Day 14 & 15: This place inspires me.

My days have been the same since last I wrote. I wake up, go to class, and spend the day alone doing things that need to be done. I’ve spent a significant many hours with myself since coming here. They were probably necessary. Back home, my time alone is limited. I don’t mind, I love the company that takes loneliness away. But it’s good to sit with yourself in quiet, with the window open and the winter air pouring in like a gentle and endearing friend.

My room is my monastery apart from my boisterous and lively house. In the day the house becomes a monastery itself. No one occupies its rooms. The wind is the only sound, the only thing coming through the door, through the windows, and sweeping through the hallways. I like it, mostly. Sometimes I crave company. All the time I crave Reston. That’s no doubt. But I’m doing a fine job at enjoying my time apart from him, knowing that I’ll soon be with him. Knowing that I won’t have to leave him for an extended amount of time like this ever again.

I walk, now, like someone who has lived here. I’ve been here for two weeks and the vacation is over. I eat my breakfast, a routine bowl of cereal. I fix a small lunch or walk down to the café. I cook dinner in the evening. In between classes, I read my books for class, write my e-mails, plan my life.

I pass by the homeless beggars on the side of the road every day, and it no longer phases me. It no longer shocks me. It no longer makes me think twice when I deny them any of my change. I’ve learned not to let my sympathy perpetuate the cycles, the lies, the poor choices.

The man who sits near our gate every single day, in a tweed blazer, slacks and a beanie no longer bends my sympathy to his will. Daily, he reeks of alcohol. Daily, he asks for money to “buy some food.” I am kind with my smiles and hellos. On my way home from the café, I made the mistake of making eye contact with him and telling him hello. He jumped up like a cat in disguise ready to pounce on a sweet bird. He walked alongside me, muttering something about money and a baby.

“You have a baby?” I asked, knowing this to be a lie.

“Yes – yes! Small baby!” He showed me with his hands.

“Where is this baby?” He paused for half a second before he told me she was in the hospital. He needs money to eat, he tells me, using sign language to ensure I understood him.

My heart is broken for this drunken alcoholic, homeless man. He lies to me. Alcohol lingers in the air after he speaks. He sits on a curbside, begging passersby, among a collection of beer cans and other trash. He has done nothing for himself. He won’t do anything for himself. But he expects me to do it for him. He’ll spend my money on nothing honorable. He is decaying by the day, a burden on society.

But still, with genuine sympathy in my voice, I lie back to him and tell him I have no money to give him. Of course I hate when he kindly, and even respectfully, gives up his begging and goes back to his trashed perch. I hate that I know better what he needs than he himself knows. I hate to send him on dejected. Isn’t that all he’s ever known, really? I want to invite him over for dinner. I want to ask him how he got where he is today. I want to ask him why he lies, why he drinks, why he begs on a corner day after day after day.

He could tell me a thousand lies, every day, but I still will be sad for him and never angry. He could make a lie about a baby he doesn’t have. I will be sad for him.

~|~

I came in contact with Lexy, my half-sister. I debated whether or not I would answer her message. It was days before I ever did. But it was necessary to respond. She was seeking me out. And hadn’t I looked for her before but couldn’t find her? She found me, and here she was. ANOTHER SISTER.

I can’t really explain how happy I am that I found her.

If my relationship with Lexy is a detriment to my newfound relationship with Andy, I’ll take matters into my own hands to ensure that we both successfully maintain both relationships. I think Andy is at a stage in his life where he’s ready to listen. He’s ready to hear what I have to say. He’s ready to be something like a parent in some senses, and a pupil in others. And I’m at the stage where I can be a diplomat and I can be a teacher.

Lexy needs to have someone with ambition in her life. I want my ambition and drive and dreams to be contagious. I want her to have those. I want her to have those as much as I want my baby sisters to have those. This need for her to dream and be whatever she wants to be is so potent and so instant, that I can only attribute it to that automatic bond that sisters have. It’s an inspiring bond. It’s a beautiful bond. It’s a bond unlike any other. She is my sister. She is going to be in my life for the rest my life, whether either of us likes it or not. She’s my little sister. I am her protectorate, her defender, her ally – everything she could ever need. We share nationalities; only finally have we sent ambassadors over to create a coalition. I couldn’t be more ecstatic about what results will come about.

This is going to be a great chapter – in both of our lives.

There’s just nothing like a sister.

~|~

I miss my sisters. I should write them each a letter. I should spend more time with them when I’m back at home. I should be there for them more. I need to be. I am the luckiest person in the world to have the opportunity to be the older sister of three beautiful, golden girls. God, I love them. They are so great. They’re my everything. A part of me would be dead if they weren’t there to keep it alive.

I should cherish them at every stage of their lives. They’re getting ready, each of them, to transition, to fall across the thresholds between the stages of youth and childhood. These are miraculous moments in their lives – moments to be savored. My babies will never be children again. They’ll be pre-teens. They’ll be in their double-digits. And my beautiful, blossoming Brittany will never be a pre-teen again. She’ll be a full-fledged teenager soon. Dear God, she’s going to need my sound advice in the coming years more than ever before. I need to be diligent in making a connection with her, in letting her know that I’m here to reach out to.

There is no one luckier than I. I am the possessor of three of the most incredible girls this world as ever seen. They’re mine. They’ll always be mine. And we have a full life to live out together. I have a life to live before them – to test the waters and tell them what to expect. I have the ability to pave a road for them or watch them from a mountain ahead as they make their own way. I get to witness, live and in color, the story of their lives. I am who they will come to to tell of their journeys and discoveries. They’ll fall in love (and that brings a smile to my face and tears to the rim of my eyes). They’ll have their hearts broken. They’ll discover truth, and they’ll recognize lies. They’ll be twisted up in the lives of other people. They’ll be confused by life’s big and small events. They’ll stay up all night reading old notes. They’ll cry in their rooms for reasons unknown to everyone and themselves. They’ll go and see the world. They’ll find happiness in the world. They’ll touch someone’s life and awaken great change. They’ll be heroes. They’ll be teachers. They’ll learn something new every day.

And I get to be there all the way through it. I don’t want to close my eyes or turn my back for even a moment during the living of their lives. I want to be the hand that pulls them temporarily from a mess to give them instruction on how to go back in and put it back in order. I want to be the wise old smile and the nodding head when they tell me stories of love and regret. I want to provide the clues to the answers of questions I myself have had to answer. I want to encourage them, urge them, push them from their comfortable homes. I want to test them, love them, hold them, carry them, chase them until they run away screaming and determined.

I want to inspire them.

All four of them.

I take my duties seriously. I am a student, a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin, a sister, a humanitarian, a woman, a lover, a writer. And it’s because I understand the way my life interlocks with so many other people’s lives. I have a duty and an obligation – and I have the honor – to live out my life to the best of my every ability for the sake, not only of my own fulfillment, but for my fellow humans, my mother, my grandparents, my cousins, my sisters, my love and my audience. There is a purpose I am made to serve, and I can either fulfill it or come short of fulfilling it. It isn’t just my life’s betterment that relies on me. There are people I’m made to touch, made to love, made to support, made to feed, made to understand, made to pray for, made to hold, made to cry with, made to advise, made to learn from, made to teach, made to smile at. The list is as long as the number of people I meet and know.

Our individual drives, ambitions, desires, personalities and passions testify to the fact that we each have a specified purpose. My mother was made to be a mother. She is the perfect mother. And she was made to be our mother. Our purposes may be forced upon us at an early stage of our lives, or they may be found at the end of our individual journeys. All our actions count.

It doesn’t matter how many lives you touch. God is in everyone – life is qualitatively infinitely great, no matter the quantity. There is no system to effectively measure the worth of a life. It doesn’t have worth – it’s beyond such petty scales.

What drives people to continue touching lives is the understanding that you have something to give to everyone and something to receive – whether it be more knowledge or an authentic smile in a wrinkled, worn face or a thanks in a language you don’t speak. But it is also realizing the interconnection that constitutes humanity. It is understanding that we are all unified because we’re made of the same bodily fluids and the same soulful emotions. We all bleed and we all cry. What drives people to continue touching lives is empathy, compassion, mercy – all embodied in that great thing, Love. If you know that every face you look upon is the face of your blood brother or sister – if you know love – then you can’t be stopped from giving it. Not necessarily because it makes you happy, but because you have reached the point of enlightenment that allowed you to feel the needs of other people because they, too, are your needs. They’re your needs because you’re human; but they’re your needs because they’re your brother’s or sister’s needs.

Well, that’s how I feel anyway. Everyone’s opinions and beliefs are products of their individual nature and the environments in which they’ve lived. I grew up in a family in love, and the realness of that love has infected me with a need to spread it. I need children to be fed with this love; I need schools to be built with this love; I need babies to be held with this love. This isn’t a want – love takes away wants. Love makes you need things for the sake of love itself. Real live, palpable, earnest, undeniable, genuine love is the universe’s most efficient fuel.

My life is determined to prove that.

What’s your purpose?

(Note the beauty of love without the complicated recipe of doctrine, which has been baking in an oven for the past two thousand years. If you cook a heart, it won’t beat and it won’t bleed. Love is meant to be raw. Not caked and cooked in some substance that takes away from its natural flavor and potency.)

July 28, 2010

I can’t wait to tell you about my trip to Mamelodi today. I will do so promptly when I return at 3 p.m. Yeah, right, I won’t be back by 3 p.m. If I am, that will be a miracle. All I care about is being back by 4:30 because I have a class that I have not yet gone to because a) the teacher was missing and b) I was locked out of my room and into my house for two hours. I’m probably a class behind. AND I HATE BEING BEHIND IN ANYTHING.

I quietly made myself a breakfast of runny fried eggs and yogurt with corn flakes in it. My domestication is greatly benefiting me these days. I think I’m going to make it when I’m really out on my own – making dinner every day, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, etc. Of course, I will have the love of my life to enlist as my aid.

He says he’s been keeping up with his house – vacuuming, taking out the trash and whatnot. THAT IS BEAUTIFUL NEWS. I have trained him well.

It’s 7:24 in the stupid morning, and I’ve got to run…

*You should probably check for tomorrow's edition, where I will tell you about my trip to the township elementary school. Best ever.