Boys

Since arriving in El Salvador, I have been working with an organization, teaching and getting to know a group of students from a community in Los Planes de Renderos, a rural area composing one of the outskirts of metropolitan San Salvador.

The name of the organization is Passion for Purity, and while they teach English, their primary purpose and goal is discipleship in the gospel, and I am grateful to them for opening the door into the lives of each of these kids, into their abilities to learn, and hunger for laughter and community. Their needs are many, and potential likewise.

I am not leaving El Salvador, but am moving to a new region, to begin work at a coffee plantation. In light of that, I brought pizza and Coke up from town, to the bible study Nicole and Noemi lead with our students on Saturday afternoons.

Afterwords the kids and I sat, ate and, mindful of our inability to communicate fully, loved through our laughter, deep smiles, and mutual understanding of that small candle within us burning at both ends.

We said our goodbyes, and I walked them to the gate, where we waved, hugged, and said goodbye once again. Thinking it was the last time I'd see them for a short while, I was surprised, yet pleased when Edgar's face peered around the door to our classroom, with hand soon following, holding a cone with coconut sorbete and raspberry topping, sold for 25 cents from a man in town that walks the streets with three-wheeled cart and bell.

I said more than thanks, and followed him out to the gate once again, knowing sorbete tastes best under a clear sky, but now noticing two other of my students, Javier and Carlos, also buying ice-cream, (pause here, for clarification, that sorbete is like ice-cream, but not ice-cream; not necessarily better, not worse, only like, but not ice-cream). I strolled over, raising my cone as I approached, to signal approval and gratitude, motioning across the street, to the mirador, as a clear location for us to unveil more than delicious from our snack. All concurring, we both-wayed and crossed the street, passing through the small black gate and single-filing, then shoulder to shoulder against the stone wall that marked the ledge, over-looking the nation's capital.

We didn't speak, solely surveyed, taking in the newness of blue sky and chilled air, white clouds and all that was the present. A photograph would have taken away from our pure pleasure and perennial contentment, however I did take one picture, as I glanced at the three boys and their ice-cream cones, staring out, thankful and non expectant at the city below, developed it in black and white and hung it at the forefront of my soul; reminding me of the things I hope to live for, and an Edwin Arlington Robinson poem I once read...

I: Boys

WE were all boys, and three of us were friends;

And we were more than friends, it seemed to me: --

Yes, we were more than brothers then, we three. . . .

Brothers? . . . But we were boys, and there it ends.

We finished our cones, and by this point had defined in spanish and english all the geographical landscapes we could spot with our eight eyes; at which point Carlos opened his backpack to reveal and retrieve four mandarins he'd picked while visiting his grandmother, polishing them with his palms before offering them to each of us, chuckling, hiding then, what we'd find out five minutes later, that we had 35 plus, mandarins in his backpack, at which point, we too laughed, each narrating a story of our own as to how Carlos managed to pick and conceal such treasure from us all afternoon. We peeled, and ate, and stared, and ate; before again breaking the silence by attempting to land the seeds spit from our mouths onto a decorative ledge roughly five feet beyond and ten feet below where we leaned against the stone wall. I was the last to accomplish my own objective, only to regain my high standing by retrieving three more mandarins and juggling them near the ledge of the lookout; gaining glances and slight applause before losing control and hitting a mother on the right shoulder, to whom I apologized, and feigned embarrassment for being the adult in my group. In reality, I was thirteen, and could not have felt ashamed even if it were appropriate.

We finished our mandarins, and absorbed a last look at the city, as I took one last photo of my friends for the dashboard of my eyes. They had nothing, and they had everything.

Other day, same sky, students, more like friends.

....I studied

Their faces and made for myself the story

Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers

And sisters they seemed to me...

Edwin Arlington Robinson