It's a Memory.

The time I spent working as an Americorps VISTA gave me a chance to see a world that I hadn’t experienced since elementary school. That world is called Poverty.

It’s not a place people wish to visit, it’s not a tourist destination anywhere, it doesn’t have fun rides or good food, and it’s not a place most people want to or think they will wind up. With the economic crises around the world, Poverty is going to become even more crowded than it already is.

Elementary school gives me a few memories of dirty faces, dirty clothes, mention of someone who didn’t have indoor plumbing (most likely because the water had been shut off), and a sense of making due.

Some of the kids I met while working as a VISTA have left permanent marks and memories. It was not their poverty that keeps them in mind. It is their spirits. It is they who keeps me thinking about them. They stick with me more than kids from high school, more than other student and professors in college.

It is how much they were themselves that still catches my thoughts. It was how they pretended to be nothing less and did not feel less, most of the time. You could catch those who were being broken down by their poverty. You could see it in their posture and in their eyes. They were hunched and ready to fight. Their eyes were angry and hateful, but so sad. They are the pennies, thrown in the garbage, those dropped on the streets and not picked up, those coins left behind because they aren't worth much. The tarnish shows on the children and pennies alike.

There are two in particular whom I hope for but am not sure hope will help. I hate to say too late, but it could have been for them. Brother and Sister, hungry for food, hungry for attention their mother cannot give. In need of clothes that fit, shoes that aren't falling apart and smelly, in need of some enormous tiny gestures of love.

There is the girl who is a boy. Her hair is short and often covered in a baseball cap. She wears boys baggy jeans, t-shirts, and plays with the boys. She has not a girly bone to her, it seemed. Yet, her name was that of a flower and she liked it. She could not stand being called a "He." She is someone I wonder about for she did not apologize for wanting the best of both worlds. She was tough for a tough world. She put forth her strength in short hair, in sports, in being masculine. Yet, she knows she's a girl and doesn't deny it. She merely hides it so she is not so vulnerable.

So, what becomes of them? I don't know and I shall probably never know. Except for one. I expect great things from her. I hope she is one of those Cinderella stories on Dateline one night. Rags to Riches, by using her brain and her kindness. I want to see her on tv campaigning for her next election. She could bring all kinds of worlds together, that girl.