past my bedtime

My poor husband does homework for hours on end most evenings. Tonight he was doing an engineering graphics assignment that he has to be on campus for. At 7:30 I finally decided to come bring him dinner. I agreed to just stay until he was done. Now it's 11! Poor thing has been here on campus since 9 this morning. I was pretty productive though. We recently got our first writing assignment in my creative writing class and I was so intimidated by it (because I want it to be good of course) that I didn't want to start it. We are supposed to write a 3-5 page memoir. I had a hard time thinking of a memory that could fill 3-5 pages. It seems the mark of a really good writer is the ability to make even the most boring memory come alive, but I didn't choose a boring memory. I decided to choose a memory from Romania because I thought I could do best with that topic, since there is a lot I could say. So here it is, it's just my first draft, who knows how much I'll change it, I'm not even sure how much I like it yet, but it was actually fun to write. I realize this is going to make this a very long post, but oh well.

Palpable Emotions

Jill Tirrell

It is interesting to me that people feel the need to talk about their emotions in great depth before they feel a sense of validation. It has been my experience that emotions can be felt in the air- as tangible as the person sitting next to you. A look or a touch can say it all, even to someone you may not have expected to understand. Compared to the lifetime that has seemed to since pass, it was only a mere two and a half years ago that I found myself in a Romanian orphanage, building a relationship with a young girl whom society had abandoned. It was she who taught me that emotions need not be explained, only shared.

I will never forget the pungent scent of urine and bleach that greeted me each day as I entered the orphanage. At first it was a shock to see the condition of the children who resided there. I can still feel the burning in my eyes as I held my tears back on my first visit to the orphanage. The cribs were metal, with very little of the original white paint remaining on the bars. The children lie there, unattended to, unloved, and unstimulated. Feeding time was much worse as most of the children required force feeding, to which the few workers had no patience for. Screams could be heard outside the orphanage walls- a sound that will linger in my ears until the day that I take my last breath.

These children were not like the children I knew at home. Their eyes were craterless moons- so empty and cold they pierced to the very soul. I often pondered how great the spirits of these children must have been to meet the challenge that was their lives. I sometimes felt they truly could see into my soul, know my thoughts, sense my selfishness. Maybe this was the reason the women paid to attend to these children chose to treat them cruelly. Perhaps they too felt judged. In a world of children who cannot speak, one learns to speak the voiceless langauge of emotions.

Was I intimidated by the enormity of my task? Yes, I was. How could I make a difference in the lives of these children in just twenty hours a week? Would I do more damage to these emotionally broken children by loving them for four months and then leaving? There were so many questions- so many doubts. Regardless of my insecurities, I couldn't just stand there. I chose one of the stiff, lifeless bodies to pick up. As I lifted Iuliana out of her crib I examined her body, stiff from cerebral palsy. Her hair, cut short like a boys. And her face, so innocent, so fragile. To my surprise, a smile spread across her lips as I drew her close to me. So the children weren't empty as I had thought. Somehow, little Iuliana had retained some emotion, some hope, despite the vacant world she lived in.

In instantly loved her. I wanted to see her smile again. For awhile I just held her in my arms. She was fairly large, probably six or seven years old, although there was no way for me to know for sure. But if I closed my eyes she became an infant in my arms. She would sit there, occasionally scooting her body into a position that would allow her to hear my heart beating. Sometimes she made noises, almost like singing.

Having studied child development extensively I knew that Iuliana had autism, although it was sometimes hard to tell which behaviors stemmed from that and which stemmed from a life of no stimulation and a strong case of attachment disorder. I was always searching for things I could do to make Iuliana smile. I lived to see her smile. In a way it was selfish; I got a kind of high from seeing her face light up. I often spun her around in circles, she loved that. One day I learned that she just loved music. Even in the most violent of fits, Iuliana would quiet immediately if she heard music. All she wanted to do was hear the music. When others would forget the music was even there, Iuliana would still listen intently, and would usually scream to let us know when it had turned off. Despite my severely lacking voice skills, my motherly intuition kicked in like I had never felt it before, taking over my entire being, and I decided to sing to Iuliana. This became a daily occurrence. I would spend hours holding Iuliana and singing to her. She never seemed to mind that I was probably off tune most of the time. She would scoot herself as best she could to get her ear right up to my mouth. Then she would just stay there, still and silent like a dark winter's night.

Iuliana could not speak. Most would agree that she did not understand the world around her. She probably did not understand her own emotions, and yet I could sense them. I didn't need to hear her scream or see her laugh to know whether she was having a good day or a bad day. The thing that surprised me even more was when Iuliana showed me that she sensed my emotions just as palpably as I sensed hers.

It was my last day in the orphanage before I was forced to take a long flight home. I was sad not just to leave Iuliana, and the other children I had grown to love, but to leave knowing that I would not be able to express my emotions to them, to let them know how I feel about them. You see at that point in my life I still believed that emotions had to be laid out on the table, discussed, and analyzed in order for them to be understood by the other party. As I sat with Iuliana, watching my last moments with her disappear before my eyes, I was filled with a love for her and a sadness that I had to leave her, most likely never to see her again. Just a couple minutes before I had to put her down forever, she reached up and grabbed my hair. This was nothing unusual, she often pulled hair. I let my head follow my hair, not having the strength to stop her. She pulled my hair until my face was by hers and then she put her mouth to my cheek. It took my a moment to process what had just happened. Iuliana had kissed me, as I often did to her. It was at that moment that I knew she could feel my emotions. I little girl who could not understand even the most basic of things around her understood my emotions. She left me with that parting gift. The thought of it still warms my heart much like memories of family vacations and Christmas mornings from my childhood.

I have never since denied the power of emotions. While they may be defined as intangible, they are often quite the opposite. Love and sadness, while maybe the easiest to sense, are not the only emotions to be felt in the air. Embarrassment, for example, can make the air feel thick enough to choke you. It is my hope that none of us feels we need to hash out our every emotion or feeling with a friend of lover. Often times if you feel it strong enough and think it often enough your partner will feel it more powerfully than could have ever been expressed in words.