Holes in my Heart

Sunday went all wrong. I didn’t wake up begrudgingly from a deep sleep to walk downstairs to go to the longest church services in the world. I didn’t wake up five feet from a mermaid and an almond-eyed beauty. No one showed me a postcard of “cats doing people things.” There were no tambourines. I didn’t wear my EM shirt for the first time in months. I didn’t long for an afternoon nap. I didn’t meet a group of people I would learn to love and cherish over the next week. I didn’t dance to the radio while making salad, spaghetti, and garlic bread with my roommates. A seven-foot tall man didn’t tell me a story about a woman named Mildred. I didn’t convince anyone that I’m from Russia or laugh through the rules in the group meeting.

Monday, I did not walk six miles through the Bronx or sing the Ninja song first thing in Harlem. I did not sing the Ninja song at all. No one got into an argument over whether my name is Swick or Swift. I didn’t get mobbed by small children in the hallway. Making coffee was not my top priority. There was no one to make coffee for, anyhow. There was no crisis to be averted and I haven’t eaten rice and gondule in several days. No one has tried to speak to me in Spanish. 

My world has been turned upside down.

I did, however, run into my first grade teacher in my local Target. She has always been my favourite teacher – hands down. She remembered me and couldn’t believe I was already old enough to be starting grad. school. She said I had the same smile. And suddenly, dozens of smiles flooded my mind. Some old, many new. And though my heart ached for little bodies in New York I may never hug again, there was a healing warmth that covered it all. A warmth that even though I am far from Harlem, my work there is far from over. Just as even though I hadn’t seen my first grade teacher in years, the love she gave and the things she taught me never left me. And new people came and went from my life, watering the seeds she’d planted.

The Salvation Army was there long before me, and will continue to be there long after my teammates and I are gone and forgotten. Or maybe, just maybe we won’t be completely forgotten and the love we gave will have been more than a seed. Regardless, something powerful happened there this summer…or perhaps I should say that Someone powerful happened.

I struggle to tell people about my summer because I feel like they expect me to tell them about all the families I helped and to show them tangible pictures of the ways I changed the world. But I can’t. To be honest, I didn’t even really meet most of the families I served. I served hundreds of families at the New York Common Pantry, but since I often worked in the fruits and veggies section, I interacted with almost none of them. I never saw their faces or heard their laughs.

“But what about the food pantries or soup kitchens where you worked?,” people ask. Okay, this one is a little easier. I can tell them about my friend Robert, who went out of his way to make people laugh, or the hour-long conversation I had with him one day about faith, his life, and everything in between. I can talk about how that was the first real conversation Robert had had in years because his son doesn’t speak to him and he spends most of his time alone.

But that’s just a small glimpse. How do I tell people that I only got to spend two weeks with Robert before moving to a different location and that it broke my heart to not see him two or three times a week after that? How do I share how much hurt I encountered during my trip and how it hurt my heart to walk alongside these people? How do I share the pieces of my heart that I left behind?

Or what about the Hispanic ladies I met in the park? I saw them several days a week for two weeks, and again had to leave them. They welcomed my groups and me every time with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Even if they already had their own water bottles and didn’t need the ones we were passing out, they waited expectantly for us with smiles and welcoming hearts. It seems so small and unimportant when I try to tell people, but I looked forward to my time with them and part of my heart is still on that bench in that park.

And then there’s Goya, whose name I’m not even sure I can spell, who was one of my favourite parts of working at the Bronx Tremont. There were one or two days where I didn’t see her, and those days were the worst. She’d teach me a few words in Spanish to help me communicate with the ladies who cooked lunch for the kids and us, and she made me feel like the most important person in the world just because I existed. It was surprisingly humbling to talk with her because I recognized how my love paled in comparison to hers.

How can I talk about Joseph and his siblings, who became some of my closest friends even with a severe language barrier between us? How can I possibly tell people about all the kids at the Harlem Temple who swarmed me when I once made the mistake of sitting on the floor next to them? Never before have I thought that I’d drown in an ocean of small children.

How can I show you the missing parts of my soul or the parts that I’ve gained?

 How can I possibly say how I’ve been unalterably changed by this experience except by baring the scars of the parts of my heart that didn’t come back with me?