Memories - heart cargo

It seems strange even to me, but today is the first time I've really thought back, pulled up memories, revisited the part of my life in and around Pucallpa, Peru. There was a lot there, a lot that I didn't even realize. Depth of feeling. Love. Pain. Longing. Joys and regrets. Sadness for a little brother I barely got to know. Longings for people I learned to love - Jenni, Mauro, my SM family, Hermano Miqueas. Friendships - Alfonso, the taxi driver I'd eat supper with, and the watch repairman who's name I can't even remember, but who I could sit and talk with for hours, even if my visits were months apart. The lady with the clothes stall in the market, who never forgot my telling her about harvesting pineapple - or that I needed to buy more clothes from her - and how happy she was when again, at the very end of my time, I needed to, getting long sleeve shirts to cover my healing skin. I'm not one who easily cries - not that I conciously avoid it, but the need to rarely seems to come up. But I've cried three times this summer - each time, seemingly for a different reason, feeling alone on a bus, overwhelmed by a non-stop camp schedule and responsibilities - but I can't help thinking that those weren't the real, or only reason. They were forerunners of the single tear that ran down my cheek while I looked at Jenni's pictures and wrote this paragraph. One lonely tear - and the feeling of some enormous weight lodged behind my sternum, for friends, memories, for Willem, still keeping all those little trees out of the junge by hand, hoping for a tractor, and for Hector.

I didn't know how much I loved that cute little 7 month old - it's just starting to hit me now. I know I can't tell his story as well as Jenni already has (http://memories.touchofloveperu.org/). I wish a lot of things. For heaven, when I'll get to see that little guy again - with no more ever-present IV tubing, no more viral loads. And that until then, this world had more people like Jenni, willing to to take on the task of loving little baby boys dying of starvation, and keep at it, even after finding out what a miracle we were asking for. And for me, I choose to live that way - loving, even knowing it will - or does - hurt: schedule, pocket, ego, body, or, hardest of all, heart.