHY? The African proverb is true - "I am because we are; we are because I am.

WHY? Life is about community. 

In community, I learn how to give and I learn how to receive. 

I learn how to see beauty, ingenuity, wonder and courage in you.

I learn to be myself so you can see beauty, ingenuity, wonder and courage in me. 

I learn how to be me, you learn how to be you, and we together learn how to be.

WHY? Life is hands and feet, hearts and minds, ears and eyes, thoughts and words, being and doing. 

We are these in part, and when we are together, we are these in whole. 

We are life. 

Life is us.

WHY? Life has a heartbeat. 

My faith tradition teaches me that every person I meet...EVERY person...is created in the image of God...in the imago Dei...and that the smallest and most forgotten persons are Jesus in the world in this moment and time. 

Life is about our hearts expanding as we serve each other. 

When I live my life to serve you, and you live your life to serve me, and we live our lives to serve the smallest and most forgotten, and the smallest and most forgotten become the example to us of faith, hope and love, then we build a little bit of the kinship of God on Earth.

WHY? By knowing each other, we build a more human world, a world of corazón and abrazó, as my Cuban friends would say. 

We live.

That is why the goal of life is for us to know each other.

That is why I want you to know Little Salt in my story.