I wonder...

Often I am reminded of a fudge selling man I met in South Africa named Keith. Upon leaving South Africa after four months, Keith told me, "That’s why you have four parts to your heart; so you can leave one here (Africa) when you go home.”

Almost seven years later, I have once again returned “home”, feeling as if I have left part of my heart behind. This time, I left it in Haiti. It’s an awful feeling, one that makes me almost physically sick. And yet, the pain and the longing are accompanied with gratitude. How grateful I am to have had this one, short week. How grateful I am to have met these people; to have found yet another beautiful place in which to leave a piece of my heart.

On my last plane ride home, I read Elle magazine. In it, Reese Witherspoon quoted Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare wrote, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea. My love is deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have. For both are infinite.” I think that that almost perfectly describes this sort of blessing.

Yesterday morning I said good-bye to Alix, likely never to see him again. I have no picture to remember him by. I have nothing but the fading image in my head of him sleeping with his two forefingers in his mouth or his rare but captivating smile. A week ago, I had not met Alix. I wasn’t aware that he even existed. Without these days, I’m sure my life would have passed on without notice… I would not have felt the absence of his presence in my life. Now, I wonder how long I will worry about his continued existence.. about whether or not he continues to move and breathe and inhabit this same living world as me.

Alix is eight months old and he is sick. I watched as the Sisters struggled to put an IV into his tiny, fragile hands. His small body is too weak to sit up or stand or laugh. He is strong enough to eat, but not strong enough to keep the much needed nourishment inside of his failing body. I wonder if he’ll get better. I wonder if they’ll find a way to get his body to stop rejecting the very sustenance it needs to survive. And, if he does get well, I wonder if his young mother will have the means to take care of him anyhow.

Before I left him, all I could do was stroke his brow and offer him loving kindness:
May you be happy and peaceful.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be safe and protected.
May you live your life with joy and ease.
That is all I could do. And, it has to be enough. It has to be enough or I won’t be able to fall asleep, or pay my bills, or go to work. How could anyone ever fall asleep in a world where helpless babies die daily if they couldn’t blindly trust that someway, somehow, everything was going to be okay?

I take a deep breath and realize that I am still trying to convince myself that everything is indeed going to be okay. Life is interesting. There are over six billion people on the planet and sometimes you can be surrounded by them and yet feel completely alone, lost, hopeless. At other times, you can be so close to just one person, one little Alix in your arms, that you can block the whole rest of the world out and rest assured that even if you were the only two living beings on the planet, all would be well. Your love would be infinite and you would never be alone.

As I descended into the Twin Cities, I noticed how the city lights sparkled like stars. In one day, I left mountains, and sunlight, and warmth to find flat lands, artificial light shining amidst natural darkness, and cold. It’s weird to think that all of this exists in the same world, the same life, the same day. I wonder exactly how this came to be my plot.. my tiny.. short.. fleeting.. beautiful.. deep place in this huge, never-ending universe. I wonder how Alix’s plot came to be his.

I wonder a lot of things.