Paper Hearts

A small Mexican girl gave me her heart. It’s hanging over the mirror in my dorm room. This heart has never beaten or pumped blood. But I do know this heart, this dirty crumpled heart, created out of a sheet of forgotten paper, has felt. It bears two words, names. Written in the hand of a child in blue crayon: Katelyn and Olivia. The first: an upper middle class college student, the second: a young orphan in Tijuana, Mexico.  Two different people, two different worlds, but a heart that unites them, if even for a moment.

I met Olivia on a short work trip to Tijuana last semester. A group of students from the university I attend in San Diego were going down to spend a day at an orphanage, bring the children lunch, and play with them. I have to admit, I was nervous. I had never been to Mexico and the media heightened descriptions of Tijuana had me, and my mother, a bit apprehensive. I left that morning feeling inadequate to be working with these kids. My Spanish isn’t that great and my understanding of the life of an orphan is even worse. I questioned if I could do anything to help these children who had known so little good.

Crossing the border, the scenery began to change. We departed the prosperous homes and clean streets of southern California and slowly descended into a world of decay. Arriving at the orphanage, we could see children playing in a cement yard, separated from the street by a tall concrete wall crowned with barbed wire. Guard dogs ran to meet us as we entered the iron gate and greeted the congregation of small faces. As I watched children scamper bare foot across cement and gravel, I remembered, with a painful embellishment of guilt, my own front yard in a Midwest suburban neighborhood. The contrast between my childhood and the life these kids were experiencing was drastic, difficult, and demoralizing. It was, and remains, incomprehensible to me that people can live in the same world, the same country, a mere 20 miles or so apart and live such vastly different lives.

Our group settled into the yard as games of basketball, soccer, and cards began to emerge out of the woodwork. I wandered over to the coloring station, sparing both my peers and the kids the frightening picture of me in any form of sport. I knelt down next to a small girl, of maybe seven or eight. She was intensely coloring a picture of Noah’s ark that looked as ancient as the story itself. Mustering up my bilingual courage, I began to try to talk to her about what she was doing. A pink crayon here, a green pencil there, and slowly but surely, the girl’s story began to unfold itself.

Her name was Olivia. She had dark hair cut in a blunt line. She had a beautiful smile, a contagious giggle, and an experience all her own.

Throughout the afternoon, as I attempted to converse with Olivia, I came to learn a little about her past. We talked about her family, what it was like to live in this orphanage, and like all good girl talk, we discussed her crush who conveniently happened to be at the coloring table as well. I don’t remember everything she said that day. Honestly, I couldn’t understand everything she said that day. But I do remember the shy joy she emanated, a humble happiness that was beyond her circumstances.  We colored more Bible stories, laughed, and tossed around paper cubes. The time spent with Olivia was not the torturously awkward encounter I had predestined the trip to be. Rather, it was a time of simple enjoyment and sincere relationship, things my generation has seemed to toss away.

When the time neared for my group to depart, Olivia came quietly to my side, hands behind her back. I knelt down on the cement to hug her but, instead of giving an embrace, I was given a heart. The tiny paper heart she had folded out of an old, printed page, our names scribbled in the middle, cupped in her hands like the invaluable treasure it was. I took the gift, recognizing that on a day I had set out to give, I had received.

Olivia’s story is one of thousands. The weak, forgotten, lost of this world are everywhere; we just have to open our eyes. In a culture that instinctively picks up People Magazine to emotionally stalk the latest money-crazed celebrity, stories like Olivia’s are easily pushed aside. The orphans, the widows, the homeless- these are far less pleasant to read about and make rather uncomfortable cocktail party conversation. We have determinedly closed our hearts, shut our eyes, and tuned out the desperate pleas. It is time we, as a people, as a country, tear down the walls of our hearts in order to be truly broken- hopelessly broken for the voiceless, hopeless, and the defenseless. I’m afraid we have become a people of fear. If we allow ourselves to feel something in the full force in which it exists, there will be no more ignoring it. A true experience of sorrow demands action, condemns apathy, and cultivates passion. But action requires sacrifice, something we Americans aren’t often inclined to. Regardless, this is not something we can continue to hide from.  Because there are stories out there, stories like Olivia’s that deserve to be heard.  We must lead lives of love, be listeners of stories, and learn to walk gracefully amongst the paper hearts.