If You Read Only One Blog Post Today...

TheWholeWorldIsStuffedUpThem
TubesVille


...Go and read Jody Paterson's latest.

It's about how she is getting ready to leave the children of Angelitos Felices behind when she and her partner, Paul Willcocks, soon return to Canada:

...I don't expect the younger children to remember me for long. I've seen for myself how quickly they forget others who were once in their lives, the price of having grown up with a string of well-meaning but ultimately transient foreigners passing through your doors with their gifts and their cuddles and their tearful goodbyes. They hug easily, these children, but I fear it's because they know to get it while the getting's good, and that nothing lasts.

The older ones, though - they'll remember. I've already talked to Rosario, the 9-year-old who I feel the most attachment to, about the little box that I'm going to buy her, and how I'll put my email inside it for the day when she wants to find me again. Hide it under your mattress, I told her, knowing how rapidly treasured things go missing in that place. When you're ready to come looking, I'll be there...


It's really a fine post.

For all kinds of reasons.

Not least of which is the fact that a number of folks who stop by here occasionally and folks who came to see E. and me (and our friends) play (for real, in the flesh) awhile back, helped Jody and Paul improve things structurally at that little orphanage in Honduras (and you can still help a little more if you like...here!).

But to get back to that passage of Jody's above...

When I used to work with kids, back before I chucked everything and went to gradual school to learn how to become a science geek, I always fretted about how fleeting it all was and I really did often wonder if the kids would remember all the things we had done.

And then, I think maybe it was the summer of 1985, the last summer I worked with kids in the Sooke Hills (in between working working with kids on Southern Vancouver Island who had had at least a few things in common with the kids of Angelitos), we watched Meatballs again for the 86th time, and the one scene that matters, the Vegas scene, flipped everything upside down...

So.

What am I on about this time?

Well, I came to the realization that you will never connect with them all.

But if you just connect with one, it's more than enough.

Way more, in fact.

OK?


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