Well, friends, I am writing from my cold room in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. It's been just over 10 hours since I flew out of Haiti and it already seems like a dream. I walked into my room with all the photos of my kids on my wall and it honestly feels like it's been months since I saw them. My life is split between two realities that never fully connect. How could I possibly be sitting here in luxury when just this morning I was squashed between 2 teenage boys on a thin mattress on the roof of a beat-up concrete block building? I don't know how they felt all day, but I have only felt one thing: agony. Yes, I am being melodramatic, but if you could see their faces when they are hugging me good-bye, if you could see the absolute joy when they see me for the first time, if you could sense how utterly at ease they are with me, then you would know what I mean. I am so glad that I had the chance to go, but a part of me keeps whispering, "Keziah, if you hadn't gone, you wouldn't be sitting here crying right now." To which I answer, "If I hadn't gone......" A million different answers could finish that thought. But the one that I hope is the most true goes like this: "If I hadn't gone, their Christmas would not have been quite so special."
Since I did not have internet access during the majority of my stay, I kept a draft form of a journal in my computer of everything that happened over the holidays. Tomorrow, I will start posting those memories and the photos that accompany them. For now, I am going to cry myself to sleep because I can't give those 60 adorable children the good night kisses that they are waiting for. Bon nwit, pitit mwen yo. Mwen renmen nou anpil.
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Welcome home Se'm!! There are no melodramatic words that hold enough drama for the saying goodbye to those sweet kids! I know it's usually the hardest I ever cry. It feels like someone actually reaches in to your heart and is twisting it or it might just stop beating all together- either way it just hurts, and then you come home to a long stretch of either depression or a kind of weird numbness. It's this crazy little thing called LOVE. I always dread the goodbye even before I go! I've decided the reason it is SO hard and SO horrible is because it's so very good while your there and there is so much love involved.
They are hard kids to say goodbye to and I can't even imagine it with the bond you have with them. So curl up in a ball somewhere and have a breakdown for a while.
Meanwhile, I'm so glad your home safely and can start sharing how it all went!!!!
I hope you are able to have a happy and fun New Years Eve tonight (even with a heartache)!
Love you lots and lots,
Angela
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